Half-Hours with Jimmieboy

"I would have," said the king, "because you know the law of this country requires the king to consume a bottle of cod-liver oil every day, and if the bottles were all broken, perhaps the law, too, would have been crushed out of existence. But, after all, I'd rather be king with cod-liver oil than have my kingdom ruined and do without it. How would you like to see our gardens?"

"Very much," said Jimmieboy. "I'm fond of flowers."

The king laughed.

"What a droll idea," he said, turning to the laureate. "The idea of flowers growing in gardens! Write me a rhyme on the drollness of the idea."

The laureate sighed. It was evident that he was getting tired of composing verses to order.

"I hear and obey," he replied, shortly, and then he recited as follows:

"To think of wasting: any time
In raising flowers, I think,
Is worse than writing nonsense-rhyme,
Or frying purple ink.

"It's queerer really than the act
Of painting sword-fish green;
Or sailing down a cataract
To please a magazine.

"Indeed, it really seems to me,
Who now am very old,
The drollest bit of drollery
That ever has been drolled."

"But what do you raise in your gardens?" asked Jimmieboy, as the laureate completed his composition.

"Nothing, of course," said the king. "What's a garden for, anyhow? Pleasure, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Jimmieboy's voice, "but – "

"There isn't any but about it," said the king. "If a garden is for pleasure it must not be worked in. Business and pleasure are two very different things, and you cannot raise flowers without working."

"But how do you get pleasure out of a garden when you don't raise anything in it?"

"Aren't you dull!" ejaculated the king. "Write me a quatrain on his dullness, O laureate."

"Confound his dullness!" muttered the laureate. "I'm rapidly wearing out, poetizing about this boy." Then he added, aloud: "Certainly, your majesty. Here it is:

"He is the very dullest lad
I've seen in all my life;
For dullness he is quite as bad
As any oyster-knife."

"Is that all?" asked the king, with a frown.

"I'm afraid four lines is as many as I can squeeze into a quatrain," said the laureate, returning the frown with interest.

"Then tell this young man's ear, sirrah, how it comes that we get pleasure out of a garden in which nothing grows."

"If I must – I suppose I must," growled the laureate; and then he recited:

"The plan is thus, O little wit,
You'll see it in a minute;
We get our pleasures out of it,
Because there's none within it."

"That is very poor poetry, Laury!" snapped the king.

"If you don't like it, don't take it," retorted the laureate. "I'm tired of this business, anyhow."