Mollie and the Unwiseman

"Yes, if you will," said Mollie. "What is it about?"

"It's about three dozen to the pound, the way I weigh it," replied the Unwiseman. "It's called 'My Wish, and Why I Wish It.'"

"That's an awfully long name, isn't it?" said Mollie.

"Yes, but it makes the poem a little heavier," replied the old man. "I've made up a little for its length, too, by making the poem short. It's only a quartrain. Here's how it goes:

"I wish the sun would shine at night,
Instead of in the day, dear,
For that would make the evenings bright,
And day time would be shadier!"

"Why, that isn't bad!" cried Mollie.

"No," returned the Unwiseman. "I didn't try to make it bad, though I could have if I'd wanted to. But there's a great thing about the thought in that poem, and if you'll only look into it you'll see how wonderful it is. It can be used over and over again without anybody's ever noticing that it's been used before. Here's another poem with just the same idea running through it:

"I wish the oceans all were dry,
And arid deserts were not land, dear,
If we could walk on oceans – My!
And sail on deserts, 'twould be handier."

"How is that the same idea?" asked Mollie, a little puzzled to catch the Unwiseman's point.

"Why, the whole notion is that you wish things were as they aren't, that's all; and when you consider how many things there are in the world that are as they are and aren't as they aren't, you get some notion as to how many poems you can make out of that one idea. For instance, children hate to go to bed at night, preferring to fall asleep on the library rug. So you might have this:

"I wish that cribs were always rugs,
'Twould fill me chock up with delight,
For then, like birds and tumble-bugs,
I'd like to go to bed at night."

"Tumble-bugs don't like to go to bed at night," said Mollie. "They like to buzz around and hit their heads against the wall."

"I know that; but I have two excuses for using tumble-bugs in that rhyme. In the first place, I haven't written that rhyme yet, and so it can't be criticized. It's only what the dictionary people would call extemporious. I made it up on the spur of the moment, and from that standpoint it's rather clever. The other excuse is that even if I had written it as I spoke it, poets are allowed to say things they don't exactly mean, as long as in general they bring out their idea clearly enough to give the reader something to puzzle over."

"Well, I suppose you know what you mean," said Mollie, more mystified than ever. "Have you got any more poems?"

"Yes. Here's a new bit of Mother Goose I've dashed off:

"Namby Pamby sat on the fence,
Namby Pamby tumbled from thence.
Half the queen's donkeys, her dog, and her cat,
Could not restore Namby to where he was at."

"Why!" cried Mollie. "You can't write that. It's nothing but Humpty Dumpty all over again."

"You're all wrong there," retorted the Unwiseman. "And I can prove it. You say that I can't write that. Well, I have written it, which proves that I can. As for its being Humpty Dumpty all over again, that's plain nonsense. Namby Pamby is not Humpty Dumpty. Namby Pamby begins with an N and a P, while Humpty Dumpty begins with H and D. Then, again, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. My hero sat on a fence. Humpty Dumpty fell. Namby Pamby tumbled – and so it goes all through the poem. Mine is entirely different. Besides, it's a hysterical episode, and I've got just as much right to make poems about hystery as Mother Goose had."

"Maybe you're right," said Mollie. "But if I were you, I wouldn't write things that are too much like what other people have written."

"I don't see why," said the Unwiseman, impatiently. "If Peter Smith writes a poem that everybody likes and buys, I want to write something as much like what Peter Smith has made a fortune out of as Peter Smith has. That's the point. But we won't quarrel about it. Girls don't know much about business, and men do. I'm a man and you're only a girl."

"Well, I think Mollie's right," put in Whistlebinkie.

"You have to," retorted the Unwiseman. "If you didn't, she'd pack you up in a box and send you out to the sheathen."

"The what?" asked Mollie.

"The sheathen. Little girl savages. I call 'em sheathen to extinguish them from heathen, who are, as I understand it, little boy savages," explained the Unwiseman. "But what do you think of this for a poem. It's called Night, and you mustn't laugh at it because it is serious:

"Oh night, dear night, in street and park,
Where'er thou beest thou'rt always dark.
Thou dustent change, O sweet brunette,
No figgleness is thine, you bet.
And what I love the best, on land or sea,
Is absence of the vice of figglety."

"What's figglety?" asked Mollie.

"Figglety?" echoed the Unwiseman. "Don't you know that? Figglety is figgleness, or the art of being figgle."

"But I don't know what being figgle is," said Mollie.

"Hoh!" sneered the Unwiseman, angry at Mollie's failure to understand and to admire his serious poem. "Where have you been brought up? Figgle is changing. If you pretend to like pie to-day better than anything, and change around to pudding to-morrow, you are figgle. Some people spell it fickle, but somehow or other I like figgle better. It's a word of my own, figgle is, while fickle is a word everybody uses – but I won't argue with you any more," he added with an impatient gesture. "You've found fault with almost everything I've done, and I'm not going to read any more to you. It's discouraging enough to have people pass you by and not buy your poems, without reading 'em to a little girl that finds fault with 'em, backed up in her opinion by a pug dog and a rubber doll like Whistlebinkie. Some time, when you are better natured, I'll read more to you, but now I won't."

Saying which, the Unwiseman turned away and walked into his house, banging the door behind him in a way which plainly showed that he was offended.

Mollie and Whistlebinkie and Gyp went silently home, very unhappy about the Unwiseman's temper, but, though they did not know it, they were very fortunate to get away before the Unwiseman discovered that the mischievous Gyp had chewed up three pounds of sonnets while their author was reading his poem "Night," so that on the whole, I think, they were to be congratulated that things turned out as they did.

X

The Unwiseman's Luncheon

In which the Unwiseman makes Some Sensible Remarks on Eating

Whistlebinkie, said Mollie, one morning in the early spring, "it's been an awful long time since we saw the Unwiseman."

"Thasso," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I wonder what's become of him."

"I can't even guess," said Mollie. "I asked papa the other morning if he had seen any of his poetry in print and he said he hadn't so far as he knew, although he had read several books of poetry lately that sounded as if he'd written them. I say we go out and try to find him."

"Thasoots me," said Whistlebinkie.

"What's that?" said Mollie. "You still talk through the top of your hat so much that I really can't make out what you say half the time."

"I forgot," said Whistlebinkie, meekly. "What I meant to say was that that suits me. I'd like very much to see him again and hear some of his poetry."

"I don't much think he's stayed in that business," observed Mollie. "He's had time enough to be in sixteen different kinds of businesses since we saw him, and I'm pretty certain that he's tried eight of them any how."