The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V

"If you don't mind," said Dickey, "I should like to go with you."

Without a word of reply the Itinerant Tinker rose slowly and painfully to his feet, rearranged on his back the merchandise he had laid aside, and started off up the hill, with Dickey following closely at his heels.

"I tried to mend the Great Dipper once," resumed the Itinerant Tinker, at length. "I only succeeded, however, in crooking the handle; but it looks better that way, I think."

"How did you manage to reach it?" asked Dickey, a little doubtfully.

"I climbed up the Milky Way," replied the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "In order to reach it after I got there, I was obliged to stand on the horn of the moon. It was a very perilous undertaking."

Dickey couldn't believe quite all that the Itinerant Tinker was telling him. But his mild and gentle eyes wore such a serious expression that he very much disliked to doubt the old man's word.

"Speaking of the moon," went on the Itinerant Tinker after a while, "I tried once to make her stand up—after she had set, you know. It proved a thankless task. She treated me very rudely, indeed. By the by, have you seen the Flighty-wight?"

"No, sir; I have not," replied Dickey.

"He's always jumping at conclusions, you know. I jumped at a conclusion once, fell into disgrace, and was very much cut up over it. I tried to patch him up and he called me an old meddler! You haven't heard of such ingratitude before, I fancy?"

"It was very mean of him, I think," said Dickey, sympathetically.

"Oh, that's nothing," pursued the Itinerant Tinker, in a melancholy tone. "That's nothing! I once attempted to solder a new tip on the Wizard's wand. He turned me into a rabbit, he did."

"Whatever did you do then?" asked Dickey.

"I protested, of course. He merely said that he was only making game of me. But if there's any one thing that I can do better than another," went on the Itinerant Tinker, after another embarrassing pause, "it's piecing together a split infinitive. Would you like me to show you how it's done?"

"Indeed, I should," Dickey eagerly answered; "very much, indeed."

"Very well, then. Just give me time to set down these necessary commodities, and I'll show you exactly the manner in which it's done and undone."

After he had rid himself of his awkward burden, the Itinerant Tinker carefully selected a saw from his kit of tools.

"Is that a log over there?" he asked, pointing toward a mound of earth. "I'm a trifle nearsighted, you know."

"No," Dickey replied. "But there's one off there, just to the other side. A big one, too."

"The identical thing," said the Itinerant Tinker. Whereupon he walked over to it and immediately began sawing a thin slab from off its smooth end.

"Now," said he, after he had finished the rather difficult task, oiled his saw and returned it to his kit, "I proceed to write the word love in the infinitive mood."

"Is that a sad mood?" asked Dickey. "It sounds very much like it, I think."

Without heeding the question in the least the Itinerant Tinker turned the slab for Dickey's inspection, and he read on it the two words, to love. Taking up a wedge the Itinerant Tinker printed the word dearly on the flat side of it, and then skilfully drove it between the words to and love. When he again held it up for Dickey to see, it read: to dearly love.

"There!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker, holding the slab proudly at arm's length and turning his head slowly from side to side, "that's what I call a fine bit of ingenuity!"

"So that's a split infinitive, is it?" Dickey asked.

"Why, you stupid boy!" the Itinerant Tinker exclaimed; "didn't you just this minute see me split it?"

"Yes, sir; I did," Dickey murmured rather shamefacedly.

"Then, if I split it, what else could it be but a split infinitive, I'd like to know?"

"Well," said Dickey, a bit timidly, "I never heard a block of wood called an infinitive before."

"Oh, my!" sighed the Itinerant Tinker, as he sank down on his pile of merchandise. "How you do weary me!"

He sat looking at the slab of wood for such a long time, turning it admiringly now that way, now this, that poor Dickey began to grow quite nervous.

"Please," he ventured at last, "won't you show me now how you mend it?" Dickey didn't care in the least to see it done, but he imagined that by asking the question he would regain the good will of the old man.

"There you go again! There you go!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker. He actually shed a tear. "I knew you'd do it—I knew it!"

"Now what have I done?" asked Dickey, innocently.

"You've broken the silence," said the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "It'll take me hours and hours to glue that together. But first," he went on, after another long pause, "I'll show you how neatly this split infinitive can be mended."

Thereupon he withdrew the wedge, dipped a brush into a pot of glue, and, after distributing the sticky fluid over the split sides, brought them carefully and neatly together.

"There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "that's the proper way to bring together a split infinitive. Beware, my boy, of splitting your infinitives; but if you do, call on the Itinerant Tinker and he'll straighten 'em out for you."

"Before we move along," he resumed, after he had loaded himself with his merchandise, "perhaps you'd like to listen to a story?"

"I should, if it wasn't about split infinitives," replied Dickey, doubtfully. "They really make me quite dizzy."

"Well, it's not," said the Itinerant Tinker, smiling vaguely. "It's the story of the

PEDANTIC PEDAGOGUE

"I saw him sitting—sitting there,
Outside the school-house door,
It was a dismal afternoon;
The hour was half-past four.

"I asked him, 'Sir, what is your name?'
His voice came through the fog:
'I have forgotten it, kind sir,
But I'm a Pedagogue.

"'And I'm so absent-minded, sir,
I put my clothes to bed
And hang myself upon a chair;
Is not that odd?' he said.

"'And every morning of my life
I climb into my tub;
Then wonder why I'm sitting there.
Ah, me, man! that's the rub!'