The Literary Bellows
"What kept you so long?" asked the Poker, as the Andiron and Bellows came
up. "Was our friend Bellows out of breath, or what?"
"No, I wasn't out of breath," said the Bellows. "I never am out of breath.
You might as well expect a groceryman to be out of groceries as a bellows
to be out of breath. I wasn't long, either--at least, no longer than
usual, which is two foot three. A longer bellows than that would be
useless for our purpose. I simply didn't want to come, that's all. I was
very busy writing when they interrupted me."
"It was very kind of you to come when you didn't want to," said Tom.
"No, it wasn't," said the Bellows. "I didn't want to come then, I don't
want to be here now, and I wouldn't blow the cloud an inch for you if I
didn't have to."
"But why do you have to?" asked Tom.
"I'm outvoted, that's all," replied the Bellows. "You see, my dear
Weasel"--
"Dormouse," whispered the Poker.
"I mean Dormouse," said the Bellows, correcting himself. "You see, I
believe in everybody having a say in regard to everything. I always have
everything I can put to a vote. Consequently, when Righty here came down
and asked me to help blow the cloud over and I said that I wouldn't do it
he called Lefty in, and we put it to a vote as to whether I'd have to or
not. They voted that I must and I voted that I needn't, and, of course,
that beat me; so here I am."
"Well, it's very good of you, just the same," said the Poker. "You aren't
quite as good-natured as I am, but you come pretty near it. Most people
would have left a matter of that kind entirely to themselves and then
voted the way they felt like voting. You aren't selfish, anyhow."
"Yes, I am," said the Bellows. "I'm awfully selfish."
"You're not, either," said the Poker.
"Oh, goodness!" ejaculated the Bellows. "What's the use of fighting? I say
I am."
[Illustration: "WHAT'S THE USE OF FIGHTING?"]
"Let's have a vote on it," said Righty. "I vote he isn't."
"So do I," said Tom.
"Me, too," said Lefty.
"Those are my sentiments likewise," put in the Poker.
"Oh, very well, then, I'm not," said the Bellows, with a deep drawn sigh;
"but I do wish you'd let me have my own way about some things. I want to
be selfish, even if I'm not."
"Well, we are very sorry," said the Poker, "but we can't let you be; we
need you too much to permit you to be selfish. Besides, you're too good a
fellow to be selfish. I knew a boy who was selfish once, and he got into
all sorts of trouble. Nobody liked him, and once when he gave a big dinner
to a lot of other boys not one of them would come, and he had to eat all
the dinner himself. The result was that he overate himself, ruined his
digestion, and all the rest of his life had to do without pies and cake
and other good things. It served him right, too. Do you think we are going
to let you be like that, Mr. Bellows?"
"I suppose not," said the Bellows, "but stories about selfish boys don't
frighten me. I'm a bellows, not a boy. I don't give dinners and I don't
eat pie and cake. Plain air is good enough for me, and I wouldn't give a
cent for all the other good eatables in the world except doughnuts. I like
doughnuts because, after all, they are only bellows cakes. But come, let's
hurry up with the cloud. I want to get back to my desk. I have a poem to
finish before breakfast."
This statement interested Tom hugely. He had read many a book, but never
before had he met a real author, and even if the Bellows had been a man,
so long as he was a writer, Tom would have looked upon him with awe.
"Excuse me," he said hesitatingly, as the Bellows began to wheeze away at
the cloud, "do you really write?"
[Illustration: "I blow a story or two, now and then."]
"Well, no," said the Bellows. "No, I don't write, but I blow a story or
two now and then. You see, I can't write because I haven't any hands, but
I can wheeze out a tale to a stenographer once in a while which any
magazine would be glad to publish if it could get hold of it. One of my
stories called Sparks blew into a powder magazine once and it made a
tremendous noise in the world when it came out."
"I wish you would tell me one," said Tom.
"Are you a stenographer?" asked the Bellows.
"No," said Tom, "but I like stories just the same."
"Well," said the Bellows, "I'll tell you one about Jimmie Tompkins and the
red apple."
"Hurrah!" cried Tom. "I love red apples."
"So did Jimmie Tompkins," said the Bellows, "and that's why he died. He
ate a red apple while it was green and it killed him."
There was a pause for an instant, and the Bellows redoubled his efforts to
move the cloud, which for some reason or other did not stir easily.
"Go ahead," said Tom, when he thought he had waited long enough for the
Bellows to resume.
"What on?" asked the Bellows.
"On your story about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple," Tom answered.
"Why, I've told you that story," retorted the Bellows. "Jimmie ate the red
apple and died. What more do you want? That's all there is to it."
"It isn't a very long story," suggested Tom, ruefully, for he was much
disappointed.
"Well, why should it be?" demanded the Bellows. "A story doesn't have to
be long to be good, and as long as it is all there--"
"I know," said Tom; "but in most stories there's a lot of things put in
that help to make it interesting."
"All padding!" sneered the Bellows, "and that I will never do. If a story
can be told in five words what's the use of padding it out to five
thousand?"
"None," said Tom, "except that you can't make a book out of a story of
five words."
"Oh, yes, you can," said the Bellows, airily. "It isn't any trouble at all
if you only know how, and in the end you have a much more useful book than
if you made it a million words long. You can print the five words on the
first page and leave the other five hundred pages blank, so that after you
get through with the volume as a story book you can use it for a blank
book or a diary. Most books nowadays are so full of story that when you
get through with them there isn't anything else you can do with the book."
"It's a new idea," said Tom, with a laugh.
"And all my own invention, too," said the Bellows proudly.
"He's the most inventive Bellows that ever was," put in the Poker, "that
is, in a literary way. How many copies of your book of 'Unwritten Poems'
did you sell, Wheezy?" he added.
"Eight million," returned the Bellows. "That was probably my greatest
literary achievement."
"'Unwritten Poems,' eh?" said Tom, to whom the title seemed curious.
"Yes," said the Bellows. "The book had three hundred pages, all nicely
bound--twenty-six lines to a page--and each beginning with a capital
letter, just as poetry should. Then, so as to be quite fair to all the
letters, I began with A and went right straight through the alphabet to
Z."
"But the poems?" demanded Tom.
"They were unwritten just as the title said," returned the Bellows. "You
see that left everything to the imagination, which is a great thing in
poetry."
"Didn't people complain?" Tom asked.
"Everybody did," replied the Bellows, "but that was just what I wanted. I
agreed to answer every complaint accompanied by ten cents in postage
stamps. Eight million complaints alone brought me in $480,000 over and
above all expenses, which were four cents per complaint."
"But what was your answer?" demanded Tom.
"I merely told them that my book stood upon its own merits, and that if
they didn't like my unwritten poems they could write some of their own on
the blank pages of the book. It was a perfectly fair proposition," the
Bellows replied.
"I think I like written poetry best, though," said Tom.
"That's entirely a matter of taste," said the Bellows, "and I shan't find
fault with you for that. The only thing is that Unwritten Poems are apt to
have fewer faults than the written ones, and every great poet will tell
you that nobody ever detected any mistakes in his poems until he had put
them down on paper. If he had left them unwritten nobody would ever have
known how bad they were."
Tom scratched his head in a puzzled mood. He could not quite grasp the
Bellows' meaning.
"What do you think about it, Righty?" he demanded of the Andiron.
"Oh, I don't think anything about it," replied Righty. "I haven't watched
poetry much. You see, Lefty and I don't see much of it. People light fires
nowadays more with newspapers than with poetry."
"What I've seen burns well," observed the Lefthandiron, "and don't make
much ashes to get into your eyes; but, say, Wheezy, if you'll do your
blowing about this cloud rather than about your poetry we may get
somewhere."
"Very well," said the Bellows; "fasten your hats on tight and turn up your
collars. I'm going to give you a regular tornado."
And he was as good as his word, for, expanding himself to the utmost
limit, he gave a tremendous wheeze, which nearly blew Tom from his perch,
sent his cap flying off into space and smashed the cloud into four
separate pieces, one of which, bearing the Poker, floated rapidly off to
the north, while the other three sped south, east and west, respectively.
[Illustration: "HE GAVE A TREMENDOUS WHEEZE."]
"Hi, there," cried Righty, as he perceived the damage done to their fleecy
chariot. "What are you up to? We don't want to be blown to the four
corners of the earth. Pull in--pull in, for goodness sake, or we'll never
get together again!"
"There's no satisfying you fellows," growled the Bellows. "First I don't
blow enough, and then I blow too much."
"Stop growling and haul us back again!" cried the Poker.
The Bellows began to haul in his breath rapidly, and by a process of
suction soon had the four parts of the burst cloud back together once
more.
"By jingo!" panted Lefty. "That was a narrow escape. Two seconds more and
this party would have been a goner. Even as it is, you've twisted my neck
so I'll never get it back in shape again," said the Righthandiron.
"Well, I'm sorry," said the Bellows, "but it's all your own fault. You
asked me to blow the cloud, and I blew it. You didn't say where you wanted
it blown."
"You needn't have blown it to smithereens, just the same!" retorted the
Poker. "It doesn't cost anything to ask a question now and then."
"Where, then?" demanded the Bellows.
"I'd like to find my hat," said Tom.
"Very well," said the Bellows. "I see it speeding off toward the moon, and
we'll chase after it, but we'll never catch it if it misses the moon and
falls past it into space."
The Poker rose to his full height and peered after the cap, which, even as
the Bellows had said, was sailing rapidly off in the direction of the
crescent moon, which lay to the west and below them.
"Hurrah!" he cried. "It's all right."
"Can you see it still?" asked Tom, anxiously, for his cap was made of
sealskin and he didn't wish to lose it.
"Yes, it's all right," said the Poker. "It nearly missed, but not quite.
If you will look through these glasses you will see it."
The Poker handed Tom a pair of strong field glasses and the lad, gazing
anxiously through them, was delighted to see his wandering cap hanging, as
if on a great golden hook in the sky beneath them, and which was nothing
more than the last appearance of the moon itself.
"Good!" cried the Righthandiron. "That settles the question for us of
where we shall go next. There is no choice left. We'll go to the moon.
Heave ahead, Wheezy."
Whereupon the Bellows began to blow, at first gently, then stronger and
stronger, and yet more strongly still, until the cloud was moving rapidly
in the direction they desired.