"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!'
"He wiped his spectacles and said:
'Kind sir, observe this frog.
I took him in this net, when he
Was but a pollywog.
"'Now it's my wish, good sir, to seek
The seismocosmic state;
And why this strange amphibian
Should slowly gravitate
"'From a mere firmisternial thing
To--' 'Say!' I cried, 'please wait!
I can not understand a word
Of that which you relate.'
"'Now, please tell me,' he said again,
'The sum of the equation
Between the harp and hippogriff;
Define their true relation.'
"'I can not answer you,' I said,
'Because I'm but a tinker.
But I can mend your old umbrel';
'Twill be a dime, I think, sir.'
"Just then the frog dived off his hand
And swam out to the fence,
Which was an easy thing to do--
The vapor was so dense.
"And there he perched upon a post;
It was a sight to see
The way he made grimaces at
The Pedagogue and me.
"It vexed us very much to see
A frog so impolite
I flung a gnarly stick at him--
Flung it with all my might.
"It floated softly on the fog.
As softly as a feather;
The frog jumped on and sailed away,
Leaving us there together
"A-shaking both our fists at him
Till they were sore and numb.
The bull-frog merely blinked at us,
And sang: '_You'll drown!_ BOTTLE-O'-RUM!'
"With that I left the Pedagogue
A-sitting in the wet.
He was so absent-minded, I
Dare say he's sitting yet--
"Upon the little school-house steps,
Revolving in his mind
The definite relation 'twixt
The cosmos and mankind."
When the Itinerant Tinker had finished his story he rose wearily to his
feet.
"If we don't hurry along," he said, "I doubt whether we shall reach the
Crypt in time to take our tea. I never--"
He was interrupted at this point by a shrill voice, coming, it seemed,
from the direction of the forest.
"Jingle-junk! jingle-junk! jingle-junk!" shouted the penetrating voice.
The Itinerant Tinker stopped instantly. An angry frown gathered on his
brow.
"I know who _that_ is," he muttered. "It's Wamba, son of Witless, the
Jester of Ivanhoe. I've been trying to catch _him_ for seventy-two
years, and if I do, I'll--"
Dickey never heard the end of the sentence for the Itinerant Tinker made
for the wood at a surprisingly swift gait. The incident had its really
amusing side, too; for he left behind him a trail of pots, pans,
boilers, stove-lids, potato-mashers--in fact, Dickey thought, he must
have dropped almost all of his "necessary commodities" by the time he
had vanished into the wood.