Here's the story in verse.
Listen!
"Oh, be not hasty, friend?" I cried,
"Think twice o'er all you utter."
"I'm bound to do so," he replied,
"I stut-tut-tut-tut-tutter."
And I never hear any one carrying on in that way, but what I think of an
old Irishman, a farmer who dropped into the office of a country weekly,
run by a friend of mine.
"Sit down, Mr. Dooley," said my friend, the editor.
Mr. Dooley took a chair.
"By the way, Mr. Dooley," said my friend, "you have sent me a load of
hay in payment for the five years' subscription you owed me for my
paper."
"Oi d-d-d-did," declared Mr. Dooley, nodding pleasantly.
"Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Dooley, my horse can't eat that hay."
Mr. Dooley screwed up his face, and puffed out his cheeks until I
thought he would have a fit.
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"T-t-t-to tell ye the t-t-truth, mister, no more c-c-can m-m-me
g-g-go-go-goat e-e-eat your p-p-p-p-p-paper."
I don't know which was hotter, Mr. Dooley or the editor, when they
finished their argument.
You realize there are various methods of warming a man up--for instance,
at my hotel one evening a bell-boy came to the desk, after answering a
call, and said:
"That fellow up in 999 says he's freezing."
"All right," said the clerk, cheerfully, "we'll soon have him hot
enough. Here, take him up his bill."
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I've got a great friend, Henry Badger by name, that I must tell you
about.
I hardly know whether to admire the monumental nerve of Henry Badger, or
class him as a near relative of the jackass tribe.
You may not know it, but his neighbors have long been aware of the fact
that his good spouse ruled the roost with an iron rod, and Henry's
former buoyant spirit has all but withered in his breast.
Why, he used to strut the streets with all the pompous airs of an
alderman, while now he shuffles along as though he owed ten tailors on
the block.
It is awful, the change made in that man.
Once in a while I understand there is a faint glow among the embers, and
a trace of his old-time spirit flashes up, though it is gone almost as
quickly.
That must have been the case the evening I was there.
Henry had been reading the evening paper, where many black headlines
announced the exciting events of the day.
"One wife too many," I heard her say, sarcastically; "that must of
course refer to the doings of another rascally bigamist."
"Not necessarily, my dear," returned Henry, without daring to take his
eyes off the paper.