The Unwiseman's disappointment over the failure of his Switzer Snow &
Ice Company was very keen at first and the strange old gentleman was
inclined to be as thoroughly disgusted with Switzerland as he had been
with London and Paris. He was especially put out when, after travelling
seven or eight miles to see a "glazier," as he called it, he discovered
that a glacier was not a frozen "window-pane mender" but a stream of ice
flowing perennially down from the Alpine summits into the valleys.
"They bank too much on their snow-drifts over here," he remarked, after
he had visited the _Mer-de-Glace_. "I wouldn't give seven cents to _see_
a thing like that when I've been brought up close to New York where we
have blizzards every once in a while that tie up the whole city till it
looks like one glorious big snow-ball fight."
And then when he wanted to go fishing in one of the big fissures of the
glacier, and was told he could drop a million lines down there without
getting a bite of any kind he announced his intention of getting out of
the country as soon as he possibly could. But after all the Unwiseman
had a naturally sun-shiny disposition and this added to the wonderful
air of Switzerland, which in itself is one of the most beautiful things
in a beautiful world, soon brought him out of his sulky fit and set him
to yodeling once more as gaily as a Swiss Mountain boy. He began to see
some of the beauties of the country and his active little mind was not
slow at discovering advantages not always clear to people with less
inquisitiveness.
"I should think," he observed to Mollie one morning as he gazed up at
Mount Blanc's pure white summit, "that this would be a great ice-cream
country. I'd like to try the experiment of pasturing a lot of fine
Jersey cows up on those ice-fields. Just let 'em browze around one of
those glaciers every day for a week and give 'em a cupful of vanilla, or
chocolate extract or a strawberry once in a while and see if they
wouldn't give ice-cream instead o' milk. It would be worth trying,
anyhow."
Mollie thought it would and Whistlebinkie gave voice to a long low
whistle of delight at the idea.
"It-ud-be-bettern-soder-watter-rany-way!" he whistled.
"Anything would be better than soda water," said the Unwiseman, who had
only tried it once and got nothing but the bubbles. "Soda water's too
foamy for me. It's like drinking whipped air."
But the thing that pleased the Unwiseman more than anything else was a
pet chamois that he encountered at a little Swiss Chalet on one of his
tours of investigation. It was a cunning little animal, very timid of
course, like a fawn, but tame, and for some reason or other it took
quite a fancy to the Unwiseman--possibly because he looked so like a
Swiss Mountain Boy with a peaked cap he had purchased, and ribbons wound
criss-cross around his calves and his magnificent Alpen-stock upon which
had been burned the names of all the Alps he had _not_ climbed. And then
the Unwiseman's yodel had become something unusually fine and original
in the line of yodeling, which may have attracted the chamois and made
him feel that the Unwiseman was a person to be trusted. At any rate the
little animal instead of running away and jumping from crag to crag at
the Unwiseman's approach, as most chamois would do, came inquiringly up
to him and stuck out its soft velvety nose to be scratched, and
permitted the Unwiseman to inspect its horns and silky chestnut-brown
coat as if it recognized in the little old man a true and tried friend
of long standing.
"Why you little beauty you!" cried the Unwiseman, as he sat on the fence
and stroked the beautiful creature's neck. "So you're what they call a
shammy, eh?"
The chamois turned its lovely eyes upon his new found friend, and then
lowered his head to have it scratched again.
"Mary had a little sham
Whose hide was soft as cotton,
And everywhere that Mary went
The shammy too went trottin'."
sang the Unwiseman, dropping into poetry as was one of his habits when
he was deeply moved.
[Illustration: THE CHAMOIS EVIDENTLY LIKED THIS VERSE FOR ITS EYES
TWINKLED]
The chamois evidently liked this verse for its eyes twinkled and it laid
its head gently on the Unwiseman's knee and looked at him appealingly as
if to say, "More of that poetry please. You are a bard after my own
heart." So the Unwiseman went on, keeping time to his verse by slight
taps on the chamois' nose.
"It followed her to town one day
Unto the Country Fair,
And earned five hundred dollars just
In shining silver-ware."
Whistlebinkie indulged in a loud whistle of mirth at this, which so
startled the little creature that it leapt backward fifteen feet in the
air and landed on top of a small pump at the rear of the yard, and stood
there poised on its four feet just like the chamois we see in pictures
standing on a sharp peak miles up in the air, trembling just a little
for fear that Whistlebinkie's squeak would be repeated. A moment of
silence seemed to cure this, however, for in less than two minutes it
was back again at the Unwiseman's side gazing soulfully at him as if
demanding yet another verse. Of course the Unwiseman could not
resist--he never could when people demanded poetry from him, it came
so very easy--and so he continued:
"The children at the Country Fair
Indulged in merry squawks
To see the shammy polishing
The family knives and forks.
"The tablespoons, and coffee pots,
The platters and tureens,
The top of the mahogany,
And crystal fire-screens."
"More!" pleaded the chamois with his soft eyes, snuggling its head close
into the Unwiseman's lap, and the old gentleman went on:
"'O isn't he a wondrous kid!'
The wondering children cried.
We didn't know a shammy could
Do such things if he tried.
"And Mary answered with a smile
That dimpled up her chin
'There's much that shammy's cannot do,
But much that shammy-skin.'"
Whistlebinkie's behavior at this point became so utterly and inexcusably
boisterous with mirth that the confiding little chamois was again
frightened away and this time it gave three rapid leaps into the air
which landed it ultimately upon the ridge-pole of the chalet, from
which it wholly refused to descend, in spite of all the persuasion in
the world, for the rest of the afternoon.
"Very intelligent little animal that," said the Unwiseman, as he trudged
his way home. "A very high appreciation of true poetry, inclined to make
friendship with the worthy, and properly mistrustful of people full of
strange noises and squeaks."
"He was awfully pretty, wasn't he," said Mollie.
"Yes, but he was better than pretty," observed the Unwiseman. "He could
be made useful. Things that are only pretty are all very well in their
way, but give me the useful things--like my kitchen-stove for instance.
If that kitchen-stove was only pretty do you suppose I'd love it the way
I do? Not at all. I'd just put it on the mantel-piece, or on the piano
in my parlor and never think of it a second time, but because it is
useful I pay attention to it every day, polish it with stove polish,
feed it with coal and see that the ashes are removed from it when its
day's work is done. Nobody ever thinks of doing such things with a plain
piece of bric-a-brac that can't be used for anything at all. You don't
put any coal or stove polish on that big Chinese vase you have in your
parlor, do you?"
"No," said Mollie, "of course not."
"And I'll warrant that in all the time you've had that opal glass jug on
the mantel-piece of your library you never shook the ashes down in it
once," said the Unwiseman.
"Mity-goo-dreeson-wy!" whistled Whistlebinkie. "They-ain't never no
ashes in it."
"Correct though ungrammatically expressed," observed the Unwiseman.
"There never are any ashes in it to be shaken down, which is a pretty
good reason to believe that it is never used to fry potatoes on or to
cook a chop with, or to roast a turkey in--which proves exactly what I
say that it is only pretty and isn't half as useful as my
kitchen-stove."
"It would be pretty hard to find anything useful for the bric-a-brac to
do though," suggested Mollie, who loved pretty things whether they had
any other use or not.
"It all depends on your bric-a-brac," said the Unwiseman. "I can find
plenty of useful things for mine to do. There's my coal scuttle for
instance--it works all the time."
"Coal-scuttles ain't bric-a-brac," said Whistlebinkie.
"My coal scuttle is," said the Unwiseman. "It's got a picture of a daisy
painted on one side of it, and I gilded the handle myself. Then there's
my watering pot. That's just as bric-a-bracky as any Chinese china pot
that ever lived, but it's useful. I use it to water the flowers in
summer, and to sift my lump sugar through in winter. Every pound of lump
sugar you buy has some fine sugar with it and if you shake the lump
sugar up in a watering pot and let the fine sugar sift through the
nozzle you get two kinds of sugar for the price of one. So it goes all
through my house from my piano to my old beaver hat--every bit of my
bric-a-brac is useful."
"Wattonearth do-you-do with a-nold beevor-at?" whistled Whistlebinkie.
"I use it as a post-office box to mail cross letters in," said the
Unwiseman gravely. "It's saved me lots of trouble."
"Cross letters?" asked Mollie. "You never write cross letters to anybody
do you?"
"I'm doing it all the time," said the Unwiseman. "Whenever anything
happens that I don't like I sit down and write a terrible letter to the
people that do it. That eases off my feelings, and then I mail the
letters in the hat."
"And does the Post-man come and get them?" asked Mollie.
"No indeed," said the Unwiseman. "That's where the beauty of the scheme
comes in. If I mailed 'em in the post-office box on the lamp-post, the
post-man would take 'em and deliver them to the man they're addressed to
and I'd be in all sorts of trouble. But when I mail them in my hat
nobody comes for them and nobody gets them, and so there's no trouble
for anybody anywhere."
"But what becomes of them?" asked Mollie.
"I empty the hat on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of every
month and use them for kindling in my kitchen-stove," said the
Unwiseman. "It's a fine scheme. I keep out of trouble, don't have to buy
so much kindling wood, and save postage."
"That sounds like a pretty good idea," said Mollie.
"It's a first class idea," returned Mr. Me, "and I'm proud of it. It's
all my own and if I had time I'd patent it. Why I was invited to a party
once by a small boy who'd thrown a snow-ball at my house and wet one of
the shingles up where I keep my leak, and I was so angry that I sat down
and wrote back that I regretted very much to be delighted to say that
I'd never go to a party at his house if it was the only party in the
world besides the Republican; that I didn't like him, and thought his
mother's new spring bonnet was most unbecoming and that I'd heard his
father had been mentioned for Alderman in our town and all sorts of
disgraceful things like that. I mailed this right in my hat and used it
to boil an egg with a month later, while if I'd mailed it in the
post-office box that boy'd have got it and I couldn't have gone to his
party at all."
"Oh--you went, did you?" laughed Mollie.
"I did and I had a fine time, six eclairs, three plates of ice cream, a
pound of chicken salad, and a pocketful of nuts and raisins," said the
Unwiseman. "He turned out to be a very nice boy, and his mother's spring
bonnet wasn't hers at all but another lady's altogether, and his father
had not even been mentioned for Water Commissioner. You see, my dear,
what a lot of trouble mailing that letter in the old beaver hat saved
me, not to mention what I earned in the way of food by going to the
party which I couldn't have done had it been mailed in the regular way."
Here the old gentleman began to yodel happily, and to tell passersby in
song that he was a "Gay Swiss Laddy with a carpet-bag, That never knew
fear of the Alpine crag, For his eye was bright and his conscience
clear, As he leapt his way through the atmosphere, Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Trala-lolly-O."
"I do-see-how-yood-make-that-shammy-useful," said Whistlebinkie. "Except
to try your poems on and I don't b'lieve he's a good judge o' potery."
"He's a splendid judge of queer noises," said the Unwiseman, severely.
"He knew enough to jump a mile whenever you squeaked."
"Watt-else-coodie-doo?" asked Whistlebinkie through his hat. "You
haven't any silver to keep polished and there aren't enough queer noises
about your place to keep him busy."
"What else coodie-do?" retorted the Unwiseman, giving an imitation of
Whistlebinkie that set both Mollie and the rubber doll to giggling. "Why
he could polish up the handle of my big front door for one thing. He
could lie down on his back and wiggle around the floor and make it shine
like a lookin' glass for another. He could rub up against my kitchen
stove and keep it bright and shining for a third--that's some of the
things he couldie-doo, but I wouldn't confine him to work around my
house. I'd lead him around among the neighbors and hire him out for
fifty cents a day for general shammy-skin house-work. I dare say
Mollie's mother would be glad to have a real live shammy around that she
could rub her tea-kettles and coffee pots on when it comes to cleaning
the silver."
"They can buy all the shammys they need at the grocer's," said
Whistlebinkie scornfully.
"Dead ones," said the Unwiseman, "but nary a live shammy have you seen
at the grocer's or the butcher's or the milliner's or the piano-tuner's.
That's where Wigglethorpe----"
"Wigglethorpe?" cried Whistlebinkie.
"Yes Wigglethorpe," repeated the Unwiseman. "That's what I have decided
to call my shammy when I get him because he will wiggle."
"He don't thorpe, does he?" laughed Whistlebinkie.
"He thorpes just as much as you bink," retorted the Unwiseman. "But as I
was saying, Wigglethorpe, being alive, will be better than any ten dead
ones because he won't wear out, maids won't leave him around on the
parlor floor, and just because he wiggles, the silver and the hardwood
floors and front door handles will be polished up in half the time it
takes to do it with a dead one. At fifty cents a day I could earn three
dollars a week on Wigglethorpe----"
"Which would be all profit if you fed him on potery," said Whistlebinkie
with a grin.
"And if I imported a hundred of them after I found that Wigglethorpe was
successful," the Unwiseman continued, very wisely ignoring
Whistlebinkie's sarcasm, "that would be--hum--ha----"
"Three hundred dollars a week," prompted Mollie.
"Exactly," said the Unwiseman, "which in a year would amount
to--ahem--three times three hundred and sixty-five is nine, twice nine
is----"
"It comes to $15,600 a year," said Mollie.
"Right to a penny," said the Unwiseman. "I was figuring it out by the
day. Fifteen thousand six hundred dollars a year is a big sum of money
and reckoned in eclairs at fifty eclairs for a dollar is--er--is--well
you couldn't eat 'em if you tried, there'd be so many."
"Seven hundred and eighty thousand eclairs," said Mollie.
"That's what I said," said the Unwiseman. "You just couldn't eat 'em,
but you could sell 'em, so really you'd have two businesses right away,
shammys and eclaires."
"Mitey-big-biziness," hissed Whistlebinkie.
"Yes," said the Unwiseman, "I think I'll suggest it to my burgular when
I get home. It seems to me to be more honorable then burguling and it's
just possible that after a summer spent in the uplifting company of my
kitchen stove and having got used to the pleasant conversation of my
leak, and seen how peaceful it is to just spend your days exercising a
sweet gentle umbrella like mine, he'll want to reform and go into
something else that he can do in the day-time."
By this time the little party had reached the hotel, and Mollie's father
was delighted to hear of the Unwiseman's proposition. It was an entirely
new idea, he said, although he was doubtful if it was a good business
for a burgular.
"People might not be willing to trust him with their silver," he said.
"Very well then," said the Unwiseman. "Let him begin on front door knobs
and parlor floors. He's not likely to run away with those."
The next day the travellers left Switzerland and when I next caught
sight of them they had arrived at Venice.