The]

ground was white with snow when Mollie awakened from a night of pleasant

dreams. The sun shone brightly, and as the little girl looked out of her

bed-room window it seemed to her as if the world looked like a great

wedding-cake, and she was very much inclined to go out of doors and cut

a slice out of it and gobble it up, just as if it were a wedding-cake

and not a world.

Whistlebinkie agreed with her that that was the thing to do, but there

were music-lessons and a little reading to be done before Mollie could

hope to venture out, and as for Whistlebinkie, he was afraid to go out

alone for fear of getting his whistle clogged up with snow. Consequently

it was not until after luncheon that the two inseparable companions,

accompanied by Mollie's new dog, Gyp, managed to get out of doors.

"Isn't it fine!" cried Mollie, as the snow crunched musically under her

feet.

"Tsplendid!" whistled Whistlebinkie.

Gyp took a roll in the snow and gleefully barked to show that he too

thought it wasn't half bad.

"I wonder what the Unwiseman is doing this morning," said Mollie, after

they had romped about for some little while.

"I dare say he is throwing snow-balls at himself," said Whistlebinkie.

"That's about as absurd a thing as any one can do, and he can always be

counted upon to be doing things that haven't much sense to 'em."

"I've half a mind to go and see what he's doing," said Mollie.

"Let's," ejaculated Whistlebinkie, and Gyp indicated that he was ready

for the call by rushing pell-mell over the snow-encrusted lawn in the

direction of the spot where the Unwiseman's house had last stood.

"Gyp hasn't learned that the Unwiseman moves his house about every day,"

said Mollie.

"Dogs haven't much sense," observed Whistlebinkie, with a superior air.

"It takes them a long time to learn things, and they can't whistle."

"That they haven't," came a voice from behind Whistlebinkie. "That

little beast has destroyed eight lines of my poem with his horrid paws."

Mollie turned about quickly and there was the house of the Unwiseman,

and sitting on the door-step was no less a person than the old gentleman

himself, gazing ruefully at some rough, irregular lines which he had

traced in the snow with a stick, and which were punctuated here and

there by what were unmistakably the paw-marks of Gyp.

"Why--hullo!" said Mollie; "moved your house over here, have you?"

"Yes," replied the Unwiseman. "There is so much snow on the ground that

I was afraid it would prevent your coming to see me if I let the house

stay where it was, and I wanted to see you very much."

"It was very thoughtful of you," said Mollie.

"Yes; but I can't help that, you know," said the Unwiseman. "I've got to

be thoughtful in my new business. Thoughts and snow and a stick are

things I can't get along without, seeing that I haven't a slate or pen,

ink and paper, in the house."

"You've got a new business, then, have you?" said Mollie.

"Yes," the Unwiseman answered. "I had to have. When the Christmas toy

business failed I cast about to find some other that would pay for my

eclaires. My friend the hatter wanted me to go in with him, but when I

found out what he wanted me to do I gave it up."

"What did he want you to do?" asked Mollie.

"Why, there is a restaurant next door to his place where two or three

hundred men went to get their lunch every day," said the Unwiseman. "He

wanted me to go in there and carelessly knock their hats off the pegs

and step on them and spoil them, so that they'd have to call in at his

shop and buy new ones. My salary was to be fifteen a week."

"Fifteen dollars?" whistled Whistlebinkie in amazement, for to him

fifteen dollars was a princely sum.

"No," returned the Unwiseman. "Fifteen eclaires, and I was to do my own

fighting with the ones whose hats were spoiled. That wouldn't pay,

because before the end of the week I'd be in the hospital, and I am told

that people in hospitals are not allowed to eat eclaires."

"And so you declined to go into that business?" asked Mollie.

"Exactly," returned the Unwiseman. "I felt very badly on my way back

home, too. I had hoped that the hatter wanted to employ me as a

demonstrator."

"A what?" cried Whistlebinkie.

[Illustration: "A demonstrator."]

"A demonstrator," repeated the Unwiseman. "A demonstrator is one who

demonstrates--a sort of a show-man. In the hat business he would be a

man who should put on new styles of hats so as to show people how people

looked in them. I suggested that to the hatter, but he said no, it

wouldn't do. It would make customers hopeless. They couldn't hope to

look as well in his hats as I would, and so they wouldn't buy them; and

as he wasn't in the hat trade for pleasure, he didn't feel that he could

afford a demonstrator like me."

"And what did you do then?" asked Mollie.

"I was so upset that I got on board of a horse-car to ride home,

forgetting that the horse-cars all ran the other way and that I hadn't

five cents in my pocket. That came out all right though. I didn't have

to walk any further," said the Unwiseman. "The conductor was so mad when

he found out that I couldn't pay my fare that he turned the car around

and took me back to the hatter's again, where I'd got on. It was a great

joke, but he never saw it."

And the Unwiseman roared with laughter as he thought of the joke on the

conductor, and between you and me, I don't blame him.

"Well, I got home finally, and was just about to throw myself down with

my head out of the window to weep when I had an idea," continued the

Unwiseman.

"With your head out of the window?" echoed Mollie. "What on earth was

that for?"

[Illustration: "I always weep out of the window."]

"So that my tears wouldn't fall on the carpet, of course," returned the

Unwiseman. "What else? I always weep out of the window. There isn't any

use of my dampening the house up and getting rheumatism just because it

happens to be easier to weep indoors. When you're as old as I am, you

have to be careful how you expose yourself to dampness. Rheumatism might

be fun for you, because you can stay home from school, and be petted

while you have it, but for me it's a very serious matter. I had it so

bad once I couldn't lean my elbow on the dinner-table, and it spoiled

all the pleasure of dining."

"Well--go on and tell us what your idea was," said Mollie, with

difficulty repressing a smile. "Are you going to patent your scheme of

weeping through a window?"

"No, indeed," said the Unwiseman. "I'm willing to let the world have the

benefit of my discoveries, and, besides, patenting things costs money,

and you have to send in a model of your invention. I can't afford to

build a house and employ a man to cry through a window just to supply

the government with a model. My idea was this. As my tears fell to the

ground my ears and nose got very cold--almost froze, in fact. There was

the scheme in a nutshell. Tears rhyme with ears, nose with froze. Why

not write rhymes for the comic papers?"

"Oho!" said Mollie; "I see. You are going to be a poet."

"That's the idea," said the Unwiseman. "There's heaps of money in it. I

know a man who gets a dollar a yard for writing poetry. If I can write

ten yards of it a week I shall make eight dollars anyhow, and maybe ten.

All shop-keepers calculate to have remnants of their stock left over,

and I've allowed two yards out of every ten for remnants. The chief

trouble I have is in finding writing materials. I haven't any pen and

ink; I don't own any slates; the only paper I have in the house is the

wall paper and a newspaper, and I can't use them, because the wall paper

is covered with flowers and the newspaper is where I get my

ideas--besides, it's all the library I've got. I didn't know what to do

until this morning when I got up and found the ground all covered with

snow. Then it came to me all of a sudden, why not get a stick and write

your poems on the snow, and then maybe, if you have luck, you call sell

them before the thaw. I dressed hurriedly and hastened downstairs, moved

the house up near yours, so that I'd be near you and be sure to see you,

feeling confident that you could get your papa to come out and see the

poems and maybe buy them for his paper. Before long I had written thirty

yards of poetry, and just as I had finished what I thought was a fair

day's work, up comes that horrid Gyp and prances the whole thing into

nothing."

"Dear me!" said Whistlebinkie. "That was too bad."

"Wasn't it!" sighed the Unwiseman. "It was such a beautifully long

poem--and what's more, it isn't easy work. It's almost as hard as

shoveling snow, only, of course, you get better pay for it."

"You can rewrite it, can't you?" asked Mollie, gazing sadly at the havoc

Gyp had wrought in the Unwiseman's work.

"I am afraid not," said the Unwiseman. "My disappointment has driven it

quite out of my head. I can only remember the title."

"What did you call it?" asked Mollie.

[Illustration: "A Poem, by Me."]

"It was a simple little title," replied the Unwiseman. "It was called 'A

Poem, by Me.'"

"And what was it about?" asked Mollie.

"About six hundred verses," said the Unwiseman; "and not one of 'em has

escaped that dog. Those that he hasn't spoiled with his paws he has

wagged his tail on, and he chose the best one of the lot to lie on his

back and wiggle on. It's very discouraging."

"I'm very sorry," said Mollie; "and if you want me to I'll punish Gyp."

"What good would that do me?" queried the Unwiseman. "If chaining him up

would restore even half the poem, I'd say go ahead and chain him up; but

it won't. The poem's gone, and there's nothing left for me to do but go

in the house and stick my head out of the window and cry."

"Perhaps you can write another poem," said Mollie.

"That's true--I hadn't thought of that," said the Unwiseman. "But I

don't think I'd better to-day. I've lost more money by the destruction

of that first poem than I can afford. If I should have another ruined

to-day, I'd be bankrupt."

"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do," said Mollie. "I'll ask papa to let

me give you a lead-pencil and a pad to write your next poem on. How

will that do?"

"I should be very grateful," said the Unwiseman; "and if with these he

could give me a few dozen ideas and a rhyming dictionary it would be a

great help."

"I'll ask him," said Mollie. "I'll ask him right away, and I haven't any

doubt that he'll say yes, because he always gives me things I want if

they aren't harmful."

"Very well," said the Unwiseman. "And you may tell him for me, Miss

Whistlebinkie, that I'll show him how grateful I am to him and to you

for your kind assistance by letting him have the first thousand yards of

poetry I write for his paper at fifty cents a yard, which is just half

what I shall make other people pay for them."

And so Mollie and Whistlebinkie bade the Unwiseman good-by for the time

being, and went home. As Mollie had predicted, her father was very glad

to give her the pencil and the pad and a rhyming dictionary; but as he

had no ideas to spare at the moment he had to deny the little maid that

part of the request.

[Illustration: The Unwiseman becomes a poet.]

What the Unwiseman did with the pad and the pencil and the dictionary I

shall tell you in the next chapter.

[Illustration: IX. The Poems of the Unwiseman.

In which Mollie listens to some remarkable verses.