days after he had received the pencil and pad and rhyming dictionary
from Mollie, the Unwiseman wrote to his little benefactress and asked
her to visit him as soon as she could.
[Illustration: "I've written eight pounds of poetry!"]
"I've written eight pounds of poetry," he said in his letter, "and I'd
like to know what you think of some of it. I've given up the idea of
selling it by the yard because it uses up so much paper, and I'm going
to put it out at a dollar a pound. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to
have you tell your papa about this and ask him if he hasn't any heavier
paper than the lot he sent me. If he could let me have a million sheets
of paper twice as heavy as the other I could write a pound of sonnits in
half the time, and could accordingly afford to give them to him a little
cheaper for use in his newspaper. I'd have been up to see you last
night, but somehow or other my house got moved out to Illinois, which
was too far away. It is back again in New York this morning, however, so
that you won't find any trouble in getting him to see the poetry, and,
by the way, while I think of it, I wish you'd ask your papa if Illinois
rhymes with boy or boys. I want to write a poem about Illinois, but I
don't know whether to begin it with
"_'O, the boys,
Of Illinois,
They utterly upset my equipoise';_
"_'O, thou boy,
Of Illinois!
My peace of mind thou dust destroy?'_
"You see, my dear, it is important to know at the start whether you are
writing about one boy or several boys; and that rhyming dictionary you
sent me doesn't say anything about such a contiguity. You might ask him,
too, what is the meaning of contiguity. It's a word I admire, and I want
to work it in somewhere where it will not only look well, but make a
certain amount of sense.
"Yoors tooly,
"ME."
It was hardly to be expected, after an invitation of this sort, that
Mollie should delay visiting the Unwiseman for an instant, so summoning
Whistlebinkie and Gyp, she and her two little friends started out, and
ere long they caught sight of the Unwiseman's house, standing on one
corner of the village square, and in front of it was a peculiar looking
booth, something like a banana-stand in its general outlines. This was
covered from top to bottom with placards, which filled Mollie with
uncontrollable mirth, when she saw what was printed on them. Here is
what some of them said: