As Mollie and Whistlebinkie were reading these signs the door of the
Unwiseman's house was opened and the proprietor appeared. He smiled
pleasantly when he saw who his visitors were, although if Mollie had
been close enough to him to hear it she might have noticed that he gave
a little sigh.
"I didn't recognize you at first," he said; "I thought you might be
customers, and I delayed coming out so that you wouldn't think I was too
anxious to sell my wares. Of course, I am very anxious to sell 'em, but
it don't do to let the public know that. Let 'em understand that you are
willing to sell and they'll very likely buy; but if you come tumbling
out of your house pell-mell every time anybody stops to see what you've
got they'll think maybe you aren't well off, and they'll either beat you
down or not buy at all."
"Aren't you afraid of being robbed though?" Mollie asked.
[Illustration: "The newspapers would be full of it."]
"Oh, I wouldn't mind being robbed," replied the Unwiseman. "It would be
a good thing for me if somebody would steal a pound or two of my poems.
That would advertise my business. I can't afford to advertise my
business, but if I should be robbed it would be news, and, of course,
the newspapers would be full of it. Your father doesn't know of any
kind-hearted burglar who's temporarily out of work who'd be willing to
rob a poor man without charge does he?"
"No," said Mollie, "I don't think papa knows any burglars at all. We
have literary men, and editors, and men like that visiting the house
all the time, but so far we haven't had any burglars."
"Well, I suppose I'll have to trust to luck for 'em," sighed the
Unwiseman; "though it would be a great thing if an extra should come out
with great big black headlines, and newsboys yelling 'em out all over
the country, 'The Unwiseman's Potery Stand Visited by Burglars! Eight
Pounds of Triolets Missing! The Police on the Track of the
Plunderers!'"
"It would be a splendid advertisement," said Mollie. "But I'm afraid
you'll be a long time getting it. Have you any poems to show me?"
"Yes," said the Unwiseman, running his eye over his stock. "Yes, indeed,
I have. Here's one I like very much. Shall I read it to you?"
"Yes, if you will," said Mollie. "What is it about?"
"It's about three dozen to the pound, the way I weigh it," replied the
Unwiseman. "It's called 'My Wish, and Why I Wish It.'"
"That's an awfully long name, isn't it?" said Mollie.
[Illustration: The unwiseman reads his poem, "My wish and why I wished
it."]
"Yes, but it makes the poem a little heavier," replied the old man.
"I've made up a little for its length, too, by making the poem short.
It's only a quartrain. Here's how it goes:
"_I wish the sun would shine at night,
Instead of in the day, dear,
For that would make the evenings bright,
And day time would be shadier!_"
"Why, that isn't bad!" cried Mollie.
"No," returned the Unwiseman. "I didn't try to make it bad, though I
could have if I'd wanted to. But there's a great thing about the thought
in that poem, and if you'll only look into it you'll see how wonderful
it is. It can be used over and over again without anybody's ever
noticing that it's been used before. Here's another poem with just the
same idea running through it:
"_I wish the oceans all were dry,
And arid deserts were not land, dear,
If we could walk on oceans--My!
And sail on deserts, 'twould be handier._"
"How is that the same idea?" asked Mollie, a little puzzled to catch the
Unwiseman's point.
"Why, the whole notion is that you wish things were as they aren't,
that's all; and when you consider how many things there are in the world
that are as they are and aren't as they aren't, you get some notion as
to how many poems you can make out of that one idea. For instance,
children hate to go to bed at night, preferring to fall asleep on the
library rug. So you might have this:
"_I wish that cribs were always rugs,
'Twould fill me chock up with delight,
For then, like birds and tumble-bugs,
I'd like to go to bed at night._"
"Tumble-bugs don't like to go to bed at night," said Mollie. "They like
to buzz around and hit their heads against the wall."
"I know that; but I have two excuses for using tumble-bugs in that
rhyme. In the first place, I haven't written that rhyme yet, and so it
can't be criticized. It's only what the dictionary people would call
extemporious. I made it up on the spur of the moment, and from that
standpoint it's rather clever. The other excuse is that even if I had
written it as I spoke it, poets are allowed to say things they don't
exactly mean, as long as in general they bring out their idea clearly
enough to give the reader something to puzzle over."
"Well, I suppose you know what you mean," said Mollie, more mystified
than ever. "Have you got any more poems?"
[Illustration: "Could not restore Namby to where he was at."]
"Yes. Here's a new bit of Mother Goose I've dashed off:
"_Namby Pamby sat on the fence,
Namby Pamby tumbled from thence.
Half the queen's donkeys, her dog, and her cat,
Could not restore Namby to where he was at._"
"Why!" cried Mollie. "You can't write that. It's nothing but Humpty
Dumpty all over again."
"You're all wrong there," retorted the Unwiseman. "And I can prove it.
You say that I can't write that. Well, I _have_ written it, which
proves that I _can_. As for its being Humpty Dumpty all over again,
that's plain nonsense. Namby Pamby is not Humpty Dumpty. Namby Pamby
begins with an N and a P, while Humpty Dumpty begins with H and D. Then,
again, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. My hero sat on a fence. Humpty
Dumpty fell. Namby Pamby tumbled--and so it goes all through the poem.
Mine is entirely different. Besides, it's a hysterical episode, and I've
got just as much right to make poems about hystery as Mother Goose had."
"Maybe you're right," said Mollie. "But if I were you, I wouldn't write
things that are too much like what other people have written."
"I don't see why," said the Unwiseman, impatiently. "If Peter Smith
writes a poem that everybody likes and buys, I want to write something
as much like what Peter Smith has made a fortune out of as Peter Smith
has. That's the point. But we won't quarrel about it. Girls don't know
much about business, and men do. I'm a man and you're only a girl."
"Well, I think Mollie's right," put in Whistlebinkie.
"You have to," retorted the Unwiseman. "If you didn't, she'd pack you up
in a box and send you out to the sheathen."
"The what?" asked Mollie.
[Illustration: "The Sheathen."]
"The sheathen. Little girl savages. I call 'em sheathen to extinguish
them from heathen, who are, as I understand it, little boy savages,"
explained the Unwiseman. "But what do you think of this for a poem. It's
called Night, and you mustn't laugh at it because it is serious:
"_Oh night, dear night, in street and park,
Where'er thou beest thou'rt always dark.
Thou dustent change, O sweet brunette,
No figgleness is thine, you bet.
And what I love the best, on land or sea,
Is absence of the vice of figglety._"
"What's figglety?" asked Mollie.
"Figglety?" echoed the Unwiseman. "Don't you know that? Figglety is
figgleness, or the art of being figgle."
"But I don't know what being figgle is," said Mollie.
"Hoh!" sneered the Unwiseman, angry at Mollie's failure to understand
and to admire his serious poem. "Where have you been brought up? Figgle
is changing. If you pretend to like pie to-day better than anything, and
change around to pudding to-morrow, you are figgle. Some people spell it
fickle, but somehow or other I like figgle better. It's a word of my
own, figgle is, while fickle is a word everybody uses--but I won't
argue with you any more," he added with an impatient gesture. "You've
found fault with almost everything I've done, and I'm not going to read
any more to you. It's discouraging enough to have people pass you by and
not buy your poems, without reading 'em to a little girl that finds
fault with 'em, backed up in her opinion by a pug dog and a rubber doll
like Whistlebinkie. Some time, when you are better natured, I'll read
more to you, but now I won't."
Saying which, the Unwiseman turned away and walked into his house,
banging the door behind him in a way which plainly showed that he was
offended.
Mollie and Whistlebinkie and Gyp went silently home, very unhappy about
the Unwiseman's temper, but, though they did not know it, they were very
fortunate to get away before the Unwiseman discovered that the
mischievous Gyp had chewed up three pounds of sonnets while their
author was reading his poem "Night," so that on the whole, I think, they
were to be congratulated that things turned out as they did.
[Illustration: X. The Unwiseman's Luncheon.
In which the Unwiseman makes some sensible remarks on eating.
"Whistlebinkie,"]
said Mollie, one morning in the early spring, "it's been an awful long
time since we saw the Unwiseman."
"Thasso," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I wonder what's become of him."
"I can't even guess," said Mollie. "I asked papa the other morning if he
had seen any of his poetry in print and he said he hadn't so far as he
knew, although he had read several books of poetry lately that sounded
as if he'd written them. I say we go out and try to find him."
"Thasoots me," said Whistlebinkie.
"What's that?" said Mollie. "You still talk through the top of your hat
so much that I really can't make out what you say half the time."
"I forgot," said Whistlebinkie, meekly. "What I meant to say was that
that suits me. I'd like very much to see him again and hear some of his
poetry."
"I don't much think he's stayed in that business," observed Mollie.
"He's had time enough to be in sixteen different kinds of businesses
since we saw him, and I'm pretty certain that he's tried eight of them
any how."
"I guess may be so," said Whistlebinkie. "He's a great tryer, that old
Unwiseman."
Mollie donned her new spring hat and Whistlebinkie treated his face and
hands to a dash of cold water, after which they started out.
"It's the same old question now," said Mollie, as she stood on the
street corner, wondering which way to turn. "Where would we better go to
find him?"
"Well, it seems to me," said Whistlebinkie, after a moment's thought,
"it seems to me that we'd better look for him in just the same place he
was in the last time we saw him."
"I don't see why," returned Mollie. "We never did that before."
"That's why," explained Whistlebinkie. "He's such an unaccountable old
man that he's sure to turn up where you least expected him. Now, as I
look at it, the place where we least expect to find him is where he was
before. Therefore I say let's go there."
"You're pretty wise after all, Whistlebinkie," said Mollie, with an
approving nod. "We'll go there."
And it turned out that Whistlebinkie was right.
The house of the Unwiseman was found standing in precisely the same
place in which they had last seen it, but pasted upon the front door was
a small placard which read, "Gawn to Lunch. Will be Back in Eight
Weeks."
[Illustration: "He must be fearfully hungry to go to a lunch it will
take that long to eat."]
"Dear me!" cried Whistlebinkie, as Mollie read the placard to him. "He
must have been fearfully hungry to go to a lunch it will take that long
to eat."
Mollie laughed. "I guess maybe I know him well enough to know what that
means," she said. "It means that he's inside the house and doesn't want
to be bothered by anybody. Let's go round to the back door and see if
that is open."
This was no sooner said than done, but the back door, like the first,
was closed. Like the front door, too, it bore a placard, but this one
read, "As I said before, I've gone to lunch. If you want to know when
I'll be back, don't bother about ringing the bell to ask me, for I shall
not answer. Go round to the front door and find out for yourself. Yours
tooly, the Unwiseman. P. S. I've given up the potery business, so if
you're a editor, I don't want to see you any how; but if your name's
Mollie, knock on the kitchen window and I'll let you in."
"I thought so," said Mollie. "He's inside."
Then the little girl tiptoed softly up to the kitchen window and peeped
in, and there the old gentleman sat nibbling on a chocolate eclaire and
looking as happy as could be.
Mollie tapped gently on the window, and the Unwiseman, hurriedly
concealing his half-eaten eclaire in the folds of his newspaper, looked
anxiously toward the window to see who it might be that had disturbed
him. When he saw who it was his face wreathed with smiles, and rushing
to the window he threw it wide open.
"Come right in," he cried. "I'm awfully glad to see you."
"I can't climb in this way," said Mollie. "Can't you open the door?"
"Can't possibly," said the Unwiseman. "Both doors are locked. I've lost
the keys. You can't open doors without keys, you know. That's why I lost
them. I'm safe from burglars now."
"But why don't you get new keys?" said Mollie.
"What's the use? I know where I lost the others, and when my eight
weeks' absence is up I can find them again. New keys would only cost
money, and I'm not so rich that I can spend money just for the fun of
it," said the Unwiseman.
"Then, I suppose, I can't come in at all," said Mollie.
"Oh, yes, you can," said the Unwiseman. "Have you an Alpine stock?"
"What's that?" said Mollie.
"Ho!" jeered the Unwiseman. "What's an Alpine stock! Ha, ha! Not to know
that; I thought little girls knew everything."
"Well, they do generally," said Mollie, resolved to stand up for her
kind. "But I'm not like all little girls. There are some things I don't
know."
"I guess there are," said the Unwiseman, with a superior air. "You don't
know what rancour means, or fixity, or garrulousness."
"No, I don't," Mollie admitted. "What do they mean?"
"I'm not in the school-teacher business, and so I shan't tell you," said
the Unwiseman, with a wave of his hand. "Besides, I really don't know
myself--though I'm not a little girl. But I'll tell you one thing. An
Alpine stock is a thing to climb Alps with, and a thing you can climb an
Alp with ought to help you climbing into a kitchen window, because
kitchen windows aren't so high as Alps, and they don't have snow on 'em
in spring like Alps do."
"Oh," said Mollie. "That's it--is it? Well, I haven't got one, and I
don't know where to get one, so I can't get in that way."
"Then there's only two things we can do," observed the Unwiseman.
"Either I must send for a carpenter and have him build a new door or
else I'll have to lend you a step-ladder. I guess, on the whole, the
step-ladder is cheaper. It's certainly not so noisy as a carpenter.
However, I'll let you choose. Which shall it be?"
"The step-ladder, I guess," said Mollie. "Have you got one?"
"No," returned the Unwiseman; "but I have a high-chair which is just as
good. I always keep a high-chair in case some one should bring a baby
here to dinner. I'd never ask any one to do that, but unexpected things
are always happening, and I like to be prepared. Here it is."
Saying which the Unwiseman produced a high-chair and lowered it to the
ground. Upon this Mollie and Whistlebinkie climbed up to the
window-ledge, and were shortly comfortably seated inside this strange
old man's residence.
"I see you've given up the poetry business," said Mollie, after a pause.
"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "I couldn't make it pay. Not that I couldn't
sell all I could write, but that I couldn't write all that I could
sell. You see, people don't like to be disappointed, and I had to
disappoint people all the time. I couldn't turn out all they wanted. Two
magazine editors sent in orders for their winter poetry. Ten tons apiece
they ordered, and I couldn't deliver more than two tons apiece to 'em.
That made them mad, and they took their trade elsewhere--and so it went.
I disappointed everybody, and finally I found myself writing poetry for
my own amusement, and as it wasn't as amusing as some other things, I
gave it up."
"But what ever induced you to put out that sign, saying that you
wouldn't be back for eight weeks?" asked Mollie.
"I didn't say that," said the Unwiseman. "I said I _would_ be back _in_
eight weeks. I shall be. What I wanted was to be able to eat my lunch
undisturbed. I've been eating it for five weeks now, and at the end of
three weeks I shall be through."
"It musterbin a big lunch," said Whistlebinkie.
"I don't know any such word as musterbin," said the Unwiseman, severely;
"but as for the big lunch, it was big. One whole eclaire."
"I could eat an eclaire in five seconds," said Mollie.
"No doubt of it," retorted the Unwiseman. "So could I; but I know too
much for that. I believe in getting all the enjoyment out of a thing
that I can; and what's the sense of gobbling all the pleasure out of an
eclaire in five seconds when you can spread it over eight weeks? That's
a queer thing about you wise people that I can't understand. When you
have something pleasant on hand you go scurrying through it as though
you were afraid somebody was going to take it away from you. You don't
make things last as you should ought to."
"Excuse me," interrupted Whistlebinkie, who had been criticized so
often about the way he spoke, that he was resolved to get even. "Is
'should ought to' a nice way to speak?"
[Illustration: "If you want to speak some other language, you can go
outside and speak it."]
"It's nice enough for me," retorted the Unwiseman. "And as this is my
house I have a right to choose the language I speak here. If you want to
speak some other language, you can go outside and speak it."
Poor Whistlebinkie squeaked out an apology and subsided.
[Illustration: "Pleasure ought to be spread."]
"Take bananas, for instance," said the Unwiseman, not deigning to notice
Whistlebinkie's apology. "I dare say if your mother gives you a banana,
you go off into a corner and gobble it right up. Now I find that a
nibble tastes just as good as a bite, and by nibbling you can get so
many more tastes out of that banana, as nibbles are smaller than bites,
and instead of a banana lasting a week, or two weeks or eight weeks,
it's all gone in ten seconds. You might do the same thing at the
circus and be as sensible as you are when you gobble your banana. If the
clown cracked his jokes and the trapezuarius trapozed, and the elephants
danced, and the bare-back riders rode their horses all at once, you'd
have just as much circus as you get the way you do it now, only it
wouldn't be so pleasant. Pleasure, after all, is like butter, and it
ought to be spread. You wouldn't think of eating a whole pat of butter
at one gulp, so why should you be greedy about your pleasure?"
"Thassounds very sensible," put in Whistlebinkie.
"It is sensible," said the Unwiseman, with a kindly smile; "and that is
why, having but one eclaire, I make it last me eight weeks. There isn't
any use of living like a prince for five minutes and then starving to
death for seven weeks, six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-five
minutes."
Here the Unwiseman opened the drawer of his table and took out the
eclaire to show it to Mollie.
"It doesn't look very good," said Mollie.
"That's true," said the Unwiseman; "but that helps. It's awfully hard
work the first day to keep from nibbling it up too fast, but the second
day it's easier, and so it goes all along until you get to the fourth
week, and then you don't mind only taking a nibble. If it stayed good
all the while, I don't believe I could make it last as long as I want
to. So you see everything works for good under my system of luncheoning.
In the first place the pleasure of a thing lasts a long time; in the
second, you learn to resist temptation; in the third place, you avoid
greediness; and last of all, after a while you don't mind not being
greedy."
[Illustration: "The old gentleman put the eclaire away."]
With this the old gentleman put the eclaire away, locked the drawer, and
began to tell Mollie and Whistlebinkie all about the new business he was
going into.
[Illustration: XI. The Unwiseman's New Business.
In which the Old Gentleman and Mollie and Whistlebinkie start on their
travels.
"I]
have at last found something to do," he said, as he locked the eclaire
up in the drawer, "which will provide me in my old age with all the
eclaires I need, with possibly one or two left over for my friends."
"Thassnice," whistled Whistlebinkie.
"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "It's very nice, particularly if you are one
of my friends, and come in for your share of the left-over
eclaires--as, of course, you and Mollie will do. It all grew out of my
potery business, too. You see, I didn't find that people who wanted
potery ever bought it from a street-corner stand, but from regular
potery peddlers, who go around to the newspaper offices and magazines
with it, done up in a small hand-bag. So I gave up the stand and made a
small snatchel----"
"A small what?" demanded Mollie.
"A small snatchel," repeated the Unwiseman. "A snatchel is a bag with a
handle to it."
"Oh--I know. You mean a satchel," said Mollie.
"Maybe I do," observed the Unwiseman. "But I thought the word was
snatchel, because it was a thing you could snatch up hurriedly and run
to catch a train with. Anyhow, I made one and put some four or five
pounds of potery in it, and started out to sell it. The first place I
went to they said they liked my potery very much, but they couldn't use
it because it didn't advertise anything. They wanted sonnets about the
best kind of soap that ever was; or what they called a hook-and-eye
lyric; or perhaps a few quatrains about baking-powders, or tooth-wash,
or some kind of silver-polish. People don't read poems about mysteries
and little red school-houses, and patriotism any more, they said; but if
a real poet should write about a new kind of a clothes-wringer or a
patent pickle he'd make a fortune, because he'd get his work published
on fences and in railroad cars, which everybody sees, instead of in
magazines that nobody reads."
"I've seen lots of those kinds of poems," said Mollie.
"They're mighty good reading, too," said Whistlebinkie. "And is that
what you are going to do?"
[Illustration: "They'd pay for it when they published it."]
"Not I!" retorted the Unwiseman, scornfully. "No, indeed, I'm not.
Shakespeare never did such a thing, and I don't believe Milton did
either, and certainly I shall not try it. The next place I went to they
said they liked my potery well enough to print it, but I'd have to pay
for having it done, which was very hard, because I hadn't any money. The
next place they took a sonnet and said they'd pay for it when they
published it, and when I asked when that would be, they said in about
thirty-seven years."
"Mercy!" cried Mollie.
"That's what I said," said the Unwiseman, ruefully. "So again I went on
until I found an editor who was a lovely man. He read all my things
through, and when he'd finished he said he judged from the quality of my
potery I must be a splendid writer of prose."
Whistlebinkie laughed softly.
"Yes," said the Unwiseman, "that's what he said. 'Mr. Unwiseman,' said
he, 'after reading your poetry, it seems to me your _forte_ is prose.'
And I told him perhaps he was right, though I didn't know what he meant.
At any rate, he was very good to me, and asked me where I lived, and all
that. When I told him that I lived everywhere; how I just moved my house
around to suit myself, and lived one day here and another day in
Illinois, and another in Kamschatka, he grew interested at once."
"I should think he might," put in Mollie. "I didn't know you could move
as far as Kamschatka."
"Certainly I can," said the Unwiseman; "and in a way that is what I am
going to do. I have been engaged to travel in various parts of the world
just by moving my house around at will, and what I see and do under
such circumstances I am to write up for that editor's paper."
"Why it's perfectly splendid!" cried Mollie, clapping her hands together
with glee at the very idea. "I wish I could go with you."
"Me too!" whistled Whistlebinkie.
"Woof--woof!" barked Gyp, which the Unwiseman took to mean that Gyp
wished also to be included.
"All right," said the Unwiseman. "I've no objection."
"I don't know what they'd say at home," said Mollie, as she thought of
possible objections to the trip.
"Why they won't say anything," said the Unwiseman. "I'll only travel
afternoons. We'll be back every day by six o'clock, and I don't suppose
we'll start much before three. This house is a rapid traveller once she
gets started. Just wait a minute and I'll show you. Sit tight in your
chairs now. One--two--three--LET HER GO!"
[Illustration: "The house, whizzed rapidly through the air."]
The old gentleman touched a button in the wall. The house shook
violently for a second, apparently whizzed rapidly through the air, if
the whistling of the wind outside meant anything, and then suddenly,
with a thump and a bump, came to a standstill.
"Here we are," said the Unwiseman, opening the door. "Come outside."
The little party emerged, and Mollie was amazed to find herself standing
on the top of a wonderful hill gazing out over the waters of a
beautiful body of water of the most heavenly blue. At her feet a little
yellowish city nestled into the hillside, and across a strip of silvery
water was a huge and frowning fortress.
"This, Miss Whistlebinkie, is the city of Havana," said the Unwiseman to
the astonished little maid. "You have come all the way from home to Cuba
in five seconds--a distance of 1200 miles. So you see we can do all our
travelling in the afternoons, and without your being away from your home
any more than you naturally are during your play-time hours."
Mollie made no answer for a moment. She was too astonished to speak.
Whistlebinkie was the first to recover, and he was not long in
expressing his sentiments.
"Imagoin'," he whistled.
Gyp barked a similar resolution, whereupon Mollie said she'd see.
"But let us hurry back home again," she added, somewhat anxiously. She
did not quite like being so far away from home without her mother
knowing it.
"Certainly," said the Unwiseman, touching the button again. The violent
shaking and whizzing sounds were repeated, and again, with a thump and a
bump, the house came to a standstill. The Unwiseman opened the front
door, and there they were, safe and sound, in the back yard of Mollie's
home.
That night the little girl told the story of the day's adventure to her
father, and he said that, under the circumstances, he had not the
slightest objection to her making the grand tour of the world.
"Only," he said, "you must remember, dear, to be home to supper. Even if
you find yourself at the coronation of a king, remember that it is your
duty to be punctual at your meals. London, Paris, Pekin, or Kalamazoo
are always ready to be seen, night or day, no matter what the time, but
breakfast, dinner, and supper do not go on forever, and are served only
at stated hours."
And so Mollie and Gyp and Whistlebinkie joined in the adventures of the
Unwiseman Abroad, and, in point of fact, they started off that very
afternoon, though what they saw I do not know, for I have not
encountered them since. I only know that their journey was safely
accomplished, and that they all got home that night without harm, for
Mollie's papa told me so. He also told me, in confidence, that I might
hope soon to hear some remarkable tales on the subject of their
adventures; and if I do, I shall not fail to let you in turn hear what
happened to "MOLLIE AND THE UNWISEMAN ABROAD."
[Illustration]