Volume V Part 25 (1/2)

THE DUTIFUL MARINER[4]

BY WALLACE IRWIN

'Twas off the Eastern Filigrees-- Wizzle the pipes o'ertop!-- When the gallant Captain of the Cheese Began to skip and hop.

”Oh stately man and old beside, Why dost gymnastics do?

Is such example dignified To set before your crew?”

”Oh hang me crew,” the Captain cried, ”And scuttle of me s.h.i.+p.

If I'm the skipper, blarst me hide!

Ain't I supposed to skip?

”I'm growing old,” the Captain said; ”Me dancing days are done; But while I'm skipper of this s.h.i.+p I'll skip with any one.

”I'm growing grey,” I heard him say, ”And I can not rest or sleep While under me the troubled sea Lies forty spasms deep.

”Lies forty spasms deep,” he said; ”But still me trusty sloop Each hour, I wot, goes many a knot And many a bow and loop.

”The hours are full of knots,” he said, ”Untie them if ye can.

In vain I've tried, for Time and Tied Wait not for any man.

”Me fate is hard,” the old man sobbed, ”And I am sick and sore.

Me aged limbs of rest are robbed And skipping is a bore.

”But Duty is the seaman's boast, And on this gallant s.h.i.+p You'll find the skipper at his post As long as he can skip.”

And so the Captain of the Cheese Skipped on again as one Who lofty satisfaction sees In duty bravely done.

[Footnote 4: From ”Nautical Lays of a Landsman,” by Wallace Irwin.

Copyright, 1904, by Dodd, Mead & Co.]

MELINDA'S HUMOROUS STORY

BY MAY McHENRY

Melinda was dejected. She told herself that she was groping in the vale of despair, that life was a vast, gray, echoing void. She decided that ambition was dead--a case of starvation; that friends.h.i.+p had slipped through too eagerly grasping fingers; that love--ah, _love_!--

”You'd better take a dose of blue-ma.s.s,” her aunt suggested when she had sighed seven times dolefully at the tea table.

”Not _blue_-ma.s.s. Any other kind of ma.s.s you please, but _not_ blue,”

Melinda shuddered absently.

No; she was not physically ill; the trouble was deeper--soul sickness, acute, threatening to become chronic, that defied allopathic doses of favorite and other philosophers, that would not yield even to hourly repet.i.tion of the formula handed down from her grandmother--”If you can not have what you want, try to want what you have.” Yet she could lay her finger on no bleeding heart-wound, on no definite cause. It was true that the deeply a.n.a.lytical, painstakingly interesting historical novel on which she had worked all winter had been sent back from the publishers with a briefly polite note of thanks and regrets; but as she had never expected anything else, that could not depress her. Also, the slump in G.C. Copper stock had forced her to give up her long-planned southern trip and even to forego the consolatory purchase of a spring gown; but she had a mind that could soar above flesh-pot disappointments. Then, the Reverend John Graham;--but what John Graham did or said was nothing--absolutely nothing, to her.

So Melinda clenched her hands and moaned in the same key with the east wind and told the four walls of her room that she could not endure it; she must _do_ something. Then it was, that in a flash of inspiration, it came to her--she would write a humorous story.