Part 5 (2/2)
nervous mind old W. P Mills had. There was ten thousand verses to that book of poem, part.i.tioned off into various an' sundry parts so the read thereof could sit up an' draw breath about every thousand verses, an'
get his full wind ready for the run through the next slice.
”That 'Wage of Sin' book was surely for to admire, any way you looked at it. Take the subject; it wasn't any of your little, sawed-off, one-year sprints. No siree! W. P. Mills started away back in the front vestibule of time. He said, right in the preface--an' that was all poetry, too--
Now, reader, go along with me Away back to eternity, A hundred thousand years, and still Keep backing backwards if you will.
”An' when he got away back there he sort of expectorated on his hands an' started in at Genesis, Chapter One, Verse One, an' went right along down through the Bible like a cross-cut saw through a cottonwood log. He never missed a single event that was important, if true. He got all them old fellers rhymed right into that book--Jereboam, Rehoboam, Meschach, Schadrach, an' Abednego, an' all the whole caboodle, from Adam with an A to Zaccheus with a Z.
”That certain was a moral tome, an' no prevarication. It was plumb drippin' with moral from start to finish. You see Eve she set the ball a-rollin' when she swiped them apples. That was where she done dead wrong, and that was the 'Sin' as mentioned in the name of the book, an'
old W. P. Mills he showed in that literary volume how everybody has had to pay the 'Wages' ever since. It was great. I never read anything else moral that I could say I really hankered for, but I sure did enjoy that book. Old W. P. Mills was a wonder at poetry.
”It beat all how vivid he made all them Old Testament people, an' the things they did. Why, I never cared two cents for Shadrach, Meshach, an'
Abednego before I read that book, but after I read it I never could git them lines of W. P.'s out of my head--
'The King perhaps that moment saw A thing that filled his soul with awe-Shadrach and Meshach, to and fro, Walked and talked with Abednego.'
”I tell you, you can't obliterate them three men out of your mind when you read that verse once. You see them walkin' in that fiery furnace, even when you're in your little bed; walkin' an' carryin' on a conversation, which, when you come to think of it, was the most natural thing for them to be doin'. You wouldn't look to see them sit down on a hot log, or to stand still sayin' nothin'. Walk an' talk, that's what they did, an' it's what anybody would do in similar circ.u.mstances. I guess fiery furnaces has that effect all the world over, but it took W.
P. Mills to see it with his mind's eye, an' put it into verses.
”So, when Sammy gently intimated to me that it was his pa's book we was to canva.s.s, the job looked different. I might shy at an encyclopedia, or at a life of Stephen A. Douglas, but to handle a moral volume like the 'Wage of Sin' sort of appealed to the financial morality of my conscience. So I asked Sammy what the gentlemanly canva.s.sers would get out of it.
”'Pa had a lot of faith in that lyric poem,' says Sammy to me, 'an' no one had a better right to, for he wrote it himself, but the publis.h.i.+ng game was dull an' depressed about the time he got ready to issue it forth, an' he was necessitated to compensate the cost of printing it himself. And,' he says, 'the rush an' hurry of the public to buy that book is such it reminds me of the eagerness of a kid to get spanked. So I figger we can get several wagon-loads of ”Wage of Sin” at fifty cents per volume.'
”'That's a cheap price,' I says, 'That's two hundred verses for one cent, an' the cover free.'
”Sammy was one of the confidential kind that gets close up to your ear and whispers, even if he is only tellin' you that it looks like rain, so he looks all around and whispers to me:
”'We'll make our initiative beginnin' first off at Gallops Junction,'
he says, 'where we ain't known, an' where pa ain't known, an' where the book ain't known. I've a premonition,' he says, 'that 'twould be better so. If we was to start in here we would get discouraged, for the folks ain't used to buyin' ”Wage of Sin.” They've been given it so bountiful an' free that pa can't give away another copy to the poorest man in town. They've got so that they run when they see pa comin'.'
”'You've got sense in that red head of your'n,' I says.
”'For me,' he says, 'it will be merely a voluptuous excursion. It will be pie to sell that book, because I am the son of its author. Filial relations.h.i.+p to genius,' he says, 'will make them overawed, an' grateful to be allowed to buy of me, but you will have it harder. You can't claim nearer kin to genius than that you helped the son of it chop wood at various and sundry times.'
”'And gave him a handsome black eye one time,' I says reminiscently.
'I'll make the most of that. The public likes anecdotes.'
”'No,' says Sammy, 'you can omit to mention that black-eye business.
That kind of an anecdote would be harrowing to the minds of literary inclined gentlefolks. You can reminisce about how you helped me carry wood while I recited pa.s.sages of poem out of that book at you.'
”What I would have spoke next don't matter, because I omitted to speak it. I was gettin' a glimmer of an idea into my head, and I wanted to get it clear in and settled down to stay before I lost it. It got in, an'
I had a realization that it was an O.K. idea, an' that it beat Sammy's son-of-his-father idea quite scandalous.
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