Part 25 (2/2)

Then the lieutenant shook hands and left in order to catch the last boat for the fort.

”Mrs. Adeler,” I said, as I lighted a fresh cigar, ”we may regard it as a particularly fortunate thing that Smiley is not entrusted with the religious education of any number of American youth. Place the Sunday-schools of this land in the hands of Smiley and others like him, and in the next generation the country would be overrun with a race of liars.”

I am not aware that Bob Parker has ever made any very serious attempt to write poetry for the public. Of course since he has been in love with the bewildering Magruder he has sometimes expressed his feelings in verse. But fortunately these breathings of pa.s.sion were not presented to a cold and heartless world; they were reserved for the sympathetic Magruder, who doubtless read them with delight and admiration, and locked them up in her writing-desk with Bob's letters and other precious souvenirs. This, of course, is all right. Every lover writes what he considers poetry, and society permits such manifestations without insisting upon the confinement of the offenders in lunatic asylums. Bob, however, has constructed some verses which are not of a sentimental kind. Judge Pitman's story of the illumination of Cooley's nose suggested the idea which Bob has worked into rhyme and published in the _Argus_. As the poet has not been permitted to s.h.i.+ne to any great extent in these pages as a literary person, it will perhaps be fair to reproduce his poem in the chapter which contains the account of Cooley's misfortune. Here it is:

TIM KEYSER'S NOSE.

Tim Keyser lived in Wilmington; He had a monstrous nose, Which was a great deal redder than The very reddest rose, And was completely capable Of most terrific blows.

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He wandered down one Christmas day To skate upon the creek, And there, upon the smoothest ice, He slid around so quick That people were amazed to see Him do it up so slick.

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The exercise excited thirst; And so, to get a drink, He cut an opening in the ice And lay down on the brink.

He said, ”I'll dip my lips right in And suck it up, I think.”

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And while his nose was thus immersed Six inches in the stream, A very hungry pickerel was Attracted by its gleam; And darting up, he gave a snap, And Keyser gave a scream.

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Tim Keyser then was well a.s.sured He had a splendid bite.

To pull his victim up he jerked And tugged with all his might; But that disgusting pickerel had The better of the fight.

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And just as Mr. Keyser thought His nose was cut in two, The pickerel gave its tail a twist And pulled Tim Keyser through, And he was scudding through the waves The first thing that he knew.

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Then onward swam that savage fish With swiftness toward its nest, Still chewing Mr. Keyser's nose; While Mr. Keyser guessed What sort of policy would suit His circ.u.mstances best.

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Just then his nose was tickled with A spear of gra.s.s close by; Then came an awful sneeze, which knocked The pickerel into pi, And blew its bones, the ice and waves Two hundred feet on high!

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Tim Keyser swam up to the top A breath of air to take; And finding broken ice, he hooked His nose upon a cake, And gloried in a nose which could Such a concussion make.

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