Volume I Part 6 (1/2)
A certain learned professor in New York has a wife and family, but, professor-like, his thoughts are always with his books.
One evening his wife, who had been out for some hours, returned to find the house remarkably quiet. She had left the children playing about, but now they were nowhere to be seen.
She demanded to be told what had become of them, and the professor explained that, as they had made a good deal of noise, he had put them to bed without waiting for her or calling a maid.
”I hope they gave you no trouble,” she said.
”No,” replied the professor, ”with the exception of the one in the cot here. He objected a good deal to my undressing him and putting him to bed.”
The wife went to inspect the cot.
”Why,” she exclaimed, ”that's little Johnny Green, from next door.”
FIVE LIVES
Five mites of monads dwelt in a round drop That twinkled on a leaf by a pool in the sun.
To the naked eye they lived invisible; Specks, for a world of whom the empty sh.e.l.l Of a mustard-seed had been a hollow sky.
One was a meditative monad, called a sage; And, shrinking all his mind within, he thought: ”Tradition, handed down for hours and hours, Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world, Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence When I am very old, yon s.h.i.+mmering doom Comes drawing down and down, till all things end?”
Then with a wizen smirk he proudly felt No other mote of G.o.d had ever gained Such giant grasp of universal truth.
One was a transcendental monad; thin And long and slim of mind; and thus he mused: ”Oh, vast, unfathomable monad-souls!
Made in the image”--a hoa.r.s.e frog croaks from the pool, ”Hark! 'twas some G.o.d, voicing his glorious thought In thunder music. Yea, we hear their voice, And we may guess their minds from ours, their work.
Some taste they have like ours, some tendency To wriggle about, and munch a trace of sc.u.m.”
He floated up on a pin-point bubble of gas That burst, p.r.i.c.ked by the air, and he was gone.
One was a barren-minded monad, called A positivist; and he knew positively; ”There was no world beyond this certain drop.
Prove me another! Let the dreamers dream Of their faint gleams, and noises from without, And higher and lower; life is life enough.”
Then swaggering half a hair's breadth hungrily, He seized upon an atom of bug, and fed.
One was a tattered monad, called a poet; And with a shrill voice ecstatic thus he sang: ”Oh, little female monad's lips!
Oh, little female monad's eyes!
Ah, the little, little, female, female monad!”
The last was a strong-minded monadess, Who dashed amid the infusoria, Danced high and low, and wildly spun and dove, Till the dizzy others held their breath to see.
But while they led their wondrous little lives aeonian moments had gone wheeling by, The burning drop had shrunk with fearful speed: A glistening film--'twas gone; the leaf was dry.
The little ghost of an inaudible squeak Was lost to the frog that goggled from his stone; Who, at the huge, slow tread of a thoughtful ox Coming to drink, stirred sideways fatly, plunged, Launched backward twice, and all the pool was still.
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL.
JAMES T. FIELDS
THE OWL-CRITIC
A Lesson to Fault-finders
”Who stuffed that white owl?” No one spoke in the shop: The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop; The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading The _Daily_, the _Herald_, the _Post_, little heeding The young man who blurted out such a blunt question; Not one raised a head or even made a suggestion; And the barber kept on shaving.
”Don't you see, Mister Brown,”