Part 7 (1/2)

And holding to her ear a sh.e.l.l, A rosy sh.e.l.l of wondrous form; Quite plaintively to her it coos Marvelous lays of sea and storm.

It whispers of a fairy home With coral halls and pearly floors, Where mermaids clad in glist'ning gold Guard smilingly the jeweled doors.

She listens and her weird gray eyes Grow weirder in their pensive gaze.

The sea birds toss her tangled curls, The skiff lights glimmer through the haze.

Oh, strange sea-singer! what has lent Such fascination to thy spell?

Is some celestial guardian Prisoned within thee, tiny sh.e.l.l?

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Enchanted Sh.e.l.l]

The maid sits rapt until the stars In myriad s.h.i.+ning cl.u.s.ters gleam; ”Enchanted Una,” she is called By boatmen gliding down the stream.

The tempest beats the restless seas, The wind blows loud, fierce from the skies; Sweet, sylph-like Una clasps the sh.e.l.l, Peace brooding in her quiet eyes.

The wind blows wilder, darkness comes, The rock is bare, night birds soar far; Thick clouds scud o'er the gloomy heav'ns Unvisited by any star.

Where is quaint Una? On some isle, Dreaming 'mid music, may she be?

Or does she listen to the sh.e.l.l In coral halls within the sea?

The boatmen say on stormy nights They see rare Una with the sh.e.l.l, Sitting in pensive att.i.tude, Is it a vision? Who can tell?

BEHIND A GEORGIA MULE

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

Now if you wish to travel fast, I beg you not to fool With locomotion that's procured Behind a Georgia mule.

When I was teaching school in the backwoods of Georgia I had, one day, to attend to some business in Mudville, an embryo city about eleven miles from my school. Now you must know that a country school teacher can do nothing without first consulting his Board of Trustees; so I notified that honorable body that there was some business of vast importance to be attended to, and asked them to meet me on Friday afternoon; they all promised to be on hand ”two hours b'sun.” Friday afternoon, after school was dismissed, they came in one by one until they had all gathered.

As the chairman called the meeting to order, he said: ”Brederen, de objick ob dis meeting is to consider de ways ob pervidin de means ob transposin de 'fessar to Mudville.” Now, by the way, the chairman of the Board was undoubtedly intended by nature for a smart man. He had a very strong weakness for using big words in the wrong place, and thought it his special duty to impress the ”'fessar” at all times with his knowledge of the dictionary. Well, after much debate it was finally decided that ”Brudder” Whitesides would ”furnish de mule” and ”Brudder Jinks de buggy” and that I should start early the next morning.

The next morning I was up quite early, because I wished to start as soon as possible in order to avoid the heat of the day. I ate breakfast and waited--six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock--and still that promised beast had not put in appearance. Knowing the proclivity of the mule to meander along as his own sweet will dictates, especially when the sun s.h.i.+nes hot, I began to despair of reaching Mudville at all that day; but ”Brudder” Jinks, with whom I boarded, seeing my melancholy state of mind, offered to hitch up Gypsy, an antiquated specimen of the mule, whose general appearance was that of the skeleton of some prehistoric animal one sees in a museum.

I accepted this proposition with haste, and repented at leisure.

I could see a weary, long-suffering look in that mule's eye, and I could imagine how his heart must have sought the vicinity of his tail, when they disturbed his dreams of green fields and pleasant pastures, and hitched him to an old buggy, to encounter the stern realities of a dusty road. ”Verily, verily,” I soliloquized, ”the way of the mule is hard.”

But, putting aside all tender feelings, I jumped into the buggy and grasping a stick of quite ample proportions began to urge his mules.h.i.+p on his way.

Nothing of much consequence hampered our onward journey except the breaking down of three wheels and the excessive heat of the sun, which great luminary seemed not more than ninety-five miles away.

I arrived at Mudville sometime between 12 M. and 6 P. M. After having finished my business and having bountifully fed my mule on water and what gra.s.s he could nibble from around his. .h.i.tching post, I bought a large watermelon and started for home. Before I was out of sight of the town, I began to have serious misgivings about reaching home before a very late hour. In the morning by various admonitions and applications of the hickory, I had been able to get my mule into a jog trot, but on the homeward journey he would not even get up a respectable walk. Well, we trudged on for two hours or more, when to my dismay he stopped,--stopped still. As the hour was getting late and it was growing dark, I began advising him--with the hickory--that it was best to proceed, but he seemed to have hardened his heart, and his back also, and paid me no heed. There I sat--all was as still as the grave, save for the dismal hoot of the screech-owl. There I was, five and a half miles from home with no prospect of getting there.

I began to coax my mule with some words which perhaps are not in the Sabbath School books, and to emphasize them with the rising and falling inflection of the stick across his back; but still he moved not. Then all at once my conscience smote me. I thought perhaps the faithful beast might be sick. My mind reverted to Balaam, whose beast spoke to him when he had smitten him but three times and here I had smitten my beast about 3,333 times. I listened almost in expectation of hearing him say, ”Johnson, Johnson, why smitest thou me 3,333 times?”