Part 2

DAVID MCKAY for "Hans Breitmann's Party," "Breitmann and the Turners," "Ballad," "Breitmann in Politics" and "Love Song," from _Hans Breitmann's Ballads_, by Charles Godfrey Leland, and "A Boston Ballad," from _Leaves of Grass_, by Walt Whitman.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY for "In a State of Sin," from _The Virginian_, by Owen Wister.

THE MONARCH BOOK COMPANY for "The Apostasy of William Dodge," from _The Seekers_, by Stanley Waterloo.

THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY for "An Educational Project" and "The Woman-Hater Reformed," by Roy Farrell Greene; "The Trial That Job Missed," by Kennett Harris; "The Education of Grandpa," by Wallace Irwin; "An Improved Calendar," by Tudor Jenks.

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY for "Mr. Dooley on Gold Seeking," "Mr. Dooley on Expert Testimony," "Mr. Dooley on Golf," "Mr. Dooley on Football," "Mr. Dooley on Reform Candidates," from _Mr. Dooley in Peace and War_, by Finley Peter Dunne; "E.O.R.S.W." from _Alphabet of Celebrities_, by Oliver Herford; "A Letter," from _The Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son_, by George Horace Lorimer; "Vive La Bagatelle" and "Willy and the Lady," from _A Gage of Youth_, by Gelett Burgess; "When the Allegash Drive Goes Through," from _Pine Tree Ballads_, by Holman F. Day; "Had a Set of Double Teeth," from _Up in Maine_, by Holman F. Day; "Similar Cases," from _In This Our World_, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; "Barney McGee," by Richard Hovey, from _More Songs from Vagabondia_; "A Modern Eclogue," "The Sceptics," "A Staccato to O le Lupe," "A Spring Feeling," "Her Valentine" and "In Philistia," by Bliss Carman, from _Last Songs from Vagabondia_, and "Vive la Bagatelle," "A Cavalier's Valentine" and "Holly Song," from _Hills of Song_, by Clinton Scollard.

THE MUTUAL BOOK COMPANY for "James and Reginald" and "The Story of the Two Friars," from _The Tribune Primer_, by Eugene Field.

THE ORANGE JUDD COMPANY for "Spelling Down the Master," from _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, by Edward Eggleston.

JAMES POTT & COMPANY for "The Gusher," from _I've Been Thinking_, by Charles Battell Loomis.

G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS for "When Albani Sang" and "The Stove Pipe Hole," from _The Habitant_, by William Henry Drummond; "National Philosophy," from _The Voyageur_, by William Henry Drummond; "The Siege of Djklxprwbz," "Grizzly-gru," "He and She," "The Jackpot," "A Shining Mark," "The Reason," "Pass" and "The Whisperer," from _The Rhymes of Ironquill_, by Eugene F. Ware, and "A Family Horse," from _The Sparrowgrass Papers_, by Frederick S. Cozzens.

RAND, MCNALLY & COMPANY for "An Arkansas Planter," from _An Arkansas Planter_, by Opie Read.

A.M. ROBERTSON for "The Drayman," from _Songs of Bohemia_, by Daniel O'Connell.

R.H. RUSSELL for "Mr. Carteret and His Fellow-Americans Abroad," by David Gray, from _The Metropolitan Magazine_.

THE SMART SET PUBLISHING COMPANY for "An Evening Musicale," by May Isabel Fisk, from _The Smart Set_.

THE FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY for "Colonel Sterett's Panther Hunt," from _Wolfville Nights_, by Alfred Henry Lewis; "The Bohemians of Boston," "The Purple Cow" and "Nonsense Verses," from _The Burgess Nonsense Book_, by Gelett Burgess, and "My Grandmother's Turkey-tail Fan," "Little Bopeep and Little Boy Blue" and "My Sweetheart," by Samuel Minturn Peck.

THE TANDY-WHEELER PUBLISHING COMPANY for "Utah," "A New Year Idyl," "The Warrior," "Lost Chords" and "The Advertiser," from _A Little Book of Tribune Verse_, by Eugene Field.

THOMPSON & THOMAS for "The Grammatical Boy," by Edgar Wilson Nye ("Bill Nye").

THE A. WESSELS COMPANY for "The Dying Gag," by James L. Ford.

M. WITMARK & SONS for "Walk," from _Jim Marshall's New Pianner_, by William Devere.

Special thanks are due to George Ade, Wallace Bruce Amsbary, John Kendrick Bangs, H.W. Boynton, Gelett Burgess, Ellis Parker Butler, Hayden Carruth, Robert W. Chambers, Charles Heber Clarke, Joseph I.C. Clarke, Mary Stewart Cutting, John James Davies, Caroline Duer, Mrs. Edward Eggleston, May Isabel Fisk, Elliott Flower, James L. Ford, David Gray, Sarah P. McLean Greene, Jennie Betts Hartswick, William Dean Howells, Wallace Irwin, Charles F. Johnson, S.E. Kiser, A.H. Laidlaw, Alfred Henry Lewis, Charles B. Lewis, Charles Battell Loomis, Charles F. Lummis, T.L. Masson, William Vaughn Moody, R.K. Munkittrick, W.D. Nesbit, Meredith Nicholson, Alden Charles Noble, Samuel Minturn Peck, Sydney Porter, Wallace Rice, James Whitcomb Riley, Doane Robinson, Henry A. Shute, F. Hopkinson Smith, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Howard V. Sutherland, John B. Tabb, Bert Leston Taylor, Juliet Wilbor Tompkins, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, Eugene F. Ware, Anne Warner French and Stanley Waterloo for permission to reprint selections from their works and for many valuable suggestions.

THE WIT AND HUMOR OF AMERICA

MELONS

BY BRET HARTE

As I do not suppose the most gentle of readers will believe that anybody's sponsors in baptism ever wilfully assumed the responsibility of such a name, I may as well state that I have reason to infer that Melons was simply the nickname of a small boy I once knew. If he had any other, I never knew it.

Various theories were often projected by me to account for this strange cognomen. His head, which was covered with a transparent down, like that which clothes very small chickens, plainly permitting the scalp to show through, to an imaginative mind might have suggested that succulent vegetable. That his parents, recognizing some poetical significance in the fruits of the season, might have given this name to an August child, was an oriental explanation. That from his infancy, he was fond of indulging in melons, seemed on the whole the most likely, particularly as Fancy was not bred in McGinnis's Court. He dawned upon me as Melons. His proximity was indicated by shrill, youthful voices, as "Ah, Melons!" or playfully, "Hi, Melons!" or authoritatively, "You Melons!"

McGinnis's Court was a democratic expression of some obstinate and radical property-holder. Occupying a limited space between two fashionable thoroughfares, it refused to conform to circumstances, but sturdily paraded its unkempt glories, and frequently asserted itself in ungrammatical language. My window--a rear room on the ground floor--in this way derived blended light and shadow from the court. So low was the window-sill that, had I been the least disposed to somnambulism, it would have broken out under such favorable auspices, and I should have haunted McGinnis's Court. My speculations as to the origin of the court were not altogether gratuitous, for by means of this window I once saw the Past, as through a glass darkly. It was a Celtic shadow that early one morning obstructed my ancient lights. It seemed to belong to an individual with a pea-coat, a stubby pipe, and bristling beard. He was gazing intently at the court, resting on a heavy cane, somewhat in the way that heroes dramatically visit the scenes of their boyhood. As there was little of architectural beauty in the court, I came to the conclusion that it was McGinnis looking after his property. The fact that he carefully kicked a broken bottle out of the road somewhat strengthened me in the opinion. But he presently walked away, and the court knew him no more. He probably collected his rents by proxy--if he collected them at all.

Beyond Melons, of whom all this is purely introductory, there was little to interest the most sanguine and hopeful nature. In common with all such localities, a great deal of washing was done, in comparison with the visible results. There was always some thing whisking on the line, and always some thing whisking through the court, that looked as if it ought to be there. A fish-geranium--of all plants kept for the recreation of mankind, certainly the greatest illusion--straggled under the window. Through its dusty leaves I caught the first glance of Melons.

His age was about seven. He looked older from the venerable whiteness of his head, and it was impossible to conjecture his size, as he always wore clothes apparently belonging to some shapely youth of nineteen. A pair of pantaloons, that, when sustained by a single suspender, completely equipped him, formed his every-day suit. How, with this lavish superfluity of clothing, he managed to perform the surprising gymnastic feats it has been my privilege to witness, I have never been able to tell. His "turning the crab," and other minor dislocations, were always attended with success. It was not an unusual sight at any hour of the day to find Melons suspended on a line, or to see his venerable head appearing above the roofs of the outhouses. Melons knew the exact height of every fence in the vicinity, its facilities for scaling, and the possibility of seizure on the other side. His more peaceful and quieter amusements consisted in dragging a disused boiler by a large string, with hideous outcries, to imaginary fires.

Melons was not gregarious in his habits. A few youth of his own age sometimes called upon him, but they eventually became abusive, and their visits were more strictly predatory incursions for old bottles and junk which formed the staple of McGinnis's Court. Overcome by loneliness one day, Melons inveigled a blind harper into the court. For two hours did that wretched man prosecute his unhallowed calling, unrecompensed, and going round and round the court, apparently under the impression that it was some other place, while Melons surveyed him from an adjoining fence with calm satisfaction. It was this absence of conscientious motives that brought Melons into disrepute with his aristocratic neighbors. Orders were issued that no child of wealthy and pious parentage should play with him. This mandate, as a matter of course, invested Melons with a fascinating interest to them. Admiring glances were cast at Melons from nursery windows. Baby fingers beckoned to him. Invitations to tea (on wood and pewter) were lisped to him from aristocratic back-yards. It was evident he was looked upon as a pure and noble being, untrammelled by the conventionalities of parentage, and physically as well as mentally exalted above them. One afternoon an unusual commotion prevailed in the vicinity of McGinnis's Court. Looking from my window I saw Melons perched on the roof of a stable, pulling up a rope by which one "Tommy," an infant scion of an adjacent and wealthy house, was suspended in mid-air. In vain the female relatives of Tommy, congregated in the back-yard, expostulated with Melons; in vain the unhappy father shook his fist at him. Secure in his position, Melons redoubled his exertions and at last landed Tommy on the roof. Then it was that the humiliating fact was disclosed that Tommy had been acting in collusion with Melons. He grinned delightedly back at his parents, as if "by merit raised to that bad eminence." Long before the ladder arrived that was to succor him, he became the sworn ally of Melons, and, I regret to say, incited by the same audacious boy, "chaffed" his own flesh and blood below him. He was eventually taken, though, of course, Melons escaped. But Tommy was restricted to the window after that, and the companionship was limited to "Hi Melons!" and "You Tommy!" and Melons to all practical purposes, lost him forever. I looked afterward to see some signs of sorrow on Melons's part, but in vain; he buried his grief, if he had any, somewhere in his one voluminous garment.

At about this time my opportunities of knowing Melons became more extended. I was engaged in filling a void in the Literature of the Pacific Coast. As this void was a pretty large one, and as I was informed that the Pacific Coast languished under it, I set apart two hours each day to this work of filling in. It was necessary that I should adopt a methodical system, so I retired from the world and locked myself in my room at a certain hour each day, after coming from my office. I then carefully drew out my portfolio and read what I had written the day before. This would suggest some alterations, and I would carefully rewrite it. During this operation I would turn to consult a book of reference, which invariably proved extremely interesting and attractive. It would generally suggest another and better method of "filling in." Turning this method over reflectively in my mind, I would finally commence the new method which I eventually abandoned for the original plan. At this time I would become convinced that my exhausted faculties demanded a cigar. The operation of lighting a cigar usually suggested that a little quiet reflection and meditation would be of service to me, and I always allowed myself to be guided by prudential instincts. Eventually, seated by my window, as before stated, Melons asserted himself. Though our conversation rarely went further than "Hello, Mister!" and "Ah, Melons!" a vagabond instinct we felt in common implied a communion deeper than words. In this spiritual commingling the time passed, often beguiled by gymnastics on the fence or line (always with an eye to my window) until dinner was announced and I found a more practical void required my attention. An unlooked-for incident drew us in closer relation.

A sea-faring friend just from a tropical voyage had presented me with a bunch of bananas. They were not quite ripe, and I hung them before my window to mature in the sun of McGinnis's Court, whose forcing qualities were remarkable. In the mysteriously mingled odors of ship and shore which they diffused throughout my room, there was lingering reminiscence of low latitudes. But even that joy was fleeting and evanescent: they never reached maturity.

Coming home one day, as I turned the corner of that fashionable thoroughfare before alluded to, I met a small boy eating a banana. There was nothing remarkable in that, but as I neared McGinnis's Court I presently met another small boy, also eating a banana. A third small boy engaged in a like occupation obtruded a painful coincidence upon my mind. I leave the psychological reader to determine the exact co-relation between the circumstance and the sickening sense of loss that overcame me on witnessing it. I reached my room--the bananas were gone.

There was but one that knew of their existence, but one who frequented my window, but one capable of gymnastic effort to procure them, and that was--I blush to say it--Melons. Melons the depredator--Melons, despoiled by larger boys of his ill-gotten booty, or reckless and indiscreetly liberal; Melons--now a fugitive on some neighborhood house-top. I lit a cigar, and, drawing my chair to the window, sought surcease of sorrow in the contemplation of the fish-geranium. In a few moments something white passed my window at about the level of the edge. There was no mistaking that hoary head, which now represented to me only aged iniquity. It was Melons, that venerable, juvenile hypocrite.

He affected not to observe me, and would have withdrawn quietly, but that horrible fascination which causes the murderer to revisit the scene of his crime, impelled him toward my window. I smoked calmly, and gazed at him without speaking. He walked several times up and down the court with a half-rigid, half-belligerent expression of eye and shoulder, intended to represent the carelessness of innocence.

Once or twice he stopped, and putting his arms their whole length into his capacious trousers, gazed with some interest at the additional width they thus acquired. Then he whistled. The singular conflicting conditions of John Brown's body and soul were at that time beginning to attract the attention of youth, and Melons's performance of that melody was always remarkable. But to-day he whistled falsely and shrilly between his teeth. At last he met my eye. He winced slightly, but recovered himself, and going to the fence, stood for a few moments on his hands, with his bare feet quivering in the air. Then he turned toward me and threw out a conversational preliminary.

"They is a cirkis"--said Melons gravely, hanging with his back to the fence and his arms twisted around the palings--"a cirkis over yonder!"--indicating the locality with his foot--"with hosses, and hossback riders. They is a man wot rides six hosses to onct--six hosses to onct--and nary saddle"--and he paused in expectation.

Even this equestrian novelty did not affect me. I still kept a fixed gaze on Melons's eye, and he began to tremble and visibly shrink in his capacious garment. Some other desperate means--conversation with Melons was always a desperate means--must be resorted to. He recommenced more artfully.

"Do you know Carrots?"

I had a faint remembrance of a boy of that euphonious name, with scarlet hair, who was a playmate and persecutor of Melons. But I said nothing.

"Carrots is a bad boy. Killed a policeman onct. Wears a dirk knife in his boots, saw him to-day looking in your windy."

I felt that this must end here. I rose sternly and addressed Melons.

"Melons, this is all irrelevant and impertinent to the case. _You_ took those bananas. Your proposition regarding Carrots, even if I were inclined to accept it as credible information, does not alter the material issue. You took those bananas. The offense under the Statutes of California is felony. How far Carrots may have been accessory to the fact either before or after, is not my intention at present to discuss. The act is complete. Your present conduct shows the _animo furandi_ to have been equally clear."

By the time I had finished this exordium, Melons had disappeared, as I fully expected.

He never reappeared. The remorse that I have experienced for the part I had taken in what I fear may have resulted in his utter and complete extermination, alas, he may not know, except through these pages. For I have never seen him since. Whether he ran away and went to sea to reappear at some future day as the most ancient of mariners, or whether he buried himself completely in his trousers, I never shall know. I have read the papers anxiously for accounts of him. I have gone to the Police Office in the vain attempt of identifying him as a lost child. But I never saw him or heard of him since. Strange fears have sometimes crossed my mind that his venerable appearance may have been actually the result of senility, and that he may have been gathered peacefully to his fathers in a green old age. I have even had doubts of his existence, and have sometimes thought that he was providentially and mysteriously offered to fill the void I have before alluded to. In that hope I have written these pages.

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE

OR, THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY"

_A Logical Story_

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,-- Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. _Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always _somewhere_ a weakest spot,-- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will,-- Above or below, or within or without,-- And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, That a chaise _breaks down_, but doesn't _wear out_.

But the Deacon swore, (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell _yeou_,") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it _couldn'_ break daown: --"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,-- That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of whitewood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"-- Last of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through."-- "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"

Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grandchildren--where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;--It came and found The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-- "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-- Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.--You're welcome.--No extra charge.)

FIRST OF NOVEMBER,--The Earthquake-day-- There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And the spring and axle and hub _encore_. And yet, as a _whole_, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be _worn out_!

First of November, 'Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. "Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they. The parson was working his Sunday's text,-- Had got to _fifthly_, and stopped perplexed At what the--Moses--was coming next. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. --First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,-- And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,-- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! --What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,-- All at once, and nothing first,-- Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say.

THE PURPLE COW

BY GELETT BURGESS

_Reflections on a Mythic Beast, Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least._

I never Saw a Purple Cow; I never Hope to See One; But I can Tell you, Anyhow, I'd rather See than Be One.

_Cinq Ans Apres._

(_Confession: and a Portrait, Too, Upon a Background that I Rue!_)