Andiron Tales

CHAPTER VI

The Literary Bellows

"What kept you so long?" asked the Poker, as the Andiron and Bellows came up. "Was our friend Bellows out of breath, or what?"

"No, I wasn't out of breath," said the Bellows. "I never am out of breath. You might as well expect a groceryman to be out of groceries as a bellows to be out of breath. I wasn't long, either—at least, no longer than usual, which is two foot three. A longer bellows than that would be useless for our purpose. I simply didn't want to come, that's all. I was very busy writing when they interrupted me."

"It was very kind of you to come when you didn't want to," said Tom.

"No, it wasn't," said the Bellows. "I didn't want to come then, I don't want to be here now, and I wouldn't blow the cloud an inch for you if I didn't have to."

"But why do you have to?" asked Tom.

"I'm outvoted, that's all," replied the Bellows. "You see, my dear Weasel"—

"Dormouse," whispered the Poker.

"I mean Dormouse," said the Bellows, correcting himself. "You see, I believe in everybody having a say in regard to everything. I always have everything I can put to a vote. Consequently, when Righty here came down and asked me to help blow the cloud over and I said that I wouldn't do it he called Lefty in, and we put it to a vote as to whether I'd have to or not. They voted that I must and I voted that I needn't, and, of course, that beat me; so here I am."

"Well, it's very good of you, just the same," said the Poker. "You aren't quite as good-natured as I am, but you come pretty near it. Most people would have left a matter of that kind entirely to themselves and then voted the way they felt like voting. You aren't selfish, anyhow."

"Yes, I am," said the Bellows. "I'm awfully selfish."

"You're not, either," said the Poker.

"Oh, goodness!" ejaculated the Bellows. "What's the use of fighting? I say I am."

"Let's have a vote on it," said Righty. "I vote he isn't."

"So do I," said Tom.

"Me, too," said Lefty.

"Those are my sentiments likewise," put in the Poker.

"Oh, very well, then, I'm not," said the Bellows, with a deep drawn sigh; "but I do wish you'd let me have my own way about some things. I want to be selfish, even if I'm not."

"Well, we are very sorry," said the Poker, "but we can't let you be; we need you too much to permit you to be selfish. Besides, you're too good a fellow to be selfish. I knew a boy who was selfish once, and he got into all sorts of trouble. Nobody liked him, and once when he gave a big dinner to a lot of other boys not one of them would come, and he had to eat all the dinner himself. The result was that he overate himself, ruined his digestion, and all the rest of his life had to do without pies and cake and other good things. It served him right, too. Do you think we are going to let you be like that, Mr. Bellows?"

"I suppose not," said the Bellows, "but stories about selfish boys don't frighten me. I'm a bellows, not a boy. I don't give dinners and I don't eat pie and cake. Plain air is good enough for me, and I wouldn't give a cent for all the other good eatables in the world except doughnuts. I like doughnuts because, after all, they are only bellows cakes. But come, let's hurry up with the cloud. I want to get back to my desk. I have a poem to finish before breakfast."

This statement interested Tom hugely. He had read many a book, but never before had he met a real author, and even if the Bellows had been a man, so long as he was a writer, Tom would have looked upon him with awe.

"Excuse me," he said hesitatingly, as the Bellows began to wheeze away at the cloud, "do you really write?"

"Well, no," said the Bellows. "No, I don't write, but I blow a story or two now and then. You see, I can't write because I haven't any hands, but I can wheeze out a tale to a stenographer once in a while which any magazine would be glad to publish if it could get hold of it. One of my stories called Sparks blew into a powder magazine once and it made a tremendous noise in the world when it came out."

"I wish you would tell me one," said Tom.

"Are you a stenographer?" asked the Bellows.

"No," said Tom, "but I like stories just the same."

"Well," said the Bellows, "I'll tell you one about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple."

"Hurrah!" cried Tom. "I love red apples."

"So did Jimmie Tompkins," said the Bellows, "and that's why he died. He ate a red apple while it was green and it killed him."

There was a pause for an instant, and the Bellows redoubled his efforts to move the cloud, which for some reason or other did not stir easily.

"Go ahead," said Tom, when he thought he had waited long enough for the Bellows to resume.

"What on?" asked the Bellows.

"On your story about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple," Tom answered.

"Why, I've told you that story," retorted the Bellows. "Jimmie ate the red apple and died. What more do you want? That's all there is to it."

"It isn't a very long story," suggested Tom, ruefully, for he was much disappointed.

"Well, why should it be?" demanded the Bellows. "A story doesn't have to be long to be good, and as long as it is all there—"

"I know," said Tom; "but in most stories there's a lot of things put in that help to make it interesting."

"All padding!" sneered the Bellows, "and that I will never do. If a story can be told in five words what's the use of padding it out to five thousand?"

"None," said Tom, "except that you can't make a book out of a story of five words."

"Oh, yes, you can," said the Bellows, airily. "It isn't any trouble at all if you only know how, and in the end you have a much more useful book than if you made it a million words long. You can print the five words on the first page and leave the other five hundred pages blank, so that after you get through with the volume as a story book you can use it for a blank book or a diary. Most books nowadays are so full of story that when you get through with them there isn't anything else you can do with the book."

"It's a new idea," said Tom, with a laugh.

"And all my own invention, too," said the Bellows proudly.

"He's the most inventive Bellows that ever was," put in the Poker, "that is, in a literary way. How many copies of your book of 'Unwritten Poems' did you sell, Wheezy?" he added.

"Eight million," returned the Bellows. "That was probably my greatest literary achievement."

"'Unwritten Poems,' eh?" said Tom, to whom the title seemed curious.

"Yes," said the Bellows. "The book had three hundred pages, all nicely bound—twenty-six lines to a page—and each beginning with a capital letter, just as poetry should. Then, so as to be quite fair to all the letters, I began with A and went right straight through the alphabet to Z."

"But the poems?" demanded Tom.

"They were unwritten just as the title said," returned the Bellows. "You see that left everything to the imagination, which is a great thing in poetry."

"Didn't people complain?" Tom asked.

"Everybody did," replied the Bellows, "but that was just what I wanted. I agreed to answer every complaint accompanied by ten cents in postage stamps. Eight million complaints alone brought me in $480,000 over and above all expenses, which were four cents per complaint."

"But what was your answer?" demanded Tom.

"I merely told them that my book stood upon its own merits, and that if they didn't like my unwritten poems they could write some of their own on the blank pages of the book. It was a perfectly fair proposition," the Bellows replied.

"I think I like written poetry best, though," said Tom.

"That's entirely a matter of taste," said the Bellows, "and I shan't find fault with you for that. The only thing is that Unwritten Poems are apt to have fewer faults than the written ones, and every great poet will tell you that nobody ever detected any mistakes in his poems until he had put them down on paper. If he had left them unwritten nobody would ever have known how bad they were."

Tom scratched his head in a puzzled mood. He could not quite grasp the Bellows' meaning.

"What do you think about it, Righty?" he demanded of the Andiron.

"Oh, I don't think anything about it," replied Righty. "I haven't watched poetry much. You see, Lefty and I don't see much of it. People light fires nowadays more with newspapers than with poetry."

"What I've seen burns well," observed the Lefthandiron, "and don't make much ashes to get into your eyes; but, say, Wheezy, if you'll do your blowing about this cloud rather than about your poetry we may get somewhere."

"Very well," said the Bellows; "fasten your hats on tight and turn up your collars. I'm going to give you a regular tornado."

And he was as good as his word, for, expanding himself to the utmost limit, he gave a tremendous wheeze, which nearly blew Tom from his perch, sent his cap flying off into space and smashed the cloud into four separate pieces, one of which, bearing the Poker, floated rapidly off to the north, while the other three sped south, east and west, respectively.

"Hi, there," cried Righty, as he perceived the damage done to their fleecy chariot. "What are you up to? We don't want to be blown to the four corners of the earth. Pull in—pull in, for goodness sake, or we'll never get together again!"

"There's no satisfying you fellows," growled the Bellows. "First I don't blow enough, and then I blow too much."

"Stop growling and haul us back again!" cried the Poker.

The Bellows began to haul in his breath rapidly, and by a process of suction soon had the four parts of the burst cloud back together once more.

"By jingo!" panted Lefty. "That was a narrow escape. Two seconds more and this party would have been a goner. Even as it is, you've twisted my neck so I'll never get it back in shape again," said the Righthandiron.

"Well, I'm sorry," said the Bellows, "but it's all your own fault. You asked me to blow the cloud, and I blew it. You didn't say where you wanted it blown."

"You needn't have blown it to smithereens, just the same!" retorted the Poker. "It doesn't cost anything to ask a question now and then."

"Where, then?" demanded the Bellows.

"I'd like to find my hat," said Tom.

"Very well," said the Bellows. "I see it speeding off toward the moon, and we'll chase after it, but we'll never catch it if it misses the moon and falls past it into space."

The Poker rose to his full height and peered after the cap, which, even as the Bellows had said, was sailing rapidly off in the direction of the crescent moon, which lay to the west and below them.

"Hurrah!" he cried. "It's all right."

"Can you see it still?" asked Tom, anxiously, for his cap was made of sealskin and he didn't wish to lose it.

"Yes, it's all right," said the Poker. "It nearly missed, but not quite. If you will look through these glasses you will see it."

The Poker handed Tom a pair of strong field glasses and the lad, gazing anxiously through them, was delighted to see his wandering cap hanging, as if on a great golden hook in the sky beneath them, and which was nothing more than the last appearance of the moon itself.

"Good!" cried the Righthandiron. "That settles the question for us of where we shall go next. There is no choice left. We'll go to the moon. Heave ahead, Wheezy."

Whereupon the Bellows began to blow, at first gently, then stronger and stronger, and yet more strongly still, until the cloud was moving rapidly in the direction they desired.

CHAPTER VII

They Reach the Crescent Moon

As the jolly party sped along through the heavens Tom began to find his eyes bothering him a trifle. Brilliant as many of the sunshiny days had been at home, particularly when the snow was on the ground, nothing so dazzlingly bright as this great golden arc in the sky was getting to be, as they approached closer, had ever greeted his sight.

"It's blinding!" he cried, his eyes blinking and filling with water as he gazed upon the scene. "I can't stand it. What shall I do, Lefty?"

"Turn your head around and approach it backward," said Lefty. "Then you won't see it."

"But I want to see it," retorted Tom. "What's the use of visiting the moon if you can't see it?"

"Reminds me of a poem I wrote once," put in the Poker. "'What's the Use?' was one of my masterpieces, and maybe if I recite it to you it will help your eyes."

"Bosh!" growled the Bellows, who was beginning to get a little short-winded with his labors, and, therefore, a trifle out of temper. "How on earth will reciting your poem help Tom's eyes?"

"Easy enough," returned the Poker haughtily and with a contemptuous glance at the Bellows. "My poem is so much brighter than the moon that the moon will seem dull alongside of it."

"Go ahead anyhow," said Tom, interested at once and forgetting his eyes for the moment. "Give us the poem."

"Here goes, then," said the Poker, with a low bow and then, standing erect, he began. "It's called

WHAT'S THE USE

 
What's the use of circuses that haven't any beasts?
What's the use of restaurants that haven't any feasts?
 
 
What's the use of oranges that haven't any peels?
What's the use of bicycles that haven't any wheels?
 
 
What's the use of railway trains that have no place to go?
What's the use of going to war if you haven't any foe?
 
 
What's the use of splendid views for those that cannot see?
What's the use of freedom's flag to folks that aren't free?
 
 
What's the use of legs to those who have no wish to walk?
What's the use of languages to those who cannot talk?
 
 
What's the use of kings and queens that haven't any throne?
What's the use of having pains unless you're going to groan?
 
 
What's the use of anything, however grand and good,
That doesn't ever, ever work the way it really should?"
 

"Humph!" panted the Bellows, "you don't call that bright, do you?"

"I do, indeed," said the Poker. "And I call it bright because I know it's bright. It is so bright that not a magazine in all the world dare print it, because they'd never be able to do as well again, and people would say the magazine wasn't as good as it used to be."

"What nonsense," retorted the Bellows. "Why, I could blow a mile of poetry like that in ten minutes:

 
What's the use of churches big that haven't any steeples?
What's the use of nations great that haven't any peoples?
 
 
What's the use of oceans grand that haven't any beaches?
What's the use of Delawares that haven't any peaches?
 
 
What's the use—"
 

"O, shut up Wheezy," interrupted the Poker angrily. "Of course you can go on like that forever, once somebody gives you the idea, but to have the idea in the beginning was the big thing. Columbus was a great man for coming to America, but every foreigner who has come over since isn't, not by a long shot. As I say in my celebrated rhyme on "Greatness":

 
The greatest man in all the world, by far the greatest one,
Is he who goes ahead and does what no one else has done.
But he must be the first if he would rank as some "potaters,"
For those who follow after him are merely imitators.
 

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Bellows. "You are a great chap, Pokey—you, with your poetry. I hope Tom isn't going to be affected by the lessons you teach. The idea of saying that a man is the greatest man in the world because he does what no one else has done! I guess nobody's never eaten bricks up to now. Do you mean to say that if Tom here ate a brick he'd be the greatest man in the world?"

"No; he'd be a cannibal," put in the Righthandiron, desirous of stopping the quarrel between the rivals.

"How do you make that out?" demanded the Bellows.

"Because Tom is a brick himself," explained the Righthandiron; and just then slap! bang! the party plunged head first into what appeared to be—and in fact really was—a huge snowbank.

"Hurrah! Here we are!" cried Lefty, gleefully.

"Wh-where are we?" Tom sputtered, blowing the snow out of his mouth and shaking it from his coat and hair and ears.

"Hi, there! Look out!" roared Righty, grabbing Tom by the coat sleeve and yanking him off to one side. A terrible swishing sound fell upon the lad's ears, and as he gazed doggedly about him to see what had caused it he saw a great golden toboggan whizzing down into the valley, and then slipping up the hill on the other side.

"You had a narrow escape that time," said Righty, as they excitedly watched the toboggan speeding on its way, and which, by the way, was filled with a lot of little youngsters no bigger than Tom himself, children of all colors, apparently, red, white and blue, green, yellow and black. "If I hadn't yanked you away you'd have been run over."

"But where are we?" Tom asked, bewildered by the experience.

"We're on the Crescent Moon at last," said Lefty. "It's the boss toboggan slide of the universe."

"A toboggan slide?" cried Tom.

"The very same," said the Poker. "Didn't you know that this dazzling whiteness of the Crescent Moon is merely the reflection of the sun's light on the purest of pure white snow? It's too high up for dust and dirt here, you see, and so the snow is always clean, and so, equally of course, is dazzling white."

"But the tobogganing?" asked Tom.

"It's like swinging and letting the old cat die," explained the Righthandiron. "You see, it's this shape," and he marked the crescent form of the moon on the snow and lettered the various points.

"Now," he continued, "you start your toboggan at A and whizz down to C. When you get there you have gathered speed enough to take you up the hill to B. Then of its own weight the toboggan slides back to D, from which it again moves forward to E, and so it keeps on sliding back and forth until finally it comes to a dead stop at C. Isn't that a fine arrangement?"

"Magnificent," said Tom. "And do they call it tobogganing here?"

"No," said Righty, "it's called oscillating, and the machine is known as the oscycle"—

"Don't confound it with the icicle," put in the Bellows.

"Oh, I know what an icicle is," said Tom. "It's a spear of ice that hangs from a piazza roof."

"That's what it is at home," said the Poker, "but not here, my lad. Here an icicle is a bicycle with runners instead of wheels."

"But what makes it go?" demanded Tom.

"Pedals, of course," returned the Poker. "You just tread away on the pedals, as if you were riding on a bicycle, and the chain sets a dozen ice picks revolving that shove you over the ice like the wind. Oh, it's great sport!"

Another rush and roar of a passing toboggan caused them to pause in their conversation for a moment, and then Tom turned his attention to the diagram Righty had drawn on the snow.

"Suppose you didn't stop at B and go back—what would happen?" he asked as he considered the possible dangers of this wonderful new sport.

"You'd fall over the edge, of course," said the Poker.

"I see that," said Tom. "But if you fell over the edge what would become of you? Where would you land?"

"If you had luck you wouldn't land anywhere," said Righty. "The chances are, however, you'd fall back on the earth again. Maybe in Canada, possibly in China, perhaps in Egypt. It would all depend on the time of night."

"And wouldn't you be killed?" Tom asked.

"Not if you had your rubbers on," said Righty. "If you had your rubbers on it would only jar you slightly. You'd just hit the earth and then bounce back again, but there's no use of talking about that, because it never happened but once. It happened to a chap named Blenkinson, who took an Oscillator that hadn't any brake on it. He was one of those smart fellows that want to show how clever they are. He whizzed down one side and up the other, and pouf! First thing he knew he was flying off into space."