The Autobiography of Methuselah by John Kendrick Bangs (story reading txt) 📖

WHEN FATHER SPANKED ME

My Father larruped me, and yet
I could but note his eyes were wet,
When lying there across his knee
I got what he had had for me--
It seemed to fill him with regret.

"It hurt me worse than you," he said,
When later on I went to bed,
And I--the truth would not be hid--
Replied, "I'm gug-gug-glad it did!"

There were other verses written as I grew older that, while I do not regard them as masterpieces, I nevertheless think compare favorably with a great deal of the alleged poetry that has crept into print of late years. A trifle dashed off on a brick with a piece of charcoal one morning shortly after my hundredth birthday, comes back to me. The original I regret to say was lost through the careless act of one of my cousins, who flung it at a pterodactyl as it winged its flight across our meadows some years after. I reproduce it from memory.

THE JUNE-BUG

The merry, merry June-bug
Now butts at all in sight.
He butts the wall o' mornings,
He rams the ceil at night.

He caroms from the book-case
Off to the window-pane,
Then bounces from my table
Back to the case again.

He whacks against the door-jamb
And tumbles on the mat;
Then on the grand-piano
He strikes a strident flat;

Then to the oaken stair-case
He blindly flops and jumps,
And on the steps for hours
He blithely bumps the bumps.

They say that he is foolish,
And has no brains. No doubt
'Tis well for if he had 'em
He'd surely butt them out.

As I say, this is mere a trifle, but it is none the less beautifully descriptive of a creature that has always seemed to me to be worthy of more attention than he has ever received from the poets of our age. I have been unable to find in the literature of Greece, Egypt or the Orient, any reference to this wonderful insect who embodies in his frail physique so much of the truest philosophy of life, and who, despite the obstacles that seem so persistently to obstruct his path, buzzes blithely ever onward, singing his lovely song and uttering no complaints.

In the line of what I may call calendar poetry, which has always been popular since the art of rhyming began, none of the months escaped my attention, but of all of my efforts in that direction I never wrote anything that excelled in descriptive beauty my

ODE TO FEBRUARY

Hail to thee, O Februeer!
It is sweet to have you here,
Lemon-time of all the year!
Making all our noses gay
With the influenziay;
Flinging sneezes here and yon,
Rich and poor alike upon;
Clogging up the bronchial tubes
Of the Urbans and the Roobs;
Opening for all your grip
With its lavish stores of pip;
Scattering along your route
Little gifts of Epizoot;
Time of slush and time of thaw,
Time of hours mild and raw;
Blowing cold and blowing hot;
Stable as a Hottentot;
Coaxing flowers from the close
Just to nip them on the nose;
Calling birdies from their nests
For to freeze their little chests;
Springtime in the morning bright,
With a blizzard on at night;
Chills and fever through the day
Like a sort of pousse cafe;
Time of drift and time of slosh!
Season of the ripe golosh;
Running rivers in the street,
Frozen toes, and soaking feet;
Take this wreath of Poesie
Dedicated unto thee,
Undiluted stream of mush
To the Merry Month of Slush!

I preferred always, of course, to be original, not only in the matter of my thought, but in the manner of my expression as well, but like all the rest of the poetizing tribe, I sooner or later came under the Greek influence. This is shown most notably in a little bit written one very warm day in midsummer, back in my 278th year. It was entitled

TO PAN IN AUGUST

I don't wish to flout you, Pan.
Tried to write about you, Pan.
Tried to tell the story, Pan,
Of your wondrous glory, Pan;
But I can't begin it, Pan,
For this very minute, Pan,
All my thoughts are tumid, Pan,
'Tis so hot and humid, Pan,
And for all my trying, Pan,
There is no denying, Pan,
I can't think, poor sighing Pan,
Of you save as frying, Pan.

It was after reading the above, when it dropped out of my coat pocket during one of our visits to the wood-shed, that Adam expressed the profound conviction that I was born to be hanged, but as I have already intimated, neither his sense of justice, nor his sense of humor was notable.

Once in awhile I tried a bit of satire, and when my son Noah first began to show signs of mental aberration on the subject of a probable flood that would sweep everything before it, and put the whole world out of business save those who would take shares in his International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company, I endeavored to dissuade him in every possible way from so suspicious an enterprise. Failing to impress my feelings upon him in one way, I fell back upon an anonymously published poem, which I hoped would bring him to his senses. The lines were printed in red chalk on the board fence surrounding his Ship-Yard, and ran as follows:

MARINE ADVICES

O Noah he built himself a boat,
And filled it full of animiles.
He took along a billie-goat,
A pug and two old crocodiles.

A pair of very handsome yaks
A leopard and hyenas two;
A brace of tender canvas-backs,
A camel and a kangaroo.

A pair of guinea-pigs were placed
In state-rooms off the main saloon,
Along with several rabbits chaste,
A 'possum and a gray raccoon.

Now all went well upon that cruise,
And they were happy as could be,
Until one morning came the news
That filled old Noah with misery.

Those guinea-pigs--O what a tide!--
Were versed in plain Arithmetic;
The way they upped and multiplied
Made Captain Noah mighty sick.

And four days out he turned about,
And made back to the pier once more
To rid himself of all that rout,
And put the guinea-pigs ashore.

And where there were but two of these
When starting on that famous trip,
When they got back from off the seas,
Three hundred thousand left the ship!

Poor Noah! He took this publication so much to heart that he offered a reward of a thousand dollars, and a first-class passage on his cruise to the top of Mount Ararat to any one who could give him the name of the miscreant who had written the lines, but he has never yet found out who did them, and until he reads these memoirs after I have passed away, he will never know from how near home they came.

Finally let me say that in a more serious vein as a Poet I was not wanting in success--that is in my own judgment. As a mystic poet nothing better than the following came from my pen:

O arching trees that mark the zenith hour,
How great thy reach, how marvellous thy power,
So lavishly outpouring all thy rotund gifts
On mortal ways, in superhuman shifts
That overtax the mind, and vex the soul of man,
As would the details of some awful plan,
Jocund, mysterious, complex, and yet withal
Enmeshed with Joy and Sorrow, as a pall
Envelops all the seas at eventide, and brings
New meaning to the song the Robin sings
When from her nest matutinal she squirms
And hies her forth for adolescent worms
With which her young to feed, yet all the time
With heart and soul laments my dulcet rhyme!

Of this I was naturally quite proud, and when under the title of "Maternity" I read it once in secret to my Aunt Jerusha, she burst into tears as I went on, and three days later read it as a New Thought gem before the Enochsville Society of Ethical Culture. It was there pronounced a great piece of symbolic imagery, and prediction was made that some day in some more advanced age than our own, a Magazine would be found somewhere that would print it. This may be so, but I fear I shall not live to see it.


CHAPTER VII


THE INTERNATIONAL MARINE AND ZOO FLOTATION COMPANY

I have never yet been quite able to make up my mind with any degree of definiteness in regard to the sanity of my son Noah. In many respects he is a fine fellow. His moral character is beyond reproach, and I have never caught him in any kind of a wilful deception such as many parents bewail in their offspring, and I know that he has no bad habits. He has no liking for cigarette smoking, and he keeps good company and good hours. His sons Shem, Ham and Japhet, are great favorites with all of us, and as far as mere respectability goes there is no family in the land that stands higher than his, but the complete obsession of his mind by this International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company of his is entirely beyond my comprehension, and his attempts to explain it to me are futile, because its utter impracticability, and the reasons advanced for its use seem so absurd that I lose my temper before he gets half way through the first page of his prospectus. From his boyhood up he has been fond of the water, and when the bath-tub was first invented we did not have to drive him to it, as most parents have to do with most boys, but on the contrary we had all we could do to keep him away from