He looked at my tongue, and he shook his head-- This was Doctor Bright-- "I'm afraid your lungs are gone," he said, "And your kidney isn't right. A change of scene is what you need, Your case is desperate, indeed, And bread is a thing you mustn't eat-- Too much starch--but, by the way, You must henceforth live on only meat-- And take six doses of this a day!"
Perhaps they were right, and perhaps they knew, It isn't for me to say; Mayhap I erred when I madly threw Their bitter stuff away; But I'm living yet and I'm on my feet, And grass isn't all I dare to eat, And I walk and I run and I worry, too, But, to save my life, I can not see What some of the able doctors would do If there were no fools like you and me.
A stout, fat boat for gailin' And a long, slim boat for squall; But there isn't no fun in sailin' When you haven't no boat at all.
For what is the use o' calkin' A tub with a mustard pot-- And what is the use o' talkin' Of a boat that you haven't got?
[4] From "Nautical Lays of a Landsman," by Wallace Irwin. Copyright, 1904, by Dodd, Mead & Co.
When Jimaboy began to live by his wits--otherwise, when he set up author and proposed to write for bread and meat--it was a time when the public appetite demanded names and _naïveté_. And since Jimaboy was fresh enough to satisfy both of these requirements, the editors looked with favor upon him, and his income, for a little while, exceeded the modest figure of the railroad clerkship upon which he had ventured to ask Isobel to marry him.
But afterward there came a time of dearth; a period in which the new name was no longer a thing to conjure with, and artlessness was a drug on the market. Cleverness was the name of the new requirement, and Jimaboy's gift was glaringly sentimental. When you open your magazine at "The Contusions of Peggy, by James Augustus Jimaboy," you are justly indignant when you find melodrama and predetermined pathos instead of the clever clowneries which the sheer absurdity of the author's signature predicts.
"Item," said Jimaboy, jotting it down in his notebook while Isobel hung over the back of his chair: "It's a perilous thing to make people cry when they are out for amusement. Did the postman remember us this morning?"