How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee Part 8

Jesse Willows took him instantly by the nose. "You'll accept nothin',"

said he, with great sweetness; and he shook him forward and back. "I am weary of you and yore antics," and he shook him right and left. "You're goin' to rub out everything you have written," and he shook him round and round.

"Help," gurgled the struggling Totts. "Help!"

"No, indeed; no, indeed," cried Maverick and Cottsill, delighted.

"You gentlemen are included," said Willows to them, and they both hastily covered their noses with their hands. "I don't mean that way,"

he continued. "But you're goin' to rub yore lists out, too. Why, you're the contemptiblest of all the great American frauds. Just because you have written a picayune book on some picayune specialty, you pa.s.s for bein' educated in our half-civilized country. Put you among genuine scholars and you would look like old gum shoes. I know my accent is provincial," he paused and looked at Totts for a moment, "but it's a heap prettier'n yore's," he shook Totts round and round again, "and you and I are just goin' to let the English language take care of herself.

She has done it for a thousand years, and she'll do it for a thousand more, changin' what she pleases an' keepin' what she pleases."

So saying, the young man, even as one drags a resisting dog by a chain, dragged the howling Totts by his nose to the blackboard, and forced the rubber into his hand; and as Totts hung back his firmly imprisoned organ received a still more acute sensation, whereat he leaped into the air, and erased his Surracuse list at one sweep. And next, since Cottsill and Maverick were hanging back also, one with his arms s.h.i.+elding grantha, while the other s.h.i.+elded anywheres, Totts was conducted to those words.

"Out with grantha," commanded Jesse. "We'll keep it grandfather for a while yet, Mr. Bean Talk." They attempted to defend their lists, but vainly; and in the conflict that arose, a rubber flew crooked and hit one of the great West sharply in the back of the neck. He, being under a misapprehension, thereupon kicked his neighbor savagely, and in a moment all the profound scholars engaged together in a blind war, rubbing out one another's lists, whacking one another's heads, and often rolling by twos and threes beneath the table, from which dictionaries and inkstands were falling continuously. It was with the greatest difficulty that I got the gasoline organ between myself and harm's way. Jesse Willows had mounted upon the table with the still faintly bellowing Totts, whom he led slowly from one end to the other, amid the clouds of chalk and the general bedlam.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Jesse had mounted upon the table with the still faintly bellowing Totts.]

At the first pause which exhaustion brought, Masticator B. Fellows was perceived to be looking on quietly.

"Gentlemen," he said, "dear friends" (and these words stopped everything), "I am well pleased with what you have accomplished. I expected results, and I have got them. The surgeon awaits you in the House of Bandages."

No serious wounds were found; but also no scholar was found to be upon speaking terms with any other. By the generosity of Masticator each was sent home separately in a private car, on a special train, with plenty of chickle.

Masticator had created all the publicity that he desired. New students swarmed in armies to his University, and he presently issued a billion more shares of Chickle common. The press of the whole country rang with the enterprise.

SIMPLE SPELLERS WED

was one of the first headlines that greeted me upon my homeward journey.

Yes; Jesse Willows and Gertrude Appleby were the exceptions; these two scholars had gone away in the same car together to their honeymoon, while I returned lonely to the index of my forthcoming volume.

Heigho!