Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy Part 14

A few days later Mr. b.u.t.t gave me a further report. "Yes,"

he said, "the furniture is all unpacked and straightened out but I don't like it. There's a lot of it I don't quite like. I half feel like advising Jones to sell it and get some more. But I don't want to do that till I'm quite certain about it."

After that Mr. b.u.t.t seemed much occupied and I didn't see him at the club for some time.

"How about the Everleigh-Joneses?" I asked. "Are they comfortable in their new house?"

Mr. b.u.t.t shook his head. "It won't do," he said. "I was afraid of it from the first. I'm moving Jones in nearer to town. I've been out all morning looking for an apartment; when I get the right one I shall move him. I like an apartment far better than a house."

So the Joneses in due course of time were moved. After that Mr. b.u.t.t was very busy selecting a piano, and advising them on wall paper and woodwork.

They were hardly settled in their new home when fresh trouble came to them.

"Have you heard about Everleigh-Jones?" said Mr. b.u.t.t one day with an anxious face.

"No," I answered.

"He's ill--some sort of fever--poor chap--been ill three days, and they never told me or sent for me--just like their grit--meant to fight it out alone. I'm going out there at once."

From day to day I had reports from Mr. b.u.t.t of the progress of Jones's illness.

"I sit with him every day," he said. "Poor chap,--he was very bad yesterday for a while,--mind wandered--quite delirious--I could hear him from the next room--seemed to think some one was hunting him--'Is that d.a.m.n old fool gone,' I heard him say.

"I went in and soothed him. 'There is no one here, my dear boy,' I said, 'no one, only b.u.t.t.' He turned over and groaned. Mrs. Jones begged me to leave him. 'You look quite used up,' she said. 'Go out into the open air.' 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said, 'what DOES it matter about me?'"

Eventually, thanks no doubt to Mr. b.u.t.t's a.s.siduous care, Everleigh-Jones got well.

"Yes," said Mr. b.u.t.t to me a few weeks later, "Jones is all right again now, but his illness has been a long hard pull. I haven't had an evening to myself since it began.

But I'm paid, sir, now, more than paid for anything I've done,--the grat.i.tude of those two people--it's unbelievable --you ought to see it. Why do you know that dear little woman is so worried for fear that my strength has been overtaxed that she wants me to take a complete rest and go on a long trip somewhere--suggested first that I should go south. 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said laughing, 'that's the ONE place I will not go. Heat is the one thing I CAN'T stand.' She wasn't nonplussed for a moment. 'Then go north,' she said. 'Go up to Canada, or better still go to Labrador,'--and in a minute that kind little woman was hunting up railway maps to see how far north I could get by rail. 'After that,' she said, 'you can go on snowshoes.' She's found that there's a steamer to Ungava every spring and she wants me to run up there on one steamer and come back on the next."

"It must be very gratifying," I said.

"Oh, it is, it is," said Mr. b.u.t.t warmly. "It's well worth anything I do. It more than repays me. I'm alone in the world and my friends are all I have. I can't tell you how it goes to my heart when I think of all my friends, here in the club and in the town, always glad to see me, always protesting against my little kindnesses and yet never quite satisfied about anything unless they can get my advice and hear what I have to say.

"Take Jones for instance," he continued--"do you know, really now as a fact,--the hall porter a.s.sures me of it,--every time Everleigh-Jones enters the club here the first thing he does is to sing out, 'Is Mr. b.u.t.t in the club?' It warms me to think of it." Mr. b.u.t.t paused, one would have said there were tears in his eyes. But if so the kindly beam of his spectacles shone through them like the sun through April rain. He left me and pa.s.sed into the cloak room.

He had just left the hall when a stranger entered, a narrow, meek man with a hunted face. He came in with a furtive step and looked about him apprehensively.

"Is Mr. b.u.t.t in the club?" he whispered to the hall porter.

"Yes, sir, he's just gone into the cloak room, sir, shall I--"

But the man had turned and made a dive for the front door and had vanished.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"That's a new member, sir, Mr. Everleigh-Jones," said the hall porter.

IV-Ram Spudd The New World Singer. Is He Divinely Inspired?

Or Is He Not? At Any Rate We Discovered Him.

[Footnote: Mr. Spudd was discovered by the author for the New York Life. He is already recognized as superior to Tennyson and second only, as a writer of imagination, to the Sultan of Turkey.]

The discovery of a new poet is always a joy to the cultivated world. It is therefore with the greatest pleasure that we are able to announce that we ourselves, acting quite independently and without aid from any of the English reviews of the day, have discovered one. In the person of Mr. Ram Spudd, of whose work we give specimens below, we feel that we reveal to our readers a genius of the first order. Unlike one of the most recently discovered English poets who is a Bengalee, and another who is a full-blooded Yak, Mr. Spudd is, we believe, a Navajo Indian. We believe this from the character of his verse. Mr. Spudd himself we have not seen. But when he forwarded his poems to our office and offered with characteristic modesty to sell us his entire works for seventy-five cents, we felt in closing with his offer that we were dealing not only with a poet, but with one of nature's gentlemen.

Mr. Spudd, we understand, has had no education. Other newly discovered poets have had, apparently, some. Mr.

Spudd has had, evidently, none. We lay stress on this point. Without it we claim it is impossible to understand his work.

What we particularly like about Ram Spudd, and we do not say this because we discovered him but because we believe it and must say it, is that he belongs not to one school but to all of them. As a nature poet we doubt very much if he has his equal; as a psychologist, we are sure he has not. As a clear lucid thinker he is undoubtedly in the first rank; while as a mystic he is a long way in front of it. The specimens of Mr. Spudd's verse which we append herewith were selected, we are happy to a.s.sure our readers, purely at random from his work. We first blindfolded ourselves and then, standing with our feet in warm water and having one hand tied behind our back, we groped among the papers on our desk before us and selected for our purpose whatever specimens first came to hand.

As we have said, or did we say it, it is perhaps as a nature poet that Ram Spudd excels. Others of our modern school have carried the observation of natural objects to a high degree of very nice precision, but with Mr.

Spudd the observation of nature becomes an almost scientific process. Nothing escapes him. The green of the gra.s.s he detects as in an instant. The sky is no sooner blue than he remarks it with unerring certainty. Every bird note, every bee call, is familiar to his trained ear. Perhaps we cannot do better than quote the opening lines of a singularly beautiful sample of Ram Spudd's genius which seems to us the last word in nature poetry. It is called, with characteristic daintiness--

SPRING THAW IN THE AHUNTSIC WOODS, NEAR PASPEBIAC, Pa.s.sAMOQUODDY COUNTY

(We would like to say that, to our ears at least, there is a music in this t.i.tle like the sound of falling water, or of chopped ice. But we must not interrupt ourselves.

We now begin. Listen.)

The thermometer is standing this morning at thirty- three decimal one.

As a consequence it is freezing in the shade, but it is thawing in the sun.

There is a certain amount of snow on the ground, but of course not too much.

The air is what you would call humid, but not disagreeable to the touch.

Where I am standing I find myself practically surrounded by trees, It is simply astonis.h.i.+ng the number of the different varieties one sees.

I've grown so wise I can tell each different tree by seeing it glisten, But if that test fails I simply put my ear to the tree and listen, And, well, I suppose it is only a silly fancy of mine perhaps, But do you know I'm getting to tell different trees by the sound of their saps.

After I have noticed all the trees, and named those I know in words, I stand quite still and look all round to see if there are any birds, And yesterday, close where I was standing, sitting in some brush on the snow, I saw what I was practically absolutely certain was an early crow.

I sneaked up ever so close and was nearly beside it, when say!

It turned and took one look at me, and flew away.

But we should not wish our readers to think that Ram Spudd is always and only the contemplative poet of the softer aspects of nature. Oh, by no means. There are times when waves of pa.s.sion sweep over him in such prodigious volume as to roll him to and fro like a pebble in the surf. Gusts of emotion blow over him with such violence as to hurl him pro and con with inconceivable fury. In such moods, if it were not for the relief offered by writing verse we really do not know what would happen to him. His verse written under the impulse of such emotions marks him as one of the greatest masters of pa.s.sion, wild and yet restrained, objectionable and yet printable, that have appeared on this side of the Atlantic.

We append herewith a portion, or half portion, of his little gem ent.i.tled

YOU

You!

With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips, And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!

You!

With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and contracting chest, Lying against my perfectly ordinary s.h.i.+rt-front and dinner-jacket vest.

It is too much Your touch As such.

It and Your hand, Can you not understand?

Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair Unnoticed fell.

I guard it Well.

Yestere'en From your tiara I have slid, Unseen, A single diamond, And I keep it Hid.

Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill A quarter dollar, And I have it Still.

But even those who know Ram Spudd as the poet of nature or of pa.s.sion still only know a part of his genius. Some of his highest flights rise from an entirely different inspiration, and deal with the public affairs of the nation. They are in every sense comparable to the best work of the poets laureate of England dealing with similar themes. As soon as we had seen Ram Spudd's work of this kind, we cried, that is we said to our stenographer, "What a pity that in this republic we have no laureates.h.i.+p.

Here is a man who might truly fill it." Of the poem of this kind we should wish to quote, if our limits of s.p.a.ce did not prevent it, Mr. Spudd's exquisite

ODE ON THE REDUCTION OF THE UNITED STATES TARIFF