ELIPHALET JONES—INVENTOR
Inventor Jones—Eliphalet Jones,
Ah, he was the fellow for schemes!
Though critics might carp and his rivals throw
stones,
They never vexed Uncle Eliphalet Jones,
Or troubled his radiant dreams.
He calmly asserted that every day
One hundred inventions, or so, came his way;
They flocked through his mind in such myriad
rout
He hadn’t the leisure to figure them out.
But he said if a fellow should chase him around
With a pencil and notebook’twould surely be
found
That projects prolific were shed from his brain
As a wet bush, when shaken, will scatter the
rain.
When he plowed, when he hoed, when he
sowed, when he mowed
He was steadily throwing off load after load
Of notions, he stated—each notion a mint
For the chap who would take and develop the
hint.
But Eliphalet Jones—Eliphalet Jones
Was so busy with farmwork and clearing off
stones,
So busy with milking and errands and chores
He scattered inventions by dozens and scores
With a liberal hand, but with barren effect,
For they dried on the cold, arid sands of
neglect.
But for all he forgot he would cheerfully say
There were always as many the very next day.
And he figured it up; though enormous it
seems
He had fashioned and fired some ten thousand
schemes.
Now, out of that number a limited few
Eliphalet tackled and engineered through;
A few little notions right out of his head
To help out the farmwork, he carelessly said.
One patent, a holder to hitch a cow’s tail
So she couldn’t keep swatting the man with the
pail;
A few dozen scarecrows of hellish design,
Real impish constructions to jig on a line
That was jerked by a water-wheel down in the
brook;
All the horses that passed, if they got a good
look
Tumbled down stiff and dead or else, frantic
with fear,
Kicked the wagon in bits and spun’round on
one ear.
And he rigged a contrivance by which ev’ry
morn
His old Brahma rooster descending for corn,
Stepped down on a lever that flipped up a lock
And down came the fodder in front of the
stock.
Still, these were but puerile notions beside
The thing that he hoped for—his spur and his
pride,
His climax of schemes ere he went back to
dust—
For he vowed that he’d fathom the secret or
“bust;”
That if motion perpetual ever could be
Discovered by mortal, that man should be he.
So he fussed with his springs and his wee-jees
and wings
And all sorts of queer little duflicker things,
And he builded queer whiz-a-jigs, then with a
frown
He ruthlessly, scornfully cuffed them all down.
Well, the years hurried by, as the years surely
will,
But Eliphalet Jones he was confident still,
For he constantly vowed that some thingumy
spring
Put somewhere “would settle the dad-ratted
thing.”
Yet the years skittered past and his head was
snow-white
And he almost had solved it, but never “jest
quite;”
So the neighbors employed some satirical tones
When they chanced to refer to Perpetual Jones.
But hail to his name and remember his fame!
At the last—at the last, friends, he won the
great game!
He died at the birth of his triumph,’tis true,
And he left only words—yet I give them to
you,
Convinced they’re a gift to the world, without
doubt,
Or will be as soon as the thing is worked out.
He sat in his chair by the window one day
While his grandson was out with a puppy at
play;
And the boy hitched some meat to the tail of
that pup,
Then he gave him a twirl and the puppy “gee-
ed up,”
And he spun and he spun and he spun and he
spun
Just as fast at the last as when he begun,
But the tail and the meat ever kept just ahead
Of the clamorous jaws as the puppy dog sped.
“There she is,” cried Eliphalet, “darned if she
ain’t!
There’s perpetual motion!” and pallid and faint
He fell prone and dying. They lifted him up
And his eyes, glazed with death, looked their
last on that pup.
And through the dark shade of mortality’s fog
He gasped, “All you need is the right kind of
dog.”
Inventor Jones—Eliphalet Jones,
Ah, he was the fellow for schemes;
Though critics might carp and his rivals throw
stones
They never vexed Uncle Eliphalet Jones,
Or troubled his radiant dreams.