Wherefore I raised my voice against him, and called him out of his name, and cast my pillow upon him, and he departed out of that place with a loud cry. Then they that came in haste to my chamber, unbidden, looked one upon another and said: “He ate of the bird.”
LACKING FACTORS
GENDER is the sex of words. But either this matter of sex is imperfectly understood, or Nature has made faulty provision for the duality of things; for history and speech show many melancholy examples of natural celibacy, and Shelley’s dictum that “nothing in the world is single” must be accepted with the large limitation of a comprehensive denial. Who ever heard of an alligatrix? The spinster—has she anywhere a femaler mate, the spinstress? I am told there is an article, a garment, if I have rightly understood—called a garter, and that it has commonly a mate, yet I know not if any one has seen a gartress. Nor, for that matter, a garter. Has the cypress a lord and master known as the cypor? We hear of personal encounters, but a personal encounter between two ladies is not an encountress. Every one knows that an epistle is a female apostle, but why the male mate of the unlisted himmit should, except for consistency in perversion, be called a hermit, who can say? Oddly enough, the shero is unknown to fame. Is there a place beyond the grave of the sinner, called Heol, and was its existence hinted at in the old name for Sheol? In Irish folklore is no mention of the banhee. An ornithologist of even the widest attainments will assure you that the queenfisher is an undiscovered fowl. Ancient history, sacred or profane, is vainly questioned concerning the King of Heba—whom nevertheless, I love to figure to myself as making a long journey to lay countless camel loads of gifts at the feet of the very wisest sovereign in all the world—the queen of the Shebrews.
A CALIFORNIAN STATESMAN
PERSONS who have not had the advantage of hearing about the Hon. Henry Vrooman in the past ten or twelve years will be surprised to learn that he is still living. The man has more lives than a ship-load of cats from Malta. In the past few years he has been dying of heart disease so fast that he is in danger of becoming extinct. His death-rate is appalling! He has died in every voting precinct in this part of the state, and his last words are about to be compiled in three volumes. Whenever Mr. Vrooman wants “the suffrages of his fellow-citizens” he gets them together in a hall, makes them a speech, assures them that his sands of life are pretty nearly run out, closes with some neat and appropriate patriotic sentiment suitable to the sad occasion, and then flops down and dies all over the floor. Just before the vital spark is extinct the meeting is adjourned by turning off the gas and the corpse is at liberty to rise and go home. The next morning Mr. Vrooman’s political organ relates how he was snatched from the jaws of death, though his condition is still critical; and the sovereign electors say: “Well, poor feller, he’s on his last legs anyway—guess it won’t do much harm to elect him.” The wretch never drew a cent of salary without committing the crime of obtaining money by false pretenses; he is always elected on the understanding that he is to die.
But he doesn’t die—he is immortal. The moment that the “innumerable caravan” has passed the polling place he drops out of the procession and hangs about for his certificate of election. Then we hear no more about his poor heart until his term is about to expire, when it begins to trouble him again. He and his term generally manage to expire together in the sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection.
In the closing hours of the last session of the state senate somebody made a motion to limit all speeches to ten minutes. This brought Mr. Vrooman to his hind feet forthwith. “Mr. President,” he said, “standing as I do upon the threshold of the Unknown, and turning back to address my fellow-citizens for the last time, I feel grateful indeed that an all-wise Providence has so ordered it that my final words can be spoken in advocacy of the righteous and beneficent principle of free speech, and in denunciation of the reptiles who would limit the liberty of debate. With a solemn sense of my responsibility to Him from whom I received my mental powers, and to whom I am so soon to give an account of my stewardship; gazing with a glazing eye upon the transitory scenes of earth, about which 'the dark Plutonian shadows gather on the evening blast’; conscious that the lute-string is about to snap and the pitcher to be broken at the well, I adjure you, friends of my former days, as in a whisper from the dark, not to let that motion prevail.”
Wiping a light froth from his lips, the failing senator, with a friend under each arm and a half-dozen volunteer pall-bearers following, solemnly left the chamber to the sound of a dozen busy pens drafting resolutions of respect.