“I should think it was high time,” said I.
* * *
There was nothing very unusual in that little episode; but somehow it got public, and was a good deal talked about; although, as I said, hardly anybody knew the stranger, even by name. But, of course, it was well nigh forgotten six months later, when the newspaper man came to the front again.
His reappearance took the form of such a singular exhibition of meekness that it ought to have made Silo suspicious, to say the least. But he was a bit of a bully; and, like all bullies, it was hard for him to believe that a man who did not bluster could really mean fight. Perhaps he had no chance of mercy at that time; but if he did he threw it away.
The stranger wrote to the local paper a polite, even modest letter, stating, very moderately, his grievance against Mr. Silo. He further proposed a scheme, the adoption of which would obviate all possibilities of such misunderstanding. I have forgotten what the scheme was. It was not a good one, and I know now that it was not meant to be. The local paper was the Echo. It was run by a shiftless young man named Meecham; and, of course, Silo had him deep in his debt; and, of course, again, Silo more or less ran the paper. So, when that letter arrived, Meecham showed it to Silo, and Silo gave new cause of offense by violating the honorable laws of newspaper controversy, and answering back in the very same number of the paper. The matter of his reply was also injudicious. He lost his temper at once when he saw that the letter was signed “Mr. Thingumajig,” and he characterized both the plan and its proposer as “preposterous.” I am inclined to think that that word “preposterous” was just the word that the other man was setting a trap for. At any rate, he got it, and he wanted nothing better. Here is his reply:
An Open Letter to P. Q. Silo, Esq.
My Dear Mr. Silo:
I greatly regret that my little scheme for the simplification of the relations between intending purchasers and non-intending sellers (so-called) of real estate should have fallen under your disapprobation. Of course, I do not attempt to question your judgement; but you must allow me to take exception to the language in which that judgement is expressed; which is at once inappropriate and insulting. You call me and my scheme “preposterous;” and this shows that you do not know the meaning of that frequently misused word. “Preposterous” is a word that may be properly applied to a scheme that puts the cart before the horse—“having that first which ought to be last,” as Mr. Webster’s International Dictionary puts it—or to a thing or creature “contrary to nature or reason; not adapted to the end; utterly and glaringly foolish; unreasonably absurd; perverted.” If you want an instance of its proper application, the word “preposterous” might fitly be used in all its senses to describe your own brief but startling appearance on Thursday evening last, between the hours of nine and ten, in a certain quiet street of New York, in a pair of pink pants.
I remain, dear sir,
Yours very truly,
Mr. Thingumajig.