"O, shut up Wheezy," interrupted the Poker angrily. "Of course you can go on like that forever, once somebody gives you the idea, but to have the idea in the beginning was the big thing. Columbus was a great man for coming to America, but every foreigner who has come over since isn't, not by a long shot. As I say in my celebrated rhyme on "Greatness":
The greatest man in all the world, by far the greatest one,
Is he who goes ahead and does what no one else has done.
But he must be the first if he would rank as some "potaters,"
For those who follow after him are merely imitators.
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Bellows. "You are a great chap, Pokey—you, with your poetry. I hope Tom isn't going to be affected by the lessons you teach. The idea of saying that a man is the greatest man in the world because he does what no one else has done! I guess nobody's never eaten bricks up to now. Do you mean to say that if Tom here ate a brick he'd be the greatest man in the world?"
"No; he'd be a cannibal," put in the Righthandiron, desirous of stopping the quarrel between the rivals.
"How do you make that out?" demanded the Bellows.
"Because Tom is a brick himself," explained the Righthandiron; and just then slap! bang! the party plunged head first into what appeared to be—and in fact really was—a huge snowbank.
"Hurrah! Here we are!" cried Lefty, gleefully.
"Wh-where are we?" Tom sputtered, blowing the snow out of his mouth and shaking it from his coat and hair and ears.
"Hi, there! Look out!" roared Righty, grabbing Tom by the coat sleeve and yanking him off to one side. A terrible swishing sound fell upon the lad's ears, and as he gazed doggedly about him to see what had caused it he saw a great golden toboggan whizzing down into the valley, and then slipping up the hill on the other side.