"Ho!" jeered the major. "What's the use of buying bottles when you're after pickled peaches?
'Of all the futile, futile things—
Remarked the Apogee—
That is as truly futilest
As futilest can be.'
You never heard my poem on the Apogee, did you, Jimmieboy?"
"No. I never even heard of an Apogee. What is an Apogee, anyhow?" asked the boy.
"To give definitions isn't a part of my bargain," answered the major. "I haven't the slightest idea what an Apogee is. He may be a bird with a whole file of unpaid bills, for all I know, but I wrote a poem about him once that made another poet so jealous that he purposely caught a bad cold and sneezed his head off; and I don't blame him either, because it was a magnificent thing in its way. I'll tell it to you. Listen:
"THE APOGEE.
The Apogee wept saline tears
Into the saline sea,
To overhear two mutineers
Discuss their pedigree.
Said he:
Of all the futile, futile things
That ever I did see.
That is as truly futilest
As futilest can be.
He hied him thence to his hotel,
And there it made him ill
To hear a pretty damosel
A bass song try to trill.
Said he:
Of all the futile, futile things—
To say it I am free—
That is about the futilest
That ever I did see.
He went from sea to mountain height,
And there he heard a lad
Of sixty-eight compare the sight
To other views he'd had;
And he
Remarked: Of all the futile things
That ever came to me,
This is as futily futile
As futile well can be.
Then in disgust he went back home,
His door-bell rang all day,
But no one to the door did come:
The butler'd gone away.
Said he:
This is the strangest, queerest world
That ever I did see.
It's two per cent. of earth, and nine-
Ty-eight futility."