"Yes," replied the Idiot. "Indeed, my first effort was a lyric on the clothes-pin. I started one night to do the contents of the kitchen-dresser drawer in French forms, but the first thing I took out was an egg-beater, and it wouldn't go, so I did the clothes-pin lyric. I call it
"FIDELITY
"Blow, ye winds,
I fear ye not;
Blast, ye simoon,
Sere and hot!
"Hurricane,
And cyclone, too,
Blow, I have no
Fear of you.
"Lacking beauty,
Lacking grace,
Lacking handsome
Form and face;
"Lacking soul
And intellect,
Still I stand up,
Proud, erect.
"For the Fates
Have given me
Wondrous great
Tenacity.
"And success,
Both fair and fine,
Comes to him
Who holds his line.
"Burrs can stick
And so can glue—
Mucilage,
Stratena, too;
"But there's nothing
Holds so fast
As the clothes-pin
To the last."
"And you gave up the egg-beater altogether?" asked the Poet, restraining a natural inclination to find flaws in the construction of the clothes-pin poem.
"Oh no," said the Idiot, "I knocked off a little quatrain on that. I called it 'The Speedy Egg-Beater,' and it goes like this:
"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,
However speedy be their legs;
But I distance her with ease
When it comes to beating eggs."
"I really think that you would have done better to give up the egg-beater," said the Poet, grown critical. "I've no patience with one-rhymed quatrains. Now if you had written:
"Great Maude S. can beat all steeds,
However speedy be their legs;
But despite her doughty deeds;
I can beat her beating eggs,
"I should not have objected."
"I accept the amendment," replied the Idiot, meekly. "I realized the weakness of the thing myself, and thought of changing it into a couplet, where you only need one rhyme. How's this on a 'Carpet-Tack'?"