I stopped, and smiled, and said: “‘Eureka?’”
“‘Eureka!’” he echoed, smiling also.
“It seems good—for kerosene,” I said.
“It is very good—for kerosene,” he replied.
“But not for dear old ladies,” I thought, as I passed on.
And so I tell this little story—or the old ladies do—because I wish that no one may ever again buy a new teapot for old ladies. They may have an old one with a story. But in case any one unthinkingly should, I have provided a better use for it—or the man on his back doorstep has. I have always wished that I had met him—on his doorstep—earlier.
THOR’S EMERALD
I THE SHIBBOLETH OF LIBERTY
Far out, toward the eternal ice cap, there was once a spot of earth so glowing with delicate verdure that it was called Thor’s Emerald. One can scarce imagine how it came there, unless, indeed, it dropped, by some celestial mischance, from a Titanic diadem. It lay bedded between the sea and mountain, and overlooked by the glacier. Yet, these enemies were kept at bay by a south wind rifled from an inconstant current which visited the fjord. Fair to the eye, it was a Dead Sea apple. One might grind one’s heel into the soil and find the primeval shingle left by the receding waters. And, always, there had been the threat of the glacier. For, when the inconstant current should cease, at the bar itself was making before the mouth of the fjord, the glacier would come down.
It was scarce fivescore acres. Yet it has its little history, whose beginning no man knows, whose end it is mine to relate.