His story was simple, though tearful. He had brought it home that day; and, after using it for a writing-desk, had opened it out and made his bed. He was going peacefully to dream-land, when he rolled over and accidentally touched a spring. The faithful invention immediately became a double crib, and turned Buffum into a squalling wafer. Then he struggled, and was reaching around for the spring, when the patent bedstead thought it would show off some more, and straightened out, and shot up in the air, and was a clothes-horse. Buffum said he didn’t like to be clothes, and he would give the thing to anybody that would get him out. They said they would try. They didn’t want any such fire-extinguisher as that for their trouble, but they would try. They inspected it cautiously. They walked all around it. Then the commission-merchant laid his little finger on the top end of it. The thing snorted and reared as if it had been shot, slapped over with a bang, and became an extension-table for ten people. When they recovered from the panic, they came back. They found the commission-merchant in the corner trying to get breath enough to swear, while he rubbed his shins. Buffum had disappeared, but they knew he had not gone far. The invention appeared to have taken a fancy to him, and incorporated him into the firm, so to speak. He was down underneath, straddling one of the legs, with his head jammed into the mattress. Nobody dared to touch it. The landlady got a club and reached for its vital parts, but could not find them. She hammered her breath away; and when she got through, and dropped the club in despair, the thing spread out its arms with a gasp and a rattle, turned over twice, and slapped itself into a bed again, with Buffum peacefully among the sheets. He held his breath for a minute; and then, watching his opportunity, made a flying-leap to the floor, just in time to save himself from being a folding-screen.
A man with a black eye and cut lip told the “Wasp” editor about it yesterday. He said he owned the patent, that Buffum had been explaining to him how it worked.
From the San Francisco “Wasp.”
“MAGDALENA.”
Sat we ’neath the dark veranda, Years and years ago; And I softly pressed a hand a Deal more white than snow; And I cast aside my reina, As I gazed upon her face, And I read her “Magdalena,” While she smoothed her Spanish lace— Read her Waller’s “Magdalena”— She had Magdalena’s grace, Read her of the Spanish duel, Of the brother, courtly, cruel, Who between the British wooer And the Seville lady came: How her lover promptly slew her Brother, and then fled in shame— How he dreamed, in long years after, Of the river’s rippling laughter— Of the love he used to know, In the myrtle-curtained villa, Near the city of Sevilla, Years and years ago.
Ah, how warmly was I reading, As I gazed upon her face! And my voice took tones of pleading, For I sought to win her grace. Surely, thought I, in her veins Runs some drop of foreign strains— There is something half Castilian In that lip that shames vermilion; In that mass of raven tresses, Tossing like a falcon’s jesses; In that eye with trailing lashes— And its witching upward flashes— Such, indeed, I know, Shone where Guadalquivir plashes Years and years ago.
Looking in her face I read it— How the metre trips!— And the god of lovers On my happy lips— All those words of mystic sweetness Spoke I with an airy neatness, As I never had before— As I cannot speak them more— Reja, plaza and mantilla. “No palabras” and Sevilla, Caballero and sombrero, And duenna and Duero, Spada, senor, sabe Dios— Smooth as pipe of Melibœus— Ah, how very well I read it, Looking in her lovely eyes! When ’twas o’er, I looked for credit, As she softly moved to rise.
Doting dream, ah, dream fallacious— Years and years ago! For she only said, “My gracious— What a lot of French you know!” Puck.