IV.—THE INDIA-RUBBER MAN
One thousand three hundred and ninety-seven years ago, the city of Cadiz was startled by rumors of the presence of a mysterious person, whose irrepressible activity was the fear and wonder of many. Perhaps, from a certain dusk which pervaded his countenance, it came to be gossipped that he was an Indian by birth, and had arrived in Spain by way of Africa. If, however, his color was no fair sign of his origin, the manuscripts found in his apartments betrayed his affinity with the Oriental stoics. Be this as it may, the devices and doings of Don Ruy Gomia de Goma had so impressed the traditions of Cadiz that the maker of ballads, Gil Cantor, sung of him in language the puzzling quaintness of which we have endeavored to smooth out as follows into modern English:
Oft have I seen, e'en now I see,
The presence I would ban;
'Tis he, the Afreet of my dreams,
The India-rubber man!
I pick him out among the crowd
As nimbly he goes by,
And points his gum-elastic nose,
And blinks his vitreous eye.
'Tis said he prowls the streets at night,
And, spite of the police,
With India-rubber ease commits
Ingenious robberies.
Abounding Mephistopheles
On stealthy tiptoe comes,
And, as he chokes you for your purse,
He shows his frightful gums.
Avoid, my friend, his outstretched hand—
That hand of gum and glue;
And, ere he catches you, beware
The friend of caoutchouc.
Fate tries in vain to crush him out,
She studies how to kill;
But, no—this grim contortionist
Is standing, springing still.
One day, ten ruffians clubbed him down—
He wasn't dead for that;
Up, grinning in their faces, sprang
That horrid acrobat.
An agile politician, now
The public back he mounts,
And much the rabble like him for
His gumption and his bounce.