“You surely must have lost your head,” exclaimed old Captain Bean, “to go and paint your mansion red, with trimmings of pea green. A person’s eyes it fairly slams; the man who sees that paint will think he has the James H. Jams, and he’ll be apt to faint. If you had made it pink and blue, it would have hit the spot; but you have chosen such a hue as makes the neighbors hot.”
“I see your chimney is of brick,” said Colonel Sassafras; “and such a bungle makes me sick—it should be built of glass. Glass chimneys now are all the rage in Paris and in Rome, but you’re away behind the age, when you put up a home.”
“Upon a pivot,” said Judge Ace, “it should be built, just so, then you could turn it round to face most all the winds that blow.”
They all agreed that such a shack was never built before; it all was wrong and out of whack, from roof to cellar door; except the woodwork—that was grand, and beautiful and slick; they saw it had the Curtis brand, and so they could not kick.
THE GLADSOME SPIEL
All Spring it rained to beat the band, and o’er the saturated land, the water stood in pools; old Pluvius, who runs the rain, it seemed, had water on the brain, and busted all the rules.
The farmers had to sail in boats when they went forth to feed their shotes, their ostriches and cows, and when they went to sow their beans they had to go in submarines, they couldn’t use their plows.
And in the cities things were worse, and gloomy as a country hearse was nearly every face; men stood around in dripping crowds, and viewed the stretch of leaking clouds, and called them a disgrace.
Contractors, when they called on Hoar, who runs the corner lumber store, would make an awful fuss; “this is the blinkest, blankest Spring! We cannot do a doggone thing! It’s getting wuss and wuss! It keeps on raining all day long, the mud goes through to old Hong Kong, it will not dry till fall; unless the gods give us a show, out to the poorfarm we must go, our families and all!”
But Hoar, the cheerful lumberman, is one who always ties a can to every gloomy thing; his optimism then he voiced, as he wrapped up a big oak joist, and tied it with a string.