He was one of
the incurables.
Once upon a time, writing a little piece on another subject, I
advanced the claim that the champion half-wit of all poetic
anthology was Sweet Alice, who, as described by Mr. English,
wept with delight when you gave her a smile, and trembled in
fear at your frown. This of course was long before Prohibition
came in. These times there are many ready to weep with delight
when you offer to give them a smile; but in Mr. English's time and
Alice's there were plenty of saloons handy. I remarked, what an
awful kill-joy Alice must have been, weeping in a disconcerting
manner when somebody smiled in her direction and trembling
violently should anybody so much as merely knit his brow!
But when I gave Alice first place in the list I acted too hastily.
Second thought should have informed me that undeniably the post
of honor belonged to the central figure of Mr. Henry W. Longfellow's
poem, Excelsior. I ran across it--Excelsior, I mean--in three
different readers the other day when I was compiling some of the
data for this treatise. Naturally it would be featured in all
three. It wouldn't do to leave Mr. Longfellow's hero out of a
volume in which space was given to such lesser village idiots as
Casabianca and the Spartan youth.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41