But no, high up
above timber line he has an engagement with himself and Mr.
Longfellow to be frozen as stiff as a dried herring; and so, now
groaning, now with his eye flashing, now with a tear--undoubtedly
a frozen tear--standing in the eye, now clarioning, now sighing,
onward and upward he goes:
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
I'll say this much for him: He certainly is hard to kill. He can
stay out all night in those clothes, with the thermometer below
zero, and at dawn still be able to chirp the only word that is
left in his vocabulary. He can't last forever though. There has
to be a finish to this lamentable fiasco sometime. We get it:
A traveler, by the faithful hound,
Half buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!
The meteoric voice said "Excelsior!" It should have said "Bonehead!"
It would have said it, too, if Ned Buntline had been handling the
subject, for he had a sense of verities, had Ned.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41