shoulder and shouted:
“Oh, wake up! wake up! wake up! Don’t sleep all day! Here we are at
the Tower, man! I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never
got a response. Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape! Look at
it! look at it! Feast your eye on it! You have traveled; you have seen
boaster landscapes elsewhere. Come, now, deliver an honest opinion.
What do you say to this?”
I sighed wearily; and murmured:
“A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent
fare, punch in the presence of th passenjare.”
Rev. Mr.—— stood there, very grave, full of concern, apparently, and
looked long at me; then he said:
“Mark, there is something about this that I cannot understand. Those are
about the same words you said before; there does not seem to be anything
in them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them. Punch in
the–how is it they go?”
I began at the beginning and repeated all the lines.
My friend’s face lighted with interest. He said:
“Why, what a captivating jingle it is! It is almost music. It flows
along so nicely. I have nearly caught the rhymes myself. Say them over
just once more, and then I’ll have them, sure.”
I said them over. Then Mr.—— said them. He made one little
mistake, which I corrected. The next time and the next he got them
right. Now a great burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders. That
torturing jingle departed out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest
and peace descended upon me. I was light-hearted enough to sing; and I
did sing for half an hour, straight along, as we went jogging homeward.
Then my freed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent talk of
many a weary hour began to gush and flow. It flowed on and on, joyously,
jubilantly, until the fountain was empty and dry. As I wrung my friend’s
hand at parting, I said:
“Haven’t we had a royal good time! But now I remember, you haven’t said
a word for two hours. Come, come, out with something!”
The Rev. Mr.—— turned a lack-luster eye upon me, drew a deep sigh,
and said, without animation, without apparent consciousness:
“Punch, brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of the
passenjare!”
A pang shot through me as I said to myself, “Poor fellow, poor fellow!
he has got it, now.”
I did not see Mr.—— for two or three days after that. Then, on
Tuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly into a
seat. He was pale, worn; he was a wreck. He lifted his faded eyes to my
face and said:
“Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless
rhymes. They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after
hour, to this very moment. Since I saw you I have suffered the torments
of the lost. Saturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and
took the night train for Boston. The occasion was the death of a valued
old friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon.
I took my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse. But
I never got beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train started and
the car-wheels began their ‘clack, clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack!
–clack-clack-clack!’ and right away those odious rhymes fitted
themselves to that accompaniment. For an hour I sat there and set a
syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the
car-wheels made. Why, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had been
chopping wood all day. My skull was splitting with headache. It seemed
to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed and
went to bed. I stretched myself out in my berth, and–well, you know
what the result was. The thing went right along, just the same.
‘Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for an eight
cent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip slip, clack clack-clack, for a
six-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so on punch in the presence of