In the range of poetry selected by the compilers of the readers for my especial benefit as I progressed onward from the primary class into the grammar grades I find on examination of these earlier American authorities an even greater array of chuckleheads than appear in the prose divisions.I shall pass over the celebrated instance--as read by us in class in a loud tone of voice and without halt for inflection or the taking of breath--of the Turk who at midnight in his guarded tent was dreaming of the hour when Greece her knees in suppliance bent would tremble at his power.I remember how vaguely I used to wonder who it was that was going to grease her knees and why she should feel called upon to have them greased at all.Also, I shall pass over the instance of Abou Ben Adhem, whose name led all the rest in the golden book in which the angel was writing.Why shouldn't it have led all the rest? A man whose front name begins with Ab, whose middle initial is B, and whose last name begins with Ad will be found leading all the rest in any city directory or any telephone list anywhere.Alphabetically organized as he was, Mr. Adhem just naturally had to lead; and yet for hours on end my teaches consumed her energies and mine in a more or less unsuccessful effort to cause me to memorize the details as set forth by Mr. Leigh Hunt.
In three separate schoolbooks, each the work of a different compilator, I discover Sir Walter Scott's poetic contribution touching on Young Lochinvar--Young Lochinvar who came out of the West, the same as the Plumb plan subsequently came, and the Hiram Johnson presidential boom and the initiative and the referendum and the I. W. W.Even in those ancient times the West appears to have been a favorite place for upsetting things to come from; so I can't take issue with Sir Walter there.But I do take issue with him where he says:
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
Even in childhood's hour I am sure I must have questioned the ability of Young Lochinvar to perform this achievement, for I was born and brought up in a horseback-riding country.Now in the light of yet fuller experience I wish Sir Walter were alive to-day so I might argue the question out with him.
Let us consider the statement on its physical merits solely.Here we have Young Lochinvar swinging the lady to the croupe, and then he springs to the saddle in front of her.Now to do this he must either take a long running start and leapfrog clear over the lady's head as she sits there, and land accurately in the saddle, which is scarcely a proper thing to do to any lady, aside from the difficulty of springing ten or fifteen feet into the air and coming down, crotched out, on a given spot, or else he must contribute a feat in contortion the like of which has never been duplicated since.
To be brutally frank about it, the thing just naturally is not possible.I don't care if Young Lochinvar was as limber as a yard of fresh tripe--and he certainly did shake a lithesome calf in the measures of the dance if Sir Walter, in an earlier stanza, is to be credited with veracity.Even so, I deny that he could have done that croupe trick.There isn't a croupier at Monte Carlo who could have done it.Buffalo Bill couldn't have done it.Ned Buntline wouldn't have had Buffalo Bill trying to do it.Doug Fairbanks couldn't do it.I couldn't do it myself.
Skipping over Robert Southey's tiresome redundancy in spending so much of his time and mine, when I was in the Fifth Reader stage, in telling how the waters came down at Ladore when it was a petrified cinch that they, being waters, would have to come down, anyhow, I would next direct your attention to two of the foremost idiots in all the realm of poesy; one a young idiot and one an older idiot, probably with whiskers, but both embalmed in verse, and both, mind you, stuck into every orthodox reader to be glorified before the eyes of childhood.I refer to that juvenile champion among idiots, the boy who stood on the burning deck, and to the ship's captain in the poem called The Tempest.Let us briefly consider the given facts as regards the latter: It was winter and it was midnight and a storm was on the deep, and the passengers were huddled in the cabin and not a soul would dare to sleep, and they were shuddering there in silence--one gathers the silence was so deep you could hear them shuddering--and the stoutest held his breath, which is considerable feat, as I can testify, because the stouter a fellow gets the harder it is for him to hold his breath for any considerable period of time.Very well, then, this is the condition of affairs.If ever there was a time when those in authority should avoid spreading alarm this was the time.By all the traditions of the maritime service it devolved upon the skipper to remain calm, cool and collected.But what does the poet reveal to a lot of trusting school children?
"We are lost!" the captain shouted, As he staggered down the stair.
He didn't whisper it; he didn't tell it to a friend in confidence;he bellowed it out at the top of his voice so all the passengers could hear him.The only possible excuse which can be offered for that captain's behavior is that his staggering was due not to the motion of the ship but to alcoholic stimulant.Could you imagine Little Sure Shot, the Terror of the Pawnees, drunk or sober, doing an asinine thing like that? Not in ten thousand years, you couldn't.
But then we must remember that Little Sure Shot, being a moral dime-novel hero, never indulged in alcoholic beverages under any circumstances.
The boy who stood on the burning deck has been played up as an example of youthful heroism for the benefit of the young of our race ever since Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Hemans set him down in black and white.I deny that he was heroic.I insist that he merely was feeble-minded.Let us give this youth the careful once-over:
The scene is the Battle of the Nile.The time is August, 1798.