I then go in to breakfast. This meal consists almost wholly of food. I am passionately fond of food, and I may truly say, with my hand on my heart, that I owe much of my great success in life to this inward craving, this constant yearning for something better.
During this meal I frequently converse with my family. I do not feel above my family, at least, if I do, I try to conceal it as much as possible. Buckwheat pancakes in a heated state, with maple syrup on the upper side, are extremely conducive to literature. Nothing jerks the mental faculties around with greater rapidity than buckwheat pancakes.
After breakfast the time is put in to good advantage looking forward to the time when dinner will be ready. From 8 to 10 A. M., however, I frequently retire to my private library hot-bed in the hay mow, and write 1,200 words in my forthcoming book, the price of which will be $2.50 in cloth and $4 with Russia back.
I then play Copenhagen with some little girls 21 years of age, who live near by, and of whom I am passionately fond.
After that I dig some worms, with a view to angling. I then angle. After this I return home, waiting until dusk, however, as I do not like to attract attention. Nothing is more distasteful to a truly good man of wonderful literary acquirements, and yet with singular modesty, than the coarse and rude scrutiny of the vulgar herd.
In winter I do not angle. I read the “Pirate Prince” or the “Missourian’s Mash,” or some other work, not so much for the plot as the style, that I may get my mind into correct channels of thought I then play “old sledge” in a rambling sort of manner. I sometimes spend an evening at home, in order to excite remark and draw attention to my wonderful eccentricity.
I do not use alcohol in any form, if I know it, though sometimes I am basely deceived by those who know of my peculiar prejudice, and who do it, too, because they enjoy watching my odd and amusing antics at the time.
Alcohol should be avoided entirely by literary workers, especially young women. There can be no more pitiable sight to the tender hearted, than a young woman of marked ability writing an obituary poem while under the influence of liquor.
I knew a young man who was a good writer. His penmanship was very good, indeed. He once wrote an article for the press while under the influence of liquor. He sent it to the editor, who returned it at once with a cold and cruel letter, every line of which was a stab. The letter came at a time when he was full of remorse.
He tossed up a cent to see whether he should blow out his brains or go into the ready-made clothing business. The coin decided that he should die by his own hand, but his head ached so that he didn’t feel like shooting into it. So he went into the ready-made clothing business, and now he pays taxes on $75,000, so he is probably worth $150,000. This, of course, salves over his wounded heart, but he often says to me that he might have been in the literary business to-day if he had let liquor alone.
A Father’s Letter
My dear son.—Your letter of last week reached us yesterday, and I enclose $13, which is all I have by me at the present time. I may sell the other shote next week and make up the balance of what you wanted. I will probably have to wear the old buffalo overcoat to meetings again this winter, but that don’t matter so long as you are getting an education.
I hope you will get your education as cheap as you can, for it cramps your mother and me like Sam Hill to put up the money. Mind you, I don’t complain. I knew education come high, but I didn’t know the clothes cost so like sixty.
I want you to be so that you can go anywhere and spell the hardest word. I want you to be able to go among the Romans or the Medes and Persians and talk to any of them in their own native tongue.
I never had any advantages when I was a boy, but your mother and I decided that we would sock you full of knowledge, if your liver held out, regardless of expense. We calculate to do it, only we want you to go as slow on swallowtail coats as possible till we can sell our hay.
Now, regarding that boat-paddling suit, and that baseball suit, and that bathing suit, and that roller-rinktum suit, and that lawn-tennis suit, mind, I don’t care about the expense, because you say a young man can’t really educate himself thoroughly without them, but I wish you’d send home what you get through with this fall, and I’ll wear them through the winter under my other clothes. We have a good deal severer winters here than we used to, or else I’m failing in bodily health. Last winter I tried to go through without underclothes, the way I did when I was a boy, but a Manitoba wave came down our way and picked me out of a crowd with its eyes shet.
In your last letter you alluded to getting injured in a little “hazing scuffle with a pelican from the rural districts.” I don’t want any harm to come to you, my son, but if I went from the rural districts and another young gosling from the rural districts undertook to haze me, I would meet him when the sun goes down, and I would swat him across the back of the neck with a fence board, and then I would meander across the pit of his stomach and put a blue forget-me-not under his eye.
Your father aint much on Grecian mythology and how to get the square root of a barrel of pork, but he wouldn’t allow any educational institutions to haze him with impunity. Perhaps you remember once when you tried to haze your father a little, just to kill time, and how long it took you to recover. Anybody that goes at it right can have a good deal of fun with your father, but those who have sought to monkey with him, just to break up the monotony of life, have most always succeeded in finding what they sought.
I ain’t much of a pensman, so you will have to excuse this letter. We are all quite well, except old Fan, who has a galded shoulder, and hope this will find you enjoying the same great blessing.
Your Father.
Archimedes
Archimedes, whose given name has been accidentally torn off and swallowed up in oblivion, was born in Syracuse, 2,171 years ago last spring. He was a philosopher and mathematical expert. During his life he was never successfully stumped in figures. It ill befits me now, standing by his new-made grave, to say aught of him that is not of praise. We can only mourn his untimely death, and wonder which of our little band of great men will be the next to go.
Archimedes was the first to originate and use the word “Eureka.” It has been successfully used very much lately, and as a result we have the Eureka baking powder, the Eureka suspender, the Eureka bed-bug buster, the Eureka shirt, and the Eureka stomach bitters. Little did Archimedes wot, when he invented this term, that it would come into such general use.
Its origin has been explained before, but it would not be out of place here for me to tell it as I call it to mind now, looking back over Archie’s eventful life.
King Hiero had ordered an eighteen karat crown, size 7-1/8, and, after receiving it from the hands of the jeweler, suspected that it had been adulterated. He therefore applied to Archimedes to ascertain, if possible, whether such was the case or not. Archimedes had just got in on No. 3, two hours late, and covered with dust. He at once started for a hot and cold bath emporium on Sixteenth street, meantime wondering how the dickens he would settle that crown business.
He filled the bath-tub level full, and, piling up his raiment on the floor, jumped in. Displacing a large quantity of water, equal to his own bulk, he thereupon solved the question of specific gravity, and, forgetting his bill, forgetting his clothes, he sailed up Sixteenth street and all over Syracuse, clothed in shimmering sunlight and a plain gold ring, shouting “Eureka!” He ran head-first into a Syracuse policeman and howled “Eureka!” The policeman said: “You’ll have to excuse me; I don’t know him.” He scattered the Syracuse Normal school on its way home, and tried to board a Fifteenth street bob-tail car, yelling “Eureka!” The car-driver told him that Eureka wasn’t on the car, and referred Archimedes to a clothing store.
Everywhere he was greeted with surprise. He tried to pay his car-fare, but found that he had left his money in his other clothes.
Some thought it was the revised statute of Hercules; that he had become weary of standing on his pedestal during the hot weather, and had started out for fresh air. I give this as I remember