Andiron Tales

Chapter 7

As the jolly party sped along through the heavens Tom began to find his eyes bothering him a trifle. Brilliant as many of the sunshiny days had been at home, particularly when the snow was on the ground, nothing so dazzlingly bright as this great golden arc in the sky was getting to be, as they approached closer, had ever greeted his sight.

"It's blinding!" he cried, his eyes blinking and filling with water as he gazed upon the scene. "I can't stand it. What shall I do, Lefty?"

"Turn your head around and approach it backward," said Lefty. "Then you won't see it."

"But I want to see it," retorted Tom. "What's the use of visiting the moon if you can't see it?"

"Reminds me of a poem I wrote once," put in the Poker. "'What's the Use?' was one of my masterpieces, and maybe if I recite it to you it will help your eyes."

"Bosh!" growled the Bellows, who was beginning to get a little short-winded with his labors, and, therefore, a trifle out of temper. "How on earth will reciting your poem help Tom's eyes?"

"Easy enough," returned the Poker haughtily and with a contemptuous glance at the Bellows. "My poem is so much brighter than the moon that the moon will seem dull alongside of it."

"Go ahead anyhow," said Tom, interested at once and forgetting his eyes for the moment. "Give us the poem."

"Here goes, then," said the Poker, with a low bow and then, standing erect, he began. "It's called

"Humph!" panted the Bellows, "you don't call that bright, do you?"

"I do, indeed," said the Poker. "And I call it bright because I know it's bright. It is so bright that not a magazine in all the world dare print it, because they'd never be able to do as well again, and people would say the magazine wasn't as good as it used to be."

"What nonsense," retorted the Bellows. "Why, I could blow a mile of poetry like that in ten minutes:

"O, shut up Wheezy," interrupted the Poker angrily. "Of course you can go on like that forever, once somebody gives you the idea, but to have the idea in the beginning was the big thing. Columbus was a great man for coming to America, but every foreigner who has come over since isn't, not by a long shot. As I say in my celebrated rhyme on "Greatness":