A Plea for Old Cap Collier | Page 9

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