Judge — July 31, 1909 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The next morning, when the first accom- modation rolled into Pollywog Junction, Homer was on hand, From the smoker stepped a cor- pulent individual with a cinder-speckled collar and a bulging telescope. “+ Easy meat!" murmured Homer, tripping forward; and with a low bow he chanted, “Oh, I'm the poet porter, sir; You won't refuse, I hope, To let me brush you down a bit And lug your telescope."* The corpulent individual bristled up. The cinders on his collar and the hardware sandwich he had bought on the train made him sore all over. “A poet porter, eh?” he snorted.‘ Well, @ railroad that serves its patrons with gun- metal sandwiches is very apt to have lunatics as porters, Back to the wheel factory, young man!" And the corpulent individual took a firmer grip on his big telescope and sauntered off to- ADVERTISEMENTS. ward the only hotel in town, But Homer was “What's that? Baldness cured? _A scientific article based on facts?” not discouraged, Oh, no! You could not dis- “Fiction, dear; purey hair-raising fiction courage a real poet with a battle-ax. Walk- ing briskly across the platform, he doffed his THE POETICAL PORTER OF POLLYWOG JUNCTION. cap and accosted a pretty miss who had just OMER HARDY, the poct laureate of Pollywog Junction, was sitting on an stepped out of the last car, This was the ink keg in the office of the Pollywog Post, anxiously awaiting the de- greeting : cision of the shirt-sleeved editor on a twenty-stanza ode to rhubarb pie, when the iatter turned around, removed his corncob pipe, and said abruptly, why don’t you go to work ?”" claimed Homer in right- cous indignation. ‘Me go to work? Why, Lam a poet! Poets don’t work.”” “They may not work in big towns like New York and Chicago, Homer, but here in Pollywog the leading citizens would rather see a poet milking a cow than reel- ing off yards of the finest metaphors ever penned Homer was crestfallen, “You don't mean to * he faltered, must give up my beloved Pegasus altogether?’ “Oh, no!" hastened the wise editor, “ Far from it. You see, Homer, I have been thinking about you for some time. At last I have conceived a way to harness Pegasus and elbow juice together. Now they need a porter down at the railroad station. I bought you this cap, with ‘Porter’ on it in big brass letters, All you have to do is to approach the passengers as they leave the train and offer to carry their baggage by springing off a verse or so. For instance, if a drummer came down the platform, waltz up to him and recite the fol- lowing : * Welcome to our city, sir; It's quite a gentec! place, So allow me to relieve you of Your heavy sample case." “Ten chances to one,” added the editor, ‘ the drummer would be tickled all over at the humorous greeting and pass you a substantial tip. Above all, you want to make your quatrains extremely funny and t last line to end with whatever kind of luggage the new arrivals happen to be carrying.” Homer thought it over. Reciting baggage quatrains was not as dignified as writing odes to rhubarb pie and ¢ pumpkins, it was true; but then, perhaps, there more moncy in it. Homer decided to give the scheme a trial. He hurried to the station, and, through the editor's influe us duly installed as porter. ‘That night Homer burned the midnight oil, and when he finally left the little pine table he had original quatrains to fit y conceivable hacgage, from a portmanteau to a Saratoga, “The bard of the baygage-room,”” mused Homer, IN SMARTOSOCIBTY. ashe rolled intobed, ‘Hm! If Shakespearecould only He—* Why, she need not be so worried ; the woods are full of men."” see me now She—" Yes; but she ’s going to the seashore.”” comicbooks.com