"Is't mosquito?" asked Burlingame. "I'll say incognito."
"Nay," the Laureate smiled, "nor is it literature."
" 'Twould be bitter-that's-sure," his tutor laughed.
"Nor misbehavior."
"Thank the Savior!"
"Nor importunacy."
"That were lunacy!"
"Nor tiddly-winks."
" 'Twould gain thee little, methinks!"
"Nor galligaskin."
"Was I askin'?"
"Nor charlatan."
"Thin as tarlatan!"
"Nor Saracen."
" 'Twould be embarrassin'!"
"Nor even autoschediastic."
"Then it ought to be fantastic!"
"Nor catoptromancy."
"That's not so fancy!"
"Nor procrustean."
"I should bust thee one!"
"Nor is it Piccadilly bombast."
"You'd be sick-o'-filly-bum-blast!"
"Nor Grandma's visit."
"Then, man, what is it?"
" 'Tis month," Ebenezer said.
"Month?" cried Burlingame.
"Month," the Laureate repeated. "Rhyme me a word with month. August is the Year's eighth Month."
"Month!" Burlingame said again. " 'Tis but a single syllable!"
"Marry, then, 'twill be easy," Ebenezer smiled. "August is the Year's eighth Month."
"August is the Year's eighth Month." Burlingame began to show some alarm as he searched his store of language.
"No lisping, now," Ebenezer warned. "Don't say Whoe'er denieth it ith a Dunth, or Athent thee not, then count it oneth. That will not do."
Burlingame sighed. "And no Hudibrastics, you say?"
"Nay," Ebenezer confirmed. "You mayn't say August is the Year's eighth Month, And not the tenth or milli-onth. Ben Oliver tried that once in Locket's and was disqualified on the instant. I want a clear and natural rhyme."
"Is there aught in the language?" Burlingame cried.
"Nay," the poet declared, "as I warned you ere you took the wager."
Burlingame searched his memory so thoroughly that perspiration beaded his forehead, but after twenty minutes he was obliged to yield.
"I surrender, Eben; you have me pat." Most reluctantly, under his protégé's triumphant smile, he dismounted, and taking his place behind the aged roan, prepared to meet the odious consequences of his gamble.
"In future, Henry," Ebenezer boldly advised, "do not engage with poets in their own preserve. If I may speak with candor, the gift of language is vouchsafed to but a few, and though 'tis no great shame not to have't, 'twere folly to pretend to't when you have it not."
And having delivered himself of this unusual rebuke, Ebenezer began to hum a tune for very satisfaction. At the first slight elevation in the terrain over which they traveled, the roan mare, already wearied, broke wind noisily from the effort of climbing. Burlingame growled a mighty oath and cried out in disgust, "What sort of poor vocabulary is't, that possesses nary noun or verb to match the onth in August is the Year's eighth Month?"
"Do not rail against the language," Ebenezer began, " 'tis really a most admirable tongue. ."
He halted, as did Buriingame and the roan. The two men regarded each other warily.
"No matter," Ebenezer ventured. "The trial was done."
"Ah nay, Sir Laureate!" Burlingame laughed. "Mine is done, but thine is but begun! Down with you, now!"
"But onth," Ebenezer protested — nevertheless dismounting. " 'Tis not an English word, is't? What doth it signify?"
"Tut," said Burlingame, remounting his young gelding, "we set no such criterion as significance, that I recall. 'To match the onth. .' is what I said: onth is the object of match; objects of verbs are substantives; substantives are words. Get thee behind yon roan!"
Ebenezer sighed, Burlingame laughed aloud, the roan mare once again broke wind, and on went the travelers toward Cambridge, Burlingame singing lustily:
"How wondrous a Vocabulary Is't,
that possesseth nary
Noun nor Verb the Rhyme for which'll
Stump the son of Captain Mitchell!"
27: The Laureate Asserts That Justice Is Blind, and Armed With This Principle, Settles a Litigation
Upon their arrival at the Choptank River ferry, Burlingame declared Ebenezer's sentence served; he paid out a shilling apiece for their fares and another shilling for the two horses', and the travelers took their places in the sailing scow for the two-mile run to Cambridge.
Burlingame pointed across the channel to a few scattered buildings, scarcely visible on the farther shore. "Yonder stands the seat of Dorset County. When last your father saw it, 'twas but a planter's landing."
Weary from his ordeal, Ebenezer made no effort to conceal his disappointment. "I knew 'twould be no English Cambridge, but I'll own I had not thought 'twas rude as that. What is there in't to sing in epical verse?"
"Who knows what manner of sloven huts the real Troy was composed of, or cares to know?" his friend replied. " 'Tis the genius of the poet to transcend his material; and it wants small eloquence to argue that the meaner the subject, the greater must be the transcension."
To this the Laureate clucked his tongue and said, "Methinks the Jesuit hath the better of you, after alclass="underline" you made a prisoner of his body, and he a convert of your Reason."
Burlingame bristled at the jibe, for it was not the first Ebenezer had directed at him that day. "It ill becomes you to defend the priest," he scolded in a low voice, so that the ferryman could not hear. " 'Tis not the Pope's cause we serve, but Baltimore's: the cause of Justice."
"True enough," the poet agreed. "Yet who's to say which cause is Justice's? Justice is blind."
"But men are not; and as for Justice, her blindness is the blindness of disinterest, not of innocence."
"That I deny," Ebenezer said blithely.
"Thou'rt grown entirely captious!"
"You are near forty, and I but twenty-eight," the Laureate declared, "and in experience thou'rt at least three times my age; but despite my innocence — nay, just because of't — I deem myself no less an authority than you on matters of Justice, Truth, and Beauty."
"Outrageous!" cried his friend. "Why is't men pick the oldest and most knowledgeable of their number to judge them, if not that worldliness is the first ingredient of Justice?"
But Ebenezer stuck to his guns. " 'Tis but a vulgar error, like many another."
Burlingame showed more irritation by the minute. "What is the difference 'twixt innocence and ignorance, pray, save that the one is Latin and the other Greek? In substance they are the same: innocence is ignorance."
"By which you mean," Ebenezer retorted at once, "that innocence of the world is ignorance of't: no man can quarrel with that. Yet the surest thing about Justice, Truth, and Beauty is that they live not in the world, but as transcendent entities, noumenal and pure. 'Tis everywhere remarked how children of't perceive the truth at once, where their elders have been led astray by sophistication. What doth this evidence, if not that innocence hath eyes to see what experience cannot?"