And I doubt me greatly whether
E'er you heard the like of that:
Pointed shoes of patent-leather
On a cat!

His time he used to pass

Writing sonnets, on the grass

(I might say something good on pen and sward!) While the cat sat near at hand,

Trying hard to understand

The poems he occasionally roared.

(I myself possess a feline,

But when poetry I roar

He is sure to make a bee-line

For the door.)

The poet, cent by cent,

All his patrimony spent—

(I might tell how he went from verse to worse!) Till the cat was sure she could,

By advising, do him good.

So addressed him in a manner that was terse: "We are bound toward the scuppers,

And the time has come to act,

Or we'll both be on our uppers
For a fact!"

On her boot she fixed her eye,

But the boot made no reply

(I might say: "Couldn't speak to save its sole!")

And the foolish bard, instead

Of responding, only read

A verse that wasn't bad upon the whole.
And it pleased the cat so greatly,

Though she knew not what it meant,
That I'll quote approximately

How it went:

"If I should live to be

The last leaf upon the tree ❞—

(I might put in: "I think I'd just as leaf!") "Let them smile, as I do now,

At the old forsaken bough "

Well, he'd plagiarized it bodily, in brief!
But that cat of simple breeding

Couldn't read the lines between,

So she took it to a leading

Magazine.

She was jarred and very sore

When they showed her to the door.

(I might hit off the door that was a jar!) To the spot she swift returned

Where the poet sighed and yearned,

And she told him that he'd gone a little far. "Your performance with this rhyme has Made me absolutely sick,"

She remarked. "I think the time has
Come to kick!"

I could fill up half the page
With descriptions of her rage-

(I might say that she went a bit too fur!)
When he smiled and murmured: "Shoo!"
“There is one thing I can do!"

She answered with a wrathful kind of purr.
"You may shoo me, an' it suit you,

But I feel my conscience bid

Me, as tit for tat, to boot you!"
(Which she did.)

The Moral of the plot

(Though I say it, as should not!)
Is: An editor is difficult to suit.

But again there're other times
When the man who fashions rhymes

Is a rascal, and a bully one to boot!

H. H. Knibbs

Harry Herbert Knibbs was born at Niagara Falls, October 24, 1874. After a desultory schooling, he attended Harvard for three years when he was thirty-four. "Somebody said I took honors in English," says Knibbs, "but I never saw them." He wrote his first book, Lost Farm Camp, a novel, as

exercise.

a class

Half a dozen volumes followed, Overland Red (1914) and Tang of Life (1917) being the most popular. In 1911, Knibbs settled in Los Angeles, California, where he has lived ever since.

In Riders of the Stars (1916) and Songs of the Trail (1920), Knibbs carries on the tradition of Bret Harte and the Pike

County Ballads.

High-hearted verse this is, with more than

an occasional flash of poetry. To the typical Western breeziness, Knibbs adds a wider whimsicality, a rough-shod but nimble imagination.

THE VALLEY THAT GOD FORGOT

Out in the desert spaces, edged by a hazy blue,
Davison sought the faces of the long-lost friends he knew:
They were there, in the distance dreaming
Their dreams that were worn and old;

They were there, to his frenzied seeming,
Still burrowing down for gold.

Davison's face was leather; his mouth was a swollen blot, His mind was a floating feather, in The Valley That God Forgot;

Gold! Why his, for the finding! But water was never found,

Save in deep caverns winding miles through the under

ground:

Cool, far, shadowy places

Edged by the mirrored trees,
When-Davison saw the faces!

And fear let loose his knees.

There was Shorty who owed him money, and Billing who bossed the crowd;

And Steve whom the boys called "Sunny," and Collins who talked so loud:

Miguel with the handsome daughter,
And the rustler, Ed McCray;

Five-and they begged for water,

And offered him gold, in pay.

Gold? It was never cheaper. And Davison shook his head:

"The price of a drink is steeper out here than in town," he said.

He laughed as they mouthed and muttered
Through lips that were cracked and dried;
The pulse in his ear-drum fluttered:

"I'm through with the game!" he cried.

"I'm through!" And he knelt and fumbled the cap

his dry canteen

of

Then, rising, he swayed and stumbled into a black ravine:

His ghostly comrades followed,

For Davison's end was near,

And a shallow grave they hollowed,

When up from it, cool and clear

Bubbled the water-hidden a pick-stroke beneath the

Davison, phantom-ridden, scooped with

sand;

hand. . .

a shaking