THE ITINERANT TINKERBy Charles Raymond Macauley
Voice-over provided by Eleven Labs
Foreword
In the story that follow, readers are invited on a journey through the keen intellect and sharp wit of Charles Raymond Macauley, a master of both illustration and satire. "The Itinerant Tinker" stands as a testament to Macauley’s unique ability to blend humor, philosophy, and social critique into a compelling narrative that resonates as much today as it did in the early 20th century.
Macauley, primarily known for his political cartoons, brings a distinct intellectual richness to this work. His protagonist, the itinerant tinker, serves as both guide and commentator, leading us through a landscape of ideas and observations that challenge our perceptions and provoke introspection. As we follow this tinker’s journey, we encounter a tapestry of reflections on society, politics, and human nature, all rendered with Macauley’s characteristic insight and levity.
This story is more than a collection of musings; it is a mirror held up to society, reflecting both its virtues and its vices. Through satire, Macauley dissects the absurdities and injustices of his time, many of which remain strikingly relevant. His philosophical inquiries invite readers to ponder the deeper questions of existence and morality, encouraging a dialogue between the past and the present.
"The Itinerant Tinker" is a work that defies easy categorization. It is at once a piece of literary art, a historical document, and a philosophical treatise. Its enduring appeal lies in its ability to speak across generations, offering wisdom, humor, and critical insight. Whether you are a longtime admirer of Macauley’s work or a newcomer to his literary world, you will find yourself both entertained and enlightened by the sections that follow.
As you embark on this intellectual voyage, prepare to be challenged and amused, to reflect and to question. Macauley’s itinerant tinker is a timeless companion, guiding us through the complexities of the human condition with a light heart and a sharp mind. May this journey inspire you to think deeply, laugh freely, and see the world anew.
Gio Marron
THE ITINERANT TINKERBy Charles Raymond Macauley
Away off in front, and coming toward them along the same path, appeared a singularly misshapen figure. As they came nearer, Dickey saw that it was an old man carrying on his back, at each side and in front of him, some part or piece of almost every imaginable thing. Umbrellas, chair bottoms, panes of glass, knives, forks, pans, dusters, tubs, spoons and stove-lids, graters and grind-stones, saws and samovars,—"Almost everything one could possibly think of," said Dickey to himself.
The moment that the Fantasm caught sight of the strange figure he stopped, and Dickey noticed that his face, which was tucked securely under his left arm, turned quite pale.
"Gracious me!" he exclaimed in a thoroughly frightened way. "There's the Itinerant Tinker again! Now," he added hastily and dolefully, "I shall have to leave you and run for it."
"Why, you're surely not afraid of him!" Dickey exclaimed incredulously. Dickey was really surprised, for the old man, so far as he could judge from that distance, wore an extremely mild and kindly look. "Why do you have to run?" he asked.
"Why? Why?" the Fantasm fairly shouted. "I told you a moment ago that he was the Itinerant Tinker! He tries to mend every broken and unbroken thing in Fantasma Land! Every time he catches me," went on the Fantasm, as he edged cautiously away, "he tries to glue on my head. It's very annoying—and, besides, it hurts! Good-by, Dickey!" he called, and disappeared forthwith into the bushes.
"Isn't he a droll person?" thought Dickey. "He never stops with me more than ten minutes at a time but what he either loses his head or runs away."
By that time the Itinerant Tinker had come up to where Dickey stood. He sat wearily down on a boulder by the wayside, removed some of the heavier merchandise from off his back, and proceeded to mop his face vigorously with a great red handkerchief. Dickey waited several minutes for the old man to speak; but the Itinerant Tinker only regarded him solemnly. He did not even smile.
"It's very warm work, sir," ventured Dickey, at last, "carrying all that stuff—isn't it?"
"Stuff?" returned the Itinerant Tinker, in a very mild, but unmistakably hurt tone of voice.
"Well—" Dickey hesitated timidly.
"Don't call them stuff, please," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "call them necessary commodities."
"But whatever one does call them," Dickey persisted, "they still make you warm to carry them all about, don't they?"
The Itinerant Tinker nodded his head and sighed again.
Again Dickey waited for a considerable space of time. But the old man would have been perfectly content to sit there for ever, Dickey thought, without speaking. "I do wish he would talk," said he to himself. "It's awfully annoying to have him sit there and look at one without saying a word."
"What do you mend, sir?" Dickey inquired at last.
"I tried once," sighed the Itinerant Tinker, sadly, "to mend the break of day. It took me twenty-seven hours and eleven minutes to fix it, and it broke every twenty-four. At that rate how long would it take to patch them all together?"
Another distressing silence.
"Have you figured that out?" whispered the Itinerant Tinker at length.
"I haven't tried," Dickey admitted.
"I tried once," the Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was forced to abandon that too."
"In which direction were you going when I met you?" Dickey asked.
The Itinerant Tinker pointed ahead of him along the path and mopped his bald head.
"But where?" insisted Dickey.
"To the Crypt. I was going to the Crypt," murmured the Itinerant Tinker, "to see whether I couldn't get some umbrellas to mend."
"But they don't need umbrellas in the Crypt, do they?" Dickey asked, surprised.
"No, they don't," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "and that's the reason I'm going there."
"If you don't mind," said Dickey, "I should like to go with you."
Without a word of reply the Itinerant Tinker rose slowly and painfully to his feet, rearranged on his back the merchandise he had laid aside, and started off up the hill, with Dickey following closely at his heels.
"I tried to mend the Great Dipper once," resumed the Itinerant Tinker, at length. "I only succeeded, however, in crooking the handle; but it looks better that way, I think."
"How did you manage to reach it?" asked Dickey, a little doubtfully.
"I climbed up the Milky Way," replied the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "In order to reach it after I got there, I was obliged to stand on the horn of the moon. It was a very perilous undertaking."
Dickey couldn't believe quite all that the Itinerant Tinker was telling him. But his mild and gentle eyes wore such a serious expression that he very much disliked to doubt the old man's word.
"Speaking of the moon," went on the Itinerant Tinker after a while, "I tried once to make her stand up—after she had set, you know. It proved a thankless task. She treated me very rudely, indeed. By the by, have you seen the Flighty-wight?"
"No, sir; I have not," replied Dickey.
"He's always jumping at conclusions, you know. I jumped at a conclusion once, fell into disgrace, and was very much cut up over it. I tried to patch him up and he called me an old meddler! You haven't heard of such ingratitude before, I fancy?"
"It was very mean of him, I think," said Dickey, sympathetically.
"Oh, that's nothing," pursued the Itinerant Tinker, in a melancholy tone. "That's nothing! I once attempted to solder a new tip on the Wizard's wand. He turned me into a rabbit, he did."
"Whatever did you do then?" asked Dickey.
"I protested, of course. He merely said that he was only making game of me. But if there's any one thing that I can do better than another," went on the Itinerant Tinker, after another embarrassing pause, "it's piecing together a split infinitive. Would you like me to show you how it's done?"
"Indeed, I should," Dickey eagerly answered; "very much, indeed."
"Very well, then. Just give me time to set down these necessary commodities, and I'll show you exactly the manner in which it's done and undone."
After he had rid himself of his awkward burden, the Itinerant Tinker carefully selected a saw from his kit of tools.
"Is that a log over there?" he asked, pointing toward a mound of earth. "I'm a trifle nearsighted, you know."
"No," Dickey replied. "But there's one off there, just to the other side. A big one, too."
"The identical thing," said the Itinerant Tinker. Whereupon he walked over to it and immediately began sawing a thin slab from off its smooth end.
"Now," said he, after he had finished the rather difficult task, oiled his saw and returned it to his kit, "I proceed to write the word love in the infinitive mood."
"Is that a sad mood?" asked Dickey. "It sounds very much like it, I think."
Without heeding the question in the least the Itinerant Tinker turned the slab for Dickey's inspection, and he read on it the two words, to love. Taking up a wedge the Itinerant Tinker printed the word dearly on the flat side of it, and then skilfully drove it between the words to and love. When he again held it up for Dickey to see, it read: to dearly love.
"There!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker, holding the slab proudly at arm's length and turning his head slowly from side to side, "that's what I call a fine bit of ingenuity!"
"So that's a split infinitive, is it?" Dickey asked.
"Why, you stupid boy!" the Itinerant Tinker exclaimed; "didn't you just this minute see me split it?"
"Yes, sir; I did," Dickey murmured rather shamefacedly.
"Then, if I split it, what else could it be but a split infinitive, I'd like to know?"
"Well," said Dickey, a bit timidly, "I never heard a block of wood called an infinitive before."
"Oh, my!" sighed the Itinerant Tinker, as he sank down on his pile of merchandise. "How you do weary me!"
He sat looking at the slab of wood for such a long time, turning it admiringly now that way, now this, that poor Dickey began to grow quite nervous.
"Please," he ventured at last, "won't you show me now how you mend it?" Dickey didn't care in the least to see it done, but he imagined that by asking the question he would regain the good will of the old man.
"There you go again! There you go!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker. He actually shed a tear. "I knew you'd do it—I knew it!"
"Now what have I done?" asked Dickey, innocently.
"You've broken the silence," said the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "It'll take me hours and hours to glue that together. But first," he went on, after another long pause, "I'll show you how neatly this split infinitive can be mended."
Thereupon he withdrew the wedge, dipped a brush into a pot of glue, and, after distributing the sticky fluid over the split sides, brought them carefully and neatly together.
"There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "that's the proper way to bring together a split infinitive. Beware, my boy, of splitting your infinitives; but if you do, call on the Itinerant Tinker and he'll straighten 'em out for you."
"Before we move along," he resumed, after he had loaded himself with his merchandise, "perhaps you'd like to listen to a story?"
"I should, if it wasn't about split infinitives," replied Dickey, doubtfully. "They really make me quite dizzy."
"Well, it's not," said the Itinerant Tinker, smiling vaguely. "It's the story of the
PEDANTIC PEDAGOGUE
"I saw him sitting—sitting there,Outside the school-house door,It was a dismal afternoon;The hour was half-past four.
"I asked him, 'Sir, what is your name?'His voice came through the fog:'I have forgotten it, kind sir,But I'm a Pedagogue.
"'And I'm so absent-minded, sir,I put my clothes to bedAnd hang myself upon a chair;Is not that odd?' he said.
"'And every morning of my lifeI climb into my tub;Then wonder why I'm sitting there.Ah, me, man! that's the rub!'
"He wiped his spectacles and said:'Kind sir, observe this frog.I took him in this net, when heWas but a pollywog.
"'Now it's my wish, good sir, to seekThe seismocosmic state;And why this strange amphibianShould slowly gravitate
"'From a mere firmisternial thingTo—' 'Say!' I cried, 'please wait!I can not understand a wordOf that which you relate.'
"'Now, please tell me,' he said again,'The sum of the equationBetween the harp and hippogriff;Define their true relation.'
"'I can not answer you,' I said,'Because I'm but a tinker.But I can mend your old umbrel';'Twill be a dime, I think, sir.'
"Just then the frog dived off his handAnd swam out to the fence,Which was an easy thing to do—The vapor was so dense.
"And there he perched upon a post;It was a sight to seeThe way he made grimaces atThe Pedagogue and me.
"It vexed us very much to seeA frog so impoliteI flung a gnarly stick at him——Flung it with all my might.
"It floated softly on the fog.As softly as a feather;The frog jumped on and sailed away,Leaving us there together
"A-shaking both our fists at himTill they were sore and numb.The bull-frog merely blinked at us,And sang: 'You'll drown! Bottle-o'-Rum!'
"With that I left the PedagogueA-sitting in the wet.He was so absent-minded, IDare say he's sitting yet—
"Upon the little school-house steps,Revolving in his mindThe definite relation 'twixtThe cosmos and mankind."
He was interrupted at this point by a shrill voice, coming, it seemed, from the direction of the forest.
"Jingle-junk! jingle-junk! jingle-junk!" shouted the penetrating voice.
The Itinerant Tinker stopped instantly. An angry frown gathered on his brow.
"I know who that is," he muttered. "It's Wamba, son of Witless, the Jester of Ivanhoe. I've been trying to catch him for seventy-two years, and if I do, I'll—"
Dickey never heard the end of the sentence for the Itinerant Tinker made for the wood at a surprisingly swift gait. The incident had its really amusing side, too; for he left behind him a trail of pots, pans, boilers, stove-lids, potato-mashers—in fact, Dickey thought, he must have dropped almost all of his "necessary commodities" by the time he had vanished into the wood.
The End
From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this classic short story by Charles Raymond Macauley. Until next time, stay curious.
