“Perhaps you’re right,” Freddy said. “They’ve both been putting on airs lately. They’ve got pretty puffed up, what with being probably the richest robins in the whole country, and then all these fine feathers! Yes, I expect you’re right.… No, no; I’m sorry,” he exclaimed, as Uncle Solomon with an angry titter spread his wings for flight. “I didn’t mean to use the word again, honestly I didn’t.”
But the owl had flown off.
It wasn’t until the next afternoon that Freddy saw the Popinjays again. They came down to the pig pen and tapped on the door, and when he opened it he wouldn’t have recognized them if J. J. hadn’t had on his glasses. For the colored feathers were all gone—they were just two robins.
“For goodness’ sake!” said Freddy. “What’s all this? Where are all your fine feathers?”
“Oh, we threw those away,” J. J. said. “We’re just plain Mr. and Mrs. Pomeroy, Freddy. We’ve been thinking it all over, and I guess we have been pretty silly. We were getting so blown up with our own importance that I guess we’d have ended up by just exploding if Uncle Solomon hadn’t sort of stuck a pin in us last night.”
Freddy nodded. “Well, that’s true, J. J. Your money and your fine clothes did kind of go to your heads for a while. But you’re sensible birds; you’d have come out of it sooner or later.”
“We have Uncle Solomon to thank for it that it’s sooner, rather than later,” J. J. said. “And you too, Freddy. You know that poem you wrote about not trying to be that which you ain’t, or something? Well, that made us see our mistake too, and I wish you’d copy it off for us. We’d like to tack it up over our nest, where we can see it every day. I’m going to make the children learn it by heart.”
So Freddy went in and copied out the poem on his typewriter, and when they had thanked him they said they were going to see Uncle Solomon and thank him too. “We were pretty mad at him at first,” J. J. said, “but now we see that he did us a real service. If he hadn’t laughed, I expect we’d have gone right on that way the rest of our lives.”
“Good gracious,” said Freddy, “don’t use the word ‘expect’ when you talk to him.” And he told them of his argument with the owl.
After they had gone, Freddy went back into the study. He was pretty pleased at what J. J. had said about his poem. As far as he knew, nobody had ever been influenced by one of his poems before. His friends had read them and said ‘Very nice’ and they had even sung those that Freddy had written as songs. But they had never said that anything he had written had had any effect on them.
“Maybe,” he thought, “if this one poem has been such a good influence in J. J.’s life, maybe some of the others might be helpful to other animals. Perhaps they ought to have a wider public. Perhaps I owe it to the American people to see that it has the opportunity to read my poems.”
I guess it didn’t occur to Freddy that he was doing just what he had been lecturing the Pomeroys for doing: taking himself too seriously. Poets are always inclined to do that. On the other hand, pigs, as a rule, seldom take themselves seriously enough. And it is perfectly true that if you don’t take yourself seriously, nobody else will. It’s hard to know just where to draw the line.
Anyhow, Freddy got all his poems together, and then he sat down at his typewriter and typed out several different titles for the collected edition of his Works. Here they are, with Freddy’s comments.
Poems
by
Freddy
(Simple, but perhaps lacking in dignity.)
COLLECTED POEMS
OF
Frederick Bean, Esq.
(No, has too much dignity.)
COMPLETE WORKS OF FREDDY
(Sounds as if I was a clock.)
F. BEAN
Works
(Same objection.)
POEMS & BALLADS
OF RURAL LIFE
by
Freddy
(Not so bad. But I still don’t like it.)
He also tried some more fanciful names, such as: RURAL RHYMES, FARM FANCIES, BARNYARD BALLADS, FROM MY STUDY WINDOW, and so on. Altogether, before he finished, he had more than two hundred possible titles to choose from. And the trouble was, not that he didn’t like any of them, but that he liked nearly all. It was almost impossible to choose just one, and you couldn’t publish a book with two hundred titles. It would look funny.
I don’t know what one he finally chose, although I understand that he did finally make up his mind. And I suppose he must have, for the book is being printed now, and Freddy tells me that Uncle Solomon, of all people, is giving a sort of coming-out party for it. Uncle Solomon is going to give a speech about it—a sort of critical review. I don’t think Freddy looks forward to that with much pleasure. My goodness, I’d hate to have Uncle Solomon review one of my books.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1945 by Walter R. Brooks
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9219-0
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Freddy and the Popinjay Page 14
