EDITOR'S WALLET. Waldo Had an Idea.

Otago Witness, Issue 2527, 20 August 1902, Page 72

EDITOR'S WALLET. Waldo Had an Idea.

Thei'o is a story, writes Elbert HubbarcT, that bsars upon its features the mellow tingo of time, to tho effect that Ralph Waldo Emerson once pot up in tbe middle of the night and, in the course of his gropinge, Jell over a chair or two and knoe'-ed ilown tin- family whatnot. Mrs Eniorsoni felt softly for her mate, and, finding that he was not thtre, guessed the source of the confusion, and called in alarm, "Waldo, Waldo! are you ill?" And the placid answer war, "No, my dear: only an ide-n." So that is the etoryvibut the nftw version runs this way: Mr Eniers^n got up in the middle of tne night, anc£ after falling over tho. family rocking chair and knocking a plaster-of-paria cast off the mantel, was accosted: by hia good wife- thus: "Are you ill, Waldo?" And there was no answer — save the scratching of matches on wall, floor, bureau, and chairs. This was in. the day when matches came in sticks, and you broke them off. The lady heard the matches split off, and then she heard the scrape and scratch. "Are you ill, Waldo?" again she called ire alarm. "1111 111 nothing— why don't you say sick?— there is no one listening. !No, I am not ill. I have an idea, and wanted to write it down, but these confounded cheap matches you bought of that Connecticut pedlar wifl not light— plague take everything that comes from Connecticut, say I !" Then, there was a final scratch on the wall, and philosophy came tb Mr Compensation^ rescue as he said, "Well, well, it wasn't much of an idea, anyway; besides that, I've really forgotten what it was." And ho crawled back into bed. In the morning ilra Emerson discovered that every tooth had] been broken out of her high-back comb.