“’Well, then, I get eighteen of them a week, and they madden me.  They keep my brain in a frenzied whirl.  Grady, this man must die.  Self-preservation is the first law of nature.  I have a wife and children; I conduct a great paper; I educate the public mind.  My life is valuable to my country.  Destroy this poet, and future generations will praise your name.  He must be wiped out, exterminated, obliterated from the face of the earth.  Kill him dead and bury him deep, and fix him in so’s he will stay down, and bring in the bill for the tombstone.  I leave the case to you.  You need not tell me you have done this job.  When the poems cease to come to me, I will know that he is dead.  That will settle it.  Good-morning.’”

It is believed that the poet must have been warned by Grady, for the supplies suddenly ceased; and Markley is saving up his effusions for some other victim.

* * * * *

But the major has other persecutors.  One of them came into the editorial-room of the Patriot during one of those very hot days in June.  Major Slott was perspiring in an effort to hammer out an article on “The Necessity for Speedy Resumption.”  The visitor seized a chair and nudged up close to the major.  Then he said,

“My name is Partridge.  I called to show you a little invention of mine.”

“Haven’t got time to look at it.  I’m busy.”

“I see you are.  Won’t keep you more’n a minute” (removing his hat).  “Look at that hat and tell me how it strikes you.”

“Oh, don’t bother me!  I’m not interested in hats just now.”

“I know you ain’t, and that’s not a hat.  That’s Partridge’s Patent Atmospheric Refresher.  Looks exactly like a high hat, don’t it?  Now, what’s the thing you want most this kind of weather?”

“The thing I want most is to have you skip out of here.”

“What everybody wants is to keep cool, of course.  Now, how are you going to do it?  Why, if you know when you are well off, you will do it with this hat.  But how?  I will explain.  If you compress air until it attains a considerable pressure, and then suddenly release it, the rapid expansion causes the air to absorb heat and to produce quite a marked degree of cold.  You know this, of course?”

“I wish you’d compress your air, and then expand it in the ears of somebody besides me.”

“Now, in my invention I have utilized this beautiful law of nature in a manner that is certain to confer an inestimable blessing upon the human race.  This hat is really made of light boiler iron covered with silk.  The compressed air is contained in it.  At the present moment it is subjected to a pressure of eighty-seven pounds to the square inch.  If that hat should explode while I am sitting here, it would blow the roof off of this building.”

“So it killed you I wouldn’t care.”