replied the major, so pleased that he smiled and cracked some of the red enamel on his lips. "I like to be useful. It's almost as good as being youthful. In fact, to people who lisp and pronounce their esses as though they were teeaitches, it's quite the same. It was very easy to tell you how to find a pickled peach, but it's much harder to tell you where. In fact, I don't know that I can tell you where, but if I were not compelled to ignore the truth I should inform you at once that I haven't the slightest idea. But, of course, I can tell you where you might find them if they were there – which, of course, they aren't. For instance:
"Pickled peaches might be found
In the gold mines underground;
Pickled peaches might be seen
Rolling down the Bowling Green;
Pickled peaches might spring up
In a bed of custard cup;
Pickled peaches might sprout forth
From an ice-cake in the North;
I have seen them in the South
In a pickaninny's mouth;
I have seen them in the West
Hid inside a cowboy's vest;
I have seen them in the East
At a small boy's birthday feast;
Maybe, too, a few you'd see
In the land of the Chinee;
And this statement broad I'll dare:
You might find them anywhere."
"Thank you," said Jimmieboy. "I feel easier now that I know all this. I don't know what I should have done if I hadn't met you, major."
"It's very unkind of you to say so," said the major, very much pleased by Jimmieboy's appreciation. "Of course you know what I mean."
"Yes," answered Jimmieboy, "I do. Now I'll tell you what I think. I think pickled peaches come in cans and bottles."
"Bottles and cans,
Bottles and cans,
When a man marries it ruins his plans,"
quoted the major. "I got married once," he added, "but I became a bachelor again right off. My wife wrote better poetry than I could, and I couldn't stand that, you know. That's how I came to be a soldier."
"That hasn't anything to do with the pickled peaches," said Jimmieboy, impatiently. "Now, unless I am very much mistaken, we can go to the grocery store and buy a few bottles."
"Ho!" jeered the major. "What's the use of buying bottles when you're after pickled peaches?
'Of all the futile, futile things —
Remarked the Apogee —
That is as truly futilest
As futilest can be.'
You never heard my poem on the Apogee, did you, Jimmieboy?"
"No. I never even heard of an Apogee. What is an Apogee, anyhow?" asked the boy.
"To give definitions isn't a part of my bargain," answered the major. "I haven't the slightest idea what an Apogee is. He may be a bird with a whole file of unpaid bills, for all I know, but I wrote a poem about him once that made another poet so jealous that he purposely caught a bad cold and sneezed his head off; and I don't blame him either, because it was a magnificent thing in its way. I'll tell it to you. Listen:
The Apogee wept saline tears
Into the saline sea,
To overhear two mutineers
Discuss their pedigree.Said he:
Of all the futile, futile things
That ever I did see.
That is as truly futilest
As futilest can be.
He hied him thence to his hotel,
And there it made him ill
To hear a pretty damosel
A bass song try to trill.Said he:
Of all the futile, futile things —
To say it I am free —
That is about the futilest
That ever I did see.
He went from sea to mountain height,
And there he heard a lad
Of sixty-eight compare the sight
To other views he'd had;And he
Remarked: Of all the futile things
That ever came to me,
This is as futily futile
As futile well can be.
Then in disgust he went back home,
His door-bell rang all day,
But no one to the door did come:
The butler'd gone away.Said he:
This is the strangest, queerest world
That ever I did see.
It's two per cent. of earth, and nine-
Ty-eight futility."
"Isn't that elegant?" added the major, when he had finished.
"It sounds well," said Jimmieboy. "But what does it mean? What's futile?"
"Futile? What does futile mean?" said the major, slowly. "Why, it's – it's a word, you know, and sort of stands for 'what's the use.'"
"Oh," replied Jimmieboy. "I see. To be futile means that you are wasting time, eh?"
"That's it," said the major. "I'm glad you said it and not I, because that makes it true. If I'd said it, it wouldn't have been so."
"Well, all I've got to say," said Jimmieboy, "is that if anybody ever came to me and asked me where he could find a futile person, I'd send him over to you. Here we've wasted nearly the whole afternoon and we haven't got a single thing. We haven't even talked of anything but peaches and cherries, and we've got to get jam and sugar and almonds yet."
Here the major smiled.
"It isn't any laughing matter," said Jimmieboy. "It's a very serious piece of business, in fact. Here's this Parawelopipedon going around ruining everything he can lay his claws on, and instead of helping me out of the fix I'm in, and starting the expedition off, you sit here and tell me about Apogees and other things I haven't time to hear about."
"I was only smiling to show how sorry I was," said the major, apologetically.
"I always smile when I am sad,
And when I'm filled with glee
A solitary tear-drop trick-
Les down the cheek of me."
"Oh, that's it," said Jimmieboy. "Well, let's stop fooling now and get those supplies."
"All right," assented the major. "Where are the soldiers who accompanied you? We'll give 'em their orders, and you'll have the supplies in no time."
"How's that?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Why, don't you see," said the major, "that's the nice thing about being a general. If you have to do something you don't know how to do, you command your men to go and do it. That lifts the responsibility from your shoulders to theirs. They don't dare disobey, and there you are."
"Good enough!" cried Jimmieboy, delighted to find so easy a way out of his troubles. "I'll give them their orders at once. I'll tell them to get the supplies. Will they surely do it?"
"They'll have to, or be put in the guard-house," returned the major. "And they don't like that, you know, because the guard-house hasn't any walls, and it's awfully