Show By Ellis Parser But1er Author ofPigs is Pigs Etc ILLUSTRATED J v PETER NEWELL Early this spring Uncle Aslulod Mute made up his mind that ho was pretty sure to die within twenty or thirty years and ho felt that It would be a shame to die and not leave anything any-thing to carry his name down to pos erlty and that ho ought to hustle up a bit If ho wanted to enroll his name on the banner of fame Tho only thing that troubled him was that there woro not many things a 1 man could don do-n Uctzvlllo to make his name resound around tho world like a Juno bug In a bass drutn but one day when ho was down at the creek lolling the Idea came to him llko a flash He says ho was sitting there with a grasshopper In one hand and the fishhook fish-hook In tho other ready to thread the grasshopper on the hook when simultaneously I sim-ultaneously at the same time a bee I alighted on his left car nnd a mosquito mos-quito on his right ear He says that any ordinary man might never havo got an Idea from that but Uncle Ash dOll can wiggle his ears to and fro like a flag In tho breeze and ho wiggled them lie says ho must have wriggled hem too hard but he wasnt paying much attention to his ears Just then lo says that If ho had wiggled his ears with Just a slight wiggle all would have been well but ho must have wiggled them mighty strong forK for-K dod did not want his biography until I ho could run Into it the facts about tho creation of tho stintless bee and tho bttclcss mosquito Along about the Cth of August Undo Ashdod opened the hermetically hermetical-ly scaled Incubator In which he lint deposited the eggs of tho blsqulto ao he called tho now Insect Ho had pro pntod the eggs carefully cutting each egg In two and then gluing the rear end of a mosquito egg to the fore end of n bee egg Ho did this with several sev-eral thousand eggs and then put them to hatch In a butter tub In his attic It was his first attempt at egg graftIng graft-Ing and ho hardly hoped that more than ono or two of the eggs would hatch but tho results far exceeded his etx I nectalinns v Tho butter tub was full of blsqultos of the strongest quality They wore full of vitality and they seemed to recognize that Uncle Ashdod was a sort of stepfather to them and several sev-eral arose and kissed him In the face and ho uttered several exclamations ex-clamations of surprise In a hasty manner aDd then ho put his hand on tho back of his neck and yelped like a painful dog The experiment had been a great success and ono end of each mosquito was annexed to ono end of each bee but Uncle Ashdod u u r N r fr c r 1 1 f yy Ili t J 1 I J 1 J I lAw lA-w c t ro e h I tt l ll A l r v fn j 4 Cf I 4rTh f tf I r V < I q r r s 1f7V1 J > Pe Ne 1I Three Days Later the Biographer from Chicago Found Him There with only His Nose Above Water While Several Hundred Blsqultos Sat Patiently Pa-tiently on a Log Nearby It angered the bee and the mosquito and at the same moment that the mosquito angrily bit him on the right ear the bee arose In its might and swatted Its stinger Into his left ear up to tho handle It was Immediately after that within with-in onetenth of a secondthat Uncle Ashdod saw where a great Improvement Improve-ment could be made In bees and 11109 quitos So as soon as ho got home he set to work thinking how to Improve the boo and the mosquito and tho more he thought about It the surer he became be-came that life was too short for one man to Improve both separately and that the right thing to do would be to mix the breeds of bees and tuos quitos He said that the only objectionable ob-jectionable part of the bee was Its uftf > deck and rudder so to speak and that the mean part of the mosquito mos-quito was Its foredeck and bowsprit and what the world had been longing for these many centuries was a combination com-bination of the foreend of the bee and the rearend of time mosquito thus forming one sweet and useful Insect About that time a bald headed man from Chicago came to Betzvillo to get material for a History of the Proml float Citizens of Ringtail County tho cost of the book being only ten dollars Including the Insertion of a handmade biography of the purchaser as onoof the most prominent of nil and 25 additional for a steel engraving engrav-ing with a firm but gentle look He strongly urged Uncle Ashdod tc fall for 1L saying that Uncle Ashdod had a bunch of tho most biographical looking look-Ing whAnkera In all Ringtail county and that now was the time to be stool engraved before the price of steel went up Hut Uncle Ashdod bade him wait He told the man from Chicago that he would gladly uplift American Amer-ican literature by contributing his face and biography but that ho would not be ready until about potato digging time Tlio fact was that Uncle Ash had got the wrong ends of them Each blsqulto had a bees stinger on Its nose and a mosquitos biter on its tall and they wore ambidextrous as one might say They worked something like a seesaw A blsqulto could balance bal-ance on Its legs on a tender spot and then seesaw up and down and at each teeter the stinger on ono end would do Its dire work By the time Uncle Ashdod reached the attic door the whole production of his blsqulto factory was showing him how It was done Uncle Ashdod was seen passing through Main street at about 330 oclock accompanied by all tho bls qultos known to be In existence and he was on the Jump und at every jump he let forth a yell but at the I speed at which he was traveling the reporter of the Betzvillo News could not tell whether it was a yell of triumph tri-umph or a mere expression of annoy ante It was later learned that he had no thought fit the time of expressing ex-pressing his triumph but was simply hiking for tho swimming hole In the creek Three days later the biographer from Chicago found him there with only his nose above water while sev i ral hundred blsquitoa sat patiently r a log near by Occasionally a bis quite would fly toward Unclo Ashdod who would then duck and swallow a quart of creek water The gentleman from Chicago mentioned the subject of the biographical history to Uncle Asbdod at the time but he did not wait for an answer It seems Hint a blsqulto answered him first Ho ran all the way back to Bctzvllle and tho history was forced to go to press without even a mention of Uncle Ashdod By the time we have a heavy frost Uncle Ashdoda friends hope the bls qultos will be iu a comatose condition and Uncle Ashdod can come out ol tho creek Copyright 1009 by W G Chapman n |