His massive feet, In slippers neat, Were crossed in desperation; And from his eyes Salt tears did rise In awful exudation." "In what?" asked Jimmieboy, who was not quite used to grown-up words like exudation. "Quarts," replied the soldier, with a frown. "Don't interrupt. This poem isn't good for much unless it goes right through without a stop--like an express train." And then he resumed: "It filled my soul With horrid dole To see this wailing creature; How tears did sweep, And furrow deep, Along his nasal feature! My eyes grew dim To look at him, To see his tear-drops soiling His necktie bold, His trimmings gold, And all his rich clothes spoiling; And so I stopped, Beside him dropped, And quoth, 'Wilt tell me, mortal, Wherefore you sighed?' And he replied: 'Wilt I? Well, I shouldst chortle.'" "I don't know what chortle means," said Jimmieboy. "Neither do I," said the soldier. "But I guess the man who wrote the poem did, so it's all right, and we may safely go on to the next verse, which isn't very different in its verbiology--" "Its wha-a-at?" cried a dozen tin soldiers at once. "Gentlemen," said the declaiming soldier, severely, "there are some words in our language which no creature should be asked to utter more than once in a life-time, and that is one of them. I shall not endanger my oratorical welfare by speaking it again. Suffice it for me to say that if you want to use that word yourselves, you will find it in the dictionary somewhere under F, or Z, or Ph, or some other letter which I cannot at this moment recall. But the poem goes on to say: "Then as we sat The road-side at-- His tears a moment quelling-- In accents pale He told the tale Which I am also telling." "Dear me!" said a little green corporal at Jimmieboy's side. "Hasn't he begun the story yet?" "Yes, stupid," said a high-private. "Of course he has; but it's one of those stories that take a long time to begin, and never finish until the very end." "Oh yes, I know," said another. "It's a story like one I heard of the other day. You can lay it down whenever you want to, and be glad to have the chance." "That's it," said the high-private. "I wish you fellows would keep still," said the soldier who was reciting. "I ought to have been a quarter of the way through the first half of that poem by this time, and instead of that I'm only a sixteenth of the way through the first eighth." "You can't expect to go more than eight miles an hour," said the corporal, "even in poetry like that. It can't be done." "But what happened?" asked Jimmieboy, who was quite interested to hear the rest of the poem.