"Stewart, Donald Ogden - A Parody Outline Of History [PG]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Donald Ogden)

never forget the moment when Peter came to the front of the stage
and asked the audience if we believed in fairies. I am happy to
say that I was actually the first to respond. Leaping at once out
of my seat, I shouted "Yes--Yes!" To my intense pleasure the
whole house almost instantly followed my example, with the
exception of one man. This man was sitting directly in front of
me. His lack of enthusiasm was to me incredible. I pounded him
on the back and shouted, "Great God, man, are you alive! Wake up!
Hurrah for the fairies! Hurrah!" Finally he uttered a rather
feeble "Hurrah!" Childe Roland to the dark tower came.

That was my first meeting with that admirable statesman Woodrow
Wilson, and I am happy to state that from that night we became
firm friends. When Mr. Wilson was inaugurated in 1913 I called on
him at the White House, taking with me some members of my Yale
drama class. Each one of us had an edition of the president's
admirable "History of the American People", and I am glad to say
that he was kind enough to autograph each of the ten volumes for
all of us.

Early in Mr. Wilson's second term as president, just before the
break with Germany, I was sitting in the quiet of my library
rereading Browning's "Cristina". When I came to the third stanza
I leaped to my feet-- the thing seemed incredible, but here
before my eyes was actually Browning's prophetic message to
America in regard to the submarine sinkings.

"Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! But not so sunk that
moments--etc." It is an extraordinary evidence of the man's
genius that in 1840 he should have perhaps foreseen prophetically
the happenings of seventy-six years later! Not only did Browning
seem to know what was bound to happen, but he told us the remedy.
I sat right down and wrote to my good friend the president,
enclosing a marked copy of the poem. On the sixth of April, 1917,
war was declared.

May 7, 1912, was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of
Robert Browning. On that memorable date I was traveling to Ohio
at the request of my dear friend Miss Jones to deliver an address
at the Columbus School for Girls. Curiously enough the name of
my Pullman car was Pauline. Not only did that strike me as
remarkable, but I occupied upper berth number 9 in car 11, two
numbers which, added together, produced the exact age at which
Browning published the poem of that name. At once I recited the
opening lines, "Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me--thy soft breast
shall pant to mine--bend o'er me," to the porter.

I like to believe that the spirit of Browning arranged that
entire journey, for the other occupant of this well-omened berth
was that admirable statesman Warren G. Harding. When I sat down