AnOther by E. E. Cummings

Author:E. E. Cummings [Cummings, E. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Poetry, Regional & Cultural, United States, American
ISBN: 9780871403889
Amazon: B00FAK3DMC
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 1999-12-17T06:00:00+00:00

1. THE GARDEN OF EDEN

. . . before the dawn of history . . .

CHAPTER I

The king took off his hat and looked at it. Instantly an immense crowd gathered. The news spread like wildfire. From a dozen leading dailies,reporters and cameramen came rushing to the scene pellmell in highpowered monoplanes. Hundreds of reserves,responding without hesitation to a riotcall,displayed with amazing promptness quite unparalleled inability to control the everincreasing multitude,but not before any number of unavoidable accidents had informally occurred. A G.A.R. veteran with aluminum legs,for example,was trampled and the nonartificial portions of his heroic anatomy reduced to pulp. Twin anarchists(one of whom was watering chrysanthemums five miles away and the other of whom was fast asleep in a delicatessen)were immediately arrested,devitalized,and jailed, on the charge of habeas corpus with premeditated arson. A dog, stepped on,bit in the neck a beautiful highstrung woman who had for some time suffered from insomnia and who—far too enraged to realize,except in a very general way,the source of the pain—instantly struck a child of four,knocking its front teeth out. Another woman,profiting by the general excitement, fainted and with a hideous shriek fell through a plateglass window. On the outskirts of the throng,several octogenarians succumbed to hearttrouble with grave external complications. A motorcycle ran over an idiot. A stonedeaf nightwatchman’s left eye was exterminated by the point of a missing spectator’s parasol. Sinking seven storeys from a nearby officebuildingjames Anderson(coloured)landed in the midst of the crowd absolutely unhurt,killing eleven persons including the ambassador to Uruguay. At this truly unfortunate occurrence,one of the most prominent businessmen of the city,William K. Vanderdecker,a member of the Harvard,Yale,and Racquet Clubs,swallowed a cigar and died instantly; leaving to fifty plainclothesmen the somewhat difficult task of transporting his universally lamented remains three and one-third miles to a waiting ambulance where they were given first aid,creating an almost unmentionable disturbance during which everybody lost caste and the Rev. Donald X. Wilkins received internal injuries resulting in his becoming mentally deficient and attempting to undress on the spot. Needless to say,the holy man was prevented by wrathful bystanders from carrying out his ignominious plan,and fell insensible to the sidewalk. Calm had scarcely been restored,when a petty officer from the battleship Idaho was seized with delirium tremens. In still another part of the mob,a hydrant exploded without warning,causing no casualties. Olaf Yansen,a plumber,and a floorwalker,Isidor Goldstein,becoming mutually infuriated owing to some probably imaginary difference of opinion,resorted to a spontaneous display of physical culture,in the course of which the former(who,according to several witnesses, was getting the worst of it,in spite of his indubitably superior size)hit the latter with a brick and vanished. Mr. Goldstein is doing well. While playing with a box of peppermints which his parents,Mr. and Mrs. Aloysius Fitzroy of 96 Hoover Ave. Flatbush,had given their little son Frank Jr. to keep him quiet,the infant(in some unaccountable manner)set fire to forty-one persons,of whom thirty-nine were burned to ashes. A Chinese,Mi Wong,who exercises the profession of laundryman at 686 868th Street and Signor Alhambra,a

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