Wilbur D. Nesbit

“ Columbus packed his little grip and got upon the train
And went to see that noble man, King Ferdinand of Spain.
Result: He found America—oh, do not idly nod,
For if it hadn't been for this we couldn't go abroad!
Just think of all the travel and the voyages we'd miss
If it hadn't been for Chris.
Columbus found America and won a lot of fame—
Nobody ever thought to ask him how he knew its name;
Nobody ever booked him for some lectures to declare
In eloquent assertions how he knew the land was there.
Today we might be savages, unknowing modern bliss,
If it hadn't been for Chris. ”

“ And yet he did not work at all as modern villains do;
No one can rise and say that bold Iago hoarsely laughed
When some one demonstrated that his stories were untrue.
He did not swagger on the stage in evening clothes, and mutter,
Nor bite his finger nails in baffled anger now and then;
He never turned and left the stage with nothing else to utter
Except: "Aha! Proud beauty! I shall not be foiled again!"
Iago did not hover near the old deserted mill
To hurl the daring hero in the waters of the race ”

“ XANTIPPE
Xantippe was the lady who was wed to Socrates—
And their life was not a grand, sweet song;
'Twas a study—just a study—done in all the minor keys
With the gloomy measures turned on strong.
When old Socrates was busy at the office, she would wait
Till he ambled in at 3 a.m. ”

“ Lucullus won great battles, victories that he might boast,
Yet today we recollect him merely as a lavish host.
It is said that once he ordered quite the richest feast prepared
But no guests came to enjoy it, and the busy chef was scared.
"Is nobody here for dinner?" asked the flustered, pestered chef.
"I am dining with Lucullus!" roared Lucullus. "Are you deaf?" ”

“ Plato praised his diagnosis, called him healing's patient Moses, and though facts were hard to gather, found a goodly lot to tell.
Hippocrates had knowledge, though he didn't go to college; he could speak of all diseases that he knew, in Latin terms
(Still, 'twas only second nature to affect that nomenclature) , but he never even thought of, much less heard of, any germs.
Streptococcus or bacillus such as get in us and kill us to Hippocrates were always undiscovered and unknown,
And the grim appendicitis which today is sure to fright us, was by Dr. Hip considered but a stomach-achic groan. ”

“ At which the apple fell was based on whence it fell—indeed,
Had it dropped from the moon, we'll say, it would have grown so hot
That it would have been melted up before to earth it got.
Again, and finally, had you or I held Newton's seat,
We should, like he did, take the apple up and start to eat.
OMAR
Old Omar, in a Tent he had to live,
Yet gave to Verse such Time as he could give;
Whereat the Critics rose and Hurled at Him:
"The Stuff you write is only Tentative." ”

“ And not concede the apple simply had to gravitate.
Again we say, if Newton's place was held by you or I,
Instead of gravity we might have thought of apple pie.
You see (again we make the point that scientific minds
Discover facts which any brain that's common never finds) ,
You see, when Newton felt the jolt, his science did not stop—
He simply meditated on "What made the apple drop?" ”

“ To that honest old star gazer, Galilei Galileo.
HIPPOCRATES
Hippocrates was father to an awful lot of bother, for 'tis claimed that as to medicine he was the pioneer,
That but for him the surgeon or the latter-day chirurgeon might never have been tinkering the human running gear.
Hippocrates' diploma never threw him into coma in his efforts to decipher what its classic diction said,
For when he was seeking practice—long ago—the simple fact is that the Latin tongue was common and was very far from dead. ”

“ Go out and organize a trust—
He knew the way to raise the dust
Three centuries ago.
LUCULLUS
Lucullus was a fighter for a portion of his life;
He won the bay and laurel by his prowess in the strife.
He came back home a hero (and no doubt, just as today,
They named a cocktail for him ere they looked the other way) .
But when Lucullus noticed he was losing grips on fame,
He struck a happy notion to perpetuate his name. ”

“ Aurelian, the soldier, led a sort of a hegira
Of armies up to fight her—they came all the way from Rome.
Full soon he was pursuing them, with spears and daggers "shooing" them,
At last he sent them to defeat and caught the doughty queen. ”

“ Zenobia was like 'most any other lady—
They've been the same since mother Eve; they have the same way still:
No matter if it's Princess May, or Susie, Sal or Sadie,
No lady will consent to be convinced against her will. ”

“ Pendulums, he found by study, were precise in every wobble—
Showing how old Father Time went in his never-ending hobble.
Galilei Galileo the thermometer invented
And informed the gaping public what its figures represented.
"O you foolish Galileo," cried the public, "you shall rue it!
Why get up a thing to tell us we are hot? We always knew it."
Galilei Galileo took a tube and got some lenses
And discovered things that made him rather disbelieve his senses ”

“ When he should be considered old.
At thirty-five he was not barred
From working if he wanted to;
He did not need a union card
His daily labors to pursue;
And when his hair was snowy white
And age his manly form had bent,
Nobody called him young and bright
And ran him for vice-president.
NEWTON
Now, Newton in the orchard felt an apple strike his head. ”

“ ULYSSES
Unusually popular with mythologic misses,
And rather wont to wander when he should have stayed at home,
We find is why our hero, the redoubtable Ulysses,
Went rambling into trouble when he thought that he would roam.
Penelope, good lady, left behind in their apartment,
Had trouble in her efforts to get cash to pay the rent —
Telemachus, their scion, knew not then what being smart meant;
He should have helped his mamma, but he never earned a cent.
Ulysses, in the meantime, found the land of the Cyclopes,
And came within an ace of being made into a stew. ”

“ He mused: "It's odd that apples never drop the other way."
Once more: If you or I had been beneath the apple tree,
We might have howled: "Who was it threw that apple and hit me?"
To finish this, however, with becoming gravity,
We'll state that Newton lingered there beneath the apple tree ”