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EENIE-MEENIE-MEYNER
OF LARGE MICE AND SMALL
MEN
Eenie,
Meenie, Meyner mo,
Catch Corotis by the toe,
If he hollers let 'im go;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
But,
from Eeenie Richman, whoa!
This Corotis so-and-so
Never was a crying Joe;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Meenie
Alexander: Oh,
Sometime everyone eats crow;
Kick 'im where the scars won't show;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
You
mean, Meyner all aglow,
Let 'im have it down below?
Goody; Archie, you're a doe;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Ring-around-a-rosie;
lo,
Hand in hand they do-se-do,
Singing whoops and hi-de-ho;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Vital
business? Heavens no!
Let affairs of State go blow;
We've some seeds of hate to sow;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Slap
'im high and smash 'im low,
Beat 'im out of all his dough;
Watch us make his troubles grow;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Tell
his clients, let 'em know
Old Corotis is our foe;
We insist he's gotta go;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
But
no buts; our course you'll row,
Discontent you'd better stow;
We're real brutal, awfully so;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Oh,
we're fearsome; clever, though,
Each a bright politico
With ambitious rows to hoe;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Watch
us brew a stew, steeped slow;
Curds and sherd stirred to and fro,
Nails and snails and tales of woe,
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Round
about the cauldron go,
In the poisoned slanders throw,
Dragon's scale, newt's tail, toad's toe;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner mo.
Lizard's
eyes and lies next flow,
Potion vile, the while we grow
Into men of stature quo;
Eenie, Meenie, Meyner Co.
"For
Pete's sake," protested my exasperated roommate in 768 of Washington's
Statler Hotel, "will you put down that pencil and put out that light
and go to sleep?"
"My friend," I told Leon
Todd — for it was indeed he — "my
friend, I feel too good to sleep."
"And
what, may I inquire, is the reason for such unaccustomed happiness?"
"It is the sweet solace of good companionship that
soothes and succors
men's minds. Here I am far from the ozostomic atmosphere of the State House. For a whole week. I can
forget that mental
minor Meyner and his jackal janissaries and mingle with gentlemen of gentle discernment. It is a
pleasant feeling."
"Then
go to sleep and dream about your joy."
"You
know I don't dream. Never in my whole life have I experienced the briefest visit to dreamland. I am one of
those rarities who
doesn't revel in reverie."
"Then just sleep. It is now 3 a.m.
In exactly five hours Room Service
will come tapping at the door with my eggs and
your kippers — ugh, those kippers — and we have a busy day
ahead of us. And this evening Leon and Helen Raesly are
taking us to dinner at their club."
"I
know and I am looking forward to it. And you know I
am not normally an insomniac. But right now my mind is wrestling
with the contrast between those mental midgets in Trenton
— those psychicecdysiasts — and real men like Bob Gerholz
and Paul Guthery and Marty McGrath and Bemis Lawrence and Walter Dayton and Walter Graves . . . ."
"Fine
gentlemen indeed, but I am tired and I am sleepy and I found the Sassafras Room of the Old New Orleans tonight
somewhat less than stimulating . . . ."
"The Zazarac Room. And how could you imply that it was
dull with Fernanda Montel purring those provocative chansons
your way?"
"Mile. Montel may be internationally famed for her glamor
as they claim, but she repelled me because of the thick
coat of glistening oil with which she greased her body and
I could not understand her songs because they were in French
and I didn't think she rated a $3 cover charge. Neither did I think the oysters Rockefeller were worth
$2.25 or the lamb chops
$4.50 or the cocktails $2 each."
"Come,
come, my engaging friend, it is not like you to
concern yourself with price.
And remember, this is my birthday anniversary and you wanted me to enjoy
this festive occasion which after all cannot be repeated too many times more,
and I found my escargots Bourguignonne tasty even if they did cost
$2.25 and my pompano en papillotte good even at
$4 and the crepe Suzette satisfactorily flamboyantly aflame for
$2. Count your blessings: we could have eaten Carre d'Agneau at $11
or Chateaubriand Maison at $12."
"All
right, so it was a nice evening and I enjoyed being your
host on your birthday. But now I'd like to enjoy what's left
of the night in the rejuvenating repose of sleep."
"You
are so right. But when I think of that solipsist under
the guilded dome breathing fire like Typhon, piling Ossa
upon Pelion, I am impelled to set down my thoughts on
paper lest by morning they elude me."
"That
what's-ist doing what?"
"Solipsist. You know, Mein Meynheer Meyner with the vanity
of Narcissus, certain he is the only truly conscious being
in the whole world, that he governest this universe by mandate
eternal."
"He
certainly brings out the classicist in you."
"He
brings out the disgust in me. Here is a small-town political hack with a
mind to match, beaten for the legislature in his own rural Democratic county
after one dismal, non-productive term, who
unexpectedly finds himself in a big job by the flick of fate and the
dictation of a letter, and he thinks
he's to the manor born. He fancies himself one of the
ancient Roman censors, with power to weigh others' actions
and mete out punishment by his captious, capricious likes
and dislikes."
"Patience;
the days of his rule are numbered."
"Even
if I had the patience of Rusticus . . . ."
"Of
who'sticus?"
"The philosopher Rusticus. You remember old Rusty. He
was put to death by Domitian for his attacks upon the despot
Nero. Even had I his patience I couldn't sit silently while
Meynheer Meyner dissembles his misused power, perpetrating
the grossest impostures and impositions in the blindness
of preconceived notion while his sycophants fawn
upon him and devise new
refinements of adulation which he embraces greedily, so overpowering is his ego."
"Whew!
But what does it get you to let him molest your sleeping hours?"
"Alas, I have no pitch-pipe like Licinius to serve
as an antidote to my
distemper and lull me into soothing slumber, even though I know this peevish, petty regime will dry up and
perish with the want of wit. What was it St. Augustine wrote: 'Fools dwelling in darkness, wise in their own conceit and
puffed up with vain knowledge, going round and round, staggering
to and fro like blind men led by the blind.' "
"Is
that what he wrote? But you can't say he was incited to
it by Meyner; he didn't even know the guy."
"No, and had he, he'd have done better. Indeed,
Bacon might very well
have known Meyner when he observed 'this very littleness of spirit comes with a certain air of arrogance
and superiority.'
"To
what low estate has our chief magistracy fallen! Shades of Al Driscoll, of Walter Edge. Wandering and
straying as they do
with no settled course, Meyner & Co. fetch a wide circuit and meet with many matters, but make little progress.
Instead, they plant new standards in the immeasurable
circumambient realm of nothingness and night, looking
fearfully towards all the thirty-two points of the compass. Such
is the melancholy condition which prevails."
Genteelly
jarring sounds from the plush pallet across the wide room told me I was talking to myself.
From
the radio came the soft strains of "Let Me Go, Lover."
I switched on the television and there soon intruded into the background
Muzak the bouncy rhythms of Georgia Gibbs'
energetic record being spun by the disc jockey on Channel 9.
"Tweedle-de-dum, tweedle-de-dee," cadenced Her
Nibs into my tympanum, and somehow it came out of my pencil "Eenie,
Meenie, Meyner Mo."
I'm
afraid there was a beatific grin on my face, sadist that
I am, when finally I dropped
the pencil and switched off the light
and drifted off into somnolence.
A
few hours later while I was drooling over my much-loved kippers and Leon was trying to keep his eyes averted
from the unappetizing
sight and on his pullet-sperm, I read him
my nocturnal odinic ode.
"Remind
me," he said, "never to pick a fight with you."
"I
cannot help my outspoken forthrightness," I protested.
"Blame it on the stars. Bing Crosby explained it all Friday
night."
"Bing
Crosby?"
"Yes,
I listened to his radio program and he was talking about
history's greatest stirrer-upper, that creator of controversy and inherent revolutionary, the essayist Tom Paine, whose
stubborn sense of outraged justice and vitriolic pen had
him exiled from his native England, imprisoned in the America he helped
free, sentenced to the guillotine in the France
he helped to arise. We Aquarians who are born on the 29th
day of January just can't help being that way, it would seem."
"You
could try, couldn't you? Must you speak your mind on everything?"
"Alas, I fear 'tis so. You, Friend Todd, may be my
Callimachus and
paraphrase the epitaph he wrote for Timon:
Timon,
the misanthrope, am I below;
Go, and revile me, traveler, only go.
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