of view, that affects you
whether you will or no, and when you are in his presence you cannot
take life seriously, either,--you can but laugh with him. He does you
good. You say he is "perfectly ridiculous," but you laugh. Then he
smiles back at you and cracks another of those absurd remarks of his,
and you know he is "sympathetically ridiculous." Perhaps you were out
of sorts with life when you met him, but one cannot be angry when one
looks at a Penguin Person.

But do you say that the original bird is not like that at all, that he
is the most stupid of fellows? Ah! then you have never seen a penguin
swim! He is grace and beauty and skill in the water. If it were only
his stupidity that made us smile, not he, but the hen, would be the
most amusing of God's creatures. It is something more subtle, more
personal, than that. It can only be described as Penguinity.

Penguinity! The word is not in the dictionaries; it is beyond the pale
of the "purists"; in coining it I am fully aware that I violate the
canons of the Harvard English Department, that I fly in the face of
philology, waving a red rag. Yet I do it gladly, assertively, for I
have confidence that some day, when Penguin Persons have taken their
rightful place in the world's estimation, the world will not be able
to dispense with my little word, which will then overthrow the
dictionary despotism and enter unchallenged the leather strongholds of
Webster and Murray.

Yet before that day does come, and to hasten its coming, I would
record a tribute to my first and firmest Penguin friend,--my friend
and the friend of how many others?--long and lank of limb, thin and
high-boned of face, alert, smiling, ridiculous. On the nights when
steamships were sunk in the East River, or incipient subways elevated
suddenly above ground, or other exciting features of New York life
came clamoring for publicity, he would sit calm and smiling, coatless,
a corncob pipe between his teeth, and read "copy" with the speed of
two ordinary men. The excited night city editor would rush about,
shouting orders and countermanding them; reporters would dash in and
out; telegraph instruments would buzz; the nerve-wracking whistle of
the tube from the composing room would shrill at sudden intervals,
causing everybody to start involuntarily each time and to curse with
vexation and anger; the irritable night editor, worried lest he miss
the outgoing trains with his first edition, would look furtivel