Foley on the Workings of Nemesis

James William Foley · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages carrying a single comic ballad by James William Foley, printed complete and without commentary. It is the lightest piece in the section and the only one that makes its point as a joke.

The premise is that two inventors are set adrift in a leaky boat with nothing to eat but a couple of dozen of the patent tins one of them designed — the tins with keys and the strips that never wind — and nothing to bale with but a peek-a-boo shirtwaist of the kind the other invented, the sort that buttons down behind. They sail for days unable to open the food or empty the boat. Reaching an island, they signal a man on the shore, who calls back cheerily that he will fetch a boat, but must first go back and button up his wife's waist, which will take an hour or so; the inventor of the backstairs waist groans in his swollen throat. Hours later they see a second man at the window of a bungalow holding a tin meat can in his bleeding hands, who tells them to wait just until he has this one open and he will be there in a trice. The inventor of the patent tins, knowing exactly what that promise is worth, leaps into the sea, and the other sinks with the boat. It is a straightforward illustration of consequences returning to their author, which is why it sits in a series otherwise given over to hymns and philosophy.

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