Ida a Novel Read Online Free PDF

but he never did. He tried it again and again, he tried it on every kind of boat but they never were wrecked again. Finally he said, Once and not again.
    He did lots of things before he went back to the middle of the big country where he had been born.
    Finally he became an officer in the army and he married Ida but before that he lived around.
    One of the things he did was to sleep in a bed under a bridge. The bed was made of cardboard. He was not the first to make it. Somebody else made it but when Arthur had no place to go because he had used up all his money he used to go to sleep there. Some one always was asleep there. Day and night there was always somebody sleeping there. Arthur was one who when he woke up shaved and washed himself in the river, he always carried the things with him.
    It was a nice time then. Instead of working or having his money Arthur just listened to anybody. It made him sleepy and he was never more than half awake and in his sleep he had a way of talking about sugar and cooking. He also used to talk about medicine glasses.
    Arthur never fished in a river. He had slept too often under a bridge to care anything about going fishing. One evening he met a man who had been fishing. They talked a little and the man said that he was not much good at fishing, he saw the fish but he never could catch them. Finally he said to Arthur, do you know who I am. No said Arthur. Well said the man taking off his hat, I am chief of police. Well why can’t you catch fish, said Arthur. Well I caught a trout the other day and he got away from me. Why didn’t you take his number said Arthur. Because fish can’t talk was the answer.
    Arthur often wished on a star, he said star bright, star light, I wish I may I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight.
    The wish was that he would be a king or rich.
    There is no reason why a king should be rich or a rich man should be a king, no reason at all.
    Arthur had not yet come to decide which one was the one for him. It was easy enough to be either the one or the other one. He just had to make up his mind, be rich or be a king and then it would just happen. Arthur knew that much.
    Well anyway he went back to where he came from, he was in the middle of his country which was a big one and he commenced to cry. He was so nervous when he found himself crying that he lay full length on the ground turned on his stomach and dug his palms into the ground.
    He decided to enter the army and he became an officer and some few years after he met Ida.
    He met her on the road one day and he began to walk next to her and they managed to make their feet keep step. It was just like a walking marathon.
    He began to talk. He said. All the world is crying crying about it all. They all want a king.
    She looked at him and then she did not. Everybody might want a king but anybody did not want a queen.
    It looks, said Arthur, as if it was sudden but really it took me some time, some months even a couple of years, to understand how everybody wants a king.
    He said. Do you know the last time I was anywhere I was with my mother and everybody was good enough to tell me to come again. That was all long ago. Everybody was crying because I went away, but I was not crying. That is what makes anybody a king that everybody cries but he does not.
    Philip was the kind that said everything out loud. 8
    I knew her, he said and he said he knew Ida, hell he said, yes I know Ida. He said it to every one, he said it to her. He said he knew her.
    Ida never saw Arthur again.
    She just did not.
    She went somewhere and there she just sat, she did not even have a dog, she did not have a town, she lived alone and just sat.
    She went out once in a while, she listened to anybody talking about how they were waiting for a fall in prices.
    She saw a sign up that said please pay the unemployed and a lot of people were gathered around and were looking.
    It did not interest her. She was not unemployed. She just sat and she always had