Jimmieboy — His Book
Date: 1890-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Children’s Literature; Fantasy; Humor; Short Stories; Poetry
Description: This omnibus includes the six Jimmieboy books, with a bonus of four additional stories. The first book begins when Jimmieboy is just four years old, and recounts his many adventures with his Tiddledywinks. Later, Jimmieboy will go campaigning with his tin soldiers, assist Santa Claus, go bicycling on Saturn, meet Jack Frost, converse with a comet, befriend many magical folk, and — well, just about anything you might imagine, and lots that you can’t. ~ ~ ~ Brimming with humor, word-play, and nonsense poems, these stories are a delight.
Publisher: MobileRead
Rights: Public domain in countries where the copyright term is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

Jimmieboy —
HIS BOOK

BY
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

CONTENTS:

… About This eBook
Tiddledywink Tales
The Tiddledywinks’ Poetry Book
In Camp with a Tin Soldier
Half-Hours with Jimmieboy
The Mantel-Piece Minstrels and Other Stories
Bikey the Skicicle and Other Tales
More Tales of Jimmieboy

About this eBook

Jimmieboy — His Book
(An Omnibus)

BY
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
(1862–1922)

ILLUSTRATED BY:
Charles Howard Johnson (1868-1896)
E[dmund] M[arion] Ashe (1867-1941)
Frank Ver Beck (1858-1933)
Francis Berkeley Smith (1868–1931)
Peter Newell (1862–1924)
J. T. Richards (?–?)
“G.W.B.” (?–?)

This omnibus includes the six Jimmieboy books, with a bonus of four additional stories.

Tiddledywink Tales
The Tiddledywinks’ Poetry Book
In Camp with a Tin Soldier
Half-Hours with Jimmieboy
The Mantel-Piece Minstrels and Other Stories
Bikey the Skicicle and Other Tales
More Tales of Jimmieboy

The first book begins when Jimmieboy is just four years old, and recounts his many adventures with his Tiddledywinks. Later, Jimmieboy will go campaigning with his tin soldiers, assist Santa Claus, go bicycling on Saturn, meet Jack Frost, converse with a comet, befriend many magical folk, and — well, just about anything you might imagine, and lots that you can’t.

Brimming with humor, word-play, and nonsense poems, these stories are a delight.

* * * *

John Kendrick Bangs (May 27, 1862 – January 21, 1922) was an American author, humorist, and satirist. Between 1884 and 1906, he worked as editor at a number of magazines; then switched his focus to the lecture circuit. A prolific writer, he had more than sixty books published.

He wrote extensively in the genre of “Bangsian fantasy,” which sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife, with important fictional and historical personalities humorously portrayed as characters.

This ebook was created by ECM for MobileRead.com, August 2019, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

The contents of this book were first published 1891 – 1907. Text is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

Click here for editing notes.

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Tiddledywink Tales

(1891)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
CHARLES HOWARD JOHNSON

TO
KENNIBOY

CONTENTS:

1 … Jimmieboy
2 … The Blue and Red Tiddledywinks
3 … The Black Tiddledywink Writes a Poem
4 … The White Tiddledywink
5 … In the Tiddledywinks’ Basket
6 … The Whimperjam and the Wobbledypie
7 … Jimmieboy and Greeney Go Rowing
8 … Miss Green Tiddledywink
9 … Jimmieboy and Reddy Drive to the Zoo
10 … The Nightmare
11 … In the Zoo
12 … The Teeheelephant Bothers Reddy
13 … In the Roasted Peanut Tree
14 … The Procession
15 … The Rag-Baby Creates a Disturbance
16 … The Athletic Sports Begin
17 … Jimmieboy Acts as Judge
18 … A Trip on the J. & T. C. Railway
19 … The Tiddledywink Ball
20 … Back at Home Again

•   1   •

JIMMIEBOY

Jimmieboy was feeling rather tired. He was four years old, and had been playing ever since he had reached the happy age of six months. Before that time Jimmieboy had been content to sit on his nurse’s or his mamma’s lap, and wonder why people did such queer things; but when he realized that he had really reached the advanced age of six months, he thought it was high time he should stop being a lap baby, and assume the dignity of a seat on the floor. So he informed his parents by means of certain signs and struggles, which they at once understood, that he had made up his mind to get down on the carpet, and seek his fortunes in the nursery without the assistance of anyone.

And Jimmieboy succeeded very well after this declaration of infantile independence. It was not long before he could push himself swiftly around the nursery with his left leg, his chubby little right leg doubled up under him, and his pudgy hands flat on the floor. Once in a while, to be sure, he would move so fast, that his hands could not keep up with the rest of him, and then he would fall over on his little nose, but this did not hurt Jimmieboy. The little nose was entirely too little to be hurt very much, and so he got on famously.

Before he was a year old, Jimmieboy had succeeded so well in making his fortune that he owned five full railroad trains. One of the trains was almost as heavy as Jimmieboy himself, and the little engineer could not make it go without taking it apart, and pushing each car separately before him, which suited Jimmieboy quite as well, particularly when it came to pushing the engine which had a beautiful cowcatcher and six lovely red wheels.

In addition to his railroad trains, Jimmieboy became possessed of about fifty splendid horses—real wool horses, solid lead horses with white saddles painted on them, and little holes in their backs to hold the soldiers on; for tin soldiers on horseback have a very hard time of it, not so much because the horses are skittish, but because tin soldiers are very stiff and cannot ride easily. Then Jimmieboy had a big hobby horse that sometimes made him quite seasick when he tried to ride him; to say nothing of wooden horses with red legs, and the handsome white and black iron steeds that pulled Jimmieboy’s fire-engine over the nursery floor. Then he had books—linen books that he couldn’t tear no matter how much he wanted to; a funny old copy of Mother Goose with bright colored pictures all through it, that Jimmieboy’s grandma had given to Jimmieboy’s papa when he was no larger than Jimmieboy; books about Santa Claus, and one that told all about a wonderful fellow named Jack, who built a house that had malt in it for rats to eat; and going on to tell how these rats were killed by cats, that Jimmieboy knew were bothered by dogs, that funny cows with crumpled horns tossed in the air, just before the maiden all forlorn who was married by the priest all shaven and shorn to the man in the tattered and torn clothes, came to milk them, to the disgust of the cock that crowed in the morn to wake the farmer and the priest all shaven and shorn. Jimmieboy liked this book very much because his papa couldn’t read it to him once without telling him the same story over half-a-dozen times, which was just his idea of what a story ought to be. Then he had besides all these books, no end of dollies, and lambs, and doggies, and Noah’s Arks, with four Noahs to each Ark—with all of which beautiful things he had been playing for three years and six months—so no wonder he was tired on this particular evening, and ready to put his little curly head on his papa’s shoulder and be rocked. Besides this, the Tiddledywinks had been put to bed and Jimmieboy had no further use for that day after the Tiddledywinks had—as he thought—gone to sleep.

The reason why Jimmieboy was so willing to stop playing when the Tiddledywinks had snuggled down in their basket, and were quietly resting after their day’s work, was that Jimmieboy had not had them very long—not long enough, in fact, to have lost his interest in them. He had only received them that morning from an aunt of his who lived ever so far away from Jimmieboy, way down in the South where oranges grow on trees instead of on fruit stands as they do where Jimmieboy lives, and where most of the little boys of Jimmieboy’s age are brown, like chocolate cakes, and whose hair curls tightly on top of their little round heads, instead of falling in ringlets for other boys to pull and for nurses to brush around their thumbs early in the morning and late in the afternoon. The box containing the Tiddledywinks, had been left at the door by a great friend of Jimmieboy’s—the expressman—who had a fine name, and who lived up to it, Johnny Larkin. It had been left, as I say, by Johnny Larkin that morning with his auntie’s love, just as some weeks before several packages that were too heavy for Santa Claus to carry, and too large to be got down through the chimney, had been brought by this same lovely Johnny with Santa Claus’ love.

So Jimmieboy thought a great deal of his Tiddledywinks and had been playing with them nearly all that day. He had given them rides in his choo-choo cars, which they had accepted with stolid indifference; he had dropped them into his little savings bank and then got his mother to open the bank to get them out again: several of the green Tiddledywinks had wandered off and got lost under the bureau and one poor little blue one had been nearly drowned in Jimmieboy’s bowl of milk where the little fellow had accidentally dropped it at suppertime—for they all sat down to supper with Jimmieboy and watched him eat.

They had all been rescued however by Jimmieboy’s nurse and as the latter and Jimmieboy’s mamma were agreed that the Tiddledywinks must by this time—half past six o’clock in the evening—be very tired, what with their journey from the South and their hard day’s work playing with him, Jimmieboy, who is a kindly little fellow, was quite willing that they should be put to rest for the night and when a few minutes later Jimmieboy’s papa came home he was himself not at all opposed, as I have said, to climbing up on his lap and snuggling his curly head down on his shoulder. Then his papa rocked Jimmieboy and started to sing him a little song that he had written himself and which ran very much this way—

The greatest man in all the land

Is Jimmie, Jimmie, Jimmieboy.

He makes more noise than any band

Does Jimmie, Jimmie, Jimmieboy.

He loves to lie upon the floor

And like the lions loudly roar.

He runs a pocket grocery-store,

Does Jimmie, Jimmie, Jimmieboy.

Within the great menagerie

Of Jimmie, Jimmie, Jimmieboy,

The queerest animals you’ll see—

Oh Jimmie, Jimmie, Jimmieboy—

A great big purple el-i-phant,

A panther and a shrimp-pink ant,

And kangaroos that songs do chant

For Jimmie, Jimmie, Jimmieboy.

Jimmieboy liked this song very much because the refrain, “Jimmie, Jimmie, Jimmieboy,” as his papa sang it, sounded exactly like a railroad train going by with full steam on, which under ordinary circumstances was Jimmieboy’s favorite noise. But this evening, the song was not so entirely interesting because Jimmieboy heard, or thought he heard, voices over in the direction of the Tiddledywinks’ basket. His papa evidently did not hear the voices for he kept on singing and rocking to and fro, and for a minute or two Jimmieboy thought his ears must have deceived him or that the voices came from the next room—or perhaps, he thought, it was the big cat that lived next door purring out in the hall—for the next-door cat was very fond of Jimmieboy and used to come in ten or a dozen times a day to see how he was getting along, and to offer to kill all the rats Jimmieboy wanted him to, and not charge him a penny for it. And of course every night when Jimmieboy’s papa got home, Tom would have to walk off, because Jimmieboy liked his papa much better than he did Tom, although the fur on Tom’s face never scratched his cheek, and sometimes when his papa’s razor was not quite sharp enough, the fur on his chin was rough, and left Jimmieboy with cheeks as red as apples. Then Tom would go out in the hall and purr softly and sweetly just to show Jimmieboy that he was not jealous and did not blame him for being fond of his papa.

But after Jimmieboy had listened a minute he knew it couldn’t be a voice from the other room or the purring of old Tom out in the hall. He became certain that the voices came from the Tiddledywinks on the table, and in a minute his papa stopped singing and he could hear what was said in the basket.

•   2   •

THE BLUE AND RED TIDDLEDYWINKS

It was one of the little Blue Tiddledywinks that was speaking. Jimmieboy could hardly see him because the Tiddledywink was sitting over by the inkstand behind the paperweight, but he could understand what he said perfectly.

“I am glad,” Jimmieboy heard him say, “I am glad I am a Tiddledywink and not a doll-baby.”

“I don’t see why,” said the Green Tiddledywink, who was rolling up and down the paper cutter much to the anxiety of the big Green Snapper, who was afraid he would fall off and nick himself. “I don’t see why. I should think it would be very nice to be a doll-baby. One like that doll-baby of Jimmieboy’s, for instance. She’s a beauty. She wears shoes with real buttons on ’em. She has one of the finest red silk dresses with blue fringe I ever saw and such a head of hair! I don’t believe there are less than five hundred strands of real old gold yellow hair on that doll-baby’s head, and what is more, when she lies down, she can shut her eyes.”

“That’s all very well,” said the Blue Tiddledywink who had first spoken. “It’s a very nice thing to be able to shut your eyes when you lie down, and in that respect the doll-baby is better off than we are. It is also a fine thing to wear a red dress with blue fringe, and as for having five hundred strands of real hair, as a Tiddledywink who always has been and always will be bald, I have no criticism to make of the doll-baby on that account. Some people might say I was jealous, which I am not. But I am glad I am a Tiddledywink just the same and not a doll-baby, because I am a Tiddledywink all the way through, while the doll-baby is a little of several things, and a good deal of nothing. We Tiddledywinks are what we appear to be, and the doll-baby is not.”

“How do you know that?” asked the Green Tiddledywink, hopping from Jimmieboy’s papa’s ashtray into the basket. “Who told you?”

“l met a knife-handle in the toy-closet and he told me,” returned the Blue Tiddledywink. “He said that some time ago, before he got broken and lost all his blades, Jimmieboy climbed up on a chair one day and took him off the table and cut the doll-baby nearly in two with him, and he says there wasn’t a drop of blood in her veins. She was stuffed with sawdust!”

“l don’t believe it’s a true story,” said the Red Tiddledywink, scornfully. “I wouldn’t believe an old knife-handle. What good is a knife-handle without any blades anyhow?”

Here Jimmieboy interrupted to tell the Red Tiddledywink that an old knife-handle with out any blades was lots of good to play with, but the Red Tiddledywink didn’t seem to hear him for he went right on.

“The doll-baby’s too pretty to be stuffed with sawdust,” he said. “Anybody looking at her cheeks would know she wasn’t stuffed with sawdust. You can’t get red cheeks like that on sawdust.”

“Where did you get your color?” sniffed the Blue Tiddledywink. He was a little put out at having his statement about the doll-baby contradicted.

“At the same shop where you got yours,” retorted the Red Tiddledywink. “And it’s a better color any day than blue—but as for the doll-baby, she’s just as sweet as she can be and I won’t hear her abused. I talked to her for an hour today, and she’s got lots of sense. If she were stuffed with sawdust, she’d be wooden headed and she isn’t that, I know—she was bright enough to see my jokes. She laughed at ’em. I believe she is stuffed with sugar.”

“You’d believe in anybody who’d laugh at your jokes,” retorted the Blue Tiddledywink. “She must have good eyesight to see ’em too, but by laughing at ’em she shows that she is just what I said she was—a very much made up person.”

“They’re better jokes than you could make,” said the Red Tiddledywinks wrathfully.

“Come, come, Tiddledys,” said the big Yellow Snapper who was in charge of the little ones for the day—for the Snappers all take turns in playing nurse for the Tiddledywinks, each for a day except Sundays, when they all keep quiet in their box and do not need to be looked after. “Come, come,” said she. “You’ll have to stop this quarreling or into the basket you go and there you stay until Jimmieboy calls for you in the morning.”

“I wasn’t quarreling, ma’am,” said the Blue Tiddledywink, airily. “I never quarrel, because I can’t, you know. It takes two to make a quarrel and I am only one. I was simply talking about that green-eyed doll-baby with the—”

“Blue-eyed doll-baby,” put in the Red Tiddledywink, with a scowl.

“That green-eyed doll-baby with the red dress and apple-colored hair,” continued the Blue Tiddledywink, ignoring the red one.

“Her hair is yellow,” said the Red Tiddledywink, getting redder than ever—because as Jimmieboy could easily see, he was very, very angry.

“So ’re apples,” returned the Blue Tiddledywink. And then he added, “and I said the doll-baby was stuffed with sawdust—as she is—and Reddy here said she wasn’t—as she isn’t. No quarrel about that, ma’am.”

“Bluey said my jokes were bad,” sobbed Reddy.

“No, I didn’t,” contradicted Bluey.

“You did,” asserted Reddy.

“Well, it doesn’t make any difference anyhow what who said or what which didn’t say. If you Tiddledywinks can’t stop fighting,” the Yellow Snapper said firmly, “into bed you go.”

“Oh, all right,” said the Blue Tiddledywink. “Anything for peace and an extra hour out of bed. This business of lying down and losing my senses and doing nothing for eight long hours is very trying to me and seems like such a waste of time—and really you know sleep isn’t half so necessary for a Tiddledywink as it is for a little boy—a little boy like that Jimmieboy we’ve been playing with today, for instance. Why, he’s just got to have all the sleep he can get, you know. That’s because he takes after his papa and mamma. But we Tiddledywinks are stronger than little boys and men and women. I stayed awake a week once and felt just as chipper afterward as I would if I’d slept sound every night. No little boy could do that, nor his papa and mamma either. So I’m willing to compromise with Reddy. I didn’t say his jokes were bad, but I did kind of let him believe I thought that everybody couldn’t laugh at ’em, and I suppose it hurt his feelings, and, as I’m not quite ready to go to bed, I’ll laugh at his jokes if he will admit that the doll-baby with the grass-colored eyes and dandelion hair is stuffed with sawdust. It’s easy enough to laugh at a joke that isn’t funny, you know. Even the doll-baby could do that. That suit you, Reddy?”

“That will do,” returned Reddy. “It suits me very well—I don’t want to go to bed any more than you do, so I will admit that the blue-eyed doll-baby with golden hair, that is sweeter than all the maple sugar in the world, is stuffed with sawdust. My admitting it doesn’t make it so. I might admit that you are a pink-eyed shrimp but that wouldn’t make you any the less of a sky-blue piece of celluloid. I’ll compromise—but you’ve got to laugh at my joke.”

“All right,” said Bluey, “get it off.”

“When is a Tiddledywink not a Tiddledywink?” asked Reddy.

“Give it up,” said Bluey.

“When he isn’t, of course,” roared Reddy.

And then they all laughed, and so it was decided that Reddy’s jokes were funny, as they frequently were, and that the doll-baby was stuffed with sawdust—which she really was.

From this Jimmieboy was able to see that when the Tiddledywinks made up their minds that so was so, so was very apt to be so.

•   3   •

THE BLACK TIDDLEDYWINK
WRITES A POEM

At this point Jimmieboy’s papa whispered softly across the room to his mamma that he thought—he wasn’t quite sure—but he thought Jimmieboy must be asleep, he had been so very still, and once, he said, he was certain he heard him snore. But Jimmieboy heard the whisper and stopped listening to the Tiddledywinks long enough to tell his papa that he wasn’t asleep at all and hadn’t been.

“I was on’y finkin,” he said, by which he meant that he was only thinking. It was a funny way to say it but then Jimmieboy always said everything in a funny way. He seemed to think that every word—or almost every word there was except Papa and Mamma and Nana began with an “F” or a “W.” It was very curious, too, how he came to talk that way, because no one else that he or his papa ever heard talk, used so many effs and double-yews, and his mamma said that she had never heard of anyone who had even heard of anyone who called a railroad track a “wailwoad wack” before, and Jimmieboy’s Nana made lots of fun of him because he called the Tiddledywinks “Widdledywinks.” So it happened that when Jimmieboy said he was “on’y finkin” his papa knew what he meant and said: “Oh, all right, fink away—it’ll do you good.” And then he started rocking again and began another song he’d scratched off on one of Jimmieboy’s “witing wadds,” as Jimmieboy called his scribbling pads. This song went somewhat this way:

O scoot away Skeeter, O scoot sky high,

Don’t you bite Jimmieboy, don’t even try,

For Jimmieboy’s papa takes care o’ him—

He squashes the Skeeters that bite little Jim.

This song used to make Jimmieboy laugh, but he didn’t listen all the way through this time, because before his papa had half finished he looked over at the table again, and saw the little Black Tiddledywink struggling with his mamma’s lead pencil that lay there, evidently trying to write something on a piece of note paper that he had found close at hand. The Tiddledywink seemed to be very much interested in what he was doing and Jimmieboy was curious to know what it was he was writing, and he didn’t have to wait very long to have his curiosity gratified either, for the Yellow Snapper, who, as I have already said, was in charge, cried out:

“Hi there, Blackey, what are you doing with that pencil? A man might as well try to write with a telegraph pole as you with that pencil.”

“But I am writing, ma’am,” returned the Black Tiddledywink, laboriously pushing the pencil up and down until he had made a very fair W. “l am writing a poem.”

“A what?” laughed the Lamp-Chimney, as if he didn’t believe Blackey could write a poem—and, strangely enough, it didn’t seem a bit queer to Jimmieboy to hear the Lamp-Chimney speak.

“A poem—or rather a song,” returned the Black Tiddledywink, pleasantly. “I’ve written lots and lots of poetry in my day. I wrote a very pretty little song once to a lovely pink donkey I saw some years ago in a Noah’s Ark, and really I’ve got no end of nursery rhymes stored away. I wrote that verse about the Duck in the Tiddledywink Weekly. Perhaps you saw it in the last number?”

“No. I don’t take that paper,” replied the Lamp-Chimney. “I’m a constant reader of the Kerosene Monthly.”

“Well, it went this way,” said Blackey—

“There was a small Duck of White Plains

Who said: “O my Duckship it pains

To hear people say

That the only wise way

Is to go in the house when it rains.”

“Isn’t that elegant!” cried the Green Tiddledywink proudly, addressing the Lamp-Chimney.

“Did you really write that out of your own head, and alone?” asked the Chimney, amazed at Blackey’s cleverness, as also was Jimmieboy.

“I got every bit of it out of my own head,” said Blackey, proudly, “and I wrote it—how do you suppose?”

“I give it up—with a pen?” said the Blue Tiddledywink.

“No, sir. I wrote it on a piece of blotting paper with the end of a burnt match,” returned the Black Tiddledywink, “and at the same time I wrote a poem called ‘My Favorite Fruit.’

“It goes this way—

“Some people like the oyster best,

And some the polar bear:

With some the peanut’s in request

But I prefer fresh air.”

“That’s lovely,” cried the Yellow Tiddledywink, “but I think I like pine-cones better than fresh air. They have more taste to them.”

“Pine-cones are good,” said the Blue Tiddledywink, “but they can’t hold a lighted match to goldfish tails with mucilage on ’em. They’re simply great. I haven’t had any lately, either. They aren’t in season ever until the fortieth of January, and since they cut January down to thirty-one days they’ve never come into season again.”

“How do you think of these poems, any way?” asked the Lamp-Chimney.

“Oh, I take in what people say,” said Blackey, “and sometimes something somebody says will give me an idea for a poem. For instance I overheard an omnibus horse once telling a hay wagon that he thought it was going to rain, and I sat right down on the curbstone and wrote these lines in my notebook:

“It doesn’t seem to matter much

Howe’er a cook may try,

There isn’t anything can touch

A handsome pumpkin pie—

Unless it be a pickled fly,

And I don’t care for them,

Because they always make me cry,

And ’jaculate Ahem!”

“But I don’t see,” said the Lamp Chimney, “how the remark of the omnibus-horse suggested that.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” returned the Black Tiddledywink, “and for a very good reason. You are not a poet.”

“It’s the same way with my jokes,” put in the Red Tiddledywink. “They are always suggested by something that they’re not at all like. For instance, my joke about a cat wearing her furs all through the summer so as to keep the moths out of them, was suggested by seeing a dog chasing his tail around a flower pot.”

“But are all your poems suggested that way?” asked the White Tiddledywink.

“Oh, no,” replied Blackey. “Sometimes they come naturally and are just what you’d expect; this one I’ve just written was inspired by what Bluey said about being glad he was a Tiddledywink and simply expresses his feeling in verse. It’s a good thing to be satisfied and glad you are what you are, you know. It is really awful if you are not so, as a story I could tell you about a stuffed alligator I once knew down south, would prove.”

“What was the story of the stuffed alligator?” asked the Green Tiddledywink, wheeling himself about the edge of the basket.

“Oh, he was only a plain stuffed alligator,” returned Blackey, “and he was always unhappy because he wasn’t something else—he never knew what. When I first knew him he was wishing he was a drum, so that he could make a noise in the world. I told him how foolish he was, how the drum was always getting beaten—not because he was noisy but to make him more so. And then I told him how drums were not favorites with people; how some papas that I knew of had declined to let their little boys play with ’em, and after a while I got him quite out of the notion. But it wasn’t long before he began to be envious of a toy balloon he had met; said the balloon was bound to rise in the world while all he could do was to sit on the floor and stay stuffed. It didn’t take me a minute to show him how foolish that was. I told him he ought to be very well satisfied that he wasn’t a toy balloon because the balloon was always empty and’ was sure to burst sooner or later. He hadn’t thought of that and said he guessed that after all there were some good things about being a stuffed alligator and for two weeks he was contented.”

“And did he get discontented again?” asked the Yellow Snapper, who was quite interested in what Black Tiddledywink was saying.

“Yes,” returned the Story-Teller, “the man who owned us took him one day and put him alongside of the fireplace. He thought he would show up better there, I suppose, and then the alligator got in with some sticks of wood that told him all about the trees out in the forest and how lovely everything out there was with the birds singing and the leaves rustling. He got very envious of the sticks of wood, and wished he was one of them. Poor fellow! He had his wish too quickly granted.”

“He didn’t turn into a stick of wood, did he?” asked the Blue Snapper.

“Oh no,” returned the Black Tiddledywink, “but one cold night the maid came in to build a fire, and in the dark she mistook the stuffed alligator for a stick and put him on the andirons with the pieces of wood, and before anyone knew it he was burned up. I guess he’d have been glad to be a plain, stuffed alligator again as soon as he found out what it was to be a stick—but it was too late. So I say I’m glad Bluey is glad to be what he is. We all ought to be glad we are ourselves. It’ll make us more contented, and that’s what I based my poem on.”

“Let’s hear it,” put in Reddy, “I’m very fond of poetry—especially yours.”

“Thank you,” said the Black Tiddledywink, blushing deeply, probably in honor of Reddy’s color, and then he sang his song as follows:

“Oh, I am a Tiddledywink!

I am a Tiddledywink—

It is a glorious thing, I think,

To be a Tiddledywink.

I’m glad I am just what I be—

I’m glad to be just what I am.

It always makes me sad to see

An Elephant who’d be a clam;

A Kangaroo who thinks that he

Would have been happier as a dog;

A Hippopotamus who’d be,

If he’d his way, a jumping frog.

And Oh, I dee—

M it perfect rot

To wish to be

What one is not:

And so I say, I’m glad that I

Am what I am, and never sigh

Because I’m not a skating rink,

But just a plain old Tiddledywink.”

This song was received with delight by the Tiddledywinks, but it made Jimmieboy do a little hard “finking,” and when he had thought it all over he was rather sorry to remember that only the day before he had wished he was a cornucopia, so that he could be filled up with candy, and he was glad after all that he was his papa’s and mamma’s own Jimmieboy.

•   4   •

THE WHITE TIDDLEDYWINK

So deeply did Jimmieboy “fink” over the Black Tiddledywink’s song, and so soothing did it sound as sung by the Yellow Snapper and his little friends, that Jimmieboy really fell asleep long enough to have his papa make up his mind that he ought to be in bed. That is how it happened that when Jimmieboy opened his eyes again he and the Tiddledywinks were alone in the room and nearer together than when he sat on his papa’s lap, for now Jimmieboy found himself clad in his little night-dress and lying flat on his back in his crib, which stood right beside the table on which the Tiddledywinks were talking.

Generally when Jimmieboy waked up and found himself alone in the room he would cry just a little, so that his Nana would come in and hold his hand until he should fall asleep again, but he did not feel at all lonesome this time. Were not the Tiddledywinks still there having a high old time almost at the edge of his pillow? And, what was even more strange, couldn’t he, Jimmieboy, see them just as plainly as could be, although the only light in the room came from a few dim rays straggling in through the portiere from the gas fixture in the next room where Nana sat knitting a pair of mittens for somebody with hands about the size of Jimmieboy’s? No wonder he wasn’t lonesome. Who could be with thirty-six lively little Tiddledywinks and six beautiful Snappers all of different colors enjoying themselves right alongside of him? So he didn’t cry for Nana to come and hold his hand this time. He just stood up at the side of his crib and said:

“Hullo!”

This seemed to startle the Tiddledywinks very much, for they all jumped in a nervous sort of way and scampered back into their basket as fast as they could, where they hid, trembling like leaves on the trees—that is, all except one poor little White Tiddledywink who in his fright rolled off in the wrong direction and got so close that Jimmieboy could take him in his hand, which the little fellow proceeded to do at once.

“Oh please, sir,” cried the White Tiddledywink, getting whiter than ever—“please don’t hurt me, sir, I wasn’t doing anything sir—only running around the table, sir. I didn’t know there was any harm in it, sir, and I’ll never, never do it again if you will only let me go back. My dear old Snapper and my brothers and sisters and cousins will be so worried.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Jimmieboy, kindly. “There wasn’t any harm in your wunning awound the table as long as you didn’t touch nuffin. Did you touch anyfing?”

“No, sir—that is I didn’t move anything, sir,” gasped the little prisoner. “I did play see-saw with one of my brothers on the paper cutter but we left it just where we found it, sir—none the worse for wear—indeed, sir, it was a little better because we shook some of the dust off.”

“Oh, that’s all wight,” said Jimmieboy. “You needn’t be afwaid of me. I’m Wimmieboy.”

“Why, so you are,” returned the White Tiddledywink joyfully, after gazing intently at Jimmieboy for a moment. “Do you know I didn’t reckernize you in those clothes.”

Jimmieboy was very glad to hear the Tiddledywink say,“reckernize” because that was the way he said it himself. His Uncle Periwinkle—Periwinkle was not his uncle’s real name, but it was the name by which he was best known to Jimmieboy, and a real lovely uncle he was, too—Uncle Periwinkle, I say, had laughed at him a few days before for saying it that way and had told him that there was a “G” in it—and whatever that was Jimmieboy didn’t know. He hadn’t studied geology and of course couldn’t be expected to know what his Uncle Periwinkle was trying to say, but at any rate whatever a “G” was and however it might affect the pronunciation of reckernize, Jimmieboy was satisfied that reckernize was right and to have the Tiddledywink back him up in this opinion was very pleasing to him and so Jimmieboy kissed the Tiddledywink and asked:

“Do I look so diff’ent in my bed clothes?”

“I wouldn’t know you for the same boy,” said the White Tiddledywink. “But then we haven’t known each other long enough to be very well acquainted. You know when we were playing today your hair was fixed kind of different, wasn’t it? You didn’t have pieces of paper on your back hair then, did you?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy, running his hand over his curl papers. “No. I didn’t, and I wish I didn’t have ’em on now. They ain’t very cumferble.”

“Very what?“asked the White Tiddledywink.

“Very cumferble,” said Jimmieboy. “Don’t you know what cumferble means?”

“Oh, yes, I know!“cried the White Tiddledywink. “You mean they aren’t very pretty to look at.”

“No, I don’t,” said Jimmieboy. “I couldn’t mean that, you know, because they are on the back of my yead, and of course I can’t see ’em, and so I don’t know wevver they’s pyitty or not. Cumferble means—means—why, it means cumferble.”

“Oh, now I understand!” said the White Tiddledywink, knowingly. “It means that they don’t cost much. I might have thought of that if I’d only thought of it.”

“That’s twue,” returned Jimmieboy, with a laugh. “If you had fought of it, you pwoberly would have fought of it,—but that ain’t what I mean, neither.”

“You don’t mean that the curl-papers are very papery, do you? Curl-papers are that way very often,” suggested the Tiddledywink.

“No, I mean that they ain’t cumferble, that’s all. You’ll have to ask your Snapper what it means,” said Jimmieboy. “It’s very hard for a little boy like me to explain fings to people what doesn’t unnerstand ’em. I don’t mind tellin’ people fings they know, but fings they don’t know is too much bovver.”

“Too much what?” asked the White Tiddledywink, anxiously. He was discovering lots of new words he’d never known before.

“Never mind,” said Jimmieboy. “If you don’t know what bovver is, you are a very lucky Widdledywink. There ain’t many fings in this world what hasn’t had twouble of some kind or ovver.”

“Oh, now I know. You mean bother, of course. But you never have any troubles, do you?” asked the Tiddledywink. Jimmieboy seemed so young to have troubles.

“Lots of ’em,” said Jimmieboy, shaking his head so that the curl-papers rattled. “I dropped my bestest agate down fwoo the wegister into the furnace; I tooked my wubber dolly out widin’ and she got losted; my papa gave me a piece of candy big enough to last five minutes, and I swallowed it all at once and on’y had one little taste of it—and, oh, lots and lots of fings happen to me,—my wailwoad wain wan over my finger one day, and it hurted awful.”

“What did you do?” asked the Tiddledywink, kissing Jimmieboy’s finger, because it made him sorry to think it had ever been hurt, it was so very tender and little and pretty.

“I cwied for a little while, and then I kept it out of the wain’s way after that.”

“I guess that was the best thing to do,” said the Tiddledywink, approvingly. “Just a little cry and common sense mixed up is a very good thing. I never cry because I can’t. I haven’t anything to cry with.”

“Well,” said Jimmieboy, “that’s all wight. I wouldn’t cwy if I could help it. It makes me feel very uncomferble—”

“Very what?” asked the Tiddledywink.

“Oh dear!” returned Jimmieboy. “There we are again back at cumferble; perhaps we’d better talk about somefing else.”

“I think so too,” replied the Tiddledywink, nodding his head. “There’s too much ‘bovver’ about cumferble for us to get along well together if we keep on talking about it. You were speaking about your troubles a while ago. Did you ever notice that every time you had a trouble you followed it up with half a dozen untroubles?”

“I don’t know what an untwouble is,” said Jimmieboy, somewhat puzzled.

“Why, something that isn’t a trouble, of course—something pleasant,” returned the White Tiddledywink.

“Oh, yes. I’ve notiriced that,” said Jimmieboy. “Why, when my agate went down into the furnace, my papa bought me six more. I never yiked any one of ’em quite as much as I did the one I lost, but then you know there were six of the new ones, and I guess I loved all six fwee times as much as the ovver. Then I’ve notiriced too, that while it’s howwid havin’ my face washed, it’s weal nice to have a clean face;—and mamma never spanked me yet without lovin’ me fwee times as hard afterward.”

“It’s been the same way with me,” said the Tiddledywink. “I got lost once and had an awful time before I was found, but after my Snapper had found me, I had ten times as much fun as I used to have. I don’t believe I’ve cried one ninety-tooth part as much as I’ve laughed, and I’ve had eight glads to one sorry all through my life. Blackey—you ought to talk with Blackey—he’s my cousin and writes poetry—”

“Yes, I heard some of it,” said Jimmieboy. “And I fink it’s very nice.”

“Well,” resumed the Tiddledywink, “he wrote a verse on glads and sorrys. I don’t remember the exact words, but it goes very much like this:

“I never cry when I am sorry,

I never weep when I am sad,

Because I know that by tomorrow

There’ll be ten things to make me glad!”

“Blackey must be a very smart Widdledywink,” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes,” replied the White Tiddledywink proudly, “he is awfully smart. I heard a gentleman say once that no one but Blackey could make ‘sorry’ rhyme with ‘tomorrow.’”

“I fink I’d yike to meet Blackey,” said Jimmieboy. “Let’s go over and join the ovver Widdledywinks.”

“All right,’ returned the White Tiddledywink. “They’ll all be glad to see you, because they think you are a dear little boy.”

•   5   •

IN THE TIDDLEDYWINKS’ BASKET

How he ever managed to do it Jimmieboy didn’t know, but he did get over the side of the crib, and into the Tiddledywinks’ basket, without any trouble, nor did the White Tiddledywink help him a bit. It was stranger still, because Jimmieboy had often tried to climb over that little brass sidepiece that kept him from falling out of bed, and never before had he been able to do it.

He was surprised, too, as he entered the Tiddledywinks’ basket, to find how airy and roomy it was. It had—although Jimmieboy had not noticed it during the daytime while he was playing with it—tiny little windows and halls, and stairs up and down, and pretty little bedrooms, and, best of all, a playroom in which Jimmieboy could see the most wonderful toys he ever saw—all entirely different from those with which he was used to playing. And through a little door that led out from the hall, Jimmieboy could see a beautiful park, with lovely paths running every which way, skirting six little round gardens in which grew flowers of every hue, and especially pink, which was Jimmieboy’s favorite color; and, funniest of all, out in this park Jimmieboy could see Tiddledywink doggies and chickens, which were not at all like the chickens and doggies that he had—they were more like Tiddledywinks with feathers, the chickens were, and the doggies looked like Tiddledywinks with four legs and a tail. Jimmieboy wouldn’t have known they were doggies if they hadn’t wagged their tails, but he knew the chickens were chickens right away, because they strutted about so proudly and cackled so much.

“I don’t see why you Widdledywinks wanted to play on my nurserwy table,” said Jimmieboy. “Not when you have all this beautiful place to play in.”

“Oh, that’s only natural,” said the White Tiddledywink. “It’s just for the sake of variety.”

“I don’t know beriety,” said Jimmieboy. “Is he a Widdledywink?”

“No,” returned Whitey. “He’s a word, and he means something different from everything else.”

“No wonder I didn’t know him,” laughed Jimmieboy. “I wouldn’t know what a fing was that was diff’ent from everyfing I knew about. I didn’t fink you had so much room in your basket,” he added.

“Oh, we have lots of room. We have a dining-room—”

“Do you eat?” asked Jimmieboy, very much surprised.

“Oh my, yes,” returned Whitey. “We eat toothpicks—we have ’em fried every Friday and stewed every Stewsday. And besides that we’re very fond of apple cores—”

“I wavver yike apple cores myself,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ve on’y had one and somefing happened to me afterwards. I had a awful hurt down where I bweave and mamma made me take somefing that I didn’t yike to make me well. I fink I’d wavver have the apple core and the hurt than take the ovver fing, but mamma wanted me to take it and I didn’t care ’cause the taste didn’t last long.”

“They never hurt us, apple cores don’t,” said the White Tiddledywink, “but that’s because we don’t eat the way you do. You swallow everything. We never do. We haven’t anything to swallow ’em into. We just look at ’em you know and think how nice they are. When you get used to it that’s the nicest and healthiest way to eat.”

“I don’t much fink I’d yike that,” said Jimmieboy. “Seems to me I’d wavver taste what I eat. What good is molasses and bwead when you on’y look at it?”

“That’s just it,” said the White Tiddledywink, “it’s just as sweet whether you take it in your mouth or not. Taking it in your mouth doesn’t make it sweet. It’s just as sweet when you look at it—don’t you see? And then think of all the bad things you have to take sometimes! How nice it would be if you only had to look at medicines!”

“But they’re just as bad,” said Jimmieboy, triumphantly.

“Of course they are,” said the Tiddledywink. “But that doesn’t make any difference. You don’t taste ’em just looking at ’em.”

“I fink I’d wavver eat dinner my way and take mediker—” Jimmieboy always called medicine ‘mediker’— “and take mediker your way. I’ll have to tell my mamma about your way and maybe she’ll let me. You seem pyitty stwong.”

“I don’t much believe she will let you,” said the White Tiddledywink, shaking his head. “You see it’s the dinner you eat that upsets you, and to make everything right you’d have to take your medicine the way you eat your dinner. That’s the only way we can do. When we think a dinner we have taken doesn’t agree with us we look at the medicine right afterwards—sometimes we pour the medicine right on the dinner and it makes us feel better right away. You’ve got to stick to one plan or another.”

“I won’t,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ll do bofe. I’ll look at what I eat and then I’ll eat it, so that I’ll get twice as much good out of it as you do.”

“That’s greedy,” said the White Tiddledywink, “and as Blackey said in his verse, ‘I am not fond of greedy boys.’ You know the rest of it I suppose?”

“No,” replied Jimmieboy, “I don’t fink I ever heard that poem. How does it go?”

“This way,” said the Tiddledywink, and he recited as follows:

“I am not fond of greedy boys

Who’re eating all the time.

I’d never give them any toys

Or put them in my rhyme,

Except to say that years ago

I knew a boy named Si

Who ate so very much, you know,

He turned into a pie.”

“Is that a twue sto’y?” asked Jimmieboy, when the White Tiddledywink had finished.

“So Blackey said—only the boy’s name wasn’t really Si. He had to make his name Si so that it would rhyme with pie.”

“I s’pose if he had turned into a cake, the boy would have been named Jake,” said Jimmieboy.

“I suppose so,” returned the Tiddledywink. “Blackey never told us what his real name was, only that he turned into a pie and was eaten up at lunch time by the coachman.”

“That was awful,” said Jimmieboy, turning pale. “I must be careful not to eat too much.”

“Yes—or when you do, eat too much of something the coachman doesn’t like,” suggested the Tiddledywink.

“That’s a good idea,” said Jimmieboy, delighted. “And I know what it is—it’s marshmallows. But what ovver wooms have you here?”

“There’s our parlor over there,” said the Tiddledywink, pointing down the hall.

“Whereabouts,” asked Jimmieboy. “I don’t see any parlor, there’s on’y a little cwack in the wall like the one in the top of my penny bank.”

“That’s the door. It’s all we need,” said the Tiddledywink. “You see we can roll ourselves in there without any trouble. See?” and the Tiddledywink rolled through the crack as he spoke and disappeared in the wall. In a moment he was back again.

“Nice, eh?” he said.

“Yes—pyitty nice,” said Jimmieboy. “But how do you ever get company in there?”

“Company? In a parlor?” said the Tiddledywink with a scornful laugh. “I never heard of having company in a parlor. That’s where we sleep—sometimes. We just roll in there and lie down and go to sleep. Nothing but a Tiddledywink can get in there, you know—so we’re never disturbed.”

Jimmieboy couldn’t help laughing at the idea of sleeping in the parlor. His papa and mamma never had let him do it, and he thought the way the Tiddledywinks did things was very queer, but he was too polite to say much more about it, so he turned and walked into the playroom.

“This is nice,” said he, looking about him, “I yike this very much. What’s that funny fing over there?” he asked, pointing to a curious toy on the floor.

“That’s a rail-boat,” said the Tiddledywink. “Didn’t you ever see a rail-boat before?”

“Never heard of such a fing,” said Jimmieboy. “What good is it?”

“What good? Why, it’s one of the finest things to play with you ever saw,” returned the Tiddledywink.

“But what does it do?” asked the little visitor.

“Why, it’s a boat that sails up and down the track,” explained the Tiddledywink.

“But it’s cars that wun on wacks,” said Jimmieboy.

“Not in Tiddledywink-land,” said Whitey. “No, sir. We have lots of cars, but we have to push them up and down in a tub full of water, and the Snappers don’t like to have us do that for fear we’ll get all wet, and I don’t care much for it either because it’s horrid to get wet. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know,” said Jimmieboy. “My Nana never lets me get wet. I kind of fink I’d like to twy.”

“Oh, you’ll try someday. Just wait until you are caught out in a heavy storm without your cane. You’ll get wet enough,” laughed the Tiddledywink, “and you won’t like it either, I can tell you. I got wet once when I wasn’t more ’n a day old. That’s why I am a White Tiddledywink. I was to have been a Pink Tiddledywink, but I was rained on before my color set and that’s how it was.”

“You don’t feel very badly about it, do you?” said Jimmieboy, with a sympathetic glance at his little friend.

“Oh no. Not so very,” said the Tiddledywink. “People all like white, you know, and maybe if I’d been red, or black, or green, or pink somebody would have disliked me.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Jimmieboy, giving the White Tiddledywink a little squeeze. “I’d have yiked you anyhow. You’re so good to me, telling me all these fings and showing me about. And then you know,” he added, “white is such a clean color. I heard my papa say so, and he knows pyitty much everyfing—he said so himself.”

“I’d like to meet your papa someday,” said the White Tiddledywink. “He must be a fine fellow. But now I guess we’d better join the Snappers, and my brothers and cousins out in the park—I see they’re not in here. We can come back and see the toys afterwards.”

And so Jimmieboy and the White Tiddledywink passed out into the park, and the latter giving a funny little cry that Jimmieboy thought would have been very much like a canary bird’s whistle if it hadn’t reminded him of the purr of a kitten, they soon found themselves surrounded by the Tiddledywinks and the Snappers who came running in from the woods that stood on all sides of this beautiful spot.

•   6   •

THE WHIMPERJAM
AND THE WOBBLEDYPIE

At first the Tiddledywinks paid no attention to Jimmieboy, they were so glad to see Whitey back again. When Jimmieboy had said “Hullo” to them, just before he caught the White Tiddledywink, they were so frightened that they didn’t stop to see who it was that said, “Hullo.” If they had they would not have been afraid, because, although Jimmieboy was a great deal bigger than they were, they knew what kind of a boy he was and they were certain he wouldn’t intentionally hurt anyone. Indeed they had heard one of the little tin soldiers say that Jimmieboy was the tenderest hearted boy he ever knew, and he had added that while it hurt him very much to have his head twisted around so that the back of his neck came just over his scarf-pin, and although it was extremely painful to have his leg bent backwards until it snapped off, Jimmieboy was so awfully sweet about it afterwards, and seemed so very, very sorry for what he had done, that he would have been willing to go through the same trial ten times a day every day in the week for the rest of his life, just for the pleasure of being petted and sympathized with afterwards.

But they all thought it was some horrible animal that had caught Whitey and yelled “Hullo” and so they ran as fast as their legs could carry them. It was dark in the room at the time and they didn’t know but that the Wobbledypie had come after them, and Reddy said he was sure it was the Whimperjam, because he had heard him whimper.

Now the Wobbledypie was an animal that Jimmieboy had never heard of before, although if he had read Blackey’s poem about that terrible creature he would have known well enough what it was—as you will know when you read the poem which I will print right here.

“O the Wobbledypie is a horrible bird,

With a sewing machine for a mouth—

And he comes, or at least it is so I have heard,

From the regions that lie in the south.

He’s a nose that’s a hundred and ten inches long,

And his eyes are big windows of glass—

And on each of his fingers he carries a prong,

Which he uses for lighting the gas.

And a very queer thing ’bout the Wobbledypie

When he’s moving he rolls like a ball—

But the funniest yet to the Tiddledy eye

He has really no body at all.”

That is about as fine a description of the Wobbledypie as I ever heard, although it fails to mention the fact that you can always tell the Wobbledypie, even when he is far away, by his hat, which is a tall beaver hat like the one Jimmieboy’s papa wears to church on Sundays, only the silk on it is brushed the wrong way so as to give it a fuzzy look. If you see a Wobbledypie without his hat, you will know at once that he isn’t a real Wobbledypie but a Tartlejig—which isn’t half so useful as the Wobbledypie, has a nose only ninety-two inches long, and the window glass in his eyes is dull and cracked. Besides nobody is ever afraid of a Tartlejig, and the Tiddledywinks even go so far as to pull his whiskers and call him by his first name, which to a Tartlejig is the most awful thing that can happen.

The Whimperjam is another kind of creature altogether, but quite as terrible. He is eating all the time and nothing satisfies him quite so well as strawberry jam—from which he gets part of his name. The other part he gets from his habit of whimpering when he hasn’t any jam. He is a great tease, is the Whimperjam, and for that reason the Tiddledywinks fear him. It makes him very happy indeed to catch a Tiddledywink and compel his captive to roll about him, and he never stops until the Tiddledywink has rolled five miles, which makes the Tiddledywink very dizzy, as you would be if you turned round and round three hundred thousand times in a single afternoon—and that is about what the Tiddledywink would have to do to go five miles. But the Whimperjam is a much better looking creature than the Wobbledypie or the Tartlejig. He has bright red hair, blue eyes and a nose that looks like a shoe horn. His mouth is very small—only large enough to get strawberry jam and whimpers through. Like the Wobbledypie he has no body, but his legs, which grow out of his neck just below his chin, are very pretty indeed, looking like candlesticks, and he always has them covered with pretty striped stockings. His arms, too, are peculiar, being four times as long as his legs and having four joints in each, so that he can fold them up out of his way when he is walking.

The Tiddledywinks have to be very careful about the Whimperjam because he can reach so far. Indeed Blackey has a verse about this fearful animal in which he says:

A great big, horrid Whimperjam

Got hold of me one day

When I was standing where I am

And he a mile away.

So, as I say, it was a very glad time for the Tiddledywinks when they saw Whitey back again safe and sound.

“Was it the Whimperjam got you?” asked Reddy, putting his arm around him. “If it was, you must be tired.”

“No, it wasn’t the Whimperjam,” returned Whitey with a smile and a glance at Jimmieboy—the idea of anybody’s taking him for a Whimperjam was so absurd.

“Then it must have been the Wobbledypie,” said Bluey. “I said so too. You can’t fool me even in the dark. I can tell a Wobbledypie anywhere, even if I don’t see him. I can tell by the sound of his mind working when he thinks, and when his eyes wink it sounds like torpedoes. Didn’t you hear him winking, Greeney?” he asked, turning to the Green Tiddledywink, who was picking a bouquet of dandebears for Whitey—they don’t have dandelions in Tiddledywink-land, but the dandebears are quite as pretty.

“Cert’nly,” said Greeney. “I heard him wink and what’s more when I was climbing up the side of the basket to get away I looked back and I saw him reach out his hand and catch Whitey. He had a boxing glove on it, but I knew it was a Wobbledypie’s hand just the same—I could hear his knuckles crack.”

“Did he dip you in the mucilage pot, Whitey?” asked Bluey—for this was the favorite method of the Wobbledypie for making the Tiddledywinks unhappy.

Whitey laughed aloud. “You Tiddledys must have been dreaming,” he said, “or else you have wonderful eyesight and ear-hearing to be able to see things that aren’t and hear things that ain’t. It wasn’t the Wobbledypie that said ‘Hullo’ and grabbed me—nor the Tartlejig, nor the Pinjoodle, but dear little Jimmieboy.”

“Not the pretty little fellow who’s been playing with us all day and who gave me three rides around the nursery in his choo-choo cars for nothing?” said Blackey.

“The very same,” said Whitey.

“Well, this is very curious,

Its like I never see,

It may not be too much for us

But ’tis too much for me.”

said Blackey. And then he added, “I don’t see how Bluey could ever have taken Jimmieboy for the Wobbledypie.”

“Perhaps,” said Jimmieboy, thinking it was about time somebody paid some attention to him, “perhaps it was my curl papers. Does the Wobbledypie ever wear curl papers?”

“Oh, often,” said the Green Tiddledywink. “He wears them on his upper lip because part of his business is to sneer at things and his lip is naturally straight, so he has to curl it.”

“That accounts for it,” said Bluey, rather glad to get out of the position he was in so easily. He was afraid Jimmieboy might be angry at being taken for the Wobbledypie and this made everything all right. “I saw the curl papers and didn’t wait for the rest. I’m not very brave when the Wobbledypie comes around, you know,” he said, addressing Jimmieboy in a whisper. “It isn’t pleasant to be dipped in the mucilage. It makes you feel so sticky, you know, so I always run. Ever been dipped in mucilage, sir?”

“No, I’ve never been dipped in mucilage—that is, on’y my fumb,” answered Jimmieboy.

“Your what?” asked Bluey.

“My fumb—my big little finger that sits all alone down in the corner of my hand,” replied Jimmieboy, illustrating his statement by holding his thumb up and wiggling it.

“Oh yes. Your thumb,” returned Bluey. “And didn’t it stick?”

“Yes—it felt just like molasses—but it tasted diff’ent,” said Jimmieboy, making a wry face at the remembrance of the mucilage’s taste.

“Jimmieboy has come over to stay a little while with us,” said Whitey at this point, “and I want you Tiddledys to show him around. There are lots of things here that he’s never seen.”

“Very well,” said the Yellow Tiddledywink. “I’ll show him the Moon-flowers and my hoe with teeth.”

“I’ll read him some things from my poems,” said Blackey.

“He may not think they have much sense,

But that is only fair

Because although they are immense,

There isn’t any there.”

“And I,” said the Red Tiddledywink, “will take him up to my room and ask him riddles and tell him lots and lots of jokes.”

“I’ll take him rowing,” said the Green Tiddledywink.

“Papa don’t let me go wowing,” replied Jimmieboy.

“Why not?” queried Greeney.

“Because he’s afwaid I’ll fall in the water,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh, pshaw!” returned the Green Tiddledywink. “We don’t row anywhere near the water. How could you row a bicycle on water? It wouldn’t float. Come along.”

And before Jimmieboy knew how he got there, he and the Green Tiddledywink were seated on a beautiful nickel bicycle, rowing down the garden path as fast as their oars could take them.

•   7   •

JIMMIEBOY AND GREENEY
GO ROWING

For a few minutes Jimmieboy was uneasy. It isn’t the certainest thing in the world rowing a bicycle. It is even harder, some people think, than riding one in the regular way because the oars sometimes do not weigh the same and make the bicycle tip to one side, but after he’d rowed a mile or two Jimmieboy began to like it very much and got so that he wasn’t at all afraid.

“Do you wow much?” he said, turning to the Green Tiddledywink who sat behind him.

“Oh, yes indeed. “I’m out rowing nearly all the time—but the others don’t care so very much for it. They like sailing better than they do rowing. They think it is easier, and perhaps it is, but I believe in taking all the exercise I can get. Exercise makes you good and strong, and I’m the strongest Tiddledywink in the basket.”

“I shouldn’t fink sailing on a bicycle would be very safe,” said Jimmieboy. He had seen boats sailing on a lake his papa and mamma had taken him to, way up in the mountains, the summer before, and he knew well enough that sometimes when the wind blew pretty hard the boats used to go over on one side and he couldn’t see very well how a bicycle could be made to stand up at all if that should happen to it.

“Well, you are right there,” said the Tiddledywink, “it isn’t safe unless you have your roads padded with mattresses and that costs a great many flowers.”

“Gweat many fwowers?” asked Jimmieboy, opening his eyes as wide as he could, for he was just as surprised as he could be. “What do you mean by that?”

“We pay all our bills with flowers in Tiddledywink-land. Didn’t you know that?” asked the Tiddledywink, surprised in his turn.

“Never heard of such a funny fing,” said Jimmieboy. “S’pose all your fwowers fade—what becomes of your money?”

“Flowers don’t fade here. They’re all made of wax. Don’t you know about the bees?” said Greeney.

“Of course I know about the bees,” said Jimmieboy. “Know lots about ’em. They bite with their tails—and they wun awound the gardens and get honey out of the fwowers.”

“Yes,” said the Green Tiddledywink. “That’s all true—but didn’t you ever hear of beeswax?”

“Guess I did,” laughed Jimmieboy. “My mamma’s got some down in the ironing room to wub on the irons. I know all about it too because I tried to chew some of it up one day and couldn’t. It was pyitty good though.”

“Well, where do you suppose the bees got that?”

“I never fought to fink,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Greeney. “They get it out of the wax flowers that grow here in Tiddledywink-land. That’s where; and when it’s fried in pancakes with nutmeg dust on ’em it’s the finest dish you ever looked at.”

“But if your fwowers are made of wax they don’t have any smell,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh, yes, they do,” retorted the Tiddledywink, “and what’s more we can make ’em smell just as we want ’em to because we water ’em with cologne. If we think a daisolet would be nicer if it smelled like a heliorose or a verbenatrope we water it with cologne that will make it smell that way, so everybody’s satisfied with flowers he has.”

“Isn’t it wavver ’spensive waterin’ fwowers with cologne?” asked Jimmieboy. “I bwoke a bottle of cologne once and my Nana said anovver one just like it would cost, oh, ever so much money—over fifty cents, she said. That’s more’n you cost.”

“’Tisn’t more’n we cost,” said the Tiddledywink warmly. “We cost a dollar. We aren’t any fifty cent Tiddledywinks and you mustn’t think we are. We are all in fast colors and we haven’t any nicks in us either, and besides our basket’s worth more’n forty cents. But never mind about that. Cologne would be expensive if we didn’t have it in fountains. Comes down from the Tiddledywink mountains and spouts right up in our gardens. That’s the best kind of cologne there is, you know. Comes right straight out of the ground and doesn’t have to be mixed or bottled or anything—only just smelled.”

For a minute or two Jimmieboy said nothing. He thought it must be perfectly lovely to live in the country where they had fountains of cologne and where flowers always smelled just as you wanted them to, and he had an idea that he’d like to stay with the Tiddledywinks all the time; but then, when he thought of his papa and mamma and his books and cars and dollies and all the other nice things he had in the nursery, he made up his mind that after all he would like Tiddledywink-land better as a place to visit, and he resolved that when he went back home again he would tell his papa all about the lovely country he was now in, and try to get him to visit it too, and maybe bring mamma if she’d come—which he doubted because his mamma was too fond of home to take pleasure in traveling anywhere.

“What kind of fing do they go sailing in then, if they can’t sail bicycles?” he asked, at last breaking the silence.

“Sometimes they go in boats built like your express wagon. Sometimes they go out in baby carriages, but most of the time they have a little sled on wheels with a big pole for the sail in the middle of it,” returned the Tiddledywink. “When they go chickening they use a great big donkey cart because it stands way up high and doesn’t frighten the chickens.”

“I don’t know what you mean by wickening,” said Jimmieboy, who was very much puzzled by what the Tiddledywink said. “What is wickening?”

“I didn’t say wickening,” retorted the Tiddledywink. “I said chickening. I thought everybody knew what chickening was. It’s like fishing, only instead of catching fish you catch chickens. Get a boat and sail out to where the chickens are thickest; tie up to a hitching post, and then bait your line with a piece of corn or a cold cake of some kind and haul in chickens by the dozen. It’s great sport, chickening. Blackey’s very fond of it. In his little book called ‘Poems of an Aged Snapper,’ he wrote a mighty pretty verse on it. This is the way it goes:

“‘Ah me, I sigh for those old days—

The days when papa use’ter

Take me chickening through the maize.

My baited line I’d cast and raise

A fat, fourteen pound rooster.’”

“I don’t beyieve it’s a twue sto’y at all,” said Jimmieboy. “No Snapper could ever haul in a fourteen pound Wooster. He wouldn’t be heavy enough.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said the Green Tiddledywink with a shake of his head. “Those Snappers are pretty smart fellows and maybe the Poppergee helped him.”

“What’s a Poppergee?” asked Jimmieboy.

“He’s the good fairy of the Tiddledywinks,” answered Greeney. “He comes to us when we are in a fix and puts cold cream on our troubles. He’s awful nice. He’s a big tall creature with blue trousers on, and he always has a bunch of keys in his pocket and a bottle of vaseline in his bag. I’ll never forget the first time I tried to go sailing on a bicycle and got upset. It was over my head—”

“Over your head on the path? I don’t see how that could be,” said Jimmieboy.

“You didn’t wait for me to finish,” returned the Tiddledywink, “and you ought always to wait until people are through talking before you begin. As Blackey puts it:

‘When other people have the floor,

I’ll tell you what to do:

Refrain from putting in your oar

Till t’other ones are through.’”

“’Scuse me,” said Jimmieboy. “Papa told me about that too and I forgot.”

“Well, as I was saying,” said Greeney. “It was over my head when I fell out—because I fell into the bushes. It was horrid, too. I couldn’t see, and the ladder we carry with us when we sail, so’s to climb up and call for help in case of accident, wasn’t where I could reach it at all and I was in an awful position. I cried that time, I can tell you—cried so hard my tears wet my feet and gave me a fearful cold. That’s the worst part of this land sailing. If you get wrecked and cry, you get so awfully wet, while at sea your tears just drop in the water and don’t do any harm. But, just as I was giving myself up for lost, the Poppergee came along, and I tell you I was glad. I knew he was coming by the rattle of his keys in his pocket as he walked. I called to him and he pulled me out, gave me a nice big spoonful of vaseline and a little bit of cold cream and I was all right again. So you see I am very fond of the Poppergee.”

“I should fink you would be very fond of him,” said Jimmieboy. “It’s a very fine fing to have a good fairwy yike that. I’ve got one, and I fink he must be somefing yike your Poppergee. He has a bunch of keys in his pocket and he wears blue twousers too, sometimes, but he never carwies cold cweam and vaseline in his bag. He’s ’bout six feet tall.”

“So’s our Poppergee,” put in Greeney. “And he never wears a hat in the house.”

“Neiver does my fairwy,” said Jimmieboy. “Does your Poppergee have a watch that says ‘tick’ all the time?”

“Yes, he has,” replied the Tiddledywink. “And it is always eight minutes behind time and the Poppergee never can remember whether it’s too slow or too fast, so he always gets where he wants to be long before he wants to be there, and so he never gets left.”

“Then I know who the Poppergee is,” said Jimmieboy with a chuckle.”

“Who?” asked Greeney.

“Never you mind,” said Jimmieboy, “but when I go home I’m going to tease my papa about somefing, ’cause he’s got a watch that’s eight minutes wrong too, and he wears blue—but never mind. I’ll have lots of fun with him. Hullo! What’s this?” he added suddenly, for the bicycle had stopped before a little green summerhouse and Greeney had hopped to the ground and offered his hand to Jimmieboy to help him down.

•   8   •

MISS GREEN TIDDLEDYWINK

“Dear me!” cried Jimmieboy in surprise, as he gazed at the pretty little cottage before which he and the Green Tiddledywink were standing. “What is this?”

“This is my home,” replied the Tiddledywink with a proud smile. “This is where my brothers and sisters and I live, together with our Snapper. Isn’t it nice?”

“Perfectly lubly,” said Jimmieboy, clapping his hands with delight, “but I fought you all lived down there in the basket!”

“You mustn’t think when you are in Tiddledywink-land,” said the Green Tiddledywink gravely. He grew very solemn, because he didn’t want to have to tell Jimmieboy what he had hidden from him in the beginning—that the Tiddledywinks only slept in the parlor in the basket when they were naughty. He didn’t want Jimmieboy to know that the Tiddledywinks ever were naughty, and so he tried to keep him from saying anything more on that subject. “You mustn’t think here,” he added, “because it’s against our laws, except at dinner time, when you have to think whether you like your dinner or not. Didn’t you know that if people didn’t know what it was to think, it would never occur to them to be thoughtless?”

“I never fought of that,” said Jimmieboy.

“Which shows how much good it does to think,” cried the Tiddledywink. “With all your thinking you haven’t been able to think of things that we think of without thinking.”

“I wish you’d say that again,” said Jimmieboy, puzzled a little bit by the Tiddledywink’s words. “I couldn’t exyactly follow you.”

“No, I couldn’t say it again because I’ve got so many other things to say,” returned the Tiddledywink, “and as for following me, you won’t find that hard if you will keep your eye on me and go wherever I go. Won’t you come in and see my brothers and sisters and the Snapper?” he added.

Jimmieboy never remembered whether he said he would go in or not. All he ever knew about it was that he soon found himself standing in the prettiest little parlor imaginable, where, playing on a piano about as tall as a darning needle, he saw a lovely Tiddledywink with what looked like a satin dress on. It was the Green Tiddledywink’s sister practicing her music lesson, and as Jimmieboy listened to the tune she was playing he thought he “reckernized” it, but whether it was “Yankee Doodle” or “Way Down Upon the Suwanee River,” he couldn’t quite make out. At any rate he thought it was an awfully pretty tune and he said so.

“Oh dear,” cried little Miss Green Tiddledywink, jumping up hurriedly from the piano. “Excuse me, I didn’t know anyone had come in.”

“It’s only Jimmieboy and me,” said her brother.

“And I enjoyed the moobic so much,” said Jimmieboy—he always called music ‘moobic.’ However, Miss Green Tiddledywink seemed to understand.

“What was it you were playing?” he added. “‘Yankee Doodle’ or ‘Way Down Upon the Suwanee River’?”

“I don’t know either of those songs,” replied Miss Green Tiddledywink. “The air I was playing is called ‘Suwanee Doodle.’ There is a tune called ‘Way Down Upon the Yankee River,’ but I only know it upon the finger-bowls—I’ve never played it on the piano.”

“I don’t fink I quite unnerstand you,” said Jimmieboy. “What do you mean when you say you know it on the finger-bowls?”

“Didn’t you ever play on the finger-bowls?” asked the Green Tiddledywink.

“Nope,” said Jimmieboy. “Not as I can recommember.”

“Then I’ll play them for you,” said Miss Green Tiddledywink, rising and walking to the table where there stood all in a row a dozen pretty glass finger-bowls, which, when she tapped them with a little gold hammer she had, tinkled forth the most beautiful ‘moobic’ Jimmieboy had ever heard. When she had finished playing she turned to Jimmieboy and said:

“That’s ‘Way Down Upon the Yankee River’.”

“Yes—I know now,” said Jimmieboy. “Your tune ‘Suwanee Doodle,’ is ‘Yankee Doodle’ mixed with ‘Suwanee River,’ while your ‘Yankee River’ is ‘Suwanee River’ mixed with ‘Yankee Doodle.’”

“Yes, I guess that’s it,” said Miss Green Tiddledywink. “I never could tell the difference between them myself, except that I could play one on the piano and the other on the finger-bowls.”

“Don’t you fink that’s a funny fing to use finger bowls for—to play tunes on?” asked Jimmieboy of Miss Green Tiddledywink.

“Funny!” she answered, “whatever else could they be used for? How do you use finger bowls up where you live? As hats?”

Here the little young woman laughed merrily, and Jimmieboy could not help doing the same, because it did seem very absurd, this idea of hers, that he and his papa and mamma wore finger-bowls for hats.

“Why, no. We have ’em for dinner,” said he.

“You don’t eat ’em?” cried Miss Green Tiddledywink.

“No, no, no, no!” laughed Jimmieboy. “We couldn’t eat glass. Of course not—but we use them to wash our hands in.”

“I should think,” said the young woman, her lip curving into a becoming bit of a sneer, “I should think you would wash your hands before going to dinner. I don’t understand you people anyhow,” she added. “I think you are exceedingly queer. You think it is so awfully fine to have hair on your heads and yet it is a fearful bother for you to keep it curled. I think Blackey hit it off just about right in his rhyme on unnecessary things. He wrote:

‘Oh how I hate unnecessary things,

Including beggars, measles, mumps and kings.

Oh how I hate the things that no one needs.

Including whooping-cough, snowballs and weeds.

How glad am I that I don’t have to wear

Eye-glasses, rubber-boots or curly-hair—

And how my heart doth gladly beat and sing

That I’m not an unnecessary thing.’”

Here Jimmieboy noticed for the first time that little Miss Green Tiddledywink was bald and he was surprised to see that she was just as pretty as could be in spite of it.

“But our heads would look very funny if we didn’t have hair,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh, that’s all a notion,” returned Miss Green Tiddledywink, “and besides even if you did look funny you could cover it up with a hat.”

“That’s so,” said Jimmieboy, “but they don’t let little boys keep their hats on in the house where I live.”

“I know that,” returned the Tiddledywink, “but that’s only because they don’t want you to cover up your hair,” and then, seeing that Jimmieboy was looking rather bored at getting into an argument about his people’s customs, the young woman asked him if he wouldn’t like to have her sing him a song, and he said he would, whereupon she sang what she called a few lines from Father Gander’s Melodies.

“They ran something like this:

“I had a little husband once,

No bigger than my thumb;

I took him round to Taffy’s house

And there I bade him drum.

When Taffy heard him drumming there,

Dressed in his cloak of red,

He got his little musket down

And shot him in the head.”

“My Mother Goose has got some po’twy in it somefing yike that,” said Jimmieboy, “on’y Taffy doesn’t shoot the little husband. He steals a marrow bone.”

“That’s a queer thing to do,” returned little Miss Green Tiddledywink. “Whatever could he do with a marrow bone? That doesn’t seem a likely thing to do. I believe Father Gander’s story is the true one—though it was rather hard on the little husband. Did you ever hear this one?

‘I love little Piggy, her grunt is so sweet,

And if I don’t hurt her she’ll slowly repeat

The names of her uncles, the price of her hat,

And tell funny stories about Pussy Cat.’” .

Jimmieboy laughed at this until his sides ached.

“That’s very funny,” he said, “but it ain’t a bit yike Mother Goose’s story about loving little Pussy whose coat is so warm.”

“Coat?” cried the little Green Tiddledywink girl. “I don’t see why she speaks of the Pussycat’s coat—as if the Pussycat could slip it on and off whenever she wanted to! Why, it’s ’diculous.”

“It’s what?” asked Jimmieboy. “Diculous” was a new word for him.

“Oh, you’d say wee-diculous, I suppose,” returned Miss Tiddledywink, “but I haven’t time to put wees on all my words the way you do.”

“Tell me some more of Father Gander’s po’twy,” said Jimmieboy, wishing to change the subject.

“Certainly,” replied Miss Greeney, rising from her chair and getting a book from which she read:

“Jack Fat could eat no sprats,

His wife would not eat shrimps,

And while Jack hunted dogs and cats

His wife would curl her crimps.”

“That’s pyitty good,” said Jimmieboy. “Is there anyfing there about ‘Wain, Wain, go away?’”

“No, but there’s this one:

Rain, Rain, do not shirk,—

My umbrella wants to work!’”

said Miss Greeney. “Is that anything like yours?”

“Exyactly the same,” said Jimmieboy, “on’y it’s just the ropposite to the way mine goes. How about ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’—is that there?”

“Yes,” returned Miss Green Tiddledywink, turning over the pages. “Here it is:

‘Hey, Diddle, Diddle.

The Pig and the Griddle!

The cat sat down on the range;

And the little mouse grinned

When the taters were skinned,

And the butcher ran off with the change.’”

“But,” said Jimmieboy, in a surprised tone, “doesn’t Father Gander tell you how the cow jumped over the moon, and how the dish wan away with the spoon?”

“Of course not,” replied Miss Greeney. “And how could he? It never happened. A pony like the Red Tiddledywink’s might be able to jump over the moon because he’s got spring heels, but no plain cow could ever jump that high, and all that Father Gander says in his book is really and truly true. Like Jack and Jill. Jack never fell down at all as it really happened.

“‘Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water.

Jill came near to falling down,

But Jacky deftly caught her.’

That’s the way that affair happened.”

“I s’pose that’s so,” said Jimmieboy, after a minute of thought; then he added, “didn’t you say the Wed Widdledywink had a pony?”

“Yes,” replied Miss Greeney. “A lovely little—why,” she said, interrupting herself, “there he is with it now at the door.”

And then Jimmieboy heard the Red Tiddledywink’s voice out in front of the green cottage calling: “Jimmieboy—oh—Jimmieboy!”

•   9   •

JIMMIEBOY AND REDDY
DRIVE TO THE ZOO

As was usually the case with when there was something new and wonderful to be seen, it did not take him long to present himself to the Red Tiddledywink, who sure enough, as Miss Green Tiddledywink had said, had arrived with his pony and barrow to take Jimmieboy driving.

Jimmieboy had fully intended to say “Howdy-do” to the Red Tiddledywink as soon as he saw him, but when the pony met his gaze he was so pleased that he forgot to do it—and it was no wonder that he was pleased, for the Red Tiddledywink’s pony was a beauty—although a funny looking beauty, it seemed to Jimmieboy at first. He had on two pairs of very handsome patent leather shoes and blue eyeglasses, the pony had, which seemed very strange until Jimmieboy got used to it. Then around his neck was a stiff white linen sailor collar, with a red silk necktie, and a great big diamond pin in it, such as Jimmieboy remembered seeing the fireman, who was his mamma’s cook’s cousin, wear once when he called on the cook. Jimmieboy remembered it because he happened to be in the kitchen when the cook’s cousin called, eating the cake batter from the sides of a big earthenware dish, which was a pleasure he could never forget. The diamond was very dazzling, and that was why the pony had to wear the blue eyeglasses. But the queerest thing about the pony was his tail, growing on the end of which Jimmieboy noticed a great big fly net.

“That’s a great scheme,” the Red Tiddledywink said afterwards. “You see it isn’t enough to scare a fly away, because he gets over his fright in a very few minutes and comes right back again. The way our ponies’ tails are made enables them to catch the fly and hold on to him, so that when he is got rid of once he is got rid of for all the time.”

“That’s a good fing,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ll have to tell papa about that when I get back home.”

“Oh, that wouldn’t do any good,” put in the Red Tiddledywink, “because they have got to grow on the horses. You couldn’t buy a net for your horses to catch flies with. Your papa knows that as well as anybody, and as for growing ’em it’s only on Tiddledywink horses that these nets are found.”

“Then I’ll tell papa to buy a team of Widdledywink horses,” said Jimmieboy.

“Humph! Your papa must be rich,” returned Reddy. “Do you know how much a team of Tiddledywink horses would cost?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, eight dollars wouldn’t more’n begin to buy ’em,” said the Red Tiddledywink, “and it would take four more to finish the bargain.”

When Jimmieboy counted up and realized that it would take twelve full dollars for his papa to buy a team of Tiddledywink horses, he sighed;—twelve dollars was so much money—and he had only managed to save nine cents since his last birthday, nearly a year ago. But to return. There stood this wonderful pony with the patent leather shoes, harnessed to a wheelbarrow, which he pushed before him, the Red Tiddledywink sitting in front, near the wheel, and pointing out to the pony where he wished to go.

“Ready?” asked the Tiddledywink.

“Yes—always,” said Jimmieboy.

“Then you must be like me,” said the Tiddledywink, with a grin. “I’m always Reddy too.”

And then Jimmieboy remembered that the Red Tiddledywink was the one that was always joking, and he said he was glad to meet him again, as he climbed into the wheelbarrow.

“Where shall we drive to?” asked the Red Tiddledywink as Jimmieboy took a seat beside him. “Would you rather go to the Zoo or to see the Water-Wheel?”

“I don’t know,” said Jimmieboy, after thinking a minute. “Which is the bestest?”

“Well, I think the Water-Wheel is the most likely to please everybody because there’s always enough of it to go round,” returned the Red Tiddledywink, “but some people claim to have had a roaring good time at the Zoo, looking at the Mangatoo and the other animals there.”

“Let’s go to see bofe of ’em,” said Jimmieboy. “We have time, haven’t we?”

“I guess so,” said the Red Tiddledywink, with a sly wink at the pony. “If we haven’t we can stop at the clockmaker’s and buy some; and perhaps if he hasn’t any we’ll meet somebody else with some to spare.”

This made Jimmieboy laugh. He thought Reddy was a very bright Tiddledywink and he said so.

“Well, that’s very true,” said the Red Tiddledywink, “but you know red is a bright color and I guess that’s where I get it. Turn to the left, Mumbledypeg.”

The pony turned to the right. “Who is Wumbledypeg?” asked Jimmieboy.

“The pony, of course,” answered Reddy. “Who did you suppose it was—that poll-parrot that’s just lighted on his mane?”

“That’s not a poll-parwot, said Jimmieboy, “it’s a horsefly. My papa’s horse always has a lot of ’em following him.”

“I know that’s what you call them up your way, but we call them poll-parrots down here because they’re a nuisance,” returned Reddy. “Don’t you think Mumbledypeg is a good name for my pony?”

“I s’pose it is,” said Jimmieboy, “but it seems a pyitty big name for such a little horse.”

“That’s just why I named him Mumbledypeg,” returned the Red Tiddledywink. “It’ll make him think he’s a big horse, and he goes just twice as fast as he would if I called him Tiny. He thinks I think he’s fourteen knuckles high instead of two and a half, and he doesn’t want me to think anything else, because, you know, he’s a proud little animal. That is why he wears patent leather shoes—because he’s so full of pride.”

“He may be pwoud,” said Jimmieboy, “but I don’t fink he knows much.”

“Don’t think he knows much? Why, he’s the smartest little horse you ever saw,” retorted Reddy, indignantly.

“But you told him to turn to the left and he turned to the wight.”

“That proves just what I said,” cried the Red Tiddledywink triumphantly. “He knew more than I did. He didn’t make any mistake. He knows the right is always right.”

“I hadn’t fought of it that way,” said Jimmieboy, “but now you say it, I see. It’s funny though, isn’t it?”

“I’ve known funnier things,” returned Reddy. “For instance, my joke about the Turtle and the Locomotive was a great deal funnier.”

“I don’t fink I know that one,” said Jimmieboy.

“It’s a riddle,” said the Tiddledywink. “The riddle is ‘What’s the difference between a turtle and a locomotive?’”

“Well,” said Jimmieboy meekly, “What is it?”

“Don’t you really know?” asked the Tiddledywink.

“No,” said Jimmieboy, innocently.

“Then you’d better not walk on the railroad track,” roared Reddy.

Jimmieboy heard a funny short laugh behind him and when he turned he noticed that the pony’s eyeglasses had slipped—the little animal had been laughing. He laughed too, Jimmieboy did, the Tiddledywink had caught him so neatly, but he didn’t like it very much after all.

Just then Reddy bowed very sweetly to somebody on the walk beside the road.

“Who was that?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Why, don’t you know her?” said Reddy. “That’s the doll-baby Bluey said was stuffed with sawdust. She’s a great friend of mine and my sister has invited her down here to spend a week. Blackey wrote the invitation in rhyme for us. It was quite pretty too. He wrote

‘Dear Dolly: Come

Where wax-bees hum,

And hare bells softly clink—

And spend some time

With, yours for rhyme,

The Ruby Tiddledywink.’”

“That was very nice,” said Jimmieboy. “And what did the doll-baby answer?”

“She wrote some poetry too when she answered. She said:

‘Look out for me,

O waxen bee,

For one full week—two maybe.

Excuse my pen

(Where has it been!)

Yours always, Dolly Baby.’”

“Did she send the letter by post?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, no indeed,” said the Red Tiddledywink. “That’s a silly way to do. Down here in Tiddledywink-land we never think of using the post. When we have letters to write, we write ’em and then take ’em and deliver ’em ourselves. That saves time and the money for stamps stays in our own pockets. The doll-baby brought her letter with her.”

“But what’s the use of witing if you are fixed so that you can take the letters yourself? There isn’t any use of witing fings that you can say,” protested Jimmieboy.

“I don’t know about that,” said Reddy. “We can all say Blackey’s poetry but there was lots of use writing it, and besides that our plan gives you plenty of practice in writing and that’s a good thing to have. And then you know if people always wrote things and said nothing there’d never be any fighting afterwards about what they said. I think after all it would be better to write everything and not say a word—like a dumb-waiter.”

This was only half clear to Jimmieboy. He knew a dumb-waiter couldn’t say anything, but he never had heard before that it wrote, but he was afraid that Reddy was trying to get up some big joke at his expense, so he kept very still.

“You don’t seem to have much to say,” said Reddy after a while, noticing Jimmieboy’s silence.

“No,” returned Jimmieboy. “I haven’t any pen and ink to say it with,” and then seeing that Reddy felt a little hurt he added: “did you ever wite a book of jokes?”

“Yes—once,” said the Red Tiddledywink sadly, “and I nearly got arrested for it, and the Snappers all said if I ever wrote another they wouldn’t let me stay a Tiddledywink any more—so I never did it again.”

“Why were they so queer about it?” asked Jimmieboy. “I should fink they’d yike to have you wite jokes.”

“Oh, they do—but they get too much of ’em when they come by the bookful. The way I nearly got arrested, you know, was through an old Blue Snapper from another basket getting hold of the book and laughing himself to death. They said I was responsible, I but got off by saying the Snapper killed himself. I didn’t give him the book—he took it himself.”

“Of course it was his own fault,” said Jimmieboy.

“Of course,” said Reddy, “but the Snappers in our basket said I’d better not do any more anyhow, because it kept them too busy sewing buttons on the other Tiddledywinks’ vests—they all laughed till their buttons came off; and Greeney, he nearly broke his arm over my joke about the poorest way to get rid of the measles being to give ’em to somebody else. He thought of that one day while he was out rowing on his bicycle and he laughed so he fell off and hurt his arm awfully.”

“That was too bad,” said Jimmieboy. “I guess it’s just as well that you’ve stopped witing books of jokes. It’s wavver ser’us business the way it happened.”

“Very ser’us,” assented the Red Tiddledywink. “But here we are at the Zoo. Will you get out and see it or shall we have the animals out to see you?”

“I guess I’ll have ’em come out here,” said Jimmieboy, pleased with the novelty of having the Zoo come to see him.

“I’m afraid,” said the Red Tiddledywink with a smile, “that you’ll have to guess again—because that isn’t the right answer.”

And so Jimmieboy got out of the barrow and he and the Red Tiddledywink started to enter the Zoo.

“You may run away now,” said Reddy to the pony, as the door opened—which to Jimmieboy seemed a very strange thing to say to a pony.

•   10   •

THE NIGHTMARE

And such animals as that Zoo contained! There for instance was the Nightmare. Jimmieboy had frequently heard his papa speak of the Nightmare, but until he entered the Tiddledywink-land Zoo he had never seen one. Now it stood before him in a great big box-stall, large enough, it seemed to Jimmieboy, to hold all the horses in his nursery, with room to spare. It wasn’t a bad looking animal, either, Jimmieboy thought—not half so bad as he had supposed it would be after hearing his papa describe it—indeed as Jimmieboy’s papa told about it the Nightmare was an animal to be feared, while here in the Zoo he seemed as gentle as a lamb and as playful as a kitten.

“That’s a fine specimen of a Nightmare,” said the Red Tiddledywink, proudly. “In fact I heard his keeper say he was the finest he ever saw. The only trouble with him is that he eats so much and he’ll never eat anything a second time, not even strawberry shortcake. They gave him some of that one day and he ate up forty-seven pieces of it and wanted more. He seemed to like it so much that they made a hundred and seventeen rousing big ones for him the next day, but he wouldn’t touch ’em. Simply turned his head away and cried.”

“What did they do then?” asked Jimmieboy; it seemed so strange that anything could ever refuse strawberry shortcake.

“They brought him ten barrels of whipped cream and he smiled like you do on Christmas morning,” returned Reddy, “and in five minutes there wasn’t a spoonful left, but ever since then he has refused to touch it. He is hungry for new things all the time. He’ll eat anything, it doesn’t matter what, once, and all there is of it, too, and then he’s had enough. Never wants to see it again.”

“He doesn’t seem to have any shoes on,” said Jimmieboy, taking a closer look at the animal.

“Oh, no. A Nightmare only wears slippers when he wears anything. That’s so he can move about without waking people,” explained the Red Tiddledywink. “If he waked people, you know, he couldn’t work, because the minute a man or a Tiddledywink wakes up, for some reason or other, he doesn’t like the Nightmare, and won’t have anything more to do with him. So he usually goes about on tiptoes.”

Here the Nightmare gave an exhibition of how he went about on tiptoes, which must have pleased Jimmieboy very much, for he fairly roared with laughter.

“Dear me,” cried the Red Tiddledywink. “You must be more careful. Don’t laugh at the Nightmare. That makes him shy.”

“Well, what of it?” said Jimmieboy, recklessly. “What happens when he’s shy?”

“He always calls for soda-water then, and we can’t get it here,” replied the Red Tiddledywink, with an anxious glance at the Nightmare.

“And if he doesn’t get it, what then?” asked Jimmieboy.

“He usually sends in his resignation from the Zoo,” returned the Red Tiddledywink. “And when that happens the managers are put to enormous expense getting him to change his mind and stay a little while longer. And then sometimes if he’s feeling cross anyhow, and sees people laughing at him, he’ll refuse to eat anything for a week.”

“I should fink that would make it cheaper to keep him,” said Jimmieboy.

“Not at all,” replied Reddy. “You see when he goes without anything to eat for a week, he is always extra hungry for the next six months.”

“Well,” put in Jimmieboy, “he looks so funny walking on tipsy-toes, I can’t help laughing, and if my doing it is going to bwing about all those dweadful fings, perhaps we’d better look at somefing else that don’t mind being laughed at.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Reddy. “Suppose we go and see the Welsh Rabbits? Generally people see the Welsh Rabbits before they see the Nightmare, but we’ll do it differently. Did you ever see a Welsh Rabbit?”

“No, I don’t fink I ever did,” said Jimmieboy. “What do they look yike?”

“They’re very pretty,” returned Reddy, “and I heard a man say once they were good to eat—but we never kill ’em. They’re just as good to look at, I think—all nice and yellow, and soft as a pussy cat. There are two of ’em now over in that cage.”

“What funny looking animals! What are they doing now?” asked Jimmieboy, inspecting the Welsh Rabbits.

“They’re asleep,” Reddy answered. “They sleep all the time. We’ve had those rabbits four years now and they’ve never waked up. They go to sleep on those pieces of toast you see there and seem perfectly happy.”

“Do they ever fight?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Not with each other,” said Reddy. “I heard of their killing a man once but I never could see how they did it. They’re the best behaved animals in the Zoo. They’re very good unless they get cold, and then they are fearful.”

“I s’pose it’s to keep warm that they yike to go to sleep on the toast,” suggested Jimmieboy.

“Yes—that’s it,” replied Reddy. “But sometimes you know even toast is cold and that makes the Rabbits suffer and get disagreeable.”

“I don’t s’pose,” said Jimmieboy, gazing intently at the Rabbits, “that they’re good for much except for looking at and eating.”

“No,” returned Reddy. “I don’t suppose they are—though I did hear of a man who said they’d make good boots. They might, too, but I don’t think the boots would last very long.”

“No, I don’t fink so either,” said Jimmieboy. “And besides people don’t care to wear boots of that color. Do they eat anyfing?”

“Very little—we don’t ever give ’em anything but poached eggs and they are always left untouched. The chief trouble we have with the Rabbits is keeping ’em warm. We give ’em an overcoat of mustard in winter and generally that does very well.”

“I’d yike my papa to see one of ’em,” said Jimmieboy. “I fink he’d yike ’em.”

“I know he would,” returned Reddy. “That’s a way papas have—why, I knew a a little boy whose papa would rather have a Welsh Rabbit than a stuffed owl or a team of saw-horses.”

“What’s the use of a stuffed owl and a team of saw-horses anyhow?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Lots of use,” answered Reddy, “the stuffed owl won’t sing, and the saw-horses never run away, and you never have to feed ’em. I know plenty of people who are always poor because their horses eat so much, and if they had saw-horses they wouldn’t have to pay a cent for their food.”

“Yes,—but how could they wide downtown and go shopping?” asked Jimmieboy.

“They could take a horse-car of course,” returned Reddy. “I’m surprised you didn’t think of that.”

“Well, I’m not s’prised,” said Jimmieboy. “I’m not s’prised at anyfing I hear or see here and I ain’t going to be either—on’y I don’t see why you yike a bird not to sing. That’s one of the fings I yike about a bird—his singing.

“Oh, pshaw!” retorted Reddy. “You’re a very queer little boy—or else you never heard the Anirooney bird.”

“The what?” asked Jimmieboy.

“The Anirooney bird,” replied Reddy. “He’s the queerest looking bird you ever saw in your life. He has a Japanese fan for a tail. He curls his feathers every morning over a pipe stem and parts his hair in the middle. He has four legs and two wings like other birds, but he’s too dignified to fly.”

“What does he do when he wants to go up a twee—climb?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, no indeed,” ejaculated Reddy. “That would be more undignified than flying. He changes his mind and stays below. He won’t live in a cage unless it has mirrors on all sides of it. His vanity is really something fearful, and when we get to him you mustn’t let on but what you think he is the loveliest bird you ever saw, because if you don’t he’ll beat a tattoo on the side of his cage with all four of his drumsticks, and it always makes people deaf when he does that.”

“But I can’t tell a sto’y,” said Jimmieboy. “I can’t say I fink he’s pyitty if I don’t.”

“Then there’s only two things left for us to do,” said the Red Tiddledywink. “Either you can’t see him at ‘all or you mustn’t say anything while you’re looking at him.”

“I won’t say a word,” said Jimmieboy in a whisper. “But why do you call him the Aniwooney bird?” he said.

“Because Annie Rooney is the only song he can sing,” returned the Red Tiddledywink, “and it’s dreadful. He has a notion, you know, that his voice, which sounds like a foghorn on a dark night, accompanied by two penny whistles and a banjo with only one string, is the most beautiful thing in the world, and he sings Annie Rooney with it all day long and once every hour during the night. Some people call him the Hullaballoo bird—but that was the name he had before they discovered that his one tune was really Annie Rooney. Blackey heard him sing it once and a few days later at a party over at Miss Green Tiddledywink’s he got up and read this poem on the bird.

“I’ve heard the pretty Puttypiper’s pipe:

I’ve also heard the jolly jamble’s jamb.

I’ve heard the Chippercholly’s cheerful chipe,

The gay hued Yambermumpkins yearning yamb.

I’ve heard the Dindin birdy’s deafening din;

I’ve listened to the hooting Hootentot—

I’ve heard the melancholy Boojoo in

The dead of night when sailing in my yacht.

But never have I heard such fearful noise,

As when the Anirooney bird begins

To sing the song that only he enjoys,

At which he only of his hearers grins.

And ’tis my fondest hope if ever he

Haply upon my path in life appears

There may be time before we meet for me

To stuff two bales of cotton in my ears.”

“My!” ejaculated Jimmieboy. “He must be a terwor.”

“He is,” returned the Tiddledywink, “so be careful—for his is the next cage.”

•   11   •

IN THE ZOO

“Dear, dear me!” cried the Red Tiddledywink in a tone of alarm, as he and Jimmieboy stopped before the cage of the Anirooney bird and saw that it was empty. “He must have escaped. I wonder if the keeper knows this!”

“He—he isn’t dangewous, is he?” asked Jimmieboy, frightened just a little bit. “He doesn’t bite?”

“Oh yes, he bites,” returned the Red Tiddledywink, “but he wouldn’t bite you. He prefers furniture. He bites the legs of tables and chairs and if it’s a particularly light and pretty chair he’ll eat it all up.”

“I am very glad then,” said Jimmieboy, “that they don’t have Aniwooney birds anywhere but in Widdledywink-land, ’cause if we had ’em up where we live my mamma wouldn’t yike it. She yikes pyitty chairs, and in her parlor where nobody ever sits any more, she has fifteen or firty white ones with gold on ’em.”

“Thirty’s twice as many as fifteen,” said Reddy. “Can’t you come nearer than that?”

“No,” replied Jimmieboy. “I on’y know how to count by fifteens. Fifteen, firty, forty-two—”

“Forty-two!” cried the Red Tiddledywink, with a roar of laughter. “Forty-five is next to thirty.”

“No,” said Jimmieboy firmly. “It ain’t—leastways it ain’t the way I say it—but what are you going to do about the Aniwooney bird?”

“Do? Why, what we always do when an animal escapes from the Zoo. Wait until he comes back again to claim the reward,” returned Reddy. “You see that’s the only way the animals and birds here can make any money. They never pay the animals in a Zoo, you know—not even up where you live. The managers think if they give them plenty to eat and a cage to live in they ought to be satisfied—as they really ought, because it costs a great deal to” keep a Zoo like this running. But some of the animals have expenses the Zoo people don’t care to pay. Take the Anirooney bird for instance. It costs him seven or eight bunches of flowers a year to keep his voice in tune. Then the comic Mangatoo has to buy all the comic papers so as to keep up being comic. The trick Hankipank has to buy new tricks and then the Cockadoodledon’t—”

“The which?” interrupted Jimmieboy somewhat puzzled.

“The Cockadoodledon’t,” returned the Tiddledywink. “He’s a rooster that doesn’t crow—he has to have money too, you know, to pay a rooster that does crow to call the keeper when he wants him. He’s an awfully good bird, the Cockadoodledon’t is,” added Reddy. “He’s generous and self-sacrificing. He’ll give you all the feathers he can spare whenever you want ’em, and all our Tiddledywink girls are very fond of him. They sent him a Valentine last Valentine’s day that pleased him very much. I have a copy of it. Shall I read it?”

“I’d yike to hear it very much,” returned Jimmieboy, impressed by what he had just heard. So Reddy read the following lines:

“The generousest bird alive, in cages, moors, or heathers,

Is sweet old Cockadoodledon’t, who gives away his feathers—

Who, if it happens that he has no feathers to dispose,

Will promise you that you can have the very first that grows:

Which, should it turn out to be red and not a navy blue one,

As you had wished, he’ll throw away and sprout at once a new one.

To him we send upon this day this short and loving line

To ask him if he’ll not consent to be our Valentine.”

“That was very nice,” said Jimmieboy. “Did they have it pwinted?”

“Oh, no, indeed. They had it embroidered on an afghan and sent it to him with a bunch of bananas, of which he is very fond,” said Reddy.

“He consented to be their Valentine, I s’pose?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Well, no,” replied Reddy. “He didn’t. It wasn’t because he was ill-natured, though. He said he didn’t want to be anybody’s Valentine. Sent a rhymed answer—like this

‘I’ve just received your handsome Valentine,

Note your request, but really must decline,

Because I fear if I were what you wish

Someone would put a stamp on me and—swish!

Down would I go, dropped in the morning mail

And off to some strange person straightway sail.

Such is the fate of all good Valentines,

And hence it is yours truly now declines.

In short, dear ladies, I most plainly wont:

I’d rather stay your Cockadoodledon’t.’”

“He must be a smart Cockadoodledon’t to w’ite poetwy,” said Jimmieboy, when Reddy had finished.

“Oh, he didn’t write that—he got Blackey to do it for him,” said Reddy.

“It was quite as good as the Valentine,” added Jimmieboy.

“Yes—it had a right to be,” said the Red Tiddledywink. “Blackey wrote that too.”

“I don’t fink I quite unnerstand,” said Jimmieboy, “about the animals making money the way you say they do. Frinstance”—Jimmieboy always said frinstance when he meant “for instance”—“Frinstance, up where we live, when we lost our little dog, my papa offered a reward for him, but the dog didn’t get it. The man who found him and bwought him back got it.”

“Ah, but don’t you see that was because the little dog didn’t find and bring himself back,” returned Reddy. “If he had your papa would probably have given him the reward just as we do here. You see the way of it is this. The Anirooney bird needs money to have his voice tuned and the Music-Doctors charge very high for tuning up voices like the Anirooney bird’s. The bird can’t earn the money because there isn’t anybody that will pay him for anything he can do. He wouldn’t take it when he hadn’t any right to it, because that wouldn’t be right, and except in the matter of eating up table legs that don’t belong to him and fancy chairs that other people own, he’s very honest. So there’s nothing for him to do but get lost and wait until they advertise a reward for him. This the keepers will do probably tomorrow, and if they offer enough money the Anirooney bird will find himself at once, and return himself, and claim the reward. If it isn’t enough, he will stay lost until the keepers offer as much as he needs. That’s another nice thing about him too,” Reddy added. “He never holds out for more than he needs.”

“But s’pose somebody else finds him?” asked Jimmieboy, very much interested by this novel means of making money.

“Nobody ever does,” returned Reddy. “It’s against the laws of the Zoo. If other people could find him, you know, and get the reward, the keepers would have to pay for tuning his voice, because it has to be kept in tune. If it isn’t, the bird ceases to be an Anirooney bird.”

“And what does he become?” asked Jimmieboy.

“A Dumb-Crambo,” returned Reddy, “and a Dumb-Crambo is a disgrace to a respectable Zoo because he never curls his feathers, whistles Annie Rooney out of tune—he can’t help it you know—and won’t eat anything but the holes in jumbles, so that he starves to death.”

“I know all about that,” said Jimmieboy, gleefully. “My papa bwought a lot of jumbles home one night for me, and mamma said she didn’t fink they were good for me, so papa said he’d fix it so it would be all wight, and he divided ’em up. He gave me all the holes and ate all the cakes himself, and then when I said I didn’t fink that was fair, he sang this little song to me:

‘There’s plenty of food in a jumble—

The bigger the jumble the more.

Nobody can wightfully gwumble

And over such eating feel sore.

And so a division we’ll make, sir,

Ere taking our usual stwoll.

I’ll take all the edge of the cake, sir,

While you can have all of the hole.’”

“I guess you’d rather have had half instead of the hole,” chuckled the Red Tiddledywink.

“Why, that’s the first joke you’ve said in a long time,” said Jimmieboy with a laugh. “You must have forgotten yourself.”

“I do that sometimes,” said Reddy. “But I never forget myself on a railroad train and leave myself behind.”

“You might get up a widdle on that,” suggested Jimmieboy. “‘What’s the diff’ence between me and an umbwella?’  ‘I never leave myself on a wailwoad wain.’”

“That’s only half good,” said Reddy, “because there are so many answers it might have besides the real one, and that wouldn’t be a good thing. I might say that I wasn’t like an umbrella because I haven’t any ribs; or I might not be like an umbrella because I haven’t any handle; or because I can’t keep off rain—so you see it wouldn’t do for a riddle at all, because everybody could give an answer without thinking. In a book I have at home on ‘How To Be Funny,’ there is some very good advice about riddles. One thing it says is:

‘A riddle’s never any good—

You might as well confess it—

If of a great big multitude

Most anyone can guess it.

And then you must remember, too,

Beware of such undoers;

Their answers may be quite as true

And funnier than yours.’

“Don’t you see?” continued Reddy, “If your riddle has more than one answer somebody else may have a better answer than you have, and then where are you? People will laugh at him and won’t pay any attention to you. That happened to me at a party once, and I felt awful about it. Everybody laughed at the jokes of a tin soldier that was visiting Bluey and wouldn’t listen to me. He wasn’t so very funny either but he made ’em grin. I asked a riddle ‘When is a Scotch Terrier not a Scotch Terrier,’ the answer being ‘When he is a Lap-Dog,’ but the tin soldier, he got in ahead of me and said that was too easy.”

“What was his answer?” asked Jimmieboy.

“‘Never,’” said Reddy ruefully. “But I got even with him afterwards,” he added, bursting out laughing. “I got off a joke that same night about pillows being cheap because feathers are always down—and my, how he laughed.”

Here Reddy looked a little sad and then added:

“He laughed so that he doubled right up and couldn’t bend back again without help, and when we helped him—he—snapped—right—off—in—the middle!”

•   12   •

THE TEEHEELEPHANT
BOTHERS REDDY

Just then there came to Jimmieboy’s ears the greatest din he had ever heard, and he noticed that the Red Tiddledywink looked very much frightened—in fact, he had turned pink with fear.

“What is the matter?” asked Jimmieboy. “Nuffin’s wong I hope.”

“No,” returned the Red Tiddledywink, “but we want to get out of this as quickly as we can, because the Teeheelephant is coming and if he sees me we won’t get away for two hours, and then we shall be late for the Athletic Sports and the Blue Tiddledywink’s Ball.”

“l don’t fink I’ve ever seen a Teeheelephant,” said Jimmieboy, relieved to know that nothing worse than delay could come from their being caught. “What is he yike?”

“He is the worst animal alive,” cried Reddy, tugging at Jimmieboy’s sleeve to get him to move along more quickly. “He was invented, I believe just to make my life miserable. All he can do is to laugh. Indeed, he lives on laughter and the only things he will laugh at are my jokes, so whenever he sees me he rushes out of his stall and grabs me by the hand and keeps me cracking jokes by the hour, and the worst of it is he won’t listen to any old ones or jokes I’ve heard from others. They’ve got to be original and new.”

“I fink I’d yike to see him,” said Jimmieboy.

“Very likely,” said Reddy, “but think of me. I forgot to bring a basket of jokes with me.”

“You give the Teeheelephant a joke, I s’pose, just as we give the Elephant in our Zoo a peanut?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Quite the same way,” returned Reddy. “Only we don’t have to pack it away in his trunk for him—we would have to though if he had a trunk.”

“How big is the Teeheelephant?” asked Jimmieboy. “Big as me?”

“O my,” laughed Reddy. “You? You’re only a little mite alongside of the Teeheelephant. Why, the Teeheelephant doesn’t look—but, oh dear! Here he is!”

As Reddy spoke Jimmieboy heard the din repeated, and what should he see running down the room toward himself and his companion but a creature that looked for all the world like a baby elephant, only it had soft white fur on its back, and instead of the elephant’s trunk it carried a little handbag on the end of its nose, below which was a smile over fifteen inches wide.

And, oh, how it laughed when it saw Reddy, and how miserable Reddy looked as it grabbed him by the hand and tried to romp with him!

“You see now why we call him the Teeheelephant,” said the Tiddledywink,“because he is always tee-heeing and looks like an elephant. But he has a horse laugh—eh Teehee?”

At this the Teeheelephant looked cross and a tear came into his eye. It was evident that he thought Reddy’s joke old—as it was, and Jimmieboy and the Teeheelephant knew it. This tear was followed by another and another and then a dozen more, and they were all so large that before Reddy and Jimmieboy knew it their feet were soaking wet. This Jimmieboy remembered was a bad thing, and he nudged Reddy and told him to hurry up and get off a new joke, and make the Teeheelephant laugh or they’d all be drowned. Then, hoping to comfort the poor animal until Reddy should begin, Jimmieboy reached out his hand and patted him on his head—and it was a lovely soft head Jimmieboy thought; just like a kitten’s, and he was glad, in spite of all, that he had seen the Teeheelephant, which he thought about the nicest animal in all the Zoo.

“What is it a man can stand on and yet not be any taller?” Reddy ventured at last. The Teeheelephant dried his tears with a small sponge that he carried in his hand-bag and looked as if he’d like to know.

“I don’t know—what?” asked Jimmieboy.

“His head, of course,” replied Reddy. This seemed very pleasing to the Teeheelephant who made the building echo with his shouts of laughter, and then, when he had finished, he looked mournfully at Reddy, as much as to say, “I want another”—just as the elephant does when he has eaten a whole peanut and thinks he’d like a million or two more.

As for Jimmieboy, he was just a little frightened by the antics of the Teeheelephant, because, while that wonderful creature was undoubtedly a good-natured animal, and as soft as a kitten, he was five or six times as big as either Jimmieboy or the Tiddledywink, and Jimmieboy was a little afraid he might step on him. So he climbed upon a platform at one side of the room, on which was sitting a solemn looking bird which he afterwards learned was the comic Mangatoo—the one that had to have the comic papers every day to keep him from starving.

“What are you doing here?” the Mangatoo asked with a frown.

“I came up here to get out of the Teeheelephant’s way. I’m a little bit afwaid of him,” said Jimmieboy. “I hope I’m not in your way.”

“You are,” returned the Mangatoo, with a voice way down in his boots. “And if you don’t get out of my way right off, I’ll make you stay where you are until you are ready to leave.”

“That’s what I want to do,” said Jimmieboy, rather amused at this melancholy and gruff old bird.

“Well mind, I warned you, and later, when I say I told you so, don’t deny it. Do you know who I am?”

“You are the comic Mangatoo.”

“True,” said the Mangatoo wearily. “And do you know what a Mangatoo is?”

“No,” returned Jimmieboy. “What?”

“He is a Mangatoo, of course. Are all little boys as dull as you are?” he added.

“I am not dull,” replied Jimmieboy, indignantly.

“I never said I was,” said the Mangatoo, turning sadly to his papers. After he had read these for a few moments, during which time Reddy was telling jokes to the roaring Teeheelephant, he turned once more to Jimmieboy and said “Aren’t you afraid of me?”

“No,” returned Jimmieboy. “Not a bit.”

“Well, don’t you tell anybody,” returned the Mangatoo in a whisper. “It’s a secret, but—neither—am—I.”

Then he winked his eyes knowingly at Jimmieboy as much as to say, “I like you pretty well after all.”

“Are any of the other animals and birds here afwaid of themselves?” asked Jimmieboy. It had never occurred to him up in his own country that a lion, for instance, could be afraid of himself.

“All of ’em,” said the Mangatoo. “They are all afraid to be left alone with themselves—all but me, and I am too.”

“That’s queer. I don’t see how you can say ‘all but me’ and then say ‘me too.’”

“I mean,” said the Mangatoo, “that I am and I ain’t. Ever been that way? Sort of can’t-make-up-your-mind-whether-you-are-or-not? That’s my case. I don’t mind being left alone with myself, but when somebody else is left alone by myself it makes me nervous.”

“What do you do then?” queried Jimmieboy. He thought the Mangatoo a very comical bird.

“Oh, I’ve a great scheme, then,” said the Mangatoo, “I stay just as I am until I change, and then I’m all right. Reddy is making signs to you,” he added.

Jimmieboy ran down from the platform to see what Reddy wanted.

“You run along,” said the Tiddledywink. “I’m in for two hours of this. The Teeheelephant won’t let me off, and if you don’t go now you’ll miss the Athletic Sports.”

“I say,” said Jimmieboy to the Teeheelephant. “Let him off, won’t you?”

“Couldn’t possibly do it,” said the Teeheelephant, beginning to grow tearful again. “I haven’t seen him now for four weeks, and I intend to keep him the regular time, which is two hours.”

“But I want him to take me to the Affletic Sports,” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes, Teehee,” put in Reddy. “Let up on a fellow—won’t you? Jimmieboy has never been here before and maybe he won’t come again; and we got up these sports especially for his benefit.”

“I’m not keeping him,” returned the Teeheelephant—a little indignantly. “He can go just as soon as he “pleases. He doesn’t help me a bit—in fact I’d rather he did go, because he laughed at one of your jokes a minute ago and I am too hungry to divide any more of ’em with him.”

“But he can’t go without me—and you see,” said Reddy, “if he stays he’ll get his share of the fun.”

“That’s all right,” said the Teeheelephant, stamping his foot. “I know how to fix that. If he gets half the fun then we’ve got to have just twice as much fun, which will detain you here four hours instead of two.”

Reddy was in despair, but Jimmieboy had a scheme.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “If you’ll let Weddy off I’ll get my papa to send you every joke book and paper he can—and every week.”

Here if Jimmieboy had been looking he would have seen the Mangatoo cock his head to one side and seem interested.

“No, no, no, no!” cried the Teeheelephant. “He can’t go. He can’t go. He can’t go.

“Say it again,” cried the Mangatoo with a shrill laugh.

The Teeheelephant paid no attention to this sally, and Reddy, with a sad hopeless look on his face, began a string of equally sad, hopeless jokes—but they pleased the Teeheelephant.

“I’ll wait for you, Weddy,” said Jimmieboy, climbing back to the Mangatoo’s side. “I don’t care much for the sports anyhow.”

This wasn’t exactly true, but Jimmieboy wanted to make Reddy feel easier, for he was very, very sorry for him.

“Ahem!” said the Mangatoo, coming close to Jimmieboy and tickling his nose with one of his feathers. “Did I hear you say something about your papa sending joke books and comic papers and such like down here?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “I offered that to the Teeheelephant if he’d let Weddy go—but he wouldn’t.”

“Would you let strawberry shortcake go if you had it?” asked the Mangatoo.

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, jokes are the Teeheelephant’s strawberry shortcake just as comic papers are mine. You couldn’t send some of those papers to me if I—if—er ah—if I—”

“If you what?” asked Jimmieboy.

“If I helped Reddy out of his scrape?” said the Mangatoo.

“Well, wouldn’t I just?” cried Jimmieboy. “I’ll send heaps of ’em.”

“Very well then. I’ll do it,” said the Mangatoo. “I believe in you because I think you tell the truth. When I asked you if you knew what I was you didn’t tell stories and say you didn’t; and then you weren’t afraid of me, and altogether I like you and I believe you will do what you say. Now you go down to Reddy and tell him to tell the Teeheelephant the rhyme Blackey wrote about the Hoodoo down by the sea. That always makes the Teeheelephant fall over on his back with laughter, although it isn’t particularly funny, and when he falls on his back he can’t get up without assistance. Then you and Reddy can run.”

“Oh, fank you,” cried Jimmieboy, jumping down and running to the Tiddledywink’s side. “Tell him Blackey’s Hoodoo verse,” he whispered.

“What’s the good!” said Reddy. “He’s heard it once and won’t care for it, and then he’ll cry and we’ll get soaked again.”

“Do as I tell you,” said Jimmieboy earnestly and so Reddy began—

“The Hoodoo sat down by the sea,”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” laughed the Teeheelephant.

“And my how he did grin,” continued Reddy.

“Ho, ho, ho, ho!” roared the Teeheelephant, waving his hand-bag with glee.

“To see the scrumptious blue Squeegee,” resumed Reddy.

“Oh my! Oh dear. Oho!” laughed the unsuspecting Teeheelephant, lying down on his side in sheer weariness of mirth, but not noticing that the Mangatoo also was nearly exploding with laughter.

“Trip up and tumble in,” finished Reddy surprised at the effect of the verse.

“Oho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha!” shrieked the Teeheelephant, rolling over on his back and kicking his legs in the air just as the Mangatoo said he would. “That’s too good, too good.”

“Now wun for your life,” cried Jimmieboy. “He can’t get up wivout help and we shall see the Affletic Sports after all.”

Reddy needed no second bidding and in less time than it takes to tell it he and Jimmieboy had reached the door and were out in the open air.

And as the door closed behind them Jimmieboy heard the Mangatoo’s voice crying, “Don’t forget the pa-a-a-a-per-r-rs,” and then there was a splash of water against the sill. The Teeheelephant had stopped laughing, and realizing the trick that had been played upon him had begun to cry.

“I fink,” said Jimmieboy to one of the keepers who came up at that moment, “I fink you would better look out for the Teeheelephant inside there. He is cwying very hard and the west of the animals may get dwownded.”

•   13   •

IN THE
ROASTED PEANUT TREE

“Who—told—you—how—to—do—it?” panted the Red Tiddledywink, after he and Jimmieboy had run about a mile—it was a Tiddledywink mile though, and not nearly as long as the one from Jimmieboy’s house to the railway station that his papa had to run after breakfast, every morning, in order to catch the train that took him down to town to earn gumdrops for Jimmieboy.

“W-w-wait till I c-c-can c-c-catch my bweaf,” said Jimmieboy as well as he could, considering that he was all out of breath and still running.

“Catch your breath?” returned the Red Tiddledywink, with a twinkle in his eye—“I guess you mean until your breath catches you, don’t you? It seems to me you’ve run away from it.”

“Shouldn’t be s’prised if I did,” smiled Jimmieboy, still panting. “Perhaps I left it back there in the Zoo where the Teeheelephant was. You don’t want to go back there and get it for me, do you?”

The Tiddledywink shuddered at the bare idea.

“No indeed,” he gasped. “I don’t ever want to go back to the Zoo again, because if I did, and the Teeheelephant got hold of me, I don’t think he’d ever let me go because of the trick we played on him.”

“No,” Jimmieboy said, sitting down on a stump at the side of the road. “No, I don’t beyieve he ever would, and I s’pose he is pyitty mad at you by this time, eh?”

“I don’t know—we can always tell when the Teeheelephant is mad by the falling of the chimneys in the Zoo building. They never seem able to stand up when Teehee loses his temper,” said Reddy with an anxious glance back at the Teeheelephant’s home in the distance. “I haven’t heard ’em fall yet, have you?”

Just then there was a terrible crash and Jimmieboy looked back just in time to see the chimneys go down as Reddy had said.

“How does he do that?” Jimmieboy ejaculated in terror.

“He jumps up and down on the floor until he shakes ’em down,” answered the Tiddledywink. “It’s an awful bad trick, too—isn’t it?”

“I should say so,” returned Jimmieboy. “But why don’t they stop him?”

“They can’t do it. He’s awful strong, and then besides, the law can’t prevent an animal from getting mad, you know,” said Reddy.

“Who has to pay for putting the chimneys up again?” asked Jimmieboy. “The Teeheelephant or the Zoo people?”

“Neither,” returned the Tiddledywink. “It’s paid for by the man who puts ’em up.”

“I shouldn’t fink he’d yike that,” said Jimmieboy, after a moment’s reflection.

“He doesn’t,” said Reddy, “but he has to do it because when he was building them the first time he said they would stand forever, and of course when they fall down he has to pay because they don’t stand forever.”

“Seems to me,” said Jimmieboy, “that the man who doesn’t say anyfing now days is a pyitty smart man.”

“He is if he isn’t a stupid one,” returned Reddy wisely, “but who told you how to get around the Teeheelephant?”

“The Mangatoo—the comic paper bird,” said Jimmieboy.

“I don’t believe it,” retorted Reddy. “The Mangatoo never did a useful thing in his life. You never can get him to work at anything unless it’s all done before he begins.”

“But he did—he told me just how we could get away, and I told you, and we got away,” returned Jimmieboy a little indignantly, because the Mangatoo had done him and Reddy—and particularly Reddy—a good turn and he thought it very ungrateful of Reddy to speak as he did.

“Well, we’ll have to see Blackey then, and get him to change his poem about the Mangatoo,” said Reddy. “Because it isn’t a bit complimentary. It says the Mangatoo is a very useless sort of bird—which isn’t so if he helped us out of our fix.”

“What did Blackey say in his poem?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh it’s a very long one,” returned Reddy, “but if you’d like to hear it we can sit down here and I’ll recite it to you.”

“Let’s,” was all Jimmieboy could find breath to say, for they had been running again, although Jimmieboy did not know exactly when they had left the stump; and then they both threw themselves down on a bank of lilac-colored moss near a clump of trees, and Reddy began.

THE USELESS MANGATOO.

One day I had some chores to do,

The work was rather hard:

To pull the weeds that rankly grew

Out in our small backyard—

The weeds were pink and green and blue

The lawn was sadly marred;

The parlor floor I wished to clean,

The bric-a-brac to dust,

The chairs were not fit to be seen,

The fenders thick with rust—

It really made me feel too mean

To hear their state discussed.

The beds upstairs had not been made,

The cows had not been fed—

The sheep had from their pasture strayed,

The rain leaked in the shed,

And for a time I was afraid

I’d have to bake some bread.

“How shall I get this work all done?”

I asked a cherished friend—

He was the very wisest one

To whom I then could send.

“I see no method ’neath the sun

All of these things to mend.”

Said he,“Go seek the Mangatoo,

That agéd comic bird.

He’s always seeking work to do,

And then I’ve often heard

It really is delightful to

List to his talk absurd.”

And so I sought this feathered thing

And asked him if he would

Come help me in the straightening

Of household and of good.

He answered, as he flapped his wing,

He’d come down if he could.

Said I,“I want my backyard clear

Of mullen stalks and docks,”

Said he.“I’m rather clever, dear,

At winding eight day clocks,

Or if you haven’t any here

At painting signs on rocks.”

Said I,“l want my parlor swept

My fenders polished bright;

The sheep within their pasture kept,

The cows all milked at night.

Would you these duties all accept?”

Said he,“Perhaps I might.”

“Well, can’t you say with certainty?”

I cried—he’d made me mad

By calmly blinking there at me—

His eyes both big and sad.

“You’d better do so instantly!”

Said he,“Perhaps I had.”

He seemed to think a moment then,

And shortly thus did speak:

“You want to have me come just when?”

“At once,” said I in Greek.

“All right,” said he and blinked again

“I’ll be around next week.”

From which I gather that this bird

Of which I’ve sung to you,

Is useless as he is absurd

When there is work to do—

And when there isn’t, mark my word,

He’s just as bad then too.

“So you see,” said Reddy, “the general idea of the Mangatoo is that he couldn’t earn his salt in a salt mine. But this makes things look different. You have got him to do something for somebody and I think Blackey ought to write—”

Reddy never finished this sentence, for just then Jimmieboy jumped up with a hurrah, for he had heard strains of the most beautiful “moobic” in the distance and there was nothing in the world Jimmieboy liked much better than “moobic,” good or bad.

“What’s that?” he cried excitedly, grabbing Reddy by the hand and peering off in the direction from which the sounds came, seeing nothing however but a great cloud of dust.

“I don’t know what it is,” said Reddy nervously. “I don’t know whether it’s a procession of the Torchlighters or the invited guests for the Athletic Sports. If it’s the Torchlighters, we don’t want to be caught here, I can tell you.”

“Why not?” asked Jimmieboy. “They don’t hurt you, do they?”

“Oh, don’t they! Well, I guess they do.”

“How?” asked Jimmieboy, catching some of Reddy’s fear. “They don’t hit you with sticks and—and tickle you—and—and put pins in you, do they?”

“No. It’s worse’n that,” replied Reddy, climbing a roasted peanut tree that shaded the spot on which they stood, to see if he could get a better view of the approaching crowd, and so make out who they were. “It’s a great deal worse than that. They call you names and ask you questions and make fun of your answers. They hurt your feelings! They called me a little Tuppenny Tiddledywink once, right before some people I wanted to have like me, and I don’t believe those people ever forgot it, and I am to them a Tuppenny Tiddledywink to this day.”

“That’s very mean of them,” said Jimmieboy. “Do you fink they’d call me any names?” he added anxiously.

“Would they? Well, rather,” returned Reddy. “They’d call you a—they’d call you a well I think very likely they’d call you a nice, dear, sweet little girl.”

“I’m not no such fing,” cried Jimmieboy very angrily. “I’m a nice, dear, sweet little boy—my papa says so.”

“That wouldn’t make a bit of difference with the Torchlighters,” said Reddy with a laugh. He had discovered Jimmieboy’s sore point—and he might have guessed it before because no little boy cares to be called a little girl. “They’d call you a nice, dear, sweet little girl all the same and they’d bring you a lot of paper dolls to play with, and ask you if you had any little brothers, and if you weren’t sorry you weren’t a boy yourself, and oh, lots and lots of mean questions that—”

“Let’s wun then,” said Jimmieboy. “I don’t want to fall in with people who are going to take me for a little girl.”

“I can’t run another step,” said Reddy wearily, “because I’m all worn out as it is getting away from the Teeheelephant.”

“But what are you going to do?” cried Jimmieboy. “We can’t stay here and be caught; and those moobic people are getting nearer to us every minute. I’m going to wun.”

“Don’t do it,” said Reddy, “but hurry up and climb up here in this roasted peanut tree with me. If it’s the Torchlighters, they won’t see us, and if it’s the Athletic Sport guests, we can climb down and join ’em. Roasted peanuts are poisonous to Torchlighters and even if they did see us up here, they wouldn’t dare stop.”

“All wight,” said Jimmieboy, rushing to the foot of the tree. “Here I come.”

And putting his arms about the tree Jimmieboy began to climb. It was wonderful too how easily and how well he climbed. He was half way up before Reddy knew he had started—but then he stopped suddenly and cried “owch!”

“What’s the matter?” called Reddy.

“Somefing stinged me,” sobbed Jimmieboy, ruefully rubbing his chin over his right hand—he couldn’t rub his hand over his chin because he did not dare let go of the limb for fear of falling back to the ground.

“It wasn’t a sting,” explained Reddy, reaching down to help him up. “I forgot to tell you not to touch any of the peanuts. The peanuts on a roasted peanut tree are always very hot when they are just ripe, and the nuts on this tree haven’t been ripe much longer than four minutes. So be very careful.”

And Jimmieboy was very careful, and before long he was seated on a high part of the roasted peanut tree, peering through the leaves and down the road at the cloud of dust, behind which could be heard the “moobic,” the tramp of feet, the rolling of wheels and the roar of laughing, shouting, singing, beings of some kind or another, the two little creatures in the tree did not know what. It was a very exciting moment for Jimmieboy, but he had Reddy with him, and this, taken together with the fact that the roasted peanuts were unusually delicious when plucked fresh from the tree, and after they had cooled down a little, made him feel not altogether uncomfortable and not at all afraid.

•   14   •

THE PROCESSION

“I wish that cloud would break,” said Reddy, leaning far out and trying once more to satisfy himself as to what it was that lay concealed behind the dust cloud. “Maybe if it doesn’t break they’ll get by without our seeing ’em at all.”

“That wouldn’t be any harm, would it?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No—it wouldn’t be any harm if it were the Torchlighters, but if it should happen to be the Athletic Sport people and we should miss ’em, we couldn’t see the sports,” said Reddy, with a worried look on his face.

-“Why not?” asked Jimmieboy. “Would they go off and have ’em some place where we couldn’t find ’em?”

“Oh, no—but they wouldn’t let us in. We don’t have tickets for anything here, you know,” explained the Tiddledywink, tossing a hot peanut into the air to cool it. “Everybody goes at once, and they let ’em all in and then lock the doors and won’t let anybody in after that, so that those who come late always have to stay outside.”

“How do they get their money, with all these people going in at once?” asked Jimmieboy. “I should fink lots of people would get in fwee.”

“They all do,” returned Reddy. “But they have to pay to get out.”

“S’pose they don’t have any money, what happens then?” queried Jimmieboy. He was a little anxious on this point because when he came to look in his buttonholes he found he hadn’t a single flower, and flowers he remembered were the things with which Tiddledywink people paid their bills. He wished, too, that he had known all this before he came down to Tiddledywink-land, because he knew of a place where there were bags and bags and bags full of solid gold dandelions growing wild—a fortune beyond the wildest dreams of the most hopeful Tiddledywink.

“Then they keep ’em there until they do pay,” said Reddy.

“But isn’t that very ’spensive?” asked Jimmieboy. “They’d have to feed ’em and keep ’em alive, I should fink.”

“Oh, of course,” said Reddy. “But they make lots and lots of money that way. They charge everybody they keep their board and lodging.”

“But if a Widdledywink hasn’t any fwowers to pay today how is he ever going to get ’em if he is locked up?” queried Jimmieboy.

“They give ’em’ all little gardens and make ’em raise enough flowers to pay for everything,” said Reddy, and then he cried “Hoorah! It’s raining, it’s raining.”

And sure enough it was raining.

“I don’t see why you are so glad it’s waining,” said Jimmieboy. “We’ll get soaked all fwoo.”

“No, we won’t,” cried Reddy, gleefully. “The roasted peanut tree will keep us dry and now I know it’s the Athletic Sport parade because it always rains when we have one.”

The rain began to come down in torrents all about the peanut tree but never touching it or the two little fellows sitting high in its branches, because, as Reddy explained, the heat of the tree dried up all the rain before it got near enough to wet anything—although it was not uncomfortably warm for Jimmieboy, probably because he was still dressed in his little night clothes, which were rather light for a boy of his size to be off traveling in, even in so soft and balmy a country as Tiddledywink-land was.

“Then I’m glad too because the rain will lay the dust,” said Reddy. “By the way,” he added, “what can a hen do that the rain can’t?”

“What?” asked Jimmieboy heedlessly.

“Lay an egg,” roared Reddy, laughing so hard that the tree shook and loosened the hot peanuts which fell upon them and made Jimmieboy so uncomfortable that he started to climb down. It was a queer downcoming too. Jimmieboy felt as if he were floating through the air—dropping slowly and gently down to the ground, landing in a moment upon a soft bank of ferns, standing on which he could see almost as far down the road as when he was high up in the tree. Barely had his feet touched the ground when the music and noise, which had ceased when the rain began, started up again and the rain as quickly stopped.

“Glory! glory!” sang Reddy, dancing up and down until the ferns were almost entirely spoiled. “It’s the procession of the toys they talked of getting up in your honor, and they’ve got all the best Tiddledywink bands for the music and in the middle of all is the State carriage for you—Hooray!”

Jimmieboy was quite carried away by Reddy’s delight, and began dancing with equal vigor himself. “Hooray!” he cried, quite as loudly as Reddy had done. “Who are these first ones?” he added quickly, for at that moment the first band of music appeared at the turn of the road, which was as far as they could see.

“It’s the—the Grass Band,” yelled Reddy with delight, turning half a dozen back-somersaults to get rid of some of his surplus energy, else he must have flown away. “It’s the Grass Band, led by old Drum Major Grass Hopper.”

“I’ve heard of bwass bands,” Jimmieboy began, but Reddy interrupted:

“And they’re playing their best, too.”

Which indeed was true, for the music seemed to grow better and sweeter every minute. Somehow or other it reminded Jimmieboy of a delicious drink of milk—it was so very good and soft; and then, as the band drew nearer, he could see that it was made up entirely of grasshoppers, blowing on tiny blades of grass held between their thumbs—Jimmieboy had never seen a grasshopper’s thumb before and he thought it an altogether queer thing. They played just as Jimmieboy’s papa had often done out on the lawn at home, only the music the grasshoppers got out of the soft green spears was much less squeaky than that his papa used to get. As they drew closer to Jimmieboy the grasshoppers redoubled their efforts, and as they passed him the Drum Major, who held a big piece of clover in his hand, saluted him with a wink and an extra high hop.

Behind the Grass Band came a battalion of Green Tiddledywinks, at the head of whom Jimmieboy noticed his little friend who had taken him off bicycling a few hours before, and then in a beautiful carriage pulled by Tiddledywink ponies wearing the same style of shoes and clothes that Reddy’s pony had, only with emeralds in their shirts instead of the diamond the other pony had on, rode little Miss Green Tiddledywink, the Green Snapper, and much to Jimmieboy’s surprise the old calico Santa Claus he had had so many happy days with up in the nursery.

“How did he get here?” Jimmieboy asked of Reddy—but Reddy had in some manner disappeared, and Jimmieboy, looking around him to see, if possible, where he had gone, discovered that he was flanked on three sides by a strong guard of tin soldiers.

“Dear me,” he said, frightened just the least bit, for the soldiers looked very fierce. “What is the meaning of this? Where is Weddy?”

“Please, sir,” said the Commander of the tin soldiers, advancing to his side, “the Red Tiddledywink was summoned to the command of his company, sir. We were called down from the nursery barracks to act as guard of honor to you until the Tiddledywink carriage arrives to take you to the Athletic Grounds.”

“Oh,” said Jimmieboy. “That’s it, is it? I couldn’t quite see what you were doing here. You may weturn to your men.”

Then he turned to watch the procession again. It was well he did, or he would have missed the Yellow Tiddledywinks who were just coming around the turn, a fine band of canary birds before them furnishing the music. Jimmieboy said afterwards that he had never heard canaries sing so well, and he thought he remembered the tune, but when he tried it he found he only knew the first note, and his papa said he had heard that before.

The Yellow Tiddledywinks all carried long sprays of goldenrod over their shoulders, and looked very gay and glittering in their yellow clothes. Behind them came their invited guests, and with these Jimmieboy saw his dear little friend the Plush Dog-on-Wheels, barking at nearly everything he saw.

“He ought to have a soft pedal on his mouth,” said a gruff voice at Jimmieboy’s side, which made him start a little, although he knew that the tin soldiers would take care that he wasn’t hurt.

“Hullo, you here?” smiled Jimmieboy, as soon as he saw who it was.

“No. I’m elsewhere,” returned the Mangatoo—for it was he that spoke. “That’s the queer thing about me. I’m never where I am. When I’m there I’m here, and when I’m here I’m not.”

“How did you get away from the Zoo?” asked Jimmieboy, returning the bow of a huge Agate that stalked by in the procession with a beaver hat on, looking for all the world like a big glass eye with legs.

“Can’t a bird save himself from drowning?” asked the Mangatoo, indignantly. “Did you suppose I was going to stay in that place after the Teeheelephant had cried five minutes? I guess not. You’d have got your feet wet if you’d stood on your head, the place filled up so, and if there is anything I don’t like it’s salt water bathing.”

“Are the Teeheelephant’s tears salt?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Are they?” sneered the Mangatoo. “Did you ever taste sea water?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “Once.”

“Well, the Teeheelephant’s tears aren’t a bit like it,” said the Mangatoo. “It’s awful, and I got my throat wet and won’t be able to sing this evening.”

“I didn’t know you ever sang,” said Jimmieboy.

“I never do,” returned the Mangatoo. “But I don’t see what that’s got to do with the salt water spoiling my voice.”

“Do you ever see anyfing?” Jimmieboy asked. It was a little cross of him perhaps, but the Mangatoo was behaving in a very disagreeable manner, throwing stones as he talked at the Red Monkey-on-a-Stick that was going by at the moment with Reddy’s company.

“Not with my eyes shut,” said the Mangatoo. “And I don’t believe you can either. Goodbye.”

“Are you going?” asked Jimmieboy, holding out his hand.

“Oh, no,” said the Mangatoo. “Not at all.”

“Then why did you say goodbye?”

“Because it’s a harmless remark to make and fills up the time. Saying goodbye doesn’t mean I’m going, anyhow. Clocks go without saying it. So do railway trains and music boxes—you don’t seem to know very much, considering how young you are,” said the Mangatoo scornfully, shying a stick into the middle of a carriage in which sat four chocolate colored doll babies, whereat the babies began to cry and the plaster lion who was in charge roared up to the Mangatoo that if he had time he’d come up and bite his drumstick off.

“All right,” retorted the Mangatoo. “I prefer the second joint myself,” which made Jimmieboy laugh, although he did consider the Mangatoo’s behavior disgraceful.

“I’m rather fond of the drumstick bone,” said Jimmieboy in a minute, with a sly look at the Mangatoo.

“All right,” returned the bird solemnly, drawing one leg up under his wing as if to protect it. “When I get through with mine you can have it. Here come the Blue Tiddledywinks. Hear the bells?”

“What are the bells?” asked Jimmieboy.

“That’s their band—made up of Bluebells. Pretty idea, eh?” said the Mangatoo.

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “Very.”

“Well, I don’t agree with you,” said the Mangatoo.

“You don’t agwee with anybody, do you?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No. If I did they’d eat me,” retorted the bird, and then he laughed—and such a laugh as it was. It fairly shook the road.

“What are you laughing at?” asked Jimmieboy. “I don’t see anyfing funny.”

“I was only thinking—teehee—” laughed the Mangatoo, “of how funny—hee-hee-hee—this procession would be if it wasn’t—ha-ha-ha—so awfully stupid.”

“The carriage is ready for you now, sir,” cried the Captain of the tin soldiers, coming up at this moment.

“Very well,” said Jimmieboy. “I am weady.”

“I guess I’ll go along with you,” said the Mangatoo, rising and walking to the carriage.

“I guess you won’t,” retorted the Captain.

“Very well!” said the Mangatoo, making a face at the Captain, “but I warn you if I do not go I shall stay. Remember that. Goodbye, Jimmieboy,” he added, turning to his little acquaintance. “You are the first of the little boy kind of animals I’ve ever had anything to do with, and I think you are the best of the kind that I know of. Next time you come to see me bring your eyes along with you, for, as the poet says,

‘You cannot see the Mangatoo,

No matter how you try,

Unless you bring along with you

A fine transparent eye.’

And mind, don’t forget the comic papers.”

And so Jimmieboy bade farewell to the Mangatoo, and entered the carriage.

•   15   •

THE RAG-BABY
CREATES A DISTURBANCE

It was the first time Jimmieboy had ever taken part in a procession. He had often watched them go by the window his papa always got when there were sights of that kind to be seen, and it had seemed to him that it must indeed be blissful to be one of those “pyitty” soldiers and carry a sword or a gun, and wear a big feather in his hat. But to ride in a beautiful carriage like this with six handsome Tiddledywink ponies to pull it, each pony managed by a magnificently dressed Tiddledywink sitting astride of it, with bands of music on all sides, and all playing different tunes and every tune a combination of favorites—this was grander than anything he had ever dreamed of, although it reminded him of a story his papa told him once, about a lovely Queen who had reigned over a small island near Europe for fifty years and who had had a jubilee on account of it, which his papa had sailed over the water in a big boat to see and had enjoyed very much. Jimmieboy didn’t really believe that this Queen in all her glory and power could have felt any prouder than he did at that moment—in fact, he was sure she couldn’t have felt quite as proud, because she was only one of dozens of Kings and Queens and Princesses in her procession, while he was the only little boy in all Tiddledywink-land. And how lustily the Tiddledywinks and invited Toys, who were not in the procession, but who lined both sides of the road, cheered as Jimmieboy passed by, bowing and bowing until his neck fairly ached; and how he wished he had thought to bring his hat along with him so that he could take it off to all these people and wave it at them and—O how lovely it all was—and what would his papa say if he could see him now!

But it could not last forever, as Jimmieboy almost wished it might. In fact it lasted for a very much less space of time than always, for in five Tiddledywink minutes, which are about a fifty-seventh part as long as a tenth of one of our seconds, the music stopped and a loud voice that sounded something like that of the brakeman who owned a train Jimmieboy had traveled on once, called out, “Last station. All out for the Athletic Sports;” and immediately Jimmieboy found himself in the middle of a great, pushing, hauling crowd who were trying to get through the gates to the seats within.

“Little boys in night clothes ought not to be allowed at Athletic Sports without a nurse,” said a strange voice almost at Jimmieboy’s side, and on looking around Jimmieboy saw the Rag-baby he had punished the day before, by placing him in the waste basket for two hours, standing back of him. This was the Rag-baby’s revenge. Jimmieboy wanted to answer back but somehow or other he was afraid to, because the Rag-baby was a much bigger person here in Tiddledywink-land than he was up home in the nursery.

“Move on,” said the Tin Soldier, who was at Jimmieboy’s side to protect him from the rudeness of the unruly guests.

“I’ll bend your bayonet into a button hook if you say another word to me,” retorted the Rag-baby, turning his attention to Jimmieboy’s protector and shaking his fist in his face.

This roused Jimmieboy’s anger a little, because he never liked that particular Rag-baby very much anyhow, and he didn’t care to have his little friend the Tin Soldier, who was a great favorite of his, bullied. So he summoned up all the courage he had and said:

“If you do, I’ll take you when we get back home and lock you up in a buweau dwawer for four weeks.”

“That’s right, Jimmieboy,” cried the Monkey-on-a-Stick from the rear edge of the crowd. “Don’t let that quarrelsome Rag-baby frighten you. We’re all friends here except him and if he doesn’t behave we’ll—”

“Tickets!” shouted the voice that sounded like the brakeman’s.

“Dear me,” said Jimmieboy in alarm. “I fought we didn’t have to have tickets.”

“You were right,” whispered the voice. “But they all know that except the Rag-baby and we don’t want to let him in—so we’re going to demand his ticket.”

Then the whisper stopped and the loud voice came again:

“T-I-C-K-E-T-S.”

“I haven’t one,” said the Rag-baby, for it was to him that the voice spoke this time.

“Then you can’t come in,” returned the voice. “Step out of the way, please—don’t block up the passage.”

“But the rest of these people haven’t any tickets, either,” returned the Rag-baby indignantly.

“Never said they had,” retorted the voice. “But what’s that got to do with the size of the room?”

“You are letting them in,” insisted the Rag-baby. “And you are keeping me out.”

“That’s very true,” returned the voice, “but of course you know why?”

“Can’t say I do,” said the Rag-baby. “I’m as good as these others—and a good deal better.”

“That’s just the reason,” said the voice with a chuckle. “You’re so much better than anyone else here we think you ought not to be asked to come in except on a printed ticket, made specially for you. Unfortunately the printer has disappointed us and the ticket won’t be ready for six weeks. You might come then.”

“But there won’t be any sports, then,” shouted the Rag-baby, for he was getting madder every minute.

“No—but the trains will run just the same and you can come and have some races with yourself. Goodbye,” and with this the voice died away, the gate slammed and everybody was inside except the Rag-baby, and in a few minutes the Teeheelephant who had escaped from the Zoo and was now searching for Reddy, came along and catching up the quarrelsome outcast put him away in his hand bag and galloped back to the Zoo to inspect his captive.

“That’s what happens to quarrelsome people,” said the Tin Soldier. “They always get into trouble sooner or later.”

“I’m glad he’s not going to be here,” said Jimmieboy, “because he is the most twoublesome doll I have. But where are we to sit?” he added, looking about him.

What he saw when he looked about him was a hall about forty feet square all covered with chairs, excepting down at one end, where Jimmieboy could see a platform upon which were a few more chairs and tables and tall poles—but he didn’t see any place for running and jumping as he had expected.

“Funny kind of Athletic Sports,” he thought to himself.

“Yes,” said the Tin Soldier, “they are.”

“They are what?” asked Jimmieboy. He had not said anything was anything so far.

“Funny kind of Athletic Sports. I saw you think it,” returned the Tin Soldier. “You know I can see what’s going on in your head through those big brown eyes of yours—they are so clear.”

“Well,” laughed Jimmieboy a little nervously, “if that’s the case I’ll have to fink with my eyes tight shut after this—because it isn’t always pleasant to have people know what you are finking about.”

“It is if you think nice things about people,” said the Soldier, “and that’s all the kind of way a little boy like you ought to think.”

“Little boys don’t always do as they ought to,” said Jimmieboy sagely. To this the Tin Soldier replied that he didn’t know about that—that Jimmieboy was the only little boy he had ever had anything to do with and he had supposed he never was naughty.

“Why, I’ve been naughty lots of times,” said Jimmieboy. “Don’t you wecommember once my papa took you away from me because I did somefing he didn’t want me to?”

“I remember my being taken away from you but I didn’t know what it was for.”

“I guess,” said Jimmieboy, “it was for the sake of example. He didn’t want you to learn naughty twicks from me.”

“I guess that must have been it,” said the Tin Soldier. “But I never should have guessed it if you hadn’t helped.”

At this moment Reddy came up with the Black Tiddledywink and told Jimmieboy that the sports were about to begin, and that if he would go with Blackey, Blackey would see that he got a good seat.

“When the sports are over,” Reddy said after Jimmieboy and Blackey were made acquainted, “we are all going to a ball at the Blue Tiddledywink’s. It isn’t a rubber ball either,” he added just for the sake of his joke.

“I suppose we’ll have the regular supper afterwards?” suggested Blackey—“huckleberry longcake and thaw-cream?”

“What’s thaw-cream?” said Jimmieboy.

“Boiled ice-cream,” explained Blackey and then he added the little rhyme,

“I do not mean to give offense

But I assert that its immense

Especially when cold’s intense.”

“What’s the matter with you?” said Reddy to the Black Tiddledywink. “We never have thaw-cream at balls. They never have anything but rolls at balls.”

“So they don’t,” returned Blackey. “I’d forgotten that.

“’Tis strange how I forget some things—

Like postage stamps and finger rings,

And always, when it comes December,

The other things I can’t remember.”

“They’re very good rolls though,” Reddy said with a nod at Jimmieboy. “Nice and light you know—we have to keep strings tied to ’em to hold ’em down, they’re so light and hot! My, how fine and hot they are. The butter you put on ’em melts as soon as it touches ’em and you’d never know it was there. But there goes the bell and I must be off.”

As Reddy spoke the bell had been rung for the contestants in the first event and as Reddy was Master of Ceremonies, Jimmieboy was willing to excuse him, particularly as he had left Blackey behind to entertain the little visitor.

“He’s a nice Widdledywink,” said Jimmieboy with an affectionate glance in the direction of the retreating Reddy.

“Yes,” returned Blackey,“very nice indeed. In fact,

With all that you have just now said

I perfectly agree.

I really think that little Red

’S almost as nice as me.”

“You should say ‘nice as I,’” said Jimmieboy. He didn’t know why ‘nice as I’ was better than ‘nice as me’ for of course he had never studied grammar, but he did know that his papa had corrected him several times when he had himself said ‘nice as me.’”

“But I don’t think he’s as nice as you,” said Blackey, “so I won’t say it.”

This was confusing to Jimmieboy, so he thought he wouldn’t pursue the question any further and changed the subject by saying:

“But I don’t see any wunning wack.”

“What for?” queried Blackey.

“For your sports of course,” said Jimmieboy; “You must have a wunning wack if you have wunning waces.”

“But we don’t have running races—such things aren’t permitted down here,” returned Blackey. “They tire you out so and get you all out of breath. We never run unless the Whimperjam or the Wobbledypie wants us, and so running is very useless at most times and not sport at others, and as my poem says,

Oh, what’s the use of useless things.

If you’ve no fingers, why have rings?

Without a head why buy a hat—

Pray tell me that.”

“Yes—but Affletic Sports up in my countwy are all made up of wunning waces and jumping waces, or wowing waces,” explained Jimmieboy.

“Well, I don’t see the good of ’em,” said Blackey. “And they must be very tiresome. When we have races they are either thinking races—to see who can think the fastest—or talking races, to see who can talk the longest, or sitting races to see who can sit the stillest; and so on. There’s lots of good in that style of sport because it rests the racers and they don’t get overheated and out of breath. As the heroine in my poem says to her cousin, who is about to leave her, and seek his fortune:

I do not pine for them that ride and hunt,

For them that run and row I have no care—

Give me that noble being none can stunt

At sitting motionless upon a chair.

I deem them sorry wights who’re strong to thump

Each other til the one or t’other shrinks—

I have no love for him who lives to jump—

But let me have that one who fastest thinks.

The noblest sport is that which contributes

Most to the good and glory of our kind.

I love him best who never substitutes

Mere leggy sports for those that tax the mind.

“Perhaps that’s a little too deep for you Jimmieboy,” Blackey added, “but you see we Tiddledywinks have to jump as a matter of business. We jump for a living, so when we come to our sports we try to do something different. Now as for you, I should advise you to get all the ‘leggy sports’ you can and let thinking and sitting still alone for some years to come. You are not a Tiddledywink but a little boy, and it isn’t likely you ever will be a Tiddledywink—though if you ever are I hope you’ll come and join our set—and little boys need all the exercise they can get; and they’re rather like flowers, too—they need sunshine and a good watering every day, and if they get that they’re apt to be happy anywhere. Exercise is health for you, but business for us—see?”

From which Jimmieboy would have known if he had been old enough, that Blackey was something of a philosopher as well as a poet.

“You and I,” said Blackey after a moment’s pause, “would better run a little bit though and get into our seats—for I see the band is preparing to play the lullaby.”

“What’s the lullaby for?” Jimmieboy asked.

“For the Sleeping Match. The Tiddledywinks are going to see which can go to sleep the quickest.”

•   16   •

THE ATHLETIC SPORTS BEGIN

“What are those books on the table for?” asked Jimmieboy, as the six Tiddledywinks who were to take part in the Sleeping Match came out upon the platform and bowed to the audience.

“Those are arithmetics,” said Blackey. “They make the race faster, you know, and of course the faster the race the more exciting it is.”

“I’ve heard of ‘wiffmetic,’” said Jimmieboy, “from a big cousin of mine who knows all about it, but he said it was very slow.”

. “Of course it is,” returned Blackey. “As I said once in my poem on slowness:

The Snail is very, very slow,

For one so light and small;

You hardly see the tortoise go,

You hardly see the grasses grow,

But this Arithmetic, you know,

Is slower than them all.”

“Then I don’t see how it makes a wace faster,” said Jimmieboy.

“You forget,” returned Blackey, “that this is a Sleeping Match. Don’t you see the Tiddledywinks are all lying down?”

“Why yes—and studying the wiffmetics—oh, I see,” said Jimmieboy, with a loud laugh. “They are studying themselves to sleep.”

“Hooray! Tiger!” shouted the Calico Santa Claus over on the other side of the hall, and the Red Tiddledywinks all applauded.

“What’s the cheering for?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Why, didn’t you see Reddy nod?” returned Blackey. “He’s the champion so far. He’s sleepier than—hullo what’s the matter now?” Blackey added, rising from his seat and walking over to the stage, for there seemed to be a quarrel of some kind going on there, and all the contesting Tiddledywinks had sprung to their feet and were talking vigorously to the stuffed Owl, who, inasmuch as he lived in Jimmieboy’s papa’s library over a lot of books, which Jimmieboy called the Bicyclopedia, was supposed to know enough to be referee and had been asked to act as such.

“I hope there is not going to be a fight,” said Jimmieboy, when Blackey returned.

“Fight?” said Blackey, “Oh no. There’s just a little misunderstanding, that’s all. They’ve got to start over again. Reddy didn’t understand the rules and began studying fractions and of course he’d have been asleep first because the others were beginning with addition, which isn’t half so stupid. It’s one of the rules that the contestants have got to begin at the beginning of the arithmetic because some parts of it are sleepier than others, and of course it wouldn’t be fair if they didn’t all have the same advantage.”

“The Owl does very well for a judge, doesn’t he?” said Jimmieboy, when all had quieted down and the Tiddledywink athletes had started off on their race again.

“Yes. And it’s a good thing for the Tiddledywinks that he isn’t in this match, too,” said Blackey, “because he’d win it if he was. Why, that Owl can get to sleep nine times quicker than you could an hour after bedtime, and that’s a good deal to be able to do, considering the size of his eyes and all the things he knows and has to forget.”

“How do you mean, ‘forget’?” queried Jimmieboy. He had never thought much on the subject of sleep and Blackey’s remarks were rather hard for him to understand.

“Why, that’s all sleep is,” returned Blackey wisely. “It’s nothing but shutting your eyes and forgetting everything. Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Jimmieboy. “When I go to sleep I don’t forget everyfing. I dweam about mamma and papa and all my toys and—”

“Yes, but that isn’t real remembering,” said Blackey. “That’s only dream remembering.”

“I don’t see what diff’ence there is,” retorted Jimmieboy, a bit puzzled.

“There’s a good deal,” Blackey answered. “Did you ever dream you had a stick of candy in your hand?”

“Lots o’ times,” said Jimmieboy, smacking his lips at the remembrance.

“And did you ever wake up before you’d eaten that dream candy?” asked Blackey.

“Yes,” assented Jimmieboy.

“Then what did you do with it?” asked Blackey.

“Nuffin’,” said Jimmieboy. “There wasn’t anyfing to do anyfing with.”

“Well, the difference between that dream candy and real candy is just the same as the difference between real remembering and dream remembering—so you see sleep is nothing after all but forgetting. Perhaps you have read my poem about the Bumblebee and the Fish?”

“No. I can’t wead,” returned Jimmieboy, “but I’ve learned how to listen.”

“That’s a great thing, too,” put in Blackey. “Most little boys don’t know how to listen even in words of no syllables. But the poem of the Bumblebee shows how sleep makes you forget very important things sometimes. The Bumblebee is supposed to tell the story and it goes this way:

“THE BUMBLEBEE AND THE FISH.

One night when I lay fast asleep—

I am a Bumblebee—

The notion in my head did creep

That I lived in the briny deep,

The restless, sounding sea—

Strange place that was for me!

And all the fishes gathered there,

The Cod, Sardine and Whale.

Came swimming up from everywhere—

Except the Shark who took a scare,

And turned a ghastly pale

In every single scale.

The Minnow then in solemn tone

Asked, ‘Pray sir, tell us what

You chance to be—art flesh and bone?

Art fish or fowl? Wood or stone?

And I—I answered not—

I’d really clean forgot.

I thought and thought and thought and thought

I thought for hours three—

Nor found the answer that I sought,

Until a sudden change was wrought,

And I of sleep was free—

And then I cried ‘A Bee.’

But ’twas too late. The fish were gone—

Their thirst by no means slaked—

The Halibut and Pinky Prawn,

The Whale, the Cod had all withdrawn

The moment that I waked—

And how my poor head ached.

And hence it is that since that night

The monsters of the seas—

The Mackerel and Bait of white

The Shrimp and other fishes bright

Have looked on Bumblebees

As crazy mysteries.”

“Hi, hi, HI, Hi, hi!” cried the Monkey-on-a-Stick, who was sitting with the Green Tiddledywinks. “Greeney’s ahead—Greeney’s ahead.”

“How does he know?” asked Jimmieboy, for as far as he could see the Sleeping Match contestants were as wide-awake as ever.

“He can tell by his breathing,” said Blackey. “He’s nearer than we are, you know, and maybe Greeney is giving one of those half-asleep snores—don’t you know the kind when you give a little snort and then straighten up suddenly as much as to say, ‘I’m not asleep’?”

“Whitey seems to be very wide-awake,” said Jimmieboy, after a minute spent in watching the athletes. “He doesn’t look a bit sleepy—I don’t beyieve he’ll win.”

“No,” returned Blackey. “He won’t. He didn’t train properly. He slept ten hours last night and had coffee for breakfast. The others haven’t been asleep for four days and have drank nothing but bromide.”

“What’s bwomide—anyfing like soda-water?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Yes,” said Blackey. “Very—only it’s lazier. It makes you tired and want to go to sleep—so you see Whitey really hasn’t any show at all—that is, not unless he reads his Arithmetic faster than the others and gets over into Mental Long Division before they do. If he can do that he has a chance.”

“Do you fink he will do it?” asked Jimmieboy—he was rather fond of Whitey and thought he’d like to see him win at something.

“Well, no, I don’t,” returned Blackey. “I think Whitey is saving himself up for the Thinking Match—that comes right after the exhibition jump by the Monkey-on-a-Stick, which is next to the Sleeping Match. Whitey is the quickest thinker we have, though lately the Yellow Tiddledywink has rushed him pretty close—in fact, he beat him thinking out an answer to one of Reddy’s riddles one day last week, but that was only in practice, and the Green Snapper says that Whitey let him beat on purpose just to encourage him.”

Just then the Green Tiddledywink in the Sleeping Match gave a snore that could be heard all over the hall and the audience began to applaud, supposing he had won, but the Owl never said a word because he too had fallen asleep, and before the applause had waked him up Reddy had fallen into a deep slumber.

“Judgment! Judgment!!” cried the Tiddledywinks in the audience so loudly at last that the Owl waked up and asked:

“What’s the matter?”

“We want your decision!” cried the Tiddledywinks. “The race is over.”

“Which won?” asked the Owl, his big eyes blinking as though he would like to fall off to sleep once more.

“That’s for you to decide,” said the Tiddledywinks, impatiently.

“Oh, very well, the prize will go to—er—by the way, what is the prize?” he said, turning wearily to the Red Tiddledywink.

“A piece of blue ribbon,” was the answer.

“Very well,” said the Owl. “All right. Give it to the Blue Tiddledywink.”

“He didn’t win the match,” cried Reddy, indignantly. “He wasn’t half asleep.”

“That’s all right,” said the Owl, opening his eyes wide and glaring at Reddy. “He may not have won the match but he did far better. He’s won the prize.”

“But why?” cried Greeney in despair. “It isn’t fair—it isn’t fair. I was asleep the first.”

“That may be too,” said the Owl, gravely—“indeed, I do not doubt for one moment that it is so—but the Blue Tiddledywink gets the blue ribbon because—it matches him and I’m here to award prizes according to the match.”

The Blue Tiddledywink laughed, but he was too honest to keep the prize he hadn’t won, so when the Owl handed him the ribbon he turned to Greeney and Reddy and, after a moment’s whispering with them, clambered over the edge of the platform and, making his way across the hall to where Jimmieboy sat, pinned the ribbon on the little fellow’s dress right over his heart.

Then all the audience stood up and cheered and called upon Jimmieboy for a speech, but he was too much overcome to do anything more than rise up in his chair and kiss his hand to the audience and bow half a dozen times, and then sit down again. When he had done this the Canary Band played some music, at the conclusion of which the Owl fell off to sleep again and the Monkey-on-a-Stick leaped up on the platform to give his Exhibition jump.

It was very strange about this.

Jimmieboy had seen the Monkey-on-a-Stick jump nearly every day since the last Christmas, when he had found him along with several pieces of candy and some other things in the stocking which Santa Claus had left him, but never had he seen him jump so high or so well as he did on this occasion. The Monkey started from the bottom of the stick and shot off into the air until he touched the ceiling with his hands, and then he drew his legs up and tapped the ceiling with his feet before he came down. Then he slid to the ground and with a single spring went way over to the back of the hall, where he landed on his head, springing immediately back again to the platform and spinning round and round upon his outstretched tail until Jimmieboy and the other guests had to tell him to stop, it made them so dizzy. Then the Monkey gave one more leap—his broad leap, he called it—springing from his place on the platform and never touching ground again until he had circled the hall eight and a half times, which brought him directly over his seat, into which he dropped.

It was marvelous, the skill with which the Monkey jumped, and the hall fairly echoed with cheers at the conclusion of his performance. The cheers, as was natural, once more awakened the Owl, who strutted proudly over to the table upon which the prizes lay, and selected the medal which had been made for the Monkey as a testimonial of regard and a tribute to his greatness. Having done this, the Owl held up his claw to enjoin silence and then he said:

“This time I shall make no mistake. The tremendous satisfaction which attended the presentation of the Blue Ribbon to our friend Jimmieboy convinces me that it is to him the prizes should go, and as a token of our admiration of the Monkey-on-a-Stick’s marvelous jumping powers and with our thanks to him for his delightful exhibition, I now present this medal to Jimmieboy.”

“No—no,” cried the Tiddledywinks to the Owl in an excited whisper. “Give it to the Monkey.”

“There is no pleasing you people,” said the Owl gruffly, glaring at everybody, which with his big eyes was quite the easiest thing he could do.

“Let Jimmieboy have it,” called the Monkey. “I don’t care.”

But he did care, for, as Jimmieboy could very well see, a great big tear came out of his eye and trickled down his nose—for the medal was a very pretty one. The Owl would have said it was only perspiration, probably, but Jimmieboy knew tears when he saw them. He had seen so many.

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy, rising and taking the medal from the Owl, “let me have it. Then I,” he added, suiting the action to the word, “then I can give it to the Monkey myself, for he deserves it and I mean that he shall have it.”

This was quite as pleasing to the audience as anything that had happened, and the cheering and hand clapping that followed was so deafening that no one heard the Owl, who was snoring away once more as if his life depended on it.

“Now for the Thinking Match,” said Blackey as the Tiddledywink Thinkers came out on the platform. “Keep your eye on Whitey, because he is the greatest Thinker going. You can hardly tell his thoughts from real ones.”

•   17   •

JIMMIEBOY ACTS AS JUDGE

The Thinking Match didn’t seem to Jimmieboy to be very interesting at first. He couldn’t tell which was ahead, or what any of them were thinking about, and altogether the contest struck him as being unusually stupid, and he almost wished the Owl would wake up and be outrageous for a few minutes, or that the Mangatoo might come along and be disagreeable. Blackey, as a poet, was of course very much absorbed in what was going on on the platform, and had ceased his rhyming prattle for the moment, and for the first time since he had come to Tiddledywink-land Jimmieboy was beginning to wish he was somewhere else.

“I say, Blackey,” he said, after waiting for something to happen as long as he was able to stand the quiet, “don’t these finkers have anyfing like wiffmetic to make the wace exciting?”

“No indeed,” returned Blackey. “They don’t need it—it’s exciting enough as it is, for you know thinking is against the law, and if the police were to hear of it—phe-e-eee-ew!”—this last was a long, low whistle which made Jimmieboy shudder to think of what might take place if the police should happen in at that moment and catch the Tiddledywinks deep in thought.

“What would they do?” he whispered. “What would the police do if they should catch them finking?”

“They’d take ’em by their legs,” said Blackey, “and turn ’em heel side up and shake all the thoughts right out of ’em, and then when they’d seen what kind of thoughts they were, they’d have ’em punished accordingly. If they were ill-natured thoughts they’d fine ’em twenty-five verbenas apiece. If they were funny thoughts and could make the judge laugh they’d get off with a good scolding.”

“But why did you people ever make such a funny law as that—to keep people from finking?” asked Jimmieboy. “I don’t see any weason for a law yike that.”

“Oh, we had to have it,” returned Blackey. “It was the only way we could make thinking exciting and we’ve found that lots of people who never thought of thinking before there was a law against it, don’t do anything else now.”

“Are many people arwested for it here?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No; it’s pretty hard to find out whether one is guilty, you know,” said Blackey, calmly. “It’s very hard to get witnesses who can be at all sure that he has seen a Tiddledywink thinking. You might look very thoughtful, you know, and yet not have an idea in your head. In fact,” Blackey added, “that’s the way with most people. You never can judge by appearances—I never do. I make it a rule to judge by disappearances. For instance, a man may look as if he’d take a piece of cake that wasn’t his, but it would be very wrong to make up your mind that he’d do it just because he looked that way; but if the cake and the man disappear—all at the same time, you know—”

“I see,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ll have to wecommember that. And do you know I am so glad you told me about the law—I wecommember now, Gweeney told about it before, but I had forgotten—it makes the wace ever so much more exciting. It’s a sort of wace between the Widdledywinks and the police—I wish the police would—no, I don’t either,” he added, hastily. He was going to say he hoped the police would come just for the excitement of it, but when he thought of what might happen if they did, he changed his mind.

“Why, of course they’ll come,” laughed Blackey. “How else are we to decide who’s champion? You don’t suppose we’d leave it to that sleepy old Owl to decide, do you?”

“I didn’t know,” said Jimmieboy, meekly. “I s’posed he was judge of everyfing.”

“Ho!” jeered Blackey. “Just the opposite. He isn’t judge of anything. Why, he couldn’t tell you whether it was raining or not if he was out in a thunder-storm without a waterproof on.”

“He is s’posed to be a very wise Owl,” said Jimmieboy. “My papa finks he’s just stuffed with wisdom.”

“Well, he isn’t,” said Blackey, confidently. “It’s cotton he is stuffed with and not a cent’s worth of wisdom in the whole bird.

“‘He’s a wise looking bird—that is so,

And yet I’m quite certain, my dear,

That the creature enough doesn’t know

To stay out of doors when it’s clear.

“There they are now,” Blackey added, jumping up and down, nervously.

“Who!” asked Jimmieboy.

“The police—don’t you hear them knocking?”

And Jimmieboy listened, and sure enough there was a loud knocking going on at the door, which was immediately opened, and through it came a long line of policemen. They looked to Jimmieboy very much like the small worsted ninepins his papa had brought him a few days before, dressed up in police uniforms, but he wasn’t quite certain enough on this point to warrant him in going over to intercede for the Tiddledywinks, who were apparently very nervous now that the police had arrived.

“What’s going on here?” asked the Captain of the Police, eyeing Jimmieboy sternly.

“It’s a Fink—” began Jimmieboy.

“Hush,” whispered Blackey, “don’t give it away. Tell him the Monkey has just been giving an Exhibition jump.”

“The Monkey-on-a-Stick has been jumping,” stammered Jimmieboy. “And we’ve had a Sleeping Match, too.”

“It looks to me as if somebody had been thinking around here,” said the Captain, suspiciously, walking over to the platform where the contestants stood cowering before him—all except the Yellow and Green Tiddledywinks who had climbed out of the window.

“’Twasn’t me,” said the Blue Tiddledywink.

“Very well,” said the Owl, waking up at this moment. “If it wasn’t you, you aren’t in the race at all.”

“Nobody’d ever arrest you for thinking,” sneered the Captain, giving the Owl a poke with his club. “I’m sure now that one of you fellows has been violating the law. What the Owl says convinces me that you have been having a Thinking Match. Now which one of you is guilty? What do you think, Reddy?”

“I don’t think,” returned Reddy.

“That leaves the race between my brother and Whitey,” whispered the Black Tiddledywink. “The Yellow and Green Tiddledywinks have run away and Bluey and Reddy have denied that they think. Now, let’s see who’ll win.”

“Then it’s one of you two,” continued the policeman, grabbing Blackey’s brother and Whitey by their arms. “Which is it? Quick! Tell me.”

“I think you ought to decide that for yourself,” said Blackey’s brother. “That’s what you are paid for.”

“Oh indeed,” retorted the Policeman. “You think that, do you? Well, just let me tell you that’s no kind of a thought, so it’s very evident you haven’t been thinking. That only leaves you, Whitey. How is it, eh? I fancy you’re guilty, eh?”

“I think perhaps you’re right,” returned Whitey.

At this the audience cheered and it was plain that the Policeman considered the expression as evidence of a thought of the most thoughtful kind, for the next minute Whitey was placed under arrest. Then the cheering became uproarious for this settled the point. Whitey had won the contest.

“Now do you understand Thinking Matches?” asked Blackey, when the cheering had quieted down.

“Oh yes—who ever gets arwested wins,” said Jimmieboy.

“Exactly,” said Blackey.

“S’pose two get arwested?”

“Then it’s a tie,” explained Blackey. “But hi there,” he cried, springing to his feet and shouting to the Owl. “What are you doing with that medal? That’s Whitey’s.”

“Silence!” said the Owl gravely. “I am here to award the medals to the proper people. Now I’m going to give this medal for the Thinking Match to the Policeman.”

“But he is not the proper one,” cried Blackey.

“That poet over there says you are not a proper person, Mr. Policeman,” said the Owl. “I wouldn’t stand that if I were you.”

The Policeman, paying no attention to this remark, the Owl continued, addressing his audience:

“But Dolls, Tiddledywinks and Jimmieboy, I must explain to you why I award the prize to the Policeman. It belongs to Whitey, of course, but you know what Policemen are. If I give this prize to Whitey, the Policeman will take it away from him. If I keep it myself, he’ll take it away from me. Now the only way to keep the Policeman from doing a wrong thing is to give him this medal, which I now do with the thanks and cordial appreciation of this gathering for his assistance and in the hope that he will speedily depart and not return until he is sent for which in my opinion will be forty-six weeks after never.”

“That settles you,” said the “Policeman. “I’ll swap my prisoner for you and give Whitey the medal besides. Come along,” he added, releasing Whitey and seizing the Owl by the wing.

“Too-whoo—too-whoo—too-whoom are you speaking?” screeched the Owl, as Jimmieboy and the audience howled with laughter and delight at the turn affairs had taken; and Blackey so excited that he dropped into rhyme—cried out:

“O really this is lovely quite,

It makes me shriek with glee—

To note the Owl in this plight

Is pleasing unto me.

He’s such a wild outrageous way,

We have small use for him—

And hence it is he finds today

Our sympathy is slim.

And with one voice we all do cry—

And spice it with a grin—

Oh Copper grab this fowl sly,

And then O run him in.”

“Run him in?” echoed the Policeman. “Well, I guess I will run him in. Move along here.”

“But I haven’t done anything,” said the Owl.

“I know you haven’t,” retorted the Policeman. “But laziness is more of a crime than thinking, and you seem to be the more important prisoner of the two. I’ll let Whitey off this time, but you must go with me.”

And so the Policeman walked off with the Owl, and the Tiddledywinks and their guests with a sigh of relief settled back in their chairs to listen to the joke Match, in which Reddy was to compete against Blackey—Reddy having to make a joke twice as often as Blackey made a funny verse.

Much to his embarrassment Jimmieboy was made judge of this event. He didn’t want to take the Owl’s place because he could see it was a very thankless position, and that even the Owl, wise as he had supposed him to be, was unable to award the prizes to the satisfaction of the Tiddledywinks. But Blackey and Reddy insisted that he should serve, because, as Reddy said, there were very few people who could like poetry and understand jokes all at once; and, he said, he thought Jimmieboy was just the kind of person to have the fine quality which would make of him a good judge in a contest of that sort, and he was willing to submit to Jimmieboy’s decision in the matter. Blackey said practically the same thing, although he put it differently—intimating that because one could understand a joke was no reason for supposing he could not appreciate a good poem and so forth. So Jimmieboy consented, the bell rang, and the contest began. Blackey opened with this rhyme:

“O let me have a chicken bone

Out on our old front stoop,

A razor and a six inch hone

And I will make some soup.”

“If a small chestnut cheers ’til his voice is husky, is he a hoarse-chestnut? If I should bury my watch in the ocean, would it be a Waterbury watch?” responded Reddy with out hesitation.

Jimmieboy laughed and looked toward Blackey, to see what he would do, and Blackey was ready.

“Here’s a verse on Unselfishness,” Blackey said.

“I clambered up the mountain side,

And sat high in a tree—

The view was fine and very wide,

But suddenly I sorely cried

To think, no matter how it tried,

The view could not see me.”

The audience applauded very heartily as Blackey sat down after this, and perhaps it was just as well it did for Reddy’s sake, for he too was so full of admiration for Blackey’s sentiment that he wasn’t quite ready with his two jokes. But the applause gave him the time he needed and the moment it stopped he blurted out:

“‘I’m not fond of currents’, as the crab said when the undertow caught him and swept him out to sea. ‘Where’s the cat,’ asked Willie. ‘With his paws,’ returned smart little Jennie, aged two years and seven months.”

Jimmieboy joined in the general laugh that followed these jokes and then Blackey stepped forward and recited these lines:

“If all the land were apple pie,

The sea all custard cup,

I rather think, my friends, that I

Would eat the Twirler up.”

“Who wouldn’t?” cried Jimmieboy enthusiastically, for he did like apple pie and custard cup.

“I wouldn’t,” said Reddy, coming forward. “That’s one joke,” he added, “because I would, you know.”

“That’s good,” said Blackey smiling.

“Count it in Jimmieboy, and let’s have the other, Reddy.”

“‘Oh dear!’” Reddy began, “‘Oh dear,’ said the man who fell out of the balloon. ‘What shall I do?’  ‘Keep on tumbling ’til you stop,’ said the eagle. ‘It’s all you can do.’”

“That’s the best yet,” said the Monkey-on-a-Stick, pounding with his stick on the floor. “There’s not only humor but pathos and philosophy in that joke.”

“Here’s a small boy poem,” said Blackey, when quiet had been restored,

“I’m sorry for the birdies in the tree!”

To me one day from upstairs Tommy cried down.

‘Pray tell me why?’ I asked of him and he

Replied, ‘they have no bannisters to slide down!’”

“Why is a cent like a snake?” asked Reddy, rising immediately.

“Give it up,” said Jimmieboy.

“Because it’s all head and tail,” returned Reddy. Then he added: “Why was that old Owl we had here a little while ago like a donkey?”

“Don’t know,” said Jimmieboy. “I’m not good on widdles, you know.”

“Because he couldn’t help himsel—” Reddy began and then he was interrupted.

“ALL ABOARD FOR THE BALL,” cried the voice Jimmieboy had heard at the gate of the building, when he had entered. “STEP LIVELY. ALL ABOARD.”

“Come along quick or we’ll be left,” called Greeney, grasping Jimmieboy by the hand and pulling him along, for everyone else in the room had started.

“But the match—” Jimmieboy cried.

“Oh, we never wait for the end of matches between Blackey and Reddy,” said Greeney. “We couldn’t, you know, for they’d never finish.”

“But who gets the pwize?”

“You keep that yourself,” said the Tiddledywink, boosting Jimmieboy on board of a train that stood at the door, on every car of which was painted, in large red letters:

THE JIMMIEBOY AND TIDDLEDYWINK
CENTRAL RAILWAY COMPANY

“It seems to me nobody who wins a pwize in your sports ever gets one,” said Jimmieboy.

“That’s true,” returned the Tiddledywink, “But they get the glory, and the prizes don’t amount to much. Look at ’em tomorrow,” he added, significantly, “and you’ll see.”

And then the train drew out of the station with a tremendous puffing of smoke, and they were all on their way to the Ball to be given in Jimmieboy’s honor at the Blue Tiddledywink’s house.

•   18   •

A TRIP ON THE
J. & T. C. RAILWAY

“We don’t seem to be going very fast,” said Jimmieboy after a few minutes.

“No, this isn’t one of our fast trains, it’s one of our accommodation trains,” said Greeney. “You see,” he added, “we don’t any of us ever use the fast trains because they never stop anywhere. It costs less to keep a fast train running than it does to have it stop at places and then start up again.”

“But I don’t see exyactly,” Jimmieboy replied. “I don’t see how you can keep a fast twain going all the time. It must get to the end of the woad sometime.”

“Not at all,” said Greeney with a smile, which probably meant that he considered Jimmieboy even greener than himself. “The railroad on which we run our fast trains is built in the form of a circle, and the express trains just go round and round and round, never stopping anywhere. You don’t seem to think, too, that if a fast train stopped at places it wouldn’t be fast all the time. It would have to slow up to stop, and if you have ever traveled any you probably know how passengers grumble when a fast train turns into a slow one. This was what gave the railroad people the idea of not stopping anywhere—passengers used to grumble so much, and now they have nothing whatever to say.”

“But why have it at all!” asked Jimmieboy, “that’s what I can’t unnerstand.”

“Did you ever hear of a successful railroad being conducted without fast trains?” asked Greeney surprised at Jimmieboy’s remark.

“Can’t say that I ever did,” Jimmieboy returned. “But—”

“MUMPTYREETLEDOO,” cried the Brakeman, pushing the door wide open and sticking his head into the car.

“What did he say?” asked Jimmieboy.

“He said, ‘All out for Tenpinville.’ This is where the tenpins come from,” returned Greeney.

“I didn’t fink that was what he said,” returned Jimmieboy. “It sounded more yike Wumptyteedletoo.”

“It does sound that way when the Brakeman says it but that’s the way Brakemen talk, you know, and if we know what they mean what difference does it make?” replied Greeney.

“Well, s’pose you don’t know what they mean?” Jimmieboy asked.

“Then you ought not to travel, because something would be sure to happen to you,” answered Greeney. “I think “people travel too young nowadays anyhow. This is a pretty place isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy, looking out of the window at the broad and beautiful fields dotted all over with daisies and poppies. “But why don’t we go on to the station instead of stopping wight in the middle of this field?”

“What queer questions you ask,” said Greeney, eying Jimmieboy narrowly as though wondering whether or not his little guest was in his right mind. “What is the use of stopping at stations when nine tenths of the people on the trains want to be let out in the fields? The only way to get along with the traveling public is to let ’em have their own way if you can find out what that is.”

“That is all wight,” said Jimmieboy. He could see plenty of reason in that. “But why do the people want to get out in the field?”

“For a very simple reason,” returned Greeney. “Because it’s nearer home. I guess you’ve been a home boy rather than a traveler. If you hadn’t you would know that railway stations are always put as far away from people’s homes as possible because they are noisy places as a rule and often not pleasant to look at. In nearly every case there is a vacant lot or a field somewhere which is nearer the homes of the greatest number of passengers than the station is, so here when the conductor goes through the car and takes up the tickets he gets the address of every passenger and stops as near the homes of all at once as he can get. Now, tonight most of the people live near this field. Tomorrow night most of the people may live near that cornfield you see a mile up the track, and then the train will stop there. See?”

“I fink I do,” said Jimmieboy. “The wailwoad just yikes to be obliging.”

“That’s the very point,” returned Greeney. “You can see some things after all.”

“It’s a very funny fing for a wailwoad to do that though,” said Jimmieboy.

Greeney did not quite know whether it was the system of stoppages or the railroad’s desire to be obliging that Jimmieboy considered queer, but it was a habit of his to appear at least to understand everything, and he accordingly asked no questions but simply observed that that was so.

“What do they do with the stations?” asked Jimmieboy. “There’s no use having ’em if they don’t use ’em, is there?”

“Oh, yes indeed,” said Greeney. They rent ’em out to people, make hotels of ’em, use ’em for stores, hospitals or anything else a house could be used for. If every railroad did that they’d make more money.”

“I don’t notice anybody getting out here,” Jimmieboy said in a little while, after he had thought very deeply on the queer way trains in Tiddledywink-land were run.

“No. That’s a’ strange thing about Tenpinville,” explained Greeney. “Nobody ever comes here. It’s only a place to come from, not to go to. That’s why the Tenpins came from it.”

“Don’t the place ever get emptied out?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Nope,” returned Greeney. “Never. There’s no end to the Tenpins, and I don’t believe there ever will be.”

“It seems to me,” Jimmieboy put in, “it seems to me that if I lived in as pyitty a place as this I’d want to come back again.”

“So would I,” replied Greeney. “But you know the Tenpins all have solid wooden heads—block-heads some people call ’em—and whenever you find anything or anybody with a solid wooden head you find they lack good sense. You can’t get sense into a Tenpin. If you could they wouldn’t stand up before a big heavy ball just to be knocked down again.”

“There’s a good deal in that,” said Jimmieboy. “I suppose they’d yike to have sense, too, if they could find woom for it. Why don’t they have hollow heads so that they could get sense into them?”

“Why don’t cows have wings?” Greeney asked suggestively.

“Because they can’t—if they had wings they wouldn’t be cows,” replied Jimmieboy. “But what has that got to do with it?” he added.

“Tenpins don’t have hollow heads with room in ’em for’ sense because they can’t, and if they could they wouldn’t be Tenpins,” returned Greeney.

“Who’ll have a box of cough-drops; fresh from the tree!” cried a trainboy, entering the car and passing down the aisle. “Nice fresh cough-drops.”

“How much are they a box?” asked the Calico Santa Claus, whom Jimmieboy had noticed a few minutes before seated ahead of him.

“We give ’em away, sir,” returned the boy. “Nobody would ever buy them so we decided the only way to do was to give ’em away.”

“I don’t want ’em, then,” said Santa Claus, handing back the box the trainboy had put in his lap. “Cough-drops that don’t sell for a dollar aren’t worth having.”

“You are mistaken, sir,” said the boy with a pleading look in his eye, as much as to say “you could save my life by taking one of these boxes if you only knew it. You are indeed very much mistaken. These are the very best cough-drops in the market and I speak only the truth when I say that they are worth at least five dollars a box—only we prefer to give them away. We get rid of them faster.”

“But I don’t exactly see why you should be so generous. If they are so good, why don’t you sell them?” insisted Santa Claus.

“Well, if you must know,” said the cough-drop boy, “these cough-drops grow in my father’s orchard and the children are so fond of them that they make themselves ill eating them. Consequently we have to get rid of them in some way. We find this is the surest and cheapest way to do it.”

.“And you guarantee them?” said Santa Claus, taking a box in his hand and opening it.

“Guarantee them?” echoed the boy. “Well, I guess we do guarantee them. One box of these drops will give you the worst cough you ever had in your li—”

“M U M P T Y R E E T L E D O O” the Brakeman called out again as the train slowed up and halted, this time in what seemed to Jimmieboy to be the back yard of a doll’s house.

“This isn’t Tenpinville?” said Jimmieboy, looking out of the window.

“Nobody said it was,” retorted Greeney. “This is Dollton-on-the-Railway.”

“But you told me that ‘Wumptyteedletoo’ was Bwakeman talk for Tenpinville,” remonstrated Jimmieboy, “and he said it again.”

“My dear little boy,” said Greeney, “will you never understand our ways? The first time he said that it meant Tenpinville, as I told you; this time it stands for Dollton-on-the-Railway. The next time he says it it will mean Marbleburg Haven, the time after that it will mean Snappertown, which is the capital of Tiddledywink-land, where Bluey lives, and where the ball is to be held. Mumptyreetledoo is the word the Brakeman likes best and as I told you before every time he calls that out the travelers know just where they are.”

“Well, I don’t see the sense of calling out anyfing,” said Jimmieboy.

“I am afraid we shall have to get spectacles for you,” said the Green Tiddledywink sadly. “There is so much that you don’t see. If the Brakeman didn’t cry out Mumptyreetledoo, how would we ever know he was on the train or if he was on the train that he wasn’t asleep?”

“Ah! That’s it, is it?” said Jimmieboy. “And I s’pose we stopped in the back yard of that Doll’s House because the Doll who lives in it was the only person who wanted to get off?”

“Not a bit of it. That house wasn’t occupied. Nobody lives there,” returned Greeney.

“Then why did we stop there?” Jimmieboy insisted.

“Because nobody wanted to get off,” returned Greeney. “That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”

To this Jimmieboy made no answer. He really couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just leaned back in his seat as the train started up again and looked out of the window. And so they traveled on in silence to Marbleburg, where there was a band of Agates at the station to serenade Jimmieboy as he passed through, at the head of which he thought he saw his favorite white alley. He really wasn’t quite sure it was the alley, because evening was coming on and it was getting quite dark, but he waved his handkerchief just the same in the hope that if it was the alley he would see it and would be glad of the attention—which shows how much the little fellow loved his toys.

“L U G G A G E, please,” called a voice at Jimmieboy’s side as the train moved on.

“Give him your luggage—quick,” said Greeney. “He earns forty dollars a day and his time is valuable. So don’t keep him waiting.”

“I haven’t got any luggage—what’s luggage, anyhow?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Bags and trunks,” said Greeney, “and straps and hat boxes of course. Hurry up and give them to him.”

“But I haven’t got any,” said Jimmieboy again. “I came off wivout any.”

“The idea of traveling without luggage!” said the Rag-Baby scornfully, He had escaped from the Teeheelephant and boarded the train as it was leaving the Athletic grounds. “Very childish performance that.”

“It’s against the rules of the Company to travel without luggage,” said the man who earned forty dollars a day. “Never happened on this road before,” he added. “I don’t know what to do about it. Perhaps I ought to put him off.”

“Yes, you ought,” called a voice from the rear which Jimmieboy’ immediately recognized as that of the Mangatoo. “And that’s just why you won’t.”

“Never mind him,” said the Conductor to the Luggageman. “He’s all right, Jimmieboy is. Come back into the next car with me and help me put one of the passengers off.”

“I can’t do it,” said the Luggageman. “I’ve got to put this child off if he can’t show his luggage.”

“Put somebody else off,” yelled the Mangatoo. “Won’t that do?”

“Yes, it will,” returned the Luggageman. “I don’t care who is put off you know, but it’s got to be somebody.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what you can do,” said the Tin Soldier coming up. “My father lives about a hundred yards from here. Suppose you put me off? This is as far as I want to go anyhow.”

“That suits me,” said the Luggageman, “but maybe Jimmieboy would rather be put off himself. How is that? I can’t deprive him of the privilege if he wants to go himself.”

“I’m not at all anxious,” returned Jimmieboy. “I want to go on to the next Wumptyteedletoo.”

“Very well,” said the Conductor, pulling the cord and stopping the train. “We’ll put the Tin Soldier off and then we’ll go back into the next car and get rid of that other passenger too.”

“What’s he done?” asked Greeney.

“Got a cinder in his eye,” returned the Conductor, indignantly, “and worse yet, refuses to give it up.”

“How dishonest,” said Santa Claus, holding up his hands in horror. “The idea of anybody’s being so stubborn, to say nothing of the wrong of stealing one of the Company’s cinders in the first place. He ought to be put off.”

So the Tin Soldier and the dishonest passenger were put off and the train started up again.

“You had a narrow escape,” said Greeney. “If you had been put off there it would have been awful, because it is considered a terrible disgrace, and it’s really never done unless you violate the luggage rules or try to steal the Company’s property as the man with the—”

“M U M P T Y R E E T L E D O O,“called the Brakeman. “All out.”

“Hurry up now,” said Greeney, catching Jimmieboy by the hand, “or the train will start back again and take you with it. This is Snappertown and there is Bluey’s house up on the hill.”

And then the Green Tiddledywink and Jimmieboy descended from the train followed by the Mangatoo, the Rag-baby, the Calico Santa Claus and all the other passengers, bound for the Tiddledywink ball.

“I didn’t hear the Brakeman call Wumptyteedletoo at Marbleburg,” said Jimmieboy.

“No, he had his mouth full of oyster soup at the time. He ought to be reprimanded too,” returned Greeney as they started up the hill. “If he isn’t, there’ll be an accident someday and somebody will be carried by his station.”

•   19   •

THE TIDDLEDYWINK BALL

As they drew near to the top of the hill Jimmieboy heard the buzz of hundreds of voices and above it all the strains of the Grass Band, playing a grand military march.

It had now grown quite dark and the only way they could see at all was by the light of the Chinese lanterns that were hung in festoons in every direction, and Jimmieboy wondered for a minute if he were not in Fairyland; it all looked so beautiful. Bluey’s house was the largest and finest in all Tiddledywink-land—or at least it so appeared to Jimmieboy.

“It’s puffectly bee-utiful,” he exclaimed, as he stood on the outside and caught its outline in vari-colored lights against the sky. “And dear, dear, dear, what a view he must have here.”

“Oh, yes,” said Greeney. “There is a fearful view. Why, from Bluey’s back piazza you can see a hundred miles.”

“A hundwed miles?” echoed Jimmieboy. “Why, that is wonderful.”

“That’s what everybody says,” returned Greeney. “But it’s true just the same. He can see way down to Tenpinville, and that’s fifty miles.”

“But you said a hundwed miles a minute ago,” replied Jimmieboy.

“Well—that’s a hundred miles. Fifty there and fifty back. A view isn’t a bit worth having if you can’t see your way back,” vouchsafed Greeney.

“Has Bluey a name for this lubly home?” Jimmieboy asked, gazing about him and in through the windows, where everything seemed even more beautiful than it did outside—which was quite beautiful enough, Jimmieboy thought.

“Yes. He calls it Butterfly Lodge,” returned Greeney. “Rather pretty name, we think. He named it that because it has two wings. Reddy is the only person who criticizes the name and I guess he only does it for the joke.”

“What does he want it called?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Centipede Castle,” Greeney answered, his eyes twinkling.

“What for?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Because it has a hundred feet front,” said Greeney with a laugh in which Jimmieboy joined.

“Weddy never forgets his joke, does he,” he said.

“Sometimes,” replied Greeney. “He has to, you know. You couldn’t expect anything as small as Reddy to remember all his jokes; why, he’s cracked millions of ’em. Sometimes he forgets and says ’em a second time and then we all call out ‘good as ever,’ and he knows.”

“What does he say when you catch him up on an old joke?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, he just laughs and says that he knew he’d said it before all along but he didn’t, know whether we’d heard it with both ears,” returned Greeney, with a grin the ends of which nearly met on the back of his neck, which so startled Jimmieboy that he did not show any signs of mirth himself.

“He’s here, he’s here,” somebody cried at this moment and the front door of Butterfly Lodge was thrown open and a vast flood of light came forth from within, illuminating the whole surrounding country as brilliantly as though it were midday.

And through this open door Jimmieboy entered to find a broad hallway decorated with every variety of sweet smelling flowers, and lined from end to end with Tiddledywinks in gorgeous costumes, who bowed most profoundly as he passed on to the reception room at the rear. So gorgeously were the Tiddledywinks dressed that Jimmieboy felt somewhat anxious about his own clothes, and glancing nervously down at his costume he was surprised to note that, unknown to himself, he was appareled even more magnificently than the others.

“Where did these clothes come from,” he asked of Greeney who was still at his side.

“Never mind that, returned Greeney with a wink. “That’s another great thing about this house of Bluey’s. If you came in here with a linen duster on you’d think you were wearing a velvet robe studded with diamonds.”

“I wish I hadn’t my curl papers on,” said Jimmieboy. “Curl papers and velvet wobes don’t go well together.”

“Why, you haven’t had those on since the Luggage-man went through the train. He took ’em while you weren’t looking. You look fine,” returned Greeney and as he spoke they reached the door of the Reception room where Jimmieboy found the Blue Tiddledywink standing to receive him.

“Welcome to Butterfly Lodge,” said Bluey with a gracious smile, extending his hand which Jimmieboy grasped and squeezed. “I hope you were not tired by the railway journey?”

“Tut,” cried the Mangatoo, who had followed Greeney and Jimmieboy in. “Tired? By that journey?”

“It’s a pretty long journey,” said Bluey. “Two hundred and thirty miles.”

“Well, what of it?” said the Mangatoo scornfully. “There were two hundred and thirty of us on the train. That’s a mile apiece. A mile wouldn’t tire a wagon wheel, much less a big fellow like Jimmieboy.”

“Where’s your invitation to this ball?” asked one of the Tenpin policeman coming up and tapping the Mangatoo on the back.

“In my other clothes, of course,” said the Mangatoo, coolly eying the policeman from head to foot. “That’s where I always carry papers I may happen to want.”

“You can’t stay here if you haven’t one, you know,” returned the policeman.

“Where’s yours?” queried the Mangatoo.

“That’s neither here nor there,” began the policeman.

“Then it isn’t anywhere,” retorted the Mangatoo. “So you’d better do your duty and put yourself out. I only came here to get a check for my hat anyhow.”

“What do you do that for?” asked Jimmieboy.

“The hat’s no good—I can’t sell it but I might be able to cash the check,” the Mangatoo answered. “I’ve known that to happen, you know.

“It’s very evident,” said Reddy, with a sad smile, “that you’ve been brought up on comic papers.”

“That’s so,” put in Jimmieboy, “but I rather yike the Mangatoo. I wish we had birds yike him up our way.”

“My grandfather came from your country.” said the Mangatoo gratefully. “They call him a Loon up there—and he is a Loon too. If he wasn’t he’d pay his bill and get rid of it.”

“You have many of his qualities,” said Bluey, dryly, and then turning to Jimmieboy he added, “Come along and I’ll introduce you to your partner for the opening Quadrille.”

“I’m very sorwy,” Jimmieboy began, “but weally Bluey, I don’t dance at all.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” returned Bluey. “None of the guests dance, it’s too much exertion for them. The way we have a ball, we sit quietly in big comfortable armchairs on a raised step running all about the ball room, and watch our hired dancers going through the Quadrilles and other dances. You’ll find it is by far the pleasantest way of dancing there is—so restful, you know. Your partner for the Quadrille is the Doll-Baby, the one that’s stuffed with sawdust. You remember her, I think?”

“Oh my, yes. I wecommember her very well,” said Jimmieboy, with a pleased smile, for the Doll-Baby and he had been famous friends for a long time. “There she is now—am I to sit next to her?”

“Yes, until the Quadrille is over, and then you are to have Cinderella for the waltz,” returned Bluey, as they reached the seat set apart for Jimmieboy.

“How do you do,” said the Doll-Baby as she recognized Jimmieboy. “Glad you’ve come.”

“So am I,” said Jimmieboy, sinking down into the deliciously soft cushions of the armchair and giving a tired little sigh—for he had had so many experiences since he arrived in Tiddledywink-land that he was beginning to feel very weary. “And I’m glad to see you here. Do you come to Widdledywink-land often?”

“No, I do not,” replied the Doll-Baby. “I don’t have much chance to, really. Having so much to do at home, looking after all my little brothers and sisters, keeps me from visiting here as much as I should like.”

“Do you have much twouble keeping your bwovvers and sisters in order?” Jimmieboy asked.

“Oh dear, yes,” answered the Doll-Baby, “particularly those Paper Dolls. They are so delicate, you know, and then they are all the time tearing their clothes or going too near the fire or doing something rash.”

“I guess the wubber dolls are the easiest to take care of, are they not?” queried Jimmie.

“You’d think so. They are so strong,” replied the Doll-Baby, “but really they are not. One of them fell into the bathtub, for instance, the other day, and lost all his beautiful pink cheeks; and a pretty blue coat I had had painted on him was simply washed out of existence. Then you remember what a terrible time we had with the Rubber Soldier who went to sleep on the register last winter, and had his uniform and left leg melted right off! It’s really awfully trying, keeping small dolls out of mischief—by the way, won’t you fix these pillows on my chair a little better? As they are now I have to lean way back, and you know I can’t keep my eyes open when I do that.”

Jimmieboy did as he was requested and assisted the Doll-Baby in maintaining that upright position which was absolutely necessary when she desired to keep awake, and then, as the Grass Band started up playing the Quadrille, his interest turned to what was going on on the floor.

And it was most interesting to watch a dozen Turtles dancing a Quadrille—so much so, in fact, that Jimmieboy was intensely sorry when the dance came to an end, although the excitement of it was prolonged by the mishap to a young middle-aged Turtle, who slipped on the glassy floor and fell over on his back, so that he could not rise without the assistance of eight of the Tenpin police.

When this was over Jimmieboy said good evening to the Doll-Baby, and arm in arm with Blackey, who came after him, marched across the room to where sat little Cinderella, with whom he was to enjoy the waltz.

“I’ve never met Cinderwella before,” said Jimmieboy to Blackey. “How is she, pleasant?”

“Quite,” returned Blackey, “if she likes you. If she doesn’t she’ll sneer at your clothes. She’s a queer girl. I wrote a few lines about her last winter. They go like this:

CINDERELLA.

“She isn’t a particle proud,

Though dressed in rich satins and chintz.

She mingles right in with the crowd

Although she has married the Prince.

She’s pretty as ever likewise,

And hasn’t forgot that the book

Which brought her before public eyes

Asserts that she knows how to cook.

Should she take a fancy to you

You’ll note a soft light in her eye—

She’ll offer when dancing is through

To bake you a fine pigeon pie.

But should you by ill-luck displease.

She’ll give you the chillingest frown—

A glance that your marrow will freeze—

And ask if you made your own gown.”

“I hope she yikes me,” said Jimmieboy, a little nervously. “I don’t have a good time as a usual thing when I’m with people who don’t yike me.”

“As I’ve said in my new book of poems,” said Blackey, putting his arm about Jimmieboy’s waist, “in a little verse called ‘To Jimmieboy,’

“Should you say aught about me,

To make me wish to strike you,

Just knowing you would flout me

And really make me like you.

And should you end by liking me,

By all the stars above you,

You could not e’en by striking me

Make me do aught but love you.

In other words, my dear Jimmieboy,” continued Blackey affectionately, “nobody can help liking you whatever you may do or say.”

“You dear old fing,” murmured Jimmieboy, patting Blackey gently on the head; and then he was introduced to Cinderella just as the Grass Hopper Band began playing the waltz, in response to which five lobsters and five crabs danced in through the door and over the floor together.

“Isn’t it comical,” said Cinderella, with a merry burst of laughter.

“Funniest thing I ever saw,” returned Jimmieboy.

“Yes,” returned Blackey. “As my book says

A funnier thing than a waltzing crab,

Or a lobster in twirling feather,

Is seen when the crab and the lobster grab

Each other’s hands with their nabbiest nab

And glide over the floor together.’”

“You don’t dance, yourself, do you, Miss Cinderwella?” asked Jimmieboy after Cinderella had smiled duly at Blackey’s rhyme.

“Not unless I have a softwood floor,” returned Cinderella. “These hardwood floors shiver my glass slippers all to pieces.”

“I should fink they might,” returned Jimmieboy. “I s’pose you must bweak a gweat many pairs.”

“Oh no. They’re not so easy to break as some leather ones and then they never wear out. The only real trouble with them is,” said the little Princess, “that sometimes I go out without any on at all—they are so clear, that I cannot always tell whether I have any on or not until I have put my foot into water somewhere, and then I can tell. If I have them on, my feet keep dry but otherwise—oh dear, here is that odious Mangatoo coming up.”

“Good evening,” said the Mangatoo. “Good evening, Cinderella. I’ve found out what you wanted to know.”

“Indeed?” was the chilling response. “I was not aware that I had ever asked you for any information.”

“Well, you did—last time I saw you. You asked me where I got my clothes,” persisted the Mangatoo. “You asked me if I made ’em myself, and I couldn’t quite decide whether I did or not, and I’ve been thinking it over.”

It was evident then to Jimmieboy that Cinderella had disliked the Mangatoo from the start, because he remembered Blackey’s poem about her sneering at the clothes of those for whom she did not care.

“Well, what conclusion have you reached?” returned Cinderella coldly.

“None,” answered the Mangatoo. “But I’ve got a question to ask. Who made your hair?-”

“Come, come,” said. Jimmieboy, tapping the Mangatoo with Cinderella’s fan which he held in his hand. “That’s not polite.”

“It’s meant to be polite,” said the Mangatoo. “Therefore it isn’t impolite. Did she make her hair?”

“No—of course she didn’t. It grew on her head,” said Blackey.

“Then I didn’t make my clothes, that’s all,” said the Mangatoo, turning away. “I grew every feather of ’em,” and then they lost sight of the strange bird in the crowd that was passing to and fro.

“Supper’s ready,” cried Bluey, from the other side of the room. “Come along, Jimmieboy. You and Miss Green Tiddledywink are to go in together.”

“All wight,” replied Jimmieboy, gleefully, for he was rather hungry. “I’m coming,” and then he said to Cinderella, “Goodbye, Pwincess. I hope we shall meet again.”

“So do I,” answered Cinderella. “And when you do come to the Palace I’ll introduce you to the Prince and make you a pigeon pie.”

Then Jimmieboy knew that Cinderella liked him, and with a light happy heart he ran across to where Miss Green Tiddledywink awaited him and with her he passed into the supper room.

“We have a special treat for you,” said Bluey, after Jimmieboy was seated in the supper room. “Something you love better than anything else in the world.”

“What is it?” said Jimmieboy.

“It is behind that curtain over there,” Bluey answered with a broad smile—and the Mangatoo whispered,

“Don’t forget the Comic Papers.”

“It is behind the curtain,” repeated Bluey, “and you must guess what it is.”

“Custard?” queried Jimmieboy.

“No,” cried Reddy.

“Jelly!” said Jimmieboy.

“Nope!” laughed Blackey.

“Don’t forget the Comic Papers!” came from the Mangatoo.

“Ice Cweam!” said Jimmieboy.

“No—no—no!” returned Greeney. “Close your eyes and try to guess before I count three. What is it that you love more than all the rest of the world put together.

“One!”

•     •     •     •     •

“Two!”

•     •     •     •     •

“Three!” cried Greeney.

“Papa and Mamma,” murmured Jimmieboy, opening his eyes just as Greeney drew the curtain aside.

•   20   •

BACK AT HOME AGAIN

And so it was. Jimmieboy had guessed rightly. There behind the drawn curtain stood his papa and his mamma, but when he looked for Greeney and Bluey and Cinderella and the Mangatoo and the supper room he could not see them anywhere.

Somehow or other he had got back into his nursery and was lying flat on his back in his crib, while the warm rays of the morning sun streamed in through the window.

“Where have the Widdledywinks gone?” he asked, rubbing his eyes and looking about him.

“Oh, they’re all right in their basket,” said papa, catching him up and giving him a resounding kiss. “Aren’t you tired of the Tiddledywinks yet?” he added, tossing the basket full of them on Jimmieboy’s lap.

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “I love them more than ever,” and then taking Blackey in his hand he kissed him and whispered, “Don’t I, Blackey.”

But Blackey said never a word in rhyme or otherwise. He had evidently gone to sleep, as had also the Snappers and all the others, Blue, Green, Yellow, Red and White.

As for the Mangatoo, Jimmieboy has saved the Comic Papers for him, but not knowing his address cannot send them, and, strange to say, the Tiddledywinks have always kept silent when Jimmieboy has requested information as to his whereabouts.

The Tiddledywinks’
Poetry Book

(1892)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
CHARLES HOWARD JOHNSON
[FROM TIDDLEDYWINK TALES]

CONTENTS:

Jimmieboy AND THe Tiddledywinks
A Fine Plan
The Mangatoo
The Railboat
The Anirooney Bird
The Grasshopper Band
The Wobbledypie
The Tiddledywink Pony
The Tiddledywink Flowers
The Cockadoodledon’t
Sly Old Tom
The Teeheelephant
A Narrow Escape
The Misinformation Bird
“Fare, Please”
The Dancing Turtles
The Nightmare
In the Roasted Peanut Tree
The Policeman’s Chorus
Not Envious
Chickening
Round the World
The Foolish Tenpin
A Sleeping Contest
The Whimperjam
Greedy Si
The Unhappy Elephant
The Owl

From the Black Tiddledywink’s Nursery Melodies

Jimmie Boy to the Tiddledywinks

JIMMIEBOY
AND THE TIDDLEDYWINKS

Small Jimmieboy one soft June night

Found out a thing that pleased him quite,

Which was, in short, that Tiddles talked,

And sang, and danced, and also walked.

His nurse had put him in his bed,

And, several moments later, sped

To other things—for she supposed

He was asleep: his eyes were closed.

Scarce had she gone when near the lamp

The youngster heard a tramp, tramp, tramp,

And looking toward the table, where

The lamp was standing, noticed there

The Tiddles climbing all about

Engaged in play and noisy rout.

There were the red ones and the blue,

The black and yellow, green ones too.

The white Tids strutted to and fro

Till Jimmieboy cried out “Hullo!”

Whereat they scampered out of sight

And then peeped back, to his delight.

Then one, less timid than the rest,

Came back and told him to get dressed,

And come along with them and play

Until the sun proclaimed the day,

Which he was glad enough to do—

And O! the countries they went through.

He saw strange sights and wondrous beasts;

He sat down to the strangest feasts;

He heard the queerest poetry,

And met birds that you rarely see.

He heard fine music, and went through

The very finest sort of Zoo—

In which he saw the Mangatoo,

The Nightmare, and the Rooster who

Could crow most loud, yet never crew;

Met Cinderella at a ball,

In a most gorgeous dancing hall;

And when at last the night was sped

He found himself once more in bed.

Some things he saw that happy night,

As you read on, will greet your sight

And if you have in seeing these

The fun he had, they’re sure to please,

And they by whom this work was done

Will not be sorry ’twas begun.

A FINE PLAN

I’ve written an invitation

To Dolly to visit us here,

And to have a small spree

With my sister and me.

She’s certain, I think, to appear.

And now that I’ve got it written,

I wonder if Dolly will see,

From beginning to end

That the letter is penned

In most beautiful poetry.

The lines are all rhymed most neatly,

The wording is wonderful sweet;

And I’ve written it, too,

In an ink of pale blue,

And am really proud of the feat.

I’ve mentioned the wax-bee’s humming,

And I’ve mentioned the hare-bell’s clink,

And I’m rather inclined

To think Dolly will find

I’m great at the using of ink.

I hope when the fair one sees it

And notes that it’s real poetry,

She will hasten down here

And will call me “my dear,”

And ask if she can’t marry me;

For then I can easily tell her—

Without making Dolly enraged,

That I cannot, for I

To the blue bottle fly,

Last Fourth of July, got engaged.

THE MANGATOO

One day the comic Mangatoo

From off his lofty perch down flew,

His morning paper ’neath his wing,

And thus to Jimmieboy did sing:

“You think I am a parrot, but

Although I have his lordly strut,

A parrot’s just what I am not.

I can’t deny his bill I’ve got,

His voice and eyes and general hue:

And ’twixt the post and me and you

I’m like the parrot in the phiz,

With claws and temper much like his—

And yet I’m not a parrot—you

’Ll observe I am a Mangatoo.”

“Then what, I pray,” said Jimmieboy,

In manner rather grave than coy,

“What is a Mangatoo; do tell?”

The creature thought and answered, “Well,

A Mangatoo

Is—entre nous—

Well, he’s a wondrous sort of bird,

At least you know that’s what I’ve heard—

That has the parrot’s voice and beak,

And like the parrot likes to speak.

He has his claws and lordly strut,

His eyes and hue and temper, but

Is not a parrot,—don’t you see ?

In short a Mangatoo is—Me!”

“Ah, yes, I see. A Mangatoo,”

Said Jimmieboy,

“is just like you,

A parrot through and through and through,

Yet not a Polly!”

“That ’s it, sir.

He’d be a parrot if he were,

But as he isn’t, don’t you see,

Becomes a Mangatoo, like me.”

Whereat the queer bird winked his eye,

And to his perch again did fly,

And Jimmieboy departing thence

Decided that the bird was dense,

In other words lacked sense.

THE RAILBOAT

The railboat is a wondrous thing,

Since it enables me

To take a fast express train if

I wish to cross the sea.

For they are faster far than those

Big ocean steamers, men

Spend weeks to go to Europe in

And weeks to come again.

I would they were in general use,

Because one then could go

Across to Europe every week

And spend a day or so.

It would, I think, be very fine

If one could leave for France

Tonight, and get there in two days,

And over Paris glance.

And then to get aboard again,

And whisk back o’er the deep

To get a change of clothes and fly

To where the Chinese sleep.

To cruise about the ocean in

A handsome parlor car,

Would certainly become, I think,

Extremely popular.

And I am sure I cannot see

Why we in Tiddle Land

Alone make use of railboats when

They are so truly grand.

THE ANIROONEY BIRD

When this bird sings I’m told that he

Drives whales and codfish out to sea.

His voice is deep and rather harsh,

Like that of bull-frogs in the marsh,

And sometimes, when he’s mad, they say

It sounds like German bands in May,

Or dishes falling off a tray.

One old man said he thought the sound

Resembled rumblings under ground,

Combined with rattling spoons and tongs,

And frying pans and dinner gongs;

Another, that to him ’twas like

An orguinette off on a strike,

Assisted by a crowd of boys,

With every kind of childish noise.

To me, who’ve heard him try to sing,

But once, ’twas like a cracked bell’s ring,

Mixed in with thunder and the song

Of cats when night is well along,

With just a dash of creaking doors,

Pop-guns and trumpet blasts in scores.

But, worst of all this awful bird,

His voice both night and day is heard,

By light of sun, by light of moon,

In “Annie Rooney” out of tune.

To any little girl or boy

I’ll give the most desired toy,

If he or she will salt his tail

And have him locked up safe in jail,

Beyond the reach of friends or bail,

Where he no more can bother me

By singing wildly out of key

“She’s my Annie,

I’m her Joe

Little—Annie—Rooney

Is

My

Sweet

Heart.”

THE GRASSHOPPER BAND

Old major Grasshopper is leading his band,

He’s gaily caparisoned—epaulettes grand;

His coat is embroidered with gold and fine lace,

He’s truly the handsomest one of his race.

The band that’s behind him’s a curious crowd,

One half ’s playing softly, the other quite loud,

And each one is playing—I wish they’d forbear

A totally different, separate air.

Why, two of the twelve queer musicians you see

Are playing “Remember” and “Annie Rooney,”

And two pert grasshoppers are having some fun

With “Bye, Oh My Baby” and “John, Get Your Gun.”

“Whoa, Emma!” and “Comrades” two others now play,

And one of them’s tooting the March Boulanger.

Then more are compelling the welkin to roar,

With “White Wings,”  “Mikado,” and old “Pinafore.”

While two you can’t see are indulging in bets

At which can get quickest through “Sweet Violets.”

Such music as comes from it all, I must say,

I’ve not heard before in the whole of my day;

To wish to hear more, were I big enough dunce,

I’d set forty hand-organs going at once,

And listen for two bars, or possibly three,

And then grab my hat and jump into the sea.

THE WOBBLEDYPIE

Oh this is the horrible Wobbledypie,

Who sees through a wonderful window-glass eye,

With shutters for lids,

No friend of the Tidds,

Who’re always in hiding when Wobble is nigh.

Just look at his nose—what a curious nose!

’Twill reach from his forehead right down to his toes.

The hat on his head

Is yellow and red,

A match for his fluffery, feathery clothes.

He stole his umbrella—’tis cotton, and green

He eats all his meals with a sewing machine.

The chief of his joys

Is teasing Tidd boys

With tricks that are horrid, unpleasant and mean.

Puts salt in their coffee and milk in their cream,

He throws their best clothes in the bubbling stream

When swimming they go,

And cries out “O-ho!

”When anyone questions the use of the scheme.

The Tidds hate him most, though, because he has got

One habit, the vilest of all the vile lot:

’Tis funny, he thinks,

To grab up the ’Winks

And souse ’em all into the mucilage pot,

Which makes ’em so sticky it makes ’em all cry,

And very unhappy, and that is just why

The ’Winkys all flee

Whenever they see

That horrible creature the Wobbledypie.

THE TIDDLEDYWINK PONY

This is the pony—color, pink

That’s owned by Miss Red Tiddledywink,

Who keeps him always bright and clean

And feeds him well on vaseline.

The pony wears a diamond pin,

Just out of reach, behind his chin;

A sailor-collar on his neck

That’s white as snow, without a speck;

Although blue specs the pony wears

Upon his eyes—he’s several pairs

His diamond shines so wondrous bright

It hurts the little pony’s sight.

That net that grows upon his tail

To catch the flies doth never fail,

And when he’s out upon the street

He wears fine shoes upon his feet;

They’re patent leathers—look and see—

And make his small heart beat with glee.

The barrow that he’s harnessed to

Is painted red and white and blue,

And when Miss Ruby goes to ride

She sits upon the left-hand side,

And tells the pony, you must know,

Just where she does not want to go.

And then the pony goes straight there,

So that, to get most anywhere,

The only plan the owners find,

Is not to say what they’ve in mind,

But something else entirely

Which makes all right two times in three.

A strange small horse is this, I think,

But just right for a Tiddledywink.

THE TIDDLEDYWINK FLOWERS

The flowers in this pleasant land,

Although they’re made of wax,

Are very pretty, and not one

A lovely perfume lacks.

A rose sometimes will smell just like

A bit of heliotrope,

And for the scent of mignonette

A lily e’en may hope.

The odor of the violet

At any time may come,

If, haply, we should wish for it,

To the chrysanthemum.

The mullen stalk may smell as sweet

As any flow’r that grows;

And I have seen a bleeding-heart

That smelt just like a rose.

Indeed, whatever odor we

Desire in any plant,

We always have, and no one dares

To tell us that we can’t.

And this is how we get them so:

At first the seed is sown,

And then to water it we use

Our favorite cologne.

THE COCKADOODLEDON’T

In me

You see

The famous Cockadoodledon’t.

I can crow loud—but, no! I won’t!

And that’s the reason why, you see,

All people are so fond of me.

My feathers are of lovely hue

Red, green and yellow, pink and blue,

And look most swell, so people say,

On bonnets, and I make ’em pay.

The ladies from the country round,

Besieging me, are always found.

Because my feathers are so grand

They’re sought for throughout all the land,

So that I’ve gone into the trade,

And oh, the millions. I have made!

Why, really, I just roll in wealth,

And haven’t made a cent by stealth.

Just try to think,

Excuse my wink,

How much I make, my little man,

From working on this feather plan:

I sell blue feathers for a dime,

Unless you take eight at a time,

In which case I add on ten cents,

Because the labor is immense.

It takes a day, ’twixt me and you,

To grow a feather of that hue.

Red feathers cost you somewhat more

It takes two days to sprout forth four—

I charge eight dollars for a score.

But should you call for forty-nine,

To sell at all I would decline,

Because, you see, in winter weather,

I might be left without a feather,

And so contract a heavy cold,

Which for the health is bad, I’m told.

In other ways I’m doing well.

Folks send me flowers which I sell;

And sometimes men send me cigars

Packed up in boxes and in jars,

The which I vend on railway cars.

All things considered, sir, it pays

To be a creature fond of praise

And get it—to know how to crow,

And keep my voice closed, don’t you know.

SLY OLD TOM

[RATTY SPEAKS]

Rody, see that sign there,

Old Tom Cat’s put out?

Wants to curry favor,

Haven’t any doubt.

Thinks the folks ’ll like him,

If he catches me,

’Ticularly, Rody,

If he does it free.

Horrid, mean old thing, he

Dearly loves a fight.

Hangs around my doorstep,

At it day and night.

Tries to catch me sleeping

Every night and day,

Says he’ll never ask a

Single cent of pay.

But I know him, Rody,

Tommy thinks if he

Catches one of us poor

Rats, next day he’ll see

Round his neck a purple

Ribbon made of silk,

And for luncheon, maybe,

Sixteen quarts of milk.

He’s a sly old creature,

Asks for no reward.

Hopes to get it, just the

Same, the mean old fraud.

THE TEEHEELEPHANT

Here comes the great Teeheelephant,

Who wears a satchel, for he can’t

Afford a trunk in which to hold

Gumdrops and peanuts, tarts and gold.

His disposition is most sweet,

His smile is broad—say, seven feet

And when he’s glad he laughs and shrieks

So that the echoes last for weeks.

His hide is soft and furry, and

Feels like a kitten’s to the hand.

His eyes like rubies glisten when

He gets a jester in his den;

Because, you know, he feeds on jokes,

Just as on beef feed other folks.

The jokes must every one be new,

Or else the Teehee cries “Boo-Hoo!”

And when he cries like that—poor wight!

It is a very painful sight.

Small Jimmieboy, whom here you see,

Is somewhat frightened at Teehee,

Because he never saw before

A creature having such a roar.

But little Tidd, who’s with him there,

Is standing firm, without a care,

And says, “Don’t be afraid, my boy,

I’ll see that he does not annoy.

If he begins at teasing you,

He’ll have to reckon with me, too;

And though I’m small and rather slim,

I think I’m big enough for him.”

Which makes me smile, for to Teehee

Small Tidd’s no bigger than a pea,

And were I Tidd and little Jim,

I’d turn and madly flee from him.

A NARROW ESCAPE

One day, this poor Teeheelephant

Got weeping, just because

A great big awkward rabbit came

And stepped upon his paws.

Now, Teehee’s paws are very soft,

And so, of course, it hurt

To have them trampled rudely on

By this young rabbit pert.

And so Teehee began to weep,

His tears coursed down his cheek,

And every now and then he’d ope

His small hand-bag and shriek.

Then as the tears fell to the ground,

They formed a little pool,

For each was big as those great globes

The teachers use in school;

And as the pool grew deeper, and

The water mounted high,

The more did poor old Teehee shriek,

The more did Teehee cry.

And finally, so. hard he wept,

The pool reached to his knees;

And he, I fear, would have been drowned

Had he not thought to seize

A handsome life preserver that

Right by his cage was placed,

And tie it firmly round about

His twenty-eight-foot waist.

THE MISINFORMATION BIRD

Now, here’s a very pretty fight,

The Tidds are wrathy, oh yes, quite,

Because the owl, that strange old bird,

Has told them things that are absurd;

Which, when they told to other folks,

Those others said were only jokes.

For instance: first he told poor Red

A pin had brains within its head,

And Red supposed the old bird knew,

And told the Plush Dog it was true,

Whereat the Plush Dog laughed and laughed,

And said he thought that Red was daft.

To Blackey then the Owl remarked,

The big Oak-tree at midnight barked;

Which Blackey went to hear and found

The green old tree made ne’er a sound.

But worst of all, the mean thing told

The small Blue Tidd that brass was gold,

And Bluey paid out eighty cents

To get a brass watch, worth two pence.

Another time the Owl observed

That baseballs should be square, not curved,

Whereat the Tidds got up a match,

And not a square ball could they catch,

Because the angles hurt their hands

And they were jeered at by the stands.

So that is why you see them now

Engaged in having one grand row,

And telling that old Owl that he

Is just as mean as mean can be;—

And that they really don’t believe

He knows a pocket from a sleeve;

A red wheelbarrow from a clam;

A river from a battering ram;

The difference ’twixt an asymptote

And tooth-picks at a table d’hote.

In fact they say, “Bird, what you know,

Is of the sort that isn’t so.”

And while I’m not part of the fight,

I really think the Tidds are right.

“FARE, PLEASE”

I think perhaps, maybe,

This homely doll-baby,

Desires to ride on a railway somewhere,

And has had the hard fate,

To be stopped at the gate

By Shem, Ham or Japhet, demanding her fare.

There’s a look of surprise

In the rag-baby’s eyes,

At anything really so ridicu-lous.

No dolly that she e’er

Has heard of has paid fare,

And so Madame Raggy’s inclined for a fuss.

“Look ye here, sir,” she says,

“The Rag-baby ne’er pays

For riding in cars, wagons, trucks, or on vans:

I have always gone free,

Which is why, don’t you see,

I have left buying tickets all out of my plans.”

But old Shem won’t give in;

He replies with a grin,

“The rules are quite plain as to your case applied.

All toys without nurses,

Must have in their purses,

The cash to pay up if they wish for a ride.

“So pay up your penny!”

“But, Shem, I’ve not any!!”

“Step lively, then, madame, get out of the way.

I’ll lend you a nickel

To buy a tricycle,

You cannot ride free on the railroad today.”

THE DANCING TURTLES

These Turtles do not really dance,

As though they learned to waltz in France,

Nor do I think, from what I see,

They studied it in Italy;

And I am certain that their grace

Was not learned from the English race;

And furthermore, I do opine

They never learned it near the Rhine;

And I will wager you a dime,

’Twas not acquired in Russian clime;

And confident indeed I am,

’Twas quite unknown in Amsterdam.

The way they wobble ’bout the knees

Is utterly unlike Chinese;

And Persians, when in dance they flit,

Are like the Turtles not a bit;

Nor can they say they learned in far-

Off fabled, sunny India,

And he, I say, but tempts the fates,

Who says they studied in the States.

In fact, since watching them, my dear,

To my own mind ’tis very clear,

Their dancing is so strangely rare—

They never learned it anywhere.

THE NIGHTMARE

[BY THE RED TIDDLEDYWINK]

The Nightmare is a silly horse,

That lives down in our Zoo,

Who, when things do not suit him quite,

Kicks up a great ado.

He sends his resignation in

To those who are in charge,

And then departing in a huff,

Roams here and there at large.

Nor will he ever come again,

This animal so shy,

Until he’s sure they’ll give him fruit,

And cake, and apple pie;

And cream and crackers; nuts and wine;

Asparagus and cheese;

And custard, raisins, lemonade,

And oysters cooked with peas.

And this is why you rarely see,

In ordinary Zoos,

This disagreeable animal,

Who never will wear shoes—

Who roams about in dead of night

Upon his tipsy toes,

And leaves behind him horrid dreams,

No matter where he goes.

IN THE ROASTED PEANUT TREE

The roasted, toasted peanut tree,

That is the place for us, you see.

’Tis warm as toast, when toast is warm,

And just the place in time of storm;

The tree’s so hot the rain may fall,

And never wet the tree at all—

Because you see the heat is spry,

And keeps the boughs and peanuts dry.

We two have climbed up here to see

The big parade go by the tree;

A great parade it is, of toys:

The kind that make the girls and boys

So happy when the Christmas time

Comes round, and merry church-bells chime.

The Plush Dog’s there, the Hobby-horse,

The Monkey-on-a-stick, of course;

The big glass Agate—like an eye—

With two slim legs goes stalking by,

And then Tin Soldiers by the score;

Shem, Ham and Japhet, and old Noah,

And all the beasts out of the Ark,

Like those they have up in the park.

Then, Dolls with music in their throats,

And Lambs, and Rams, and Billy-goats,

And as they march they all salute,

And then pass on upon their route.

THE POLICEMAN’S CHORUS

We are the noine tin-pin police,

We’re none uv us very obese—

Which manes we’re not fat,—

’Tis plain to see that

We’re bound upon kapin’ the peace.

We notice you think we luk queer,

Your smoiles reach around to your ear.

Ho-ho,—you don’t dare

Come out uv your lair,

And give us wan chance at ye here.

Our names they are Patsy Tyrone,

Jim Murphy and Martin O’Hone,

And Billy O’Toole,

Pete Kelly, John Poole,

And Tom, Dick and Harry Malone.

There’s eight from the ould town uv Cork

And wan from the Oislands of Ork.

We kem in a boat,

And phin we would vote,

We take a run down to New York.

Phin toys think they’ll have a hub-bub,

And raise a great rub-a-dub-dub—

They call on us boys,

To squelch all thim toys,

And give the disthurbers the club.

And all the day,

It’s, “Move on—say

What do ye think we’re here for, eh ?

You moind your eye,

And don’t you thry

To sthop us moindin’ yours,—hi—hi!’

We are the noine tin-pin police!

We’re none uv us very obese,

Which manes we’re not fat;

’Tis plain to see that

We’re bound upon kapin’ the peace!

NOT ENVIOUS

THE DOLL

If I had been a Tiddledywink,

I should have died, I really think;

They are so very, strangely thin,

No sign of nose, nor any chin;

With legs that join right on their heads,

No bigger than most cotton threads;

No hair to mention, and their feet

So large they take up all the street,

Their eyes, as far as I can see,

Not made of glass, but ivory,

You can’t see through such eyes, you know,

And glass is made to look through,—so

I really am most glad to think

I am a Dolly dressed in pink,

And not a moon-faced Tiddledywink.

THE TIDDLEDYWINKS

We’d hate to be that Dolly there

So loaded down with flaxen hair,

With eyes that shut and eyes that wink,

And dresses made of blue and pink.

She always has to sit and be

The pink of pink propriety.

She cannot dance for fear she’ll lose

The buttons off her dollar shoes.

She cannot fall from chairs or bed

For fear she’ll crack her waxen head.

She can’t enjoy those lovely clothes,

Because she can’t see past her nose.

She can’t eat rich and creamy whips,

Because she cannot move her lips,

And worst of all, with pride she’s puffed,

Although with sawdust she is stuffed.

CHICKENING

The Tiddledywinks don’t care to fish, the water is so wet,

And so, when they would have some sport, such as the anglers get,

They sail down to the chicken-yard aboard a wagonette.

There, to a piece of thread, they tie a hook made from a pin,

Which baited with a grain of corn,—their faces all a-grin,

They cast out on the ground, and then they call the chickens in.

And oh! the sport those Tiddles have! The bantams they do catch!

Sometimes they haul a rooster in,—a rooster hard to match,—

And once a Tidd a turkey caught, down in the cabbage patch.

And how the ducks and goslings quack when they perchance are snared;

And how the geese all waddle off, their bravery impaired

By seeing others getting that for which they’re not prepared!

Indeed, this chickening’s lots of fun, as those who’ve tried remark.

There is no chance of drowning, or of being gone ’til dark,

And some folks say the chickens think it is a jolly lark—

As well they may, because they know,—that is, the chickens do,

That being caught by Tidds does not involve a chicken stew,

Because they’re always let go free whene’er the angler’s through.

ROUND THE WORLD

These Tiddledywinks, they thought one day,

They’d like to travel far away,

And see how big the big world was

Just as the great explorer does.

And so they got upon a train,

That went out West and back again;

And then they stepped on board a ship,

And o’er the ocean made a trip;

Through China journeyed; then struck South,

To where the Ganges keeps its mouth;

Through Persia, Turkey, Russia, then

To where Wilhelm holds sway o’er men;

Through France to England; then the three

Once more crossed o’er the salt, salt sea

To Yankeeland, and then straight home,

Resolved no more again to roam.

And they decided, after all,

The world, though big, was likewise small.

Because,” said one, “the world is round,”

(And marked two points upon the ground

Like this)

“And goes from one to two

Which makes it plain to me and you,

That, though one way ’tis many a mile,

And takes, to walk, a wondrous while,

The other way, the total trip

Is hardly more than I can skip

Upon one leg, and not half try,

And that’s the way to go, say I!”

Their brothers, though, were glad that they

Had really gone the other way,

Through seas and far-off lands of kings,

Because they brought home such fine things.

THE FOOLISH TENPIN

This Tenpin is a foolish thing

To leave his native town,

To seek his fortune in this world,

Where he must be bowled down

Why, when you think how beautiful

This Tenpinville must be,

’Tis hard to understand just why

The Tenpins from it flee.

I’m told that sweetest fruits grow wild

Out in the Tenpin fields;

That forty thousand quarts each day

The Tenpin cream-well yields;

That Sunday clothes cost nothing there;

And that the circus pays

The Tenpins who will come and laugh

At what the old clown says;

That school keeps only Saturday;

That candy grows in beds;

And that in summer Tenpins can

Go coasting on their sleds

That soda-water’s always free;

That birds sing real, live tunes;

And that the Tenpin boys eat jam

All day with table spoons.

Ah! Tenpin, do not leave this place,

This lovely, happy town,

To seek your fortunes in the world,

Where you will be bowled down.

A SLEEPING CONTEST

Here is a most exciting race,

Far more so than the huntsman’s chase

Of deer and fox, through wood and dale;

Far more so than small boats to sail;

Far more exciting than that one

In which two mortals take a gun,

To see how near a wee small spot

Each one can plant an ounce of shot.

’Tis more exciting, too, they say,

Than catching sardines in the bay;

Or putting salt on robins’ tails,

Or riding horseback after snails,

Or hunting horse-flies with a bow,

Or fighting tigers with a hoe,

Or chasing ostriches and mice

On summer days across the ice.

But what is best about this race

Is that it leaves no single trace

Of weariness in those who try

Conclusions with a tight-closed eye.

And sometimes when the baby cries

At night, and will not close his eyes,

I tell him, right straight to his face,

I wish he’d try one little race

With me, and see which of us two

Could quickest go to sleep, and who

Could win the contest, rather odd,

By reaching first the Land of Nod.

THE WHIMPERJAM

This is the wondrous Whimperjam

Eating his mid-day meal;

A shoe-horn for a nose he has,

I wonder if it’s steel;

Or only brass, like most shoe-horns,

And parlor fire tongs;

Just see his arms,—four-jointed, and

His fingers look like prongs.

His mouth, it seems, is very small

For him to whimper through,

And eat his jam with thrice a day,

Just as we mortals do.

And see the stockings on his legs,

They look like barber poles,

Except they’re rather slim for that,

And doubtless full of holes.

That ruff that runs around his neck,

How strange that ruff appears—

It is, I think, a pity that

It does not hide his ears.

Indeed, I think it would be well

If that fine ruff could hide

His eyes and nose, his legs and arms,

And all the rest beside

Because I do not think that he

Is handsome, like the clam.

There really is small beauty in

This famous Whimperjam.

GREEDY SI

This is a picture of a boy,

Who Pumpkin pie did so enjoy

That he would gnash his teeth and cry

At all times, when not eating pie,

His name was Si.

’Twas pie for breakfast, pie for lunch,

And pie at dinner Si would munch.

’Twas pie at dawn and pie at night.

For pie he’d scream and howl and fight.

Before, betwixt and after meals,

He’d eat these dainties shaped like wheels;

Until, one day,

He put, they say,

Some fourteen dozen pies away.

Which filled his parents with dismay.

And then! Oh then! next morning came,

And Si was missed. They called his name—

“Oh Si! Say, Si!”

They offered sixteen kinds of pie,

But to their calls came no reply

And why?

Because that naughty, wicked boy

Who pumpkin pie did so enjoy,

Himself had turned into a pie,

Poor Si!

And, what was worse, a hungry wight

Had broken in the house that night

And stolen that same pumpkin pie,

And swallowed it—and swallowed Si,

That naughty, greedy little boy,

Who pumpkin pie did so enjoy,

He’d fight

All night

To get a bite

Of pie; Oh, my!

The moral, as it strikes my eye,

Is, that the parents of poor Si

Did wrong to let him have the pie.

THE UNHAPPY ELEPHANT

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” the Elephant said,

“It is so awful hot!

I’ve fanned myself for twenty weeks,

And haven’t cooled a jot.

“It’s terrible to be so large,

In days as hot as these,

There’s so much of one to be warm,

And very little breeze.

“Each boy and girl that comes here brings

An apple or a pear,

When I would give my lovely tusks

For just one breath of air.

“And though peanuts and ginger-snaps

Are often very nice,

There are times when I should prefer

A berg or two of ice.

“For don’t you see, the more I fan

Myself to cool one spot,

The other sections of myself

Grow nearly twice as hot.

“It’s very well to jeer at me,

And say I’ve got a fan;

But can’t you see it was not made

For me, but for a man?

“The fan that’s really large enough,

The fan of which I dream—

Is larger than an opera house,

And should be worked by steam.

“Ah! would I were an oyster down

Beneath the vasty deep,

Where it is always cool and calm,

And living’s very cheap.

“Oh, would I were a What-is-it,

A camel or a bear,

A puppy dog from Mexico

That hasn’t any hair;

“Oh, would I were a kangaroo,

Or anything extant,

Except a sizzling, suffering,

Red-hot old Elephant.”

THE OWL

I think,” to me observed the Owl,

“That I’m a truly wondrous fowl.

My eyes are big as all out doors,

And sharp as needles are my claws.

Here in my head is wisdom stored,

Much greater than the books afford.

If you should ask me what I think

I’m worth, I’d say without a wink,

Ten thousand hens, a million geese,

Plus twenty thousand quail, obese,

Plus sixty billion robin eggs,

Plus eighty storks with fourteen legs,

Plus sparrows, roosters by the score,

Plus ninety million turkeys more.

Just add to these a herd of calves,

Divide me up in sixty halves,

And all these things you’ve heard me name

Would equal just one of those same.

Why, really, if you’d offer me

All birds in air, all fish in sea,

With men and beasts, and land thrown in,

I’d look at you and mildly grin,

And say, ‘Cheep! Cheep! Too Cheep. You may

Not buy a bird like me today;

For what you offer is too small.

You could not buy me, sir, at all

Not even were the universe

Shut up there in your silken purse!

But, if you’d like to hire me

To come and board and lodge with thee,

Why, that is different; I’ll come,

For—let me see—we’ll put the sum

At fifty cents a year, and I

Will board and lodge there ’till I die!’

What’s that ? You say you wouldn’t keep

A thing like me near where you sleep ?

Too—whoo! Too—whoo! Too—whit! Too—whay!

Is all, dear sir, I’ve got to say

And if you knew just what that meant

Your feelings would be turbulent!

Too-oo-oo-ooo

Whoo-oo-ooo!!”

FROM
THE BLACK TIDDLEDYWINK’S
NURSERY MELODIES

MR. RAM’S STORE

Bah, Bah, old gray Ram,

Have you any silk ?

Not a spoonful, but I am

Well supplied with milk.

Bah, Bah, tell me, then,

Have you cottage cheese?

Not a bit, Ma’am, but I’ve splen-

Differous green peas.

Bah, Bah, give me some

Loaves of fancy breads.

Madame, I have not a crumb;

Won’t you buy some sleds?

Bah! Ram, will you say

Why this store you run ?

Yes, dear Madame, that I may

Have a bit of fun.

A DISAPPOINTMENT

I had a little Billy Goat,

His name was Dapple Pink,

I dressed him in a blanket blue,

With lining made of mink.

I sent him to the County Fair,

Dressed in his Sunday rig,

But just because he ate so much,

They said he was a pig.

And as he was not very fat,

And hadn’t button eyes,

The judge decided that he’d give

Another pig the prize.

BABY

Giggle, giggle,

[Writhe and wriggle,

Papa’s gone to town;]

Nursey’s washing baby’s things,

Mamma, do not frown.

SNOW

Snow, snow, do not pack,

For the shoveling breaks my back.

JIMMIE BOY
TO THE TIDDLEDYWINKS

“Tiddles,” said Jimmieboy,

When they were through,

“I’ve had an elegant

Journey with you.

“I’ve seen the strangest of

Wonderful things

Rarer, far rarer than

Wren’s teeth or kings.

“And I am sorry, sirs,

Now we’ve returned,

That our convention is

To be adjourned.

“But, I will tell you what:

If you will go

Whither I take you, I’ll

Show you my show.

“For I have animals

Up in my lair,

Fine as the Mangatoo,

Or the Nightmare.

“Lions of plaster and

Horses of wool,

Marvellous creatures, sirs,

By the Arkful.

“Soldiers, the bravest of

Brave, made of tin;

Walking dolls, talking dolls,

Dolls that will grin.

“Come with me, any time,

And I will see,

If I can’t make you glad

As you’ve made me.”

In Camp
with a Tin Soldier

(1892)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
E. M. ASHE

TO
RUSSELL

CONTENTS:

1 … The Start
2 … Jimmieboy Receives His Orders
3 … Major Blueface Tries to Assist
4 … Jimmieboy Meets the Enemy
5 … The Major Returns
6 … The Corporal’s Fairy Story
7 … A Disagreeable Personage
8 … Arrangements for a Duel
9 … The Sprite’s Story
10 … The Major’s Tale
11 … Planning a Visit
12 … In Fortyforefoot Valley
13 … The Rescue
14 … Home Again

•   1   •

THE START

“Br-r-r-rub-a-dub-dub! Br-r-r-rub-a-dub-a-dub-dub! Br-r-r-rub-adub-dub-a-dub-dub-a-dub-dub!”

“What’s that?” cried Jimmieboy, rising from his pillow on the nursery couch, and looking about him, his eyes wide open with astonishment.

“What’s what?” asked mamma, who was sitting near at hand, knitting a pair of socks for a small boy she knew who would shortly want them to keep his feet warm when he went off coasting with his papa.

“I thought I heard soldiers going by,” returned Jimmieboy, climbing up on the windowsill and gazing anxiously up and down the street. “There were drums playing.”

“I didn’t hear them,” said mamma. “I guess you imagined it. Better lie down again, Jimmieboy, and rest. You will be very tired when papa gets home, and you know if you are tired you’ll have to go to bed instead of taking supper with him, and that would be too bad on his birthday.”

“Is papa really going to have a birthday today?” queried the little fellow. “And a cake with candles in it?”

“Yes,” answered mamma. “Two cakes with candles on them, I think,” she added.

“What’s he to have two cakes for? I had only one,” said Jimmieboy.

“One cake wouldn’t be big enough to hold all the candles,” mamma answered. “You see, papa is a few years older than you are—almost six times as old today, and if he has a candle for every year, he’ll have to have two cakes to hold them all.”

“Is papa six years old today?” asked Jimmieboy, resuming his recumbent position on the pillow.

“Oh, indeed, yes, he’s thirty,” said mamma.

“How many is thirty?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Never mind, dearest,” returned mamma, giving Jimmieboy a kiss. “Don’t you bother about that. Just close those little peepers and go to sleep.”

So Jimmieboy closed his eyes and lay very still for a few minutes. He was not sorry to do it, either, because he really was quite sleepy. He ought to have had his nap before luncheon, but his mamma had been so busy all the morning, making ready for his papa’s birthday dinner, that she had forgotten to call him in from the playground, where he was so absorbed in the glorious sport of seesawing with his little friend from across the way that he never even thought of his nap. As many as five minutes must have slipped by before Jimmieboy opened his eyes again, and I doubt if he would have done so even then had he not heard repeated the unmistakable sounds of drums.

“I did hear ’em that time, mamma,” he cried, starting up again and winking very hard, for the sandman had left nearly a pint of sand in Jimmieboy’s eyes. “I heard ’em plain as could be.”

To this second statement of Jimmieboy’s that he heard soldiers going by somewhere, there was no answer, for there was no one in the room to give him one. His mamma, supposing that he had finally fallen asleep, had tiptoed out of the room and was now downstairs, so that the little fellow found himself alone. As a rule he did not like to be alone, although he knew of no greater delight than that of conversing with himself, and he was on the point of running to the door to call to his mother to return, when his attention was arrested by some very curious goings-on in a favorite picture of his that hung directly over the fireplace.

This picture was not, under ordinary circumstances, what anyone would call a lively picture—in fact, it was usually a very quiet one, representing a country lane shaded on either side by great oak-trees that towered up into the sky, their branches overhanging the road so as to form a leafy arch, through which only an occasional ray of the sun ever found its way. From one end to the other of this beautiful avenue there were no signs of life, save those which were presented by the green leaves of the trees themselves, and the purling brook, bordered by grasses and mosses, that was visible a short distance in; no houses or cows or men or children were there in sight. Indeed, had it not been for a faint glimmering of sunlight at the far end of the road, some persons might have thought it a rather gloomy scene, and I am not sure but that even Jimmieboy, had he not wondered what there could be beyond the forest, and around the turn which the road took at that other end, would have found the picture a little depressing. It was his interest in what might possibly lie beyond the point at which the picture seemed to stop that had made it so great a favorite with him, and he had frequently expressed a desire to take a stroll along that road, to fish in the little stream, and to explore the hidden country around the turn.

So great was his interest in it at one time, that Jimmieboy’s papa, who was a great person for finding out things, promised to write to the man who had painted the picture and ask him all about the unseen land, so that his little son’s curiosity might be satisfied, a promise which he must have kept, for some days later, on his return from business, he took a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to Jimmieboy, saying that there was the artist’s answer. Jimmieboy couldn’t read it, of course, because at that time he had not even learned his letters, so he got his papa to do it for him, and they made the pleasing discovery that the artist was a poet as well as a painter, for the answer was all in rhyme. If I remember rightly, this is the way it read:

AROUND THE TURN.

Around the turn are kings and queens;

Around the turn are dogs and cats;

Around the turn are pease and beans,

And handsome light blue derby hats.

Around the turn are grizzly bears;

Around the turn are hills and dales;

Around the turn are mice and hares,

And cream and milk in wooden pails.

Indeed, you’ll find there horses, pigs,

Great seas and cities you’ll discern;

All things, in fact, including figs,

For all the world lies round the turn.

This explanation was quite satisfactory to Jimmieboy, although he was a little fearful as to what might happen if the grizzly bears should take it into their heads to come down into the nursery and hug him, which was certainly not an unlikely thing for them to do, for the mice had come—he had seen them himself—and his mamma had often said that he was a most huggable little fellow.

Now there was undoubtedly some sign of life down the road, for Jimmieboy could see it with his own eyes. There was something moving there, and that something was dressed in gay colors, and in front of it was something else that shone brightly as an occasional ray of the sun shimmered through the trees and glistened upon it. In an instant all thought of his mamma had flown from his mind, so absorbed was he by the startling discovery he had made up there in the picture. To turn back from the door and walk over to the fireplace was the work of a moment, and to climb up on the fender and gaze into the picture occupied hardly more than another moment, and then Jimmieboy saw what it was that was moving down the road, and with delighted ears heard also what that other thing was that preceded the moving thing.

The first thing was a company of tin soldiers marching in perfect time, their colors flying and the captain on horseback; and the other thing in front was a full brass band, discoursing a most inspiring military march in a fashion that set Jimmieboy strutting about the nursery like a general.

As the little fellow strode around the room his step was suddenly arrested by a voice immediately at his feet.

“Hi, there, Jimmieboy!” it said. “Please be careful where you are walking. You nearly stepped on me that time.”

Jimmieboy stopped short and looked down upon the floor.

“Hello!” he said. “What are you doing there, colonel?”—for it was none other than the colonel of the tin soldiers himself who had thus requested him to look out where he stepped.

“There’s trouble on hand,” said the colonel, climbing up on to a footstool so as to be nearer Jimmieboy’s ear, for he did not wish to alarm everybody by shouting out the dreadful news he had to impart. Jimmieboy’s mamma, for instance, was a timid little woman, and she would have been very much frightened if she had known what had happened. “There’s a great deal of trouble on hand,” the colonel repeated. “The Noah in your ark fell asleep last night before the animals had gone to bed, and while he was napping, the Parallelopipedon got loose, ate up the gingerbread monkey and four peppermint elephants, and escaped out of the back window to the woods. Noah didn’t find it out until an hour ago, when he went to feed the elephants, and immediately he made the discovery word came from the Pannikins, who live around the turn there in the woods, that the Parallelopipedon had eaten the roof off their house, and was at the time the letter was written engaged in whittling down the fences with a jackknife, and rolling all the pumpkins down the mountainside into Tiddledywink-land, and ruining the whole country. We have got to capture that animal before breakfast. If we don’t, there’s no telling what may happen. He might even go so far as to come back, and that would be horrible.”

“I don’t think I remember the Parawelopipedon,” said Jimmieboy, pronouncing the animal’s name with some difficulty. “What kind of an animal was that?”

“Oh, he’s an awful animal,” returned the colonel. “I don’t blame you for not remembering him, though, because he is a hard animal to remember. He is the only animal they had like him in the ark. They couldn’t find two of his sort, and I rather guess they are glad they couldn’t, because his appetite is simply dreadful, and the things he eats are most embarrassing. He’s the one your papa was telling you about last night before you went to bed. Don’t you remember the rhyme he told you—beginning this way:

‘The Parallelopipedon

I do not like, because

He has so many, many sides,

And ninety-seven claws’?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Jimmieboy. “He is the same animal that—

‘Hasn’t got a bit of sense,

Or feather to his name;

No eye, no ear with which to hear,

But gets there just the same.’”

“That’s it! that’s it!” cried the colonel. “And don’t you remember,

‘There’s not a thing he will not eat,

From pie to sealing-wax,

Although he shows a preference for

Red bricks and carpet tacks’?”

“Yes, I remember that very well now,” said Jimmieboy. “Wasn’t there a verse about his color, too? Didn’t it say:

‘His color is a fearful one—

A combination hue

Of yellow, green, and purple, mixed

With solferino blue’?”

“No; that was the Parallelogram,” replied the colonel. “A Parallelopipedon is six times as bad as a Parallelogram. His color has a verse about it, though, that says:

‘His hue is the most terrible

That ever man has seen;

’Tis pink and saffron, blue and red,

Mixed up with apple green’.”

“Dear me!” cried Jimmieboy. “And do you mean to say he’s really got away?”

“I do, indeed,” returned the colonel. “Got away, and Noah is glad of it, because he doesn’t have to feed him any more. But it’ll never do to let him stay loose; he will do too much damage. Why, Jimmieboy, suppose he should overeat himself and die? He’s the only one in the world, and we can’t afford to lose an animal like that; besides, after he has ruined all the country around the turn, it’s just as like as not he’ll begin on the rest of the picture, and eat it all up, frame and all.”

“My!” cried the little boy. “That would be terrible, wouldn’t it! You are right—he must be captured. I have half a mind to go along with you and help.”

“Half a mind isn’t enough,” retorted the colonel, shaking his head. “You can’t go into the soldier business unless you have a whole mind—so goodbye, Jimmieboy. I must be running along; and should I not return, as the poet says,

“‘Pray do not weep for me, my boy,

But, as the years slip by,

Drop all your pennies in a bank—

Brave soldiers never die;

And someday I’ll turn up again,

Exalted, high in rank,

And possibly I’ll find some use

For that small sum in bank.’”

“I’m not going to stay here while you are fighting,” said Jimmieboy, with a determined shake of his head. “I’ve got a whole mind to go with you, and a uniform to wear as well. But tell me, can I get up there on the road?”

“Certainly,” said the colonel. “I’ll show you how, only put on your uniform first. They won’t let you go unless you are suitably dressed. Little boys, with striped trousers like yours, would be out of place, but with a uniform such as yours is, with real gold on the cap and brass buttons on the coat—well, I’m not sure but what they’ll elect you water-carrier, or general, or something equally important.”

So Jimmieboy hurried to his clothes-closet and quickly donned his military suit, and grasping his sword firmly by the hilt, cried out:

“Ready!”

“All right,” said the colonel. “They are waiting for us. Close your eyes.”

Jimmieboy did as he was told.

“One—two—three—eyes open!” cried the colonel.

JIMMIEBOY AND THE TIN SOLDIERS

Again Jimmieboy did as he was ordered, although he couldn’t see why he should obey the colonel, who up to this afternoon had been entirely subject to his orders. He opened his eyes at the command, and, much to his surprise, found himself standing in the middle of that wooded road in the picture, beneath the arching trees, the leaves of which rustled softly as a sweet perfumed breeze blew through the branches. About him on every side were groups of tin soldiers talking excitedly about the escape of the devastating Parallelopipedon, every man of them armed to the teeth and eager for the colonel’s command to start off on the search expedition. The band was playing merrily under the trees up the road near the little brook, and back in the direction from which he had come, through the heavy gilt frame, Jimmieboy could see the nursery just as he had left it, while before him lay the turn at the end of the wood and the unknown country now soon to be explored.

•   2   •

JIMMIEBOY
RECEIVES HIS ORDERS

For a few moments Jimmieboy was so overcome by the extreme novelty of his position that he could do nothing but wander in and out among the trees, wondering if he really was himself, and whether the soldiers by whom he was surrounded were tin or creatures of flesh and blood. They certainly looked and acted like human beings, and they talked in a manner entirely different from what Jimmieboy was accustomed to expect from the little pieces of painted tin he had so often played with on the nursery floor, but he very soon learned that they were tin, and not made up, like himself, of bone and sinew.

The manner of his discovery was this: One of the soldiers, in a very rash and foolhardy fashion, tried to pick up a stone from the road to throw at a poor little zinc robin that was whistling in the trees above his head, and in bending over after the stone and then straightening himself up to take aim, he snapped himself into two distinct pieces—as indeed would any other tin soldier, however strong and well made, and of course Jimmieboy was then able to see that the band with whom he had for the moment cast his fortunes were nothing more nor less than bits of brittle tin, to whom in some mysterious way had come life. The boy was pained to note the destruction of the little man who had tried to throw the stone at the robin, because he was always sorry for everybody upon whom trouble had come, but he was not, on the whole, surprised at the soldier’s plight, for the simple reason that he had been taught that boys who threw stones at the harmless little birds in the trees were naughty and worthy of punishment, and he could not see why a tin soldier should not be punished for doing what a small boy of right feelings would disdain to do.

After he had made up his mind that his companions were really of tin, he became a bit fearful as to his own make-up, and the question that he now asked himself was, “Am I tin, too, or what?” He was not long in answering this question to his own satisfaction, for after bending his little fingers to and fro a dozen or more times, he was relieved to discover that he had not changed. The fingers did not snap off, as he had feared they might, and he was glad.

Barely had Jimmieboy satisfied himself on this point when a handsomely dressed soldier, on a blue lead horse, came galloping up, and cried out so loud that his voice echoed through the tall trees of the forest:

“Is General Jimmieboy here?”

“Jimmieboy is here,” answered the little fellow. “I’m Jimmieboy, but I am no general.”

“But you have on a general’s uniform,” said the soldier.

“Have I?” queried Jimmieboy, with a glance at his clothes. “Well, if I have, it’s because they are the only soldier clothes I own.”

“Well, I am very sorry,” said the soldier on horseback, “but if you wear those clothes you’ve got to be general. It’s a hard position to occupy, and of course you’d rather be a high-private or a member of the band, but as it is, there is no way out of it. If the clothes would fit anyone else here, you might exchange with him; but they won’t, I can tell that by looking at the yellow stripes on your trousers. The stripes alone are wider than any of our legs.”

“Oh!” responded Jimmieboy, “I don’t mind being general. I’d just as lief be a general as not; I know how to wave a sword and march ahead of the procession.”

At this there was a roar of laughter from the soldiers.

“How queer!” said one.

“What an absurd idea!” cried another.

“Where did he ever get such notions as that?” said a third.

And then they all laughed again.

“I am afraid,” said the soldier on horseback, with a kindly smile which won Jimmieboy’s heart, “that you do not understand what the duties of a general are in this country. We aren’t bound down by the notions of you nursery people, who seem to think that all a general is good for is to be stood up in front of a cannon loaded with beans, and knocked over half a dozen times in the course of a battle. Have you ever read those lines of High-private Tinsel in his little book, ‘Poems in Pewter,’ in which he tells of the trials of a general of the tin soldiers?”

“Of course I haven’t,” said Jimmieboy. “I can’t read.”

“Just the man for a general, if he can’t read,” said one of the soldiers. “He’ll never know what the newspapers say of him.”

“Well, I’ll tell you the story,” said the horseman, dismounting, and standing on a stump by the roadside to give better effect to the poem, which he recited as follows:

“THE TIN SOLDIER GENERAL.

I walked one day

Along the way

That leads from camp to city;

And I espied

At the roadside

The hero of my ditty.

His massive feet,

In slippers neat,

Were crossed in desperation;

And from his eyes

Salt tears did rise

In awful exudation.”

“In what?” asked Jimmieboy, who was not quite used to grown-up words like exudation.

“Quarts,” replied the soldier, with a frown. “Don’t interrupt. This poem isn’t good for much unless it goes right through without a stop—like an express train.”

And then he resumed:

“It filled my soul

With horrid dole

To see this wailing creature;

How tears did sweep,

And furrow deep,

Along his nasal feature!

My eyes grew dim

To look at him,

To see his teardrops soiling

His necktie bold,

His trimmings gold,

And all his rich clothes spoiling;

And so I stopped,

Beside him dropped,

And quoth, ‘Wilt tell me, mortal,

Wherefore you sighed?’

And he replied:

‘Wilt I? Well, I shouldst chortle.’”

“I don’t know what chortle means,” said Jimmieboy.

“Neither do I,” said the soldier. “But I guess the man who wrote the poem did, so it’s all right, and we may safely go on to the next verse, which isn’t very different in its verbiology—”

“Its wha-a-at?” cried a dozen tin soldiers at once.

“Gentlemen,” said the declaiming soldier, severely, “there are some words in our language which no creature should be asked to utter more than once in a lifetime, and that is one of them. I shall not endanger my oratorical welfare by speaking it again. Suffice it for me to say that if you want to use that word yourselves, you will find it in the dictionary somewhere under F, or Z, or Ph, or some other letter which I cannot at this moment recall. But the poem goes on to say:

“Then as we sat

The roadside at—

His tears a moment quelling—

In accents pale

He told the tale

Which I am also telling.”

“Dear me!” said a little green corporal at Jimmieboy’s side. “Hasn’t he begun the story yet?”

“Yes, stupid,” said a high-private. “Of course he has; but it’s one of those stories that take a long time to begin, and never finish until the very end.”

“Oh yes, I know,” said another. “It’s a story like one I heard of the other day. You can lay it down whenever you want to, and be glad to have the chance.”

“That’s it,” said the high-private.

“I wish you fellows would keep still,” said the soldier who was reciting. “I ought to have been a quarter of the way through the first half of that poem by this time, and instead of that I’m only a sixteenth of the way through the first eighth.”

“You can’t expect to go more than eight miles an hour,” said the corporal, “even in poetry like that. It can’t be done.”

“But what happened?” asked Jimmieboy, who was quite interested to hear the rest of the poem.

“I’ll have to tell you some other time, general,” replied the soldier. “These tin warriors here haven’t any manners. Someday, when you have time to spare, I’ll tell you the rest of it, because I know you’ll be glad to hear it.”

“Yes, general,” put in the corporal, with a laugh. “Someday when you have a year to spare get him to tell you the first twenty-seventh of the next ninety-sixth of it. It won’t take him more than eleven months and thirty-two days to do it.”

“Bah!” said the poetic soldier, mounting his horse and riding off with an angry flush on his cheek. “Someday, when I get promoted to the ranks, I’ll get even with you.”

“Who is he, anyhow?” asked Jimmieboy, as the soldier rode off.

“He’s Major Blueface, and he has to look after the luggage,” replied the corporal. “And as for that poem of his, Jimmieboy, I want to warn you. He has a printed copy of it that takes seven trunks to carry. He says it was written by High-private Tinsel, but that’s all nonsense. He wrote it himself.”

“Then I like it all the better,” said Jimmieboy. “I always like what people I like write.”

“There’s no accounting for tastes,” returned the corporal. “We don’t any of us like the major. That’s why we made him major. Looking after luggage is such awfully hard work, we didn’t want to make anyone else do it, and so we elected him.”

“Why don’t you like him?” asked Jimmieboy. “He seems to me to be a very nice soldier.”

“That’s just it,” returned the corporal. “He’s just the kind of soldier to please little boys like you, and he’d look perfectly splendid in a white and gold parlor like your mamma’s, but in camp he’s a terror. Keeps his boots shined up like a looking-glass; wears his Sunday uniform all the time; in fact, he has seven Sunday uniforms—one for each day of the week; and altogether he makes the rest of us feel so mean and cheap that we can’t like him. He offered a prize once to the soldier who’d like him the best, and who do you think won it?”

“I don’t know,” said Jimmieboy. “Who?”

“He won it himself,” retorted the corporal. “Nobody else tried. But you’d better go over to the colonel’s quarters right away, Jimmieboy. You know he wants you.”

“He hasn’t sent for me, has he?” asked the boy.

“Of course he has. That’s what the major came to tell you,” answered the corporal.

“But he didn’t say so,” returned Jimmieboy.

“No, he never does what he is sent to do,” explained the corporal. “That’s how we know. If he had told you the colonel wanted you, we’d all know the colonel didn’t want you. He’s a queer bird, that major. He’s so anxious to read his poem to somebody that he always forgets his orders, and when he does half remember what he is sent to do, we can tell what the orders are by what he doesn’t say.”

“I shouldn’t think he’d be a good man to look after the luggage if he forgets everything that way,” said Jimmieboy.

“That’s just where he’s great,” returned the corporal. “For, don’t you see, every man in the regiment wants to carry about three times as much luggage as he ought to, and the major makes it all right by forgetting two-thirds of it. Oh, there’s no denying that he’s one of the greatest luggage men there ever was; but you run along now, or the colonel may lose his temper, and that always delays things.”

“I’m not afraid of the colonel,” said Jimmieboy, bravely.

“Neither are we,” said the corporal, in reply to this, “but we don’t like to have our campaign delayed, and when the colonel loses his temper we have to wait and wait until he finds it again. Sometimes it takes him a whole week.”

So Jimmieboy, wondering more and more at the singular habits of the tin soldiers, ran off in search of the colonel, whom he found sitting by the brook-side fishing, and surrounded by his staff.

“Hello!” said Jimmieboy, as he caught sight of the colonel. “Having any luck?”

“Lots,” said the colonel. “Been here only five minutes, and I’ve caught three hickory twigs, a piece of wire, and one of the finest colds in my head I ever had.”

“Good,” said Jimmieboy, with a laugh. “But aren’t there any fish there?”

“Plenty of ’em,” answered the colonel. “But they’re all so small I’d have to throw ’em back if I caught ’em. They know that well enough, and so save me trouble by not biting. But I say, I suppose you know we can’t start this expedition without ammunition?”

“What’s that?” queried Jimmieboy, to whom the word ammunition was entirely new.

“Ammunition? Why, that’s stuff to load our guns with,” returned the colonel. “You must be a great general not to know that.”

“You must excuse me,” said Jimmieboy, with a blush. “There is a great deal that I don’t know. I’m only five years old, and papa hasn’t had time to tell me everything yet.”

“Well, it’s all right, anyhow,” replied the colonel. “You’ll learn a great deal in the next hundred years, so we won’t criticize; but of course, you know, we can’t go off without ammunition any more than a gun can. Now, as general of the forces, it is your duty to look about you and lay in the necessary supplies. For the guns we shall need about fourteen thousand rounds of preserved cherries, seventeen thousand rounds of pickled peaches for the cannon, and a hundred and sixty-two dozen cans of strawberry jam for me.”

Jimmieboy’s eyes grew so round and large as he listened to these words that the major turned pale.

“Then,” continued the colonel, “we have to have powder and shell, of course. Perhaps four hundred and sixteen pounds of powdered sugar and ninety-seven barrels of shells with almonds in ’em would do for our purposes.”

“But—but what are we to do with all these things, and where am I to get them?” gasped Jimmieboy, beginning to be very sorry that he had accepted so important a position as that of general.

“Do with ’em?” cried the colonel. “What’ll we do with ’em? Why, capture the Parallelopipedon, of course. What did you suppose we’d do with ’em—throw them at canary-birds?”

“You don’t load guns with preserved cherries, do you?” asked the boy.

“We don’t, eh? Well, I just guess we do,” returned the colonel. “And we load the cannon with pickled peaches, and to keep me from deserting and going over to the enemy, they keep me loaded to the muzzle with strawberry jam from the time I start until we get back.”

“You can’t kill a Parawelopipedon with cherries and peaches, can you?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Not quite, but nearly,” said the colonel. “We never hit him with enough of them to kill him, but just try to coax him with ’em, don’t you see? We don’t do as you do in your country. We don’t shoot the enemy with lead bullets, and try to kill him and make him unhappy. We try to coax him back by shooting sweetmeats at him, and if he won’t be coaxed, we bombard him with pickled peaches until they make him sick, and then he has to surrender.”

“It must be pretty fine to be an enemy,” said Jimmieboy, smacking his lips as he thought of being bombarded with sweetmeats.

“It is,” exclaimed the colonel, with enthusiasm. “It’s so nice, that they have to do the right thing by me in the matter of jam to keep me from being an enemy myself.”

“But what do I get?” returned Jimmieboy, who couldn’t see why it would not be pleasant for him to be an enemy, and get all these delightful things.

“You? Why, you get the almonds and the powdered sugar and all the mince-pie you can eat—what more do you want?” said the colonel.

“Nothing,” gasped Jimmieboy, overcome by the prospect. “I wouldn’t mind being a general for a million years at that rate.”

With which noble sentiment the little fellow touched his cap to the colonel, and set off, accompanied by a dozen soldiers, to find the cherries, the peaches, the almonds, and the powdered sugar.

•   3   •

MAJOR BLUEFACE
TRIES TO ASSIST

The expedition under Jimmieboy’s command had hardly been under way a quarter of an hour when the youthful general realized that the colonel had not told him where the cherries and peaches and other necessary supplies were to be found.

“Dear me,” he said, stopping short in the road. “I don’t know anything about this country, and I am sure I shan’t be able to find all those good things—except in my mamma’s pantry, and it would never do for me to take ’em from there. I might have to fight cook to get ’em, and that would be dreadful.”

“Yes, it would,” said Major Blueface, riding up as Jimmieboy spoke these words. “It would be terribly awful, for if you should fight with her now, she wouldn’t make you a single pancake or pie or custard or anything after you got back.”

“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Jimmieboy, with a sigh of relief. “Perhaps you can tell me what I’ve got to do to get that ammu—that ammu—oh, that ammuknow, don’t you?”

“Ammunition?” suggested the major.

“Yes, that’s it,” said Jimmieboy. “Could you tell me where to get it?”

“I could; but, really,” returned the major, “I’m very much afraid I’d better not, unless you’ll promise not to pay any attention to what I say.”

“I don’t see what good that would do,” said Jimmieboy, a little surprised at the major’s words. “What’s the use of your saying anything, if I am not to pay any attention to you?”

“I’ll tell you if you’ll sit down a moment,” was the major’s reply, upon which he and Jimmieboy sat down on a log at the roadside.

The major then recited his story as follows:

“THE MAJOR’S MISFORTUNE.

When I was born, some years ago,

The world was standing upside down;

Pekin was off in Mexico,

And Paris stood near Germantown.

The moon likewise was out of gear.

And shone most brilliantly by day;

The while the sun did not appear

Until the moon had gone away.

Which was, you see, a very strange,

Unhappy way of doing things,

And people did not like the change,

Save clods who took the rank of kings.

For kings as well were going wrong,

And ’stead of crowns wore beaver hats,

While those once mean and poor grew strong;

The dogs e’en ran from mice and rats.

The Frenchman spoke the Spanish tongue,

The Russian’s words were Turkestan;

And England’s nerves were all unstrung

By cockneys speaking Aryan.

Schools went to boys, and billy goats

Drove children harnessed up to carts.

The rivers flowed uphill, and oats

Were fed to babies ’stead of tarts.

With things in this shape was I born.

The stars were topsy-turvy all,

And hence it is my fate forlorn

When things are short to call them tall;

When thing are black to call them white;

And if they’re good to call them bad;

To say ’tis day when it is night;

To call an elephant a shad.

And when I say that this is this,

That it is that you’ll surely know;

For truth’s a thing I always miss,

And what I say is never so.”

“Poor fellow!” cried Jimmieboy. “How very unpleasant! Is that really a true story?”

“No,” returned the major, sadly. “It is not true.”

And then Jimmieboy knew that it was true, and he felt very sorry for the major.

“Never mind, major,” he said, tapping his companion affectionately on the shoulder. “I’ll believe what you say if nobody else does.”

“Oh, don’t, don’t! I beg of you, don’t!” cried the major, anxiously. “I wouldn’t have you do that for all the world. If you did, it would get us into all sorts of trouble. If I had thought you’d do that, I’d never have told you the story.”

“Very well,” said Jimmieboy, “then I won’t. Only I should think you’d want to have somebody believe in you.”

“Oh, you can believe in me all you want,” returned the major. “I’m one of the finest fellows in the world, and worthy of anybody’s friendship—and if anybody ought to know, Jimmieboy, I’m the one, for I know myself intimately. I’ve known myself ever since I was a little bit of a boy, and I can tell you if there’s any man in the world who has a noble character and a good conscience and a heart in the right place, I’m him. It’s only what I say you mustn’t believe in. Remember that, and we shall be all right.”

“All right,” said Jimmieboy. “We’ll do it that way. Now tell me what you don’t know about finding preserved cherries and pickled peaches. We’ve got to lay in a very large supply of them, and I haven’t the first idea how to get ’em.”

“H’m! What I don’t know about ’em would take a long time to tell,” returned the major, with a shake of his head, “because there’s so much of it. In the first place,

“I do not know

If cherries grow

On trees, or roofs, or rocks;

Or if they come

In cans—ho-hum!—

Or packed up in a box.

Mayhap you’ll find

The proper kind

Down where they sell red paint;

And then, you see,

Oh, dear! Ah, me!

And then again you mayn’t.”

“That appears to settle the cherries,” said Jimmieboy, somewhat impatiently, for it did seem to him that the major was wasting a great deal of valuable time.

“Oh, dear me, no!” ejaculated the major. “I could go on like that forever about cherries. For instance:

“You might perchance

Get some in France,

And some in Germany;

A crate or two

In far Barboo,

And some in Labradee.”

“Where’s Labradee?” asked Jimmieboy.

“It’s Labrador,” said the major, with a smile; “but Labradee rhymes better with Germany, and as long as you know I’m not telling the truth, and are not likely to go there, it doesn’t make any difference if I change it a little.”

“That’s so,” said Jimmieboy, with a snicker. “But how about those peaches? Do you know anything that isn’t so about them?”

“Oh, yes, lots,” said the major.

“I know that when the peach is green,

And growing on the tree,

It’s harder than a common bean,

And yellow as can be.

I know that if you eat a peach

That’s just a bit too young,

A lesson strong the act will teach,

And leave your nerves unstrung.

And, furthermore, I know this fact:

The crop, however hale

In every year before ’tis packed,

Doth never fail to fail.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Jimmieboy, when the major had recited these lines, “but it doesn’t help me a bit. What I want to know is how the pickled peaches are to be found, and where.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said the major. “Well, it’s easy enough to tell you that. First as to how you are to find them—this applies to huckleberries and daisies and fire-engines and everything else, just as well as it does to peaches, so you’d better listen. It’s a very valuable thing to know.

“The way to find a pickled peach,

A cow, or piece of pumpkin pie,

A simple lesson is to teach,

As can be seen with half an eye.

Look up the road and down the road,

Look North and South and East and West.

Let not a single episode

Come in betwixt you and your quest.

Search morning, night, and afternoon,

From Monday until Saturday;

By light of sun and that of moon,

Nor mind the troubles in your way.

And keep this up until you get

The thing that you are looking for,

And then, of course, you need not fret

About the matter any more.”

“You are a great help,” said Jimmieboy.

“Don’t mention it, my dear boy,” replied the major, so pleased that he smiled and cracked some of the red enamel on his lips. “I like to be useful. It’s almost as good as being youthful. In fact, to people who lisp and pronounce their esses as though they were tee-aitches, it’s quite the same. It was very easy to tell you how to find a pickled peach, but it’s much harder to tell you where. In fact, I don’t know that I can tell you where, but if I were not compelled to ignore the truth I should inform you at once that I haven’t the slightest idea. But, of course, I can tell you where you might find them if they were there—which, of course, they aren’t. For instance:

“Pickled peaches might be found

In the gold mines underground;

Pickled peaches might be seen

Rolling down the Bowling Green;

Pickled peaches might spring up

In a bed of custard cup;

Pickled peaches might sprout forth

From an ice-cake in the North;

I have seen them in the South

In a pickaninny’s mouth;

I have seen them in the West

Hid inside a cowboy’s vest;

I have seen them in the East

At a small boy’s birthday feast;

Maybe, too, a few you’d see

In the land of the Chinee;

And this statement broad I’ll dare:

You might find them anywhere.”

“Thank you,” said Jimmieboy. “I feel easier now that I know all this. I don’t know what I should have done if I hadn’t met you, major.”

“It’s very unkind of you to say so,” said the major, very much pleased by Jimmieboy’s appreciation. “Of course you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” answered Jimmieboy, “I do. Now I’ll tell you what I think. I think pickled peaches come in cans and bottles.”

“Bottles and cans,

Bottles and cans,

When a man marries it ruins his plans,”

quoted the major. “I got married once,” he added, “but I became a bachelor again right off. My wife wrote better poetry than I could, and I couldn’t stand that, you know. That’s how I came to be a soldier.”

“That hasn’t anything to do with the pickled peaches,” said Jimmieboy, impatiently. “Now, unless I am very much mistaken, we can go to the grocery store and buy a few bottles.”

“Ho!” jeered the major. “What’s the use of buying bottles when you’re after pickled peaches?

‘Of all the futile, futile things—

Remarked the Apogee—

That is as truly futilest

As futilest can be.’

You never heard my poem on the Apogee, did you, Jimmieboy?”

“No. I never even heard of an Apogee. What is an Apogee, anyhow?” asked the boy.

“To give definitions isn’t a part of my bargain,” answered the major. “I haven’t the slightest idea what an Apogee is. He may be a bird with a whole file of unpaid bills, for all I know, but I wrote a poem about him once that made another poet so jealous that he purposely caught a bad cold and sneezed his head off; and I don’t blame him either, because it was a magnificent thing in its way. I’ll tell it to you. Listen:

“THE APOGEE.

The Apogee wept saline tears

Into the saline sea,

To overhear two mutineers

Discuss their pedigree.

Said he:

Of all the futile, futile things

That ever I did see.

That is as truly futilest

As futilest can be.

He hied him thence to his hotel,

And there it made him ill

To hear a pretty damosel

A bass song try to trill.

Said he:

Of all the futile, futile things—

To say it I am free—

That is about the futilest

That ever I did see.

He went from sea to mountain height,

And there he heard a lad

Of sixty-eight compare the sight

To other views he’d had;

And he

Remarked: Of all the futile things

That ever came to me,

This is as futily futile

As futile well can be.

Then in disgust he went back home,

His doorbell rang all day,

But no one to the door did come:

The butler’d gone away.

Said he:

This is the strangest, queerest world

That ever I did see.

It’s two percent of earth, and nine-

Ty-eight futility.”

“Isn’t that elegant?” added the major, when he had finished.

“It sounds well,” said Jimmieboy. “But what does it mean? What’s futile?”

“Futile? What does futile mean?” said the major, slowly. “Why, it’s—it’s a word, you know, and sort of stands for ‘what’s the use.’”

“Oh,” replied Jimmieboy. “I see. To be futile means that you are wasting time, eh?”

“That’s it,” said the major. “I’m glad you said it and not I, because that makes it true. If I’d said it, it wouldn’t have been so.”

“Well, all I’ve got to say,” said Jimmieboy, “is that if anybody ever came to me and asked me where he could find a futile person, I’d send him over to you. Here we’ve wasted nearly the whole afternoon and we haven’t got a single thing. We haven’t even talked of anything but peaches and cherries, and we’ve got to get jam and sugar and almonds yet.”

Here the major smiled.

“It isn’t any laughing matter,” said Jimmieboy. “It’s a very serious piece of business, in fact. Here’s this Parawelopipedon going around ruining everything he can lay his claws on, and instead of helping me out of the fix I’m in, and starting the expedition off, you sit here and tell me about Apogees and other things I haven’t time to hear about.”

“I was only smiling to show how sorry I was,” said the major, apologetically.

“I always smile when I am sad,

And when I’m filled with glee

A solitary teardrop trick-

Les down the cheek of me.”

“Oh, that’s it,” said Jimmieboy. “Well, let’s stop fooling now and get those supplies.”

“All right,” assented the major. “Where are the soldiers who accompanied you? We’ll give ’em their orders, and you’ll have the supplies in no time.”

“How’s that?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Why, don’t you see,” said the major, “that’s the nice thing about being a general. If you have to do something you don’t know how to do, you command your men to go and do it. That lifts the responsibility from your shoulders to theirs. They don’t dare disobey, and there you are.”

“Good enough!” cried Jimmieboy, delighted to find so easy a way out of his troubles. “I’ll give them their orders at once. I’ll tell them to get the supplies. Will they surely do it?”

“They’ll have to, or be put in the guard-house,” returned the major. “And they don’t like that, you know, because the guard-house hasn’t any walls, and it’s awfully drafty. But, as I said before, where are the soldiers?”

“Why!” said Jimmieboy, starting up and looking anxiously about him. “They’ve gone, haven’t they?”

“They seem to have,” said the major, putting his hand over his eyes and gazing up and down the road, upon which no sign of Jimmieboy’s command was visible. “You ordered them to halt when you sat down here, didn’t you?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy, “I didn’t.”

“Then that accounts for it,” returned the major, with a scornful glance at Jimmieboy. “They’ve gone on. They couldn’t halt without orders, and they must be eight miles from here by this time.”

“What’ll happen?” asked the boy, anxiously.

“What’ll happen?” echoed the major. “Why, they’ll march on forever unless you get word to them to halt. You are a gay general, you are.”

“But what’s to be done?” asked Jimmieboy, growing tearful.

“There are only two things you can do. The earth is round, and in a few years they’ll pass this way again, and then you can tell them to stop. That’s one thing you can do. The second is to dispatch me on horseback to overtake and tell them to keep right on. They’ll know what you mean, and they’ll halt and wait until you come up.”

“That’s the best plan,” cried Jimmieboy, with a sigh of relief. “You hurry ahead and make them wait for me, and I’ll come along as fast as I can.”

So the major mounted his horse and galloped away, leaving Jimmieboy alone in the road, trudging manfully ahead as fast as his small legs could carry him.

•   4   •

JIMMIEBOY MEETS THE ENEMY

As the noise made by the clattering hoofs of Major Blueface’s horse grew fainter and fainter, and finally died away entirely in the distance, Jimmieboy was a little startled to hear something that sounded very like a hiss in the trees behind him. At first he thought it was the light breeze blowing through the branches, making the leaves rustle, but when it was repeated he stopped short in the road and glanced backward, grasping his sword as he did so.

“Hello there!” he cried. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

“Sh-sh-sh!” answered the mysterious something. “Don’t talk so loud, general, the major may come back.”

“What if he does?” said Jimmieboy. “I rather think I wish he would. I don’t know whether or not I’m big enough not to be afraid of you. Can’t you come out of the bushes and let me see you?”

“Not unless the major is out of sight,” was the answer. “I can’t stand the major; but you needn’t be afraid of me. I wouldn’t hurt you for all the world. I’m the enemy.”

“The what?” cried Jimmieboy, aghast.

“I’m the enemy,” replied the invisible object. “That’s what I call myself when I’m with sensible people. Other people have a long name for me that I never could pronounce or spell. I’m the animal that got away.”

“Not the Parallelopipedon?” said Jimmieboy.

“That’s it! That’s the name I can’t pronounce,” said the invisible animal. “I’m the Parallelandsoforth, and I’ve been trying to have an interview with you ever since I heard they’d made you general. The fact is, Jimmieboy, I am very anxious that you should succeed in capturing me, because I don’t like it out here very much. The fences are the toughest eating I ever had, and I actually sprained my wisdom-tooth at breakfast this morning trying to bite a brown stone ball off the top of a gate post.”

“But if you feel that way,” said Jimmieboy, somewhat surprised at this unusual occurrence, “why don’t you surrender?”

“Me?” cried the Parallelopipedon. “A Parallelandsoforth of my standing surrender right on the eve of a battle that means all the sweetmeats I can eat, and more too? I guess not.”

“I wish I could see you,” said Jimmieboy, earnestly. “I don’t like standing here talking to a wee little voice with nothing to him. Why don’t you come out here where I can see you?”

“It’s for your good, Jimmieboy; that’s why I stay in here. I am an awful spectacle. Why, it puts me all in a tremble just to look at myself; and if it affects me that way, just think how it would be with you.”

“I wouldn’t be afraid,” said Jimmieboy, bravely.

“Yes, you would too,” answered the Parallelopipedon. “You’d be so scared you couldn’t run, I am so ugly. Didn’t the major tell you that story about my reflection in the looking-glass?”

“No,” answered Jimmieboy. “He didn’t say anything about it.”

“That’s queer. The story is in rhyme, and the major always tells everybody all the poetry he knows,” said the invisible enemy. “That’s why I never go near him. He has only enough to last one year, and the second year he tells it all over again. I’m surprised he never told you about my reflection in the mirror, because it is one of his worst, and he always likes them better than the others.”

“I’ll ask him to tell it to me next time I see him,” said Jimmieboy, “unless you’ll tell it to me now.”

“I’d just as lief tell you,” said the Parallelopipedon. “Only you mustn’t laugh or cry, because you haven’t time to laugh, and generals never cry. This is the way it goes:

“THE PARALLELOPIPEDON
AND THE MIRROR.

The Parallelopipedon so very ugly is,

His own heart fills with terror when he looks upon his phiz.

That’s why he wears blue goggles—twenty pairs upon his nose,

And never dares to show himself, no matter where he goes.

One day when he was walking down a crowded village street,

He looked into a little shop where stood a mirror neat.

He saw his own reflection there as plain as plain could be;

And said, ‘I’d give four dollars if that really wasn’t me.’

And, strange to say, the figure in the mirror’s silver face

Was also filled with terror at the other’s lack of grace;

And this reflection trembled till it strangely came to pass

The handsome mirror shivered to ten thousand bits of glass.

To this tale there’s a moral, and that moral briefly is:

If you perchance are burdened with a terrifying phiz,

Don’t look into your mirror—’tis a fearful risk to take—

’tis certain sure to happen that the mirror it will break.”

“Well, if that’s so, I guess I don’t want to see you,” said Jimmieboy. “I only like pretty things. But tell me; if all this is true, how did the major come to say it? I thought he couldn’t tell the truth.”

“That’s only as a rule. Rules have exceptions. For instance,” explained the Parallelopipedon, “as a rule I can’t pronounce my name, but in reciting that poem to you I did speak my name in the very first line—but if you only knew how it hurt me to do it! Oh dear me, how it hurt! Did you ever have a tooth pulled?”

“Once,” said Jimmieboy, wincing at the remembrance of his painful experience.

“Well, pronouncing my name is to me worse than having all my teeth pulled and then put back again, and except when I get hold of a fine general like you I never make the sacrifice,” said the Parallelopipedon. “But tell me, Jimmieboy, you are out after preserved cherries and pickled peaches, I understand?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “And powdered sugar, almonds, jam, and several other things that are large and elegant.”

“Well, just let me tell you one thing,” said the Parallelopipedon, confidentially. “I’m so sick of cherries and peaches that I run every time I see them, and when I run there is no tin soldier or general of your size in the world that can catch me. Now what are we here for? I am here to be captured; you are here to capture me. To accomplish our various purposes we’ve got to begin right, and you might as well understand now as at any other time that you are beginning wrong.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” said Jimmieboy. “I’m obeying orders. The colonel told me to get those things, and I supposed I ought to get ’em.”

“It doesn’t pay to suppose,” said the Parallelopipedon. “Many a victory has been lost by a supposition. As that old idiot Major Blueface said once, when he tried to tell an untruth, and so hit the truth by mistake:

‘Success always comes to

The mortal who knows,

And never to him who

Does naught but suppose.

For knowledge is certain,

While hypothesees

Oft drop defeat’s curtain

On great victories.’”

“What are hypothesees?” asked Jimmieboy.

“They are ifs in words of four syllables,” said the Parallelopipedon, “and you want to steer clear of them as much as you can.”

“I’ll try to,” said Jimmieboy. “But how am I to get knowledge instead of hypotheseeses? I have to take what people tell me. I don’t know everything.”

“Well, that’s only natural,” said the Parallelopipedon, kindly. “There are only two creatures about here that do know everything. They—between you and me—are me and myself. The others you meet here don’t even begin to know everything, though they’ll try to make you believe they do. Now I dare say that tin colonel of yours would try to make you believe that water is wet, and that fire is hot, and other things like that. Well, they are, but he doesn’t know it. He only thinks it. He has put his hand into a pail of water and found out that it was wet, but he doesn’t know why it is wet any more than he knows why fire is hot.”

“Do you?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Certainly,” returned the Parallelopipedon. “Water is wet because it is water, and fire is hot because it wouldn’t be fire if it wasn’t hot. Oh, it takes brains to know everything, Jimmieboy, and if there’s one thing old Colonel Zinc hasn’t got, it’s brains. If you don’t believe it, cut his head off someday and see for yourself. You won’t find a whole brain in his head.”

“It must be nice to know everything,” said Jimmieboy.

“It’s pretty nice,” said the Parallelopipedon, cautiously. “But it’s not always the nicest thing in the world. If you are off on a long journey, for instance, it’s awfully hard work to carry all you know along with you. It has given me a headache many a time, I can tell you. Sometimes I wish I did like your papa, and kept all I know in books instead of in my head. It’s a great deal better to do things that way; then, when you go traveling, and have to take what you know along with you, you can just pack it up in a trunk and make the railroad people carry it.”

“Do you know what’s going to happen tomorrow and the next day?” asked Jimmieboy, gazing in rapt admiration at the spot whence the voice proceeded.

“Yes, indeed. That’s just where the great trouble comes in,” answered the Parallelopipedon. “It isn’t so much bother to know what has been—what everybody knows—but when you have to store up in your mind thousands and millions of things that aren’t so now, but have got to be so someday, it’s positively awful. Why, Jimmieboy,” he said, impressively, “you’d be terrified if I told you what is going to be known by the time you go to school; it’s awful to think of all the things you will have to learn then that aren’t things yet, but are going to be within a year or two. I’m real sorry for the little boys who will live a hundred years from now, when I think of all the history they will have to learn when they go to school—history that isn’t made yet. Just take the Presidents of the United States, for instance. In George Washington’s time it didn’t take a boy five seconds to learn the list of Presidents; but think of that list today! Why, there are twenty-five names on it now, and more to come. It gets harder every year. Now I—I know the names of all the Presidents there’s ever going to be, and it would take me just eighteen million nine hundred and sixty-seven years, eleven months and twenty-six days, four hours and twenty-eight minutes to tell you all of them, and even then I wouldn’t be half through.”

“Why, it’s terrible,” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes, indeed it is,” returned the Parallelopipedon. “You ought to be glad you are a little boy now instead of having to wait until then. The boys of the year 19,605,726,422 are going to have the hardest time in the world learning things, and I don’t believe they’ll get through going to school much before they’re ninety years old.”

“I guess the colonel is glad he doesn’t know all that,” said Jimmieboy, “if it’s so hard to carry it around with you.”

“Indeed he ought to be, if he isn’t,” ejaculated the Parallelopipedon. “There’s no two ways about it; if he had the weight of one half of what I know on his shoulders, it would bend him in two and squash him into a piece of tinfoil.”

“Say,” said Jimmieboy, after a moment’s pause. “I heard my papa say he thought I might be President of the United States someday. If you know all the names of the Presidents that are to come, tell me, will I be?”

“I don’t remember any name like Jimmieboy on the list,” said the Parallelopipedon; “but that doesn’t prove anything. You might get elected on your last name. But don’t let’s talk about that—that’s politics, and I don’t like politics. What I want to know is, do you really want to capture me?”

“Yes, I do,” said Jimmieboy.

“Then you’d better give up trying to get the peaches and cherries,” said the Parallelopipedon, firmly. “I won’t have ’em. You can shoot ’em at me at the rate of a can a minute for ninety-seven years, and I’ll never surrender. I hate ’em.”

“But what am I to do, then?” queried the little general. “What must I do to capture you?”

“Get something in the place of the cherries and peaches that I like, that’s all. Very simple matter, that.”

“But I don’t know what you like,” said Jimmieboy. “I never took lunch with you.”

“No—and you never will,” answered the Parallelopipedon. “And for a very good reason. I never eat lunch, breakfast, tea, or supper. I never eat anything but dinner, and I eat that four times a day.”

Jimmieboy laughed, half with mirth at the oddity of the Parallelopipedon’s habit of eating, and half with the pleasure it gave him to think of what a delectable habit it was. Four dinners a day seemed to him to be the height of bliss, and he almost wished he too were a Parallelopipedon, that he might enjoy the same privilege.

“Don’t you ever eat between meals?” he asked, after a minute of silence.

“Never,” said the Parallelopipedon. “Never. There isn’t time for it in the first place, and in the second there’s never anything left between meals for me to eat. But if you had ever dined with me you’d know mighty well what I like, for I always have the same thing at every single dinner—two platefuls of each thing. It’s a fine plan, that of having the same dishes at every dinner, day after day. Your stomach always knows what to expect, and is ready for it, so you don’t get cholera morbus. If you want me to, I’ll tell you what I always have, and what you must get me before you can coax me back.”

“Thank you,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ll be very much obliged.”

And then the Parallelopipedon recited the following delicious bill of fare for the young general.

THE PARALLELOPIPEDON’S DINNER.

First bring on a spring mock-turtle

Stuffed with chestnuts roasted through,

Served in gravy; then a fertile

Steaming bowl of oyster stew.

Then about six dozen tartlets

Full of huckleberry jam,

Edges trimmed with juicy Bartletts—

Pears, these latter—then some ham.

Follow these with cauliflower,

Soaked in maple syrup sweet;

Then an apple large and sour,

And a rich red rosy beet.

Then eight quarts of cream—vanilla

Is the flavor I like best—

Acts sublimely as a chiller,

Gives your fevered system rest.

After this a pint of coffee,

Forty jars of marmalade,

And a pound of peanut toffee,

Then a pumpkin pie—home-made.

Top this off with pickled salmon,

Cold roast beef, and eat it four

Times each day, and ghastly famine

Ne’er will enter at your door.

“H’m! h’m! h’m!” cried Jimmieboy, dancing up and down, and clapping his hands with delight at the very thought of such a meal. “Do you mean to say that you eat that four times a day?”

“Yes,” said the Parallelopipedon, “I do. In fact, general, it is that that has made me what I am. I was originally a Parallelogram, and I ate that four times a day, and it kept doubling me up until I became six Parallelograms as I am today. Get me those things—enough of them to enable me to have ’em five times a day, and I surrender. Without them, I go on and stay escaped forever, and the longer I stay escaped, the worse it will be for these people who live about here, for I shall devastate the country. I shall chew up all the mowing-machines in Pictureland. I’ll bite the smokestack off every railway engine I encounter, and throw it into the smoking car, where it really belongs. I’ll drink all the water in the wells. I’ll pull up all the cellars by the roots; I may even go so far as to run down into your nursery, and gnaw into the wire that holds this picture country upon the wall, and let it drop into the water pitcher. But, oh dear, there’s the major coming down the road!” he added, in a tone of alarm. “I must go, or he’ll insist on telling me a poem. But remember what I say, my boy, and beware! I’ll do all I threaten to do if you don’t do what I tell you. Goodbye!”

There was a slight rustling among the leaves, and the Parallelopipedon’s voice died away as Major Blueface came galloping up astride of his panting, lather-covered steed.

•   5   •

THE MAJOR RETURNS

“Well,” said Jimmieboy, as the major dismounted, “did you catch up with them?”

“No, I didn’t,” returned the major, evidently much excited. “I should have caught them but for a dreadful encounter I had up the road, for between you and me, Jimmieboy, I have had a terrible adventure since I saw you last, and the soldiers I went to order back have been destroyed to the very last man.”

“Dear me!” cried Jimmieboy. “I am glad I didn’t go with you. What happened?”

“I was attacked about four miles up the road by a tremendous sixty-pound Quandary, and I was nearly killed,” said the major. “The soldiers had only got four and a half miles on their way, and hearing the disturbance and my cries for help they hastened to the rescue, and were simply an-ni-hi-lated, which is old English for all mashed to pieces.”

“But how did you escape?” said the boy.

“Oh, I had a way, and it worked, that’s all. I’m the safest soldier in the world, I am. You can capture me eight times a day, but I am always sure to escape,” said the major, proudly. “But, my dear general, how is it that you do not tremble? Are you not aware that under the circumstances you ought to be a badly frightened warrior?”

“I don’t tremble, because I don’t know whether you are telling the truth or not,” said Jimmieboy. “Besides, I never saw a Quandary, and so I can’t tell how terrible he is. Is he dreadful?”

“He’s more than dreadful,” returned the major. “No word of two syllables expresses his dreadfulness. He is simply calamitous; and if there was a longer word in the dictionary applying to his case I’d use it, if it took all my front teeth out to say it.”

“That’s all very well,” said Jimmieboy, “but you can’t make me shiver with fear by saying he’s calamitous. What does he do? Bite?”

“Bite? Well, I guess not,” answered the major, scornfully. “He doesn’t need to bite. Would you bite an apple if you could swallow it whole?”

“I think I would,” said Jimmieboy. “How would I get the juice of it if I didn’t?”

“You’d get just as much juice whether you bit it or not,” snapped the major, who did not at all like Jimmieboy’s coolness under the circumstances. “The Quandary doesn’t bite anything, because his mouth is so large there isn’t anything he can bite. He just takes you as you stand, gives a great gulp, and there you are.”

“Where?” queried Jimmieboy, who could not quite follow the major.

“Wherever you happen to be, of course,” said the major, gruffly. “You aren’t a very sharp general, it seems to me. You don’t seem to be able to see through a hole with a millstone in it. I have to explain everything to you just as if you were a baby or a schoolteacher, but I can just tell you that if you ever were attacked by a Quandary you wouldn’t like it much, and if he ever swallowed you you’d be a mighty lonesome general for a little while. You’d be a regular land Jonah.”

“Don’t get mad at me, major,” said Jimmieboy, clapping his companion on the back. “I’ll be frightened if you want me to. Br-rr-rrr-rrr-rrrrr! There, is that the kind of a tremble you want me to have?”

“Thank you, yes,” the major replied, his face clearing and his smile returning. “I am very much obliged; and now to show you that you haven’t made any mistake in getting frightened, I’ll tell you what a Quandary is, and what he has done, and how I managed to escape; and as poetry is the easiest method for me to express my thoughts with, I’ll put it all in rhyme.

“THE QUANDARY.

He is a fearful animal,

That quaint old Quandary—

A cousin of the tragical

And whimsically magical

Dilemma-bird is he.

He has an eye that’s wonderful—

’tis like a public school:

It has a thousand dutiful,

Though scarcely any beautiful,

Small pupils ’neath its rule.

And every pupil—marvelous

Indeed, sir, to relate—

When man becomes contiguous,

Makes certainty ambiguous—

Which is unfortunate.

For when this ambiguity

Has seized upon his prize,

Whate’er man tries, to do it he

Will find when he is through it, he

Had best done otherwise.

And hence it is this animal,

Of which I sing my song,

This creature reprehensible,

Is held by persons sensible

Responsible for wrong.

So if a friend or foe you see

Departing from his aim,

Be full, I pray, of charity—

He may have met the Quandary,

And so is not to blame.”

“That is very pretty,” said Jimmieboy, as the major finished; “but, do you know, major, I don’t understand one word of it.”

Much to Jimmieboy’s surprise the major was pleased at this remark.

“Thank you, Jimmieboy,” he said. “That proves that I am a true poet. I think there’s some meaning in those lines, but it’s so long since I wrote them that I have forgotten exactly what I did mean, and it’s that very thing that makes a poem out of the verses. Poetry is nothing but riddles in rhyme. You have to guess what is meant by the lines, and the harder that is, the greater the poem.”

“But I don’t see much use of it,” said Jimmieboy. “Riddles are fun sometimes, but poetry isn’t.”

“That’s very true,” said the major. “But poetry has its uses. If it wasn’t for poetry, the poets couldn’t make a living, or if they did, they’d have to go into some other business, and most other businesses are crowded as it is.”

“Do people ever make a living writing poetry?” Jimmieboy asked.

“Once in a while. I knew a man once who did. He called himself the Grocer-Poet, because he was a grocer in the daytime and a poet at night. He sold every poem he wrote, too,” said the major.

“To a newspaper?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, no,” said the major. “He bought ’em from himself. When he’d wake up in the morning as a grocer he’d read what he had written the night before as a poet, and then he’d buy the verses from himself and throw them into the fire. But to return to the Quandary. He has awfully bad manners. He stares you right in the face whenever he meets you, and no matter what you want to do he tries to force you to do the other thing. The only way to escape him is not to do anything, but go back where you started from, and begin all over again.”

“Where did you meet him?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Where? Why, where he’s always met, of course, at a fork in the road. That’s where he gets in his fine work,” said the major. “Suppose, for instance, you were out for a stroll, and you thought you’d like to go—well, say to Calcutta. You stroll along, and you stroll along, and you stroll along. Then you come to a place where the road splits, one half going to the right and one to the left, or, if you don’t like right and left, we’ll say one going to Calcutta by way of Cape Horn, and the other going to Calcutta by way of Greenland’s icy mountains.”

“It’s a long walk either way,” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes. It’s a walk that isn’t often taken,” assented the major, with a knowing shake of the head. “But at the fork of this road the Quandary attacks you. He stops you and says, ‘Which way are you going to Calcutta?’ and you say, ‘Well, as it is a warm day, I think I’ll go by way of Greenland’s icy mountains.’  ‘No,’ says the Quandary, ‘you won’t do any such thing, because it may snow. You’d better go the other way.’  ‘Very well,’ say you, ‘I’ll go the other way, then.’  ‘Why do you do that?’ queries the Quandary. ‘If it should grow very warm you’d be roasted to death.’  ‘Then I don’t know what to do,’ say you. ‘What is the matter with going both ways?’ says the Quandary, to which you reply, ‘How can I do that?’  ‘Try it and see,’ he answers. Then,” continued the major, his voice sinking to a whisper—“then you do try it and you do see, unless you are a wise, sagacious, sapient, perspicacious, astute, canny, penetrating, needle-witted, learned man of wisdom like myself who knows a thing or two. In that case you don’t try, for you can see without trying that any man with two legs who tries to walk along two roads leading in different directions at once is just going to split into at least two halves before he has gone twenty miles, and that is just what the Quandary wants you to do, for it’s over such horrible spectacles as a man divided against himself that he gloats, and when he is through gloating he swallows what’s left.”

“And what does the wise, sagacious, sappy, perspiring man of wisdom like yourself who knows a thing or two do?” asked Jimmieboy.

“I didn’t say sappy or perspiring,” retorted the major. “I said sapient and perspicacious.”

“Well, anyhow, what does he do?” asked Jimmieboy.

“He gives up going to Calcutta,” observed the major.

“Oh, I see. To gain a victory over the Quandary you turn and run away?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Yes, that’s it. That’s what saved me. I cried for help, turned about, and ran back here, and I can tell you it takes a brave man to turn his back on an enemy,” said the major.

“And why didn’t the soldiers do it too?” queried Jimmieboy.

“There wasn’t anybody to order a retreat, so when the Quandary attacked them they marched right on, single file, and every one of ’em split in two, fell in a heap, and died.”

“But I should think you would have ordered them to halt,” insisted Jimmieboy.

“I had no power to do so,” the major replied. “If I had only had the power, I might have saved their lives by ordering them to march two by two instead of single file, and then when they met the Quandary they could have gone right ahead, the left-hand men taking the left-hand road, the right-hand men the right, but of course I only had orders to tell them to come back here, and a soldier can only obey his orders. It was awful the way those noble lives were sacrifi—”

Here Jimmieboy started to his feet with a cry of alarm. There were unmistakable sounds of approaching footsteps.

“Somebody or something is coming,” he cried.

“Oh, no, I guess not,” said the major, getting red in the face, for he recognized, as Jimmieboy did not, the firm, steady tread of the returning soldiers whom he had told Jimmieboy the Quandary had annihilated. “It’s only the drum of your ear you hear,” he added. “You know you have a drum in your ear, and every once in a while it begins its rub-a-dub-dub just like any other drum. Oh, no, you don’t hear anybody coming. Let’s take a walk into the forest here and see if we can’t find a few pipe plants. I think I’d like to have a smoke.”

“Why, you naughty major!” cried Jimmieboy, shaking his arm, which his companion had taken, free from the major’s grasp. “You’ve been telling me a great big fib, because there are the soldiers coming back again.”

“What!” ejaculated the major, in well-affected surprise. “Well, I declare! So they are. Dear me! Why, do you know, general, that is the most marvelous cure I ever saw in my life. To think that all those men whom I saw not an hour ago lying dead on the field of battle, all ready for the Quandary’s luncheon, should have been resuscitated in so short a time, as—”

“Halt!” roared Jimmieboy, interrupting the major in a most unceremonious fashion, for the soldiers by this time had reached a point in the road directly opposite where he was sitting.

The soldiers halted.

“Break ranks!” cried Jimmieboy, after the corporal had told him the proper order to give next.

The soldiers broke ranks, and in sheer weariness threw themselves down on the soft turf at the side of the road—all except the corporal, who at Jimmieboy’s request came and sat down at the general’s side to make his report.

“This is fine weather we are having, corporal,” said the major, winking at the subordinate officer, and trying to make him understand that the less he said about the major the better it would be for all concerned.

“Yes,” returned the corporal. “Better for sleeping than for military duty, eh, major?”

Here the major grew pale, but had the presence of mind to remark that he thought it might rain in time for tea.

“There’s something behind all this,” thought Jimmieboy; “and I’m going to know what it all means.”

Then he said aloud, “You have had a very speedy recovery, corporal.”

Here the major cleared his throat more loudly than usual, blushed rosy red, and winked twice as violently at the corporal as before.

“Did you ever hear my poem on the ‘Cold Tea River in China’?” he asked.

“No,” said the corporal, “I never did, and I never want to.”

“Then I will recite it for you,” said the major.

“After the corporal has made his report, major,” said Jimmieboy.

“It goes this way,” continued the major, pretending not to hear.

“Some years ago—’way back in ’69—a

Friend and I went for a trip through China,

That pleasant land where rules King Tommy Chang,

Where flows the silver river Yangtse-Wang—

Through fertile fields, through sweetest-scented bowers

Of creeping vinous vines and floral flowers.”

“My dear major,” interrupted Jimmieboy, “I do not want to hurt your feelings, but much as I like to hear your poetry I must listen to the report of the corporal first.”

“Oh, very well,” returned the major, observing that the corporal had taken to his heels as soon as he had begun to recite. “Very well. Let the corporal proceed.”

Jimmieboy then saw for the first time that the corporal had fled.

“Why, where is he?” he asked.

“I do not know,” returned the major, coldly. “I fancy he has gone to the kitchen to cook his report. He always goes off when I recite.”

“Oh, well, never mind,” said Jimmieboy, noticing that the major was evidently very much hurt. “Go on with the poem about ‘Cold Tea River.’”

“No, I shall not,” replied the major. “I shall not do it for two reasons, general, unless you as my superior officer command me to do it, and I hope you will not. In the first place, you have publicly humiliated me in the presence of a tin corporal, an inferior in rank, and consequently have hurt my feelings more deeply than you imagine. I am not tall, sir, but my feelings are deep enough to be injured most deeply, and in view of that fact I prefer to say nothing more about that poem. The other reason is that there is really no such poem, because there is really no such a stream as Cold Tea River in China, though there might have been had Nature been as poetic and fanciful as I, for it is as easy to conceive of a river having its source in the land of the tea-trees, and having its waters so full of the essence of tea gained from contact with the roots of those trees, that to all intents and purposes it is a river of tea. Had you permitted me to go on uninterrupted I should have made up a poem on that subject, and might possibly by this time have had it done, but as it is, it never will be composed. If you will permit me I will take a horseback ride and see if I cannot forget the trials of this memorable day. If I return I shall be back, but otherwise you may never see me again. I feel so badly over your treatment of me that I may be rash enough to commit suicide by jumping into a smelting-pot and being molded over again into a piece of shot, and if I do, general, if I do, and if I ever get into battle and am fired out of a gun, I shall seek out that corporal, and use my best efforts to amputate his head off so quickly that he won’t know what has happened till he tries to think, and finds he hasn’t anything to do it with.”

Breathing which horrible threat, the major mounted his horse and galloped madly down the road, and Jimmieboy, not knowing whether to be sorry or amused, started on a search for the corporal in order that he might hear his report, and gain, if possible, some solution of the major’s strange conduct.

•   6   •

THE CORPORAL’S FAIRY STORY

Jimmieboy had not long to search for the corporal. He found that worthy in a very few minutes, lying fast asleep under a tree some twenty or thirty rods down the road, snoring away as if his life depended upon it. It was quite evident that the poor fellow was worn out with his exertions, and Jimmieboy respected his weariness, and restrained his strong impulse to awaken him.

His consideration for the tired soldier was not without its reward, for as Jimmieboy listened the corporal’s snores took semblance to words, which, as he remembered them, the snores of his papa in the early morning had never done. Indeed, Jimmieboy and his small brother Russ were agreed on the one point that their father’s snores were about the most uninteresting, uncalled for, unmeaning sounds in the world, which, no doubt, was why they made it a point to interrupt them on every possible occasion. The novelty of the present situation was delightful to the little general. To be able to stand there and comprehend what it was the corporal was snoring so vociferously, was most pleasing, and he was still further entertained to note that it was nothing less than a rollicking song that was having its sweetness wasted upon the desert air by the sleeping officer before him.

This is the song that Jimmieboy heard:

“I would not be a man of peace,

Oh, no-ho-ho—not I;

But give me battles without cease;

Give me grim war with no release,

Or let me die-hi-hi.

I love the frightful things we eat

In times of war-or-or;

The biscuit tough, the granite meat,

And hard green apples are a treat

Which I adore-dor-dor.

I love the sound of roaring guns

Upon my e-e-ears,

I love in routs the lengthy runs,

I do not mind the stupid puns

Of dull-ull grenadiers.

I should not weep to lose a limb,

An arm, or thumb-bum-bum.

I laugh with glee to hear the zim

Of shells that make my chance seem slim

Of getting safe back hum.

Just let me sniff gunpowder in

My nasal fee-a-ture,

And I will ever sing and grin.

To me sweet music is the din

Of war, you may be sure.”

“Well, I declare!” cried Jimmieboy. “If my dear old papa could snore songs like that, wouldn’t I let him sleep mornings!”

“He does,” snored the corporal. “The only trouble is he doesn’t snore as clearly as I do. It takes long practice to become a fluent snorer like myself—that is to say, a snorer who can be understood by anyone whatever his age, nation, or position in life. That song I have just snored for you could be understood by a Zulu just as well as you understood it, because a snore is exactly the same in Zuluese as it is in your language or any other—in which respect it resembles a cup of coffee or a canary-bird.”

“Are you still snoring, or is this English you are speaking?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Snoring; and that proves just what I said, for you understood me just as plainly as though I had spoken in English,” returned the corporal, his eyes still tightly closed in sleep.

“Snore me another poem,” said Jimmieboy.

“No, I won’t do that; but if you wish me to I’ll snore you a fairy tale,” answered the corporal.

“That will be lovely,” said Jimmieboy. “I love fairy tales.”

“Very well,” observed the corporal, turning over on his back and throwing his head back into an uncomfortable position so that he could snore more loudly. “Here goes. Once upon a time there was a small boy named Tom whose parents were so poor and so honest that they could not afford to give him money enough to go to the circus when it came to town, which made him very wretched and unhappy, because all the other little boys who lived thereabouts were more fortunately situated, and had bought tickets for the very first performance. Tom cried all night and went about the town moaning all day, for he did want to see the elephant whose picture was on the fences that could hold itself up on its hind tail; the man who could toss five-hundred-pound cannon balls in the air and catch them on top of his head as they came down; the trick horse that could jump over a fence forty feet high without disturbing the two-year-old wonder Pattycake who sat in a rocking-chair on his back. As Tom very well said, these were things one had to see to believe, and now they were coming, and just because he could not get fifty cents he could not see them.

“Then he thought, ‘Here! why can’t I go out into the world, and by hard work earn the fifty cents I so much need to take me through the doors of the circus tent into the presence of these marvelous creatures?’

“And he went out and called upon a great lawyer and asked him if he did not want a partner in his business for a day, but the lawyer only laughed and told him to go to the doctor and ask him. So Tom went to the doctor, and the doctor said he did not want a partner, but he did want a boy to take medicines for him and tell him what they tasted like, and he promised Tom fifty cents if he would be that boy for a day, and Tom said he would try.

“Then the doctor got out his medicine-chest and gave Tom twelve bottles of medicine, and told him to taste each one of them, and Tom tasted two of them, and decided that he would rather do without the circus than taste the rest, so the doctor bade him farewell, and Tom went to look for something else to do. As he walked disconsolately down the street and saw by the clock that it was nearly eleven o’clock, he made up his mind that he would think no more about the circus, but would go home and study arithmetic instead, the chance of his being able to earn the fifty cents seemed so very slight. So he turned back, and was about to go to his home, when he caught sight of another circus poster, which showed how the fiery, untamed giraffe caught cocoanuts in his mouth—the cocoanuts being fired out of a cannon set off by a clown who looked as if he could make a joke that would make an owl laugh. This was too much for Tom. He couldn’t miss that without at least making one further effort to earn the money that would pay for his ticket.

“So off he started again in search of profitable employment. He had not gone far when he came to a crockery shop, and on stopping to look in the large shop window at the beautiful dishes and graceful soup tureens that were to be seen there, he saw a sign on which was written in great golden letters ‘BOY WANTED.’ Now Tom could not read, but something told him that that sign was a good omen for him, so he went into the shop and asked if they had any work that a boy of his size could do.

“‘Yes,’ said the owner of the shop. ‘We want an errand-boy. Are you an errand-boy?’

“Tom answered bravely that he thought he was, and the man said he would give him a trial anyhow, and sent him off on a sample errand, telling him that if he did that one properly, he would pay him fifty cents a day for as many days as he kept him, giving him a half holiday on all circus-days. Tom was delighted, and started off gleefully to perform the sample errand, which was to take a basketful of china plates to the house of a rich merchant who lived four miles back in the country. Bravely the little fellow plodded along until he came to the gateway of the rich man’s place, when so overcome was he with happiness at getting something to do that he could not wait to get the gate open, but leaped like a deer clear over the topmost pickets. But, alas! his very happiness was his ruin, for as he landed on the other side the china plates flew out of the basket in every direction, and falling on the hard gravel path were broken, every one.”

“Dear me!” cried Jimmieboy, sympathetically. “Poor little Tom.”

“Whereat the cow

Remarked, ‘Pray how—

If what you say is true—

How should the child,

However mild,

Become so wildly blue?’”

snored the corporal.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Jimmieboy, very much surprised at the rhyme, which, so far as he could see, had nothing to do with the fairy story.

“What’s the matter with me?” returned the corporal. “Nothing. Why?”

“There wasn’t anything about a cow in the fairy story you were telling about Tom,” said Jimmieboy.

“Was I telling that story about Tom?” asked the sleeping soldier.

“Certainly,” replied Jimmieboy.

“Then you must have interrupted me,” snored the corporal. “You must never interrupt a person who is snoring until he gets through, because the chances are nine out of ten that, being asleep, he won’t remember what he has been snoring about, and will go off on something else entirely. Where was I when you interrupted?”

“You had got to where Tom jumped over the gate and broke all the china plates,” answered Jimmieboy.

“Very well, then. I’ll go on, but don’t you say another thing until I have finished,” said the corporal. Then resuming his story, he snored away as follows: “And falling on the hard gravel path the plates were broken every one, which was awfully sad, as anyone could understand who could see how the poor little fellow threw himself down on the grass and wept. Dear me, how he wept! He wept so long and such great tears, that the grass about him for yards and yards looked as fresh and green as though there had been a rainstorm.

“‘Oh, dear! what shall I do?’ cried Tom, ruefully regarding the shattered plates. ‘They’ll beat me if I go back to the shop, and I’ll never get to see the circus after all.’

“‘No,’ said a voice. ‘They will not beat you, and I will see that you get to the circus.’

“‘Who are you?’ asked Tom, looking up and seeing before him a beautiful lady, who looked as if she might be a part of the circus herself. ‘Are you the lady with the iron jaw or the horseback lady that jumps through hoops of fire?’

TOM AND THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

“‘Neither,’ replied the lady. ‘I am your Fairy Godmother, and I have come to tell you that if you will gather up the broken plates and take them up to the great house yonder, I will fix it so that you can go to the circus.’

“‘Won’t they scold me for breaking the plates?’ asked Tom, his eyes brightening and his tears drying.

“‘Take them and see,’ said the Fairy Godmother, and Tom, who was always an obedient lad, did as he was told. He gathered up the broken plates, put them in his basket, and went up to the house.

“‘Here are your plates,’ he said, all of a tremble as he entered.

“‘Let’s see if any of them are broken,’ said the merchant in a voice so gruff that Tom trembled all the harder. Surely he was now in worse trouble than ever.

“‘H’m!’ said the rich man taking one out and looking at it. ‘That seems to be all right.’

“‘Yes,’ said Tom, meekly, surprised to note that the plate was as good as ever. ‘It has been very neatly mended.’

“‘Very what?’ roared the rich man, who didn’t want mended plates. ‘Did you say mended?’

“‘Oh, no, sir!’ stammered Tom, who saw that he had made a bad mistake. ‘That is, I didn’t mean to say mended. I meant to say that they’d been very highly recommended.’

“‘Oh! Recommended, eh?’ returned the rich man more calmly. ‘That’s different. The rest of them seem to be all right, too. Here, take your basket and go along with you. Goodbye!’

“And so Tom left the merchant’s house very much pleased to have got out of his scrape so easily, and feeling very grateful to his Fairy Godmother for having helped him.

“‘Well,’ said she, when he got back to the gate where she was awaiting him, ‘was everything all right?’

“‘Yes,’ said Tom, happily. ‘The plates were all right, and now they are all left.’

“The Fairy Godmother laughed and said he was a bright boy, and then she asked him which he would rather do: pay fifty cents to go to the circus once, or wear the coat of invisibility and walk in and out as many times as he wanted to. To this Tom, who was a real boy, and preferred going to the circus six times to going only once, replied that as he was afraid he might lose the fifty cents he thought he would take the coat, though he also thought, he said, if his dear Fairy Godmother could find it in her heart to let him have both the coat and the fifty cents he could find use for them.

“At this the Fairy Godmother laughed again, and said she guessed he could, and, giving him two shining silver quarters and the coat of invisibility, she made a mysterious remark, which he could not understand, and disappeared. Tom kissed his hand toward the spot where she had stood, now vacant, and ran gleefully homeward, happy as a bird, for he had at last succeeded in obtaining the means for his visit to the circus. That night, so excited was he, he hardly slept a wink, and even when he did sleep, he dreamed of such unpleasant things as the bitter medicines of the doctor and the broken plates, so that it was just as well he should spend the greater part of the night awake.

“His excitement continued until the hour for going to the circus arrived, when he put on his coat of invisibility and started. To test the effect of the coat he approached one of his chums, who was standing in the middle of the long line of boys waiting for the doors to open, and tweaked his nose, deciding from the expression on his friend’s face—one of astonishment, alarm, and mystification—that he really was invisible, and so, proceeding to the gates, he passed by the ticket-taker into the tent without interference from anyone. It was simply lovely; all the seats in the place were unoccupied, and he could have his choice of them. Surely nobody could ask for anything better.

“You may be sure he chose one well down in front, so that he should miss no part of the performance, and then he waited for the beginning of the very wonderful series of things that were to come.

“Alas! poor Tom was again doomed to a very mortifying disappointment. He forgot that his invisibility made his lovely front seat appear to be unoccupied, and while he was looking off in another direction a great, heavy, fat man entered and sat down upon him, squeezing him so hard that he could scarcely breathe, and as for howling, that was altogether out of the question, and there through the whole performance the fat man sat, and the invisible Tom saw not one of the marvelous acts or the wonderful animals, and, what was worse, when a joke was got off he couldn’t see whether it was by the clown or the ringmaster, and so didn’t know when to laugh even if he had wanted to. It was the most dreadful disappointment Tom ever had, and he went home crying, and spent the night groaning and moaning with sorrow.

“It was not until he began to dress for breakfast next morning, and his two beautiful quarters rolled out of his pocket on the floor, that he remembered he still had the means to go again. When he had made this discovery he became happy once more, and started off with his invisible coat hanging over his arm, and paid his way in for the second and last performance like all the other boys. This time he saw all there was to be seen, and was full of happiness, until the lions’ cage was brought in, when he thought it would be a fine thing to put on his invisible coat, and enter the cage with the lion-tamer, which he did, having so exciting a time looking at the lions and keeping out of their way that he forgot to watch the tamer when he went out, so that finally when the circus was all over Tom found himself locked in the cage with the lions with nothing but raw meat to eat. This was bad enough, but what was worse, the next city in which the circus was to exhibit was hundreds of miles away from the town in which Tom lived, and no one was expected to open the cage doors again for four weeks.

“When Tom heard this he was frightened to death almost, and rather than spend all that time shut up in a small cage with the kings of the beasts, he threw off the coat of invisibility and shrieked, and then—”

“Yes—then what?” cried Jimmieboy, breathlessly, so excited that he could not help interrupting the corporal, despite the story-teller’s warning.

“The bulldog said he thought it might,

But pussy she said ‘Nay,’

At which the unicorn took fright,

And stole a bale of hay,”

snored the corporal with a yawn.

“That can’t be it! that can’t be it!” cried Jimmieboy, so excited to hear what happened to little Tom in the lions’ cage that he began to shake the corporal almost fiercely.

“What can’t be what?” asked the corporal, sitting up and opening his eyes. “What are you trying to talk about, general?”

“Tom—and the circus—what happened to him in the lions’ cage when he took off his coat?” cried Jimmieboy.

“Tom? And the circus? I don’t know anything about any Tom or any circus,” replied the corporal, with a sleepy nod.

“But you’ve just been snoring to me about it,” remonstrated Jimmieboy.

“Don’t remember it at all,” said the corporal. “I must have been asleep and dreamed it, or else you did, or maybe both of us did; but tell me, general, in confidence now, and don’t ever tell anybody I asked you, have you such a thing as a—as a gumdrop in your pocket?”

And Jimmieboy was so put out with the corporal for waking up just at the wrong time that he wouldn’t answer him, but turned on his heel, and walked away very much concerned in his mind as to the possible fate of poor little Tom.

•   7   •

A DISAGREEABLE PERSONAGE

It cannot be said that Jimmieboy was entirely happy after his falling out with the corporal. Of course it was very inconsiderate of the corporal to wake up at the most exciting period of his fairy story, and leave his commanding officer in a state of uncertainty as to the fate of little Tom; but as he walked along the road, and thought the matter all over, Jimmieboy reflected that after all he was himself as much to blame as the corporal. In the first place, he had interrupted him in his story at the point where it became most interesting, though warned in advance not to do so, and in the second, he had not fallen back upon his undoubted right as a general to command the corporal to go to sleep again, and to stay so until his little romance was finished to the satisfaction of his superior officer. The latter was without question the thing he should have done, and at first he thought he would go back and tell the corporal he was very sorry he hadn’t done so. Indeed, he would have gone back had he not met, as he rounded the turn, a singular-looking little fellow, who, sitting high in an oak-tree at the side of the road, attracted his attention by winking at him. Ordinarily Jimmieboy would not have noticed anybody who winked at him, because his papa had told him that people who would wink would smoke a pipe, which was very wrong, particularly in people who were as small as this droll person in the tree. But the singular-looking little fellow winked aloud, and Jimmieboy could not help noticing him. Like most small boys Jimmieboy delighted in noises, especially noises that went off like pop-guns, which was just the kind of noise the tree dwarf made when he winked.

“Hello, you!” said Jimmieboy, as the sounds first attracted his attention. “What are you doing up there?”

“Sitting on a limb and counting the stars in the sky,” answered the dwarf.

Jimmieboy laughed. This seemed such a curious thing to do.

“How many are there?” he asked.

“Seventeen,” replied the dwarf.

“Ho!” jeered Jimmieboy.

“There are, really,” said the dwarf. “I counted ’em myself.”

“There’s more than that,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ve had stories told me of twenty-seven or twenty-eight.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” returned the dwarf, “that is, nothing but what I said. If there are twenty-eight there must be seventeen, so you can’t catch me up on that.”

“Come down,” said Jimmieboy. “I want to see you.”

“I can’t come now,” returned the dwarf. “I’m too busy counting the eighteenth star, but I’ll drop my telescope and let you see me through that.”

“I’ll help you count the stars if you come,” put in Jimmieboy. “How many stars can you count a day?”

“Oh, about one and a half,” said the dwarf. “I could count more than that, only I’m cross-eyed and see double, so that after I’ve got through counting, I have to divide the whole number by two to get the proper figures, and I never was good at dividing. I’ve always hated division—particularly division of apples and peaches. There is no meaner sum in any arithmetic in the world than that I used to have to do every time I got an apple when I was your age.”

“What was the sum?” asked Jimmieboy.

“It was to divide one apple by three boys,” returned the queer little man. “Most generally that would be regarded as a case of three into one, but in this instance it was one into three; and, worse than all, while it pretended to be division, and was as hard as division, as far as I was concerned it was subtraction too, and I was always the leftest part of the remainder.”

“But I don’t see why you had to divide your apples every time you got any,” said Jimmieboy.

“That’s easy enough to explain,” said the dwarf. “If I didn’t divide, and did eat the whole apple, I’d have a fearful pain in my heart; whereas if I gave my little brothers each a third, it would often happen that they would get the pain and not I. After one or two experiments I fixed it so that I never got the pain part any more—for you know every apple has an ache in it—and they did, so, you see, I kept myself well as could be, and at the same time built up quite a reputation for generosity.”

“How did you fix it so as to give them the pain part always?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Why, I located the part of the apple that held the pain. I did not divide one apple I got, but ate the whole thing myself, part by part. I studied each part carefully, and discovered that apples are divided by Nature into three parts, anyhow. Pleasure was one part, pain was another part, and the third part was just nothing—neither pleasure nor pain. The core is where the ache is, the crisp is where the pleasure is, and the skin represents the part which isn’t anything. When I found that out I said, ‘Here! What is a good enough plan for Nature is a good enough plan for me. I’ll divide my apples on Nature’s plan.’ Which I did. To one brother I gave the core; to the other the skin; the rest I ate myself.”

“It was very mean of you to make your brothers suffer the pain,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, they had their days off. One time one brother’d have the core; another time the other brother’d have it. They took turns,” said the dwarf.

“It was mean, anyhow!” cried Jimmieboy, who was so fond of his own little brother that he would gladly have borne all his pains for him if it could have been arranged.

“Well, meanness is my business,” said the dwarf.

“Your business?” echoed Jimmieboy, opening his eyes wide with astonishment, meanness seemed such a strange business.

“Certainly,” returned the dwarf. “Don’t you know what I am? I am an unfairy.”

“What’s that?” asked Jimmieboy.

“You know what a fairy is, don’t you?” said the dwarf.

“Yes. It’s a dear lovely creature with wings, that goes about doing good.”

“That’s right. An unfairy is just the opposite,” explained the dwarf. “I go about doing unfair things. I am the fairy that makes things go wrong. When your hat blows off in the street the chances are that I have paid the bellows man, who works up all these big winds we have, to do it. If I see people having a good time on a picnic, I fly up to the sky and push a rain cloud over where they are and drench them, having first of course either hidden or punched great holes in their umbrellas. Oh, I can tell you, I am the meanest creature that ever was. Why, do you know what I did once in a country school?”

“No, I don’t,” said Jimmieboy, in tones of disgust. “I don’t know anything about mean things.”

“Well, you ought to know about this,” returned the dwarf, “because it was just the meanest thing anybody ever did. There was a boy who’d studied awfully hard in hopes that he would lead his class when the holidays came, and there was another boy in the school who was equal to him in everything but arithmetic, and who would have been beaten on that one point, so that the other boy would have stood where he wanted to, only I helped the second boy by rubbing out all the correct answers of the first boy and putting others on the slate instead, so that the first boy lost first place and had to take second. Wasn’t that mean?”

“It was horrid,” said Jimmieboy, “and it’s a good thing you didn’t come down here when I asked you to, for if you had, I think I should now be slapping you just as hard as I could.”

“Another time,” said the unfairy, ignoring Jimmieboy’s remark, “I turned myself into a horsefly and bothered a lame horse; then I changed into a bulldog and barked all night under the window of a man who wanted to go to sleep, but my regular trick is going around to hat stores and taking the brushes and brushing all the beaver hats the wrong way. Sometimes when people get lost here in the woods and want to go to Tiddledywink-land, I give them the wrong directions, so that they bring up on the other side of the country, where they don’t want to be; and once last winter I put rust on the runners of a little boy’s sled so that he couldn’t use it, and then when he’d spent three days getting them polished up, I pushed a warm rain cloud over the hill where the snow was and melted it all away. I hide toys I know children will be sure to want; I tear the most exciting pages out of books; I spill salt in the sugar-bowls and plant weeds in the gardens; I upset the ink on love-letters; when I find a man with only one collar I fray it at the edges; I roll collar buttons under bureaus; I—”

“Don’t you dare tell me another thing!” cried Jimmieboy, angrily. “I don’t like you, and I won’t listen to you any more.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” replied the unfairy. “I am just mean enough to make you, and I’ll tell you why. I am very tired of my business, and I think if I tell you all the horrid things I do, maybe you’ll tell me how I can keep from doing them. I have known you for a long time, only you didn’t know it.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, I have, just the same,” returned the dwarf. “And I can prove it. Do you remember, one day you went out walking, how you walked two miles and only met one mud puddle, and fell into that?”

“Yes, I do,” said Jimmieboy, sadly. “I spoiled my new suit when I fell, and I never knew how I came to do it.”

“I made you do that!” said the unfairy, triumphantly. “I grabbed hold of your foot, and upset you right into it. I waited two hours to do it, too.”

“You did, eh?” said Jimmieboy. “Well, I wish I had an axe. I’d chop that tree down, and catch you and make you sorry for it.”

“I am sorry for it,” said the dwarf. “Real sorry. I’ve never ceased to regret it.”

“Oh, well, I forgive you,” said Jimmieboy, “if you are really sorry.”

“Yes, I am,” said the dwarf; “I’m awfully sorry, because I didn’t do it right. You only ruined your suit and not that beautiful red necktie you had on. Next time I’ll be more careful and spoil everything. But let me give you more proof that I’ve known you. Who do you suppose it was bent your railway tracks at Christmas so they wouldn’t work?”

“You!” ejaculated Jimmieboy.

“Yes, sirree!” roared the dwarf. “I did, and, what is more, it was I who chewed up your best shoes and bit your plush dog’s head off; it was I who ate up your luncheon one day last March; it was I who pawed up all the geraniums in your flowerbed; and it was I who nipped your friend the postman in the leg on St. Valentine’s day so that he lost your valentine.”

“I’ve caught you there,” said Jimmieboy. “It wasn’t you that did those things at all. It was a horrid little brown dog that used to play around our house did all that.”

“You think you are smart,” laughed the dwarf. “But you aren’t. I was the little brown dog.”

“I don’t see how you can have any friends if that is the way you behave,” said Jimmieboy, after a minute or two of silence. “You don’t deserve any.”

“No,” said the dwarf, his voice trembling a little—for as Jimmieboy peered up into the tree at him he could see that he was crying just a bit—“I haven’t any, and I never had. I never had anybody to set me a good example. My father and my mother were unfairies before me, and I just grew to be one like them. I didn’t want to be one, but I had to be; and really it wasn’t until I saw you pat a hand-organ monkey on the head, instead of giving him a piece of cake with red pepper on it, as I would have done, that I ever even dreamed that there were kind people in the world. After I’d watched you for a while and had seen how happy you were, and how many friends you had, I began to see how it was that I was so miserable. I was miserable because I was mean, but nobody has ever told me how not to be mean, and I’m just real upset over it.”

“Poor fellow!” said Jimmieboy, sympathetically. “I am really very, very sorry for you.”

“So am I,” sobbed the dwarf. “I wish you could help me.”

“Perhaps I can,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, wait a minute,” said the dwarf, drying his eyes and peering intently down the road. “Wait a minute. There is a sheep down the road there tangled up in the brambles. Wait until I change myself into a big black dog and scare her half to death.”

“But that will be mean,” returned Jimmieboy; “and if you want to change, and be good, and kind, why don’t you begin now and help the sheep out?”

“H’m!” said the dwarf. “Now that is an idea, isn’t it! Do you know, I’d never have thought of that if you hadn’t suggested it to me. I think I will. I’ll change myself into a good-hearted shepherd’s boy, and free that poor animal at once!”

The dwarf was as good as his word, and in a moment he came back, smiling as happily as though he had made a great fortune.

“Why, it’s lovely to do a thing like that. Beautiful!” he said. “Do you know, Jimmieboy, I’ve half a mind to turn mean again for just a minute, and go back and frighten that sheep back into the bushes just for the bliss of helping her out once more.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Jimmieboy, with a shake of his head. “I’d just change myself into a good fairy if I were you, and go about doing kind things. When you see people having a picnic, push the rain cloud away from them instead of over them. Do just the opposite from what you’ve been doing all along, and pretty soon you’ll have heaps and heaps of friends.”

“You are a wonderful boy,” said the dwarf. “Why, you’ve hit without thinking a minute the plan I’ve been searching for for years and years and years, and I’ll do just what you say. Watch!”

The dwarf pronounced one or two queer words the like of which Jimmieboy had never heard before, and, presto change! quick as a wink, the unfairy had disappeared, and there stood at the small general’s side the handsomest, sweetest little sprite he had ever even dreamed or read about. The sprite threw his arms about Jimmieboy’s neck and kissed him affectionately, wiped a tear of joy from his eye, and then said:

“I am so glad I met you. You have taught me how to be happy, and I am sure I have lost eighteen hundred and seven tons in weight, I feel so light and gay; and—joy! oh, joy! I no longer see double! My eyes must be straight.”

“They are,” said Jimmieboy. “Straight as—straight as—well, as straight as your hair is curly.”

And that was as good an illustration as he could have found, for the sprite’s hair was just as curly as it could be.

•   8   •

ARRANGEMENTS FOR A DUEL

“Where are you going, Jimmieboy?” asked the sprite, after they had walked along in silence for a few minutes.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Jimmieboy, with a short laugh. “I started out to provision the forces before pursuing the Parawelopipedon, but I seem to have fallen out with everybody who could show me where to go, and I am all at sea.”

“Well, you haven’t fallen out with me,” said the sprite. “In fact, you’ve fallen in with me, so that you are on dry land again. I’ll show you where to go, if you want me to.”

“Then you know where I can find the candied cherries and other things that soldiers eat?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No, I don’t know where you can find anything of the sort,” returned the sprite. “But I do know that all things come to him who waits, so I’d advise you to wait until the candied cherries and so forth come to you.”

“But what’ll I do while I am waiting?” asked Jimmieboy, who had no wish to be idle in this new and strange country.

“Follow me, of course,” said the sprite, “and I’ll show you the most wonderful things you ever saw. I’ll take you up to see old Fortyforefoot, the biggest giant in all the world; after that we’ll stop in at Alltart’s bakery and have lunch. It’s a great bakery, Alltart’s is. You just wish for any kind of cake in the world, and you have it in your mouth.”

“Let’s go there first, I’m afraid of giants,” said Jimmieboy. “They eat little boys like me.”

“Well, I don’t blame them for that,” said the sprite. “A little boy as sweet as you are is almost too good not to eat; but I’ll take care of you. Fortyforefoot, I haven’t a doubt, would like to eat both of us, but I have a way of getting the best of fellows of that sort, so if you’ll come along you needn’t have the slightest fear for your safety.”

“All right,” said Jimmieboy, after thinking it all over. “Go ahead. I’ll follow you.”

At this moment the galloping step of a horse was heard approaching, and in a minute Major Blueface rode up.

“Why, how do you do, general?” he cried, his face beaming with pleasure as he reined in his steed and dismounted. “I haven’t seen you in—my!—why, not in years, sir. How have you been?”

“Quite well,” said Jimmieboy, with a smile, for the major amused him very much. “It doesn’t seem more than five minutes since I saw you last,” he added, with a sly wink at the sprite.

“Oh, it must be longer than that,” said the major, gravely. “It must be at least ten, but they have seemed years to me—a seeming, sir, that is well summed up in that lovely poem a friend of mine wrote some time ago:

“‘When I have quarreled with a dear

Old friend, a minute seems a year;

And you’ll remember without doubt

That when we parted we fell out.’”

“Very pretty,” said the sprite. “Very pretty, indeed. Reminds me of the poems of Major Blueface. You’ve heard of him, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said the major, frowning at the sprite, whom he had never met before. “I have heard of Major Blueface, and not only have I heard of him, but I am also one of his warmest friends and admirers.”

“Really?” said the sprite, not noticing apparently that Jimmieboy was nearly exploding with mirth. “How charming! What sort of a person is the major, sir?”

“Superb!” returned the major, his chest swelling with pride. “Brave as a lobster, witty as a porcupine, and handsome as a full-blown rose. In short, he is a wonder. Many a time have I been with him on the field of battle, where a man most truly shows what he is, and there it was, sir, that I learned to love and admire Major Blueface. Why, once I saw that man hit square in the back by the full charge of a brass cannon loaded to the muzzle with dried pease. The force of the blow was tremendous—forcible enough, sir, in fact, to knock the major off his feet, but he never quailed. He rose with dignity, and walked back to where the enemy was standing, and dared him to do it again, and when the enemy did it again, the major did not forget, as some soldiers would have done under the circumstances, that he was a gentleman, but he rose up a second time and thanked the enemy for his courtesy, which so won the enemy’s heart that he surrendered at once.”

“What a hero!” said the sprite.

“Hero is no name for it, sir. He is a whole history full of heroes. On another occasion which I recall,” cried the major, with enthusiasm, “on another occasion he was pursued by a lion around a circular path—he is a magnificent runner, the major is—and he ran so much faster than the lion that he soon caught up with his pursuer from the rear, and with one blow of his sword severed the raging beast’s tail from his body. Then he sat down and waited until the lion got around to him again, his appetite increased so by the exercise he had taken that he would have eaten anything, and then what do you suppose that brave soldier did?”

“What?” asked Jimmieboy, who had stopped laughing to listen.

“He gave the hungry creature his own tail to eat, and then went home,” returned the major.

“Is that a true story?” asked the sprite.

“Do you think I would tell an untrue story?” asked the major, angrily.

“Not at all,” said the sprite; “but if the major told it to you, it may have grown just a little bit every time you told it.”

“No, sir. That could not be, for I am Major Blueface himself,” interrupted the major.

“Then you are a brave man,” said the sprite, “and I am proud to meet you.”

“Thank you,” said the major, his frown disappearing and his pleasant smile returning. “I have heard that remark before; but it is always pleasant to hear. But what are you doing now, general?” he added, turning and addressing Jimmieboy.

“I am still searching for the provisions, major,” returned Jimmieboy. “The soldiers were so tired I hadn’t the heart to command them to get them for me, as you said, so I am as badly off as ever.”

“I think you need a rest,” said the major, gravely; “and while it is extremely important that the forces should be provided with all the canned goods necessary to prolong their lives, the health of the commanding officer is also a most precious consideration. As commander-in-chief why don’t you grant yourself a ten years’ vacation on full pay, and at the end of that time return to the laborious work you have undertaken, refreshed?”

“But what becomes of the war?” asked Jimmieboy. “If I go off, there won’t be any war.”

“No, but what of it?” replied the major. “That’ll spite the enemy just as much as it will our side; and maybe he’ll get so tired waiting for us to begin that he’ll lie down and die or else give himself up.”

“Well, I don’t know what to do,” said Jimmieboy, very much perplexed. “What would you do?” he continued, addressing the sprite.

“I’d hire someone else to take my place if I were you, and let him do the fighting and provisioning until you are all ready,” said the sprite.

“Yes, but whom can I hire?” asked the boy.

“The Giant Fortyforefoot,” returned the sprite. “He’d be just the man. He’s a great warrior in the first place and a great magician in the second. He can do the most wonderful tricks you ever saw in all your life. For instance,

“He’ll take two ordinary balls,

He’ll toss ’em to the sky,

And each when to the earth it falls

Will be a satin tie.

He’ll take a tricycle in hand,

He’ll give the thing a heave,

He’ll mutter some queer sentence, and

’Twill go right up his sleeve.

He’ll ask you what your name may be,

And if you answer ‘Jim!’

He’ll turn a handspring—one, two, three!

Your name will then be Tim.

He’ll take a fifty-dollar bill,

He’ll tie it to a chain,

He’ll cry out ‘Presto!’ and you will

Not see your bill again.”

“I’d like to see him,” said Jimmieboy. “But I can’t say I want to be eaten up, you know, and I’d like to have you tell me before we go how you are going to prevent his eating me.”

“Very proper,” said Major Blueface. “You suffer under the great disadvantage of being a very toothsome, tender morsel, and in all probability Fortyforefoot would order you stewed in cream or made over into a tart. My!” added the major, smacking his lips so suggestively that Jimmieboy drew away from him, slightly alarmed. “Why, it makes my mouth water to think of a pudding made of you, with a touch of cinnamon and a dash of maple syrup, and a shake of sawdust and a hard sauce. Tlah!”

This last word of the major’s was a sort of ecstatic cluck such as boys often make after having tasted something they are particularly fond of.

“What’s the use of scaring the boy, Blueface?” said the sprite, angrily, as he noted Jimmieboy’s alarm. “I won’t have any more of that. You can be as brave and terrible as you please in the presence of your enemies, but in the presence of my friends you’ve got to behave yourself.”

The major laughed heartily.

“Jimmieboy afraid of me?” he said. “Nonsense! Why, he could rout me with a frown. His little finger could, unaided, put me to flight if it felt so disposed. I was complimenting him—not trying to frighten him.

“When I went into ecstasies

O’er pudding made of him,

’Twas just because I wished to please

The honorable Jim;

And now, in spite of your rebuff,

The statement I repeat:

I think he’s really good enough

For anyone to eat.”

“Well, that’s different,” said the sprite, accepting the major’s statement. “I quite agree with you there; but when you go clucking around here like a hen who has just tasted the sweetest grain of corn she ever had, or like a boy after eating a plate of ice-cream, you’re just a bit terrifying—particularly to the appetizing morsel that has given rise to those clucks. It’s enough to make the stoutest heart quail.”

“Nonsense!” retorted the major, with a wink at Jimmieboy. “Neither my manner nor the manner of any other being could make a stout hart quail, because stout harts are deer and quails are birds!”

This more or less feeble joke served to put the three travelers in good humor again. Jimmieboy smiled over it; the sprite snickered, and the major threw himself down on the grass in a perfect paroxysm of laughter. When he had finished he got up again and said:

“Well, what are we going to do about it? I propose we attack Fortyforefoot unawares and tie his hands behind his back. Then Jimmieboy will be safe.”

“You are a wonderfully wise person,” retorted the sprite. “How on earth is Fortyforefoot to show his tricks if we tie his hands?”

“By means of his tricks,” returned the major. “If he is any kind of a magician he’ll get his hands free in less than a minute.”

“Then why tie them at all?” asked the sprite.

“I’m not good at conundrums,” said the major. “Why?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” returned the sprite, impatiently.

“Then why waste time asking riddles to which you don’t know the answer?” roared the major. “You’ll have me mad in a minute, and when I’m mad, woe be unto him which I’m angry at.”

“Don’t quarrel,” said Jimmieboy, stepping between his two friends, with whom it seemed to be impossible to keep peace for any length of time. “If you quarrel I shall leave you both and go back to my company.”

“Very well,” returned the major. “I accept the sprite’s apology. But he mustn’t do it again. Now as you have chosen to reject my plan of attacking Fortyforefoot and tying his hands, suppose you suggest something better, Mr. Sprite.”

“I think the safe thing would be for Jimmieboy to wear this invisible coat of mine when in the giant’s presence. If Fortyforefoot can’t see him he is safe,” said the sprite.

“I don’t see any invisible coat anywhere,” said the major. “Where is it?”

“Nobody can see it, of course,” said the sprite, scornfully. “Do you know what invisible means?”

“Yes, I do,” retorted the major. “I only pretended I didn’t so that I could make you ask the question, which enables me to say that something invisible is something you can’t see, like your jokes.”

“I can make a better joke than you can with my hands tied behind my back,” snapped the sprite.

“I can’t make jokes with your hands tied behind your back, but I can make one with my own hands tied behind my back that Jimmieboy here can see with his eyes shut,” said the major, scornfully.

“What is it? I like jokes,” said Jimmieboy.

“Why—er—let me see; why—er—when is a sunbeam sharp?” asked the major, who did not expect to be taken up so quickly.

“I don’t know; when?” asked Jimmieboy.

“When it’s a ray, sir. See? Ray, sir—razor. Ha! ha! Pretty good, eh?” laughed the major.

“Bad as can be,” said the sprite, his nose turned up until it interfered with his eyesight. “Now hear mine, Jimmieboy. When is a joke not a joke?”

“Haven’t the slightest idea,” observed Jimmieboy, after scratching his head and trying to think for a minute or two.

“When it’s one of the major’s,” roared the sprite, whereat the woods rang with his laughter.

The major first turned pale and then grew red in the face.

“That settles it,” he said, throwing off his coat. “That is a deadly insult, and there is now no possible way to avoid a duel.”

“I am ready for you at any time,” said the sprite, calmly. “Only as the challenged party I have the choice of weapons, and inasmuch as this is a hot day, I choose the jawbone.”

“Not a talking match, I hope?” said the major, with a gesture of impatience.

“Not at all,” replied the sprite. “A story-telling contest. We will withdraw to that moss-covered rock underneath the trees in there, gather enough huckleberries and birch bark for our luncheon, and catch a mess of trout from the brook to go with them, and then we can fight our duel all the rest of the afternoon.”

“But how’s that going to satisfy my wounded honor?” asked the major.

“I’ll tell one story,” said the sprite, “and you’ll tell another, and when we are through, the one that Jimmieboy says has told the best story will be the victor. That is better than trying to hurt each other, I think.”

“I think so too,” put in Jimmieboy. “I’m ready for it.”

“Well, it isn’t a bad scheme,” agreed the major. “Particularly the luncheon part of it; so you may count on me. I’ve got a story that will lift your hair right off your head.”

PREPARING LUNCH

So Jimmieboy and his two strange friends retired into the wood, gathered the huckleberries and birch bark, caught, cooked, and ate the trout, and then sat down together on the moss-covered rock to fight the duel. The two fighters drew lots to find out which should tell the first story, and as the sprite was the winner, he began.

And the story he told was as follows.

•   9   •

THE SPRITE’S STORY

“When I was not more than a thousand years old—” said the sprite.

“Excuse me,” interrupted the major. “But what was the figure?”

“One thousand,” returned the sprite. “That was nine thousand years ago—before this world was made. I celebrated my ten-thousand-and-sixteenth birthday last Friday—but that has nothing to do with my story. When I was not more than a thousand years of age, my parents, who occupied a small star about forty million miles from here, finding that my father could earn a better living if he were located nearer the moon, moved away from my birthplace and rented a good-sized, four-pronged star in the suburbs of the great orb of night. In the old star we were too far away from the markets for my father to sell the products of his farm for anything like what they cost him; freight charges were very heavy, and often the stagecoach that ran between Twinkleville and the moon would not stop at Twinkleville at all, and then all the stuff that we had raised that week would get stale, lose its fizz, and have to be thrown away.”

“Let me beg your pardon again,” put in the major. “But what did you raise on your farm? I never heard of farm products having fizz to lose.”

“We raised soda-water chiefly,” returned the sprite, amiably. “Soda-water and suspender buttons. The soda-water was cultivated and the suspender buttons seemed to grow wild. We never knew exactly how; though from what I have learned since about them, I think I begin to understand the science of it; and I wish now that I could find a way to return to Twinkleville, because I am certain it must be a perfect treasure-house of suspender buttons by this time. Even in my day they used to lie about by the million—metallic buttons, every one of them. They must be worth today at least a dollar a thousand.”

“What is your idea about the way they happened to come there, based on what you have learned since?” asked the major.

“Well, it is a very simple idea,” returned the sprite. “You know when a suspender button comes off it always disappears. Of course it must go somewhere, but the question is, where? No one has ever yet been known to recover the suspender button he has once really lost; and my notion of it is simply that the minute a metal suspender button comes off the clothes of anybody in all the whole universe, it immediately flies up through the air and space to Twinkleville, which is nothing more than a huge magnet, and lies there until somebody picks it up and tries to sell it. I remember as a boy sweeping our back yard clear of them one evening, and waking the next morning to find the whole place covered with them again; but we never could make money on them, because the moon was our sole market, and only the best people of the moon ever used suspenders, and as these were unfortunately relatives of ours, we had to give them all the buttons they wanted for nothing, so that the button crops became rather an expense to us than otherwise. But with soda-water it was different. Everybody, it doesn’t make any difference where he lives, likes soda-water, and it was an especially popular thing in the moon, where the plain water is always so full of fish that nobody can drink it. But as I said before, often the stagecoach wouldn’t or couldn’t stop, and we found ourselves getting poorer every day. Finally my father made up his mind to lease, and move into this new star, sink a half-dozen soda-water wells there, and by means of a patent he owned, which enabled him to give each well a separate and distinct flavor, drive everybody else out of the business.”

“You don’t happen to remember how that patent your father owned worked, do you?” asked the major, noticing that Jimmieboy seemed particularly interested when the sprite mentioned this. “If you do, I’d like to buy the plan of it from you and give it to Jimmieboy for a Christmas present, so that he can have soda-water wells in his own back yard at home.”

“No, I can’t remember anything about it,” said the sprite. “Nine thousand years is a long time to remember things of that kind, though I don’t think the scheme was a very hard one to work. For vanilla cream, it only required a well with plain soda-water in it with a quart of vanilla beans and three pints of cream poured into it four times a week; same way with other flavors—a quart of strawberries for strawberry, sarsaparilla for sarsaparilla, and so forth; but the secret was in the pouring; there was something in the way papa did the pouring; I never knew just what it was. He always insisted on doing the pouring himself. But if you don’t stop asking questions I’ll never finish my story.”

“You shouldn’t make it so interesting if you don’t want us to have our curiosity excited by it,” said Jimmieboy. “I’d have asked those questions if the major hadn’t. But go ahead. What happened?”

“Well, we moved, and in a very short time were comfortably settled in the suburban star I have mentioned,” continued the sprite. “As we expected, my father grew very, very rich. He was referred to in the moon newspapers as ‘The Soda-water King,’ and once an article about him said that he owned the finest suspender-button mine in the universe, which was more or less true, but which, as it turned out, was unfortunate in its results. Some moon people hearing of his ownership of the Twinkleville Button Mines came to him and tried to persuade him that they ought to be worked. Father said he didn’t see any use of it, because the common people didn’t wear suspenders, and so didn’t need the buttons.

“‘True,’ said they, ‘but we can compel them to need them, by making a law requiring that everybody over sixteen shall wear suspenders.’

“‘That’s a good idea,’ said my father, and he tried to have it made a law that everyone should wear suspenders, high or low, and as a result he got everybody mad at him. The best people were angry, because up to that time the wearing of suspenders had been regarded as a sign of noble birth, and if everybody, including the common people, were to have them they would cease to be so. The common people themselves were angry, because to have to buy suspenders would simply be an addition to the cost of living, and they hadn’t any money to spare. In consequence we were cut off by the best people of the moon. Nobody ever came to see us except the very commonest kind of common people, and they came at night, and then only to drop pailfuls of cod-liver oil, squills, ipecac, and other unpopular things into our soda-water wells, so that in a very short time my poor father’s soda-water business was utterly ruined. People don’t like to order ten quarts of vanilla cream soda-water for Sunday dinner, and find it flavored with cod-liver oil, you know.”

“Yes, I do know,” said Jimmieboy, screwing his face up in an endeavor to give the major and the sprite some idea of how little he liked the taste of cod-liver oil. “I think cod-liver oil is worse than measles or mumps, because you can’t have measles or mumps more than once, and there isn’t any end to the times you can have cod-liver oil.”

“I’m with you there,” said the major, emphasizing his remark by slapping Jimmieboy on the back. “In fact, sir, on page 29 of my book called ‘Musings on Medicines’ you will find—if it is ever published—these lines:

“The oils of cod!

The oils of cod!

They make me feel tremendous odd,

Nor hesitate

I here to state

I wildly hate the oils of cod.”

“Bravo!” cried the sprite. “When I start my autograph album I want you to write those lines on the first page.”

“With pleasure,” returned the major. “When shall you start the album?”

“Never, I hope,” replied the sprite, with a chuckle. “And now suppose you don’t interrupt my story again.”

Clouds began to gather on the major’s face again. The sprite’s rebuke had evidently made him very angry.

“Sir,” said he, as soon as his feelings permitted him to speak. “If you make any more such remarks as that, another duel may be necessary after this one is fought—which I should very much regret, for duels of this sort consume a great deal of time, and unless I am much mistaken it will shortly rain cats and dogs.”

“It looks that way,” said the sprite, “and it is for that very reason that I do not wish to be interrupted again. Of course ruin stared father in the face.”

“How rude of ruin!” whispered the major to Jimmieboy, who immediately silenced him.

“Trade having fallen away,” continued the sprite, “we had to draw upon our savings for our bread and butter, and finally, when the last penny was spent, we made up our minds to leave the moon district entirely and try life on the dog-star, where, we were informed, people only had one eye apiece, and every man had so much to do that it took all of his one eye’s time looking after his own business so that there wasn’t any left for him to spend on other people’s business. It seemed to my father that in a place like this there was a splendid opening for him.”

“In what line?” queried the major.

“Renting out his extra eye to blind men,” roared the sprite.

Jimmieboy fell off the rock with laughter, and the major, angry at being so neatly caught, rose up and walked away but immediately returned.

“If this wasn’t a duel I wouldn’t stay here another minute,” he said. “But you can’t put me to flight that way. Go on and finish.”

“The question now came up as to how we should get to the dog-star,” resumed the sprite. “Our money was all gone. Nobody would lend us any. Nobody would help us at all.”

“I should think they’d have been so glad you were leaving they’d have paid your fare,” said the major, but the sprite paid no attention.

“There was no regular stage line between the moon and the dog-star,” said he, “and we had only two chances of really getting there, and they were both so slim you could count their ribs. One was by getting aboard the first comet that was going that way, and the other was by jumping. The trouble with the first chance was that as far as anyone knew there wasn’t a comet expected to go in the direction of the dog-star for eight million years—which was rather a long time for a starving family to wait, and besides we had read of so many accidents in the moon papers about people being injured while trying to board comets in motion that we were a little timid about it. My father and I could have managed very well; but mother might not have—ladies can’t even get on horse cars in motion without getting hurt, you know.

“Then the other scheme was equally dangerous. It’s a pretty big jump from the moon to the dog-star, and if you don’t aim yourself right you are apt to miss it, and either fall into space or land somewhere else where you don’t want to go. For instance, a cousin of mine who lived on Mars wanted to visit us when we lived at Twinkleville, but he was too mean to pay his fare, thinking he could jump it cheaper. Well, he jumped and where do you suppose he landed?”

“In the sun!” cried the major, in horror.

“No. Nowhere!” returned the sprite. “He’s jumping yet. He didn’t come anywhere near Twinkleville, although he supposed that he was aimed in the right direction.”

“Will you tell me how you know he’s falling yet?” asked the major, who didn’t seem to believe this part of the sprite’s story.

“Certainly. I saw him yesterday through a telescope,” replied the sprite.

The major began to whistle.

“And he looked very tired, too,” said the sprite. “Though as a matter of fact he doesn’t have to exert himself any. All he has to do is fall, and, once you get started, falling is the easiest thing in the world. But of course with the remembrance of my cousin’s mistake in our minds, we didn’t care so much about making the jump, and we kept putting it off and putting it off until finally some wretched people had a law made abolishing us from the moon entirely, which meant that we had to leave inside of twenty-four hours; so we packed up our trunks with the few possessions we had left and threw them off toward the dog-star; then mother and father took hold of hands and jumped and I was to come along after them with some of the baggage that we hadn’t got ready in time.

“According to my father’s instructions I watched him carefully as he sped through space to see whether he had started right, and to my great joy I observed that he had—that very shortly both he and mother would arrive safely on the dog-star—but alas! My joy was soon turned to grief, for a terrible thing happened. Our great heavy family trunk that had been dispatched first, and with truest aim, landed on the head of the King of the dog-star, stove his crown in and nearly killed him. Hardly had the king risen up from the ground when he was again knocked down by my poor father, who, utterly powerless to slow up or switch himself to one side, landed precisely as the trunk had landed on the monarch’s head, doing quite as much more damage as the trunk had done in the beginning. When added to these mishaps a shower of hat-boxes and hand-bags, marked with our family name, fell upon the Lord Chief Justice, the Prime Minister and the Heir Apparent, my parents were arrested and thrown into prison and I decided that the dog-star was no place for me. Wild with grief, and without looking to see where I was going, nor in fact caring much, I gave a running leap out into space and finally through some good fortune landed here on this earth which I have found quite good enough for me ever since.”

Here the sprite paused and looked at Jimmieboy as much as to say, “How is that for a tale of adventure?”

“Is that all?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Mercy!” cried the major, “Isn’t it enough?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “Not quite. I don’t see how he could have jumped so many years before the world was made and yet land on the world.”

“I was five thousand years on the jump,” explained the sprite.

“It was leap-year when you started, wasn’t it?” asked the major, with a sarcastic smile.

“And your parents? What finally became of them?” asked Jimmieboy, signaling the major to be quiet.

“I hadn’t the heart to inquire. I am afraid they got into serious trouble. It’s a very serious thing to knock a king down with a trunk and land on his head yourself the minute he gets up again,” sighed the sprite.

“But didn’t you tell me your parents were unfairies?” put in Jimmieboy, eying the sprite distrustfully.

“Yes; but they were only my adopted parents,” explained the sprite. “They were a very rich old couple with lots of money and no children, so I adopted them not knowing that they were unfairies. When they died they left me all their bad habits, and their money went to found a storeroom for worn out lawnmowers. That was a sample of their meanness.”

“Well that’s a pretty good story,” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes,” said the sprite, with a pleased smile. “And the best part of it is it’s all true.”

“Tut!” ejaculated the major, scornfully. “Wait until you hear mine.”

•   10   •

THE MAJOR’S TALE

“A great many years ago when I was a souvenir spoon,” said the major, “I belonged to a very handsome and very powerful potentate.”

“I didn’t quite understand what it was you said you were,” said the sprite, bending forward as if to hear better.

“At the beginning of my story I was a souvenir spoon,” returned the major.

“Did you begin your career as a spoon?” asked the sprite.

“I did not, sir,” replied the major. “I began my career as a nugget in a lead mine where I was found by the king of whom I have just spoken, and on his return home with me he gave me to his wife who sent me out to a lead smith’s and had me made over into a souvenir spoon—and a mighty handsome spoon I was too. I had a poem engraved on me that said:

‘Aka majo te roo li sah,

Pe mink y rali mis tebah.’

Rather pretty thought, don’t you think so?” added the major as he completed the couplet.

“Very!” said the sprite, with a knowing shake of his head.

“Well, I don’t understand it at all,” said Jimmieboy.

“Ask this native of Twinkleville what it means,” observed the major with a snicker. “He says it’s a pretty thought, so of course he understands it—though I assure you I don’t, for it doesn’t mean anything. I made it up, this very minute.”

The sprite colored deeply. It was quite evident that he had fallen into the trap the major had set for him.

“I was only fooling,” he said, with a sickly attempt at a smile. “Go on with your story.”

“I think perhaps the happiest time of my life was during the hundreds of years that I existed in the royal museum as a spoon,” resumed the major. “I was brought into use only on state occasions. When the King of Mangapore gave a state banquet to other kings in the neighborhood I was the spoon that was used to ladle out the royal broth.”

Here the major paused to smack his lips, and then a small tear appeared in one corner of his eye and trickled slowly down the side of his nose.

“I always weep,” he said, as soon as he could speak, “when I think of that broth. Here is what it was made of:

‘Seven pies of sweetest mince,

Then a ripe and mellow quince,

Then a quart of tea.

Then a pint of cinnamon,

Next a roasted apple, done

Brown as brown can be.

Add of orange juice, a gill,

And a sugared daffodil,

Then a yellow yam.

Sixty-seven strawberries

Should be added then to these,

And a pot of jam.

Mix with maple syrup and

Let it in the icebox stand

Till it’s good and cold—

Throw a box of raisins in,

Stir it well—just make it spin—

Till it looks like gold.’

Oh, my!” cried the major. “What a dish it was, and I, I used to be dipped into a tureen full of it sixteen times at every royal feast, and before the war we had royal feasts on an average of three times a day.”

“Three royal banquets a day?” cried Jimmieboy, his mouth watering to think of it.

“Yes,” returned the major. “Three a day until the unhappy war broke out which destroyed all my happiness, and resulted in the downfall of sixty-four kings.”

“How on earth did such a war as that ever happen to be fought?” asked the sprite.

“I am sorry to say,” replied the major, sadly, “that I was the innocent cause of it all. It was on the king’s birthday that war was declared. He used to have magnificent birthday parties, quite like those that boys like Jimmieboy here have, only instead of having a cake with a candle in it for each year, King Fuzzywuz used to have one guest for each year, and one whole cake for each guest. On his twenty-first birthday he had twenty-one guests; on his thirtieth, thirty, and so on; and at every one of these parties I used to be passed around to be admired, I was so very handsome and valuable.”

“Absurd!” said the sprite, with a sneering laugh. “The idea of a lead spoon being valuable!”

“If you had ever been able to get into the society of kings,” the major answered, with a great deal of dignity, “you would know that on the table of a monarch lead is much more rare than silver and gold. It was this fact that made me so overpoweringly valuable, and it is not surprising that a great many of the kings who used to come to these birthday parties should become envious of Fuzzywuz and wish they owned a treasure like myself. One very old king died of envy because of me, and his heir-apparent inherited his father’s desire to possess me to such a degree that he too pined away and finally disappeared entirely. Just regularly faded out of sight. Didn’t die, you know, as you would, but vanished.

“So it went on for years, and finally on his sixty-fourth birthday King Fuzzywuz gave his usual party, and sixty-four of the choicest kings in the world were invited. They every one came, the feast was made ready, and just as the guests took their places around the table, the broth with me lying at the side of the tureen was brought in. The kings all took their crowns off in honor of my arrival, when suddenly pouf! a gust of wind came along and blew out every light in the hall. All was darkness, and in the midst of it I felt myself grabbed by the handle and shoved hastily into an entirely strange pocket.

“‘What, ho, without there!’ cried Fuzzywuz. ‘Turn off the wind and bring a light.’

“The slaves hastened to do as they were told, and in less time than it takes to tell it, light and order were restored. And then a terrible scene ensued. I could see it very plainly through a buttonhole in the cloak of the potentate who had seized me and hidden me in his pocket. Fuzzywuz immediately discovered that I was missing.

“‘What has become of our royal spoon?’ he roared to the headwaiter, who, though he was an African of the blackest hue, turned white as a sheet with fear.

“‘It was in the broth, oh, Nepotic Fuzzywuz, King of the Desert and most noble Potentate of the Sand Dunes, when I, thy miserable servant, brought it into the gorgeous banqueting hall and set it here before thee, who art ever my most Serene and Egotistic Master,’ returned the slave, trembling with fear and throwing himself flat upon the dining-hall floor.

“‘Caitiff!’ cried the king. ‘I believe thou hast played me false. Do spoons take wings unto themselves and fly away? Are they tadpoles that they develop legs and hop as frogs from our royal presence? Do spoons evapidate—’

“‘Evaporate, my dear,’ suggested the queen in a whisper.

“‘Thanks,’ returned the king. ‘Do spoons evaporate like water in the sun? Do they raise sails like sloops of war and thunder noiselessly out of sight? No, no. Thou hast stolen it and thou must bear the penalty of thy predilection—’

“‘Dereliction,’ whispered the queen, impatiently.

“‘He knows what I mean,’ roared the king, ‘or if he doesn’t he will when his head is cut off.’”

“Is that what all those big words meant?” asked Jimmieboy.

“As I remember the occurrence, it is,” returned the major. “What the king really meant was always uncertain; he always used such big words and rarely got them right. Reprehensibility and tremulousness were great favorites of his, though I don’t believe he ever knew what they meant. But, to continue my story, at this point the king rose and sharpening the carving knife was about to behead the slave’s head off when the potentate who had me in his pocket cried out:

“‘Hold, oh Fuzzywuz! The slave is right. I saw the spoon myself at the side of yon tureen when it was brought hither.’

“‘Then,’ returned the king, ‘it has been percolated—’

“‘Peculated,’ whispered the queen.

“‘That’s what I said,’ retorted Fuzzywuz, angrily. ‘The spoon has been speculated by some one of our royal brethren at this board. The point to be liquidated now is, who has done this deed. What, ho, without there! A guard about the palace gates—and lock the doors and bar the windows. We shall have a search. I am sorry to say, that every king in this room save only myself and my friend Prince Bigaroo, who at the risk of his kingly dignity deigned to come to the rescue of my slave, must repeal—I should say reveal—the contents of his pockets. Prince Bigaroo must be innocent or he would not have ejaculated as he hath.’

“You see,” said the major, in explanation, “Bigaroo having stolen me was smart enough to see how it would be if he spoke. A guilty person in nine cases out of ten would have kept silent and let the slave suffer. So Bigaroo escaped; but all the others were searched and of course I was not found. Fuzzywuz was wild with sorrow and anger, and declared that unless I was returned within ten minutes he would wage war upon, and utterly destroy, every king in the place. The kings all turned pale—even Bigaroo’s cheek grew white, but having me he was determined to keep me and so the war began.”

“Why didn’t you speak and save the innocent kings?” asked the sprite.

“How could I?” retorted the major. “Did you ever see a spoon with a tongue?”

The sprite made no answer. He evidently had never seen a spoon with a tongue.

“The war was a terrible one,” said the major, resuming his story. “One by one the kings were destroyed, and finally only Bigaroo remained, and Fuzzywuz not having found me in the treasures of the others, finally came to see that it was Bigaroo who had stolen me. So he turned his forces toward the wicked monarch, defeated his army, and set fire to his palace. In that fire I was destroyed as a souvenir spoon and became a lump of lead once more, lying in the ruins for nearly a thousand years, when I was sold along with a lot of iron and other things to a junk dealer. He in turn sold me to a ship-maker, who worked me over into a sounding lead for a steamer he had built. On my first trip out I was sent overboard to see how deep the ocean was. I fell in between two huge rocks down on the ocean’s bed and was caught, the rope connecting me with the ship snapped, and there I was, twenty thousand fathoms under the sea, lost, as I supposed, forever. The effect of the salt water upon me was very much like that of hair restorer on some people’s heads. I began to grow a head of green hair—seaweed some people call it—and to this fact, strangely enough, I owed my escape from the water. A sea-cow who used to graze about where I lay, thinking that I was only a tuft of grass gathered me in one afternoon and swallowed me without blinking, and some time after, the cow having been caught and killed by some giant fishermen, I was found by the wife of one of the men when the great cow was about to be cooked. These giants were very strange people who inhabited an island out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which was gradually sinking into the water with the weight of the people on it, and which has now entirely disappeared. There wasn’t one of the inhabitants that was less than one hundred feet tall, and in those days they used to act as light-houses for each other at night. They had but one eye apiece, and when that was open it used to flash just like a great electric light, and they’d take turns at standing up in the middle of the island all night long and turning round and round and round until you’d think they’d drop with dizziness. I stayed with these people, I should say, about forty years, when one morning two of the giants got disputing as to which of them could throw a stone the farthest. One of them said he could throw a pebble two thousand miles, and the other said he could throw one all the way round the world. At this the first one laughed and jeered, and to prove that he had told the truth the second grabbed up what he thought was a pebble, but which happened to be me and threw me from him with all his force.”

“Did you go all the way around?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Did I? Well, rather. I went around once and a half. And sad to say I killed the giant who threw me,” returned the major. “I went around the world so swiftly that when I got back to the island the poor fellow hadn’t had time to get out of my way, and as I came whizzing along I struck him in the back, went right through him, and leaving him dead on the island went on again and finally fell into a great gun manufactory in Massachusetts where I was smelted over into a bullet, and sent to the war. I did lots of work for George Washington. I think I must have killed off half a dozen regiments of his enemies, and between you and me, General Washington said I was his favorite bullet, and added that as long as he had me with him he wasn’t afraid of anybody.”

Here the major paused a minute to smile at the sprite who was beginning to look a little blue. It was rather plain, the sprite thought, that the major was getting the best of the duel.

“Go on,” said Jimmieboy. “What next? How long did you stay with George Washington?”

“Six months,” said the major. “I’d never have left him if he hadn’t ordered me to do work that I wasn’t made for. When a bullet goes to war he doesn’t want to waste himself on ducks. I wanted to go after hostile generals and majors and cornet players, and if Mr. Washington had used me for them I’d have hit home every time, but instead of that he took me off duck shooting one day and actually asked me to knock over a miserable wild bird he happened to want. I rebelled at this. He insisted, and I said, ‘very well, General, fire away.’ He fired, the duck laughed, and I simply flew off into the woods on the border of the bay and rested there for nearly a hundred years. The rest of my story is soon told. I lay where I had fallen until six years ago when I was picked up by a small boy who used me for a sinker to go fishing with, after which I found my way into the smelting pot once more, and on the Fifteenth of November, 1892, I became what I am, Major Blueface, the handsomest soldier, the bravest warrior, the most talented tin poet that ever breathed.”

A long silence followed the completion of the major’s story. Which of the two he liked the better Jimmieboy could not make up his mind, and he hoped his two companions would be considerate enough not to ask him to decide between them.

“I thought they had to be true stories,” said the sprite, gloomily. “I don’t think it’s fair to tell stories like yours—the idea of your being thrown one and a half times around the world!”

“It’s just as true as yours, anyhow,” retorted the major, “but if you want to begin all over again and tell another I’m ready for you.”

“No,” said the sprite. “We’ll leave it to Jimmieboy as it is.”

“Then I win,” said the major.

“I don’t know about that, major,” said Jimmieboy. “I think you are just about even.”

“Do you really think so?” asked the sprite, his face beaming with pleasure.

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “We’ll settle it this way: we’ll give five points to the one who told the best, five points to the one who told the longest, and five points to the one who told the shortest story. As the stories are equally good you both get five points for that. The major’s was the longest, I think, so he gets five more, but so does the sprite because his was the shortest. That makes you both ten, so you both win.”

“Hurrah!” cried the major. “Then I do win.”

“Yes,” said the sprite, squeezing Jimmieboy’s hand affectionately, “and so do I.”

Which after all, I think, was the best way to decide a duel of that sort.

•   11   •

PLANNING A VISIT

“Well, now that that is settled,” said the major with a sigh of relief, “I suppose we had better start off and see whether Fortyforefoot will attend to this business of getting the provisions for us.”

“Yes,” said the sprite. “The major is right there, Jimmieboy. You have delayed so long on the way that it is about time you did something, and the only way I know of for you to do it is by getting hold of Fortyforefoot. If you wanted an apple pie and there was nothing in sight but a cartwheel he would change it into an apple pie for you.”

“That’s all very well,” replied Jimmieboy, “but I’m not going to call on any giant who’d want to eat me. You might just as well understand that right off. I’ll try on your invisible coat and if that makes me invisible I’ll go. If it doesn’t we’ll have to try some other plan.”

“That is the prudent thing to do,” said the major, nodding his approval to the little general. “As my poem tries to teach, it is always wise to use your eyes—or look before you leap. The way it goes is this:

‘If you are asked to make a jump,

Be careful lest you prove a gump—

Awake or e’en in sleep—

Don’t hesitate the slightest bit

To show that you’ve at least the wit

To look before you leap.

Why, in a dream one night, I thought

A fellow told me that I ought

To jump to Labrador.

I did not look but blindly hopped,

And where do you suppose I stopped?

Bang! On my bedroom floor!

I do not say, had I been wise

Enough that time to use my eyes—

As I’ve already said—

To Labrador I would have got:

But this is certain, I would not

Have tumbled out of bed.’

“The moral of which is, be careful how you go into things, and if you are not certain that you are coming out all right don’t go into them,” added the major. “Why, when I was a mouse—”

“Oh, come, major—you couldn’t have been a mouse,” interrupted the sprite. “You’ve just told us all about what you’ve been in the past, and you couldn’t have been all that and a mouse too.”

“So I have,” said the major, with a smile. “I’d forgotten that, and you are right, too. I couldn’t have been a mouse. I should have put what I was going to say differently. If I had ever been a mouse—that’s the way it should be—if I had ever been a mouse and had been foolish enough to stick my head into a mousetrap after a piece of cheese without knowing that I should get it out again, I should not have been here today, in all likelihood. Therefore the general is right. Try on the invisible coat, Jimmieboy, and let’s see how it works before you risk calling on Fortyforefoot.”

“Here it is,” said the sprite, holding out his hands with apparently nothing in them.

Jimmieboy laughed a little, it seemed so odd to have a person say “here it is” and yet not be able to see the object referred to. He reached out his hand, however, to take the coat, relying upon the sprite’s statement that it was there, and was very much surprised to find that his hand did actually touch something that felt like a coat, and in fact was a coat, though entirely invisible.

“Shall I help you on with it?” asked the major.

“Perhaps you’d better,” said Jimmieboy. “It feels a little small for me.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” said the sprite. “You see it covers me all over from head to foot—that is the coat covers all but my head and the hood covers that—but you are very much taller than I am.”

Here Jimmieboy, having at last got into the coat and buttoned it about him, had the strange sensation of seeing all of himself disappear excepting his head and legs. These remaining uncovered were of course still in sight.

“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed the major, merrily, as Jimmieboy walked around. “That is the most ridiculous thing I ever saw. You’re nothing but a head and pair of legs.”

Jimmieboy smiled and placed the hood over his head and the major roared louder than ever.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” he cried. “Oh, my—oh, dear! That’s funnier still—now you’re nothing but a pair of legs. Hee-hee-hee! Take it off quick or I’ll die with laughter.”

Jimmieboy took off the hood.

“I’m afraid it won’t do, Spritey,” he said. “Fortyforefoot would see my legs and if he caught them I’d be lost.”

“That’s a fact,” said the sprite, thoughtfully. “The coat is almost two feet too short for you.”

“It’s more than two feet too short,” laughed the major. “It’s two whole legs too short.”

“This is no time for joking,” said the sprite. “We’ve too much to talk about to use our mouths for laughing.”

“All right,” said the major. “I won’t get off any more, or if I do they won’t be the kind to make you laugh. They will be sad jokes—like yours. But I say, boys,” he added, “I have a scheme. It is of course the scheme of a soldier and may be attended by danger, but if it is successful all the more credit to the one who succeeds. We three people can attack Fortyforefoot openly, capture him, and not let him go until he provides us with the provisions.”

“That sounds lovely,” sneered the sprite. “But I’d like to know some of the details of this scheme. It is easy enough to say attack him, capture him and not let him go, but the question is, how shall we do all this?”

“It ought to be easy,” returned the major. “There are only three things to be done. The first is to attack him. That certainly ought to be easy. A kitten can attack an elephant if it wants to. The second is to capture him, which, while it seems hard, is not really so if the attack is properly made. The third is not to let him go.”

“Clear as a fog,” put in the sprite. “But go on.”

“Now there are three of us—Jimmieboy, Spriteyboy and Yourstrulyboy,” continued the major, “so what could be more natural than that we should divide up these three operations among us? Nothing! Therefore I propose that Jimmieboy here shall attack Fortyforefoot; the sprite shall capture him and throw him into a dungeon cell and I will crown the work by not letting him go.”

“Magnificent!” said the sprite. “Jimmieboy and I take all the danger, I notice.”

“Yes,” returned the major. “I am utterly unselfish about it. I am willing to put myself in the background and let you have all the danger and most of the glory. I only come in at the very end—but I don’t mind that. I have had glory enough for ten lifetimes, so why should I grudge you this one little bit of it? My feelings in regard to glory will be found on the fortieth page of Leaden Lyrics or the Ballads of Ben Bullet—otherwise myself. The verses read as follows:

‘Though glory, it must be confessed,

Is satisfying stuff,

Upon my laurels let me rest

For I have had enough.

Ne’er was a glorier man than I,

Ne’er shall a glorier be,

Than, trembling reader, you’ll espy—

When haply you spy me.

So bring no more—for while ’tis good

To have, ’tis also plain

A bit of added glory would

Be apt to make me vain.’

And I don’t want to be vain,” concluded the major.

“Well, I don’t want any of your glory,” said the sprite, “and if I know Jimmieboy, I don’t think he does either. If you want to reverse your order of things and do the dangerous part of the work yourself, we will do all in our power to make your last hours comfortable, and I will see to it that the newspapers tell how bravely you died, but we can’t go into the scheme any other way.”

“You talk as if you were the general’s prime minister, or his nurse,” retorted the major, “whereas in reality I, being his chief of staff, am they if anybody are.”

Here the major blushed a little because he was not quite sure of his grammar. Neither of his companions seemed to notice the mixture, however, and so he continued:

“General, it is for you to say. Shall my plan go or shall she stay?”

“Well, I think myself, major, that it is a little too dangerous for me, and if any other plan could be made I’d like it better,” answered Jimmieboy, anxious to soothe the major’s feelings which were evidently getting hurt again. “Suppose I go back and order the soldiers to attack Fortyforefoot and bring him in chains to me?”

“Couldn’t be done,” said the sprite. “The minute the chains were clapped on him he would change them into doughnuts and eat them all up.”

“Yes,” put in the major, “and the chances are he would turn the soldiers into a lot of toy balloons on a string and then cut the string.”

“He couldn’t do that,” said the sprite, “because he can’t turn people or animals into anything. His power only applies to things.”

“Then what shall we do?” said Jimmieboy, in despair.

“Well, I think the best thing to do would be for me to change myself into a giant bigger than he is,” said the sprite. “Then I could put you and the major in my pockets and call upon Fortyforefoot and ask him, in a polite way, to turn some pebbles and sticks and other articles into the things we want, and, if he won’t do it except he is paid, we’ll pay him if we can.”

“What do you propose to pay him with?” asked the major. “I suppose you’ll hand him half a dozen checkerberries and tell him if he’ll turn them into ten one dollar bills he’ll have ten dollars. Fine way to do business that.”

“No,” said the sprite, mildly. “You can’t tempt Fortyforefoot with money. It is only by offering him something to eat that we can hope to get his assistance.”

“Ah? And you’ll request him to turn a handful of pine cones into a dozen turkeys on toast, I presume?” asked the major.

“I shall do nothing of the sort. I shall simply offer to let him have you for dinner—you will serve up well in croquettes—Blueface croquettes—eh, Jimmieboy?” laughed the sprite.

The poor major turned white with fear and rage. At first he felt inclined to slay the sprite on the spot, and then it suddenly flashed across his mind that before he could do it the sprite might really turn himself into a giant and do with him as he had said. So he contented himself with turning pale and giving a sickly smile.

“That would be a good joke on me,” he said. “But really, my dear Mr. Sprite, I don’t think I would enjoy it, and after all I have a sort of notion that I would disagree with Fortyforefoot—which would be extremely unfortunate. I know I should rest like lead on his digestion—and that would make him angry with you and I should be sacrificed for nothing.”

“Well, I wouldn’t consent to that anyhow,” said Jimmieboy. “I love the major too much to—”

“So do we all,” interrupted the sprite. “Why, even I love the major and I wouldn’t let anybody eat him for anything—no, sir!—not if I were offered a whole vanilla éclaire would I permit the major to be eaten. But my scheme is the only one possible. I will turn myself into a giant twice as big as Fortyforefoot; I will place you and the major in my pockets and then I will call upon him. He will be so afraid of me that he will do almost anything I ask him to, but to make him give us the very best things he can make I would rather deal gently with him, and instead of forcing him to make the peaches and cherries I’ll offer to trade you two fellows off for the things we need. He will be pleased enough at the chance to get anything so good to eat as you look, and he’ll prepare everything for us, and he will put you downstairs in the pantry. Then I will tell him stories, and some of the major’s jokes, to make him sleepy, and when finally he dozes off I will steal the pantry key and set you free. How does that strike you, general?”

“It’s a very good plan unless Fortyforefoot should find us so toothsome looking that he would want to eat us raw. We may be nothing more than fruit for him, you know, and truly I don’t want to be anybody’s apple,” said Jimmieboy.

“You are quite correct there, general,” said the major, with a chuckle. “In fact, I’m quite sure he’d think you and I were fruit because being two we are necessarily a pear.”

“It won’t happen,” said the sprite. “He isn’t likely to think you are fruit and even if he does I won’t let him eat you. I’ll keep him from doing it if I have to eat you myself.”

“Oh, of course, then, with a kind promise like that there is nothing left for us to do but accept your proposition,” said the major. “As Ben Bullet says:

‘When only one thing can be done—

If people only knew it—

The wisest course beneath the sun

Is just to go and do it.’”

“I’m willing to take my chances,” said Jimmieboy, “if after I see what kind of a giant you can turn yourself into I think you are terrible enough to frighten another giant.”

“Well, just watch me,” said the sprite, taking off his coat. “And mind, however terrifying I may become, don’t you get frightened, because I won’t hurt you.”

“Go ahead,” said the major, valiantly. “Wait until we get scared before talking like that to us.”

“One, two, three!” cried the sprite. “Presto! Change!

‘Bazam, bazam,

A sprite I am,

Bazoo, bazee,

A giant I’d be.’”

Then there came a terrific noise; the trees about the little group shook to the very last end of their roots, all grew dark as night, and as quickly grew light again. In the returning light Jimmieboy saw looming up before him a fearful creature, eighty feet high, clad in a magnificent suit embroidered with gold and silver, a fierce mustache upon his lip, and dangling at his side was a heavy sword.

It was the sprite now transformed into a giant—a terrible-looking fellow, though to Jimmieboy he was not terrible because the boy knew that the dreadful creature was only his little friend in disguise.

“How do I look?” came a bellowing voice from above the trees.

“First rate. Horribly frightful. I’m sure you’ll do, and I am ready,” said Jimmieboy, with a laugh. “What do you think, major?”

But there came no answer, and Jimmieboy, looking about him to see why the major made no reply, was just in time to see that worthy soldier’s coattails disappearing down the road.

The major was running away as fast as he could go.

•   12   •

IN FORTYFOREFOOT VALLEY

“You’ve frightened him pretty well, Spritey,” said Jimmieboy, with a laugh, as the major passed out of sight.

“Yes,” returned the sprite. “But you don’t seem a bit afraid.”

“I’m not—though I think I should be if I didn’t know who you are,” returned Jimmieboy. “You are really a pretty hideous affair.”

“Well, I need to be if I am to get the best of Fortyforefoot, but, I say, you mustn’t call me Spritey now that I am a giant. It won’t do to call me by any name that would show Fortyforefoot who I really am,” said the sprite, with a warning shake of his head.

“But what shall I call you?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Bludgeonhead is my name now,” replied the sprite. “Benjamin B. Bludgeonhead is my full name, but you know me well enough to call me plain Bludgeonhead.”

“All right, plain Bludgeonhead,” said Jimmieboy, “I’ll do as you say—and now don’t you think we’d better be starting along?”

“Yes,” said Bludgeonhead, reaching down and grabbing hold of Jimmieboy with his huge hand. “We’ll start right away, and until we come in sight of Fortyforefoot’s house I think perhaps you’ll be more comfortable if you ride on my shoulder instead of in my coat-pocket.”

“Thank you very much,” said Jimmieboy, as Bludgeonhead lifted him up from the ground and set him lightly as a feather on his shoulder. “My, what a view!” he added, as he gazed about him. “I think I’d like to be as tall as this all the time, Bludgeonhead. What a great thing it would be on parade days to be as tall as this. Why, I can see miles and miles of country from here.”

“Yes, it’s pretty fine—but I don’t think I’d care to be so tall always,” returned Bludgeonhead, as he stepped over a great broad river that lay in his path. “It makes one very uppish to be as high in the air as this; and you’d be all the time looking down on your friends, too, which would be so unpleasant for your friends that they wouldn’t have anything to do with you after a while. Hang on tight now. I’m going to jump over this mountain in front of us.”

Here Bludgeonhead drew back a little and then took a short run, after which he leaped high in the air, and he and Jimmieboy sailed easily over the great hills before them, and then alighted safe and sound on the other side.

“That was just elegant!” cried Jimmieboy, clapping his hands with glee. “I hope there are lots more hills like that to be jumped over.”

“No, there aren’t,” said Bludgeonhead, “but if you like it so much I’ll go back and do it again.”

“Let’s,” said Jimmieboy.

Bludgeonhead turned back and jumped over the mountain half a dozen times until Jimmieboy was satisfied and then he resumed his journey.

“This,” he said, after trudging along in silence for some time, “this is Fortyforefoot Valley, and in a short time we shall come to the giant’s castle; but meanwhile I want you to see what a wonderful place this is. The valley itself will give you a better idea of Fortyforefoot’s great power as a magician than anything else that I know of. Do you know what this place was before he came here?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “What was it?”

“It was a great big hole in the ground,” returned Bludgeonhead. “A regular sand pit. Fortyforefoot liked the situation because it was surrounded by mountains and nobody ever wanted to come here because sand pits aren’t worth visiting. There wasn’t a tree or a speck of a green thing anywhere in sight—nothing but yellow sand glaring in the sun all day and sulking in the moon all night.”

“Why, how could that be? It’s all covered with beautiful trees and gardens and brooks now,” said Jimmieboy, which was quite true, for the Fortyforefoot Valley was a perfect paradise to look at, filled with everything that was beautiful in the way of birds and trees and flowers and water courses. “How could he make the trees and flowers grow in dry hot sand like that?”

“By his magic power, of course,” answered Bludgeonhead. “He filled up a good part of the sand pit with stones that he found about here, and then he changed one part of the desert into a pond so that he could get all the water he wanted. Then he took a square mile of sand and changed every grain of it into blades of grass. Other portions he transformed into forests until finally simply by the wonderful power he has to change one thing into another he got the place into its present shape.”

“But the birds, how did he make them?” asked the little general.

“He didn’t,” said Bludgeonhead. “They came of their own accord. They saw what a beautiful place this was and they simply moved in.”

Bludgeonhead paused a moment in his walk and set Jimmieboy down on the ground again.

“I think I’ll take a rest here before going on. We are very near to Fortyforefoot’s castle now,” he said. “I’ll sit down here for a few moments and sharpen my sword and get in good shape for a fight if one becomes necessary. Don’t wander away, Jimmieboy. This place is full of traps for just such fellows as you who come in here. That’s the way Fortyforefoot catches them for dinner.”

So Jimmieboy stayed close by Bludgeonhead’s side and was very much entertained by all that went on around him. He saw the most wonderful birds imaginable, and great bumblebees buzzed about in the flowers gathering honey by the quart. Once a great jackrabbit, three times as large as he was, came rushing out of the woods toward him, and Jimmieboy on stooping to pick up a stone to throw at Mr. Bunny to frighten him away, found that all the stones in that enchanted valley were precious. He couldn’t help laughing outright when he discovered that the stone he had thrown at the rabbit was a huge diamond as big as his fist, and that even had he stopped to choose a less expensive missile he would have had to confine his choice to pearls, rubies, emeralds, and other gems of the rarest sort. And then he noticed that what he thought was a rock upon which he and Bludgeonhead were sitting was a massive nugget of pure yellow gold. This lead him on to inspect the trees about him and then he discovered a most absurd thing. Fortyforefoot’s extravagance had prompted him to make all his pine trees of the most beautifully polished and richly inlaid mahogany; every one of the weeping willows was made of solid oak, ornamented and carved until the eye wearied of its beauty, and as for the birds in the trees, their nests were made not of stray wisps of straw and hay stolen from the barns and fields, but of the softest silk, rich in color and lined throughout with eiderdown, the mere sight of which could hardly help being restful to a tired bird—or boy either, for that matter, Jimmieboy thought.

“Did he make all this out of sand? All these jewels and magnificent carvings?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Bludgeonhead. “Simply took up a handful of sand and tossed it up in the air and whatever he commanded it to be it became. But the most wonderful thing in this place is his spring. He made what you might call a ‘Wish Dipper’ out of an old tin cup. Then he dug a hole and filled it with sand which he commanded to become liquid, and, when the sand heard him say that, it turned to liquid, but the singular thing about it is that as Fortyforefoot didn’t say what kind of liquid it should be, it became any kind. So now if anyone is thirsty and wants a glass of cider all he has to do is to dip the wish dipper into the spring and up comes cider. If he wants lemonade up comes lemonade. If he wants milk up comes milk. It’s simply great.”

As Bludgeonhead spoke these words Jimmieboy was startled to hear something very much like an approaching footstep far down the road.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, seizing Bludgeonhead by the hand.

“Yes, I did,” replied Bludgeonhead, in a whisper. “It sounded to me like Fortyforefoot’s step, too.”

“I’d better hide, hadn’t I?” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes,” said Bludgeonhead. “Come here and be quick about it. Climb inside my coat and snuggle down out of sight in my pocket. We mustn’t let him see you yet awhile.”

Jimmieboy did as he was commanded, and found the pocket a very comfortable place, only it was a little stuffy.

“It’s pretty hot in here,” he whispered.

“Well, look up on the left hand corner of the outer side of the pocket and you’ll find two flaps that are buttoned up,” replied Bludgeonhead, softly. “Unbutton them. One will let in all the air you want, and the other will enable you to peep out and see Fortyforefoot without his seeing you.”

In a minute the buttons were found and the flaps opened. Everything happened as Bludgeonhead said it would, and in a minute Jimmieboy, peering out through the hole in the cloak, saw Fortyforefoot approaching.

The owner of the beautiful valley seemed very angry when he caught sight of Bludgeonhead sitting on his property, and hastening up to him, he cried:

“What business have you here in the Valley of Fortyforefoot?”

Jimmieboy shrank back into one corner of the pocket, a little overcome with fear. Fortyforefoot was larger and more terrible than he thought.

“I am not good at riddles,” said Bludgeonhead, calmly. “That is at riddles of that sort. If you had asked me the difference between a duck and a garden rake I should have told you that a duck has no teeth and can eat, while a rake has plenty of teeth and can’t eat. But when you ask me what business I have here I am forced to say that I can’t say.”

“You are a very bright sort of a giant,” sneered Fortyforefoot.

“Yes,” replied Bludgeonhead. “The fact is I can’t help being bright. My mother polishes me every morning with a damp chamois.”

“Do you know to whom you are speaking?” asked Fortyforefoot, threateningly.

“No; not having been introduced to you, I can’t say I know you,” returned Bludgeonhead. “But I think I can guess. You are Anklehigh, the Dwarf.”

At this Fortyforefoot turned purple with rage.

“Anklehigh the Dwarf?” he roared. “I’ll right quickly teach thee a lesson, thou rash fellow.”

Fortyforefoot strode up close to Bludgeonhead, whose size he could not have guessed because Bludgeonhead had been sitting down all this time and was pretty well covered over by his cloak.

“I’ll take thee by thine ear and toss thee to the moon,” he cried, reaching out his hand to make good his word.

“Nonsense, Anklehigh,” returned Bludgeonhead, calmly. “Don’t be foolish. No dwarf can fight with a giant of my size.”

“But I am not the dwarf Anklehigh,” shrieked Fortyforefoot. “I am Fortyforefoot.”

“And I am Bludgeonhead,” returned the other, rising and towering way above the owner of the valley.

“Mercy sakes!” cried Fortyforefoot, falling on his knees in abject terror. “He’d make six of me! Pardon, O, Bludgeonhead. I did not know you when I was so hasty as to offer to throw you to the moon. I thought you were—er—that you were—er——”

“More easily thrown,” suggested Bludgeonhead.

“Yes—yes—that was it,” stammered Fortyforefoot. “And now, to show that you have forgiven me, I want you to come to my castle and have dinner with me.”

“I’ll be very glad to,” replied Bludgeonhead. “What are you going to have for dinner?”

“Anything you wish,” said Fortyforefoot. “I was going to have a very plain dinner tonight because for tomorrow’s dinner I have invited my brother Fortythreefoot and his wife Fortytwoinch to have a little special dish I have been so fortunate as to secure.”

“Ah?” said Bludgeonhead. “And what is that dish, pray?”

“Oh, only a sniveling creature I caught in one of my traps this afternoon. He was a soldier, and he wasn’t very brave about being caught, but I judge from looking at him that he will make good eating,” said Fortyforefoot. “I couldn’t gather from him who he was. He had on a military uniform, but he behaved less like a warrior than ever I supposed a man could. It seems from his story that he was engaged upon some secret mission, and on his way back to his army, he stumbled over and into one of my game traps where I found him. He begged me to let him go, but that was out of the question. I haven’t had a soldier to eat for four years, so I took him to the castle, had him locked up in the icebox, and tomorrow we shall eat him.”

“Did he tell you his name?” asked Bludgeonhead, thoughtfully.

“He tried to but didn’t succeed. He told me so many names that I didn’t believe he really owned any of them,” said Fortyforefoot. “All I could really learn about him was that he was as brave as a lion, and that if I would spare him he would write me a poem a mile long every day of my life.”

“Very attractive offer, that,” said Bludgeonhead, with a smile.

“Yes; but I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t miss eating him for anything,” replied Fortyforefoot, smacking his lips, hungrily. “I’d give anything anybody’d ask, too, if I could find another as good.”

“Would you, honestly?” asked Bludgeonhead. “Well, now, I thought you would, and that is really what I have come here for. I have in my pocket here a real live general that I have captured. Now between you and me, I don’t eat generals. I don’t care for them—they fight so. I prefer preserved cherries and pickled peaches and—er—strawberry jam and powdered sugar and almonds, and other things like that, you know, and it occurred to me that if I let you have the general you would supply me with what I needed of the others.”

“You have come to the right place, Bludgeonhead,” said Fortyforefoot, eagerly. “I’ll give you a million cans of jam, all the pickled peaches and other things you can carry if this general you speak about is a fine specimen.”

BLUDGEONHEAD SHOWS JIMMIEBOY
TO FORTYFOREFOOT

“Well, here he is,” said Bludgeonhead, hauling Jimmieboy out of his pocket—whispering to Jimmieboy at the same time not to be afraid because he wouldn’t let anything happen to him, and so of course Jimmieboy felt perfectly safe, though a little excited.

“Beautiful!” cried Fortyforefoot. “Superb! Got any more?”

“No,” answered Bludgeonhead, putting Jimmieboy back into his pocket again. “If I ever do find another, though, you shall have him.”

This of course put Fortyforefoot in a tremendously good humor, and before an hour had passed he had not only transformed pebbles and twigs and leaves of trees and other small things into the provisions that the tin soldiers needed, but he had also furnished horses and wagons enough to carry them back to headquarters, and then Fortyforefoot accompanied by Bludgeonhead entered the castle, where the proprietor demanded that Jimmieboy should be given up to him.

Bludgeonhead handed him over at once, and ten minutes later Jimmieboy found himself locked up in the pantry.

Hardly had he time to think over the strange events of the afternoon when he heard a noise in the icebox over in one corner of the pantry, and on going there to see what was the cause of it he heard a familiar voice repeating over and over again these mournful lines:

“From Giant number one I ran—

But O the sequel dire!

I truly left a frying-pan

And jumped into a fire.”

“Hullo in there,” whispered Jimmieboy. “Who are you?”

“The bravest man of my time,” replied the voice in the icebox. “Major Mortimer Carraway Blueface of the ‘Jimmieboy Guards.’”

“Oh, I am so glad to find you again,” cried Jimmieboy, throwing open the icebox door. “I thought it was you the minute I heard your poetry.”

“Ah!” said the major, with a sad smile. “You recognized the beauty of the poem?”

“Not exactly,” said Jimmieboy. “But you said you were in the fire when I knew you were in the icebox, and so of course—”

“Of course,” said the major, with a frown. “You remembered that when I say one thing I mean another. Well, I’m glad to see you again, but why did you desert me so cruelly?”

•   13   •

THE RESCUE

For a moment Jimmieboy could say nothing, so surprised was he at the major’s question. Then he simply repeated it, his amazement very evident in the tone of his voice.

“Why did we desert you so cruelly?”

“Yes,” returned the major. “I’d like to know. When two of my companions in arms leave me, the way you and old Spriteyboy did, I think you ought to make some explanation. It was mean and cruel.”

“But we didn’t desert you,” said Jimmieboy. “No such idea ever entered our minds. It was you who deserted us.”

“I?” roared the major fiercely.

“Certainly,” said Jimmieboy calmly. “You. The minute Spritey turned into Bludgeonhead you ran away just about as fast as your tin legs could carry you—frightened to death evidently.”

“Jimmieboy,” said the major, his voice husky with emotion, “any other person than yourself would have had to fight a duel with me for casting such a doubt as you have just cast upon my courage. The idea of me, of I, of myself, Major Mortimer Carraway Blueface, the hero of a hundred and eighty-seven real sham fights, the most poetic as well as the handsomest man in the ‘Jimmieboy Guards’ being accused of running away! Oh! It is simply dreadful!

“I’ve been accused of dreadful things,

Of wearing copper finger-rings,

Of eating green peas with a spoon,

Of wishing that I owned the moon,

Of telling things that weren’t the truth,

Of having cut no wisdom tooth,

In times of war of stealing buns,

And fainting at the sound of guns,

Yet never dreamed I’d see the day

When it was thought I’d run away.

Alack—O—well-a-day—alas!

That this should ever come to pass!

Alas—O—well-a-day—alack!

It knocks me flat upon my back.

Alas—alack—O—well-a-day!

It fills me full of sore dismay.

Aday—alas—O—lack-a-well—”

“Are you going to keep that up forever?” asked Jimmieboy. “If you are I’m going to get out. I’ve heard stupid poetry in this campaign, but that’s the worst yet.”

“I only wanted to show you what I could do in the way of a lamentation,” said the major. “If you’ve had enough I’ll stop of course; but tell me,” he added, sitting down upon a cake of ice, and crossing his legs, “how on earth did you ever get hold of the ridiculous notion that I ran away frightened?”

“How?” ejaculated Jimmieboy. “What else was there to think? The minute the sprite was changed into Bludgeonhead I turned to speak to you, and all I could see of you was your coattails disappearing around the corner way down the road.”

“And just because my coattails behaved like that you put me down as a coward?” groaned the major.

“Didn’t you run away?” Jimmieboy asked.

“Of course not,” replied the major. “That is, not exactly. I hurried off; but not because I was afraid. I was simply going down the road to see if I couldn’t find a looking-glass so that Spriteyboy could see how he looked as a giant.”

Jimmieboy laughed.

“That’s a magnificent excuse,” he said.

“I thought you’d think it was,” said the major, with a pleased smile. “And when I finally found that there weren’t any mirrors to be had along the road I went back, and you two had gone and left me.”

“And what did you do then?” asked Jimmieboy.

“I wrote a poem on sleep. It’s a great thing, sleep is, and I wrote the lines off in two tenths of a fifth of a second. As I remember it, this is the way they went:

“SLEEP.

Deserted by my friends I sit,

And silently I weep,

Until I’m wearied so by it,

I lose my little store of wit;

I nod and fall asleep.

Then in my dreams my friends I spy—

Once more are they my own.

I cease to murmur and to cry,

For then ’tis sure to be that I

Forget I am alone.

’Tis hence I think that sleep’s the best

Of friends that man has got—

Not only does it bring him rest

But makes him feel that he is blest

With blessings he has not.”

“Why didn’t you go to sleep if you felt that way?” said Jimmieboy.

“I wanted to find you and I hadn’t time. There was only time for me to scratch that poem off on my mind and start to find you and Bludgeyboy,” replied the major.

“His name isn’t Bludgeyboy,” said Jimmieboy, with a smile. “It’s Bludgeonhead.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot,” said the major. “It’s a good name, too, Bludgeonpate is.”

“How did you come to be captured by Fortyforefoot?” asked Jimmieboy, after he had decided not to try to correct the major any more as to Bludgeonhead’s name.

“There you go again!” cried the major, angrily. “The idea of a miserable ogre like Fortyforefoot capturing me, the most sagacitacious soldier of modern times. I suppose you think I fell into one of his game traps?”

“That’s what he said,” said Jimmieboy. “He said you acted in a very curious way, too—promised him all sorts of things if he’d let you go.”

“That’s just like those big, bragging giants,” said the major. “The idea! why, he didn’t capture me at all. I came here of my own free will and accord.”

“What? Down here into this pantry and into the ice-chest? Oh, come now, major. You can’t fool me,” said Jimmieboy. “That’s nonsense. Why should you want to come here?”

“To meet you, of course,” retorted the major. “That’s why. I knew it was part of your scheme to come here. You and I were to be put into the pantry and then old Bludgeyhat was to come and rescue us. I was the one to make the scheme, wasn’t I?”

“No. It was Bludgeonhead,” said Jimmieboy, who didn’t know whether to believe the major or not.

“That’s just the way,” said the major, indignantly, “he gets all the credit just because he’s big and I don’t get any, and yet if you knew of all the wild animals I’ve killed to get here to you, how I met Fortyforefoot and bound him hand and foot and refused to let him go unless he would permit me to spend a week in his ice-chest, for the sole and only purpose that I wished to meet you again, you’d change your mind mighty quick about me.”

“You bound Fortyforefoot? A little two-inch fellow like you?” said Jimmieboy.

“Why not?” asked the major. “Did you ever see me in a real sham battle?”

“No, I never did,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, you’d better never,” returned the major, “unless you want to be frightened out of your wits. I have been called the living telescope, sir, because when I begin to fight, in the fiercest manner possible, I sort of lengthen out and sprout up into the air until I am taller than any foe within my reach.”

“Really?” queried Jimmieboy, with a puzzled air about him.

“Do you doubt it?” asked the major.

“Well, I should like to see it once,” said Jimmieboy. “Then I might believe it.”

“Then you will never believe it,” returned the major, “because you will never see it. I never fight in the presence of others, sir.”

As the major spoke these words a heavy footstep was heard on the stairs.

“What is that?” cried the major, springing to his feet.

“I do not ask you for your gold,

Nor for an old straw hat—

I simply ask that I be told

Oh what, oh what is that?”

“It is a footstep on the stairs,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” moaned the major. “If it is Fortyforefoot, all is over for us. This is what I feared.

“I was afraid he could not wait,

The miserable sinner,

To serve me up in proper state

At his tomorrow’s dinner.

Alas, he comes I greatly fear

In search of Major Me, sir,

And that he’ll wash me down with beer

This very night at tea, sir.

“Oh, why did I come here—why—”

“I shall!” roared a voice out in the passageway.

“You shall not,” roared another voice, which Jimmieboy was delighted to recognize as Bludgeonhead’s.

“I am hungry,” said the first voice, “and what is mine is my own to do with as I please. I shall eat both of them at once. Stand aside!”

“I will toss you into the air, my dear Fortyforefoot,” returned Bludgeonhead’s voice, “if you advance another step; and with such force, sir, that you will never come down again.”

“Tut, tut! I am not so easily tossed. Stand aside,” roared the voice of Fortyforefoot.

The two prisoners in the pantry heard a tremendous scuffling, a crash, and a loud laugh.

Then Bludgeonhead’s voice was heard again.

“Goodbye, Fortyforefoot,” it cried.

“I hope he is not going to leave us,” whispered Jimmieboy, but the major was too frightened to speak, and he trembled so that half a dozen times he fell off the ice-cake that he had been sitting on.

“Give my love to the moon when you pass her, and when you get up into the milky way turn half a million of the stars there into baked apples and throw ’em down to me,” called Bludgeonhead’s voice.

“If you’ll only lasso me and pull me back, I’ll do anything you want me to,” came the voice of Fortyforefoot from some tremendous height, it seemed to Jimmieboy.

“Not if I know it,” replied Bludgeonhead, with a laugh. “I think I’d like to settle down here myself as the owner of Fortyforefoot Valley. Goodbye.”

Whatever answer was made to this it was too indistinct for Jimmieboy to hear, and in a minute the key of the pantry door was turned, the door thrown open, and Bludgeonhead stood before them.

“You are free,” he said, grasping Jimmieboy’s hand and squeezing it affectionately. “But I had to get rid of him. It was the only way to do it. He wanted to eat you right away.”

“And did you really throw him off into the air?” asked Jimmieboy, as he walked out into the hall.

“Yes,” said Bludgeonhead. “See that hole in the roof?” he added, pointing upward.

“My!” ejaculated Jimmieboy, as he glanced upward and saw a huge rent in the ceiling, through which, gradually rising and getting smaller and smaller the further he rose, was to be seen the unfortunate Fortyforefoot. “Did he go through there?”

“Yes,” replied Bludgeonhead. “I simply picked him up and tossed him over my head. He’ll never come back. I shall turn myself into Fortyforefoot and settle down here forever, only instead of being a bad giant I shall be a good one—but hallo! Who is this?”

The major had crawled out of the ice-chest and was now trying to appear calm, although his terrible fright still left him trembling so that he could hardly speak.

“It is Major Blueface,” said Jimmieboy, with a smile.

“Oh!” cried Bludgeonhead. “He was Fortyforefoot’s other prisoner.”

“N—nun—not at—t—at—at all,” stammered the major. “I def—fuf—feated him in sus—single combat.”

“But what are you trembling so for now?” demanded Bludgeonhead.

“I—I am—m not tut—trembling,” retorted the major. “I—I am o—only sh—shivering with—th—the—c—c—c—cold. I—I—I’ve bub—been in th—that i—i—i—ice bu—box sus—so long.”

JIMMIEBOY AND BLUDGEONHEAD
ROARED WITH LAUGHTER

Jimmieboy and Bludgeonhead roared with laughter at this. Then, giving the major a warm coat to put on, they sent him upstairs to lie down and recover his nerves.

After the major had been attended to, Bludgeonhead changed himself back into the sprite again, and he and Jimmieboy sauntered in and out among the gardens for an hour or more and were returning to the castle for supper when they heard sounds of music. There was evidently a brass band coming up the road. In an instant they hid themselves behind a tree, from which place of concealment they were delighted two or three minutes later to perceive that the band was none other than that of the “Jimmieboy Guards,” and that behind it, in splendid military form, appeared Colonel Zinc followed by the tin soldiers themselves.

“Hurrah!” cried Jimmieboy, throwing his cap into the air.

“Ditto!” roared the sprite.

“The same!” shrieked the colonel, waving his sword with delight, and commanding his regiment to halt, as he caught sight of Jimmieboy.

“Us likewise!” cheered the soldiers: following which came a trembling voice from one of the castle windows which said:

“I also wish to add my cheer

Upon this happy day;

And if you’ll kindly come up here

You’ll hear me cry ‘Hooray.’”

“It’s Major Blueface’s voice!” cried the colonel. “Is the major ill?”

“No,” said the sprite, motioning to Jimmieboy not to betray the major. “Only a little worn-out by the fight we have had with Fortyforefoot.”

“With Fortyforefoot?” echoed the colonel.

“Yes,” said the sprite, modestly. “We three have got rid of him at last.”

“Then the victory is won!” cried the colonel. “Do you know who Fortyforefoot really was?”

“No; who?” asked Jimmieboy, his curiosity aroused.

“The Parallelopipedon himself,” said the colonel. “We found that out last night, and fearing that he might have captured our general and our major we came here to besiege him in his castle and rescue our officers.”

“But I don’t see how Fortyforefoot could have been the Parallelopipedon,” said Jimmieboy. “What would he want to be him for, when, all he had to do to get anything he wanted was to take sand and turn it into it?”

“Ah, but don’t you see,” explained the colonel, “there was one thing he never could do as Fortyforefoot. The law prevented him from leaving this valley here in any other form than that of the Parallelopipedon. He didn’t mind his confinement to the valley very much at first, but after a while he began to feel cooped up here, and then he took an old packing box and made it look as much like a living Parallelopipedon as he could. Then he got into it whenever he wanted to roam about the world. Probably if you will search the castle you will find the cast-off shell he used to wear, and if you do I hope you will destroy it, because it is said to be a most horrible spectacle—frightening animals to death and causing every flower within a mile to wither and shrink up at the mere sight of it.”

“It’s all true, Jimmieboy,” said the sprite. “I knew it all along. Why, he only gave us those cherries and peaches there in exchange for yourself because he expected to get them all back again, you know.”

“It was a glorious victory,” said the colonel. “I will now announce it to the soldiers.”

This he did and the soldiers were wild with joy when they heard the news, and the band played a hymn of victory in which the soldiers joined, singing so vigorously that they nearly cracked their voices. When they had quite finished the colonel said he guessed it was time to return to the barracks in the nursery.

“Not before the feast,” said the sprite. “We have here all the provisions the general set out to get, and before you return home, colonel, you and your men should divide them among you.”

So the table was spread and all went happily. In the midst of the feast the major appeared, determination written upon every line of his face. The soldiers cheered him loudly as he walked down the length of the table, which he acknowledged as gracefully as he could with a stiff bow, and then he spoke:

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have always been a good deal of a favorite with you, and I know that what I am about to do will fill you with deep grief. I am going to stop being a man of war. The tremendous victory we have won today is the result entirely of the efforts of myself, General Jimmieboy and Major Sprite—for to the latter I now give the title I have borne so honorably for so many years. Our present victory is one of such brilliantly brilliant brilliance that I feel that I may now retire with luster enough attached to my name to last for millions and millions of years. I need rest, and here I shall take it, in this beautiful valley, which by virtue of our victory belongs wholly and in equal parts to General Jimmieboy, Major Sprite and myself. Hereafter I shall be known only as Mortimer Carraway Blueface, Poet Laureate of Fortyforefoot Hall, Fortyforefoot Valley, Pictureland. As Governor-General of the country we have decided to appoint our illustrious friend, Major Benjamin Bludgeonhead Sprite. General Jimmieboy will remain commander of the forces, and the rest of you may divide amongst yourselves, as a reward for your gallant services, all the provisions that may now be left upon this table. It is all yours. I demand but one condition. That is that you do not take the table. It is of solid mahogany and must be worth a very considerable sum.

“Now let the saddest word be said,

Now bend in sorrow deep the head.

Let tears flow forth and drench the dell:

Farewell, brave soldier boys, farewell.”

Here the major wiped his eyes sadly and sat down by the sprite who shook his hand kindly and thanked him for giving him his title of major.

“We’ll have fine times living here together,” said the sprite.

“Well, rather!” ejaculated the major. “I’m going to see if I can’t have myself made over again, too, Spritey. I’ll be pleasanter for you to look at. What’s the use of being a tin soldier in a place where even the cobblestones are of gold and silver.”

“You can be plated anyhow,” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes, and maybe I can have a platinum sword put in, and a real solid gold head—but just at present that isn’t what I want,” said the major. “What I am after now is a piece of birthday cake with real fruit raisins in it and strips of citron two inches long, the whole concealed beneath a one inch frosting. Is there any?”

•   14   •

HOME AGAIN

“I don’t think we have any here,” said Jimmieboy, who was much pleased to see the sprite and the major, both of whom he dearly loved, on such good terms. “But I’ll run home and see if I can get some.”

“Well, we’ll all go with you,” said the colonel, starting up and ordering the trumpeters to sound the call to arms.

“All except Blueface and myself,” said the sprite. “We will stay here and put everything in readiness for your return.”

“That is a good idea,” said Jimmieboy. “And you’ll have to hurry for we shall be back very soon.”

This, as it turned out, was a very rash promise for Jimmieboy to make, for after he and the tin soldiers had got the birthday cake and were ready to enter Pictureland once more, they found that not one of them could do it, the frame was so high up and the picture itself so hard and impenetrable. Jimmieboy felt so badly to be unable to return to his friends, that, following the major’s hint about sleep bringing forgetfulness of trouble, he threw himself down on the nursery couch, and closing his brimming eyes dozed off into a dreamless sleep.

It was quite dark when he opened them again and found himself still on the couch with a piece of his papa’s birthday cake in his hand, his sorrows all gone and contentment in their place. His papa was sitting at his side, and his mamma was standing over by the window smiling.

“You’ve had a good long nap, Jimmieboy,” said she, “and I rather think, from several things I’ve heard you say in your sleep, you’ve been dreaming about your tin soldiers.”

“I don’t believe it was a dream, mamma,” he said, “it was all too real.” And then he told his papa all that had happened.

“Well, it is very singular,” said his papa, when Jimmieboy had finished, “and if you want to believe it all happened you may; but you say all the soldiers came back with you except Major Blueface?”

“Yes, every one,” said Jimmieboy.

“Then we can tell whether it was true or not by looking in the tin soldier’s box. If the major isn’t there he may be up in Fortyforefoot castle as you say.”

Jimmieboy climbed eagerly down from the couch, and, rushing to the toy closet, got out the box of soldiers and searched it from top to bottom. The major was not to be seen anywhere, nor to this day has Jimmieboy ever again set eyes upon him.

Half-Hours
with Jimmieboy

(1893)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FRANK VER BECK
CHARLES HOWARD JOHNSON
PETER NEWELL
J. T. RICHARDS

TO MY SON,
FRANCIS HYDE BANGS.

CONTENTS:

1 … Christmas Eve at Jimmieboy’s
2 … The Dwarf and the Dude Giant
3 … Jimmieboy’s Dream Poetry
4 … A Subterranean Mutiny
5 … Jimmieboy in the Library
6 … Jimmieboy’s Snowman
7 … The Bicyclopedia Bird
8 … Giant the Jack Killer
9 … Jimmieboy and the Fireworks
10 … Jimmieboy’s Photograph
11 … Jimmieboy and the Blank-Book
12 … Jimmieboy and the Comet
13 … Jimmieboy and Jack Frost

•   1   •

CHRISTMAS EVE AT JIMMIEBOY’S

It had been a long and trying day to Jimmieboy, as December 24th usually is to children of his age, who have great expectations, and are more or less impatient to have them fulfilled. He had been positively cross at suppertime because his father had said that Santa Claus had written to say that a much-desired velocipede could not be got down through the chimney, and that he thought Jimmieboy would have to wait until the chimneys had been enlarged, or his papa had built a new house with more commodious flues.

“I think it’s just too bad,” said Jimmieboy, as he climbed into bed an hour later. “Just because those chimneys are small, I can’t have a philocipede, and I’ve been gooder than ever for two weeks, just to get it.”

Then, as his nurse extinguished the lamp and went into the adjoining room to sew, Jimmieboy threw himself back upon his pillow and shed a tear. The tear crept slowly down over his cheek, and was about to disappear between his lips and go back again to where it had started from, when a voice was heard over by the fireplace.

“Can you get it down?” it said.

Jimmieboy sat up and peered over toward the spot whence the voice came, but could see nothing.

“No. The hind wheels won’t go through the chimney-pot, and even if they would, it wouldn’t do any good. The front wheel is twice as big as the hind ones,” said another voice, this one apparently belonging to someone on the roof. “Can’t you get it in through the front door?”

“What do you take me for—an expressman?” cried the voice at the fireplace. “I can’t leave things that way. It wouldn’t be the proper thing. Can’t you get a smaller size through?”

“Yes; but will it fit the boy?” said the voice on the roof.

“Lower your lantern down here and we’ll see. He’s asleep over here in a brass bedstead,” replied the other.

And then Jimmieboy saw a great red lantern appear in the fireplace, and by its light he noticed a short, ruddy-faced, merry-eyed old gentleman, with a snowy beard and a smile, tiptoeing across the room toward him. To his delight he recognized him at once as Santa Claus; but he didn’t know whether Santa Claus would like to have him see him or not, so he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, and pretended to be asleep.

“Humph!” ejaculated Santa Claus, as he leaned over Jimmieboy’s bed, and tried to get his measure by a glance. “He’s almost a man—must be five years old by this time. Pretty big for a small velocipede; still, I don’t know.” Here he scratched his beard and sang:

“If he’s too large for it, I think,

’Twill be too small for him,

Unless he can be got to shrink

Two inches on each limb.”

Then he walked back to the fireplace and called out, “I’ve measured.”

“Well, what’s the result?” queried the voice on the roof.

“‘Nothing,’ as the boy said when he was asked what two plus one minus three amounted to. I can’t decide. It will or it won’t, and that’s all there is about it.”

“Can’t we try it on him?” asked the voice up the chimney.

“No,” returned Santa Claus. “That wouldn’t prove anything; but we might try him on it. Shall I send him up?”

“Yes,” came the voice from above, much to Jimmieboy’s delight, for he was quite curious to see what was going on up on the roof, and who it was that owned the other voice.

In a moment Jimmieboy found himself in Santa Claus’s arms, cuddled up to the warm fur coat the dear old gentleman wore, in which position he was carried up through the chimney flue to the roof. Then Jimmieboy peeped out between his half-opened eyelids, and saw, much to his surprise, that instead of there being only one Santa Claus, there were two of them.

“Oh dear!” he said in astonishment; “I didn’t know there were two of you.”

Both the Santas jumped as if someone had let off a cannon cracker under their very noses.

“Well, I declare!” said the one that had carried Jimmieboy up through the chimney. “We’re discovered. Here I’ve been in this business whole centuries, and I’ve never been discovered before.”

“That’s so,” assented the other. “We know now how America must have felt when Columbus came sailing in. What’ll we do about it?”

“We’ll have to take him into partnership, I guess,” rejoined the first. “It’ll never do in this world not to. Would you like to be one of our concern, Jimmieboy?”

“Oh, indeed I would,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, I say we let him help us this time anyhow,” said the roof Santa Claus. “You’re so fat, I’m afraid you can’t get down some of these small chimneys, and Jimmieboy is just about the right size.”

“Good scheme,” said the other; “but he isn’t dressed for it, you know.”

“He can get a nice black soot down in the factory chimney,” said the roof Santa Claus, with a wink.

“That’s so; and as the factory fires are always going, it will be a nice warm soot. What do you say, Jimmieboy?” said the other.

“It’s lovely,” replied the boy. “But how did there come to be two of you?”

“There had to be,” said the first Santa Claus Jimmieboy had seen. “The world is growing so fast that my work has nearly doubled in the last twenty years, so I had to get an assistant, and he did so well, I took him into partnership. He’s my brother.”

“And is his name Santa Claus, too?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh no, indeed. His name is Marmaduke. We call him Marmy for short, and I can tell you what it is, Jimmieboy,

“He is as fine a fellow

As ever you did spy;

He’s quite as sweet and mellow,

Though not so fat as I.”

“And that’s a recommendation that any man has a right to be proud of,” said Marmy Claus, patting himself on the back to show how proud he felt. “But, Santa, we must be off. It would not do for the new firm of Santa, Marmy, and Jimmie Claus to begin business by being late. We’ve got to leave toys in eighteen flat-houses, forty-two hotels, and an orphan asylum yet.”

“That’s a fact,” said Santa, jumping into the sleigh and grasping the reins. “Just help Jimmieboy in here, Marmy, and we’ll be off. We can leave his things here on our way back.”

JIMMIEBOY AND THE BROTHERS CLAUS

Then, before he knew how it happened, Jimmieboy found himself wrapped up warmly in a great fur coat, with a seal-skin cap on his head, and the dearest, warmest ear-tabs over his ears, sitting in the middle of the sleigh between the two huge, jolly-faced, members of the Claus family. The long lash of the whip snapped in the frosty air, at the sound of which the reindeer sprang forward and dragged the toy-laden cutter off on its aerial flight.

At the start Santa drove, and Marmy prepared the toys for the first little boy they were to visit, handing Jimmieboy a lot of sugarplums, to keep him from getting hungry, before he began.

“This is a poor sick little fellow we are going to see first,” he said. “He wanted a set of choo-choo cars, but we can’t give them to him because the only set we have is for you, Jimmieboy. Your application came in before his did. I hope he won’t be disappointed, though I am afraid he will be. A fishpond isn’t half so much fun as a set of choo-choo cars.”

“That’s so,” said Jimmieboy. “But, Mr. Marmy, perhaps, if it’s going to make him feel real bad not to get them—maybe—perhaps you might let him have the cars. I don’t want them too much.” This wasn’t quite true, but Jimmieboy, somehow or other, didn’t like to think of the little sick boy waking up on Christmas day and not finding what he wanted. “You know, I have one engine and a coal car left of my old set, and I guess maybe, perhaps, I can make them do,” he added.

Marmy gave the little fellow an affectionate squeeze, and said: “Well, if you really feel that way, maybe we had better leave the cars there. Eh, Santa?”

“Maybe, perhaps,” said Santa.

And it so happened; and although he could not tell exactly why, Jimmieboy felt happier after leaving the cars at the little sick boy’s house than he ever thought he could be.

“Now, Jimmieboy,” said Santa, as Marmy took the reins and they drove off again, “while Marmy and I are attending to the hotels and flat-houses, we want you to take that brown bag and go down the chimney of the orphan asylum, and leave one toy for each little child there. There are about a hundred little orphans to be provided for.”

“What’s orphans?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Orphans? Why, they are poor little boys and girls without any papas and mammas, and they all have to live together in one big house. You’ll see ’em fast asleep in their little white cots when you get down the chimney, and you must be very careful not to wake them up.”

“I’ll try not to,” said Jimmieboy, softly, a lump growing up in his throat as he thought of the poor children who had no parents. “And I’ll make sure they all get something, too.”

“That’s right,” said Marmy. “And here’s where they live. You take the bag now, and we’ll let you down easy, and when we get through, we’ll come back for you.”

So Jimmieboy shouldered the bag full of toys, and was lowered through the chimney into the room where the orphans were sleeping. He was surprised to find how light the bag was, and he was almost afraid there would not be enough toys to go around; but there were, as he found out in a moment. There were more than enough by at least a dozen of the most beautiful toys he had ever seen—just the very things he would most have liked to have himself.

“I just guess I’ll give ’em one of these things apiece, and keep the extra ones, and maybe perhaps they’ll be for me,” he said.

JIMMIEBOY IN THE ORPHAN ASYLUM

So he arranged the toys quietly under the stockings that hung at the foot of the little white beds, stuffing the stockings themselves with candies and apples and raisins and other delicious things to eat, and then sat down by the fireplace to await the return of Santa Claus and Santa’s brother Marmy. As he sat there he looked around the dimly lighted room, and saw the poor thin white faces of the little sleeping orphans, and his heart stirred with pity for their sad condition. Then he looked at the bag again, and saw the extra dozen toys that were so pleasing to him, and he wondered if it would make the orphans happier next morning if they should wake and find them there, too. At first he wasn’t sure but that the orphans had enough; and then he thought of his own hamper full of dolls, and dogs, and tin soldiers, and cars, and blocks, at home, and he tried to imagine how much fun he could get out of a single toy, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that he could get much.

“One toy is great fun for an hour,” he said to himself, “but for a year, dear me! I guess I won’t keep them, after all. I’ll just put them in the middle of the room, so that they’ll find them in the morning, and maybe perhaps— Hello!” he added, as he took the extra toys out of the bag; “they were for me, after all. They’ve got my name on ’em. Oh, dear! isn’t it love— I don’t know, though. Seems to me I’d better leave them here, even if they are for me. I can get along without them because I have a papa to play with, and he’s more fun than any toy I ever had; and mamma’s better’n any doll baby or choo-choo car I ever saw. Yes, I will leave them.”

And the little fellow was true to his purpose. He emptied the bag to the very last toy, and then, hearing the tinkling bells of Santa’s sleigh on the roof again, he ran to the chimney, and was hauled up by his two new friends to the roof.

“Why, you’ve left everything except the bag!” cried Marmy, as Jimmieboy climbed into the sleigh.

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy, with a little sigh; “everything.”

“But the bag had all your things in it, and we haven’t a toy or a sugarplum left for you,” said Santa.

“Never mind,” said Jimmieboy. “I don’t care much. I’ve had this ride with you, and—al—together I’m—pret—ty well—satis—fi—”

Here the little assistant to the Claus brothers, lulled by the jingling of the bells, fell asleep.

It was morning when he waked again—Christmas morning—and as he opened his eyes he found himself back in his little crib, pondering over the mysterious experiences of the night. His heart was strangely light and happy even for him, especially when he thought of the little orphan children, and tried to imagine their happiness on waking and finding the extra toys—his toys—in addition to their own; and as he thought about it, his eyes wandered to the chimney-place, and an unexpected sight met his gaze, for there stood the much-wished-for velocipede, and grouped around it on the floor were a beautiful set of choo-choo cars exactly like those he had left with the sick boy, and a duplicate of every one of the extra toys he had left at the asylum for the orphans.

“They must have been playing a joke on me,” he cried, in delighted tones, as he sprang out of bed and rushed over to where the toys lay. “I do believe they left them here while I was in the asylum. The—dear—old—things!”

And then Jimmieboy was able to measure the delight of the orphan children and the little sufferer by comparing it with his own; and when he went to bed that night, he whispered in his mamma’s ear that he didn’t know for sure, but he thought that if the orphans only had a papa and a mamma like his, they would certainly be the happiest little children in all the world.

•   2   •

THE DWARF
AND THE DUDE GIANT

The day had not yet dawned, but Jimmieboy was awake—wide awake. So wide awake was he, indeed, that the small bed in which he had passed the night was not broad enough by some ten or twelve feet to accommodate the breadth of his wakefulness, and he had in consequence crawled over into his father’s bed, seated himself as nearly upon his father’s neck as was possible, and was vociferously demanding a story.

“Oh, wait a little while, Jimmieboy,” said his father, wearily. “I’m sound asleep—can’t you see?”

“Tell a story,” said Jimmieboy, poking his thumbs into his father’s half closed eyes.

The answer was a snore—not a real one, but one of those imitation snores that fathers of boys like Jimmieboy make use of on occasions of this sort, prompted no doubt by the maker’s desire to convince a persistent enemy to sleep that his cause is hopeless, and of which the enemy is never to be convinced.

“Tell a story about a Giant,” insisted Jimmieboy, a suggestion of tears in his voice.

“Oh, well,” returned the sleepy father, sitting up and, rubbing his eyes vigorously in a vain effort to get all the sleepiness out of them. “If you must have it, you must have it, so here goes. Let’s see—a story of a Giant or of a Dwarf?”

“Both,” said Jimmieboy, placidly.

“Dear me!” cried his father. “I wish I’d kept quiet about the Dwarf. Well, once upon a time there was a Giant.”

“And a Dwarf, too,” put in Jimmieboy, who did not intend to be cheated out of a half of the story.

“Yes. And a Dwarf, too,” said the other with a nod. “The Giant was a Dude Giant, who cared more for his hats than he did for anything else in the world. It was quite natural, too, that he should, for he had a finer chance to show them off than most people have, because he had no less than four heads, which is very remarkable for a Dude Giant, because dudes who are not giants very rarely have even one head worth mentioning. Hats were about the only things the Dude Giant cared for at all. He used to buy every style of headgear he could find, and it took almost all of the salary he received at the Museum where he was on exhibition to pay for them; but he was particularly fond of silk hats. Of these he had twenty-eight; four for each day of the week, those for Sunday being especially handsome and costly.

“Now it happened that in the same exhibition with the Dude Giant there was a Dwarf named Tiny W. Littlejohn—W standing for Wee, which was his middle name. He was a very good-natured fellow, Tiny was, and as far as he knew he hadn’t an enemy in the world. He was so very nice that everybody who came to the exhibition brought him cream cakes, and picture books, and roller skates, and other beautiful things, and nobody ever thought of going away without buying his photograph, paying him twenty-five cents extra for the ones with his autograph on, which his mother wrote for him. In this way the Dwarf soon grew to be a millionaire, while the Dude Giant squandered all he had on riotous hats, and so remained as poor as when he started. For a long time everything went smoothly at the Exhibition. There were no jealousies or quarrels of any sort, except between the Glass Eater and the man who made Glass Steamboats, and that was smoothed over in a very short time by the Glass Eater saying that the Glass-blower made the finest crystal pies he had ever tasted. But contentment and peace could not last forever in an establishment where one attraction was growing richer and richer every day as the Dwarf was, while another, the Dude Giant, was no better off than the day he joined the show, and when finally the Dwarf began to come every morning in a cab of his own, drawn by a magnificent gray horse with a banged tail, and to dress better even than the proprietor of the Museum himself, the Dude Giant became very envious, and when the Dude Giant gets envious he is a very disagreeable person. For instance, when no one was looking he would make horrible faces at Tiny, contorting his four mouths and noses and eight cheeks all at once in a very terrifying manner, and when he’d look cross-eyed at the Dwarf with all eight of his eyes poor Tiny would get so nervous that he would try to eat the roller skates and picture books, instead of the cream cakes people brought him, and on one occasion he broke two of his prettiest teeth doing it, which marred his personal appearance very much.

“Tiny stood it as long as he could, and then he complained to his friend, the Whirlwind, about it, and the Whirlwind, who was a very sensible sort of a fellow, advised him not to mind it. It was only jealousy, he said, that led the Dude Giant to behave that way, and if Tiny had not been more successful than Forepate—as the Dude Giant was called—Forepate wouldn’t have been jealous, so that his very jealousy was an acknowledgment of inferiority. So Tiny made up his mind he wouldn’t pay any attention to the Dude Giant at all, but would go right ahead minding his own business and making all the money he could.

“This made Forepate all the more angry, and finally he resolved to get even with the Dwarf in some other way than by making grimaces at him. Now, it happened that Forepate’s place was over by a window directly opposite to where the Dwarf sat, and so, to get near enough to Tiny to put his scheme against him into execution, he complained to the manager that there was a terrible draft from the window, and added that unless he could sit on the other side of the room he was certain he’d catch cold in three of his heads anyhow, if not in all of them.

“‘Very well,’ said the manager. ‘Where do you wish to sit?’

“‘You might put me next to Littlejohn, over there,’ said the head with red hair.

“‘But,’ said the manager, ‘what shall we do with that stuffed owl with the unicorn’s horns?’

“‘Put him by the window,’ said another of the Dude Giant’s heads.

“‘Yes,’ said the third head. ‘No draft in all the world could give a stuffed owl a cold.’

“‘That’s so,’ replied the manager. ‘We’ll make the change right off.’

“And then the change was made, though Tiny did not like it very much.

“To disarm all suspicion, the Dude Giant was very affable to the Dwarf for a whole week, and to see him talking to Tiny no one would have suspected that he hated him so, which shows how horribly crafty he was. Finally the hour for his revenge arrived. It was Monday morning, and Forepate and Tiny had taken their places as usual, when, observing that no one was looking, Forepate took his biggest beaver hat and put it over Tiny, completely hiding him from view. Poor Tiny was speechless with rage, and so could not cry out. Forepate kept him under his hat all day, and whenever anyone asked where Littlejohn was, one of his heads would say, ‘Alas! Poor Tiny, he has mysteriously disappeared!’ And another head would shake itself and say ‘Somebody must have left the door open and the wind must have whisked the dear little fellow out into the cold, cold world.’ Then the other two heads would blubber, at which the Dude Giant would take out his handkerchiefs and wipe his eight eyes and shake all over as if he were inconsolable, and Tiny, overhearing it all, grew more and more speechless with indignation.

“That night, of course, Forepate had to release him, and Tiny hurried away fairly howling with anger. When he arrived at home he told his mother how he had been treated and how he had been done out of a whole day’s cream cakes and picture books and roller skates, and she advised him to go at once to the Whirlwind and confide his woe to him, which he did.

“‘Forepate ought to be ashamed of himself,’ said the Whirlwind, when Tiny had told his story.

“‘But he never does what he ought to do unless somebody makes him,’ said Tiny, ruefully. ‘Can’t we do something to make him ashamed of himself?’

“‘Well, I’ll see,’ said the Whirlwind, with a shake of his head that meant that he intended to do something. ‘What does the Dude Giant do with himself on Sundays?’

“‘Shows off his best hats on Fifth avenue,’ returned the Dwarf.

“‘Very well then, I have it,’ said the Whirlwind. ‘Next Sunday, Tiny, we’ll have our revenge on Forepate. You stand on one of the stoops at the corner of Fifth avenue and Thirty-fourth street at midday, and you’ll see a sight that will make you happy for the rest of your days.’

“So, on the following Sunday the Dwarf climbed up on one of the front stoops on Fifth avenue, near Thirty-fourth street, and waited. He hadn’t been there long when he saw Forepate striding down the avenue dressed in his best clothes, and wearing upon his heads four truly magnificent beaver hats, which he had just received from London, and of which he was justly proud.

“‘I wonder where the Whirlwind is,’ thought the Dwarf, looking anxiously up and down the avenue for his avenger. ‘I do hope he won’t fail.’

“Hardly were the words out of his mouth when Forepate reached the crossing of Thirty-fourth street, and just as he stepped from the walk into the street, bzoo! along came the Whirlwind, and off went Forepate’s treasured hats. One hat flew madly up Fifth avenue. A second rolled swiftly down Fifth avenue. A third tripped merrily along East Thirty-fourth street, while the fourth sailed joyously into the air, struck a lamppost, and then plunged along West Thirty-fourth street. And then! Dear me! What a terrible thing happened! It was perfectly awful—simply dreadful!”

“Hurry up and tell it,” said Jimmieboy, jumping up and down with anxiety to hear what happened next.

“Then,” said his papa, “when the Dude Giant saw his beloved hats flying in every direction he howled aloud with every one of his four voices, and craned each of his necks in the direction in which it’s hat had flown.

“Then the head with the auburn hair demanded that the Giant should immediately run up Fifth avenue to recover its lost beaver, and the giant started, but hardly had he gone a step when the head with the black hair cried out:

“‘No! Down Fifth avenue after my hat.’

“‘Not at all!’ shrieked the head without any hair. ‘Go east after mine.’

“‘Well, I guess not!’ roared the head that had curly hair. ‘He’s going west after mine.’

“Meanwhile the Giant had come to a standstill. He couldn’t run in any direction until his heads had agreed as to which way he should go, and all this time the beautiful hats were getting farther and farther away, and the heads more frantic than ever. For five full minutes they quarreled thus among themselves, turning now and then to peer weepingly after their beloved silk hats, and finally, with a supreme effort, each endeavored to force the Giant in the direction it wished him to go, with the result that poor Forepate was torn to pieces, and fell dead in the middle of the street.”

Here papa paused and closed his eyes for a minute.

“Is that all?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Yes—I believe that’s all. The Dude Giant was dead and the Dwarf was avenged.”

“And what became of Tiny?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, Tiny,” said his father, “Tiny—he—he laughed so heartily at the Dude Giant’s mishap that he loosened the impediment to his growth—”

“The what?” asked Jimmieboy, to whom words like impediment were rather strange.

“Why, the bone that kept him from growing,” explained the storyteller. “He loosened that and began to grow again, and inside of two weeks he was as handsome a six-footer as you ever saw, and as he had made a million and a half of dollars he resigned from the Exhibition and settled down in Europe for a number of years, had himself made a Grand Duke, and then came back to New York and got married, and lived happy ever after.”

And then, as the getting-up bell rang downstairs, Jimmieboy thanked his father for the story and went into the nursery to dress for breakfast.

•   3   •

JIMMIEBOY’S DREAM POETRY

If there is anything in the world that Jimmieboy likes better than custard and choo-choo cars, it is to snuggle down in his papa’s lap about bedtime and pretend to keep awake. It doesn’t matter at all how tired he is, or how late bedtime may on special occasions be delayed, he is never ready to be undressed and “filed away for the night,” as his Uncle Periwinkle puts it.

It was just this way the other night. He was as sleepy as he possibly could be. The sandman had left enough sand in his eyes, or so it seemed to Jimmieboy, to start a respectable sea-beach, and he really felt as if all he needed to make a summer resort of himself was a big hotel, a band of music, and an ocean. But in spite of all this he didn’t want to go to bed, and he had apparently made up his mind that he wasn’t going to want to go to bed for some time to come; and as his papa was in an unusually indulgent mood, the little fellow was permitted to nestle up close under his left arm and sit there on his lap in the library after dinner, while his mamma read aloud an article in one of the magazines on the subject of dream poetry.

It was a very interesting article, Jimmieboy thought. The idea of anybody’s writing poetry while asleep struck him as being very comical, and he laughed several times in a sleepy sort of way, and then all of a sudden he thought, “Why, if other people can do it, why can’t I?”

“Why?” he answered—he was quite fond of asking himself questions and then answering them—“why? Because you can’t write at all. You don’t know an H from a D, unless there’s a Horse in the picture with the H, and a Donkey with the D. That’s why.”

“True; but that’s only when I’m awake.”

“Try it and see,” whispered the Pencil in his papa’s vest pocket. “I’ll help, and maybe our old friend the Scratch Pad will help too.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Jimmieboy, taking the Pencil out of his papa’s pocket, and assisting it to climb down to the floor, so that it could run over to the desk and tell the Scratch Pad it was wanted.

“Don’t you lose my pencil,” said papa.

“No, I won’t,” replied Jimmieboy, his eyes following the Pencil in its rather winding course about the room to where the desk stood.

“I have to keep out of sight, you know, Jimmieboy,” the Pencil said, in a low tone of voice. “Because if I didn’t, and your papa saw me walking off, he’d grab hold of me and put me back in his pocket again.”

Suddenly the Pencil disappeared over by the wastebasket, and then Jimmieboy heard him calling, in a loud whisper: “Hi! Pad! Paddy! Pad-dee!”

“What’s wanted?” answered the Pad, crawling over the edge of the desk and peering down at the Pencil, who was by this time hallooing himself hoarse.

“Jimmieboy and I are going to write some dream poetry, and we want you to help,” said the Pencil.

“Oh, I’m not sleepy,” said the Pad.

“Neither am I,” returned the Pencil. “But that needn’t make any difference. Jimmieboy, does the sleeping and dreaming, and you and I do the rest.”

“Oh, that’s it, eh? Well, then, I don’t mind; but—er—how am I ever going to get down there?” asked the Pad. “It’s a pretty big jump.”

“That’s so,” answered the Pencil. “I wouldn’t try jumping. Can’t the Twine help you?”

“No. He’s all used up.”

“Then I have it,” said the Pencil. “Put a little mucilage on your back and slide down. The mucilage will keep you from going too fast.”

“Good scheme,” said the Pad, putting the Pencil’s suggestion into practice, and finding that it worked beautifully, even if it did make him feel uncomfortably sticky.

ARM IN ARM THEY TIPTOED
SOFTLY ACROSS THE ROOM

And then, arm in arm, they tiptoed softly across the room and climbed up into Jimmieboy’s lap. So quietly did they go that neither Jimmieboy’s mamma, nor his papa noticed them at all, as they might have had the conspirators been noisy, although mamma was reading and papa’s head was thrown back, so that his eyes rested on the picture molding.

“Here we are, Jimmieboy,” said the Pad. “Pen here tells me you’re going to try a little dream poetry.”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “I am, if you two will help.”

“Count on us,” said the Pencil. “What do you do first?”

“I don’t exactly know,” said Jimmieboy. “But I rather think I take Pencil in my hand, Pad in my lap, and fall asleep.”

“All right,” said the Pad, lying flat on his back. “I’m ready.”

“So am I,” put in the Pencil, settling down between two of Jimmieboy’s fingers.

“ALL ABOARD FOR SLEEP”

“All aboard for sleep,” said Jimmieboy, with a smile, and then he fell into a doze. In about two minutes he opened his eyes again, and found both Pad and Pencil in a great state of excitement.

“Did I write anything?” asked Jimmieboy, in an excited whisper.

“Yes,” said the Pad. “You just covered me up with a senseless mass of words. This isn’t any fun.”

“No,” said the Pencil. “It’s all nonsense. Just see here what you’ve got.”

Jimmieboy looked anxiously at the Pad, and this is what he saw:

I seensince,
memory’swrong,

They both dressed
couple walked

And straightway change
upstairs with me,

“I think it’s

“If that’s the case,”

catch the early in.”

to leave the shop,
for it’s pla

Polypop.

two weeks yesterday.”

haven’t uttered

Oh, Polypop, I

ersnee, “See here,

He didn’t pay
moon was shining bright.

To see the

Polypop came down

“Dear me!” he said. “Why, that doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

“No. There isn’t much in dream poetry, I guess,” said the Pad. “I’m going back home. Goodbye.”

“Oh, don’t go,” said the Pencil. “Let’s try it again—just once more. Eh?”

“Very well,” returned the Pad, good-naturedly, tearing off one of his leaves. “Go ahead, Jimmieboy.”

And Jimmieboy dozed off again.

“Wake up, wake up!” cried the Pencil in about three minutes. “We’ve got something this time.”

But they were all disappointed, for, when they looked, all that they could see was this:

have not them

And if my not
were in chintz;

With that the along;

your vest.”

For you to go

Replied best,
the Snickersnee,

And tra

I hadn’t time

“My reason in;

“I know it,” said the

Since

You one small cheer,
say,

Then quoth the Snick

his fee.

And as the

Snickersnee,

The one night,

“Rubbish!” said the Pad, indignantly. “There’s two leaves of myself wasted now on your old dream poetry. I think that’s enough. I’m off. Goodbye.”

“Don’t be hasty, Pad,” retorted the Pencil. “That’s a great deal better than the other. Why, there’s one part there with all the lines beginning with capitals, and when that happens it’s generally a sign that there’s poetry around.”

“There isn’t much there, though,” said Jimmieboy, a little disappointed by the result. “I guess Pad’s right. We’d better give it up.”

“Not yet,” pleaded the Pencil. “There’s luck in odd numbers, you know. Let’s try it just once more.”

“Shall we, Jimmieboy?” asked the Pad.

“Yes. Let’s,” assented Jimmieboy, as he dropped off to sleep for the third time.

This time he must have slept five minutes. When he opened his eyes he saw the Pencil staring blankly at the Pad, on which was written nothing more than this curious looking formula:

2
2
—
4

“How aggravating!” said Jimmieboy.

“Abominable!” ejaculated the Pad.

“I believe it’s a key to what has gone before,” said the Pencil, shaking his rubber wisely. “Two and two make four—two and two make four. Ah! I know. You’ve got to put two and two together to make four. If we put those two leaves of nonsensical words together, maybe we’ll have a poem. Let’s try.”

“It’ll use me up, I’m afraid,” sighed the Pad.

“Oh, no. It won’t take more than a half of you,” said the Pencil, putting the two leaves on which Jimmieboy had first written together.

“It looks like a poem,” he said, when he had fitted the two together. “Let’s see how it reads.

“I have not seen them since.

And if my memory’s not wrong,

They both were dressed in chintz,

With that the couple walked along;”

“That doesn’t mean a blessed thing,” said the Pad.

“It’s nonsense,” said Jimmieboy.

“Just wait!” said the Pencil, beginning to read again:

And straightway change your vest.”

For you to go upstairs with me,

Replied, “I think it’s best

“If that’s the case,” the Snickersnee

And catch the early train.”

I hadn’t time to leave the shop

“My reason for it’s plain;

“I know it,” said the Polypop;

“Since two weeks yesterday.”

You haven’t uttered one small cheer

Oh, Polypop, I say,

Then quoth the Snickersnee, “See here,

He didn’t pay his fee.

And as the moon was shining bright,

To see the Snickersnee,

The Polypop came down one night

“Ho!” jeered the Pad. “That’s elegant poetry, that is. You might get paid five cents a mile for stuff like that, if you wanted to sell it and had luck.”

“I don’t care,” said the Pencil. “It rhymes well.”

“Oh, I know what’s the matter,” said Jimmieboy, gleefully. “Why, of course it’s poetry. Read it upside down, and it’s all right. It’s dream poetry, and dreams always go the other way. Why, it’s fine. Just listen:

“The Polypop came down one night

To see the Snickersnee,

And, as the moon was shining bright,

He didn’t pay his fee.”

“That is good,” said the Pad. “Let me say the next:

“Then, quoth the Snickersnee, ‘See here,

Oh, Polypop, I say,

You have not uttered one small cheer

Since two weeks yesterday.’”

“I thought it would come out right,” said the Pencil. “The next two verses are particularly good, too:

“‘I know it,’ said the Polypop;

‘My reason for it’s plain;

I hadn’t time to leave the shop

And catch the early train.’

‘If that’s the case,’ the Snickersnee

Replied, ‘I think it’s best

For you to go upstairs with me,

And straightway change your vest.’”

“Now altogether,” cried the Pad, enthusiastically. “One, two, three!” And then they all recited:

“With that the couple walked along;

They both were dressed in chintz;

And if my memory’s not wrong,

I have not seen them since.”

“Hooray!” cried Jimmieboy, as they finished—so loudly that it nearly deafened the Pad, which jumped from his lap and scurried back to the table as fast as it could go.

“What’s that cheer for?” asked papa, looking down into Jimmieboy’s face, and grabbing the Pencil, which was on the point of falling to the floor.

“It’s for Dream Poetry,” murmured Jimmieboy, getting drowsy again. “I’ve just dreamed a lot. It’s on the Pad.”

“Indeed!” said papa, with a sly wink at mamma. “Let’s get the Pad and read it.”

NOTHING BUT DREAM-WRITING ON THE PAD

The little fellow straightened up and ran across to the desk, and, grasping the Pad firmly in his hands, handed it to his father to read.

“H’m!” said papa, staring at the leaf before him. “Blank verse.”

“Read it,” said Jimmieboy.

“I can’t tonight, my boy,” he answered. “My eyes are too weak for me to see dream writing.”

For between you and me that was the only kind of writing there was on that Pad.

•   4   •

A SUBTERRANEAN MUTINY

It seemed rather strange that it should have been left there, and yet Jimmieboy was glad that in grading his papa’s tennis court the men had left that bit of flat rock to show up on the surface of the lawn. It had afforded him no end of pleasure since he had first discovered it. As a make-believe island in a raging sea of grass, he had often used it to be cast away upon, but chiefly had he employed it as a vantage ground from which to watch his father and his father’s friends at their games of tennis. The rock was just about large enough for the boy to sit upon and pretend that he was umpire, or, as his father said, mascot for his father’s opponents, and it rarely happened that a game of tennis was played upon the court that was not witnessed by Jimmieboy seated upon his rocky coigne.

The strangest experience that Jimmieboy ever had with this bit of stone, however, was one warm afternoon last summer. It was at the drowsy period of the day. The tennis players were indulging in a game, which, to the little onlooker, was unusually dull, and he was on the point of starting off in pursuit of something, it mattered not what, so long as it was interesting enough to keep him awake, when he observed a most peculiar thing about the flat stone. It had unquestionably become transparent! Jimmieboy could see through it, and what he saw was of most unexpected quality.

“Dear me!” he ejaculated, “how very queer. This rock is made of glass.”

Then he peered down through it, and saw a beautiful marble staircase running down into the earth, at the foot of which was a great door that looked as though it was made of silver, and the key was of gold. At the sides of the staircase, hanging upon the walls, were pictures of strange little men and women, but unlike the men and women in other pictures, they moved about, and talked, and romped, and seemed to enjoy themselves hugely. Great pictures were they indeed to Jimmieboy’s mind, because they were constantly changing, like the designs in his kaleidoscope.

“I must get down there,” he said, softly, to himself. “But how?”

As he spoke the door at the foot of the steps opened, and a small creature, for all the world like the goblin in Jimmieboy’s fairy book, poked his head out. The goblin looked all about him, and then turning his eyes upward until they met those of the boy, he cried out:

“Hullo! Are you the toy peddler?”

“No,” replied Jimmieboy.

“Then you are the milk broker, or the potato merchant, and we don’t want any milk or any potatoes.”

The goblin slammed the door when he had said this, and with such a bang that all the little people in the pictures ran to the edge of the frame and peered out to see what was the matter. One poor little fellow, who had been tending sheep in a picture halfway up the stairs, leaned out so far that he lost his balance and tumbled out head over heels. The sheep scampered over the hill and disappeared in the background of the painting.

“Poor little shepherd boy!” said Jimmieboy. “I hope you are not hurt!”

The shepherd boy looked up gratefully at the speaker, and said he wasn’t, except in his feelings.

“Is there any way for me to get in there?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No, sir,” said the shepherd boy. “That is, not all of you. Part of you can come in.”

“Ho!” said Jimmieboy. “I can’t divide myself up.”

“Yes, you can,” returned the shepherd boy. “It’s easy enough, when you know how, but I suppose you don’t know how, not having studied arithmetic. You can’t even add, much less divide.”

“Maybe you can tell me how,” said Jimmieboy.

“Certainly, I can,” said the shepherd boy. “The part of you that can come in is your eye, and your ear, and your voice. All the rest of you must stay out.”

“But how do I get ’em in?” asked Jimmieboy.

“They are in now,” said the other. “You can see me, you can hear me, and I can hear you.”

“But I can’t see what’s beyond that door.”

“Oh, we’ll fix that,” said the little shepherd. “I’ll knock on the door, and when it is opened you can tell the goblin that you want to see what he’s got, and he’ll show it all to you if you tell him that your father is the man who didn’t blast the rock out.”

The shepherd boy then went softly down the stairs, knocked on the door, and before it was opened had flown back to his duties in the picture. Then, as he had intimated, the goblin opened the door again, and poking his head out as before, cried:

“Is that you, milk broker?”

“No,” answered Jimmieboy. “I am the son of the man who didn’t blast away the flat rock, and my eye and my ear and my voice want to come in.”

“Why, certainly,” said the goblin, throwing the door wide open. “I didn’t know you were you. Let ’em walk right in.”

Jimmieboy was about to say that he didn’t know how his eye or his ear or his voice could walk anywhere, but he was prevented from so doing by the sudden disappearance of the staircase, and the substitution therefor of a huge room, the splendor of which was so great that it for a moment dazzled his eyes.

“Who comes here?” said a voice in the corner of the room.

“The eye and the ear and the voice of the son of the man who did not blast the flat stone,” observed the goblin, and then Jimmieboy perceived, seated upon a lustrous golden throne, a shriveled-up dwarf, who looked as if he might be a thousand years old, but who, to judge from the crown he wore upon his head, was a king.

The dwarf was clad in garments of the richest texture, and his person was luminous with jewels of the rarest sort. As the goblin announced the visitor the king rose up, and descending from the throne, made a courtly bow to Jimmieboy.

“Thrice welcome, O son of the man who did not blast the flat rock,” he said. “It is only fitting that one who owes so much to the father should welcome the eye and the ear and the voice of the son, for know, O boy, that I am the lord of the Undergroundies whose kingdom would have been shattered but for your father’s kindly act in sparing it.”

“I suppose that blasting the rock would have spoiled all this,” said Jimmieboy’s voice, as his eye took in the royal magnificence of the place, while to his ears came strains of soft and sweet music. “It would have been dreadful!”

“Much more dreadful than you imagine,” replied the little king. “It would have worked damage that a lifetime could not have repaired.”

Then the king turned to a tall, pale creature in black who sat writing at a mahogany table in one corner of the throne room, and commanded him to recite into Jimmieboy’s ear how dreadful it would have been.

“Compose, O laureate,” he said to the tall, pale creature, “compose a song in which the dire effects of such a blast are fully set forth.”

The laureate rose from his seat, and bowing low before the king and Jimmieboy’s eye, began his song, which ran in this wise:

“A half a pound of dynamite

Set in that smooth, flat stone.

Our palace would quite out of sight

Most certainly have blown.

It would have blown our windowpanes

To high Gibraltar’s ledge,

And all our streets and country lanes

It would have set on edge.

It would have knocked our royal king

As far up as the moon;

Beyond the reach of anything—

Beyond the best balloon.

It would have taken all our pears,

Our candy and our toys,

And hurled them where the polar bears

Indulge in horrid noise.

It would have spoiled the music-box,

And ruined all our books—

Knocked holes in all our woolen socks,

And ruined thus their looks.

’Twould have destroyed our chandeliers,

To dough turned all our pie;

And, worst of all, my little dears,

It would have injured I.”

“Is that dreadful enough?” asked the laureate, turning to the king.

“It suits me,” said the king. “But perhaps our friend Jimmieboy would like to have it made a little more dreadful.”

“In that case,” said the laureate, “I can compose a few more verses in which the blast makes the tennis court over us cave in and bury all the cake and jam we have in the larder, or if he thinks that too much to sacrifice, and would like a little pleasure mixed in with the terribleness, the cod-liver oil bottle might be destroyed.”

“I wouldn’t spoil the cake and jam,” said Jimmieboy’s voice, in reply to this. “But the cod-liver oil might go.”

“Very well,” said the laureate, and then he bowed low again and sang:

“But there is balm for our annoy,

For next the blast doth spoil

Six hundred quarts—O joy! O joy!—

Of vile cod-liver oil.”

“I should think you would have liked that,” said Jimmieboy’s voice.

“I would have,” said the king, “because you know the law of this country requires the king to consume a bottle of cod-liver oil every day, and if the bottles were all broken, perhaps the law, too, would have been crushed out of existence. But, after all, I’d rather be king with cod-liver oil than have my kingdom ruined and do without it. How would you like to see our gardens?”

“Very much,” said Jimmieboy. “I’m fond of flowers.”

The king laughed.

“What a droll idea,” he said, turning to the laureate. “The idea of flowers growing in gardens! Write me a rhyme on the drollness of the idea.”

The laureate sighed. It was evident that he was getting tired of composing verses to order.

“I hear and obey,” he replied, shortly, and then he recited as follows:

“To think of wasting: any time

In raising flowers, I think,

Is worse than writing nonsense-rhyme,

Or frying purple ink.

It’s queerer really than the act

Of painting sword-fish green;

Or sailing down a cataract

To please a magazine.

Indeed, it really seems to me,

Who now am very old,

The drollest bit of drollery

That ever has been drolled.”

“But what do you raise in your gardens?” asked Jimmieboy, as the laureate completed his composition.

“Nothing, of course,” said the king. “What’s a garden for, anyhow? Pleasure, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy’s voice, “but—”

“There isn’t any but about it,” said the king. “If a garden is for pleasure it must not be worked in. Business and pleasure are two very different things, and you cannot raise flowers without working.”

“But how do you get pleasure out of a garden when you don’t raise anything in it?”

“Aren’t you dull!” ejaculated the king. “Write me a quatrain on his dullness, O laureate.”

“Confound his dullness!” muttered the laureate. “I’m rapidly wearing out, poetizing about this boy.” Then he added, aloud: “Certainly, your majesty. Here it is:

“He is the very dullest lad

I’ve seen in all my life;

For dullness he is quite as bad

As any oyster-knife.”

“Is that all?” asked the king, with a frown.

“I’m afraid four lines is as many as I can squeeze into a quatrain,” said the laureate, returning the frown with interest.

“Then tell this young man’s ear, sirrah, how it comes that we get pleasure out of a garden in which nothing grows.”

“If I must—I suppose I must,” growled the laureate; and then he recited:

“The plan is thus, O little wit,

You’ll see it in a minute;

We get our pleasures out of it,

Because there’s none within it.”

“That is very poor poetry, Laury!” snapped the king.

“If you don’t like it, don’t take it,” retorted the laureate. “I’m tired of this business, anyhow.”

“And what, pray,” cried the king, striding angrily forward to the mutinous poet, “what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to get up a revolution,” retorted the laureate, shaking his quill pen fiercely at the king. “If I go to the people tomorrow, and promise not to write any more poetry, they’ll all be so grateful they’ll make me king, and set you to work wheeling coal in the mines for the mortals.”

The king’s face grew so dark with anger as the laureate spoke that Jimmieboy’s eye could hardly see two inches before itself, and in haste the little fellow withdrew it from the scene. What happened next he never knew, but that missiles were thrown by the quarreling king and poet he was certain, for there was a tremendous shout, and something just tipped the end of his ear and went whizzing by, and rubbing his eyes, the boy looked about him, and discovered that he was still lying face downward upon the flat rock, but it was no longer transparent.

Off in the bushes directly back of him was his father, looking for a tennis ball. This, some people say, is the object that whizzed past Jimmieboy’s ear, but to this day the little fellow believes that it was nothing less than the king’s crown, which that worthy monarch had hurled at the laureate, that did this.

For my part I take sides with neither, for, as a matter of fact, I know nothing about it.

•   5   •

JIMMIEBOY IN THE LIBRARY

“I’m going to sit in this comfor’ble armchair by the fire,” said Jimmieboy, climbing up into the capacious easy-chair in his father’s library, and settling down upon its soft cushioned seat. “I’ve had my supper, and it was all of cold things, and I think I ought to get ’em warmed up before I go to bed.”

“Very well,” said his papa. “Only be careful, and keep your feet awake. It wouldn’t be comfortable if your feet should go to sleep just about the time your mamma wanted you to go to bed. I’d have to carry you upstairs, if that should happen, and the doctor says if I carry you much longer I’ll have a back like a dromedary.”

“Oh, that would be lovely!” said Jimmieboy. “I’d just like to see you with two humps on your back—one for me, and one for my little brother.”

“Dear me!” said a gruff voice at Jimmieboy’s side—“Dear me! The idea of a boy of your age, with two sets of alphabet picture blocks and a dictionary right in the house, not knowing that a dromedary has only one hump! Ridiculous! Next thing you’ll be trying to say that the one-eyed catteraugus has two eyes.”

Jimmieboy leaned over the arm of the chair to see who it could be that spoke. It wasn’t his father, that much was certain, because his father had often said that it wasn’t possible to do more than three things at once, and he was now doing that many—smoking a cigar, reading a book, and playing with the locket on the end of his watch-chain.

“Who are you, anyhow?” said Jimmieboy, as he peered over the arm, and saw nothing but the Dictionary.

“I’m myself—that’s who,” was the answer, and then Jimmieboy was interested to see that it was nothing less than the Dictionary itself that had addressed him. “You ought to be more careful about the way you talk,” added the Dictionary. “Your diction is airy without being dictionary, if you know what that means, which you don’t, as the Rose remarked to the Cauliflower, when the Cauliflower said he’d be a finer Rose than the Rose if he smelled as sweet.”

“I’m very sorry,” Jimmieboy replied, meekly, “I forgot that the dromedary only had one hump.”

“I don’t believe you’d know a dromedary from a milk dairy if they both stood before you,” retorted the Dictionary. “Now would you?”

“Yes, I think I would,” said Jimmieboy. “The milk dairy would have cream in bottles in its windows, and the dromedary wouldn’t.”

“Ah, but you don’t know why!” sang the Dictionary. “You don’t even begin to know why the dromedary wouldn’t have cream in bottles in its windows.”

“No,” said Jimmieboy, “I don’t. Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because he has no windows,” laughed the Dictionary; “and between you and me, that’s one of the respects in which the dromedary is like a bass drum—there isn’t a solitary window in either of ’em.”

“You know a terrible lot, don’t you?” said Jimmieboy, patronizingly.

“Terrible isn’t the word. I’m simply hideously learned,” said the Dictionary. “Why, I’ve been called a vocabulary, I know so many words.”

“I wish you’d tell me all you know,” said Jimmieboy, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair, and putting his chin on the palms of his two hands. “I’d like to know more than papa does—just for once. Do you know enough to tell me anything he doesn’t know?”

“Do I?” laughed the Dictionary. “Well, don’t I? Rather. Why, I’m telling him things all the time. He came and asked me the other night what raucous meant, and how to spell macrobiotic.”

“And did you really know?” asked Jimmieboy, full of admiration for this wonderful creature.

“Yes; and a good deal more besides. Why, if he had asked me, I could have told him what a zygomatic zoophagan is; but he never asked me. Queer, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “What is one of those things?”

“A zygomatic zoophagan? Why, that’s a—er—let me see,” said the Dictionary, turning over his leaves. “I like to search myself pretty thoroughly before I commit myself to a definition. A zygomatic zoophagan is a sort of cheeky animal that eats other animals. You are one, though I wouldn’t brag about it if I were you. You are an animal, and at times a very cheeky animal, and I’ve seen you eat beef. That’s what makes you a zygomatic zoophagan.”

“Do I bite?” asked Jimmieboy, a little afraid of himself since he had learned what a fearful creature he was.

“Only at dinnertime, and unless you are very careless about it and eat too hastily you need not be afraid. Very few zygomatic zoophagans ever bite themselves. In fact, it never happened really but once that I know of. That was the time the zoophagan got the best of the eight-winged tallahassee. Ever hear about that?”

THE CALIPEE AND THE ZOOPHAGAN

“No, I never did,” said Jimmieboy. “How did it happen?”

“This way,” said the Dictionary, as he stood up and made a bow to Jimmieboy. And then he recited these lines:

“THE CALIPEE AND THE ZOOPHAGAN.

“The yellow-faced Zoophagan

Was strolling near the sea,

When from the depths of ocean

Sprang forth that dread amp-hib-ian,

The mawkish Calipee.

The Tallahassee bird sometimes

The Calipee is called.

His eyes are round and big as dimes,

He has eight wings, composes rhymes,

His head is very bald.

Now if there are two creatures in

This world who disagree—

Two creatures full of woe and sin—

They are the Zo-oph, pale and thin,

And that bad Calipee.

Whene’er they meet they’re sure to fight,

No matter where they are;

Nor do they stop by day or night,

Till one is beaten out of sight,

Or safety seeks afar.

And, sad to say, the Calipee

Is stronger of the two;

And so he’d won the victory

At all times from his enemy,

The slight and slender Zoo.

But this time it went otherwise,

For, so the story goes,

As yonder sun set in the skies,

The Calipee, to his surprise,

Was whacked square on the nose.

Which is the fatal, mortal part

Of all the Calipees;

Much more important than the heart,

For life is certain to depart

When Cali cannot sneeze.

The world, surprised, asked ‘How was it?

How did he do it so?

Where did the Zoo get so much wit?

How did he learn so well to hit

So fatally his foe?’

’Twas but his strategy,’ then cried

The friends of little Zoo;

‘As Cali plunged, our hero shied,

Ran twenty feet off to one side,

And bit himself in two.

‘And then, you see, the Calipee

Was certainly undone;

The Zo-oph beat him easily,

As it must nearly always be

When there are two to one.’

“Rather a wonderful tale that,” continued the Dictionary. “I don’t know that I really believe it, though. It’s too great a tale for any dog to wag, eh?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “I don’t think I believe it either. If the zoophagan bit himself in two, I should think he’d have died. I know I would.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” said the Dictionary; “because you couldn’t. It isn’t a question of would and could, but of wouldn’t and couldn’t. By the way, here’s a chance for you to learn something. What’s the longest letter in the alphabet?”

“They’re all about the same, aren’t they?” asked Jimmieboy.

“They look so, but they aren’t. L is the longest. An English ell is forty-five inches long. Here’s another. What letter does a Chinaman wear on his head?”

“Double eye!” cried Jimmieboy.

“That’s pretty good,” said the Dictionary, with an approving nod; “but you’re wrong. He wears a Q. And I’ll tell you why a Q is like a Chinaman. Chinamen don’t amount to a row of beans, and a Q is nothing but a zero with a pig-tail. Do you know why they put A at the head of the alphabet?”

“No.”

“Because Alphabet begins with an A.”

“Then why don’t they put T at the end of it?” asked Jimmieboy.

“They do,” said the Dictionary. “I-T—it.”

Jimmieboy laughed to himself. He had no idea there was so much fun in the Dictionary. “Tell me something more,” he said.

“Let me see. Oh, yes,” said the Dictionary, complacently. “How’s this?

“‘Oh, what is a yak, sir?’ the young man said;

‘I really much wish to hear.’

‘A queer-looking cad with a bushy head,

A buffalo-robe all over him spread,

And whiskers upon his ear.’

And tell me, I pray,’ said the boy in drab,

Just what’s a Thelphusi-an?’

‘A great big crab with nippers that nab

Whatever the owner desires to grab—

A crusty crustace-an.”

‘I’m obliged,’ said the boy, with a wide, wide smirk,

As he slowly moved away.

‘Will you tell me, sir, ere I go to work—

To toil till the night brings along its murk—

How high peanuts are today?’

And I had to give in,

For I couldn’t say;

And the boy, with a grin,

Moved off on his way.”

“That was my own personal experience,” said the Dictionary. “The boy was a very mean boy, too. He went about telling people that there were a great many things I didn’t know, which was very true, only he never said what they were, and his friends thought they were important things, like the meaning of sagaciousness, and how many jays are there in geranium, and others. If he’d told ’em that it was things like the price of peanuts, and how are the fish biting today, and is your mother’s seal-skin sack plush or velvet, that I didn’t know, they’d not have thought it disgraceful. Oh, it was awfully mean!”

“Particularly after you had told him what those other things were,” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes; but I got even with him. He came to me one day to find out what an episode was, and I told him it was a poem in hysterical hexameters, with a refrain repeated every eighteenth line, to be sung to slow music.”

“And what happened?” asked Jimmieboy.

“He told his teacher that, and he was kept in for two months, and made to subtract two apples from one lunch every recess.”

“Oh, my, how awful!” cried Jimmieboy.

“But it served him right. Don’t you think so?” said the Dictionary.

“Yes, I do,” said Jimmieboy. “But tell me. What’ll I tell papa that he doesn’t know?”

“Tell him that a sasspipedon is a barrel with four sides, and is open at both ends, and is a much better place for cigar ashes than his lap, because they pass through it to the floor, and so do not soil his clothes.”

“Good!” said Jimmieboy, peering across the room to where his father still sat smoking. “I think I’ll tell him now. Say, papa,” he cried sitting up, “what is a sasspipedon?”

“I don’t know. What?” answered Jimmieboy’s father, laying his paper down, and coming over to where the little boy sat.

“It’s a—it’s a—it’s an ash-barrel,” said the little fellow, trying to remember what the Dictionary had said.

“Who said so?” asked papa.

“The Dictionary,” answered Jimmieboy.

And when Jimmieboy’s father came to examine the Dictionary on the subject, the disagreeable old book hadn’t a thing to say about the sasspipedon, and Jimmieboy went up to bed wondering what on earth it all meant, anyhow.

•   6   •

JIMMIEBOY’S SNOWMAN

The snow had been falling fast for well-nigh forty-eight hours and Jimmieboy was almost crazy with delight. He loved the snow because it was possible to do so much with it. One didn’t need to go into a store, for instance, and part with ten cents every time one happened to want a ball, when there was snow on the ground. Then, too, Jimmieboy had a new sled he wanted to try, but best of all, his father had promised to make him a snowman, with shoe-buttons for eyes and a battered old hat on his head, if perchance there could be found anywhere in the house a hat of that sort. Fortunately a battered old hat was found, and the snowman when finished looked very well in it. I say fortunately because Jimmieboy had fully made up his mind that a battered hat was absolutely necessary to make the snowman a success, and had not the old one been found I very much fear the youth would have taken his father’s new one and battered that into the state of usefulness required to complete the icy statue to his satisfaction.

After the snowman was finished Jimmieboy romped about him and shouted in great glee for an hour or more, and then, growing a little weary of the sport, he ran up into his nursery to rest for a little while. He had not been there very long however when he became, for some unknown reason, uneasy about the funny looking creature he had left behind him. Running to the window he looked out to see if the snowman was all right, and he was much surprised to discover that he wasn’t there at all. He couldn’t have melted, that was certain, for the air was colder than it had been when the snowman was put up. No one could have stolen him because he was too big, and so, well, it certainly was a strange conclusion, but none the less the only one, he must have walked off himself.

“It’s mighty queer!” thought Jimmieboy. “He was there ten minutes ago.”

Then he ran downstairs and peered out of the window. At the front of the house no snowman was in sight. Then he went to a side window and looked out. Still no snowman. And then the doorbell rang, and Jimmieboy went to the door and opened it, and, dear me! how he laughed when he saw who it was that had rung the bell, as would also have you, for, honestly, it was no one else than the snowman himself.

“What do you want?” asked Jimmieboy. The snowman made a low bow to Jimmieboy, and replied:

“I got so weary standing there,

I thought I’d ask you for a chair;

’tis rather cool of me, I know,

But coolness in a man of snow

Is quite the fashion in these days,

And to be stylish always pays.”

“Won’t you come in?” asked Jimmieboy politely.

The snowman stared at Jimmieboy with all the power of the shoe-buttons. He was evidently surprised. In a moment or two, however, he recovered and said:

“Indeed, I’ll enter not that door,

I’ve tried it once or twice before.”

“What of that?” asked Jimmieboy. “Didn’t you like it?”

“Oh, yes; I liked it well enough,

Although it used me pretty rough;

I lost a nose and foot and ear,

Last time I happened to come here.”

“Do you always speak in rhyme?” asked Jimmieboy, noticing the snowman’s habit for the first time.

“Always, except when I speak in prose,” said the snowman. “But perhaps you don’t like rhyme?”

“Yes, I do like rhyme very much,” said Jimmieboy.

“Then you like me,” said the snowman, “because I’m mostly rime myself. But say, don’t stand there with the door open letting all the heat out into the world. If you want to talk to me come outside where we can be comfortable.”

“Very well,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ll come, if you’ll wait until I bundle up a little so as to keep warm.”

“All right, I’ll wait,” the snowman answered, “only don’t you get too warm. I’ll take you up to where I live and introduce you to my boys if you like—only hurry. If a thaw should set in we might have trouble.

“Of all mean things I ever saw

The meanest of them is a thaw.”

Jimmieboy, pondering deeply over his curious experience, quickly donned his overcoat and rubber boots, and in less time than it takes to tell it was out of doors again with the snowman. The huge white creature smiled happily as Jimmieboy came out, and taking him by the hand they went off up the road together.

“I’m glad you weren’t offended with me because I wouldn’t go in and sit down in your house,” said the snowman, after they had walked a little way. “I had a very narrow escape thirty winters ago when I was young and didn’t know any better than to accept an invitation of that sort. I lived in Russia then, and a small boy very much like you asked me to go into his house with him and see some funny picture-books he had. I said all right, and in I went, never thinking that the house was hot and that I’d be in danger of melting away. The boy got out his picture-books and we sat down before a blazing log fire. Suddenly the boy turned white as I was, and cried out:

“‘Hi! What have you done with your leg?’

“‘I brought it in with me, didn’t I?’ I said, looking down to where the leg ought to be, and noticing much to my concern that it was gone.

“‘I thought so,’ said the boy. ‘Maybe you left it down on the hat-rack with your hat and cane.’

“‘Well I wish you’d go and see,’ said I, very nervously. ‘I don’t want to lose that leg if I can help it.’

“So off the boy went,” continued the snowman, “and I waited there before the fire wondering what on earth had become of the missing limb. The boy soon came back and announced that he couldn’t find it.

“‘Then I must hop around until I do find it,’ I put in, starting up. Would you believe it, Jimmieboy, that the minute I tried to rise and hop off on the search I discovered that my other leg was gone too?”

“Dear me!” said Jimmieboy. “How dreadful.”

“It was fearful,” returned the snowman, “but that wasn’t half. I raised my hand to my forehead so as to think better, when off dropped my right arm, and as I reached out with my left to pick it up again that dropped off too. Then as my vest also disappeared, the boy cried out:

“‘Why, I know what’s the matter. You are melting away!’

“He was right. The heat of the log fire was just withering me right up. Fortunately as my neck began to go and my head rolled off the chair onto the floor, the boy had presence of mind enough to pick it up—it was all that was left of me—and throw it out of the window. If it hadn’t been for that timely act of his I should have met the horrid fate of my cousin the iceberg.”

“What was that?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, he wanted to travel,” said the snowman, “so he floated off down to South America and waked up one morning to find himself nothing but a tankful of the Gulf of Mexico. We never saw the poor fellow again.”

“I understand now why you didn’t want to come in,” said Jimmieboy, “and I’m glad you didn’t do as I asked you, for I don’t think mamma would have been pleased if you’d melted away in the parlor.”

“I know she wouldn’t,” said the snowman. “She’s like the woman mentioned in the poem, who

“—hated flies and muddy shoes,

As well as pigs and kangaroos;

But most of all she did abhor,

A melted snowdrift on the floor.”

“Do you live near here?” asked Jimmieboy as he trudged along at the snowman’s side.

“Well,” replied the snowman, “I do, and I don’t. When I do, I do, and when I don’t, it’s otherwise. This climate doesn’t agree with me in the summer, and so when summer comes I move up to the North Pole. Ever been there?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy, “what sort of a place is it?”

“Fine,” returned the snowman. “The thermometer is always at least twenty miles below zero, even on the hottest days, and fire can’t by any possibility come near us. Only one fire ever tried to and it was frozen stiff before it got within a hundred leagues of us. In winter, however, I come to places like this, and bring my little boys with me. We hire a convenient snowdrift and live in that. There’s mine now right ahead of you.”

Jimmieboy peered curiously along the road, at the far end of which he could see a huge mound of snow like the one the famous blizzard had piled up in front of his father’s house some time before Jimmieboy and the world came to know each other.

“Do you live in that?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the snowman. “And I will say that it’s one of the most conveniently arranged snowdrifts I ever lived in. The house part of it is always as cold as ice—it’s cooled by a special kind of refrigerator I had put in, which consumes about half a ton of ice a week.”

Jimmieboy laughed.

“It’s a cold furnace, eh?” he said.

“Precisely,” answered the snowman. “And besides that the house is deliciously drafty so that we have no difficulty in keeping cold. Once in a while my boys run in the sun and get warmed through, but I dose ’em up with ice-water and cold cream and they soon get chilled again. But come, shall we go in?”

The pedestrians had by this time reached the side of the snowdrift, and Jimmieboy was pleased to see a door at one side of it. This the snowman opened, and they entered together a marvelously beautiful and extensive garden glistening with frosty flowers and snow-clad trees. At the end of the garden was a little white house that looked like the icing on Jimmieboy’s birthday cake. As they approached it, the door of the little house was thrown open and a dozen small-sized snow boys rushed out and began to pelt the snowman and Jimmieboy with tennis balls.

“Hold up, boys,” cried the snowman. “I’ve brought a friend home to see you.”

The boys stopped at once, and Jimmieboy was introduced to them. For hours they entertained him in the gardens and in the house. They showed him wondrous snow toys, among which were rocking horses, railway trains, soldiers—all made of the same soft fleecy substance from which the snowman and his children were constructed. When he had played for a long time with these they gave him caramels and taffy and cream cakes, these also made of snow, though as far as their taste went they were better than those made of sugar and chocolate and cream, or, at least, it seemed so to Jimmieboy at the time.

After this bit of luncheon the boys invited him out to coast, and he went along with them to the top of a high hill without any snow upon it, and for hours he and they slid from summit to base in great red-wheeled wagons. It took his breath away the first time he went down, but when he got used to it he found the sport delightful. He was glad, however, when a voice from the little white house called to the children to return.

“Come in now, boys,” it said. “It is getting too warm for you to stay out.”

The boys were obedient to the word and they all—a dozen of them at least—trooped back into the house where Jimmieboy was welcomed by his friend the snowman again. The snowman looked a little anxious, Jimmieboy thought, but he supposed this was because the littlest snowboy had overheated himself at his play and had come in minus two fingers and an ear. It was not this, however, that bothered him, as Jimmieboy found out in a few minutes, for the snowman simply restored the missing fingers and the ear by making a new lot for the little fellow out of a handful of snow he got in the garden. Anything so easily replaced was not worth worrying over. The real cause of his anxiety came out when the father of this happy little family of snow boys called Jimmieboy to one side.

“You must go home right away,” he said. “I’m sorry, but we have got to fly just as hard as we can or we are lost.”

“But—” said Jimmieboy.

“Don’t ask for reasons,” returned the snowman, gathering his little snowboys together and rushing off with them in tow. “I haven’t time to give them. Just read that and you’ll see. Farewell.”

Then he made off down the garden path, and as he fled with his babies Jimmieboy picked up the thing the snowman had told him to read, and wandered back into the house, holding it in his hand. It was only a newspaper, but at the top of the first column was an announcement in huge letters:

WARM WAVE TONIGHT
*   *   *   *   *   *
WISE SNOWMEN
WILL MOVE NORTH AT ONCE

When Jimmieboy saw this he knew right away why he had been deserted, but to this day he doesn’t know how he knew it, because at the time this happened he had not learned how to read. At all events he discovered what the trouble was instantly, and then he decided that as he had been left by all of his new friends he would go home. He walked to the front door and opened it, and what do you suppose it opened into?

The garden?

Not a bit of it.

Into Jimmieboy’s nursery itself, and when the door closed upon him after he had stepped through it into the nursery and Jimmieboy turned to look at it, lo, and behold it wasn’t there!

Nor was the snowman to be found the next morning. It was quite evident that he had got away from the warm wave that appeared on the scene the night before, for there wasn’t even a sign of the shoe-button eyes or the battered hat, as there certainly would have been had he melted instead of run away.

•   7   •

THE BICYCLOPEDIA BIRD

“Boo!” said something.

And Jimmieboy of course was startled. So startled was he that, according to his own statement, he jumped ninety-seven feet, though for my own part I don’t believe he really jumped more than thirty-three. He was too sleepy to count straight anyhow. He had been lolling under his canvas tent down near the tennis court all the afternoon, getting lazier and lazier every minute, and finally he had turned over square on his back, put his head on a small cushion his mamma had made for him, closed his eyes, and then came the “Boo!”

“I wonder—” he said, as he gazed about him, seeing no sign of any creature that could by any possibility say “Boo!” however.

“Of course you do. That’s why I’ve come,” interrupted a voice from the bushes. “More children of your age suffer from the wonders than from measles, mumps, or canthaves.”

“What are canthaves?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Canthaves are things you can’t have. Don’t you ever suffer because you can’t have things?” queried the voice.

“Oh, yes, indeed!” returned Jimmieboy. “Lots and lots of times.”

“And didn’t you ever have the wonders so badly that you got cross and wouldn’t eat anything but sweet things for dinner?” the voice asked.

“I don’t know exactly what you mean by the wonders,” replied Jimmieboy.

“Why, wonders is a disease that attacks boys who want to know why things are and can’t find out,” said the voice.

“Oh, my, yes I’ve had that lots of times,” laughed Jimmieboy. “Why, only this morning I asked my papa why there weren’t any dandelionesses, and he wouldn’t tell me because he said he had to catch a train, and I’ve been wondering why ever since.”

“I thought you’d had it; all boys do get it sooner or later, and it’s a thing you can have any number of times unless you have me around,” said the voice.

“What are you anyhow?” asked Jimmieboy.

“I’m what they call the Encyclopedia Bird. I’m a regular owl for wisdom. I know everything—just like the Cyclopaedia; and I have two wheels instead of legs, which is why they call me the Bicyclopedia Bird. I can’t let you see me, because these are not my office hours. I can only be seen between ten and two on the thirty-second of March every seventeenth year. You can get a fair idea of what I look like from my photograph, though.”

As the voice said this, sure enough a photograph did actually pop out of the bush, and land at Jimmieboy’s feet. He sprang forward eagerly, stooped, and picking it up, gazed earnestly at it. And a singular creature the Bicyclopedia Bird must have been if the photograph did him justice. He had the head of an owl, but his body was oblong in shape, just like a book, and, as the voice had said, in place of legs were two wheels precisely like those of a bicycle. The effect was rather pleasing, but so funny that Jimmieboy really wanted to laugh. He did not laugh, however, for fear of hurting the Bird’s feelings, which the Bird noticed and appreciated.

“Thank you,” he said, simply.

“What for?” asked Jimmieboy, looking up from the photograph, and peering into the bush in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of the Bird itself.

“For not laughing,” replied the Bird. “If you had laughed I should have biked away at once because I am of no value to anyone who laughs at my personal appearance. It always makes me forget all I know, and that does me up for a whole year. If I forget all I know, you see, I have to study hard to learn it all over again, and that’s a tremendous job, considering how much knowledge there is to be had in the world. So you see, by being polite and kind enough not to laugh at me, who can’t help being funny to look at, and who am not to blame for looking that way, because I am not a self-made Bird, you are really the gainer, for I promise you I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“That’s very nice of you,” returned Jimmieboy; “and perhaps, to begin with, you’ll tell me something that I ought to want to know, whether I do or not.”

“That is a very wise idea,” said the Bicyclopedia Bird, “and I’ll try to do it. Let me see; now, do you know why the Pollywog is always amiable?”

“No,” returned Jimmieboy. “I never even knew that he was, and so couldn’t really wonder why.”

“But you wonder why now, don’t you?” asked the voice, anxiously. “For if you don’t, I can’t tell you.”

“I’m just crazy to know,” Jimmieboy responded.

“Then listen, and I will tell you,” said the voice. And then the strange bird recited this poem about

THE POLLYWOG.

“The Pollywog’s a perfect type

Of amiability.

He never uses angry speech

Wherever he may be.

He never calls his brother names,

Or tweaks his sister’s nose;

He never pulls the sea-dog’s tail,

Or treads upon his toes.

He never says an unkind word,

And frown he never will.

A smile is ever on his lips,

E’en when he’s feeling ill.

And this is why: when Pollywog

The first came on the scene,

He had a temper like a cat’s—

His eye with it was green.

Now, just about the time when he

Began to lose his tail,

To change into a croaking frog,

He came across a nail—

A nail so rusty that it looked

Just like an angleworm,

Except that it was straight and stiff,

And so could never squirm.

And Polly, feeling hungry, to

Assuage his appetite,

Swam boldly up to that old nail,

And gave it such a bite,

He nearly broke his upper jaw;

His lower jaw he bent.

And then he got so very mad,

His temper simply went.

He lost it so completely as

He lashed and gnashed around,

That though this happened years ago,

It has not since been found.

And that is why, at all times, in

The Pollywog you see,

A model of that virtue rare—

True Amiability.”

“Now, I dare say,” continued the Bird—“I dare say you might have asked your father—who really knows a great deal, considering he isn’t my twin brother—sixteen million four hundred and twenty-three times why the Pollywog is always so good-natured, and he couldn’t have answered you more than once out of the whole lot, and he’d have been wrong even then.”

“It must be lovely to know so much,” said Jimmieboy.

“It is,” said the Bird; “that is, it is lovely when you don’t have to keep it all to yourself. It’s very nice to tell things. That’s really the best part of secrets, I think. It is such fun telling them. Now, why does the sun rise in the morning?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“For the same reason that you do,” returned the sage Bird. “Because it is time to get up.”

“Well, here’s a thing I don’t know about,” said Jimmieboy. “What is ‘to alarm?’”

“To frighten—to scare—to discombobulate,” replied the Bird. “Why?”

“Well, I don’t see why an alarm-clock is called an alarm-clock, because it doesn’t ever alarm anybody,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh, it doesn’t, eh?” cried the Bird. “Well, that’s just where you are mistaken. It alarms the people or the animals you dream about when you are asleep, and they make such a noise getting away that they wake you up. Why, an alarm-clock saved my life once. I dreamed that I fell asleep on board a steamboat that went so fast hardly anybody could stay on board of her—she just regularly slipped out from under their feet, and unless a passenger could run fast enough to keep up with her, or was chained fast enough to keep aboard of her, he’d get dropped astern every single time. I dreamed I was aboard of her one day, and that to keep on deck I chained myself to the smokestack, and then dozed off. Just as I was dozing, a Misinformation Bird, who was jealous of me, sneaked up and cut the chain. As he expected, the minute I was cut loose the boat rushed from under me, and the first thing I knew I was struggling in the water. While I was struggling there, I was attacked by a Catfish. Cats are death to birds, you know, and I really had given myself up for lost, when ‘ting-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling’ went the alarm-clock in the corner of my cage; the fish turned blue with fear, swished his tail about in his fright, and the splashing of the water waked me up, and there I was standing on one wheel on my perch, safe and sound. If that clock hadn’t gone off and alarmed that Catfish, I am afraid I should have been forever lost to the world.”

“I see now; but I never knew before why it was called an alarm-clock, and I’ve wondered about it a good deal,” said Jimmieboy. “Now, here’s another thing I’ve bothered over many a time: What’s the use of weeds?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said the Bird, with a laugh. “To make lawns look prettier next year than they do this.”

“I don’t see how that is,” said Jimmieboy.

“Clear as window glass. This year you have weeds on your lawn, don’t you?”

“Yes,” returned Jimmieboy.

“And you make them get out, don’t you?” said the Bird.

“Yes,” assented Jimmieboy.

“Well, there you are. By getting out they make your lawns prettier. That’s one of the simplest things in the world. But here’s a thing I should think you’d wonder at. Why do houses have shutters on their windows?” asked the Bird.

“I know why,” said Jimmieboy. “It’s to keep the sun out.”

“That’s nonsense, because the sun is so much larger than any house that was ever built it couldn’t get in if it tried,” returned the feathered sage.

“Then I don’t know why. Why?” asked Jimmieboy.

“So as to wake people up by banging about on windy nights, and they are a mighty useful invention too,” said the Bird. “I knew of a whole family that got blown away once just because they hadn’t any shutters to bang about and warn them of their danger. It was out in the West, where they have cyclones, which are things that pick up houses and toss them about just as you would pebbles. A Mr. and Mrs. Podlington had built a house in the middle of a big field for themselves and their seventeen children. Mr. Podlington was very rich, but awful mean, and when the house was finished, all except the shutters, he said he wasn’t going to have any shutters because they cost too much, and so they hadn’t a shutter on the house. One night after they had lived where they were about six months they all went to bed about nine o’clock, and by ten they were sound asleep, every one of them. At eleven o’clock a breeze sprang up. This grew very shortly into a gale. Then it became a hurricane, and by two o’clock it was a cyclone. One cyclone wouldn’t have hurt much, but at three o’clock two more came along, and the first thing the Podlington family knew their house was blown off its foundations, lifted high up in the air, and at breakfast-time was out of sight, and, what is worse, it has never come down anywhere, and all this happened ten years ago.”

“But where did it go?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Nobody knows. Maybe it landed in the moon. Maybe it’s being blown about on the wings of those cyclones yet. I don’t believe we’ll ever know,” answered the Bird. “But you can see just why that all happened. It was Mr. Podlington’s meanness about the shutters, and nothing else. If he had had shutters on that house, at least one of them would have flopped bangety-bang against the house all night, and the chances are that they would all have been waked up by it before the cyclone came, and in plenty of time to save themselves. In fact, I think very likely they could have fastened the house more securely to the ground, and saved it too, if they had waked up and seen what was going on.”

“I’LL NEVER BUILD A HOUSE
WITHOUT SHUTTERS”

“I’ll never build a house without shutters,” said Jimmieboy, as he tried to fancy the condition of the Podlingtons whisking about in the air for ten long years—nearly five years longer than he himself had lived. If they had landed in the moon it wouldn’t have been so bad, but this other possible and even more likely fate of mounting on the wind ever higher and higher and not landing anywhere was simply dreadful to think about.

“I wouldn’t, especially in the cyclone country,” returned the voice in the bush. “But I’ll tell you of one thing that would save you if you really did have to build a house without shutters; build it with wings. You’ve heard of houses with wings, of course?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Jimmieboy. “Why, our house has three wings. One of ’em was put on it last summer, so that we could have a bigger kitchen.”

“I remember,” said the Bird. “I wondered a good deal about that wing until I found out it was for a kitchen, and not to fly with. The house had enough wings to fly with without the new one. In fact, the new one for flying purposes would be as useless as a third wheel to a bicycle.”

“What do you mean by to fly with?” asked Jimmieboy, puzzled at this absurd remark of the Bird.

“Exactly what I say. Wings are meant to fly with, aren’t they? I hope you knew that!” said the Bird. “So if the Podlingtons’ house had had wings it might have got back all right. It could have worked its way slowly out of the cyclone, and then sort of rested on its wings a little until it was prepared to swoop down on to its old foundations, alighting just where it was before. A trip through the air under such circumstances would have been rather pleasant, I think—much pleasanter than going off into the air forever, without any means of getting back.”

“But,” asked Jimmieboy, “even if Mr. Podlington’s house had had wings, how could he have made them work?”

“Why, how stupid of you!” cried the Bird. “Don’t you know that he could have taken hold of the—”

“Ting-a-ling-a-ling a-ling-a-ling!” rang the alarm-clock up in the cook’s room, which had been set for six o’clock in the afternoon instead of for six in the morning by some odd mistake of Mary Ann’s.

“The alarm! The alarm!” shrieked the Bird, in terror.

And then the invisible creature, if Jimmieboy could judge by the noise in the bush, seemed to make off as fast as he could go, his cries of fear growing fainter and fainter as the wise Bird got farther and farther away, until finally they died away in the distance altogether.

Jimmieboy sprang to his feet, looked down the road along which his strange friend had fled, and then walked into the house, wishing that the alarm-clock had held off just a little longer, so that he might have learned how the wings of a house should be managed to make the house fly off into the air. He really felt as if he would like to try the experiment with his own house.

•   8   •

GIANT THE JACK KILLER

Jimmieboy was turning over the pages of his fairy book the other night, trying to refresh his memory concerning the marvelous doings of the fairyland people by looking at the pictures. His papa was too tired to read to him, and as no one else in the house was willing to undertake the task, the boy was doing his best to entertain himself, and as it happened he got more out of his own efforts than he ever derived from the efforts of others. He had dallied long over the weird experiences of Cinderella, and had just turned over the pages which lead up to the story of Jack the Giant Killer, when something in the picture of the Giant’s castle seemed to move.

Looking a little more closely at the picture in a startled sort of way, Jimmieboy saw that the moving thing was the knob of the castle door, and in a jiffy the door itself opened, and a huge homely creature whom Jimmieboy recognized at once as an ogre stuck his head out. For a moment the little fellow felt disposed to cry for help. Surely if the Giant could open the door in the picture there was no reason why he should not step out of the book entirely and make a speedy meal of Jimmieboy, who, realizing that he was entirely unarmed, was inclined to run and hide behind his papa’s back. His fast oozing courage was quickly restored, however, by the Giant himself, who winked at him in a genial sort of fashion as much as to say: “Nonsense, boy, I wouldn’t eat you, if I could.” The wink he followed up at once with a smile, and then he said:

“That you, Jimmieboy?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jimmieboy, very civilly indeed. “I’m me. Are you you?”

The Giant laughed.

“Yes,” he replied, “and so, of course, we are ourselves. Are you very busy?”

“Not very,” said Jimmieboy. “Why?”

“I want a little advice from you,” the Giant answered. “I think it’s about time the tables were turned on that miserable little ruffian Jack. The idea of a big thing like me being killed every day of his life by a mosquito like Jack is very tiresome, and I want to know if you don’t think it would be fair if I should kill him just once for the sake of variety. It won’t hurt him. He’ll come to life again right away just as we Giants do—”

“Don’t you stay dead when Jack kills you?” asked Jimmieboy.

“You know the answer to that as well as I do,” said the Giant. “You’ve had this story read to you every day now for three years, haven’t you?”

“About that,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, if we stayed dead how do you suppose we’d be on hand to be killed again the next time you had the story read to you?”

“I never thought of that,” said Jimmieboy.

“Never thought of it?” echoed the ogre. “Why, what kind of thoughts do you think, anyhow? It’s the only thought for a thinker to think I think, don’t you think so?”

“Say that again, will you?” said Jimmieboy.

“Couldn’t possibly,” said the ogre. “In fact, I’ve forgotten it. But what do you think of my scheme? Don’t you think it would be wise if I killed Jack just once?”

“Perhaps it would,” said the boy. “That is if it wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Hurt him? Didn’t I tell you it wouldn’t hurt him?” said the Giant. “I wouldn’t hurt that boy for all the world. If I did I’d lose my position. Why, all I am I owe to him. The fairy people let me live in this magnificent castle for nothing. They let me rob them of all their property, and all I have to do in return for this is to be killed by Jack whenever any little boy or girl in your world desires to be amused by a tragedy of that sort. So you see I haven’t any hard feelings against him, even if I did call him a miserable little ruffian.”

“Well, I don’t exactly like to have Jack killed,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ve always rather liked him. What do you suppose he would say to it?”

“That’s just the point. I wouldn’t kill him unless he was willing. That would be a violation of my agreement with him, and when he came to he might sue me for what the lawyers call a breach of contract,” said the ogre. “Now, it seemed to me that if you were to go to Jack and tell him that you were getting a little tired of having this story end the way it does all the time, and that you thought it only fair to me that I should have a chance to celebrate a victory, say once a week—every Saturday night for instance—he’d be willing to do it.”

“Where can I find him?” asked Jimmieboy. “I just as lief ask him.”

“He’s in the picture, two pages farther along, sharpening his sword,” said the ogre.

“Very well, I’ll go see him at once,” said Jimmieboy. Then he said goodbye to the Giant, and turned over the pages until he came to the pictures showing how Jack sharpened his sword on the soles of the shoes of another giant, whom he had bound and strapped to the floor.

At first Jimmieboy did not know how to address him. He had often spoken to the figures in the pictures, but they had never replied to anything he had said. However, he made a beginning.

“Ahem!” he said.

The effect was pleasing, for as he said this Jack stopped sharpening his blade and turned to see who had spoken.

“Ah, Jimmieboy!” said the small warrior. “Howdy do. Haven’t seen much of you this week. You’ve been paying more attention to Hop o’ My Thumb than to me lately.”

“Well, I love you just the same,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ve just seen the Giant that lives up in the castle with the dragon on the front stoop.”

“He’s a good fellow,” said Jack. “I’m very fond of him. He never gives me any trouble, and dies just as easy as if he were falling off a log, and out of business hours we’re great chums. He’s had something on his mind lately, though, that I don’t understand. He says being killed every day is getting monotonous.”

“That’s what he said to me,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, I hope he doesn’t resign his position,” said Jack, thoughtfully. “I know it isn’t in every way a pleasant one, but he might go farther and fare worse. The way I kill him is painless, but if he got into that Beanstalk boy’s hands he’d be all bruised up. You can’t fall a mile without getting hurt, you know, and I like the old fellow too well to have him go over to that Beanstalk cousin of mine.”

“He likes you, too,” said Jimmieboy, pleased to find that there was so much good feeling between the two creatures. “But he thinks he ought to get a chance to win once in a while. He said if he could arrange it with you to have him kill you once a week—Saturday nights, for instance—he’d be perfectly contented.”

“That’s reasonable enough,” said Jack, nodding his head approvingly. “Did he say how he would like to do it?”

“No, only that he’d kill you tenderly, so that you wouldn’t suffer,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh, I know that!” said Jack, softly. “He’s too tender-hearted to hurt anybody. I’m very much inclined to agree to the proposition, but he must let me choose the manner of the killing. He hasn’t had much practice killing people, and if he were to do it by hitting me on the head with a stick of wood I’d be likely to wake up with a headache next day; neither should I like to be smothered because while that doesn’t bruise one or break any bones its awfully stuffy, and if there’s one thing I like it is fresh air.”

“Perhaps he might eat you,” suggested Jimmieboy.

“He isn’t big enough to do that comfortably,” said Jack, shaking his head. “He’d have to cut me up and chew me, because his throat isn’t large enough for him to swallow me at one gulp. But I’ll tell you what you can do. You go back to him, and tell him that I’ll agree to his proposition, if he’ll have me cooked in a plum-pudding four hundred feet in circumference. I’m very fond of plum-pudding, and while he is eating it from the outside I could be eating it from the inside, and, of course, I shouldn’t be burned in the cooking, because in the middle of a pudding of that size the heat never could reach me.”

“But when he reached you,” said Jimmieboy, “you’d have the same trouble you said you’d have if he ate you up. He’d have to cut you to pieces and chew you.”

“Ah!” said Jack, “don’t you see my point? By the time he reached me he would have eaten so much plum-pudding that he wouldn’t have room for me, so I’d escape.”

“But, then, you wouldn’t be killed,” said Jimmieboy.

“That wouldn’t make any difference,” said Jack. “We’d stop the story before I escaped and everybody would think I’d been eaten up, and that’s all he wants. He just wants to seem to win once. He doesn’t really care about killing me dead. Don’t you see?”

“Yes, I think I do,” said Jimmieboy, “and I’ll go back and tell him what you say.”

“Thank you,” said Jack. “And while you are there give him my love, and tell him I’ll be around to kill him as usual after tea.”

All of which Jimmieboy did and the Giant readily agreeing to the plum-pudding scheme, said good night to his little visitor, and retired into the castle, closing the door after him.

Then Jimmieboy went to bed in a great hurry, because he knew how sleep made time seem shorter than it really was, and he was very anxious to have Saturday night come around so that he could see how the new ending to the story of Jack the Giant Killer worked.

As yet that Saturday night has not turned up, so that I really cannot tell you whether or not the arrangement was a success.

•   9   •

JIMMIEBOY AND THE FIREWORKS

There was whispering going on somewhere, and Jimmieboy felt that it was his duty to find out where it was, who it was that was doing it, and what it was that was being whispered. It was about an hour after supper on the evening of July 3d when it all happened. A huge box full of fireworks had arrived only a few hours before, and Jimmieboy was somewhat afraid that the whisperings might have come from burglars who, knowing that there were thirty-five rockets, twenty Roman candles, colored lights by the dozen, and no end of torpedoes and firecrackers and other things in the house, had come to steal them, and, if he could help himself, Jimmieboy was not going to allow that. So he began to search about, and in a few minutes he had located the whisperers in the very room at the foot of the back stairs in which the fireworks were. His little heart almost stopped beating for a moment when he realized this. It isn’t pleasant to feel that perhaps you will be deprived, after all, of something you have looked forward to for a whole month, and upon the very eve of the fulfillment of your dearest hopes at that.

“I’ll have to tell papa about this,” he said; and then, realizing that his papa was not at home, and that his mamma was upstairs trying to convince his small brother that it would be impossible to get the moon into the nursery, although it looked much smaller even than the nursery window, Jimmieboy resolved that he would take the matter in hand himself.

“A boygler wouldn’t hurt me, and maybe if I talk gruff and keep out of sight, he’ll think I’m papa and run,” he said.

Then he tried his gruff voice, and it really was tremendously gruff—about as gruff as the bark of a fox-terrier. After he had done this, he tiptoed softly down the stairs until he stood directly opposite the door of the room where the fireworks were.

“Move on, you boygler you!” he cried, just as he thought his father would have said it.

The answer was an explosion—not exactly of fireworks, but of mirth.

“He thinks somebody’s trying to steal us,” said a funny little voice, the like of which Jimmieboy had never heard before.

“How siss-siss-sissingular of him,” said another voice that sounded like a firecracker missing fire.

“He thinks he can fool us by imitating the voice of his pop-pop-pop-popper,” put in a third voice, with a laugh.

At which Jimmieboy opened the door and looked in, and then he saw whence the whispering had come, and to say that he was surprised at what he saw is a too mild way of putting it. He was so astonished that he lost all control over his joints, and the first thing he knew he was sitting on the floor. The spectacle had, in fact, knocked him over, as well it might, for there, walking up and down the floor, swarming over chairs and tables, playing pranks with each other, and acting in a generally strange fashion, were the fireworks themselves. It was interesting, and at the same time alarming, for one or two reckless skyrockets were smoking, a lot of foolish little firecrackers were playing with matches in one corner, and a number of the great big cannon torpedoes were balancing themselves on the arms of the gas-fixture, utterly heedless of the fact that if they were to fall to the floor they would explode and be done for forever.

“Hullo, Jimmieboy!” said one of the larger rockets, taking off his funny little cap at the astonished youngster. “I suppose you’ve come down to see us rehearse?”

“I thought somebody was stealing you, and I came down to frighten them away,” Jimmieboy replied.

The Rocket laughed. “Nobody can steal us,” it said. “If anybody came to steal us, we’d cry, and get so soaked with tears nobody could get us to go off, so what good would we be?”

“Not much, I guess,” said Jimmieboy.

“That’s the answer,” returned the Rocket. “You seem to be good at riddles. Let me give you another. What’s the difference between a man who steals a whole wig and a firecracker?”

“I am sure I don’t know,” said Jimmieboy, still too full of wonderment to think out an answer to a riddle like that.

“Why, one goes off with a whole head of hair,” said the Rocket, “and the other goes off only with a bang.”

“That’s good,” said Jimmieboy. “Make it up yourself?”

“No,” said the Rocket. “I got that out of the magazine.”

“What magazine?” asked Jimmieboy, innocently.

“The powder-magazine,” roared the Rocket, and then the Pin Wheel and other fireworks danced about, and threw themselves on the floor with laughter—all except the Torpedoes, which jumped up and down on a soft plush chair, where they were safe.

When the laughter over the Rocket’s wit had subsided, one of the Roman Candles called to the Giant Cracker, and asked him to sing a song for Jimmieboy.

“I can’t sing tonight,” said the Cracker. “I’m very busy making ready my report for tomorrow.”

Here the Cracker winked at Jimmieboy, as much as to say, “How is that for a joke?” Whereat Jimmieboy winked back to show that he thought it wasn’t bad; which so pleased the Cracker that he said he guessed, after all, he would sing his song if the little Crackers would stop playing until he got through. The little Crackers promised, and the Giant Cracker sang this song:

“THE GIANT CRACKER AND
THE MANDARIN’S DAUGHTER.

He was a Giant Cracker bold,

His name was Wing-Hi-Ee.

He wore a dress of red and gold—

Was handsome as could be.

His master was a Mandarin,

Who lived in old Shang-Hai,

And had a daughter named Ah Din,

With sweet blue almond eye.

Now Wing he loved this Saffron Queen,

And Ah Din she loved him;

But Chinese law came in between

Them with its measures grim.

For you must know, in that far land,

Where dwell the heathen wild,

A Cracker may not win the hand

Of any noble’s child.

This made their love a hopeless one—

Alas! that it should be

That anywhere beneath the sun

Exists such misery!

So they resolved, since she could not

Become his cherished bride,

Together they’d seek out some spot

And there they’d suicide.

They hastened, weeping, from the town,

Wing-Hi and fair Ah Din,

And on the riverbank sat down

Until the tide came in.

Then Wing-Hi whispered, sitting there,

With teardrops in his eye,

‘Goodbye, Ah Din!’ And, in despair,

She answered him, ‘Goodbye.’

And then she grasped a sulphur match;

She lit it on her shoe,

Whereat, with neatness and dispatch,

Wing-Hi she touched it to.

There came a flash, there came a shriek,

A sound surpassing weird,

And Wing-Hi brave and Ah Din meek

In pieces disappeared.”

“Isn’t that lovely?” asked the Rocket, his voice husky with emotion.

“It’s very fine,” said Jimmieboy. “It’s rather sad, though.”

“Yes; but it might have been sadder, you know,” said the Giant Cracker. “She might not have loved him at all; and if she hadn’t loved him, he wouldn’t have wasted a match committing suicide for her sake, and then there wouldn’t have been any tragedy, and, of course, no song would have been written about it. Why, there is no end to the misery there might have been.”

Here one of the Torpedoes fell off the gas-fixture to the floor, where he exploded with a loud noise. There was a rush from all sides to see whether the poor little fellow was done for forever.

“Send for the doctor,” said the Pin Wheel. “I think he can be mended.”

“No, don’t,” said the injured Torpedo. “I can fix myself up again. Send for a whisk broom and bring me a parlor match, and I’ll be all right.”

“What’s the whisk broom for?” asked Jimmieboy, somewhat surprised at the remedies suggested.

“Why,” said the Torpedo, “if you will sweep me together with the whisk broom and wrap me up carefully, I’ll eat the head off the parlor match, and I’ll be all right again. The match-head will give me all the snap I need, and if you’ll wrap me up in the proper way, I’ll show you what noise is tomorrow. You’ll think I’m some relation to that Miss Din in the Giant Cracker’s song, unless I’m mistaken, when you hear me explode.”

The Firecrackers jeered a little at this, because there has always been more or less jealousy between the Torpedoes and the Firecrackers, but the Rocket soon put a stop to their sneers.

“What’s the use of jeering?” he said. “You don’t know whether he’ll make much noise or not. The chances are he’ll make more noise than a great many of you Crackers, who are just as likely as not to turn out sissers in the long run.”

The Firecrackers were very much abashed by the Rocket’s rebuke, and retired shamefacedly into their various packs, whereupon the Pin Wheel suggested that the Rocket recite his poem telling the singular story of Nate and the Rocket.

“Would you like to hear that story, Jimmieboy?” asked the Rocket.

“Very much,” said Jimmieboy. “The name of it sounds interesting.”

“Well, I’ll try to tell it. It’s pretty long, and your ears are short; but we can try it, as the boy observed to the man who said he didn’t think the boy’s mouth was large enough to hold four pieces of strawberry shortcake. So here goes. The real title of the poem is

“THE DREADFUL FATE OF NAUGHTY NATE.

’Way back in eighty-two or three—

I don’t recall the date—

There lived somewhere—’twixt you and me,

I really can’t locate

The place exact; say Sangaree—

A lad; we’ll call him Nate.

His father was a grocer, or

A banker, or maybe

He kept a thriving candy store,

For all that’s known to me.

Perhaps he was the Governor

Of Maine or Floridee.

At any rate, he had a dad—

Or so the story’s told;

Most youngsters that I’ve known have had—

And Nate’s had stacks of gold,

And those who knew him used to add,

He spent it free and bold.

If Nate should ask his father for

A dollar or a cent,

His father’d always give him more

Than for to get he went;

And then, before the day was o’er,

Nate always had it spent.

Molasses taffy, circus, cake,

Tarts, soda-water, pie,

Hot butterscotch, or rare beefsteak,

Or silk hats, Nate could buy.

His father’d never at him shake

His head and ask him ‘Why?’

‘For but one thing,’ his father cried,

‘You must not spend your store;

Skyrockets I cannot abide,

So buy them never more.

Let such, I pray, be never spied

Inside of my front door.’

But Nate, alas! did not obey

His father’s orders wise.

He hied him forth without delay,

Ignoring tarts and pies,

And bought a rocket huge, size A,

‘The Monarch of the Skies.’

He clasped it tightly to his breast,

And smiled a smile of glee;

And as the sun sank in the west,

He sat beneath a tree,

And then the rocket he invest-

I-g-a-t-e-d.

Alas for Nate! The night was warm;

June bugs and great fireflies

Around about his head did swarm;

The mercury did rise;

And then a fine electric storm

Played havoc in the skies.

Now if, perchance, it was a fly,

I’m not prepared to say;

Or if ’twas lightning from the sky,

That came along that way;

Or if ’twas only brought on by

The heat of that warm day,

I am not certain, but ’tis clear

There came a sudden boom,

And high up in the atmosphere,

Enlightening the gloom,

The rocket flew, a fiery spear,

And Nate, too, I presume.

For never since that July day

Has any man seen Nate.

But far off in the Milky Way,

Astronomers do state,

A comet brilliant, so they say,

Doth round about gyrate.

It’s head’s so like small Natty’s face,

They think it’s surely he,

Aboard that rocket-stick in space,

Still mounting constantly;

And still must mount until no trace

Of it at all we see.”

NATE AS A COMET

“Isn’t that the most fearfully awfully terribly horribly horribly terribly fearful bit of awfulness you ever heard?” queried the Rocket, when he had finished.

“It is indeed,” said Jimmieboy. “It really makes me feel unhappy, and I wish you hadn’t told it to me.”

“I would not bother about it,” said the Rocket; “because really the best thing about it is that it never happened.”

“Suppose it did happen,” said Jimmieboy, after thinking it over for a minute or two. “Would Nate ever get back home again?”

“Oh, he might,” returned the Rocket. “But not before six or seven million years, and that would make him late for tea, you know. By the way,” the Rocket added, “do you know the best kind of tea to have on Fourth of July?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “What?”

“R-o-c-k-e-tea,” said the Rocket.

The Pin Wheels laughed so heartily at this that one of them fell over on a box of Blue Lights and set them off, and the Rocket endeavoring to put them out was set going himself, and the first thing Jimmieboy knew, his friend gave a fearful siss, and disappeared up the chimney. The sparks from the Rocket falling on the Roman Candles started them along, and three or four balls from them landed on a flower piece which was soon putting forth the most beautiful fiery roses imaginable, one of which, as it gave its dying sputter, flew up and landed on the fuse of a great set piece that was supposed to have a motto on it. Jimmieboy was almost too frightened to move, so he just sat where he was, and stared at the set piece until he could read the motto, which was, strange to say, no motto at all, but simply these words in red, white, and blue fire, “Wake up, and go to bed right.” Whereupon Jimmieboy rubbed his eyes, and opened them wider than ever to find his papa bending over him, and saying the very words he had seen on the set piece.

Probably the reason why his papa was saying this was that Jimmieboy had been found by him on his return home lying fast asleep, snuggled up in the corner of the library lounge.

As for the fireworks, in some way or other they all managed to get back into the box again in good condition, except the broken torpedo, which was found in the middle of the floor just where it had fallen. Which Jimmieboy thinks was very singular.

•   10   •

JIMMIEBOY’S PHOTOGRAPH

Jimmieboy had been taken to the photographer’s and had posed several times for the man who made pictures of little boys. One picture showed how he looked leaning against a picket fence with a tiger skin rug under his feet. Another showed him in the act of putting his hands into his pockets, while a third was a miserable attempt to show how he looked when he couldn’t stand still. The last pleased Jimmieboy very much. It made him laugh and Jimmieboy liked laughing better than anything, perhaps, excepting custard, which was his idea of real solid bliss. Why it made him laugh, I do not know, unless it was because in the picture he was very much blurred and looked something like a mixture of a cloud and a pinwheel.

“I like that one,” Jimmieboy said to his mother, when the proof came home. “Won’t you let me have it?”

“Yes,” said his mother. “You can have it. I don’t think anyone else wants it.”

So the proof became Jimmieboy’s property, and he put it away in his collection of treasures, which already contained many valuable things, such as the whistle of a rubber ball, a piece of elastic, and a worn-out tennis racket. These treasures the boy used to have out two or three times a day, and the last time he had them out something queer happened. The blurred little figure in the picture spoke to him and told him something he didn’t forget in a hurry.

“You think I’m a funny-looking thing don’t you?” said the blurred picture of himself.

“Yes, I do,” said Jimmieboy, “that’s why I laugh at you whenever I see you.”

“Well, I laugh when I see you, too,” retorted the picture. “You are just as funny to look at sometimes as I am.”

“I’m not either,” said Jimmieboy. “I don’t look like a cloud or a pin-wheel, and you do.”

“I’m a picture of you, just the same,” returned the proof, “and if you had stood still when the man was taking you, I’d have been all right. It’s awful mean the way little boys have of not standing still when they are having their pictures taken, and then laughing at the thing they’re responsible for afterward.”

“I didn’t mean to be mean,” said Jimmieboy.

“Perhaps not,” retorted the picture, “but if it hadn’t been for you I’d have been a lovely picture, and your mamma would have had a nice little silver frame put around me, and maybe I’d have been standing on your papa’s desk with the inkstand and the mucilage instead of having to live all my life with a broken whistle and a tennis bat that nobody but you has any use for.”

Here the picture sighed, and Jimmieboy felt very sorry for it.

“Boys don’t know what a terrible lot of horrid things happen because they don’t stand still sometimes,” continued the picture. “I know of lots of cases where untold misery has come from movey boys.”

“From what?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Movey boys,” replied the picture. “By that I mean boys that don’t stand still when they ought to. Why, I knew of a boy once who wouldn’t stand still and he shook a whole town to pieces.”

“Ho!” jeered Jimmieboy. “I don’t believe it.”

“Well, it’s so, whether you believe it or not,” said the picture. “The boy’s name was Bob, and he lived somewhere, I don’t remember where. His mother told him to stand still and he wouldn’t; he just jumped up and down, and up and down all the time.”

“That may be, but I don’t see how he could shake a whole town to pieces,” said Jimmieboy, “unless he was a very heavy boy.”

“He didn’t weigh a bit more than you do,” answered the picture. “He was heavy enough when he jumped to shake his nursery though, and the nursery was heavy enough to shake the house, and the house was heavy enough to shake the lot, and the lot was heavy enough to shake the street, and the street shook the whole town, and when the town shook, everybody thought there was an earthquake, and they all moved away, and took the name of the town with them, which is why I don’t know where it was.”

Jimmieboy was silent. He never knew before that not standing still could result in such an awful happening.

“I know another boy, too, who lived in—well, I won’t say where, but he lived there. He broke a fine big mirror in his father’s parlor by not standing still when he was told to.”

“Did he shake it down?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No, indeed, he didn’t,” returned the picture. “He just stood in front of it and got so movey that the mirror couldn’t keep up with him, but it tried to do it so hard that it shook itself to pieces. But that wasn’t anything like as bad as what happened to Jumping Sam. He was the worst I ever knew. He never would keep still, and it all happened and he never could unhappen it, so that it’s still so to this very day.”

“But you haven’t told me what happened yet,” said Jimmieboy, very much interested in Jumping Sam.

“Well, I will tell you,” said the picture, gravely. “And this is it. The story is a poem, Jimmieboy, and it’s called:

“THE HORRID FATE
OF JUMPING SAM.

Small Sammy was as fine a lad

As ever you did see;

But one bad habit Sammy had,

A Jumper bold was he.

And, oh! his fate was very sad,

As it was told to me.

He never, never, would stand still

In school or on the street;

He’d squirm if he were well or ill,

If on his back or feet.

He’d wriggle on the windowsill,

He’d waggle in his seat.

And so it happened one fine day,

When all alone was he,

He got to jumping in a way

That was a sight to see.

He leaped two feet at first, they say,

And then he made it three.

Then four, and five, the long day through,

Until he could not stop.

Each jump he jumped much longer grew,

Until he gave a hop

Up in the air a mile or two,

A-twirling like a top.

He turned about and tried to jump

Back to his father’s door,

But landed by the village pump,

Some twenty miles or more

Beyond it, and an awful bump

He’d got when it was o’er.

And still his jumps increased in size,

Until they got so great,

He landed on the railway ties

In some far distant state;

And then he knew ’twould have been wise,

His jumping to abate.

But as the years passed slowly by,

His jumping still went on,

Until he leaped from Italy,

As far as Washington.

And he confessed, with heavy eye,

It wasn’t any fun.

And when, in 1883,

I met him up in Perth,

He wept and said ‘goodbye’ to me,

And jumped around the earth.

And I was saddened much to see

That he knew naught of mirth.

Last year in far Allahabad,

Late in the month of June,

I met again this jumping lad—

’Twas in the afternoon—

As he with visage pale and sad

Was jumping to the moon.

So all his days, leap after leap,

He takes from morn to night.

He cannot eat, he cannot sleep,

But flies just like a kite,

And all because he would not keep

From jumping when he might.

And I believe the moral’s true—

Though shown with little skill—

That whatsoever you may do,

Be it of good or ill,

Once in a while it may pay you

To practice keeping still.”

A long silence followed the completion of the blurred picture’s poem. For some reason or other it had made Jimmieboy think, and while he was thinking, wonderful to say, he was keeping very quiet, so that it was quite evident that the fate of Jumping Sam had had some effect upon him. Finally, however, the spell was broken, and he began to wiggle just as he wiggled while his picture was being taken, and then he said:

“I don’t know whether to believe that story or not. I can’t see your face very plainly here. Come over into the light and tell me the poem all over again, and I can tell by looking in your eye whether it is true or not.”

The picture made no reply, and Jimmieboy, grasping it firmly in his hand, went to the window and gazed steadily at it for a minute, but it was useless. The picture not only refused to speak, but, as the rays of the setting sun fell full upon it, faded slowly from sight.

Nevertheless, true story or not, Jimmieboy has practiced standing still very often since the affair happened, which is a good thing for little boys to do, so that perhaps the brief life and long poem of the rejected picture were not wasted after all.

•   11   •

JIMMIEBOY AND THE BLANK-BOOK

Somebody had sighed deeply, and had said, “Oh dear!”

What bothered Jimmieboy was to find out who that somebody was. It couldn’t have been mamma, because she had gone out that evening with papa to take dinner at Uncle Periwinkle’s, and for the same reason, therefore, it could not have been papa that had sighed and said “Oh dear!” so plainly. Neither was it Moggie, as Jimmieboy called his nurse, companion, and friend, because Moggie, supposing him to be asleep, had gone upstairs to her own room to read. It might have been little Russ if it had only been a sigh that had come to Jimmieboy’s ears, for little Russ was quite old enough to sigh; but as for adding “Oh dear!” that was quite out of the question, because all little Russ had ever been able to say was “Bzoo,” and, as you may have observed for yourself, people who can only say “Bzoo” cannot say “Oh dear!”

“OH! DEAR!”

It was so mysterious altogether that Jimmieboy sat up straight on his pillow, and began to wonder if it wouldn’t be well for him to get frightened and cry. The question was decided in favor of a shriek of terror; but the shriek did not come, because just as Jimmieboy got his mouth open to utter it, the strange somebody sighed again, and said:

“Aren’t you sorry for me, Jimmieboy?”

“Who are you?” asked Jimmieboy, peering through the darkness, trying to see who it was that had addressed him.

“I’m a poor unhappy Blank-book,” came the answer. “A Blank-book with no hope now of ever becoming great. Did you ever feel as if you wanted to become great, Jimmieboy?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” returned the boy. “I do yet. I’m going to be a fireman when I grow up, and drive an engine, and hold a hose, and put out great configurations, as papa calls ’em.”

“Then you know,” returned the Blank-book, “or rather you can imagine, my awful sorrow when I say that I have aspired to equally lofty honors, but find myself now condemned to do things I don’t like, to devote my life not to great and noble deeds, but to miserable everyday affairs. You can easily see how I must feel if you will only try to imagine your own feelings if, after a life whose every thought and effort had been directed toward making you the proud driver of a fire-engine, you should find it necessary to settle down to the humdrum life of a lawyer, all your hopes destroyed, and the goal toward which you had ever striven placed far beyond your reach.”

“You didn’t want to be a fireman, did you?” asked Jimmieboy, softly.

“No,” said the Blank-book, jumping off the table, and crossing over to Jimmieboy’s crib, into which he climbed, much to the little fellow’s delight. “No, I never wanted to be a fireman, or a policeman, or a car conductor, because I have always known that those were things I never could become. No matter how wise and great a Blank-book may be, there is a limit to his wisdom and his greatness. It sometimes makes us unhappy to realize this, but after all there is plenty in the world that a Blank-book can do, and do nobly, without envying others who have to do far nobler and greater things before they can be considered famous. Everything we have to do in this world is worth doing well, and everybody should be content to do the things that are given to his kind to accomplish. The poker should always try to poke as well as he can, and not envy the garden hose because the garden hose can sprinkle flowers, while he can’t. The rake should be content to do the best possible rake’s work, and not sigh because he cannot sing ‘Annie Rooney’ the way the hand-organ does.”

“Then why do you sigh because of the work they have given you to do?”

“That’s very simple,” returned the Blank-book. “I can explain that in a minute. While I have no right to envy a glue-pot because it can hold glue and I can’t, I have a right to feel hurt and envious when it falls to the lot of another Blank-book, no better than myself, to become the medium through which beautiful poems and lovely thoughts are given to the world, while I am compelled to do work of the meanest kind.

“It has always been my dream to become the companion of a poet, of a philosopher, or of a humorist—to be the Blank-book of his heart—to lie quiet in his pocket until he had thought a thought, and then to be pulled out of that pocket and to be made the receptacle of that thought.

“Oh, I have dreamed ambitious dreams, Jimmieboy—ambitious dreams that must now remain only dreams, and never be real. Once, as I lay with a thousand others just like me on the shelf of the little stationery shop where your mother bought me, I dreamed I was sold to a poet—a true poet. Everywhere he went, went I, and every beautiful line he thought of was promptly put down upon one of my leaves with a dainty gold pencil, contact with which was enough to thrill me through and through.

“Here is one of the things I dreamed he wrote upon my leaves:

“‘What’s the use of tears?

What’s the use of moping?

What’s the use of fears?

Here’s to hoping!

‘Life hath more of joy

Than she hath of weeping.

When grief comes, my boy,

Pleasure’s sleeping.

‘Only sleeping, child;

Thou art not forsaken,

Let thy smiles run wild—

She’ll awaken!’

“Don’t you think that’s nice?” queried the Blank-book when he had finished reciting the poem.

“Very nice,” said Jimmieboy. “And it’s very true, too. Tears aren’t any good. Why, they don’t even wash your face.”

“I know,” returned the Blank-book. “Tears are just like rain clouds. A sunny smile can drive ’em away like autumn leaves before a whirlwind.”

“Or a clothesline full of clothes before an east wind,” suggested Jimmieboy.

“Yes; or like buckwheat cakes before a hungry schoolboy,” put in the Blank-book. “Then that same poet in my dream wrote a verse about his little boy I rather liked. It went this way:

“‘Of rats and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails

Some man has said boys are made;

But he who spoke to be truthful fails,

If ’twas of my boy ’twas said.

‘For honey, and wine, and sweet sunshine,

And fruits from over the swim,

And everything else that’s fair and fine,

Are sure to be found in him.

‘His kisses are nice and sweet as spice,

His smile is richer than cake—

Which, if it were known to rats and mice,

The cheeses they would forsake.

‘His dear little voice is soft and choice,

He giggles all day with glee,

And it makes my heart and soul rejoice,

To think he belongs to me.’”

“That’s first rate,” said Jimmieboy. “Only Mother Goose has something very much like it about little girls.”

“That was just it,” returned the Blank-book. “She had been a little girl herself, and she was too proud to live. If she had been a boy instead of a girl, it would have been the boy who was made of sugar and spice and all that’s nice.”

“Didn’t your dream-poet ever write anything funny in you?” asked Jimmieboy. “I do love funny poems.”

“Well, I don’t know whether some of the things he wrote were funny or not,” returned the Blank-book, scratching his cover with a pencil he carried in a little loop at his side. “But they were queer. There was one about a small boy, named Napples, who spent all his time eating apples, till by some odd mistake he contracted an ache, and now with J. Ginger he grapples.”

“That’s the kind,” said Jimmieboy. “I think to some people who never ate a green apple, or tasted Jamaica ginger, or contracted an ache, it would be real funny. I don’t laugh at it, because I know how solemn Tommy Napples must have felt. Did you ever have any more like that?”

“Oh my, yes,” returned the Blank-book. “Barrels full. This was another one—only I don’t believe what it says is true:

“A man living near Navesink,

Eats nothing but thistles and zinc,

With mustard and glue,

And pollywog stew,

Washed down with the best of blue ink.’”

“That’s pretty funny,” said Jimmieboy.

“Is it?” queried the Blank-book, with a sigh. “I’ll have to take your word for it. I can’t laugh, because I have nothing to say ha! ha! with, and even if I could say ha! ha! I don’t suppose I’d know when to laugh, because I don’t know a joke when I see one.”

“Really?” asked Jimmieboy, who had never supposed anyone could be born so blind that he could not at least see a joke.

“EVERYBODY LAUGHED BUT ME.”

“Really,” sighed the Blank-book. “Why, a man came into the store where I was for sale once, and said he wanted a Blank-book, and the clerk asked him what for—meaning, of course, did he want an account-book, a diary, or a copybook. The man answered, ‘To wash windows with, of course,’ and everybody laughed but me. I simply couldn’t see the point. Can you?”

“Why, certainly,” said Jimmieboy, a broad smile coming over his lips. “It was very funny. The point was that people don’t wash windows with Blank-books.”

“What’s funny about that?” asked the Blank-book. “It would be a great deal funnier if people did wash windows with a Blank-book. He might have said ‘to go coasting on,’ or ‘to sweeten my coffee with,’ or ‘to send out to the heathen,’ and it would have been just as funny.”

“I guess that’s true,” said Jimmieboy. “But it was funny just the same.”

“No doubt,” returned the Blank-book; “but it seems to me what’s funny depends on the other fellow. You might get off a splendid joke, and if he hadn’t his joke spectacles on he’d think it was nonsense.”

“Oh no,” said Jimmieboy. “If he hadn’t his joke spectacles on he wouldn’t think it was nonsense. Jokes are nonsense.”

“But you said a moment ago the fun of the Blank-book joke was that you couldn’t wash windows with one. That’s a fact, so how could it be nonsense?”

“I never thought of it in that way,” said Jimmieboy.

“Ah!” ejaculated the Blank-book. “Now that is really funny, because I don’t see how you could think of it in any other way.”

“I don’t see anything funny about that,” began Jimmieboy.

“Oh dear!” sighed the Blank-book. “We never shall agree, except that I am willing to believe that you know more about nonsense than I do. Perhaps you can explain this poem to me. I dreamed my poet wrote this on my twelfth page. It was called ‘A Plane Tale:’

“‘I used to be so surly, that

All men avoided me;

But now I am a diplomat,

Of wondrous suavity.

‘I met a carpenter one night,

Who wore a dotted vest;

And when I asked if that was right,

He told me to go West.

‘I seized his saw and brandished it,

As fiercely as I could,

And told him, with much show of wit,

I thought he was no good.

‘At that he looked me in the face,

And said my tone was gruff;

My manner lacked a needed grace,

In every way was rough.

‘He seized and laid me on a plank,

He gave a little cough;

And then, although my spirits sank,

He planed me wholly off!

‘And ever since that painful night,

When he so treated me,

I’ve been as polished, smooth a wight,

As anyone can be.’”

“There isn’t much sense in that,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, now, I think there is,” said the Blank-book. “There’s a moral to that. Two of ’em. One’s mind your own business. If the carpenter wanted to wear a dotted vest it was nobody’s affair. The other moral is, a little plane speaking goes a great way.”

“Oh, what a joke!” cried Jimmieboy.

“I didn’t make any joke,” retorted the Blank-book, his Russia-leather cover getting red as a beet.

“Yes, you did, too,” returned Jimmieboy. “Plane and plain—don’t you see? P-l-a-n-e and p-l-a-i-n.”

“IS THAT WHAT YOU CALL A JOKE?”

“Bah!” said the Blank-book. “Nonsense! That can’t be a joke. That’s a coincidence. Is that what you call a joke?”

“Certainly,” replied Jimmieboy.

“Well, then, I’m not as badly off as I thought. I wanted to be a poet’s book and couldn’t, but it is better to be used for a wash-list as I am than to help funny men to remember stuff like that. I am very grateful to you, Jimmieboy, for the information. You have made me see that I might have fared worse than I have fared, and I thank you, and as I hear your mamma and papa coming up the stairs now, I’ll run back to the desk. Good night!”

And the Blank-book kissed Jimmieboy, and scampered over to the desk as fast as it could, and the next day Jimmieboy begged so hard for it that his mamma gave it to him for his very own.

“What shall you do with it now that you have it?” asked mamma.

“I’m going to save it till I grow up,” returned Jimmieboy. “Maybe I’ll be a poet, and I can use it to write poems in.”

•   12   •

JIMMIEBOY AND THE COMET

Jimmieboy was thinking very hard. He was also blinking quite as hard because he was undeniably sleepy. His father had been reading something to his mamma about a curious thing that lived up in the sky called a comet. Jimmieboy had never seen a comet, nor indeed before that had he even heard of one, so of course his ideas as to what it looked like were rather confused. His father’s description of it was clear enough, perhaps, but nevertheless Jimmieboy found it difficult to conjure up in his mind any reasonable creature that could in any way resemble a comet. Finally, however, he made up his mind that it must look like a queer kind of a dog with nothing but a head and a tail—or perhaps it was a sort of fiery pollywog.

At any rate, while he thought and blinked, what should he see peeping in at him through the window but the comet itself. Jimmieboy knew it was the comet because the comet told him so afterward, and besides it wore a placard suspended about its neck which had printed on it in great gold letters: “I’m the Comet. Come out and take a ride through the sky with me.”

“Me?” cried Jimmieboy, starting up as soon as he had read the invitation.

Immediately the word “Yes” appeared on the placard and Jimmieboy walked over to the window and stepping right through the glass as though it were just so much air, found himself seated upon the Comet’s back, and mounting to the sky so fast that his hair stood out behind him like so many pieces of stiff wire.

“Are you comfortable?” asked the Comet, after a few minutes.

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy, “only you kind of dazzle my eyes. You are so bright.”

The Comet appeared to be very much pleased at this remark, for he smiled so broadly that Jimmieboy could see the two ends of his mouth appear on either side of the back of his neck.

“You’re right about that,” said the Comet. “I’m the brightest thing there ever was. I’m all the time getting off jokes and things.”

“Are you really?” cried Jimmieboy, delighted. “I am so glad, for I love jokes and—and things. Get off a joke now, will you?”

“Certainly,” replied the obliging Comet. “You don’t know why the moon is called she, do you?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “Why is it?”

“Because it isn’t a sun, so it must be a daughter,” said the Comet. “Isn’t that funny?”

“I guess so,” said Jimmieboy, trying to look as if he thought the joke a good one. “But don’t you know anything funnier than that?”

“Yes,” returned the Comet. “What do you think of this: What is the only thing you can crack without splitting it?”

“That sounds interesting,” said Jimmieboy, “but I’m sure I never could guess.”

“Why, it’s a joke, of course,” said the Comet. “You can crack a joke eight times a day and it’s as whole as it ever was when night comes.”

“That’s so,” said Jimmieboy. “That’s funnier than the other, too. I see now why they call you a Comic.”

“I’m not a Comic,” said the Comet, with a laugh at Jimmieboy’s mistake. “I’m a Comet. I end with a T like the days when you have dinner in the afternoon. They end with a tea, don’t they?”

“That’s the best, yet,” roared Jimmieboy. “If you give me another like that I may laugh harder and fall off, so I guess you’d better hadn’t.”

“How would you like to hear some of my poetry?” asked the Comet. “I’m a great writer of poetry, I can tell you. I won a prize once for writing more poetry in an hour than any other Comet in school.”

“I’m very fond of it,” said Jimmieboy. “Specially when it don’t make sense.”

“That’s the kind I like, too,” agreed the Comet. “I never can understand the other kind. I’ve got a queer sort of a head. I can’t understand sense, but nonsense is as clear to me as—well as turtle soup. Ever see any turtle soup?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy, “but I’ve seen turtles.”

“Well, turtle soup is a million times clearer than turtles, so maybe you can get some idea of what I mean.”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “I think I do. Nonsense poetry is like a window to you. You can see through it in a minute.”

“Exactly,” said the Comet. “Only nonsense poetry hasn’t any glass in it, so it isn’t exactly like a window to me after all.”

“Well, anyhow,” put in Jimmieboy. “Let’s have some of the poetry.”

“Very good,” said the Comet. “Here goes. It’s about an animal named the Speeler, and it’s called ‘The Speeler’s Lament.’

“Oh, many years ago,

When Jack and Jill were young,

There wandered to and fro,

Along the glistening snow,

A Speeler, much unstrung.

I asked the Speeler why

He looked so mortal sad?

He gazed into my eye,

And then he made reply,

In language very bad,

‘I’m sad,’ said he, ‘because

A Speeler true I be;

And yet, despite my jaws,

My wings, and beak, and claws,

Despite my manners free,

‘Despite my feathers fine,

My voice so soft and sweet,

My truly fair outline,

My very handsome spine,

And massive pair of feet,

‘In all this world of space—

On foot, on fin, on wing—

From Nature’s top to base,

There never was a trace

Of any such strange thing.

‘And it does seem to me—

Indeed it truly does—

’tis dreadful, sir, to be,

As you can plainly see,

A thing that never was!’”

“What’s a Speeler?” said Jimmieboy.

“It isn’t anything. There isn’t any such thing as a Speeler and that’s what made this particular Speeler feel so badly,” said the Comet. “I know I’d feel that way myself. It must be dreadful to be something that isn’t. I was sorry after I had written that poem and created the poor Speeler because it doesn’t seem right to create a thing just for the sake of making it unhappy to please people who like poetry of that kind.”

“I’m afraid it was a sensible poem,” said Jimmieboy. “Because, really, Mr. Comet, I can’t understand it.”

“Well, let me try you on another then, and take away the taste of that one. How do you like this. It’s called ‘Wobble Doo, the Squaller.’

“The Wobble Doo was fond of pie,

He also loved peach jam.

But what most pleased his eagle eye,

Was pickled cakes and ham.

But when, perchance, he got no cake,

Jam, ham, or pie at all,

He’d sit upon a garden rake,

And squall, and squall, and squall.

And as these never came his way,

This hero of my rhyme,

I really do regret to say,

Was squalling all the time.”

“Your poems are all sad, aren’t they?” said Jimmieboy. “Couldn’t you have let Wobble Doo have just a little bit of cake and jam?”

“No. It was impossible,” replied the Comet, sadly, “I couldn’t afford it. I did all I could for him in writing the poem. Seems to me that was enough. It brought him glory, and glory is harder to get than cakes and peach jam ever thought of being. Perhaps you’ll like this better:

“Abadee sollaker hollaker moo,

Carraway, sarraway mollaker doo—

Hobledy, gobbledy, sassafras Sam,

Taramy, faramy, aramy jam.”

“I don’t understand it at all,” said Jimmieboy. “What language is it in?”

“One I made up myself,” said the Comet, gleefully. “And it’s simply fine. I call it the Cometoo language. Nobody knows anything about it except myself, and I haven’t mastered it yet—but my! It’s the easiest language in the world to write poetry in. All you have to do is to go right ahead and make up words to suit yourself, and finding rhyme is no trouble at all when you do that.”

“But what’s the good of it?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, it has plenty of advantages,” said the Comet, shaking his head wisely. “In the first place if you have a language all your own, that nobody else knows, nobody else can write a poem in it. You have the whole field to yourself. Just think how great a man would be if he was the only one to understand English and write poetry in it. He’d get all the money that ever was paid for English poetry, which would be a fortune. It would come to at least $800, which is a good deal of money, considering.”

“Considering what?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Considering what it would bring if wisely invested,” said the Comet. “Did you ever think of what $800 was worth in peanuts, for instance.”

Jimmieboy laughed at the idea of spending $800 in peanuts, and then he said: “No, I never thought anything about it. What is it worth in peanuts?”

“Well,” said the Comet, scratching his head with his tail, “it’s a very hard bit of arithmetic, but, I’ll try to write it out for you. Peanuts, you know, cost ten cents a quart.”

“Do they?” said Jimmieboy. “I never bought a whole quart at once. I’ve only paid five cents a pint.”

“Well, five cents a pint is English for ten cents a quart,” said the Comet, “and in $800 there are eight thousand ten centses, so that you could get eight thousand quarts of peanuts for $800. Now every quart of peanuts holds about fifty peanut shellfuls, so that eight thousand quarts of peanuts equal four hundred thousand peanuts shellfuls. Each peanut shell holds two small nuts so that in four hundred thousand of them there are eight hundred thousand nuts.”

“Phe-e-ew!” whistled Jimmieboy. “What a feast.”

“Yes,” said the Comet, “but just you wait. Suppose you ate one of these nuts a minute, do you know how long it would take you, eating eight hours a day, to eat up the whole lot?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy, beginning to feel a little awed at the wondrous possibilities of $800 in peanuts.

“Four years, six months, three weeks and six days, and you’d have to eat Sundays to get through it in that time,” said the Comet. “In soda water it would be quite as awful and in peppermint sticks at two cents a foot it would bring you a stick forty thousand feet, or more than seven miles long.”

“Isn’t $800 wonderful,” said Jimmieboy, overcome by the mere thought of so much peppermint candy.

“Yes—but really I am much more wonderful when you think of me. You haven’t been on my back more than ten minutes and yet in that time I have taken you all around the world,” said the Comet.

“All the way!” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes,” said the Comet, stopping suddenly. “Here we are back at your window again.”

“But I didn’t see China, and I wanted to,” said the boy.

“Can’t help it,” said the Comet. “You had your chance, but you preferred to talk about poetry and peanuts. It isn’t my fault. Off with you, now.”

And then the Comet bucked like a wild Western Bronco, and as Jimmieboy went over his head through the window and landed plump in his papa’s lap, the queer creature with the fiery tail flew off into space.

•   13   •

JIMMIEBOY AND JACK FROST

I
IN WHICH JACK GIVES OFFENSE

Jimmieboy is the proud possessor of a small brother, who, to use one of Jimmieboy’s own expressions, is getting to be a good deal of a man. That is to say, he is old enough to go out driving all by himself, being eleven months of age, and quite capable of managing the fiery untamed nurse that pushes his carriage along the street. Of course, if the nurse had not been warranted kind and gentle when the baby’s mamma went to find her in the beginning, little Russ would have had to have somebody go along with him when he went driving—somebody like Jimmieboy, for instance, to frighten off big dogs and policemen, and to see that the nurse didn’t shy or run away—but as it was, the baby had developed force of character and self-reliance enough to go out unattended, and, except on one occasion, he got back again safe and sound.

This one occasion was early in December, when Nature, having observed that the great big boys had got through playing football and were beginning to think of snowballs, sent word to the Arctic Cold Weather Company that she desired to have delivered at once five days of low temperature for general distribution among her friends, which days were sent through by special messenger, arriving late on the night of December 1st, giving great satisfaction to everybody, particularly to those who deal in ice, ear-muffs, and skates. At first Jimmieboy’s mamma thought that Nature was perhaps a little too generous with her frosty weather, and for two days she kept her two sons, Jimmieboy and Russ, cooped up in the house, laying in a supply of furnace and log-fire heat sufficiently large to keep them warm until the third day, when she thought that they might safely go out.

JIMMIEBOY PREPARED FOR COLD WEATHER

Upon the third day Jimmieboy’s papa said that he imagined the boys were warm enough to venture out-of-doors, so they were bundled up in leggings, fur-lined coats, flannel bands, scarfs, silk handkerchiefs, lamb’s-wool rugs, and “arctics,” the door was opened, and out they went. Jimmieboy stayed out seven minutes, and then came in again to see if he could find out why his nose had suddenly changed its color, first from pink to red, and then from red to blue. He also wished to come in, he said, because the solid iron driver of his red express wagon had been “freezed stiff,” and he was afraid if he stayed out much longer he’d never thaw out again. Little Russ, on the contrary, lying luxuriously in his carriage, with no part of him visible save the tip end of his chin, which was so fat that the coverings would slip off, no matter how hard mamma and the nurse tried to make them stay on, remained out-of-doors for two hours, apparently very comfortable. His great blue eyes shone mirthfully when he came in, and until six o’clock that evening all went well with him, and then he began to whimper.

“What’s the matter with my baby?” asked Jimmieboy.

LITTLE RUSS

Little Russ made no reply other than a grimace, which made Jimmieboy laugh, at which the baby opened his mouth as wide as he could and shrieked with wrath.

“I’m inclined to think,” said the nurse, as she sought vainly to find where a possible pin might be creating a disturbance to the baby’s discomfiture—“I’m inclined to think that perhaps he’s got a pain somewhere.”

And then the youthful Russ blinked his eyes, gave another shriek, and attempted to pout. Now it is a singular way little Russ has of pouting. He gets it from his mamma, who used to pout in just the same way when she was a little girl—so grandma says—and it consists entirely of sticking his chin out as far as he can, while concealing his lower lip as much as possible beneath the cherry-colored Cupid’s bow that acts as his upper lip. A proceeding of this sort always results in making that chin the most conspicuous thing in the room, so that it is not surprising that when little Russ pouted, everyone in the room should at once notice that there was a great red spot upon it.

“Why, the poor little soul has been frostbitten!” cried mamma, running for the cold cream—queer thing that, by the way, Jimmieboy thought. He would have put warm cream on a cold sore like that.

“So he is!” ejaculated papa, with an indignant glance at the chin, which only caused that fat little feature to pout the more. “Hadn’t I better send for the doctor?”

“Does dogs frost-bite?” queried Jimmieboy, looking around the room for a stick with which to beat the dog that had done the biting, if perchance it was a dog that was responsible.

“No, indeed,” said papa. “It wasn’t a dog; it was Jack Frost, and nobody else. He ought to be muzzled.”

“Who is Jack Frost, papa?” Jimmieboy asked, so much interested in Jack that he for a moment forgot his suffering small brother.

“Jack? Why, Jack is a man named Frost, who deals in cold, and he goes around in winter biting people. He’s a sort of iceman, only he’s retired from trade, and gives things away, to people who don’t want ’em. It would be better if he’d go into business, and sell his favors to people who do want ’em.”

“Well, he’s a naughty man,” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes, indeed, he is,” said papa. “Why, he’s the man who withered all your mamma’s plants, and painted our nice green lawn white; and then, when we wanted to dig holes for the fence posts, he came along and made the ground so hard it took all the edge off the spade, and made the hired man so tired that he overslept himself that night and let the furnace go out.”

“Can’t somebody catch him, and put him into prism?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, he’s been in prism lots of times,” said papa, with a laugh at Jimmieboy’s droll word; “but he manages to get out again.”

“Where does he live, papa?” asked the boy.

“All around in winter. In summer he goes north for his health.”

“And can’t anybody ever get rid of him?”

“No. The only way to do that successfully would be to burn him out, and so far nobody has ever been able to do it entirely. You can put him out of your own house; but, if he wants to, he’ll stay around the place and nip your plants, and freeze up your wells, and put a web of ice on your grass and sidewalks in spite of anything you can do.”

By this time little Russ had quieted down and gone to sleep. The cold cream, aided by a huge bottleful of the food he liked best, which warmed up his little heart and various other parts of his being, to which the world had for a little while seemed bleak and drear, had put him in a contented frame of mind, and if the smile on his lips meant anything he had forgotten his woes in dreams of sweet and lovely things.

It was not so, however, with Jimmieboy, who grew more and more indignant as he thought of that great lumbering iceman, Jack Frost, coming along and biting his dear little brother in that cruel fashion. It was simply cowardly, he thought. Of course Jimmieboy could understand how anyone might wish to take a bite of something that was as sweet as little Russ was, and when mosquitoes did it he was not disposed to quarrel with them, because it was courageous in a minute insect like a mosquito to risk his life for his sweetmeats, but with Jack Frost it was different. Why didn’t he take a man of his size like papa, for instance, or the grocer man? He was afraid to—that was it—and so he fastened upon a poor, helpless little man like Russ, only eleven months old.

“He ought to be hitted on the head,” said Jimmieboy.

“That wouldn’t do any good,” said papa. “It wouldn’t hurt him a bit. You couldn’t kill him with a hundred ice-picks, and I don’t believe even a steam-drill would lay him up more than a week. What he’s afraid of is heat—only heat, and nothing else. That cracks him all up and melts him, so that he can’t bite anything.”

Then Jimmieboy had his supper and began playing with his toys until bedtime should come, but all the time his mind was on that cruel Jack Frost. Something else in the room was thinking about it, too, only Jimmieboy didn’t know it. The little gas stove that stood guard over by the fireplace was quite as angry about Jack’s behavior as anybody, but he kept very still until along about eight o’clock when he began to sputter.

Jimmieboy stopped pushing his iron engine over the floor, and looked with heavy eyes at the gas stove. This was extraordinary behavior for the stove, and Jimmieboy wondered what was the matter.

“Say!” whispered the stove, as Jimmieboy looked at him. “Let’s get after that Frost fellow and make him wish he never was born.”

Jimmieboy said nothing to this. He was too much surprised to say anything—the idea of a gas stove speaking to him was so absurd. He only gazed steadfastly at the extraordinary thing in the fireplace, and then let his head droop down on his arms as he lay on the floor, and in a moment would have been asleep had not the stove again sputtered.

“Hi! Jimmieboy!” it cried. “Don’t go to sleep. I know where Jack Frost lives, and we’ll get after him and punish him for what he did to little Russ.”

“How?” asked Jimmieboy, crawling across the room on his hands and knees, and looking earnestly at this strange gas stove.

“Never mind how,” returned the Stove. “I’ll tell you that later. The point is, will you go? If you will say the word I’ll make all the arrangements, and we’ll set off after everybody has gone to bed. It is a beautiful moonlight night. Everything is just right for a successful trip. There’s enough snow on the ground for the sleigh to move, and the river’s all frozen over except in the middle. We can skate as far as the ice goes, and then, if there is no boat, we can put on your papa’s arctics, and walk across the water to the other side. From there it’s only a forty-minute skate to Jack’s home. He’ll come in about twelve o’clock, and we’ll have him just where we want him. What do you say?”

“I’ll be in bed by the time you want to start,” said Jimmieboy. “I’d like to do it very much, but I don’t know how to dress myself, and—”

“Never mind that,” returned the Gas Stove. “Go as you are.”

“In my nightgown? On a cold night like this?” queried the little fellow, more than ever astonished at the Gas Stove’s peculiarities.

“Why, certainly. I’ll see that you are kept warm,” returned the stove. “I’ve got warmth enough for twenty-six as it is, and if there’s only two of us—why, you see how it’ll be. It’ll be too warm for two of us.”

“That’s so,” said Jimmieboy. “I never thought of it that way. I might sit on your lap if I couldn’t keep warm any other way, eh?”

“I’ve got a better way than that,” said the Stove, dancing a little jig on the tiles. “I’ll get you a pair of gas gloves, some gas ear-tabs, a patent nose furnace, an overcoat lined with gas-jets that can be lit so as to keep you warm without burning you, and leggings, shoes, hats, and everything you need to make you feel as happy and warm as a poached egg on toast.”

“That’ll be splendid,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ll go, and we’ll fix Jack so that he won’t bite any of our people any more, eh?”

“Yes,” said the Gas Stove, delighted at the prospect.

“Shall we muzzle him?” asked Jimmieboy. But the Gas Stove only winked, for just then mamma came upstairs from dinner, and as it was Jimmieboy’s nurse’s night out, his mamma undressed the little fellow, and put him in his crib, where he shortly dropped off to sleep.

In a little while everybody in the house had gone to bed, and when the last light had been extinguished the door of the room in which Jimmieboy slept was slowly opened, and the Gas Stove, all his lights turned down so that nobody could see him in the darkness, tiptoed in, and climbing upon the side of Jimmieboy’s crib tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

THE GAS-STOVE TAPPED HIM
LIGHTLY ON THE SHOULDER

“All ready?” he said, in a low whisper.

“Yes,” answered Jimmieboy, softly, as he arose and got down on the floor. “How do we go? Down the stairs?”

“No,” replied the Gas Stove. “We’ll take the toy balloon up the chimney.”

Which they at once proceeded to do.

II
IN WHICH JIMMIEBOY
AND THE GAS STOVE MAKE A START

“Now jump into the sleigh just as quickly as you can, Jimmieboy,” said the Stove, as they issued forth into the cold night air. “Put on that fur cap and the overcoat, shoes, and gloves, and I’ll light ’em up.”

“They won’t burn, for sure?” queried Jimmieboy, nervously, for the idea of wearing clothes heated by gas was a little bit terrifying.

“Not a bit,” said the Stove in reply. “I wouldn’t give ’em to you if they would. Thanks,” he added, turning and throwing a ten-cent piece to a gas boy, who handed him the reins by which the horses were controlled. “We’ll be back about sunrise.”

“Very well,” said the boy. “Do you want me turned on all night, sir?”

“No,” answered the Stove. “Gas is expensive these days. You can turn yourself out right away. Have you fed the horses?”

“Yes, sir,” said the boy. “They’ve each had four thousand feet by the meter for supper.”

“Fuel or illuminating?” queried the Stove.

“Illuminating,” replied the boy.

“Good,” said the Stove. “That ought to make them bright. Goodbye. Get up!”

With this the horses made a spring forward—fiery steeds in very truth, their outlines in jets, each burning a small flame, standing out like lines of stars in the sky.

“THIS IS PRETTY FINE, EH?”

“This is pretty fine, eh?” said the Gas Stove, with a smile, which, had anyone looked, must have been visible for miles, so light and cheerful was it.

“Lovely!” cried Jimmieboy, almost gasping in ecstasy. “I’m just as warm and comfortable as can be. I didn’t know you had a team like this.”

“Ah, my boy,” returned the Stove, “there’s lots you don’t know. For instance:

“You don’t know why a fire will burn

On hot days merrily;

And when the cold days come, will turn

As cold as I—C—E!

You don’t know why the puppies bark,

Or why snap-turtles snap;

Or why a horse runs round the park,

Because you say, ‘git-ap.’

You don’t know why a peach has fuzz

Upon its pinky cheek;

Or what the poor Dumb-Crambo does

When he desires to speak.

“Do you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Jimmieboy. “But I should like to very much.”

“So should I,” said the Stove. “We’re very much alike in a great many respects, and particularly in those in which we resemble each other.”

The truth of this was so evident that Jimmieboy could think of nothing to say in answer to it, so he merely observed: “I’m awful hungry.”

This was a favorite remark of his, particularly between meals.

“So am I,” said the Stove. “Let’s see what we’ve got here. Just hold the reins while I dive down into the lunch basket.”

Jimmieboy took the reins with some fear at first, but when he saw that they were high up in the air where there was really nothing but a star or two to run into, and realized that even they were millions of miles away, he soon got used to it, and was sorry when the Stove resumed control.

“There, Jimmieboy,” said the Stove, as he drew his hand out of the basket. “There’s a nice hot gingersnap for you. I think I’ll take a snack of this fuel gas myself.”

“You don’t eat gas, do you?” asked the small passenger.

“I guess I do,” ejaculated the Stove, with a smack of his lips. “As our Gas Poet Laureate said:

“Oh, kerosene

Is good, I ween,

And so is apple sass;

But bring for me,

Oh, chickadee,

A bowl of fuel gas!

Some persons like

The red beefstike,

The cow just dotes on grass—

But to my mind

No one can find

More toothsome things than gas.

And so I say,

Bring me no hay;

No roasted deep-sea bass.

Bring me no pease,

Or fricassees,

If, haply, you have gas.

“It’s easy to eat, too,” added the Stove. “In fact, I heard your papa say we consumed too much of it one day when he’d got his bill from the gas butcher.”

“Do you chew it?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No, indeed. We take it in through a pipe. It isn’t like soup or meat, though I sometimes think if people could take soup out of a pipe instead of from a spoon they’d look handsomer while they were eating. But the great thing about it is it’s always ready, and if it comes cold, all you have to do is to touch a match to it, and it gets as hot as you could want.”

“I should think you’d get tired of it,” said Jimmieboy.

“Not at all. There’s a great variety in gases. There’s fuel gas, illuminating gas, laughing gas, attagas—”

“What’s that last?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Attagas? Why, when we want a game dinner, we have attagas. If you will look it up in the dictionary you will find that it’s a sort of partridge. It’s mighty good, too, with a sauce of stewed gasberries, and a mug or two of gasparillo to wash it down.”

Here Jimmieboy smacked his lips. Gasparillo truly sounded as if it might be very delightful, though I don’t myself believe it is any less bitter to the taste than some other barks of trees, such as quinine, for instance.

“Howdy do?” said the Stove, with a familiar nod to the east of them.

“Howdy do!” replied Jimmieboy.

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” said the Stove, with a laugh. “I was only nodding to an old friend of mine; he’s got a fine place up in the sky there. His name is Sirius. They call him the dog-star, and all he has to do is twinkle. You can’t see him all the time from your house, but when you get up as high as this he stands right out and twinkles at you. Pretty good fellow, Sirius is. I might have had his place, but somehow or other I prefer to work indoors and rest nights. Sirius is out all the time, and has to keep awake all night. But we’ve got to get down to the earth again. Here’s where we take to the skates.”

Jimmieboy looked over the edge of the sleigh as the horses turned in response to a movement of the reins, and started down to earth. He saw a great white river below him, flowing silently along a narrow winding channel, everything on the border of which seemed bathed in silver except the middle of the river itself, a strip of forty or fifty feet in width, which was not frozen over.

“That’s Frostland,” whispered the Gas Stove. “We can’t get over to the other side with this team because they are very skittish, and if the sleigh were overturned and our ammunition lost we should be lost ourselves. We’ve got to land directly below where we are now, skate to the edge of the ice on this bank, row over to the other, and then skate again directly to the palace. We mustn’t let anybody know who we really are, either, or we may have trouble, and we want to avoid that; for you know, Jimmieboy,

“The man who gets along without

A care or bit of strife,

Is certain sure, beyond all doubt,

To lead a happy life.”

“But I can’t skate,” said Jimmieboy.

“You can slide, can’t you?” asked the Stove.

“Yes, both ways. Standing up and sitting down.”

“Well, my patent steam skates, operated by gas, will attend to all the rest if you will only stand up straight,” returned the Stove, and the sleigh dropped lightly down to the earth, and the two crusaders against Jack Frost alighted.

“Isn’t it beautiful here?” said Jimmieboy, as he looked about him and saw superb tall trees, their leaves white and glistening in the moonlight, bound in an icy covering that kept them always as he saw them then. “And look at the flowers,” he added, joyously, as he caught sight of a bed of rosebushes, only the flowers were lustrous as silver and of the same dazzling whiteness.

“Yes,” said the Gas Stove, sadly. “Every time Jack Frost withers a flower or a plant he brings it here, and it remains forever as you see them now; he has had the choice of the most beautiful things in the world. But come, we must hurry. Put on these skates.”

Jimmieboy did as he was told, and then the Stove lit a row of small jets of gas along the steel runners of the skates, and they grew warm to Jimmieboy’s feet, and in a moment little puffs of steam issued forth from them, and Jimmieboy began to move, slowly at first, and then more and more quickly, until he was racing at breakneck speed.

“Hi, Stovey!” he cried, very much alarmed to find himself speeding off through this strange country all alone. “Hurry up and catch me, or I’ll be out of sight.”

“Keep on,” hallooed the Stove in return. “Don’t bother about me. I’ve got four feet to your two, and I can go twice as fast as you do. Keep on straight ahead, and I’ll be up with you in a minute—just as soon as I can get the ammunition and my hose out.”

“I wonder what he’s going to do with the hose?” Jimmieboy asked himself. The Stove was too far behind him for the little skater to ask him.

“HALT!” CRIED A VOICE

“Halt!” cried a voice in front of Jimmieboy.

“I can’t,” gasped the little fellow, very much frightened, for as he gazed through the darkness to see who it was that addressed him, he perceived a huge snow man standing directly in his path.

“You must,” cried the Snow Man, opening his mouth and breathing forth an icy blast that nearly froze the water in Jimmieboy’s eyes. “You shall!” he added, opening his arms wide, so that before he knew it Jimmieboy was precipitated into them.

“See?” said the Snow Man. “I can compel y—”

The Snow Man never got any further with this remark, for in a moment Jimmieboy passed straight through him. The heat of Jimmieboy’s clothes had melted a hole through the Snow Man, and as the small skater turned to look at his adversary he saw him standing there, his head, his sides, and legs still intact, but from his waist down all the middle part of him had disappeared.

THE MIDDLE PART OF HIM HAD DISAPPEARED

“Dear me! How sad,” Jimmieboy said.

“Not at all,” responded a voice beside him. “It serves him right; he’s the meanest Snow Man that ever lived. If you hadn’t melted him he’d have turned himself into an avalanche, and then you’d have been buried so deep in snow and ice you’d never have got out.”

“Who are you?” queried Jimmieboy, with a startled glance in the direction whence the voice seemed to come.

“Only what you hear,” replied the voice. “I am a voice. Jack Frost froze the rest of me and carted it away, and left me here for the rest of my life.”

“What were you?”

“I cannot remember,” said the voice. “I may have been anything you can think of. You could stand there and call me all the names you chose, and I couldn’t deny that I was any of them.

“Sometimes I think I may have been

A piece of apple pie;

Perhaps a great and haughty queen,

Perhaps a gaily dressed marine,

In former days was I.

I may have been a calendar,

To tell some man the date;

I may have been a railway car,

A rocket or a shooting star,

Or e’en a roller skate.

I may have been a jar of jam,

Perhaps a watch and chain;

I may have been a boy named Sam,

An oyster or a toothsome clam,

Perhaps a weather vane.

I may have been a pot of ink,

A sloop or schooner yacht;

I may have been the missing link,

But what I was I cannot think—

For I have quite forgot.

“All I know is that I was something once; that Jack Frost came along and caught me and added me to his collection of curiosities, where I have been ever since. They call me the invisible chatterbox, and tell visitors that I escaped from the National Vocabulary at Washington.”

“I am very sorry for you,” said Jimmieboy, sympathetically.

“You needn’t be,” said the voice. “I’m happy! I’m the only curiosity here that can be impudent to King Jack. I can say what I please, you know, and there’s no way of punishing me; I’m like a newspaper in that respect. I can go into any home, high or low, say what I please, and there you are. Nobody can hurt me at all. Oh, it’s just immense. I play all sorts of tricks on Jack, too. I get right up in front of his mouth and talk ridiculous nonsense, and people think he says it. Why, only the other night a Snow Man I don’t like went in to see Jack, and Jack liked him tremendously, too, and was really glad to see him; but before the King had a chance to say a word I hallooed out: ‘Get out of here, you donkey. Go make snowballs of your head and throw them at yourself;’ and the Snow Man thought Jack said it, and, do you know, he went outside and did it. He’s been laid up ever since.”

“I think that was a very mean thing to do,” said Jimmieboy.

“I’d agree with you if I had any conscience, but alas! they’ve deprived me of that too,” sighed the voice. “But look out,” it added, hastily. “Throw yourself into that snowbank or you’ll fall into the river.”

Without waiting to think why, Jimmieboy obeyed the voice and threw himself headlong into a huge snowbank at his side, and glanced anxiously about him.

He was indeed, as the voice had said, on the very edge of the ice, and another yard’s advance would have landed him head over heels in the rushing water.

“That would have been awful, wouldn’t it?” he said to the Stove, as his little friend came up.

“Yes, it would,” returned the Stove. “It would have put out the lights in your clothes, and that would have been very awful, for I find we have come away without any matches. Jump into the boat, now, and row as straight for the other side as you can.”

Jimmieboy looked about him for a boat, but couldn’t see one.

“There is no boat,” he said.

“Yes, there is—jump!” cried the Stove.

And Jimmieboy jumped, and, strange to relate, found himself in an instant seated amidships in an exquisitely light rowboat made entirely of ice.

“Row fast, now,” said the Stove. “If you don’t the boat will melt before we can get across.”

III
IN THE HEART OF FROSTLAND

“We’re afloat!

We’re afloat!

In our trim ice-boat;

And we row—

Yeave ho!

“I guess I won’t sing any more,” said the Gas Stove. “It’s a hard song to sing, that is, particularly when you’ve never heard it before, and can’t think of another rhyme for boat.”

“That’s easy enough to find,” returned Jimmieboy, pulling at the oars. “Coat rhymes with boat, and so do note and moat and goat and—”

“Very true,” assented the Stove, “but it wouldn’t do to use coat because we take our coats off when we row. Note is good enough but you don’t have time to write one when you are singing a sea-song. Moat isn’t any good, because nobody’d know whether you meant the moat of a castle, a sun-moat, or the one in your eye. As for goats, goats don’t go well in poetry. So I guess it’s just as well to stop singing right here.”

“How fast we go!” said Jimmieboy.

“What did you expect?” asked the Stove. “The bottom of this boat is as slippery as can be, and, of course, going up the river against the current we get over the water faster than if we were going the other way because we—er—because we—well because we do.”

“Seems to me,” said Jimmieboy, “I’d better turn out some of the gas in my coat. I’m melting right through the seat here.”

“So am I,” returned the Stove, with an anxious glance at the icy craft. “It won’t be more than a minute before I melt my end of the boat all to pieces. I’m afraid we’ll have to take to our arctics after all. I brought a pair of your father’s along, and it’s a good thing for us that he has big feet, for you’ll have to get in one and I in the other.”

Just then the stern of the boat melted away, and the Stove, springing up from his seat and throwing himself into one of the arctics, with his ammunition and rubber hose, floated off. Jimmieboy had barely time to get into the other arctic when his end of the ice-boat also gave way, and a cross-current in the stream catching the arctic whirled it about and carried it and its little passenger far away from the Stove who shortly disappeared around a turn in the river, so that Jimmieboy was left entirely alone in utter ignorance as to where he really was or what he should do next. Generally Jimmieboy was a very brave little boy, but he found his present circumstances rather trying. To be floating down a strange river in a large overshoe, with absolutely no knowledge of the way home, and a very dim notion only as to how he had managed to get where he was, was terrifying, and when he realized his position, great tears fell from Jimmieboy’s eyes, freezing into little pearls of ice before they landed in the bottom of the golosh, where they piled up so rapidly that the strange craft sank further and further into the water and would certainty have sunk with their weight had not the voice Jimmieboy had encountered a little while before come to his rescue.

“GOLOSH, AHOY!”

“Golosh, ahoy!” cried the voice. “Captain! Captain! Lean over the side and cry in the river or you’ll sink your boat.”

The sound of the voice was a great relief to the little sailor who at once tried to obey the order he had received but found it unnecessary since his tears immediately dried up.

“Come out here in the boat with me!” cried Jimmieboy. “I’m awful lonesome and I don’t know what to do.”

“Then there is only one thing you can do,” said the voice from a point directly over the buckle of the arctic. “And that is to sit still and let time show you. It’s a great thing, Jimmieboy, when you don’t know what to do and can’t find anyone to tell you, to sit down and do nothing, because if you did something you’d be likely to find out afterwards that it was the wrong thing. When I was young, in the days when I was what I used to be, I once read a poem that has lingered with me ever since. It was called ‘Wait and See’ and this is the way it went:

“When you are puzzled what to do,

And no one’s nigh to help you out;

You’ll find it for the best that you

Should wait until Time gives the clew.

And then your business go about—

Of this there is no doubt.

Just see the cow! She never knows

What’s going to happen next, so she

Contented ’mongst the daises goes,

In clover from her head to toes,

From care and trouble ever free—

She simply waits, you see!

The horse, unlike the cow, in fear

Jumps to and fro at maddest rate,

Tears down the street, doth snort and rear,

And knocks the wagon out of gear—

And just because he does not wait,

His woes accumulate.

D. Crockett, famous in the past,

The same sage thought hath briefly wed

To words that must forever last,

Wherever haply they be cast:

‘Be sure you’re right, then go ahead,’

That’s what D. Crockett said.

Lots in that. If you don’t know what to do,” continued the voice, “don’t do it.”

“I won’t,” said Jimmieboy. “But do you know where we are?”

“Yes,” said the voice. “I am here and you are there, and I think if we stay just as we are forever there is not likely to be any change, so why repine? We are happy.”

Just then the golosh passed into a huge cavern, whose sides glistened like silver, and from the roof of which hung millions of beautiful and at times fantastically shaped icicles.

“This,” said the voice, “is the gateway to the Kingdom of Frostland. At the far end you will see a troop of ice soldiers standing guard. I doubt very much if you can get by them, unless you have retained a great deal of that heat you had. How is it? Are you still lit?”

“I am,” said Jimmieboy. “Just put your hand on my chest and see how hot it is.”

“Can’t do it,” returned the voice, “for two reasons. First, I haven’t a hand to do it with, and secondly, if I had, I couldn’t see with it. People don’t see with their hands any more than they sing with their toes; but say, Jimmieboy, wouldn’t it be funny if we could do all those things—eh? What a fine poem this would be if it were only sensible:

“A singular song having greeted my toes,

I stared till I weakened the sight of my nose

To see what it was, and observed a sweet voice

Come forth from the ears of Lucinda, so choice.

I cast a cough-drop in the lovely one’s eyes,

Who opened her hands in a tone of surprise,

And remarked, in a way that startled my wife,

‘I never was treated so ill in my life.’

Then tears in a torrent coursed over her arms,

And the blush on her teeth much heightened her charms.

As, tossing the cough-drop straight back, with a sneeze,

She smashed the green goggles I wear on my knees.”

Jimmieboy laughed so long and so loudly at this poetical effusion that he attracted the attention of the guards, who immediately loaded their guns and began to pepper the invaders with snowballs.

“Throw yourself down on your stomach in the toe of the golosh,” whispered the voice, “and they’ll never know you are there. Keep perfectly quiet, and when any questions are asked, even if you are discovered, let me answer them. I can disguise myself so that they won’t recognize me, and they’ll think I’m your voice. In this way I think I can get you through in safety.”

So Jimmieboy threw himself down in the golosh, and the voice began to sing.

“No, no, my dear,

I do not fear

The devastating snow-ball;

When it strikes me,

I shriek with glee,

And eat it like a dough-ball.”

“HALT!” CRIED THE ICE-GUARDS

“Halt!” cried the ice-guards. “Who are you?”

“I am a haunted overshoe,” replied the voice. “I am on the foot of a phantom which only appears at uncertain hours, and is consequently now invisible to you.

“And, so I say,

Oh, fire away,

I fear ye not, icicles;

Howe’er ye shoot,

I can’t but hoot,

Your act so greatly tickles.”

“Shall we let it through?” asked the Captain of the guards.

“I move we do,” said one High Private.

“I move we don’t,” said another.

“All in favor of doing one thing or the other say aye,” cried the Captain.

“Aye!” roared the company.

“Contrary-minded, no,” added the Captain.

“No!” roared the company.

“Both motions are carried,” said the Captain. “We will now adjourn for luncheon.”

The overshoe, meanwhile, had floated on down through the gates and was now out of the guards’ sight and Jimmieboy sprang to his feet and looked about him once more, and what he saw was so beautiful that he sat speechless with delight. He was now in the heart of Frostland, and before him loomed the Palace, a marvelously massive pile of richly carven ice-blocks transparent as glass; and within, seated upon a throne of surpassing brilliance and beauty, sat King Jack surrounded by his courtiers, who were singing songs the like of which Jimmieboy never before had heard.

“Now remember, Jimmieboy,” said the voice, as the overshoe with its passengers floated softly up to the huge snow-pier that ran out into the river at this point where they disembarked—“remember I am to do all the talking. Otherwise you might get into trouble.”

“All right, Voicy,” began Jimmieboy, and then there came a terrific shout from within.

“WHO COMES HERE?”

“Who comes here?” cried King Jack, rising from his throne and pointing his finger at Jimmieboy.

“I am a traveling minstrel,” Jimmieboy seemed to reply though in reality it was the kind-hearted voice that said it. “And I have come a thousand and six miles, eight blocks, fourteen feet, six inches to recite to your Majesty a poem I have written in honor of your approaching Jubilee.”

“Have I a Jubilee approaching?” roared Jack, turning to his Secretary of State, who was so startled that his right arm melted.

“Y—yes, your Majesty,” stammered the Secretary, with a low bow. “It is coming along at the rate of sixty seconds a minute.”

“Why have I not been informed of this before?” roared Jack, casting a glance at the cowering Secretary that withered the nose straight off his face. “Don’t you know that Jubilees are useful to a man only because other people give him presents in honor of the event? And here you’ve kept me in ignorance of the fact all this time, and the chances are I won’t get a thing;—for I’ve neglected my relatives dreadfully.”

“Sire,” pleaded the Secretary, “all that you say is true, but I have attended to all that. I have informed your friends that the Jubilee is coming, and they are all preparing pleasant little surprises for you. We are going to give your Majesty a surprise party, which is the finest kind of a party, because you don’t have to go home after it is over, and the guests bring their own fried oysters, and pay all the bills.”

“Ah!” said Jack, melting a little. “You are a good man, after all. I will raise your salary, and send your children a skating-pond on Christmas day; but when is this Jubilee to take place?”

“In eight hundred and forty-seven years,” returned the voice, who did not like the Secretary of State, and wanted to get him in trouble. “On the eighty-second day of July.”

“What—a—at?” roared the King, glaring at the Secretary.

“I didn’t say a word, sire,” cried the unfortunate Secretary.

“No?” sneered Jack. “I suppose it was I that answered my own question, eh? That settles you. The idea of my waiting eight hundred and forty-seven years for a Jubilee that is to take place on an impossible date! Executioner, take the Secretary of State out to the furnace-room, and compel him to sit before the fire until there’s only enough of him left to make one snowball. Then take that and throw it at the most decrepit hack-driver in my domain. The humiliation of this delayer of Jubilees must be complete.”

The Secretary of State was then led weeping away, and Jack, turning to the awed Jimmieboy, shouted out:

“Now for the minstrel. If the poem pleaseth our Royal Coolness, the singer shall have the position made vacant by that unfortunate snowdrift I have just degraded. Step right up, young fellow, and turn on the poem.”

“Step up to the foot of the throne and make a bow, and leave the rest to me,” whispered the voice to Jimmieboy. “All you’ve got to do is to move your lips and wave your arms. I’ll do the talking.”

Jimmieboy did as he was bade. He took up his stand before the throne, bowed, and the voice began to declaim as Jimmieboy’s lips moved, and his arms began to shoot out, first to the left and then to the right.

“This poem,” said the voice, “is in the language of the Snortuguese, and has been prepared at great expense for this occasion, fourteen gallons of ink having been consumed on the first stanza alone, which runs as follows:

“Jack Frigidos,

Jack Frigidos,

Oh, what a trope you are!

How you do shine

And ghibeline,

And conjugate afar!”

“It begins very well, oh, minstrel!” said Jack, with an approving nod. “The ink was well expended. Mount thee yon table, and from thence deliver thyself of the remnant of thy rhyme.”

“Thanks,” returned the voice; “I will.”

“Get up on the table, Jimmieboy,” the voice added, “and we’ll finish ’em off there. Be a little slow about it, for I’ve got to have time to compose the rest of the poem.”

So Jimmieboy clambered up the leg of the table, and in a few moments was ready for the voice to begin, which the voice proceeded to do.

“I will repeat the first verse, your Majesty, for the sake of completeness. And here goes:

“Jack Frigidos,

Jack Frigidos,

Oh, what a trope you are!

How you do shine,

And ghibeline,

And conjugate afar!

How debonair

Is thy back hair;

Thy smile how contraband!

Would I could ape

Thy shapely shape,

And arrogate thy hand!

That nose of thine,

How superfine!

How pertinent thy chin.

How manifest

The palimpsest

And contour of thy shin!

How ormolu

Thy revenue!

How dusk thy silhouette!

How myrtilly

Thy pedigree

Doth grace thine amulet!

What man is there,

Ay, anywhere,

What mortal chanticleer,

Can fail to find

Unto his mind

Thy buxom bandolier!

Ah, Frigidos!

Jack Frigidos,

In parcel or in keg,

Another like

Thee none can strike

From Dan to Winnipeg.”

Here the voice paused.

“Is that all?” queried Jack Frost.

“It is all I have written up to this moment,” the voice answered. “Of course there are seventy or eighty more miles of it, because, as your Majesty is well aware, it would take many a league of poetry fitly to commemorate your virtues.”

“Your answer is pleasing unto me,” replied the monarch of Frostland, when the voice had thus spoken. “The office of the Secretary of State is yours. The salary is not large, but the duties are. They are to consist mainly of—”

Here the King was interrupted by a tremendous noise without. Evidently someone was creating a disturbance, and as Jimmieboy turned to see what it was, he saw the great ice mountain looming up over the far-distant horizon melt slowly away and dwindle out of sight; and then messengers, breathless with haste, rushed in and cried out to the King:

THE GAS-STOVE DESTROYING FROSTLAND

“We are attacked! we are attacked! A tribe from a far country, commanded by the Gas Stove, is even now within our boundaries, armed with a devastating hose, breathing forth fire, by which already has been destroyed the whole western frontier.”

“What is to be done?” cried Jack, in alarm, and springing to his feet. “Can we not send a regiment of cold winds out against them, and freeze them to their very marrows and blow out the gas?”

“We cannot, sire,” returned the messenger, “for the heat is so deadly that the winds themselves thaw into balmy zephyrs before they reach the enemy.”

“Not so!” cried the voice from Jimmieboy’s lips. “For I will save you if you will place the matter in my hands.”

“Noble creature!” sobbed Jack, grasping Jimmieboy by the hand. “Save my kingdom from destruction, and all that you ask of me in the future is yours.”

And Jimmieboy, promising to help Jack, started out, clad with all the authority of his high office, to meet the Gas Stove.

IV
THE END OF THE STORY

As Jimmieboy proceeded along the icy road he observed that everything was beginning to thaw, and then, peering as far into the distance as he could, he saw a great flame burning fiercely and scorching everything with which it came in contact. It was quite evident that the Gas Stove had brought with him the most effective ammunition possible for his purposes.

“I don’t see exactly how he does it,” said the newly appointed Secretary of State, as he ran hurriedly toward the devastating fire.

“Easy enough,” returned the voice. “He has brought along a large quantity of gas and a garden hose, and he has turned on the gas just as you would turn on water, lit it, and there you are. There is absolutely no withstanding him, and unless he can be induced to stop very shortly, he’ll destroy this whole kingdom, and we’ll have nothing but a desert ocean; and I can tell you, Jimmieboy, a desert ocean where there is nothing but water is worse than a desert desert where there is nothing but sand.”

“It seems almost a pity to destroy such a beautiful place as this,” said Jimmieboy, looking about him, taking note of the great tall ice-covered trees and the frost flowers and grasses at the roadside. “But, you know, Jack Frost bit my little brother, which was very cowardly of him, and that’s why the Gas Stove and I have come here to fight.”

“I think you are wrong there,” said the voice. “I don’t believe Jack any more than kissed him; but if he did bite him, it was because he loved him.”

Jimmieboy had never thought of it in that light before. All he knew was that whatever Jack Frost had done, it had brought tears to little Russ’s eyes and woe to his heart.

“It’s rather a funny way to show love to bite a person,” said Jimmieboy.

“Just let me ask you a few questions,” said the voice. “Do you like cherries and peaches?”

“Oh, don’t I!” cried Jimmieboy, smacking his lips. “I just dote on ’em!”

“Then,” said the voice,

“Why do you bite the cherry sweet?

Why in the peach do your teeth meet?”

“Never thought of it that way,” said Jimmieboy.

“I suppose not,” returned the voice. “Are you fond of apples and gingerbread?”

“Well, rather!” ejaculated Jimmieboy.

“Then tell me this,” asked the voice:

“Why do you gnaw the apple red?

Why do you chew your gingerbread?”

“Because I like ’em,” returned Jimmieboy.

“Why do you crunch your taffy brown?

Why do you nibble your jumble down?

Why do you munch your candy ball?

Why do you chew at all—at all?”

continued the voice.

“To make things last longer. ’Tain’t proper to gulp ’em all down at once,” answered Jimmieboy.

“And that’s why Jack Frost bit little Russ,” asserted the voice. “In the first place, he loved him. Little Russ was to him as sweet as a cherry is to you. In the second place, he took a little wee bite, because it wasn’t proper to gulp him all down. Tomorrow that bite spot will be well, and little Russ will be none the worst for it. Now I don’t see why you should want to ruin all this beautiful country just for that. It isn’t a crime to love babies or to eat cherries.”

“That’s so,” said Jimmieboy. “But Jack Frost has done other things. He killed a lot of mamma’s flowers.”

“No, he didn’t,” returned the voice. “Your mamma left ’em outdoors all night, and Jack came along and did just what the bees do. He took all the sweetness he could find out of ’em, and brought them here, where he planted them and made them appear like flowers of silver. You see what the heat down there is doing?”

Jimmieboy looked, and saw the icy covering melting off the flowers and trees, and as the silver coating fell away they would wave softly in the balmy air for a moment, and then wither and crumble away.

“Isn’t that too bad?” he said.

“It is, indeed,” replied the voice. “Those flowers and trees would have stood and lived on forever in their ice coats—ever fresh, ever happy. The warmth from the invader’s fire gives them one glad mad moment of ecstasy, and then they wither away, and are lost forever. Is that worth while, my boy?”

The voice quivered a little as it uttered these words, and Jimmieboy felt tears rising in his own eyes too. Jack Frost was not so bad a fellow, after all, as he had been made out.

“But he made our hired man’s back ache when he went to dig some holes for the fence posts,” said Jimmieboy, who now felt that he should have some excuse for his presence in Frostland, and on a mission of destruction. “Was that right of him?”

“Even if it was his fault, it was right,” said the voice. “I don’t believe it was his fault, though. Hired men have a way of having backache when there’s lots to do. But supposing Jack did give it to him. That hired man was taking a spade and scarring Mother Earth with its sharp edge. Jack Frost gets all that he has from Mother Earth. She has given him work to do—work that has made him what he is—and it was his duty to protect her.”

“Well, I don’t know what to do,” said Jimmieboy, beginning to sob. “I came here for revenge, and I don’t think—”

“There is only one thing for you to do, be true to those who trust you,” said the voice. “Now who trusts you? Your nurse doesn’t—she wouldn’t let you out of her sight. Your papa believes in you, but he never would have entrusted such a mission as this to your hands; nor would your mamma or little Russ. On the other hand, Jack Frost has made you Secretary of State, and you promised to help him in this dreadful trial—he trusts you. As the poem says,

“E’en though it’s sure to take and bust you,

Be ever true to them that trust you.”

“I’ll save them,” said Jimmieboy. And then he started off on a run down the road, and ere long stood face to face with the Gas Stove. The latter immediately threw down his hose, turned off the gas, and clasped Jimmieboy to his heart.

“Saved! Saved!” he cried. “I have found you at last. Dear me, how anxious I have been about you!” And then he burst out in song:

“But now, O joy?

My averdupoy

Will steadily increase;

For, now you’re back,

My woes will pack

Their clothes in their valise,

And fly afar,

To the uttermost star

That shines up in the skies,

While you and I

Will warble high

The gleesomest of cries.

We’ll sing and sing,

And warble and sing,

And warble, and sing, and sing,

And warble and sing,

And sing, sing, sing,

And warble and sing, sing, sing,”

“Come off!” ejaculated the voice. “That’s mighty poor poetry for a Stove that’s as glad as you are.”

“Why, Jimmieboy, you pain me,” said the Gas Stove, who thought that it was his little friend that had spoken. “I didn’t think you would criticize my song of happiness that way.”

“I never said a word,” said Jimmieboy. “It was my friend the voice, who helped me when I was in trouble, and—”

“And by whose efforts,” interrupted the voice, “our Jimmieboy here is now the Right Honorable Jamesboy. Secretary of State to his Majesty the Emperor of Frostland, Prince of Iceberg, Marquis Thawberry, and Chief Ice-cream Freezer to all the crowned heads of Europe, Asia, Africa, Austrilia and New Jersey. I’d advise you to take off your hat, Mr. Stove, for you are in the presence of a great man.”

“No, no,” cried Jimmieboy, as the Gas Stove doffed his iron lid; “don’t take off your hat to me, Stovey. I am all that he says, but I am still Jimmieboy, and your friend.”

“But what becomes of your war?” queried the Gas Stove, ruefully. “I can’t fight against you, and you are a part of the government.”

“That’s a very sensible conclusion,” said the voice. “Only I wouldn’t let King Jack know that, or he wouldn’t ever let Jimmieboy go away from here. What you want to do is to make terms that will be satisfactory to both parties, get Jack Frost to agree to ’em, and there you are. If he won’t agree, the Gas Stove will have to go on with the war until he does agree.”

“That’s the thing to do, I suppose,” said the Stove. “What shall I insist upon, Mr. Secretary?”

“Well, I think Jack ought to quit biting babies, no matter if he does love ’em,” said Jimmieboy.

“I insist upon it,” said the Gas Stove, firmly.

“I think, too,” said Jimmieboy, “that he ought not to run off with so many flowers.”

“If you do not agree to that, Mr. Secretary,” returned the Stove, “I shall turn on my canned devastation again.”

“I shall endeavor to secure the King’s consent,” replied Jimmieboy. “And, furthermore, he must keep away from the water pipes in my papa’s house. He froze ’em all up last winter.”

“That is my ultimatum,” said the Stove.

“Your what?” queried Jimmieboy.

“My last word,” explained the Stove.

“It’s long enough to have been a half-dozen of your last words,” laughed the voice. “But is that all you’re to agree upon?”

“I don’t know of anything more,” said Jimmieboy.

“Nor I,” said the Stove.

“You’re a mean couple,” ejaculated the voice, angrily. “If I had my way, you’d do something for one who has served you when you were in trouble,” he added, addressing Jimmieboy. “Where would you have been if it hadn’t been for—for—well, for a friend of mine?”

“I don’t know who you mean,” said Jimmieboy.

“He wants something for himself,” whispered the Gas Stove, “and he is right.”

“Oh, you don’t know who I mean, eh?” sneered the voice. And then he added:

“Who saved you from the icy sea.

And brought you through S-A-F-E?

Why, ME!

Who thought about that jubilee,

And filled Jack Frost chock up with glee?

Why, ME!

Who all your goings did o’ersee,

And got this lofty place for thee?

Why, ME!

“That’s who. Now what are you going to do about it?”

“He’s going back to Jack Frost,” said the Gas Stove, “and he is going to demand that you shall be made Secretary of State in his place, and he is going to tell Jack that if he ever removes you from that position I shall return and destroy the country.”

“You are very moderate in your demands,” said the voice. “I think King Jack will be very foolish if he refuses to accede to them, particularly that one having reference to myself. I do not care for the office, of course, but since there seems to be a demand for me, I shall accept.”

So Jimmieboy, followed by the Gas Stove and the voice, returned to the palace, and the demands of the Stove were laid before the monarch.

THE GAS-STOVE
IS INTRODUCED TO THE KING

“I’ll agree to ’em all gladly,” said he, “save that which forces me to deprive myself of your valuable services. Was he quite firm about that?”

“He was!” shouted the voice, before Jimmieboy could speak.

Here somebody else in the distance seemed to call: “Jimmieboy! Hi! Jimmieboy!”

“Shall I accede or stand by you?” asked Jack, taking Jimmieboy by the hand.

“You’d better accede,” said Jimmieboy, looking around to see who was calling him, “for I have just heard someone calling me—my papa, I think—and I guess it’s time for me to get up.”

What Jack’s response to this curious remark would have been no one knows, for just then a most strange thing took place. Jack Frost and his palace in an instant faded completely from view, and Jimmieboy in surprise closed his eyes, rubbed them with both his fists, and then opened them again, to find himself in his little cot in the nursery, the gas stove burning merrily and winking at him from the fireplace, and the friendly voice, as usual, nowhere to be seen, and now not even to be heard.

THE GAS-STOVE WINKING AT HIM
FROM THE FIREPLACE

No sole remnant of the frozen country remained, save a few beautiful frost pictures on the windows, which, it seemed to Jimmieboy, Jack had left there in remembrance of the services Jimmieboy had done him; and as for the frost kiss on little Russ’s chin, it had become as invisible as that far sweeter kiss that mamma had placed upon that very same spot when she first discovered what Jack had done.

The Mantel-Piece Minstrels,
AND OTHER STORIES

(1896)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FRANCIS BERKELEY SMITH

TO THREE LITTLE CHAPS

CONTENTS:

…… Frontispiece
1 … The Mantel-Piece Minstrels
2 … A Lesson in Bird-talk
3 … A Submarine Adventure
4 … An Afternoon in a Hotel Room

•   1   •

THE MANTEL-PIECE MINSTRELS

Jimmieboy was sitting in his father’s library, the other night, studying the logs that were blazing merrily on the hearth. The flames interested him hugely, rather more so indeed than was usual, because they were apparently excited themselves, they crackled and leaped about so strangely. Every now and then, too, it seemed to Jimmieboy as if the crackling sounds he heard were like words, and that the flames were talking about something. At first he could hardly believe that this could be so, but as he crept a little nearer and turned his right ear toward them, as closely as the heat would permit, he was convinced that his impression was the correct one after all. The flames were talking together.

“You are not doing it right at all,” said the largest flame, with a sputter which one might say was an angry one.

“I’m doing the best I can,” said the little blue flame that had been spoken to. “I told you I couldn’t dance well when you asked me to join the show. I’m willing to get out if you are not satisfied. I hate minstrel shows anyhow. The only reason I consented to join was that I thought if I became one of the dancing troupe, I wouldn’t have to sit out among the audience and listen to the jokes.”

“I don’t want you to back out,” said the big flame more pleasantly. “You are very graceful, but you don’t take the right steps. You dance all by yourself instead of with the rest of us, that is all. This is to be a dance in which we all take part, and if it is to be successful we must all work together.”

“Well, I just can’t,” said the little blue flame. “I would if I could, but I can’t. When I begin dancing I forget everything else, and I might just as well try to set the river on fire as to keep step with the rest of you.”

As the little blue flame said this, Jimmieboy heard a great clapping of hands behind him, and turning to see whence it came, was astonished to see rows and rows of toys seated about him, the dolls grinning as though they wished to make the corners of their mouths meet behind their ears, while all the other playthings, from the fire engines to the glass agates, were chattering away like fine people at the opera and enjoying themselves hugely.

“Why—why, where did you come from?” asked Jimmieboy, his eyes getting as large as China alleys, so great was his surprise.

“The question should rather be, how did you get here?” retorted the rag-baby, whom he had addressed. “I didn’t know you were to be admitted to our minstrel show. Who gave you a ticket?”

“Nobody,” said Jimmieboy. “I just found myself here.”

“Well, you’d better not let the ticket man find you here without a ticket, that’s all,” said the rag-baby, in a loud whisper. “We’re very particular about whom we let in at our entertainments. If the Mantel-Piece Minstrels knew you were here, I doubt if they’d crack a single joke or sing a single song.”

“But what does this all mean?” queried Jimmieboy.

“It means that this is Fortnightly meeting of the Toy Club, and the Mantel-Piece Minstrels are going to entertain us.”

“Who are the Mantel-Piece Minstrels?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Look and see,” returned the rag-baby, “and keep still. The performance is about to begin, and if you want to see it you mustn’t let it see you.”

Jimmieboy looked up as the rag-baby spoke, and what should he see on the mantel-shelf but a long row of pieces of bric-a-brac, blacked up to look like darkies, the clock in the middle looking for all the world like the middleman at the regular minstrels, and at the ends were the grotesque little Chinese god holding clappers in his hands and the dragon-handled Royal Worcester jar holding a tambourine. Between these two were ranged the antique silver matchbox Jimmieboy’s papa had bought in Italy, the Delft cat, three or four small vases, a sandstone statuette dug up from some old ruined temple in Cyprus, and various other rare objects of art of which Jimmieboy Senior was very fond.

The amazed boy was about to utter an exclamation of surprise when the clock, acting, as I have said, as middleman, began:

“Good evening, Tambo,” he said. “I hope I see you well this evening.”

“I hopes yo’ does,” said Tambo. “If yo’ eyesight am what she oughter be yo’ sees me well enough to obsoyve that I’se as hansom lookin’ as ebber.”

Here the head of the dragon-handle made a most frightful face, which set all the toys, except the rubber doll, roaring with laughter. The rubber doll squeaked with terror through the whistle between his shoulder blades. It was his first appearance at a minstrel show, and he was afraid the dragon would come down and bite him.

“Put him out!” cried the rag-baby. “Those rubber dolls ought not to be brought to minstrel shows anyhow. They are always squeaking.”

“Dat reminds me,” said the Delft cat. “I’se got a conundrum. What am de difference ’tween a rubber doll an’ a new pair ob shoes?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said the clock, rubbing his hands together. “What is the difference between a rubber doll and a new pair of shoes?”

“I dunno myself,” answered the Delft cat. “Dey bofe squeaks so much I nebber kin tell de difference, ’ceptin’, perhaps, de pair ob shoes goes on foot an’ de rubber doll, he goes on squeakin’.”

“Brother Bones will now play on the piano,” said the clock, as the toys’ laughter over the Delft cat’s conundrum ceased. Here the Chinese god arose and requested one of the fire-engine drivers to go into the parlor and get the piano for him to play on.

“I’se berry sorry for de delay, ladies an’ gentlemen,” he said, “but I forgot to bring de pianner wid me. I tought I put it in my vest pocket befo’ I leff home, but I cyarn’ fin’ it dere. I must o’ put it in my odder clo’es. If any one ob de ladies an’ gentlemen happins to hab brought one wid him an’ will lend me de loan obit fo’ fibe minutes I’ll play on it, an’ I promise not to scratch de cover.”

“Scratch the cover?” echoed the clock. “Why, pray, should anyone scratch the cover of a piano playing on it?”

“Why?” retorted Bones. “Why? Well, it’s plain yo’ nebber saw a game ob football.”

“Football?” said the clock. “What on earth are you talking about? What has football to do with pianos?”

“In dis case it has ebberyting to do wid it,” said Bones. “Foot—ball is de only t’ing I kin play on pianners.”

“By de way,” said Tambo, when the enthusiasm of the audience over this joke had ceased, “our pianner got locked de odder night an’ we can’t git it open.”

“What seems to be the trouble? Can’t you unlock it?” asked the clock.

“No, suh,” replied Tambo. “All de keys is on de inside.”

Here one of the glass agates got hysterical with laughter and the fire-engine had to put him out.

“Well,” said the clock, after order had been restored, “Mr. Bones, if you can’t play anything but football on the piano, perhaps there is something else you can do.”

“Yassir,” said Bones, “yassir. I kin do several things, suh. Ef anyone in the audience will give me a mince pie I will perform a little magic wid it.”

“Ah,” said the clock, “magic, eh? That is good. I am very fond of magic. And what will you do with the pie?”

“I will say one, two, three, and de pie will disappeah, suh. It will disappeah jest like it nebber was, suh.”

“That is fine,” said the clock.

“Yassir,” said Bones, “it will be turned into a minstrel.”

“A minstrel!” said the clock.

“Yassir,” said Bones, “it will be turned into me. In fac’, suh, I agrees to eat dat mince pie.”

Unfortunately for the hungry Bones, no toy in the audience had brought a mince pie along. It was very strange that it should have been so, for, as I have been informed, most toys when they go to minstrel performances take very good care before starting out to be provided with opera glasses to enable them to see the jokes, fire escapes to enable them to leave early if they do not enjoy the jokes, and mince pies to enable them to enjoy the evening in spite of all adverse circumstances. So, poor Bones had to forego his exhibition of magic, but being a minstrel of much ready wit he covered his disappointment by singing “After the Ball,” which all the toys vigorously applauded, not because they liked it, but because the minstrels didn’t charge anything for their performance, and the “Book of Etiquette For Playthings” had taught them that when no pay was required, enthusiastic applause was the proper thing.

“Dat song reminds me ob a conundrum I heerd de odder night,” put in the oriental match-safe, when Bones had sat down. “What’s de difference atween a iron dog—one o’ dese dogs dey has on country places to skeer away tramps, made o’ iron an’ painted green—an’ a feller what owns a whale whad he wants to sen’ to a young lady foh a weddin’ presen’, but can’t put de address on hit, kaze de whale he won’t stan’ still.”

“Dear me,” said the clock, “that is a very long conundrum. I hardly get it through my head. Let me see. One of the things is an iron dog.”

“Yassir,” assented the match-safe. “A iron dog, painted green; one o’ dem kind whad country people—”

“Yes, I remember that,” said the clock, “and the other thing is a whale?”

“Naw, sir. Not a whale, but a man whad owns a whale dat he wants to sen’ to a young lady foh a weddin’ present,” said the match safe.

“And he cannot fasten the address on the whale?” asked the clock.

“Dat’s it,” said the safe. “Dat’s it. Kaze de whale he won’t stan’ still. Now, what am de difference atween dat dog an’ dat man?”

“I knows de answer,” said the Delft mt. “Dey can’t either ob ’em bark.”

“Dat ain’t de answer,” returned the match-safe.

“Hoh!” jeered the Chinese god. “I knows de answer. De answer is dat you don’t know de answer yo’self.”

“Yaas I does, too,” retorted the match-safe. “I knows de answer mighty well.”

“Well, I give it up,” said the clock. “What is the answer?”

“All give it up?” put in the match-safe. The whole row of minstrels nodded assent.

“Den I’ll tell yo’,” said the match-safe. “De dog—de iron dog dats painted green, he has a tail he can’t wag; an’ de man wid de whale, he has a whale he can’t tag.”

“Well, well, well, well!” roared Bones. “Dat is de most tiresomest conundrum I’ve heerd yit.”

“Yass,” said the match-safe. “Dat’s why it reminded me ob dat song you sang.”

At this the rag-baby got to laughing so hilariously that, like the agate, she went into hysterics, and in her hysterics she kicked so hard that her right shoe flew off and struck against the row of chairs in which the marbles were sitting. The force of the blow knocked the marbles off the chair and they fell to the floor with a terrible clatter, which so frightened Jimmieboy that he jumped to his feet and hallooed aloud. Why one of Jimmieboy’s halloos, to which all the toys were so used, should have that effect, I certainly do not know, but that it did cause the toys, one and all, to disappear instantly is the truth.

Jimmieboy rubbed his eyes in a mystified fashion as he noted the disappearance of the toys, and then he looked at the mantelpiece to see if the minstrels had also fled. He was relieved to find that they had not done so, but, while they had remained, the show itself was manifestly over, for they had all resumed their natural color and, as far as Jimmieboy could discover, were attending strictly to their regular duties. As for their jokes and songs they have never indulged in anything of the sort since, though several times thereafter the dragon’s head on the Worcester jar has looked as if he had something on his mind that he would like to say.

And the little blue flame?

Well, when Jimmieboy looked for him, both he and his big dancing teacher were just going out, and so Jimmieboy himself went regretfully upstairs and made ready for bed.

•   2   •

A LESSON IN BIRD-TALK

“It’s a pity you can’t talk,” said Jimmieboy, looking at the Robin that was hopping up and down the lawn looking for something nice in the way of a worm to take home to the babies for supper.

“Peep!” retorted the Robin, scornfully, gazing out of one eye at Jimmieboy, its head gracefully cocked to one side. “Pity I can’t talk! Ho! humph and pooh! I think it’s a pity you can’t understand bird language.”

Jimmieboy gazed at the bird in astonishment. This was the first time a bird had ever answered him back, and instead of wanting his sympathy it absolutely rejected it with scorn and completely turned the tables by pitying him.

“Pity birds can’t talk, eh? ” repeated the Robin. “What do you think we’re doing when we say cheep, and week, and all the other sounds we make with our throats? Think we’re just making a noise to keep ourselves from falling asleep on the grass?”

“Are you talking when you make those chirrups?” asked Jimmieboy, delighted to find a bird who not only could talk, but was willing to stop worm-hunting to talk with him.

“Are you talking when you are calling out ‘Hullo-Billy’ and ‘Howdydotommie’ and ‘Letsplaytagfellers?’” queried the Robin.

Jimmieboy laughed.

“Certainly I am,” said Jimmieboy. “But Hullo-Billy and Howdydo Tommie and Let’s play tag fellers, all mean something.”

“Well, so do peep and cheep and gurryoup,” retorted the Robin, “and for my part I think peep and cheep are both better words than letsplaytagfellers, though I can’t say gurryoup is an expression I ever cared much for.”

“But what does peep mean?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Well, well, well!” chirruped the Robin, tossing its head perkily up and down, and opening its bill as wide as it could, doubtless to laugh. “What does peep mean? Might as well ask your papa what’s anything. Why, my dear but highly stupid young man, peep means so many things in our language that it would take me forty-nine years to tell you half of the first third of ’em. It all depends on how many Es there are in it, and at what time of the day we use it, and by whom it is spoken. Plain peep with two Es in it, spoken at 5 o’clock in the morning by a baby robin, means ‘good morning, mamma, is breakfast ready?’ and her reply using the same word means, ‘no, not yet my child, but it will be shortly. Papa is over in the new vegetable garden now looking for a worm; here is a gnat, and you may have it if you are very hungry. It will keep you quiet, I hope, until papa gets back, for mamma is very tired this morning and must have a little bit more sleep—you are getting harder and more muscular every day, and mamma can’t rest as comfortably on top of you as she could before you cut your feathers.’”

“My!” cried Jimmieboy. “Does that one little word mean all that?”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” said the Robin. “Then one hour later at 6 o’clock, that same word ‘peep’ spoken by the mother robin, means ‘here comes papa, now, baby, and he’s got the finest angleworm you ever saw for our breakfast;’ to which the baby answers ‘peep,’ meaning ‘ain’t it bully;’ and the papa robin coming in says ‘peep,’ meaning ‘how’s that for a morning’s work?’ as he throws the worm into the nest. And so you see, my boy, it goes on all day. We find peep a very interesting and useful word. Every day brings some new meaning to it. For instance, the other day when you fell down and broke your bicycle bar, my little son cried ‘peep,’ and, of course, I knew at once what he meant to say, although the word had never been used that way before.”

“What did it mean then?” asked Jimmieboy, interested at once.

“Why, it means ‘I think he’s too little to bike all by himself, papa. If his papa looked after him as carefully as you look after me he wouldn’t let him go out riding on that wheel without having the hired man perched up behind to frighten off ice carts and trolley cars!’ To this I replied ‘peep,’ and my little boy knew that by that I meant ‘You are perfectly right, my son, but it is very difficult to teach human beings sense. They are not birds and therefore have not our wisdom.’”

“And how about ‘week’ and ‘cheep’ and ‘gurryoup’?” asked Jimmieboy, feeling that on the bicycle question he had better keep quiet because his experience had been most unpleasant. “When do you use them and what do they mean?”

“Well, in a way they are like peep, only we use them in different places. Peep is a word for family use only—it is what you would call a nesthold word.”

“A what?” asked Jimmieboy.

“A nesthold word,” replied the Robin. “Seems to me you are getting duller all the time.”

“Well maybe I am,” retorted Jimmieboy, “but I can’t help it. I never heard any such word as nesthold in my life. We have household words, if that is what you mean.”

“You are not so dull, after all,” said the Robin kindly. “That’s just what I did mean. I thought you would see it at once. You live in a house and the words you use are household words. We live in nests and, of course, the words we use are called nesthold words. That’s what peep represents. It is for domestic use only.

“Week is a word we use when we go out into society. Take a robin party, for instance. We all get ourselves up as spick and span as you please, polish up our red vests until they look like rubies, and go to the party. As soon as we arrive, the robin that gives the party says ‘week,’ and we reply ‘week.’ That is, she says: ‘I am so glad to see you. I was afraid perhaps you couldn’t come on account of the baby’s cold. I hope it is much better—how well he looks and what lovely feathers he has. I do wish my little Robby looked half as well.’ Our ‘week’ is in reply, and merely signifies that the baby’s cold was nothing serious, and we wouldn’t miss the party for the world, and isn’t it splendid it cleared up in time; that baby’s feathers certainly are becoming to him, but that her little Robby’s, though perhaps less brilliant in color, seem to us to possess a fineness of quality which we fear our baby’s feathers will never have. That, you see, Jimmieboy, is the meaning of ‘week’ when used on arriving at a party. A few minutes‘later it will mean ‘May I have the pleasure of escorting you to supper?’  ‘Yes, thanks; I think I will go down.’  ‘Shall I bring you a gnat?’  ‘I think I should prefer an ant, thank you.’  ‘Certainly, it is a great pleasure to get anything for you.’  ‘Oh, dear me, how polite you are,’ and so on. It is just week, week, week all through the party. Same way at calls, or at dinners out, or at anything where we robins are on our very politest behavior. And, as we lengthen out peep sometimes with a few extra E’s to make our meaning more clear, so we do with week.”

“It’s a wonderful language,” said Jimmieboy.

“Very, and easy to learn, too,” replied the Robin. “In fact, it doesn’t take our baby robins a minute to learn all the conversation they need in the nest. As soon as they come out of their shells they say peep—and there you are. Then when they go out into the world they get the other words, week, cheep and gurryoup, without any difficulty.”

“You haven’t told me yet how cheep and gurryoup are used,” said Jimmieboy.

“Cheep is our language in business,” said the bird. “If Mr. Robin goes into an arrangement with a rosebush for a supply of insects to be served at the nest every morning—just as your milkman serves you with milk—all he has to say is, cheep, and the rosebush understands. If Mrs. Robin wishes to refit the interior of her nest with a new lot of hay or straw, all she has to do is to go to the hayfield or strawpatch and say cheep, and get all she wants. It is simply a shopping term, like ‘how much is this, ten cents a yard? Dear me, isn’t that a little high?’ or ‘will you let me return this in case after I get it home I find it will not go with the carpet?’ Cheep is a very useful word—in fact, you human beings use it a great deal in your business affairs. ‘I want something cheap,’ you say. You got that word from us. We used it long before English was invented, and we are very glad to have you use it, but it makes us a little indignant when we learn that the makers of your dictionaries do not give us the credit for having invented it. That’s one great fault I find with human beings—they pride themselves on being the only kind of living things that can talk, when as a matter of fact there was a time when we birds and animals did all the talking and so gave you the idea of a lot of fine words. Who gave you the word doodle in your Yankee Doodle song? Nobody but the rooster. Who gave you the word cheap, as I have already said? Nobody but the robins. We gave you peep, too. You discovered that as soon as we opened our eyes in the morning we said peep, so you refer to that time of the day as the ‘peep of day,’ and when your baby wants to play you shut your eyes, and then opening them again cry out ‘peep,’ and he laughs until his little sides ache. Who gave you the word ‘ugh?’ You got that from the pigs. You got ‘bah’ from the sheep. You got ‘booh’ from the dogs, and so on, and on you kept taking words from those you pretend to pity because they can’t talk, until you had a respectable foundation on which to get up a language of your own—and we are all glad you did, because if you couldn’t talk you wouldn’t be happy, and we haven’t lost anything by making you happy, only your dictionary people ought to acknowledge what is owed to us.”

It certainly did seem as if the robin was right, and Jimmieboy had no fault to find with his claim to the recognition of his kind as the founders of spoken language. Passing the question over, however, he asked.

“And gurryoup?”

“That,” said the robin, sadly, “is the one word I regret in our language. We use that when we fight. It is the only naughty word we have. It means anything from ‘you’re another’ to ‘say that again and I’ll peck your eyes out.’ It’s a quarrelsome word and it’s hard to kill. But I must go now, my boy. I just heard my family calling me—hear—hear that?”

Jimmieboy listened, and sure enough from a neighboring tree he heard two small voices calling “peep-peep-pee-ee-eep!”

“My babies want me to come home and tell them a fairy story,” said the Robin. “So, goodbye. I’m very glad, indeed, to have met you—in other words, week-wee-eeeek!”

And with a gracious little nod the robin hopped away, leaving Jimmieboy wondering whether or not human beings really had got any of their words from the birds and animals. Certainly ‘cheap’ and ‘doodle’ did seem to prove the truth of what the robin had said, not to mention the word ‘ugh,’ which undoubtedly was taken from the pigs.

•   3   •

A SUBMARINE ADVENTURE

There was something going on in the aquarium the other evening when Jimmieboy went to say good night to his great round-eyed goldfish. The glittering occupant of that watery house was flopping about in the water as excitedly as if he were dressing in a hurry to catch a train to town.

“What on earth is the matter with you?” asked the boy, as he watched the busy, bustling fish for a moment. “You are jumping around just as papa does when he can’t find his collar, and the carriage is waiting to take him out to dinner somewhere.”

“That’s just what’s the matter with me,” returned the goldfish, with a sigh of despair, “I can find my collar, but I can’t find the scale to button it on, otherwise my collar-button. I’m going out to dine tonight, too, and it is getting very late. Where can I have put it? Dear me, dear me, how aggravating it all is, to be sure!”

And the poor fish hustled and bustled about, splashing the water with his tail until it spattered up over the sides of the aquarium and wet the carpet on the nursery floor.

“You mean to say that you have movable scales, do you?” asked Jimmieboy, much amazed at the idea of a fish hunting for a collar button.

“Why, of course,” answered the gold fish. “These scales are only my clothes. I can take ’em off just as you can yours whenever I want to.”

“That’s funny,” said Jimmieboy; “I’ve never seen any of them lying around.”

“Hoh!” jeered the goldfish. “You’re a great one, you are. You don’t suppose that everybody’s careless like you, do you? If you do, you make a great, large mistake. Just because boys strew their clothes all over the floor when they go to bed at night is no reason why fish should be so careless with their scales. Furthermore, you must remember that my scales are solid gold, and when I take ’em off I hang ’em up in a small closet I’ve hired in the safe deposit company. They’re too valuable to leave about.”

“But you lost your collar button scale just the same,” said Jimmieboy. “So you needn’t be so proud of yourself and so superior!”

“That isn’t my fault,” retorted the fish. “Collar buttons have only themselves to blame for getting lost. There is something in the collar button itself which dooms it to be lost. You ask your papa about it and he’ll tell you that what I say is the exact truth. I know of a man—I used to live in an aquarium next door to his house—who once made a bet of a thousand glasses of soda water that he could keep a collar button a whole year, and another man bet him he couldn’t, and they drew up a paper and had it signed by witnesses. The man who bet he could keep the button a year thought he was very smart, because instead of trying to keep it in the way the other man thought he would—in his shirt collar—he bought a small oaken box. He put the button in the oaken box and put the oaken box in a tin box with a lock and key on it. Locking the tin box, he put it in an inner compartment of his safe, locked the compartment and then shut the safe door, locked that and sent the whole thing down to the safe deposit company.”

“He had it pretty safe, I guess,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, he thought so,” laughed the goldfish. “But he didn’t win the bet just the same. The bet was made at 4 o’clock in the afternoon of December 8, 1891. At 3 o’clock on the afternoon of December 8, 1892, he went to the safe deposit company, got the safe open, opened the inner door, opened the tin box, opened the oak box—”

“And it was gone?” cried Jimmieboy.

“No—keep cool,” replied the fish. “It wasn’t gone at all. It was there safe and sound. He took it out and started off to the club to collect his bet. Five minutes of four came. He took the button out of his pocket to show to the man he’d bet with; and, booh! out it slipped from between his fingers, struck the carpet, rolled under something—nobody knows what—and hasn’t been found to this day. He’d kept the button 364 days 23 hours and 58 minutes, but he’d slipped up on the year by two minutes. So the other fellow got the soda water. And it’s just that way with ’em all. There’s no counting on ’em at all—pshaw! And doesn’t that prove it?” the fish added, with an angry sweep of his tail. “There it is—right on the back of my neck, where it ought to be, and not lost at all, with me wasting all this time looking for it!”

Jimmieboy laughed.

“I guess what you need is somebody to look after you,” he said. “You really ought not to go out to that dinner alone; you might lose yourself.”

“You are right about that, possibly,” said the goldfish, thoughtfully. “In fact, I’m a little scarey about this dinner I’m going to tonight. It’s given by my friend, Mr. Pike, in honor of his niece, Miss Pickerel, who has just come down from the Great Lakes to spend two weeks with the Pike family, and Pike, instead of getting up the dinner himself, has ordered a caterer to furnish it, and there’s something about that caterer that I don’t like. My cousin, the sunfish, went to a dinner that this same man served once, and he never came back.”

“What became of him?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Nobody ever knew,” said the goldfish. “He was sitting right there at a table eating and chatting, and all of a sudden he gave a flip-flop and disappeared. I’ve avoided these caterers’ dinners ever since.”

“You’d better take me along with you, then,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ve been to lots of dinners cooked by cateracts, or whatever you call ’em, and I rather like ’em, but they sometimes aren’t so nice next morning as you’d like to have ’em. The only headache I ever had came from a cataracts—”

“Caterer,” said the goldfish, with the accent on the last syllable.

“Well, cater-ers, then,” said Jimmieboy. “Whether they’re cataracts or caterers, I know all about ’em, and you’d better take me along with you, because I’ll take care of you at dinner if you’ll take care of me in case of sharks.”

“Needn’t be afraid of them,” said the goldfish. “They only interfere with intruders. If you go as my friend, the Pikes will be glad to see you, and the Sharks won’t harm you at all. Run along and put on your bathing suit and come along.”

So Jimmieboy did as he was told. He put on the bathing suit, and was soon swimming leisurely through the pipe of the aquarium out into the sea. Just how the pipe came to lead to the sea he never told me, but it did, and in a short while he and his friend, the goldfish, stopped at the Pikes’ place, forty fathoms under water, and about five miles out from the New Jersey coast.

On the way out Jimmieboy was much interested to see the huge lines of the monster steamship Oregon that went down near that point some years ago, and happily enough without any loss of life, and he was for stopping and taking a walk on her upper deck, where he was amused to see one or two enormous lobsters sitting on the steamer chairs that still remained on board, chatting away in a most animated fashion; but the goldfish told him he’d have to postpone that until some future time, as they were already late for the Pike dinner.

As the goldfish had said, both Mr. and Mrs. Pike and all the little Pikes were very glad to see Jimmieboy, and made him feel quite at home. Miss Pickerel he found charming, and as for the Sharks, there was only one of them present, and he was a most delightful fellow. He told witty stories and made such fearfully funny faces to amuse the little Pikes that Jimmieboy was convulsed most of the time with laughter; and then dinner‘was announced. They seated themselves about a huge table set under the spreading branches of a huge coral seaweed, and all went well until the third course, and that third course showed the goldfish’s wisdom in bringing Jimmieboy along to look after him, for he was anxious to eat it, it looked so good, and Jimmieboy advised him not to.

“I wouldn’t take any of that,” said Jimmieboy, as he read the name of the dainty on the bill of fare. “The macaroni part of it is all right, but I don’t like the April Fool sauce that comes with it.”

“It looks awful good, though,” whispered the goldfish, his mouth watering. “The macaroni looks like a delicious dish of angleworms, and I’m passionately fond of them.”

“That’s all right,” said Jimmieboy, “but the April Fool sauce—”

“What’s the matter with it? What’s it made of?” the goldfish asked.

“I don’t know; but I do know that April Fool food is a good thing to do without,” the boy answered. “I had some caramels of that sort once, and one of ’em was stuffed with cotton and the other with red pepper.” ‘

“Will you have some of the macaroni, Goldy?” asked Mrs. Pike.

“Without the sauce, please,” said Goldy, and he noticed that as he spoke the caterer glanced uneasily at him and turned pale.

“I find sauces are bad for the digestion,” continued the goldfish, for he did not wish to seem to criticize his host’s dinner, “and so I have given them up.”

“Pass Mr. Goldy the macaroni without the sauce, then,” said Mrs. Pike to the caterer. “And Mr. Jimmieboy?”

“I’ll try a little, please,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, if you are going to—” began the goldfish.

“Hush!” whispered Jimmieboy. “I only want to see what the sauce is made of.”

So they all took some, with the exception of the goldfish; and Jimmieboy, when his was placed before him, took a knife and cut it up very fine, which everybody thought was strange, but as Jimmieboy was a foreigner to them and their ways they didn’t say anything. And he showed how wise he was, for just as he cut into the macaroni there came a fearful commotion in the water, and every single member of the party except Jimmieboy and his companion made a mad rush upward, even Mr. Shark.

“Wha-wha-what does it mean?” cried the goldfish.

“It’s the April Fool Sauce,” returned Jimmieboy. “See?” And he held up his plate of macaroni, and each slender strip concealed a hook, and from each hook a scarcely visible line proceeded upward.

“They’re all caught!” he moaned. “It was a mean trick—”

“Do you mean to say that that beautiful dish was—”

“So much bait!” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh dear! oh dear!” cried the goldfish, wringing his fins. “What baseness!”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy, sadly. “And if it hadn’t been for me you’d have been caught, too!”

“But why didn’t you tell ’em?” screamed the goldfish.

“Because my mother has told me never to criticize my food, particularly when I am dining out,” sighed Jimmieboy. “What could I do after that?”

“Nothing,” said the goldfish sadly, as they wended their way home. “You had to obey your parents—but I wish you’d done as you usually do and forgot about it.”

And Jimmieboy couldn’t help wishing the same thing, too, for once—it was such a sad ending to their little adventure. He was glad, however, that his advice had saved his little friend’s life; but I don’t believe he ever told the goldfish that at his next Sunday dinner he met Mr. and Mrs. Pike and Miss Pickerel again.

•   4   •

AN AFTERNOON
IN A HOTEL ROOM

Jimmieboy had come to town for the winter and was living in a great big hotel which, while it contained no banisters on which he could slide, he liked very much because there were nineteen different kinds of dessert on the bill-of-fare every day, and buckwheat cakes always for breakfast.

“That’s the way to have things,” said Jimmieboy. “I like home very much, but when it comes to meals, hotels are much nicer. There’s always plenty more of everything downstairs, which there never is at home.”

Aside from the desserts and the elevator boy, with whom he was on great terms, there was another thing about hotel life which pleased Jimmieboy very much, and that was the remarkable dial in each of the rooms by means of which anyone in these rooms could ring up anything he wanted, except the money to pay his bill—so Jimmieboy’s papa had said. It was truly a wonderful thing, that dial. It had a metal needle on it which could be whirled around this way and that until the little pin at the end of it stood directly over the printed word which represented what the person who was using it wanted. On the dial itself were little divisions, and in each of these divisions was the name of some particularly nice or useful thing that anybody living in a hotel might be expected to want. For instance, turning the needle one way until it rested on the proper division, by merely pressing a button you could get a bath towel inside of two minutes; turning it another way and pushing the button would bring a glass of lemonade or a saddle-horse, according to the division on the dial over which you let the pin rest. All of which seemed to Jimmieboy to be particularly lovely, and it was as much as he could do to keep from experimenting with it all the time. He had outlined in his mind a beautiful game for stormy days, which was, briefly, to shut his eyes, push the pointer blindly around, press the button and then try to guess what would come, but when he suggested the game to his mother, she said it was no doubt an interesting game, but that he would better play marbles or parcheesi or something else that would not be so disturbing to the boys in the office who had to answer the bell.

So Jimmieboy had to content himself with looking at the ingenious apparatus and with imagining all sorts of fine things that might be done with it. One day, however, when everybody but himself and his mother had gone out, a card was sent up from the office stating that a certain Mrs. So-and-so had called, and Jimmieboy’s mother, when she had observed the state of the parlor floor, over which marbles and parcheesi men and paper dolls cut out of Sunday newspapers, and other things were strewn in great confusion, said she fancied she’d better receive Mrs. So-and-so in the public parlor, since it would never do to keep her waiting downstairs for three or four hours while she put her own parlor in order. Hence Jimmieboy, for the first time, was left alone in the room with the delightful dial. He was usually an obedient child, but until now his temptation had not been very great. Here he was all by himself with that pointer pointing at him, and the little button seeming to grin while it softly sang the words, “Don’t shove, just push.” It was really too much, and about ten minutes after his mother’s departure Jimmieboy yielded. That little red button was too inviting. Clambering upon a chair which stood directly beneath the dial, Jimmieboy seized the needle, closed his eyes, turned it about, and pressed the button. In a minute the little bell which showed that the message had been received at the office rang, and the needle flew back.

“Dear me,” cried the boy in alarm, when he realized what he had done. “I do hope it isn’t a saddle-horse I’ve rung up.”

It wasn’t, for a moment later a boy knocked at the door, and in response to Jimmieboy’s cheerily spoken “come in,” he entered, bringing with him a half-dozen of the loveliest sardines you ever saw in your life.

“Well—that’s fine!” cried Jimmieboy in delight. He’d always been fond of sardines. “It beats a grab-bag at a Sunday-school fair all to pieces.”

In two minutes the sardines were eaten and Jimmieboy was back at the dial again.

“Maybe I’ll get a piece of pie this time,” he said.

But he didn’t. This time a man in a blue flannel shirt came up and asked where the trunk was. This puzzled Jimmieboy. There was only one trunk in the rooms. The rest had been unpacked and sent to the store rooms, but having been asked a question, he answered it.

“In there,” he said, pointing to his mother’s room.

The man in the blue shirt walked in, tried the cover, and finding that it was locked—for it contained Jimmieboy’s mamma’s best evening dresses, and she wished to have them under lock and key—hoisted it on his shoulder and walked out.

“Where’s it to go, young ’un?” the porter asked as he passed Jimmieboy.

“Don’t know,” said Jimmieboy. “I didn’t know it was going anywhere.”

“Maybe they’ll know at the office,” said the porter, and he was gone and the trunk with him.

“Funny about that piece of pie,” thought Jimmieboy. “Maybe they didn’t understand; I’ll try again.”

Back he went to the dial and repeated his experiment.

Five minutes elapsed when up came the hall-boy again. This time, however, he didn’t bring sardines, nor had he the pie which Jimmieboy had hoped for, but he did have one of the handsomest chicken salads you ever dreamed of. It looked like a beautiful garden with flowers all over it.

“Is that all?” asked the boy.

“I guess so,” said Jimmieboy, his mouth watering as he gazed at the salad. And the boy departed.

“I wish we had a chicken salad machine like you in my house,” said Jimmieboy, as he gazed at the dial, meanwhile gulping down the salad as fast as he could. “I’d give a dollar towards buying one myself.”

In a little while the salad was eaten and Jimmieboy began again at the dial. It went on in much the same way as before, only things began to come in more rapidly, for Jimmieboy grew somewhat excited as he proceeded and did not wait for one message to be answered before sending another. In half an hour he had received two more plates of sardines, a dozen postage stamps and a magnificent bowl full of milk toast. A man came up and built a fire, grumbling a little that he should have to do it on a warmish day; the electrician called and asked what was wanted, only to be told by Jimmieboy that he didn’t know; and the sardine boy, now grown red in the face because of his continuous trips up and down, announced that the carriage was ready.

The bathroom had been visited twice by the chambermaid who brought enough bath towels to dry the Jersey coast—or so she said—and what seemed most singular of all, one of the waiters appeared carrying a tray upon which stood two bottles of champagne, a glass of Apollinaris water, and a funny-looking little pink drink in a glass, which looked so much like medicine that Jimmieboy did not touch it.

Finally there was a great racket in the hall, and a tremendous pounding on the door which startled poor little Jimmieboy very much.

“C—come in,” he cried.

And in rushed three men with fire extinguishers on their backs, and behind them came the housekeeper, the head clerk, two porters and the proprietor of the house. The housekeeper was very pale, but she did not lose her presence of mind. Sweeping all the bric-a-brac from the mantelpiece into a large clothes basket she had the maids carry it out into the hall. The porters seized all the furniture and rushed out of the room with it; the head clerk emptied all the bureau drawers into a sheet and had them carried out, while the proprietor grabbed up the wondering Jimmieboy and carried him down to the office where he would be out of the way.

Meanwhile the men with the fire extinguishers were running here and there in the apartments looking for a fire.

“There doesn’t seem to be any except in the fireplace,” said one of them, and just then Jimmieboy’s mother appeared, bringing with her Mrs. So-and-so, who had expressed a desire to see the rooms, which she had been told were so attractive.

“What on earth is the matter?” cried Jimmieboy’s mother.

“Fire,” said one of the chambermaids. “We’ve got everything out of the room though.”

“But—where is Jimmieboy?”

“Oh, he’s safe,” said the housekeeper kindly. “We had him taken downstairs.”

“He’s perfectly safe, madam,” said the head clerk, “and so far as we can see so are the rooms. The alarm seems to have been a false one. We are very sorry this has occurred at this time. It is very awkward—particularly when you are about to entertain friends—to have an accident like this happen. I am very much afraid one of your bottles of champagne has been broken.”

“Champagne?” echoed Jimmieboy’s mother.

“Yes, madam—and the last salad as well. I see that one of the maids has carelessly put it into the basket with your husband’s collars and cuffs—and, by the way, while I think of it, where shall I send your trunk?”

Jimmieboy’s mother sat down on the bed overcome, and Mrs. So-and-so looked at her in wonderment.

“I am sure I don’t know what you mean,” said she, “unless—” here she paused, for the truth began to dawn upon her. “I think you’d better send the trunk back; it was all a mistake.”

The clerk bowed and went out.

“Queer people, those,” he said to the proprietor.

“Very,” said the proprietor, “but I guess they’re all right. That teleseme ought to be looked after. I’m afraid it’s out of order. It’s either that, or that family has gone insane—unless—” and here he paused, for the truth dawned upon him as it had on Jimmieboy’s mother.

“Unless what?” asked the clerk.

“Unless that boy had something to do with it.” Then he added, with a laugh: “Anyhow it won’t do any harm. The profits on the salads and sardines and the champagne we’ve been sending up all the afternoon will more than pay us for our trouble.”

As for Jimmieboy he was soon restored to his mother, and when, three hours later, the room was finally put in order again, he received what was for him a very uninteresting lecture.

“I won’t do it again, mamma,” he said, “but when you and I are home all alone I think it would be better if you didn’t receive your company downstairs. It’s a terrible thing to have a machine like that askin’ you to have something all the time.”

In which moral his mother agreed with him, and the boy never meddled with the dial again, but that night his father had to use it to summon a doctor, for the combination of sardines and salads and milk toast rather upset Jimmieboy’s stomach.

Bikey the Skicicle
AND OTHER TALES OF JIMMIEBOY

(1902)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
PETER NEWELL

CONTENTS:

1 … Bikey the Skicicle
2 … The Imp of the Telephone
3 … Caught in Toytown
4 … Totherwayville; The Animal Town
5 … An Electrical Error
6 … In the Brownies’ House
7 … Jimmieboy—and Something
8 … Jimmieboy’s Fireworks
9 … High Jinks in the Barn
10 … Jimmieboy’s Valentine
11 … The Magic Sled
12 … The Stupid Little Apple-Tree

•   1   •

BIKEY THE SKICICLE

I
HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT

Jimmieboy’s father had bought him a bicycle, and inasmuch as it was provided with a bag of tools and a nickel-plated bell, the small youth was very much pleased with the gift.

“It’s got rheumatic tires, too,” he said, when describing it to one of his little friends.

“What’s that?” asked the boy.

“Big pieces of hose pipe,” said Jimmieboy. “They run all around the outside of the wheel and when you fill ’em up with wind and screw ’em up tight so’s the wind can’t get out, papa says, you can go over anything easy as a bird.”

“I s’pose,” said the little friend, “it’s sort of like sailing, maybe. The wind keeps blowing inside o’ those pipes and that makes the wheels go round.”

“I guess that’s it,” returned Jimmieboy.

“But I don’t see why they call ’em rheumatic,” said the other boy.

“Nor I don’t, either,” said Jimmieboy, “unless it’s because they move a little stiff at first.”

It was not long, however, before Jimmieboy discovered that his father had made a mistake when he said that the pneumatic tire would enable a bicycle to ride over anything, for about a week later Jimmieboy tried to ride over the shaft of a lawn mower with his wheel, with disastrous results. The boy took a header, and while he himself was not hurt beyond a scratch or two and a slight shaking up, which took away his appetite, the wonderful rubber tire was badly battered. What was worse, the experience made Jimmieboy a little afraid of his new possession, and for some time it lay neglected.

A few nights ago, however, Jimmieboy’s interest in his wheel was aroused once more, and today it is greater than ever, and it all came about in this way. His father and mother had gone out to make some calls and the youngster was spending a few minutes of solitude over a very fine fairy book that had recently been sent to him. While he was gazing at a magnificent picture of Jack slaying two giants with his left hand and throttling a dragon with his right, there came a sudden tinkling of a bell.

“Somebody’s at the telephone,” thought Jimmieboy, and started to go to it, when the ringing sound came again, but from a part of the house entirely away from the neighborhood of the telephone.

“Humph,” said Jimmieboy. “That’s queer. It isn’t the telephone and it can’t be the front door bell—I guess it’s the—”

“It’s me—Bikey,” came a merry voice from behind the door.

“Who?” cried Jimmieboy.

“Bikey,” replied the voice. “Don’t you remember Bikey, who threw you over the lawn mower?”

Jimmieboy turned about, and sure enough there stood his neglected wheel.

“I hope you weren’t hurt by your tumble,” said the little bicycle standing up on its hind wheel and putting its treadles softly on Jimmieboy’s shoulders, as if it were caressing him.

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “The only thing was that it took away my appetite, and it was on apple pie day. It isn’t pleasant to feel as if you couldn’t eat a thing with a fine apple pie staring you in the face. That was all I felt badly about.”

“I’m sorry about the pie,” returned the little bicycle, “but glad you didn’t flatten your nose or put your teeth out of joint, as you might easily have done. I knew a boy once who took a header just as you did, and after he got up he found that he’d broken the brim of his hat and turned a beautiful Roman nose into a stub nose.”

“You mean snub nose, don’t you?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No, I mean stub. Stub means more than snub. Snub means just a plain turn up nose, but stub means that it’s not only turned up, but has very little of itself left. It’s just a stub—that’s all,” explained the bicycle. “Another boy I knew fell so hard that he pushed his whole face right through to the back of his head, and you don’t know how queer it looks to see him walking backward on his way to school.”

“I guess I was in great luck,” said Jimmieboy. “I might have had a much harder time than I did.”

“I should say so,” said the bicycle. “A scratch and loss of appetite, when you might just as easily have had your whole personal appearance changed, is getting off very cheap. But, I say, why didn’t you turn aside instead of trying to ride over that lawn mower? Didn’t you know you’d get yourself into trouble?”

“Of course I didn’t,” said Jimmieboy. “You don’t suppose I wanted to commit soozlecide, do you? I heard papa talking to mamma about the rheumatic tires on his bicycle, and he said they were great inventions because they made the wheel boy—boy—well, boy something, I don’t remember what.”

“Boyant?” asked the little bicycle, scratching its cyclometer with its pedal.

“Yes—that was it,” said Jimmieboy. “He said the rheumatic tires made the thing boyant, and I asked him what that meant. He said boyant was a word meaning light and airy—like a boy, you know, and that boyancy in a bicycle meant that it could jump over almost anything.”

“That is so,” said Bikey. “That’s what they have those tires for, but they can’t jump over a lawn mower—unless”—Here Bikey paused and glanced anxiously around. It was evident that he had some great secret in his mind.

“Unless what?” asked Jimmieboy, his curiosity at once aroused.

“Unless a patent idea of mine, which you and I could try if you wanted to, is good.”

Bikey’s voice sank into a whisper.

“There’s millions in my idea if it’ll work,” he continued. “Do you see this?” he asked, holding up his front wheel. “This tire I have on is filled with air, and it makes me seem light as air—but it’s only seeming. I’m heavy, as you found out when you tried to get me to jump over the lawn mower, but if I could only do a thing I want to you could go sailing over a church steeple as easily as you can ride me over a lawn.”

“You mean to say you’d fly?” asked Jimmieboy, delighted at the idea.

“No—not exactly,” returned Bikey. “I never could fly and never wanted to. Birds do that, and you can buy a bird for two dollars; but a bicycle costs you anywhere from fifty to a hundred, which shows how much more valuable bicycles are than birds. No, I don’t want to fly, but I would like to float.”

“On water?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No, no, no; in the air,” said the little bicycle impatiently—“like a balloon. Wouldn’t that be fine? Anybody can float on the water, even an old cork; but when it comes to floating in the air, that’s not only fun but it means being talented. A bicycle that could float in the air would be the finest thing in the world.”

“That’s very likely true,” said Jimmieboy, “but how are you going to do it? You can’t soar.”

“Not with my tires filled with air,” replied Bikey, “but if you’ll take the hose from the gas stove and fasten one end to the supply valve of my tires, the other to the gas fixture, fill the tires up with gas and get aboard I’ll bet you we can have a ride that’ll turn out to be a regular sky-scraper.”

It sounded like an attractive proposition, but Jimmieboy wanted to know something more about it before consenting to trifle with the gas pipe.

“What good’ll the gas do?” he asked.

“Why, don’t you know that gas makes balloons go up?” said Bikey. “They just cram the balloon as full of gas as they can get it and up she sails. That’s my idea. Fill my rubber tires with gas and up we’ll go. What do you say?”

“I’ll do it,” cried Jimmieboy with enthusiasm. “I’d love more than anything else to go biking through the clouds, for to tell the truth clouds look a great deal softer than grocery carts and lawn mowers, and I wouldn’t mind running into one of them so much. Skybicycling—”

“Pooh! What a term,” retorted Bikey. “Skybicycling! Why don’t you use your mind a little and call it skycycling?”

Jimmieboy laughed.

“Perhaps skycling would be better than that,” he suggested.

“Or skiking,” smiled the little bicycle. “If it works you know I’ll be simply grand. I’ll be a sort of Christopher Columbus among bicycles, and perhaps I’ll be called a skicycle instead of bicycle. Oh, it would be too beautiful!” he added, dancing joyously on his hind wheel.

“It will indeed,” said Jimmieboy, “but let’s hurry. Seems to me as if I could hardly wait.”

“Me too,” chuckled Bikey. “You go up and get the rubber tube, fasten it to the gas pipe, and inside of ten minutes we’ll be off—if it works.”

So Jimmieboy rushed off to the attic, seized a piece of rubber tubing that had been used to carry the supply of gas to his little nursery stove in the winter, and running back to where Bikey was waiting fastened it to the fixture in the hall.

“Now,” said Bikey, unscrewing the cap of his pneumatic tire, “hold the other end there and we’ll see how it goes.”

Jimmieboy hastened to obey, and for five minutes watched his strange little friend anxiously.

“Feel any lighter?” he said.

“Yes,” whispered Bikey, almost shivering with delight. “My front wheel is off the floor already. I think twenty feet more will be enough there, and when you’ve filled up the hind tire—ta—ta—ti—tum—ti—too—ha—ha! Then we’ll go skiking.”

The plan was followed out, and when both tires had taken in as much gas as they could hold Bikey called hoarsely to Jimmieboy:

“Quick! Quick! Jump aboard or I’ll be off without you. Is the door open?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy, clambering into the saddle, after turning off the gas and screwing the caps firmly on both tires, “b—but the par—par—parlor window is.”

“Good,” cried Bikey. “We’ll sail through that! Give the right pedal a good turn; now—one—two—three—we’re off!”

And they were off. Out of the hall they flew, through the parlor without touching the floor, and then sailed through the window out into the moonlight night.

“Isn’t it great,” cried Bikey, trembling with delight.

“Greatest that ever was,” said Jimmieboy. “But, hi! Take care, turn to the left, quick.”

A great spike of some sort had loomed up before them.

“Excuse me,” said Bikey, giving a quick turn. “I was so happy I wasn’t looking where we were going. If you hadn’t spoken we’d have got stuck on that church steeple sure enough.”

II
WHEELING
ON THE BIG RING OF SATURN

“Hadn’t we better go a little higher?” asked Jimmieboy. “There’s a lot of these tall steeples about here, and it wouldn’t be any fun if we pricked a hole in one of these tires on a weather vane.”

“We are going higher all the time,” said Bikey. “There isn’t a steeple in the world can touch us now. What we want to keep away from now are eagles and snow clad Alps.”

“Ho! snow clad Alps,” laughed Jimmieboy. “There aren’t any Alps in America, they’re all in Europe.”

“Well, where are you? You don’t suppose we’ve been standing still all this time, do you? If you’d studied your geography lessons as well as you ought to you’d be able to tell one country from another. You are wheeling directly over France now. In ten minutes we’ll be over Germany, and in fifteen, if you turned to the south, you’d simply graze the top of Mont Blanc.”

“Let’s,” said Jimmieboy. “I want to see a glazier.”

“A what?” asked Bikey.

“A glazier,” answered Jimmieboy. “It’s a big slide.”

“Oh, you mean a glacier,” said Bikey, shaking all over with laughter. “I thought you meant a man to put in a pane of glass, and it struck me that Mont Blanc was a curious place to go looking for one. Shall we turn south?”

“If you don’t mind,” said Jimmieboy. “Seems to me we might coast down Mont Blanc, and have a pretty good time of it.”

“Oh, if that’s what you’re after, I won’t do it,” said Bikey. “Coasting isn’t a good thing for beginners like you, particularly on the Alps. Take a hill of your own size. Furthermore, we haven’t come out to explore the earth. I was going to take you off to the finest bicycle track you ever saw. I never saw it either, but I’ve seen pictures of it. It’s a great level gold road running about another world called Saturn. We call it Saturn’s ring down home, but I’ve ideas as to what it is.”

“Seems to me I’ve heard papa speak of Saturn. It’s got eight moons, I think he said. One for every day of the week, and two for Sunday,” said Jimmieboy.

“That’s the place,” said Bikey. “You don’t need a lamp on your wheel when you go out at night there. They’ve got moonlight to burn. If you’ll pedal ahead now as hard as you can we can get there in time for one turn and then come back; and I tell you, my boy, that coming back will be glorious. It will be down grade all the way.”

“How far off is Saturn?” asked Jimmieboy.

“I don’t know,” returned Bikey, “but it’s a long walk from your house. The ring is 18,350 miles from Saturn itself. That’s why I think it’s a good place for bicycling. Nobody’d take an ice cart or a furniture truck that far just to get in the way of a wheelman, and then as it doesn’t go anywhere but just round and round and round, they’re not likely to have trolley cars on it. It doesn’t pay to run a trolley car nowheres.”

It all seemed beautifully reasonable, and Jimmieboy’s curiosity grew greater and greater as he pedaled along. Up and on they went, passing through huge fleecy masses of clouds, now and again turning to one side to avoid running into strange little bits of stars, so small that they seemed to be nothing but islands in the ocean of the sky, and far too small to be seen on the earth.

“We can stop and rest on one of those if you want to, Jimmieboy,” said Bikey; “are you tired?”

“Not at all,” Jimmieboy answered. “Seems to me I could go on this way forever. It’s easy as lying down and going to sleep.”

Bikey chuckled.

“What are you laughing at?” said Jimmieboy.

“Nothing,” said Bikey. “When you said it was easy as sleeping I thought of something—that was all.”

“Dear me,” said Jimmieboy, ruefully. “I am awake, ain’t I? This isn’t like all the other experiences, is it?”

“Not at all,” laughed Bikey. “Your other adventures have been quite different. But, I say, we’re getting there. I can see five moons ahead already.”

“I can see six,” cried Jimmieboy, quite elated. “Yes, six—and—one more.”

“You’ve got nearly the whole set, as the boy said when he came to the other boy’s Nicaragua page in the stamp album. There are only eight altogether—only I think your seventh is Saturn itself.”

“It must be,” said Jimmieboy. “It’s got a hello around it.”

“What’s that?” asked Bikey.

“I forgot,” said Jimmieboy. “You never went to Sunday school, and so of course you don’t know what a hello is. It’s a thing like a gold hoople that angels wear on their heads.”

“I’ll have to get one,” said Bikey. “I heard somebody say I was an angel of a bicycle. I don’t know what she meant, though. What is an angel?”

“It’s a—a—good thing with wings,” said Jimmieboy.

“Humph!” said Bikey, “I’m afraid I’m not one of those. Don’t they ever have wheels? I’m a good thing, but I haven’t any wings.”

“I never heard of an angel with wheels,” said Jimmieboy. “But I suppose they come. Angels have everything that’s worth having.”

Bikey was silent. The idea of anything having everything that was worth having was too much for him to imagine, for bicycles have very little imagination.

“I wish I could be one,” he said wistfully, after a moment’s silence. “It must be awfully nice to have everything you want.”

Jimmieboy thought so, too, but he was too much interested in getting to Saturn to say anything, so he, too, kept silent and pedaled away as hard as he could. Together and happily they went on until Jimmieboy said:

“Bikey, what’s that ahead? Looks like the side of a great gold cheese.”

“That,” Bikey answered, “is exactly what you think it is. It’s the ring of Saturn, and, as the saying goes, for biking Saturn is quite the cheese. In two minutes we’ll be there.”

And in two minutes they were there. In less, in fact, for hardly eight seconds had passed before a great, blinding light caused Jimmieboy to close his eyes, and when he had opened them again he and Bikey were speeding along a most beautiful road, paved with gold.

“I thought so,” said Bikey, “we’re on the ring. And isn’t it smooth?”

“It’s like riding on glass,” said Jimmieboy. And then they stopped short.

A peculiar looking creature had stopped them. It was a creature with a face not unlike that of a man, and a body like a man’s, but instead of legs it had wheels like a bicycle. If you can imagine a Centaur with a body like a bicycle instead of a horse you will have a perfect mental picture of this strange creature.

“WE HAVE TO BE VERY PARTICULAR HERE”

“Excuse me,” said the stranger, “but we have to be very particular here. Where do you come from?”

“Earth,” said Bikey.

“All right,” said the stranger. “Move on, I’m a Saturn policeman and so many wheelmen from the Sun and the Moon and Jupiter have caused disturbances of late that we have had to forbid them coming. You are the only Earth people who have been here, and of course are not included in our rules, but I will have to go along with you to see that you do not break any of them.”

“We’re very glad to meet you,” said Bikey, “and if you’ll tell us your rules we will be very glad to obey them.”

“Well,” said the creature with wheels instead of legs, “the first rule is that nobody shall ride a wheel standing on his head. There was a person over here from Mars last week who actually put his head in the saddle and wheeled his pedals with his hands.”

“How utterly absurd!” said Jimmieboy.

“Wasn’t it?” said the Saturnian; “and my! how mad he got when I interfered—asked whether this was a free country and if anybody had rights, and all sorts of stuff like that. Now there’s another rule we have, and that is that coasting backward cannot be permitted. We used to allow that until a man from Jupiter ran slap bang into another man who lived at the extreme end of the handle of the Great Dipper, who was coasting backward from the other direction. They came together so hard that we couldn’t get ’em apart, and we have had to keep ’em here ever since. They can’t be separated, and the Dipper man won’t go to Jupiter, and the Jupiter man won’t go to Dipperville—consequently they stay here. They’re a fearful nuisance, and it all came from coasting backward.”

“It’s a very good rule,” said Jimmieboy, “but in our world I don’t think we’d need a rule like that, because, while our bicycle riders do lots of queer things, I don’t think they’d do that.”

“I hope not,” said the Saturnian, “because there isn’t any use in it, any more than in that other trick our visiting bicyclists try to play here. They take those bicycles built for two, you know, and have what they call tugs of war with ’em. One fellow takes the hind wheel and the other the front wheel, and each begins to work for all he is worth to pull the other along. We had to stop that, too, because the last time they did it the men were so strong that the bar was pulled apart and both tuggers went flying off on one wheel so fast that they have never managed to get back—not that we want them back, but that we don’t want people to set bicycling down as a dangerous sport. It means so much to us. We get all our money from our big ring here; bicyclists come from all parts of the universe to ride around it, and as they pay for the privilege, why, we get millions of dollars a year, which is divided up among the people. Consequence is, nobody has to do any work and we are all happy. You can see for yourself that it would be very bad for us if people gave it up as dangerous.”

“Very true,” said Bikey, “and now we know the rules I suppose we can go ahead.”

“Yes,” said the policeman, “only you must go to the Captain’s office and get a permit. It’ll cost you $2,000 for one season.”

“Two thousand dollars?” echoed Jimmieboy, aghast.

“That’s what I said,” said the policeman.

“But,” said Jimmieboy, ruefully, “I haven’t got more than five cents with me.”

“Then,” said the policeman, “you can get a permit for five cents’ worth—that’s one-forty thousandth part of a season.”

“And how long is a season?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Forty thousand years,” said the policeman. “You can ride a year for five cents.”

Bikey laughed.

“That’ll be long enough,” he said. “And where can I find the Captain?”

“I’m him,” said the Saturnian. “Give me the five cents and it will be all right.”

So Jimmieboy handed over his nickel, and in a moment he and Bikey were speeding along over a beautiful golden road so wide that he could not see the other side of it, and stretching on and on to the fore for thousands of miles.

III
A SUDDEN STOP AT THE TYRED INN

“This is a great place,” said Bikey as they sped along. “I’ve coasted on pretty much every kind of coasting thing there is, and I think I never struck anything like this before. It beats the North Pole all hollow.”

“You never coasted on the North Pole, did you?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Oh, didn’t I just!” laughed Bikey. “It’s made of ice, that North Pole is, and it’s so slippery that you can even slide up it—that’s awful slippery, when you come to think of it—and as for coming down, well, you’d almost think you were falling off a roof.”

“But, wasn’t it dangerous?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Not at all,” laughed Bikey. “Sliding up you run into the air, and that isn’t very hard, and coming down you land in a great snow bank—but this place here is much pleasanter, because it’s warmer, and you don’t have to exert yourself. That’s the great thing about this track. We aren’t going at all, though we seem to be—it’s the track that makes my wheels go round. It’s just a-whizzing, this track is, but we are standing perfectly still. If you should step off on to the road you’d whizz back out of sight in two seconds.”

“Well, I won’t step off, then,” said Jimmieboy a little fearfully; “I don’t want to be left up here all by myself.”

Silently they went on for at least five minutes, when what should they see before them but a great stone wall, built solidly across the road.

“Hi!” cried Bikey. “Put on the brake—hurry up.”

“There isn’t one,” shrieked Jimmieboy. “I—b—bub—busted it on the lawn mower the day of the accident.”

“Back pedal then—back pedal,” roared Bikey.

“C—can’t gug—get my feet on ’em, they’re going so fast,” cried Jimmieboy.

“Then p—pup—punk—puncture my tire—take a nail or a pin or anything—or we’ll be dashed to pieces.”

“Huh! haven’t gug—got a nail or a pup—pin or anything,” wept Jimmieboy.

“Then we are lost,” said Bikey; but just then his tires punctured themselves and they came to a full stop two feet from the stone wall and directly in front of a little hotel, from the front door of which swung a bright red sign on which was the following inscription:

THE TYRED INN
FOR
THE TIRED OUT

“My!” ejaculated Bikey as he and Jimmieboy tumbled in a heap before the inn. “That was the narrowest escape I ever had. If we hadn’t stopped we’d have been smashed all to bits—leastways I would have—you might have cleared the wall all right.”

“Good morning, Biklemen,” said a fat, pudgy little old fellow, appearing in the doorway of the inn and bowing profoundly.

“What’s that you say?” asked Bikey looking up. “I didn’t catch that last word.”

“Biklemen,” repeated the fat little fellow. “It’s a word I invented myself to save time and it signifies gentlemen who ride bicycles. Instead of saying ‘good morning, gentlemen who ride bicycles,’ I say ‘good morning, biklemen, is there anything I can do for you?’”

“Well, I should say there was,” retorted Bikey. “Just look at my tires, will you? There are twenty-six punctures in the front one and eighteen in the hind one. I should think you’d have better sense than to sprinkle the road with tacks in this way.”

“Why, what an ungrateful creature you are,” cried the landlord of the Tyred Inn, for that was who the pudgy little old fellow was. “If it hadn’t been for those tacks I’d like to know where you’d be at this moment. You’d have smashed into that stone wall and busted yourself and your rider all to pieces.”

“That’s so, Bikey,” said Jimmieboy. “Those tacks saved our lives.”

“Of course they did,” said the landlord. “And even if you had a right to growl about ’em, you haven’t any right to growl at me because the government compels me to keep that part of the road sprinkled with ’em.”

“Really?” asked Bikey. “Queer law that, isn’t it?”

“I don’t see why you think that,” replied the landlord. “Is it a queer law which results in the saving of people’s lives?”

“No; but the way to save people’s lives would be to remove that stone wall,” said Bikey. “And that’s the thing that makes this place dangerous.”

“I don’t like to be impolite to biklemen,” said the landlord, “but I must say that you don’t know what you are talking about. Do you suppose I am in business for fun?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” said Bikey, ruefully regarding his tires, which looked for all the world like porous plasters would look if they were sold by the yard.

“Well, I’ll show you in ten seconds,” said the landlord. “Do you see this inn? I presume you do, though there seems to be so little that you see that I have my doubts. Well, this inn is run, not because I think it’s a game I’m playing, but because I’m after money. Now, this inn wouldn’t earn a cent of money if biklemen didn’t stop here. See that?”

“Yes,” said Bikey. “That’s plain enough, but that doesn’t account for the tacks or the stone wall.”

“Yes, it does, too,” retorted the landlord. “I ran this inn two years before that stone wall was built, and I paid the government $500 a week for being allowed to do it, but nobody ever stopped. Every bikleman in the universe went coasting by here and never a one stopped in, so I never got a cent and was paying $26,000 a year to the government into the bargain. Of course I complained to the Secretary of the Interior, and he just laughed me off; said it wasn’t his fault; that I ought to do something myself to make ’em stop, and that is how I came to build the stone wall. They’ve got to stop now. See that?”

“Yes,” said Bikey, “I see. And did you begin to make money?”

“Well, rather,” said the landlord. “The first day after that was built a lot of biklemen from the Moon came over here and they ran plumb into that wall. Five out of eight broke their legs, two broke their arms and one of ’em got off with a cracked nose, but every one of ’em had to stay here two months at $10 a day apiece, and, of course, their families had to visit ’em, and they paid from $5 to $8 apiece, and then I charged ’em all for medical services, and altogether things began to look up. I cleared $7 a week steady. But they were a mean crowd. In spite of all the good treatment they got, as soon as they got well they made a complaint against that wall, said it was an outrage, and the government said it must come down.

“‘All right,’ said I to the Secretary. ‘But if that wall comes down I go out of the hotel business, and you can whistle for your $500 a week.’ He didn’t like that a bit, the Secretary didn’t, because his salary depended on the money I paid. Being Secretary of the Interior he got a commission on hotel taxes, and as mine was the only hotel in Saturn, shutting it up meant that he was ruined.”

“You had him there,” laughed Bikey.

“I rather guess so,” smiled the landlord, “and he knew it. Still I was easy with him. I didn’t want to have people making complaints all the time, so I said that while the stone wall had come to stay, I’d pave the street for two hundred yards in front of it with cat teasers.”

“What?” cried Jimmieboy.

“Cat teasers,” said the landlord. “Didn’t you ever hear of cat teasers? They’re small square pieces of zinc with prickers on ’em. City people generally put ’em on top of their back yard fences so that Patti cats—”

“Excuse me,” asked Bikey. “What cats?”

“Patti cats and De Reszke cats—the kind that sing, you know,” explained the landlord. “They put ’em on their back yard fences so that these operatic felines would not be able to sit down there and sing and keep them awake all night; but the scheme didn’t work. I had an idea that the cat teasers would puncture the bicycle wheels in time to stop ’em, and they did, but they interfered with people on foot as well, and after these people got lockjaw from puncturing their feet on my pavement I took it up and suggested sprinkling the roadway twice a day with tacks. This satisfied the Secretary, and a law was passed compelling me to do it, and I do. How it works you have seen for yourselves.”

“That’s true,” said Bikey, ruefully.

“Well, it saved me,” said Jimmieboy.

“But how are we ever to get home?” asked Bikey.

“Oh, as for that,” returned the landlord, “gather yourselves together and come inside. I think I can fix you out very shortly, and it won’t cost you more than $800.”

“Come on, Bikey,” said Jimmieboy, “I’d sort of like to see the inside of this house, anyhow.”

“I haven’t got any $800,” snapped Bikey.

“Oh, never mind about that,” laughed the landlord. “I run a banking business here, too. I’ll lend you all you want. Come in.”

And so they went into the “Tyred Inn for the Tired Out,” and a most remarkable place they found it to be.

IV
THE TYRED INN

The entrance to the Tyred Inn and the parlors and rooms of that extraordinary place were quite like those of any other roadside hotel, but the method of conducting it and the singular things that were to be found in it made Jimmieboy’s brief stay there an experience long to be remembered. The bicycle idea was carried out in everything. If you wanted a bell boy you had to ring a bicycle bell. In place of an elevator or staircase they had a spiral pathway running up from the center of the hall to the roof, upon which guests could either walk or ride, an electric bicycle built for two being provided for those who did not care to walk up, the elevator boy sitting on the front seat and managing the apparatus.

From the parlor there came the most beautiful strains of music, as from a fine brass and string orchestra, all of which was managed by the merest bit of a midget sitting astride of a safety and working the pedals, which in turn worked the great musical instrument that occupied the whole of the lower end of the room. Upon the walls were all sorts of curious pictures, and for a decoration of the ceiling there were automatic frescoes presenting a constantly moving bicycle scene. For instance, instead of a series of groups of rosebuds and cupids, there were about a hundred little plaster wheelmen racing about the edge of the ceiling, and every once in a while one of these would take a header, flying immediately back to his saddle again, however, and continuing on his way until the clockwork by which the frescoes were run forced him to take the header all over again. On and around they raced incessantly, and so varied were the things that they did that it did not seem to Jimmieboy as if he could remember half of them in case he should ever want to tell his father or his brothers about it afterward.

“That’s a fine ceiling, isn’t it?” asked the landlord, with a grin, as Jimmieboy gazed overhead, his mouth wide open in wonderment.

“I should say so,” replied the boy, delightedly. “I wish I could have a ceiling like that in my room.”

“Nonsense,” said Bikey. “You’d soon get tired of it. It wouldn’t take long for a ceiling like that to drive a man crazy.”

“That’s so,” put in the landlord. “But there are lots of things that would drive a man crazy that wouldn’t drive a boy crazy—like trumpets and whistles. When it comes to things like that, boys are much stronger than men. I’ve known a boy of five to stand banging on a drum for seven hours, when his father couldn’t stand it for seven minutes. Nobody need go crazy over my bicycle ceiling though,” continued the landlord. “I just press a button and it’s all over—see?”

As the little man spoke he pressed a button on the side wall, and instantly the fresco bicycles stopped moving, the little plaster wheelmen jumped off and threw themselves down upon the soft grassy borders of the painted roadside and all was still. Then the landlord pressed another button and they jumped up, mounted again and the race began once more.

“That’s my own invention,” said the landlord, “and it’s a very popular feature of my house. It brings children here. When the mothers of this neighborhood want to go off wheeling, and there’s nobody to look after the children, they bring them here and leave them with me, and they’re as good as pie as long as that ceiling goes. That’s another of my ways of making money. I charge fifty cents an hour for letting the youngsters in here, and it’s a very poor sort of a day that I don’t clear $40 on my kid account.”

“I should think so,” said Jimmieboy in a superior sort of way. “I think that if I were a child I should like to spend a day here myself.”

The landlord looked at Jimmieboy with an amused expression.

“Say, Mr. Bike,” he whispered to Bikey. “What does he think he is, a telegraph pole? He said if he was a child. Isn’t he a child?”

“Yes,” laughed Bikey, “but he is a little old for his age, you know. Had lots of experience.”

“Ha—I see,” said the landlord. Then he turned to Jimmieboy again and said:

“Now, Mr. Man, if you’ll accompany me upstairs I’ll show you my pantry.”

“Good,” said Jimmieboy. “I must say I’m pretty hungry, and a pantry is just the sort of thing I’d like to see.”

Mounting the “bikevator,” as the printed sign over it called the arrangement that took guests to the upper floors, the party was soon transferred to the landing above. The landlord, after assisting Jimmieboy to dismount, walked to the end of a long corridor and, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked and opened a little door.

“Come in,” he said, as he disappeared through the door. “I have to keep the pantry locked.”

Jimmieboy and Bikey entered as they were bid, and the landlord closed the door after them. The place was dimly lighted, but on the shelves, that rose one above another from floor to ceiling, all sorts of curious looking bottles and cakes and pies and biscuits could be seen, and Jimmieboy’s mouth watered at the sight.

“What’ll you have?” asked the landlord. “An air cake or a piece of fresh pneumatic mince pie?”

“A little of both,” said Jimmieboy.

“Or a bite of my gutta percha gum?” suggested the landlord.

“Well, it’s hard to say,” said Jimmieboy. “Indeed, I don’t know what an air cake or a pneumatic mince pie is, nor did I ever hear of gutta percha gum.”

“I know that mighty well,” laughed the landlord. “Nobody ever heard of these patent dainties of mine, but they’re the best things for the digestion you ever saw, and they last forever. If people could only train themselves to eat my food they’d be able to save money in two ways—bakers’ bills and doctors’ bills.”

“I don’t quite understand,” said Jimmieboy.

“One of my pneumatic mince pies will show you in a jiffy,” returned the landlord. “One pie if properly cared for will last a lifetime—”

“Not with a real live boy in the house it won’t,” said Jimmieboy, positively.

“That may be all very true,” said the landlord, “but if the real live boy ate one of those pies he would cease to be a real live boy. You see this pie is made of rubber, and all you’ve got to do is to blow it up with an air pump and serve it.”

“But you called it mince pie,” said Jimmieboy, very much disgusted.

“Well, it’s my pie,” said the landlord. “I guess I’ve got a right to call it what I please.”

“But you said it saved doctors’ bills,” put in Bikey, who was no better pleased with this absurd invention than was Jimmieboy.

“And I said right,” said the landlord, with a self-satisfied smile. “It’s just this way: If you eat mince pie it gives you indigestion and you have to send for the doctor, and then you get a bill for several dollars. Now, with my pie it’s different. You can’t eat it, and therefore you can’t get indigestion, and you don’t have to send for a doctor. Wherefore, as I said, it saves doctors’ bills. This is the latest make—I make a new kind every year, just as the bicycle makers make new wheels every year. A 1902 safety pneumatic mince pie costs $2; a 1901 pie I sell for $1.50.”

“And what is the difference?” asked Jimmieboy, beginning to be amused.

“The air in this year’s pie is fresher, that’s all,” said the landlord.

“I suppose your air biscuits are of the same kind?” asked Bikey.

“Yes,” said the landlord, “except that I flavor ’em. If you’re fond of vanilla, or strawberry, or any other flavor, I perfume the air that is pumped into them. They’re very nice.”

“What are those things on the top shelf?” asked Jimmieboy. “They look like sausages.”

“They are sausages. I make ’em out of old tires, and they are very good and solid. Then, over there in the icebox, I have rubber steaks and chickens—in fact, all kinds of pneumatic food. You have no idea how well they last, and how good they are for the digestion—if you could only get used to them. That’s the greatest trouble I have, getting people used to them.”

“Don’t you have any real good food here?” asked Bikey.

“Real? Why, my dear fellow,” ejaculated the landlord, “what could you ask more real than those rubber viands? You could drop a railway engine on one of those rubber sausages and it would be just as solid as ever.”

“But you can’t live on air!” protested Jimmieboy.

“No more can you live without it,” said the landlord, unlocking the door and opening it, some disappointment manifested in his countenance. “If you will come up to the hospital now, sir,” he added, addressing Bikey, “I’ll see what can be done to repair your wounds. I am sorry you do not seem to appreciate the good things in my larder.”

“We’d appreciate ’em if we could see the good of ’em,” said Jimmieboy. “What on earth can you do with a rubber mince pie besides not eat it?”

“Oh! as for that, you might use it for a football,” retorted the landlord sadly, as he locked the door behind them and started down the corridor to the hospital room.

“I call it the hospital room,” said he, “although I am aware that doesn’t describe it. We don’t take care of horses there, but as yet nobody has invented a word like bikepital, and so I do not use it. I have applied for a patent on that word, however, and as soon as I get it we’ll change the name.”

With these words they entered the hospital, and if the pantry was queer the hospital was a marvel.

V
IN THE HOSPITAL
AND HOME AGAIN

“Come right in,” said the landlord, stepping into the hospital. “We’ll fix Bikey up in a jiffy, and as for young Mr. Jimmieboy, we’ll see what can be done to improve his appetite for our gutta percha pies.”

Jimmieboy glanced apprehensively at the old gentleman. He did not like the tone in which the remark was made.

“Thank you, Mr. Landlord,” he said, after thinking for a moment, “but you needn’t bother about me. I can get along very well without liking them. The kind of pies that we have at home are plenty good enough for me, and I don’t really care to like yours, thank you.” Jimmieboy had tried to be at least polite. The landlord laughed unpleasantly.

“Humph!” he sneered, “that doesn’t make any difference to us. Article number seven, paragraph sixty-three, of the hotel laws of Saturn requires that you SHALL like the food we serve at this hotel, whether you want to or not. Therefore, what you want or don’t want to like cuts no figure here. You will have to be operated upon, and that portion of your anatomy which does not welcome the best pneumatic pie that ever was made will be removed.”

Jimmieboy immediately perceived that he was in trouble, for the landlord spoke with great determination and, what was more, had locked the door behind him, so that the boy was practically a prisoner. Escape seemed impossible, and yet escape he must, for no one could relish the idea of becoming a patient at the Bicycle Hospital. To gain time to think, he observed as civilly as he could:

“It seems to me, Mr. Landlord, that that is a curious law. Just because a traveler doesn’t like the food at your hotel he’s got to go to a hospital and stay there until he does like it. Isn’t that a trifle queer?”

“Nothing queer about it at all,” retorted the landlord savagely. “Nothing queer about it at all. Naturalest law in all the world. I’m not in business for fun, as I’ve already told you, and if I left any stone unturned to compel people to like my house I should be ruined. My guests have got to like everything, including me—I, myself, see? When I pay a big tax to the government for the privilege of doing business the government has got to do something to help me on in that business, and, fortunately for us, in Saturn we’ve got a government that is just chock full of justice and common sense.

“When I first started up here nobody liked the food I served, and after coming here once most of them never came again. Ruin was staring me in the face, so I went to the capital and I told the government that they had to do something for me, and they did. They passed an act compelling people to like my food under penalty of $500 a dislike, or six months in my hospital, where I am authorized to regard them as patients. Now you can take your choice. You don’t like the pie, you don’t like the sausage, you don’t like the rubber chops and the bicycle saddle stew you look upon with disfavor. There are four things you don’t like.

“Now you can do any one of three things. Eat all four of these dishes, pay a fine of $2,000 or stay here in the hospital and undergo a course of treatment. I don’t care which. There’s one thing certain. I’m not going to let you out of this place until you like everything about it.”

Jimmieboy glanced uneasily at Bikey, who was leaning carelessly against the wall as if he were not at all bothered by the situation.

“But I’ve got to go to school tomorrow, Mr. Landlord,” he put in. “Can’t you let me off long enough to finish my term at school, and then when vacation comes maybe I’ll come back?”

“No siree!” ejaculated the landlord. “I know what you are up to. You’re nothing but a boy, and boys don’t like schools any better than you like my pneumatic pies. You stay right here.”

“Oh, tell him you like ’em, Jimmieboy,” put in Bikey. “Tell him they beat mince all holler and pumpkin isn’t in it with ’em. Tell him life would be a barren waste and every heart full of winter if it wasn’t for ’em. Pile it on and let’s get out. I’m getting nervous.”

“Well, so they are in a way,” said Jimmieboy. “The fact is, they’re the finest pies ever made.”

The landlord’s face brightened up.

“To eat?” he asked eagerly.

“N-n-o,” stammered Jimmieboy. “Not to eat—but to play football with or to use for punching bags.”

The landlord froze up immediately.

“That settles your case,” he snapped. “I’ll put you in the violent ward and tomorrow morning we’ll begin a course of treatment that will make you wish you’d liked ’em from the beginning. And now for you, sir,” the landlord added severely, turning to Bikey. “How about you and my pneumatic pies?”

“Oh,” said Bikey, with a joyful fling of his right pedal. “I simply adore those pies. Indeed, if there’s anything I love in the world it is gutta percha food. Have you any rubber neck clams?”

The landlord beamed approval. “You are a bikleman of sense,” said he. “I will order up a pneumatic rhubarb at once.”

Bikey’s saddle turned pale.

“Oh, please don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Landlord,” he said, pulling himself together. “I—ah—I should love to have it, for if there is one thing in the world I love more than rheumatic pneubarb—I mean rheubarbic pneumat pie—I don’t know what it is, but my doctor has ordered me not to touch it for a year at least. ‘Mr. Bike,’ said he the last time I saw him, ‘you are killing yourself by eating piebarb roobs—I mean roobarb pies—they are too rich for your tubes, Mr. Bike,’ were his precise words. And he added that if I didn’t quit eating them my pedals would be full of gout and that even my cyclometer would squeak.”

“Under the circumstances,” said the landlord, with an approving nod at Bikey, “I shall not take it amiss if you refuse to eat them. But your young friend here must remain and be treated. Meanwhile, I shall have your wounds repaired and let you go. Mr. Jimmieboy will be sent forthwith to the violent ward.”

“Serves him good and right,” Jimmieboy was appalled to hear Bikey reply. Here he was off in a strange, wild place, in the hands of an enemy, who threatened him with all sorts of dreadful things, and his only friend had gone back on him.

“Bikey!” said he, reproachfully.

“Served you right,” roared Bikey. “Not to like the good gentleman’s pies. Your father has told you again and again to always like what is put before you. You impolite child, you!”

Jimmieboy’s pride alone kept him from bursting into tears, and he sorrowfully permitted himself without further resistance to be led away into the violent ward of the Inn Hospital.

“To think that he should go back on me!” the boy sighed as he entered the prison. “On me who never did him any harm but break his handlebars and bust his tires unintentionally.”

But Jimmieboy, in his surprise and chagrin had failed to note the wink in Bikey’s cyclometer, which all the time that he had been speaking was violently agitating itself in an effort to attract his attention and to let him know that his treachery was not real, but only seeming.

“Now,” said the landlord kindly to Bikey, as Jimmieboy was led away, “let us attend to you. I’ll call the doctor. Doctor Pump!” he added, calling the name loudly in a shrill voice.

“Here, sir,” replied the head physician, running in from an adjoining room.

“Here’s a chap who likes air pies so much that his doctor forbids him to eat them. I wish you’d fix him up at once,” said the landlord.

“He must be insane,” said Dr. Pump, “I’ll send him to the asylum.”

“Not I!” cried Bikey. “I’m merely punctured.”

“His wheels have gone to his head,” said Dr. Pump, feeling the pulse in Bikey’s pedals.

“Nonsense,” said Bikey. “Impossible. I haven’t any head.”

“H’m!” returned Dr. Pump, scratching his chin. “Very true. In making my diagnosis I had failed to observe the fact that you are an ordinary brainless wheel. Let me look at your tires.”

Bikey held them out.

“Do you prefer homeopathic or allopathic treatment?” asked Dr. Pump. “We are broadminded here and give our patients their choice.”

“What difference does it make in the bill?” asked Bikey.

“None,” said Dr. Pump, grandly. “It is merely a difference in treatment. If you wish homeopathic treatment we will cure your tires, which seem to be punctured, with a porous plaster, since like cures like under that system. If, on the other hand, you are an allopath, we will pump you full of rubber.”

“I think I prefer what they call absent treatment,” said Bikey, meekly. “Can’t you cure me over the telephone? I’m a Christian Scientist.”

They had never heard of this at Saturn, so Bikey was compelled to submit to one of the two other courses of treatment, and he wisely chose the porous plaster to cure his puncture, since that required merely an external application, and did not involve his swallowing anything which might later have affected his general health.

Meanwhile poor Jimmieboy was locked up in the violent ward. It was a long low-ceiled room filled with little cots, and the lad found no comfort in the discovery that there were plenty more patients in the room.

“Why, the room’s full, isn’t it?” he said, as he entered.

“Yes,” replied the bicycle attendant, who had shown him in. “In fact, everybody who comes to this house ends up here. Somehow or other, nobody likes the landlord’s food, and nobody ever has money enough along to pay the fine. It is curious how little money bicyclists take along with them when they are out for a ride. In all my experience I haven’t encountered one with more than a thousand dollars in his pocket.”

“How long does one have to stay here?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Until one likes the food,” said the attendant. “So far nobody has ever got out, so I can’t say how long they stay in years.”

Again the boy’s heart sank, and he crawled into his cot, wretched in spirit and wholly unhappy.

“I’ve given you a bed by the window,” said the attendant, “because the air is fresher there. The landlord says you are the freshest boy he ever met, and we have arranged the air accordingly. I wouldn’t try to escape if I were you, because the window looks out on the very edge of the ring of Saturn, and it’s a jump of about 90,000,000 miles to anything solid. The jump is easy, but the solid at the other end is very, very hard.”

Jimmieboy looked out of the window, and immediately drew back, appalled, for there was nothing but unfathomable space above, below, or beyond him, and he gave himself up to despair.

But the boy had really reckoned without his friend Bikey, who was as stanch and true as ever, as Jimmieboy was soon to find out.

He had lain in his little bed barely more than an hour, when from outside the window there came a whisper: “Hi, there, Jimmieboy!”

Jimmieboy got up on his elbow to listen, but just then the door opened and Dr. Pump, accompanied by the landlord, walked in. So he lay back and the words at the window were not repeated.

Dr. Pump walked to the side of Jimmieboy’s cot.

“Well, young man,” said he, “what do you think of air pies up here, now?”

“They’re bully,” said Jimmieboy, weakly, and resolved to give in.

“H’m,” said Dr. Pump. “Bad case, this. I can’t say whether of insanity or compulsion. There’s only one course. We’ll order a pie. If he’s insane he’ll eat it. If he is acting under compulsion—”

“I won’t eat it,” roared Jimmieboy, springing up from his pillow. “I won’t; I won’t; I won’t. I’ll take cod liver oil on my strawberries first!”

His was evidently an awful case, for immediately Dr. Pump, the nurse and the landlord and every patient in the place fled from the room, shrieking with terror.

“Good for you! You’ve scared them silly,” whispered the voice at the window. “Now, Jimmieboy, hurry. Jump out. I’ll catch you and we’ll be off. Be quick, for they’ll be back in a moment. Jump!”

“Who are you?” cried Jimmieboy, for he was still the same cautious little traveler.

“Bikey! I only went back on you to help you!” he said. “Jump!”

And then the door opened again, and the landlord and Dr. Pump and the nurses and all the patients and a platoon of policemen crashed into the room.

“Catch him, quick!” cried the landlord. But Jimmieboy had already jumped, landing upon the friendly saddle of Bikey. In an instant he found himself speeding away through space.

“Are we still on Saturn?” he gasped.

“Not we!” cried Bikey. “That place is too hot for us. We’re not on anything. I’m simply tumbling through the clouds and whirring my wheels for fun. I like to see the wheels go round. Don’t bother. We’ll land somewhere.”

“But,” cried Jimmieboy, “where?”

And then there was a crash. Bikey made no reply, but—

*     *     *     *     *     *

“Here,” said a well known and affectionate voice.

“Where’s here?” asked Jimmieboy, faintly, opening his eyes and gazing up into a very familiar face.

“You interrupted me, my son,” remarked the owner of the familiar face. “I was about to say, ‘Here now, Jimmieboy, this business of falling out of bed has got to stop.’ This is the fifth time in two weeks that I have had to restore you to your comfortable couch. Where have you been this time?”

“Off with Bikey,” murmured Jimmieboy, rubbing his eyes and gazing about his nursery.

“Nonsense,” said his daddy, the owner of the familiar voice. “With Bikey? Why, Bikey has been in the laundry all night.” Which fact Bikey never denied, but nowadays when the incident is mentioned he agitates his cyclometer violently, and shakes all over as if he thought it was a good joke on somebody.

In all of which I am inclined to agree with him.

THE END

•   2   •

THE IMP OF THE TELEPHONE

I
JIMMIEBOY MAKES HIS ACQUAINTANCE

The telephone was ringing, of that there was no doubt, and yet no one went to see what was wanted, which was rather strange. The cook had a great way of rushing up from the kitchen to where the phone stood in the back hall whenever she heard its sounding bells, because a great many of her friends were in the habit of communicating with her over the wire, and she didn’t like to lose the opportunity to hear all that was going on in the neighborhood. And then, too, Jimmieboy’s papa was at work in the library not twenty feet away, and surely one would hardly suppose that he would let it ring as often as Jimmieboy had heard it this time—I think there were as many as six distinct rings—without going to ask the person at the other end what on earth he was making all that noise about. So it was altogether queer that after sounding six times the bell should fail to summon anyone to see what was wanted. Finally it rang loud and strong for a seventh time, and, although he wasn’t exactly sure about it, Jimmieboy thought he heard a whisper repeated over and over again, which said, “Hullo, Jimmieboy! Jimmieboy, Hullo! Come to the telephone a moment, for I want to speak to you.”

Whether there really was any such whisper as that or not, Jimmieboy did not delay an instant in rushing out into the back hall and climbing upon a chair that stood there to answer whoever it was that was so anxious to speak to somebody.

“Hullo, you!” he said, as he got his little mouth over the receiver.

“Hullo!” came the whisper he thought he had heard before. “Is that you Jimmieboy?”

“Yes. It’s me,” returned Jimmieboy. “Who are you?”

“I’m me, too,” answered the whisper with a chuckle. “Some people call me Hello Hithere Whoareyou, but my real name is Impy. I am the Imp of the Telephone, and I live up here in this little box right over where your mouth is.”

“Dear me!” ejaculated Jimmieboy in pleased surprise. “I didn’t know anybody ever lived in that funny little closet, though I had noticed it had a door with a key-hole in it.”

“Yes, I can see you now through the key-hole, but you can’t see me,” said the Imp, “and I’m real sorry you can’t, for I am ever so pretty. I have beautiful mauve-colored eyes with eyelashes of pink, long and fine as silk. My eyebrows are sort of green like the lawn gets after a sun shower in the late spring. My hair, which is hardly thicker than the fuzzy down or the downy fuzz—as you prefer it—of a peach, is colored like the lilac, and my clothes are a bright red, and I have a pair of gossamer wings to fly with.”

“Isn’t there any chance of my ever seeing you?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Why, of course,” said the Imp. “Just the best chance in all the world. Do you remember the little key your papa uses to lock his new cigar box with?”

“The little silver key he carries on the end of his watch chain?” queried Jimmieboy eagerly.

“The very same,” said the Imp. “That key is the only key in this house that will fit this lock. If you can get it and will open the door you can see me, and if you will eat a small apple I give you when we do meet, you will smallen up until you are big enough to get into my room here and see what a wonderful place it is. Do you think you can get the key?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmieboy answered. “I’ve asked papa to let me have it several times already, but he has always said no.”

“It looks hopeless, doesn’t it?” returned the Imp. “But I’ll tell you how I used to do with my dear old father when he wouldn’t let me have things I wanted. I’d just ask him the same old question over and over again in thirteen different ways, and if I didn’t get a yes in answer to one of ’em, why, I’d know it was useless; but the thirteenth generally brought me the answer I wanted.”

“I suppose that would be a good way,” said Jimmieboy, “but I really don’t see how I could ask for the key in thirteen different ways.”

“You don’t, eh?” said the Imp, in a tone of disappointment. “Well, I am surprised. You are the first little boy I have had anything to do with who couldn’t ask for a thing, no matter what it was, in thirteen different ways. Why, it’s as easy as falling up stairs.”

“Tell me a few ways,” suggested Jimmieboy.

“Well, first there is the direct way,” returned the Imp. “You say just as plainly as can be, ‘Daddy, I want the key to your cigar box.’ He will reply, ‘No, you are too young to smoke,’ and that will make your mamma laugh, which will be a good thing in case your papa is feeling a little cross when you ask him. There is nothing that puts a man in a good humor so quickly as laughing at his jokes. That’s way number one,” continued the Imp. “You wait five minutes before you try the second way, which is, briefly, to climb upon your father’s knee and say, ‘There are two ends to your watch chain, aren’t there, papa?’ He’ll say, ‘Yes; everything has two ends except circles, which haven’t any;’ then you laugh, because he may think that’s funny, and then you say, ‘You have a watch at one end, haven’t you?’ His answer will be, ‘Yes; it has been there fifteen years, and although it has been going all that time it hasn’t gone yet.’ You must roar with laughter at that, and then ask him what he has at the other end, and he’ll say, ‘The key to my cigar box,’ to which you must immediately reply, ‘Give it to me, won’t you?’ And so you go on, leading up to that key in everything you do or say for the whole day, if it takes that long to ask for it thirteen times. If he doesn’t give it to you then, you might as well give up, for you’ll never get it. It always worked when I was little, but it may have been because I put the thirteenth question in rhyme every time. If I wanted a cream cake, I’d ask for it and ask for it, and if at the twelfth time of asking I hadn’t got it, I’d put it to the person I was asking finally this way—

“I used to think that you could do

Most everything; but now I see

You can’t, for it appears that you

Can’t give a creamy cake to me.”

“But I can’t write poetry,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh, yes you can!” laughed the Imp. “Anybody can. I’ve written lots of it. I wrote a poem to my papa once which pleased him very much, though he said he was sorry I had discovered what he called his secret.”

“Have you got it with you?” asked Jimmieboy, very much interested in what the Imp was saying, because he had often thought, as he reflected about the world, that of all the men in it his papa seemed to him to be the very finest, and it was his great wish to grow up to be as like him as possible; and surely if any little boy could, as the Imp had said, write some kind of poetry, he might, after all, follow in the footsteps of his father, whose every production, Jimmieboy’s mamma said, was just as nice as it could be.

“Yes, I have it here, where I keep everything, in my head. Just glue your ear as tightly as you can to the phone and I’ll recite it for you. This is it:

“I’ve watched you, papa, many a day,

And think I know you pretty well;

You’ve been my chum—at work, at play—

You’ve taught me how to romp and spell.

You’ve taught me how to sing sweet songs;

You’ve taught me how to listen, too;

You’ve taught me rights; you’ve shown me wrongs;

You’ve made me love the good and true.

Sometimes you’ve punished me, and I

Sometimes have wept most grievously

That yours should be the hand whereby

The things I wished were kept from me.

Sometimes I’ve thought that you were stern;

Sometimes I could not understand

Why you should make my poor heart burn

By scoldings and by reprimand.

Yet as it all comes back, I see

My sorrows, though indeed most sore

In those dear days they seemed to me,

Grieved you at heart by far the more.

The frowns that wrinkled up your brow,

That grieved your little son erstwhile,

As I reflect upon them now,

Were always softened by a smile

That shone, dear father, in your eyes;

A smile that was but ill concealed,

By which the love that in you lies

For me, your boy, was e’er revealed.”

Here the Imp stopped.

“Go on,” said Jimmieboy, softly.

“There isn’t any more,” replied the Imp. “When I got that far I couldn’t write any more, because I kind of got running over. I didn’t seem to fit myself exactly. Myself was too big for myself, and so I had to stop and sort of settle down again.”

“Your papa must have been very much pleased,” suggested Jimmieboy.

“Yes, he was,” said the Imp; “although I noticed a big tear in his eye when I read it to him; but he gave me a great big hug for the poem, and I was glad I’d written it. But you must run along and get that key, for my time is very short, and if we are to see Magnetville and all the wire country we must be off.”

“Perhaps if the rhyme always brings about the answer you want, it would be better for me to ask the question that way first, and not bother him with the other twelve ways,” suggested Jimmieboy.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” said the Imp. “I think very likely it would be better to do it that way. Just you tiptoe softly up to him and say,

“If you loved me as I love you,

And I were you and you were me,

What you asked me I’d surely do,

And let you have that silver key.”

“I think that’s just the way,” said Jimmieboy, repeating the verse over and over again so as not to forget it. “I’ll go to him at once.”

And he did go. He tiptoed into the library, at one end of which his papa was sitting writing; he kissed him on his cheek, and whispered the verse softly in his ear.

“Why, certainly,” said his papa, when he had finished. “Here it is,” taking the key from the end of his chain. “Don’t lose it, Jimmieboy.”

BEFORE HIM STOOD THE IMP

“No, I’ll not lose it. I’ve got too much use for it to lose it,” replied Jimmieboy, gleefully, and then, sliding down from his papa’s lap, he ran headlong into the back hall to where the telephone stood, inserted the key in the key-hole of the little door over the receiver and turned it. The door flew open, and before him stood the Imp.

II
IN THE IMP’S ROOM

“Dear me!” ejaculated Jimmieboy, as his eye first rested upon the Imp. “That’s you, eh?”

“I believe so,” replied the Imp, standing on his left leg, and twirling around and around until Jimmieboy got dizzy looking at him. “I was me when I got up this morning, and I haven’t heard of any change since. Do I look like what I told you I looked like?”

“Not exactly,” said Jimmieboy. “You said you had lilac-colored hair, and it’s more like a green than a lilac.”

“You are just like everybody else naming your colors. People are very queer about things of that sort, I think. For instance,” said the Imp, to illustrate his point, “you go walking in the garden with one of your friends, and you come to a rosebush, and your friend says, ‘Isn’t that a pretty rosebush?’  ‘Yes,’ say you; ‘very.’ Then he says, ‘And what a lovely lilac bush that is over there.’  ‘Extremely lovely,’ say you. ‘Let’s sit down under this raspberry bush,’ says he. Well, now you think lilac is a delicate lavender, rose a pink, and raspberry a red—eh?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “That’s the way they are.”

“Well, maybe so; but that lilac bush and rosebush and raspberry bush are all the same color, and that color is green, just like my hair; you must have thought I looked like a rainbow or a paint shop when I told you about myself?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “I didn’t think that, exactly. I thought, perhaps, you were like the pictures in my Mother Goose book. They have lots of colors to ’em, and they are not bad looking, either.”

“Well, if they are not bad looking,” said the Imp, with a pleased smile, “they must be very much like me. But don’t you want to come in?”

“I’m not small enough,” said Jimmieboy; “but I’ll eat that apple you spoke about, and maybe it’ll make me shrink, though I don’t see how it can.”

“Easy enough. Haven’t you seen a boy doubled up after eating an apple? Of course you have; perhaps you were the boy. At any rate there is no reason why, if an apple can work that way, it can’t work the other. It’s a poor rule that won’t work both ways, and an apple is pretty good, as a rule, and so you have it proved without trying that what I say is true. Here’s the apple; eat it as quickly as you can and give me the core.”

Jimmieboy took the dainty piece of fruit in his hand and ate it with much relish, for it was a very sweet apple, and he was fond of that sort of thing. Unfortunately, he liked it so well that he forgot to give the core to the Imp, and, when in a moment he felt himself shrinking up, and the Imp asked for the core, he was forced blushingly to confess that he had been very piggish about it, and had swallowed the whole thing.

“I’ve half a mind not to let you in at all!” cried the Imp, stamping his foot angrily upon the floor, so angrily that the bells rang out softly as if in remonstrance. “In fact, I don’t see how I can let you in, because you have disobeyed me about that core.”

“I’m surprised at you,” returned Jimmieboy, slightly injured in feeling by the Imp’s behavior. “I wouldn’t make such a fuss about an old apple-core. If you feel as badly about it as all that, I’ll run down into the kitchen and get you a whole apple—one as big as you are.”

“That isn’t the point at all,” said the Imp. “I didn’t want the core for myself at all. I wanted it for you.”

“Well, I’ve got it,” said Jimmieboy, who had now shrunk until he was no taller than the Imp himself, not more than two inches high.

“Of course you have, and if you will notice it is making you grow right back again to the size you were before. That’s where the trouble comes in with those trick apples. The outside makes you shrink, and the core makes you grow. When I said I wanted the core I meant that I wanted it to keep until we had had our trip together, so that when we got back you could eat it, and return to your papa and mamma just as you were in the beginning. Just run to the parlor mirror now and watch yourself.”

Jimmieboy hastened into the parlor, and climbing upon the mantelpiece gazed into the mirror, and, much to his surprise, noticed that he was growing fast. He was four inches high when he got there, and then as the minutes passed he lengthened inch by inch, until finally he found himself just as he had been before he ate the apple.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” he asked, when he returned to the telephone.

“I don’t know,” said the Imp. “It’s really too bad, for that’s the last apple of that sort I had. The trick-apple trees only bear one apple a year, and I have been saving that one for you ever since last summer, and here, just because you were greedy, it has all gone for nothing.”

“I’m very sorry, and very much ashamed,” said Jimmieboy, ruefully. “It was really so awfully good, I didn’t think.”

“Well, it’s very thoughtless of you not to think,” said the Imp. “I should think you’d feel very small.”

“I do!” sobbed Jimmieboy.

“Do you, really?” cried the Imp, gleefully. “Real weeny, teeny small.”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy, a tear trickling down his cheek.

“Then it’s all right,” sang the Imp, dancing a lovely jig to show how glad he felt. “Because we are always the way we feel. If you feel sick, you are sick. If you feel good, you are good, and if you feel sorry, you are sorry, and so, don’t you see, if you feel small you are small. The only point is, now, do you feel small enough to get into this room?”

“I think I do,” returned Jimmieboy, brightening up considerably, because his one great desire now was not to be a big grown-up man, like his papa, who could sharpen lead pencils, and go out of doors in snowstorms, but to visit the Imp in his own quarters. “Yes,” he repeated, “I think I do feel small enough to get in there.”

“You’ve got to know,” returned the Imp. “The trouble with you, I believe, is that you think in the wrong places. This isn’t a matter of thinking; it’s a matter of knowing.”

“Well, then, I know I’m small enough,” said Jimmieboy. “The only thing is, how am I to get up there?”

“I’ll fix that,” replied the Imp, with a happy smile. “I’ll let down the wires, and you can come up on them.”

Here he began to unwind two thin green silk-covered wires that Jimmieboy had not before noticed, and which were coiled about two small spools fastened on the back of the door.

“I can’t climb,” said Jimmieboy, watching the operation with interest.

“Nobody asked you to,” returned the Imp. “When these have reached the floor I want you to fasten them to the newel-post of the stairs.”

“All right,” said Jimmieboy, grasping the wires, and fastening them as he was told. “What now?”

“Now I’ll send down the elevator,” said the Imp, as he loosened a huge magnet from the wall, and fastening it securely upon the two wires, sent it sliding down to where Jimmieboy stood. “There,” he added, as it reached the end of the wire. “Step on that; I’ll turn on the electricity, and up you’ll come.”

“I won’t fall, will I?” asked Jimmieboy, timidly.

“That depends on the way you feel,” the Imp answered. “If you feel safe, you are safe. Do you feel safe?”

“Not very,” said Jimmieboy, as he stepped aboard the magnetic elevator.

“Then we’ll have to wait until you do,” returned the Imp, impatiently. “It seems to me that a boy who has spent weeks and weeks and weeks jumping off plush sofas onto waxed hardwood floors ought to be less timid than you are.”

“That’s true,” said Jimmieboy. “I guess I feel safe.”

“All aboard, then,” said the Imp, pressing a small button at the back of his room.

There was a rattle and a buzz, and then the magnet began to move upward, slowly at first, and then with all the rapidity of the lightning, so that before Jimmieboy had an opportunity to change his mind about his safety he was in the Imp’s room, and, much to his delight, discovered that he was small enough to walk about therein without having to stoop, and in every way comfortable.

“AT LAST!”

“At last!” ejaculated the Imp, grasping his hand and giving it an affectionate squeeze. “At last you are here. And now we’ll close the door, and I’ll show you my treasures.”

With this the door was closed, and for a moment all was dark as pitch; but only for a moment, for hardly had Jimmieboy turned around when a flood of soft light burst forth from every corner of the room, and the little visitor saw upon every side of him the most wonderful books, toys, and musical instruments he had ever seen, each and all worked by electricity, and apparently subject to the will of the Imp, who was the genius of the place.

III
ELECTRIC COOKING

“Hurrah!” cried Jimmieboy, in ecstasy. “This is great, isn’t it?”

“Pretty great,” assented the Imp, proudly. “That is, unless you mean large. If you mean it that way it isn’t great at all; but if you mean great like me, who, though very, very small, am simply tremendous as a success, I agree with you. I like it here very much. The room is extremely comfortable, and I do everything by electricity—cooking, reading, writing—everything.”

“I don’t see how,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh, it’s simply a matter of buttons and batteries. The battery makes the electricity, I press the buttons, and there you are. You know what a battery is, don’t you?”

“Not exactly,” said Jimmieboy. “You might explain it to me.”

“Yes, I might if I hadn’t a better way,” replied the Imp. “I won’t explain it to you, because I can have it explained to you in another way entirely, though I won’t promise that either of us will understand the explanation. Let’s see,” he added, rising from his chair and inspecting a huge button-board that hung from the wall at the left of the room. “Where’s the Dictionary button? Ah, here—”

“The what?” queried the visitor, his face alive with wonderment.

“The Dictionary button. I press the Dictionary button, and the Dictionary tells me whatever I want to know. Just listen to this.”

The Imp pressed a button as he spoke, and Jimmieboy listened. In an instant there was a loud buzzing sound, and then an invisible something began to speak, or rather to sing:

“She’s my Annie,

I’m her Joe.

Little Annie Rooney—”

“Dear me!” cried the Imp, his face flushing to a deep crimson. “Dear me, I got the wrong button. That’s my Music-room button. It’s right next the Dictionary button, and my finger must have slipped. I’ll just turn ‘Annie Rooney’ off and try again. Now listen.”

Again the Imp touched a button, and Jimmieboy once more heard the buzzing sound, followed by a squeaking voice, which said:

“Battery is a noun—plural, batteries. In baseball the pitcher and catcher is the battery; in electricity a battery is a number of Leyden jars, usually arranged with their inner coatings connected, and their outer coatings also connected, so that they may be all charged and discharged at the same time.”

“Understand that, Jimmieboy?” queried the Imp, with a smile, turning the Dictionary button off.

“No, I don’t,” said Jimmieboy. “But I suppose it is all right.”

“Perhaps you’d like an explanation of the explanation?” suggested the Imp.

“If it’s one I can understand, I would,” returned Jimmieboy. “But I don’t see the use of explanations that don’t explain.”

“They aren’t much good,” observed the Imp, touching another button. “This will make it clear, I think.”

“The Dictionary doesn’t say it,” said another squeaking voice, in response to the touch of the Imp on the third button; “but a battery is a thing that looks like a row of jars full of preserves, but isn’t, and when properly cared for and not allowed to freeze up, it makes electricity, which is a sort of red-hot invisible fluid that pricks your hands when you touch it, and makes them feel as if they were asleep if you keep hold of it for any length of time, and which carries messages over wires, makes horse-cars go without horses, lights a room better than gas, and is so like lightning that no man who has tried both can tell the difference between them.”

Here the squeaking voice turned into a buzz again, and then stopped altogether.

“Now do you understand?” asked the Imp, anxiously.

“I think I do,” replied Jimmieboy. “A battery is nothing but a lot of big glass jars in which ’lectricity is made, just as pie is made in a tin plate and custard is made in cups.”

“Exactly,” said the Imp. “But, of course, electricity is a great deal more useful than pie or custard. The best custard in the world wouldn’t move a horse-car, and I don’t believe anybody ever saw a pie that could light up a room the way this is. It’s a pretty wonderful thing, electricity is, but not particularly good eating, and sometimes I don’t think it’s as good for cooking as the good old-fashioned fire. I’ve had pie that was too hot, and I’ve had pie that was too electric, and between the two I think the too-hot pie was the pleasanter, though really nothing can make pie positively unpleasant.”

“So I have heard,” said Jimmieboy, with an approving nod. “I haven’t had any sperience with pie, you know. That and red pepper are two things I am not allowed to eat at dinner.”

“You wouldn’t like to taste some of my electric custard, would you?” asked the Imp, his sympathies aroused by Jimmieboy’s statement that as yet he and pie were strangers.

“Indeed I would!” cried Jimmieboy, with a gleeful smile. “I’d like it more than anything else!”

“Very well,” said the Imp, turning to the button-board, and scratching his head as if perplexed for a moment. “Let’s see,” he added. “What is custard made of?”

“Custard?” said Jimmieboy, who thought there never could be any question on that point. “It’s made of custard. I know, because I eat it all up when I get it, and there’s nothing but custard in it from beginning to end.”

The Imp smiled. He knew better than that. “You are right partially,” he said. “But there aren’t custard-mines or custard-trees or custard-wells in the world, so it has to be made of something. I guess I’ll ask my cookery-book.”

Here he touched a pink button in the left-hand upper corner of the board.

“Milk—sugar—and—egg,” came the squeaking voice. “Three-quarters of a pint of milk, two tablespoonfuls of sugar, and one whole egg.”

“Don’t you flavor it with anything?” asked the Imp, pressing the button a second time.

“If you want to,” squeaked the voice. “Vanilla, strawberry, huckleberry, sarsaparilla, or anything else, just as you want it.”

Jimmieboy’s mouth watered. A strawberry custard! “Dear me!” he thought. “Wouldn’t that be just the dish of dishes to live on all one’s days!”

“Two teaspoonfuls of whatever flavor you want will be enough for one cup of custard,” said the squeaky voice, lapsing back immediately into the curious buzz.

“Thanks,” said the Imp, returning to the table and putting down the receipt on a piece of paper.

“You’re welcome,” said the buzz.

“Now, Jimmieboy, we’ll have two cup custards in two minutes,” said the Imp. “What flavor will you have?”

“Strawberry cream, please,” said Jimmieboy, as if he were ordering soda-water.

“All right. I guess I’ll take sarsaparilla,” said the Imp, walking to the board again. “Now see me get the eggs.”

He pressed a blue button this time. The squeaky voice began to cackle, and in a second two beautiful white eggs appeared on the table. In the same manner the milk, flavoring, and sugar were obtained; only when the Imp signaled for the milk the invisible voice mooed so like a cow that Jimmieboy looked anxiously about him, half expecting to see a soft-eyed Jersey enter the room.

“Now,” said the Imp, opening the eggs into a bowl, and pouring the milk and flavoring and sugar in with them, and mixing them all up together, “we’ll pour this into that funnel over there, turn on the electricity, and get our custard in a jiffy. Just watch that small hole at the end of the funnel, and you’ll see the custard come out.”

“Are the cups inside? Or do we have to catch the custards in ’em as they come out?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Oh, my!” cried the Imp. “I’m glad you spoke of that. I had forgotten the cups. We’ve got to put them in with the other things.”

The Imp rushed to the button-board, and soon had two handsome little cups in response to his summons; and then casting them into the funnel he turned on the electric current, while Jimmieboy watched carefully for the resulting custards. In two minutes by the clock they appeared below, both at the same time, one a creamy strawberry in hue, and the other brown.

THE ELECTRIC CUSTARD

“It’s wonderful!” said Jimmieboy, in breathless astonishment. “I wish I had a stove like that in my room.”

“It wouldn’t be good for you. You’d be using it all day and eating what you got. But how is the custard?”

“Lovely,” said Jimmieboy, smacking his lips as he ate the soft creamy sweet. “I could eat a thousand of them.”

“I rather doubt it,” said the Imp. “But you needn’t try to prove it. I don’t want to wear out the stove on custard when it has my dinner still to prepare. What do you say to listening to my library a little while? I’ve got a splendid library in the next room. It has everything in it that has ever been written, and a great many things that haven’t. That’s a great thing about this electric-button business. Nothing is impossible for it to do, and if you want to hear a story some man is going to tell next year or next century you can get it just as well as something that was written last year or last century. Come along.”

IV
THE LIBRARY

The Imp opened a small door upon the right of the room, and through it Jimmieboy saw another apartment, the walls of which were lined with books, and as he entered he saw that to each book was attached a small wire, and that at the end of the library was a square piece of snow-white canvas stretched across a small wooden frame.

“Magic lantern?” he queried, as his eye rested upon the canvas.

“Kind of that way,” said the Imp, “though not exactly. You see, these books in this room are worked by electricity, like everything else here. You never have to take the books off the shelf. All you have to do is to fasten the wire connected with the book you want to read with the battery, turn on the current, and the book reads itself to you aloud. Then if there are pictures in it, as you come to them they are thrown by means of an electric light upon that canvas.”

“Well, if this isn’t the most—” began Jimmieboy, but he was soon stopped, for some book or other off in the corner had begun to read itself aloud.

“And it happened,” said the book, “that upon that very night the Princess Tollywillikens passed through the wood alone, and on approaching the enchanted tree threw herself down upon the soft grass beside it and wept.”

Here the book ceased speaking.

“That’s the story of Pixyweevil and Princess Tollywillikens,” said the Imp. “You remember it, don’t you?—how the wicked fairy ran away with Pixyweevil, when he and the Princess were playing in the King’s gardens, and how she had mourned for him many years, never knowing what had become of him? How the fairy had taken Pixyweevil and turned him into an oak sapling, which grew as the years passed by to be the most beautiful tree in the forest?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jimmieboy. “I know. And there was a good fairy who couldn’t tell Princess Tollywillikens where the tree was, or anything at all about Pixyweevil, but did remark to the brook that if the Princess should ever water the roots of that tree with her tears, the spell would be broken, and Pixyweevil restored to her—handsomer than ever, and as brave as a lion.”

“That’s it,” said the Imp. “You’ve got it; and how the brook said to the Princess, ‘Follow me, and we’ll find Pixyweevil,’ and how she followed and followed until she was tired to death, and—”

“Full of despair threw herself down at the foot of that very oak and cried like a baby,” continued Jimmieboy, ecstatically, for this was one of his favorite stories.

“Yes, that’s all there; and then you remember how it winds up? How the tree shuddered as her tears fell to the ground, and how she thought it was the breeze blowing through the branches that made it shudder?” said the Imp.

“And how the brook laughed at her thinking such a thing!” put in Jimmieboy.

“And how she cried some more, until finally every root of the tree was wet with her tears, and how the tree then gave a fearful shake, and—”

“Turned into Pixyweevil!” roared Jimmieboy. “Yes, I remember that; but I never really understood whether Pixyweevil ever became King? My book says, ‘And so they were married, and were happy ever afterwards;’ but doesn’t say that he finally became a great potteringtate, and ruled over the people forever.”

“I guess you mean potentate, don’t you?” said the Imp, with a laugh—potteringtate seemed such a funny word.

“I guess so,” said Jimmieboy. “Did he ever become one of those?”

“No, he didn’t,” said the Imp. “He couldn’t, and live happy ever afterwards, for Kings don’t get much happiness in this world, you know.”

“Why, I thought they did,” returned Jimmieboy, surprised to hear what the Imp had said. “My idea of a King was that he was a man who could eat between meals, and go to the circus whenever he wanted to, and always had plenty of money to spend, and a beautiful Queen.”

“Oh no,” returned the Imp. “It isn’t so at all. Kings really have a very hard time. They have to be dressed up all the time in their best clothes, and never get a chance, as you do, for instance, to play in the snow, or in summer in the sand at the seashore. They can eat between meals if they want to, but they can’t have the nice things you have. It would never do for a King to like gingersnaps and cookies, because the people would murmur and say, ‘Here—he is not of royal birth, for even we, the common people, eat gingersnaps and cookies between meals; were he the true King he would call for green peas in wintertime, and boned turkey, and other rich stuffs that cost much money, and are hard to get; he is an impostor; come, let us overthrow him.’ That’s the hard part of it, you see. He has to eat things that make him ill just to keep the people thinking he is royal and not like them.”

“Then what did Pixyweevil become?” asked Jimmieboy.

“A poet,” said the Imp. “He became the poet of everyday things, and of course that made him a great poet. He’d write about plain and ordinary good-natured puppy-dogs, and snow-shovels, and other things like that, instead of trying to get the whole moon into a four-line poem, or to describe some mysterious thing that he didn’t know much about in a ten-page poem that made it more mysterious than ever, and showed how little he really did know about it.”

“I wish I could have heard some of Pixyweevil’s poems,” said Jimmieboy. “I liked him, and sometimes I like poems.”

“Well, sit down there before the fire, and I’ll see if we can’t find a button to press that will enable you to hear them. They’re most of ’em nonsense poems, but as they are perfect nonsense they’re good nonsense.

“It is some time since I’ve used the library,” the Imp continued, gazing about him as if in search of some particular object. “For that reason I have forgotten where everything is. However, we can hunt for what we want until we find it. Perhaps this is it,” he added, grasping a wire and fastening it to the battery. “I’ll turn on the current and let her go.”

The crank was turned, and the two little fellows listened very intently, but there came no sound whatever.

“That’s very strange,” said the Imp. “I don’t hear a thing.”

“Neither do I,” observed Jimmieboy, in a tone of disappointment. “Perhaps the library is out of order, or the battery maybe.”

“I’ll have to take the wire and follow it along until I come to the book it is attached to,” said the Imp, stopping the current and loosening the wire. “If the library is out of order it’s going to be a very serious matter getting it all right again, because we have all the books in the world here, and that’s a good many, you know—more’n a hundred by several millions. Ah! Here is the book this wire worked. Now let’s see what was the matter.”

In a moment the whole room rang with the Imp’s laughter.

“NO WONDER IT WOULDN’T SAY ANYTHING”

“No wonder it wouldn’t say anything,” he cried. “What do you suppose the book was?”

“I don’t know,” said Jimmieboy. “What?”

“An old copybook with nothing in it. That’s pretty good!”

At this moment the telephone bell rang, and the Imp had to go see what was wanted.

“Excuse me for a moment, Jimmieboy,” he said, as he started to leave the room. “I’ve got to send a message for somebody. I’ll turn on one of the picture-books, so that while I am gone you will have something to look at.”

The Imp then fastened a wire to the battery, turned on the current, and directing Jimmieboy’s attention to the sheet of white canvas at the end of the library, left the room.

V
THE CIRCUS

The pictures that now followed one another across the canvas were better than any circus Jimmieboy ever went to, for the reason that they showed a water circus in which were the finest imaginable sea-monsters doing all sorts of marvelous things; and then, too, the book the Imp had turned on evidently had some reading matter in it, for as the pictures passed before the little fellow’s eyes he could hear verses describing what was going on, repeating themselves from a shelf directly back of him.

First of all in the circus was the grand parade. A great big gilded bandwagon drawn by gaily caparisoned Sea-Horses went first, and then Jimmieboy could judge how much better electric circus books were than those he had in his nursery, for this book was able to do what his had never done—it furnished music to go with the band—and such music as it was! It had all the pleasant features of the hand-organ; was as soft and sweet in parts as the music-box in the white-and-gold parlor, and once in a while would play deliciously out of tune like a real circus band. After the bandwagon there followed the most amusing things that Jimmieboy ever saw, the Trick Oysters, twelve in number, and all on foot. Next came the mounted Scallops, riding ten abreast on superbly groomed Turtles, holding the bridle of each of which walked Lobsters dressed as Clowns. Then came the menagerie, with great Sea-Lions swimming in tanks on wheels; marine Giraffes standing up to their necks in water forty feet deep; four-legged Whales, like the Oysters, on foot, and hundreds of other queer fish, all doing things Jimmieboy had never supposed they could do.

When the parade was over a great circus ring showed itself upon the canvas, and as strains of lovely music came from the left of the tent the book on the shelf began to recite:

“The Codfish walks around,

The Bass begins to sing;

The Whitebait ’round the Terrapin’s cage

Would better get out of the ring.

The Gudgeon is the fish

That goes to all the shows,

He swims up to the Teredos

And tweaks him by the nose.”

“That Gudgeon must have been a sort of Van Amberg,” thought Jimmieboy. “He did brave things like that.”

Then the book went on again:

“The Oyster now will please come forth

And show the people here

Just how he stands upon his head

And then doth disappear.”

This interested Jimmieboy very much, and he watched the canvas intently as one of the Trick Oysters walked out into the ring, and after kissing his hand to Jimmieboy and bowing to the rest of the audience—if there were any to bow to, and Jimmieboy supposed there must be, for the Oyster certainly bowed—he stood upon his head, and then without a word vanished from sight.

“Hooray!” shouted Jimmieboy, whereupon the book resumed:

“Now watch the ring intently, for

The Sea-Giraffe now comes,

And without any effort turns

A plum-cake into crumbs.”

“Huh!” cried Jimmieboy, as he watched the Sea-Giraffe turn the plum-cake into crumbs. “That isn’t anything to do. I could do that myself, and make the plum-cake and the crumbs disappear too.”

The book, of course, could not reply to this criticism, and so went right on.

“The Lobster and the Shark will now

Amuse the little folks

By making here, before their eyes,

Some rhymes and funny jokes.”

When the book had said this there appeared on the canvas a really handsome Shark clad in a dress suit and a tall hat on his head, followed closely by a Lobster wearing a jester’s coat and cap and bells, and bearing in his hand a little stick with Punch’s head on the end of it.

“How do you do?” the Lobster seemed to say, as he reached out his claw and grabbed the Shark by his right fin.

“Sir,” returned the Shark,

“If you would really like to know,

I’m very glad to say

That I am feeling pretty fine,

And think ’twill snow today.”

“I’M VERY GLAD TO SEE YOU, SHARKEY”

“I’m very glad to see you, Sharkey,” said the Lobster. “It is exceedingly pleasant to one who is always joking to meet a Fish like you.”

“I pray excuse me, Lobster dear,

If I should ask you why?

Pray come and whisper in my ear,

What your words signify.”

“Certainly, my dear Shark,” replied the Lobster. “It is always exceedingly pleasant for a droll person to tell his jokes to a creature with a mouth as large as yours, because your smile is necessarily a tremendous one. I never like to tell my jokes to people with small mouths, because their smiles are limited, while yours is as broad as the boundless ocean.”

“Thank you,” returned the Shark. “That reminds me of a little song, and as I see you have a bass drum in your pocket, I will sing it, if you will accompany me.”

Here Jimmieboy had the wonderful experience of seeing a Lobster take a bass drum out of his pocket. I shall not attempt to describe how the lobster did it, because I know you are anxious to hear the Shark’s song—as also was Jimmieboy—which went as follows:—that is, the words did; the tune I cannot here reproduce, but any reader desirous of hearing it can do so if he will purchase a bass drum set in G-flat, and beat it forty times to the second as hard as he knows how.

“I find it most convenient to

Possess a mouth like this,

Why, twenty babes at one fell swoop

I easily can kiss;

And sixty pounds of apple pie,

Plus ten of orange pulp,

And forty thousand macaroons

I swallow at a gulp.

It’s big enough for me without

Appearing like a dunce

To stand upon a platform and

Say forty things at once.

So large it is I have to wear

Of teeth a dozen sets,

And I can sing all in a bunch

Some twenty-nine duets.

Once I was captured by some men,

Who put me in a lake,

Where sadly I did weep all day—

All night I kept awake:

And when the morning came at last,

So weary, sir, was I,

I yawned and swallowed up that pond,

Which left me high and dry.

Then when my captors came to me,

I opened both my jaws,

And snapped each one of them right up

Without a moment’s pause;

I swallowed every single man

In all that country round,

And as I had the lake inside,

They every one were drowned.”

Here the Shark stopped, and Jimmieboy applauded.

“And what became of you?” asked the Lobster. “Did you die then?”

“Well,” returned the Shark, with a puzzled expression on his face. “The song stops there, and I don’t know whether I died or not. I presume I did, unless I swallowed myself and got into the lake again in that way. But, see here, Lobby, you haven’t got off any jokes for the children yet.”

“No, but I’m ready,” returned Lobby. “What’s the difference between me and Christmas?”

“Perhaps I’m very stupid,

Sometimes I’m rather slow—

But why you’re unlike Christmas

I’m sure I do not know,”

replied the Shark.

“Oh no, you aren’t stupid,” said the Lobster. “It would be far stupider of you to guess the answer when it is my turn to make the little ones laugh. The reason I am different from Christmas is just this—now don’t lose this, children—with Christmas comes Santa Claus, and with me comes Lobster claws. Now let me give you another. What is it that’s brown like a cent, is bigger than a cent, is worth less than a cent, yet costs a cent?”

“Perhaps I do not know enough

To spell C-A-T, cat—

And yet I really must confess

I cannot answer that,”

returned the Shark.

“I am very glad of that,” said the Lobster. “I should have felt very badly if you could, because, you know, I want these children here to observe that while there are some things you can do that I can’t do, there are also some things I can do that you can’t do. Now the thing that is brown like a cent, is bigger than a cent, is worth less than a cent, yet costs a cent, is a cent’s worth of molasses taffy—which the Terrapin will now pass around for sale, along with my photographs, for the benefit of my family.”

Then the Lobster bowed, the Shark and he locked fin and arm again, and amid the strains of music from the band marched out of the ring, and Jimmieboy looking up from the canvas for a moment saw that the Imp had returned.

VI
THE CIRCUS CONTINUES

“Hullo,” said Jimmieboy. “Back again?”

“Do I look it?” asked the Imp.

“Yes, I think you do,” returned Jimmieboy. “Unless you are your twin brother; are you your twin brother?”

“No,” laughed the Imp, “I am not. I am myself, and I am back again just as I appear to be, and I’ve had a real dull time of it since I went away from you.”

“Doing what?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Well, first I had to tell your mother that the butcher couldn’t send a ten-pound turkey, but had two six-pounders for her if she wanted them; and then I had to tell him for her that he could send mutton instead. After that I had to blow up the grocer for your father, whose cigars hadn’t come, and then tell your father what wasn’t so—that the cigars hadn’t been ordered—for the grocer. After that, just as I was leaving, the cook came to the phone and asked me to tell your Aunt Susan’s cook that her cousin in New York was very ill with a broken wheel on his truck, and that if she would meet her in town at eleven o’clock they could go to the matinee together, which she said she would do, and altogether it has been a very dull twenty minutes for me. Have you enjoyed yourself?”

“Hugely,” said Jimmieboy; “and I hope now that you’ve come back I haven’t got to stop enjoying myself in the same way. I’m right in the middle of the Fish Circus.”

“Oh, are you,” said the Imp, with a smile. “I rather enjoy that myself. How far have you got?”

“The Shark and the Lobster had just gone off when you came back.”

“Good,” returned the Imp. “The best part of the performance is yet to come. Move over there in the chair and make room for me. There—that’s it. Now let’s see what’s on next. Oh yes. Here comes the Juggling Clam; he is delightful. I like him better that way than if he was served with tomato ketchup.”

The Book interrupted the Imp at this point, and observed:

“Now glue your eyes upon the ring,

And see the Juggling Clam

Transform a piece of purple string

Into a pillow-sham.

Nor think that when he has done so

His tricks are seen and done,

For next he’ll turn a jet-black crow

Into a penny bun.

Next from his handsome heaven hat

He’ll take a piece of pie,

A donkey, and a Maltese cat,

A green bluebottle fly;

A talking-doll, a pair of skates,

A fine apartment-house,

A pound of sweet imported dates,

A brace of roasted grouse;

And should you not be satisfied

When he has done all that,

He’ll take whatever you decide

Out of that beaver hat.

And after that he’ll lightly spring

Into the atmosphere,

And show you how a Clam can sing

If he but persevere.

When he has all this to you,

If you applaud him well

He’ll be so glad he’ll show you through

His handsome pinky shell.”

Jimmieboy didn’t believe the Clam could do all this, and he said so to the Imp, but the Imp told him to “wait and see,” and when the boy did wait he certainly did see, for the Clam did everything that was promised, and when Jimmieboy, just to test the resources of the wonderful hat, asked the Clam to bring out three dozen jam tarts, the Clam brought out the three dozen jam tarts—only they were picture jam tarts, and Jimmieboy could only decide that it was a wonderful performance, though he would have liked mightily to taste the tarts, and see if they were as good as they looked.

“What comes next?” queried Jimmieboy, as the Clam bowed himself out of the ring.

“Listen, and the Book will tell,” returned the Imp.

The Book resumed:

“We now shall have the privilege

Of witnessing the Whale

Come forth, and set our teeth on edge

By standing on his tail.

When this is done, he’ll open wide

That wondrous mouth of his,

And let us see how the inside

Of such great creatures is;

And those who wish to take a trip—

Like Jonah took one time—

Can through his mammoth larynx slip

For one small silver dime.

For dollars ten, he’ll take you to

The coast of Labrador,

The Arctic Ocean he’ll go through

For dollars twenty-four;

And should you wish to see the Pole,

He’ll take you safely there,

If you will pay the usual toll—

Ten thousand is the fare.”

“I’d like to go to the North Pole,” said Jimmieboy.

“Got ten thousand dollars in your pocket?” queried the Imp, with a snicker.

“No; but I’ve got a dollar in my iron bank,” said Jimmieboy; “perhaps he’d take me for that.”

“YOUR EARS WOULD BE FROZEN SOLID”

“Very likely he would,” said the Imp. “These circus fellows will do almost anything for money; but when he got you there he would tell you you could stay there until you paid the other $9999; and think how awful that would be. Why, your ears would be frozen solid inside of four weeks.”

“Is it as cold as that at the Pole?” said Jimmieboy.

“Colder!” ejaculated the Imp. “Why, when I was there once I felt chilly in spite of my twenty-eight seal-skin sacques and sixty-seven mufflers, so I decided to build a fire. I got the fagots all ready, lit the match, and what do you suppose happened?”

“What?” queried Jimmieboy, in a whisper, for he was a little awed by the Imp’s manner. “Wouldn’t the match light?”

“Worse than that,” replied the Imp. “It lit, but before I could touch it to the fagots the flame froze!”

Jimmieboy eyed the Imp closely. This seemed to him so like a fairy story, in which the first half is always untrue and the last half imaginary, that he did not exactly know whether the Imp meant him to believe all he said or not. It did him no particular good, though, to scrutinize the Imp’s countenance, for that worthy gave not the slightest sign that there was any room for doubt as to the truth of this story; indeed, he continued:

“Why, the last time I went to the North Pole I took forty-seven thermometers to register the coolth of it, and the mercury not only went down to the very bottom of every one of them, but went down so quickly that it burst through the glass bulb that marked 4006 below zero, and fell eight miles more before it even began to slow up. It was so cold that some milk I carried in a bottle was frozen so hard that it didn’t thaw out for sixteen months after I got back, although I kept it in boiling water all the time, and one of the Esquimaux who came up there in midsummer to shoot polar bears had to send for a plumber after his return home to thaw out his neck, which had frozen stiff.”

“Maybe that is why the Whale charges so much to take people there,” suggested Jimmieboy.

“It is, exactly. There is no risk about it for him, but he has to eat so much hot coal and other things to warm him up, that really it costs him nearly as much as he gets to make the trip. I don’t believe that he clears more than half a dollar on the whole thing, even when he is crowded,” said the Imp.

“Crowded?” echoed Jimmieboy. “What do you mean by that?”

“Crowded? Why, crowded is an English word meaning jamful and two more,” said the Imp.

“But crowded with what?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Why, passengers, of course. What did you suppose? Ink bottles?”

“Then he takes more than one passenger at a time,” said Jimmieboy.

“Certainly he does. He’ll hold twenty-five boys of your size in comfort, thirty-five in discomfort, forty-five in an emergency, and fifty at a pinch,” said the Imp. “But see here, we are losing a lot of circus. There goes the Educated Scallop out of the ring now. I’m sorry you missed him, for he is a tender.”

“A what?”

“A tender. That is, he is ten times as marvelous as a wonder. Why, that Scallop is the finest comic actor you ever saw. His imitation of a party of sharks off manning is simply the most laughable thing I ever saw,” said the Imp, enthusiastically.

“I wish I could understand half of what you say,” said Jimmieboy, looking wistfully at the Imp. “Because if I did, you know, I might guess the rest.”

“What is it you don’t understand now?” asked the Imp.

“What is a party of sharks off manning?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Did you ever see a man fishing?” questioned the Imp.

“Yes.”

“Well, if a man can fish, why shouldn’t a fish man? Sharks can catch men just as easily as men can catch sharks, and the Scallop shows how sharks behave when they catch men—that’s all.”

“I wish I’d seen it; can’t you turn back to that page in the book, and have it done all over again?” asked the boy.

“No, I can’t,” said the Imp. “It’s against the rules of the Library. It hurts a book to be turned back, just as much as it hurts your little finger to be turned back, and in nine cases out of ten turning back pages makes them dogeared; and dogs, or anything that even suggests dogs, are not allowed here. Why, if the other Imps who own this Library with me knew that I had even mentioned dogs they would suspend me for a week. But, my dear boy, we really must stop talking. This time we missed the Crab with the iron claw—why, that Crab can crack hickory nuts with that claw when he’s half asleep; and when he’s wide awake he can hold a cherry stone a hundred miles a minute, and that’s holding mighty fast, I can tell you. Let’s hear what the Book has to say now.”

“Bang!” said the Book.

“Dear me!” cried the Imp. “Did you hear that!”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “What does it mean?”

“It means the circus is all over,” said the Imp. “That was the shutting of the Book we heard. It’s too bad; but there are other things quite as well worth seeing here. I’ll tell you what we’ll do—I’ll find the Pixyweevil Poetry Book, and turn that on, and while you are listening, I’ll see who that is ringing, for I am quite sure the bell rang a minute ago.”

VII
THE POETRY BOOK,
AND THE END

The Imp then arranged the wires so that the Poetry Book could recite itself to Jimmieboy, after which he went back to his office to see who it was that had been ringing the bell.

“My first poem,” said a soft silvery voice from the top shelf, towards which Jimmieboy immediately directed his attention—“my first poem is a perfect gem. I have never seen anything anywhere that could by any possibility be finer than it is, unless it be in my new book, which contains millions of better ones. It is called, ‘To a Street Lamp,’ and goes this way:

“You seem quite plain, old Lamp, to men,

Yet ’twould be hard to say

What we should do without you when

Night follows on the day;

And while your lumination seems

Much less than that of sun,

I truly think but for your beams

We would be much undone.

And who knows, Lamp, but to some wight,

Too small for me to see,

You are just such a wondrous sight

As old Sol is to me!

“Isn’t that just terribly lovely?” said the soft silvery voice when the poem was completed.

“Yes; but I don’t think it’s very funny,” said Jimmieboy. “I like to laugh, you know, and I couldn’t laugh at that.”

“Oh!” said the silvery voice, with a slight tinge of disappointment in it. “You want fun, do you? Well, how do you like this? I think it is the funniest thing ever written, except others by the same author:

“There was an old man in New York

Who thought he’d been changed to a stork;

He stood on one limb

’Til his eyesight grew dim,

And used his left foot for a fork.”

“That’s the kind,” said Jimmieboy, enthusiastically. “I could listen to a million of that sort of poems.”

“I’d be very glad to tell you a million of them,” returned the voice, “but I don’t believe there’s electricity enough for me to do it under twenty-five minutes, and as we only have five left, I’m going to recite my lines on ‘A Sulphur Match.’

“The flame you make, O Sulphur Match!

When your big head I chance to scratch,

Appears so small most people deem

You lilliputian, as you seem.

And yet the force that in you lies

Can light with brilliance all the skies.

There’s strength enough in you to send

Great cities burning to their end;

So that we have a hint in you

Of what the smallest thing can do.

“Don’t you like that?” queried the voice, anxiously. “I do hope you do, because I am especially proud of that. The word lilliputian is a tremendous word for a poet of my size, and to think that I was able, alone and unassisted, to lift it bodily out of the vocabulary into the poem makes me feel very, very proud of myself, and agree with my mother that I am the greatest poet that ever lived.”

“Well, if you want me to, I’ll like it,” said Jimmieboy, who was in an accommodating mood. “I’ll take your word for it that it is a tremendous poem, but if you think of repeating it over again to me, don’t do it. Let me have another comic poem.”

“All right,” said Pixyweevil—for it was he that spoke through the book. “You are very kind to like my poem just to please me. Tell me anything in the world you want a poem about, and I’ll let you have the poem.”

“Really?” cried Jimmieboy, delighted to meet with so talented a person as Pixyweevil. “Well—let me see—I’d like a poem about my garden rake.”

“Certainly. Here it is:

“I had a little garden rake

With seven handsome teeth,

It followed me o’er fern and brake,

O’er meadowland and heath.

And though at it I’d often scowl,

And treat it far from right,

My garden rake would never growl,

Nor use its teeth to bite.”

“Elegant!” ejaculated Jimmieboy. “Say it again.”

“Oh no! we haven’t time for that. Besides, I’ve forgotten it. What else shall I recite about?” queried Pixyweevil.

“I don’t know; I can’t make up my mind,” said Jimmieboy.

“Oh dear me! that’s awful easy,” returned Pixyweevil. “I can do that with my eyes shut. Here she goes:

“Shall I become a lawyer great,

A captain of a yacht,

A man who deals in real estate,

A doctor, or a what?

Ah me! Oh ho!

I do not know.

I can’t make up my mind.

I have a penny. Shall I buy

An apple or a tart?

A bit of toffee or a pie,

A catboat or a cart?

Ah me! Oh ho!

I do not know.

I can’t make up my mind.”

“Splendid!” cried Jimmieboy.

“That’s harder—much harder,” said Pixyweevil, “but I’ll try. How is this:

“I bought one day, in Winnipeg,

A truly wondrous heavy egg;

And when my homeward course was run

I showed it to my little son.

‘Dear me!’ said he,

When he did see,

‘I think that hen did

Splen-did-ly!’

I saw a bird—’twas reddish-brown—

One day while in a country town,

Which sang, ‘Oh, Johnny, Get Your Gun;’

And when I told my little son,

In tones of glee

Said he, ‘Dear me!

I think that wren did

Splen-did-ly!”

“That’s the best I can do with splendid,” said Pixyweevil.

“Well, it’s all you can do now, anyhow,” came a voice from the doorway, which Jimmieboy immediately recognized as the Imp’s; “for Jimmieboy’s mamma has just telephoned that she wants him to come home right away.”

“It was very nice, Mr. Pixyweevil,” said Jimmieboy, as he rose to depart. “And I am very much obliged.”

“Thank you,” returned Pixyweevil. “You are very polite, and exceedingly truthful. I believe myself that, as that ‘Splendid’ poem might say, if it had time,

“I’ve truly ended

Splen-did-ly.”

And then Jimmieboy and the Imp passed out of the library back through the music and cookery room. The Imp unlocked the door, and, fixing the wires, sent Jimmieboy sliding gleefully down to the back hall, whence he had originally entered the little telephone closet.

“HULLO! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

“Hullo!” said his papa. “Where have you been?”

“Having a good time,” said Jimmieboy.

“And what have you done with the key of my cigar-box?”

“Oh, I forgot,” said Jimmieboy. “I left it in the telephone door.”

“What a queer place to leave it,” said his papa. “Let me have it, please, for I want to smoke.”

And Jimmieboy went to get it, and, sure enough, there it was in the little box, and it unlocked it, too; but when his father came to open the door and look inside, the Imp had disappeared.

THE END

•   3   •

CAUGHT IN TOYTOWN

It came about in this way. Jimmieboy had been just a wee bit naughty, and in consequence had to sit in the night nursery all alone by himself for a little while. Now, the night nursery was not an altogether attractive place for a small boy to sit in all by himself, because all the toys were kept in the day nursery, and beyond the bureau drawers there was absolutely nothing in the room which could keep a boy busy for more than five minutes. So it happened that at the end of ten minutes Jimmieboy was at his wits’ ends to find out what he should do next. At the end of fifteen minutes he was about to announce to a waiting world outside that he’d make an effort to behave himself, and not tease his small brother any more, when his eye caught sight of a singular little crack in one corner of the room. It was the funniest looking crack he ever saw, as it went zigzagging on its way from floor to ceiling, and then, as he gazed at it it grew even queerer than ever, for it seemed to widen, and then what should appear at the bottom of it but a little iron gate!

“That’s the curiousest thing I’ve seen yet!” said Jimmieboy, crawling on his hands and knees over to the gate and peering through it. Then he suddenly started back, somewhat frightened, for as he looked through the bars a great gruff voice cried out:

“That’s five dollars you owe. Pay up—now. Quick, or the bus will go without me.”

And then a funny little old man that looked as if he had stepped out of a Brownie book came to the other side of the gate and thrust his hand through the bars in front of Jimmieboy.

“Hear what I said?” the little old man cried out. “Five dollars—hurry up, or the bus’ll go without me, and it gets lost every time it does and then there’s a fearful row and I’m discharged.”

“I haven’t got five dollars,” said Jimmieboy. “And, besides, if I had I wouldn’t give it to you, because I don’t owe it to you.”

“You don’t owe me five dollars?” cried the little old man angrily. “Well, I like that. Then you mean to say you are a view stealer, do you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Jimmieboy. “I never stole anything.”

“Yes you did, too,” shrieked the little old man. “You just took a look through these bars, and that look doesn’t belong to you. This country belongs to us. You’ve used our view and now you say you won’t pay for it.”

“Oh, I see,” said Jimmieboy, who began to understand. “You charge for the view—is that it?”

“Yes,” said the little old man more quietly. “We have to make a small charge to keep the view in repair, you know. There was a man here last week who spoiled one of our most beautiful bits of scenery. He looked at it so hard that it was simply used up. And another fellow, with two very sharp eyes, bored a hole through another view further along only yesterday. He gave it a quick, piercing, careless glance, and pop!—his left eye went right through it; and that’s the reason we have to make people pay. Sightseers do a deal of damage.”

“Well, I’m very sorry,” said Jimmieboy. “I didn’t know there was any charge or I wouldn’t have looked.”

“Then we’re square,” said the little old man. “I have instructions to collect five dollars or an apology from everyone who uses our views until our Wizard has invented some way of enabling people to put back the views they take without meaning to. Won’t you come in and look about you and see what an interesting country we have? You can pay for all you see with apologies, since you have no money.”

The little old man turned the key on his side of the gate and opened it.

“Thanks ever so much,” said Jimmieboy. “I’d like to come in very much indeed,” and in he walked.

“What is this place?” he asked, as he gazed about him and observed that all the houses were made of cake and candy, and that all the trees were fashioned like those that came with his toy farm.

“This,” said the little old man, clanging the gate and locking it fast, “is Toyland, and you are my prisoner.”

“Your what?” cried Jimmieboy, taking instant alarm.

“My prisoner is what I said,” retorted the little old man. “I keep a toy shop in Toyland and I’m going to put you in my show window and sell you to the first big toy that wants to buy you for a Christmas present for his little toy at home.”

“I d-don’t understand,” stammered Jimmieboy.

“Well, you will in a minute,” said the little old man. “We citizens of Toyland keep Christmas just as much as you people do, only our toys are children just as your toys are toys. You sell us when you can catch us, and we sell you when we catch you—and, what is more, the boy who is kind to his toys in your country finds his toy master in Toyland kind to him. I am told that you are very good to your toys and keep them very carefully, so you needn’t be afraid that you will be given to one of our rough toys, who will drag you around by one leg and leave you standing on your head in the closet all night.”

“But I don’t want to be sold,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, you’d better, then,” retorted the little old man, “because if someone doesn’t buy you we’ll pack you up in a box and send you out to China to the missionaries. Step right in here, please.”

Jimmieboy did not wish to obey in the least, but he didn’t dare rebel against the commands of his captor, so, with an anxious glance down the street, he started to do as he was told, when a singular sight met his eye. In glancing down the street he had caught sight of the toyshop window, and what should he see there but his friends Whitty and Billie and Johnnie and sweet little Bettie Perkins who lived across the way, and half a dozen others of his small friends.

“Fine display, eh?” said the little old man. “Great haul of children, eh?” he added. “Best window in town, and they’ll sell like hot cakes.”

“You’ve got all my friends except Tommy Hicks,” said Jimmieboy.

“I know it,” said the little old man. “We had Tommy this morning, too, but a plush rabbit living up on Main street came in and bought him to put in his little toy stocking. I don’t envy Tommy much. He used to treat a plush rabbit he had very badly, and the one that bought him seemed to know it, for as he took Tommy out he kept punching him in the stomach and making him cry like a doll, calling ‘mam-mah’ and ‘pah-pah’ all the time. He gave me a dollar for Tommy, but I’ll charge ten for you. They’ll have to pay a good price for Whitty, too, because there’s so much goes with him. He’s got a collection of postage stamps in one pocket, a muffin ring and a picture book in another, and the front of his blouse is stuffed chock full of horse chestnuts and marbles. Whitty makes a singularly rich toy, and I think he’ll sell as quickly as any of you.”

“How did you capture him?” asked Jimmieboy, who felt better now that he saw that he was not alone in this strange land. “Did he come through that crack that I came by?”

“No, indeed,” said the little old man. “He came in through the pantry door. He climbed into his mamma’s pantry after some jam, and while he was there I just turned the pantry around, and when he’d filled up on jam he walked right through the door into the back of my shop, and before he knew it I had him priced and sitting in the window. There was a wax doll in here this afternoon who wanted to buy him for her daughter Flaxilocks, but she only had $8, and I’m not going to let Whitty go for less than $12, considering all the things he’s brought with him.”

Then Jimmieboy entered the shop, and it was indeed a curious place. Instead of there being toys on the shelves waiting to be bought, there were piles of children lying there, while the toys were to be seen walking up and down the floor, pricing first a boy and then a baby and then a little girl. The salesmen were all Brownies, and most obliging ones. It didn’t seem to be a bit of trouble to them to show goods, and they were very kind to the little toys that had come in with their mothers, punching the children they had to sell in the stomach to make them say what they were made to say; and making them show how easily and gracefully they could walk, and, in short, showing off their wares to the very best advantage. Jimmieboy was too interested in what he saw to feel very anxious, and so, when the bazaar door had closed behind them, he asked the little old man very cheerfully what he should do.

“Step right into the window and sit down,” said the little old man. “Smile cheerfully and once in a while get up and twirl around on your right leg. That will attract the attention of the toys passing on the street, and maybe one of ’em will come in and buy you. Do you sing?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “Why?”

“Nothing. I only wanted to know so that I could describe you properly on the placard you are to wear,” said the little old man. “How would you like to be called the Automatic-Musical-Jimmieboy?”

“That would be first rate,” said Jimmieboy. “Only I couldn’t begin to remember it, you know.”

“You don’t have to,” said the little old man. “Nobody will ask you what you are, because the placard will tell that. Only whenever anybody wants to see you, and I take you out of the window, you must sing of your own accord. That’s what I mean by calling you an Automatic-Musical-Jimmieboy. It means simply that you are a Jimmieboy that sings of its own accord.”

So the placard was made, and Jimmieboy put it on, and got into the window, where, for hours, he was stared at by rag babies, tin soldiers, lead firemen, woolen monkeys and all sorts of other toys, who lived in this strange land, and who were walking in throngs on the sugared sidewalk without. One woolen monkey called in to price him, and Jimmieboy sang a German kindergarten song for him, but the monkey found him too expensive, for, as you may already know, it rarely happens that woolen monkeys have as much as $10 in their pockets.

A little later a wooden Noah, out of an ark across the street, came in, and purchased Whitty, and Jimmieboy began to feel tired and lonesome. The novelty of it all wore off after awhile, and some of the toys in the street bothered him a good deal by making faces at him, and a plaster lion said he thought he’d go in and take a bite of him, he looked so good, which Jimmieboy didn’t like at all, though it was meant to be complimentary.

Finally he was sold to a rubber doll with a whistle in its head, and the first thing he knew he was wrapped up in a bundle and put in a pasteboard box to be sent by express to the rubber doll’s cousin, who lived in the country. Jimmieboy didn’t like this at all, and as the little old man tied the string that fastened him in the box he resisted and began to kick, and he kicked so hard that something fell over with a crash, and, freeing his arms from the twine and the box and the paper, he sprang up and began laying about him with his fists. The little old man fled in terror. The rubber doll changed his mind and said he didn’t think he cared for so violent a toy as the Automatic-Musical-Jimmieboy after all, and started off. Jimmieboy, noting the terror that he inspired by his resistance, grabbed up three of the Brownies who were trying to hide in the fire extinguisher, and rushed shouting out of the shop and landed—where do you suppose?

Slap, bang in his own nursery!

How the nursery got there or what became of the Brownies he does not know to this day, but he remembers every detail of his experience very well and it is from him that I got the story. The queerest thing about it, though, is that Whitty has no recollection of the adventure at all, which is really very strange, for Whitty has a marvelous memory. I have known both Whitty and Jimmieboy to remember things that never happened at all, which makes Whitty’s loss of memory on this occasion more wonderful than ever.

At any rate, this story tells you exactly what happened to Jimmieboy that day at the beginning of the Christmas vacation, and I am convinced that few of you have ever had anything at all like it happen to you, which is why I have told you all about it.

•   4   •

TOTHERWAYVILLE; THE ANIMAL TOWN

“What place is this?” said Jimmieboy, as the express train came to a full stop. “I didn’t know fast trains stopped at funny little places like this—and do look! Why, there is a horse sitting in a wagon driving a pair of men uphill.”

“Better not try to know too much about diss yere place, mistah,” said the colored porter of the car Jimmieboy was traveling in. “Hit’s a powahful funny sort o’ place, but hit’s just as well fo’ you to stay on de kyar an’ not go foolin’ outside less you’s asked.”

“I should say it was queer,” returned Jimmieboy, “but I can’t help feeling that I’d like to know all about it. What is it called?”

“Totherwayville,” returned the porter. “Hit’s called like dat because everything in it’s done the other way from how you’d do it. If you walked outside on de platform ob de station likely as not some little dog would come up and tie you to a chain an’ go leadin’ you round town; ’nd you, you couldn’t say a woid. You’d only bark like as though you only was a dog and dey’d give you bones to eat when dey didn’t forget it—less dey thought you was a cat, an’ den dey’d most likely forget to feed you on milk, de way you does with yo’ cat.”

“I haven’t got any cat,” said Jimmieboy.

“Dat’s lucky fo’ de cat,” returned the porter. “Not dat I tinks yo’ ain’t as good an’ kind a little boy as ebber lived, sah, but just because ebbery body dat owns cats sort of don’t treat ’em as well as dey’d treat a baby for instance. De kindest heartedest little boy in de worl’ would forget to gib his cat its dinner if he had a new toy to play wid, or a new suit o’ party dress to put on to show his poppy when he come home.”

The porter was called away for a minute by an old lady at the other end of the car who wanted to know what time the seven ten train generally started, and while he was gone Jimmieboy gazed wonderingly out of the window; and I can’t say that I blame him for doing so, for Totherwayville was indeed a most singular place. There were very few men, women or children in the streets and those that were there appeared to live in a state of captivity. Small dogs led boys around by a string or a chain; some of the boys wore muzzles. Here and there were men tied to hitching posts, and all about were animals which Jimmieboy had always hitherto supposed were to be found only in the wild countries, or in circuses and zoological gardens.

Off in a field a hundred or more yards from the station were a lot of monkeys playing baseball, and drollest of all, in front of the Totherwayville hotel, stood a huge lion smoking a cigar and talking with an elephant.

“Well I never!” said Jimmieboy. “This seems to be a regular wild animal place.”

Just as he spoke a baby elephant came running down to the station holding a small envelope in his trunk. When he got to the platform he looked anxiously about him and then walking up to a funny looking baboon, who appeared to be depot master, engaged him in earnest conversation. The baboon took the envelope, read the address written upon it and said “he would see.”

Then he walked to the end of Jimmieboy’s car and called for the porter.

“Well, whad yo’ want?” asked the porter.

“Here’s an invitation from the mayor to a young man who is said to be on this car,” said the baboon. “If he is, will you give it to him?”

“Certainly,” said the porter, his face wreathing with smiles. “Certainly. He’s hyah.”

Jimmieboy watched all this with interest, little thinking that the invitation was for no less a person than himself. He soon discovered the fact, however, for the porter came to him instantly and handed him the envelope. It was addressed simply to:

MASTER JIMMIEBOY,

Care of the Porter,
Express Train, No. 6098.

Kindness of
Thomas Baby Elephant.

“For me?” cried Jimmieboy.

“Yassir,” said the porter. “Hit’s for you.”

Hurriedly tearing the envelope open, Jimmieboy took from it a delicately scented card on which was engraved:

The Wild Animals
Request your presence at their
wonderful Exhibition of
Trained Hagenbecks,
This Afternoon at Two.
Absolute Safety Guaranteed.
R. S. V. P.

“Dear me!” cried Jimmieboy, excitedly, “I couldn’t think of going. I should be afraid.”

“Oh, you needn’t be afraid,” said the porter. “Dey’se promised you absolute safety, and I’ll tell yo’ just one thing. Animals soldom makes promises, but when dey does, dey keeps ’em. Dey’s sort ob different from people in dat. Hit’s twice as hard to get ’em to make promises but dey seems to be able to keep ’em twice as easy as people. I’d go if I were you. De conductor’ll keep de train waitin’ fo’ you. Dere’s on’y one man aboard dat’s in a hurry an’ he’s travelin’ on a free pass, so de road ain’t liable fo’ any delays to him. I’ll go wid you.”

“But how do you know it’ll be safe?” added Jimmieboy. “I want to go very much, but—”

“Howdiknow?” said the porter. “Ain’t I took little folks to see de show befo? Oh co’se I has an’ dey’ve had de best time in de worl’, an’ come back cryin’ cause dey couldn’t stay a week.”

“Very well, then,” said Jimmieboy, “you can tell the baboon that I’ll be very glad to go.”

The porter informed the baboon who in turn acquainted the baby elephant with the fact, whereupon the baby elephant took off his hat, and bowing politely to Jimmieboy, hastened back to the mayor’s office with the little boy’s reply.

Shortly after the porter returned and said that he had fixed it with the conductor and that the train would wait, and so Jimmieboy and his chestnut colored friend started off. On the way he was gazed at curiously by more wild animals than he had ever seen before, but they were all very respectful to him, many of them bowing politely. Indeed the only incivility he encountered at all was from a rude little boy who was being led around by a handsome St. Bernard dog. The little boy snapped at him as he passed, but he was promptly muzzled by his master, and deprived of the bone he was eating for his luncheon.

After walking along for about five minutes they came to a great circular building, upon the outside of which was a huge sign.

THE TRAINED HAGENBECKS

Matinee Today.

Admission:

Grown Animals

50 cents.

Cubs, Puppies, etc.

4 dollars.

Jimmieboy laughed. “That’s funny. They charge less for grown animals than they do for baby animals.”

“Not so funny as your plan, mister,” said a gruff voice at Jimmieboy’s side, very respectfully however.

Jimmieboy looked around to see who it was that spoke and was a little startled at first to see that it was a fine specimen of a tiger that had addressed him.

“Don’t shrink,” said the tiger, seeing that the little boy was somewhat frightened. “I won’t hurt you. I’m wild, but I’m kind. Let me show you my smile—you’ll see what a big smile it is, and someday you’ll learn that an animal with a fine open countenance like mine is when I smile can’t be a bad animal. But to come back to what you think is a funny scheme. We charge more for cubs than for grown animals because they are more trouble. We talked it all over when we started the show and we found that there was ten times as much mischief in a cub or a puppy as there is in a grown up bear or dog, so we charged more; only as we don’t mind a little mischief we make the babies pay only eight times as much as the others. It’s simple and very natural, I think.”

“That’s true,” said Jimmieboy. “It isn’t so odd after all.”

And then they went inside, where Jimmieboy was received by the mayor, a very handsome lion, and his wife the lioness. All the other animals cheered and the little boy soon came to feel that he was surrounded by friends; strange friends perhaps, but faithful ones. He sat in the front of the mayor’s box and watched the cage-enclosed ring in which the Hagenbecks were to perform. A monkey band played several popular tunes in the gallery, after which the performance began.

First a baboon came out and announced a performance by six trained clowns, who he said would crack jokes and turn somersaults and make funny grimaces just as they did in their native lair. The monkey band struck up a tune and in ran the clowns. To Jimmieboy’s eyes they were merely plain everyday circus clowns, but the way the baboon made them prance around was wonderful. One of the clowns was a trifle sulky and didn’t want to crack his joke, but the baboon kept flicking him with the end of his whip until finally he did crack it, although he might better not have done so for he did it so badly that he spoiled it.

After this a pelican walked out and announced with a proud air that he would now exhibit his flock of trained dudes, who would dance and sing, and wear beautiful clothes and put the heads of their canes in their mouths as intelligently as though they were pelicans and not dudes. Jimmieboy was delighted with them, for after all he was quite like other boys and was accustomed to lavish a great deal of admiration upon such things as chewing gum and dudes. The most interesting feature of the dude exhibition was their chrysanthemum drill. It must have taken the pelican a long time to teach those dudes to pick up their chrysanthemums and place them in their little buttonholes with such military precision as they displayed. Everybody applauded this wildly and a great roar of laughter greeted the dudes’ acknowledgment of the applause, for the magnificent way in which they took off their silk hats and bowed was truly droll.

“It’s hard to believe they are merely human!” said the tiger to Jimmieboy. “Their intelligence is more that of the pelican than of the human kind.”

“With a slight mixture of the monkey mind I should say, too,” said the elephant. “I’m told these dudes are very imitative.”

“The Jumping Billikins!” cried the manager of the exhibition.

“What on earth is a Jumping Billikins?” asked Jimmieboy, who had never heard of an animal of that kind before.

“Wait and see,” said the tiger, with a laugh. “Most people call him a nerve center, but you wouldn’t understand that, so I say wait and see.”

As Jimmieboy could do nothing else he waited and in a minute the jumping Billikins appeared, followed by six men. The jumping Billikins was nothing more than a pretty little boy, about five years of age, and what he did chiefly was to jump. The six men would put sofas about the ring and the jumping Billikins would jump from one to the other as easily as though he were a real chamois-skin goat. Then he gave a remarkable exhibition of his hopping powers. He hopped up and down on one leg for twenty-eight minutes, much to the wonderment of the elephant, who strong as he was couldn’t hop on one leg at all.

“Now watch the men,” whispered the tiger. “The jumping Billikins is going to have a romping match with them, and you’d hardly believe it but he’ll have them worn out in less than five minutes and yet he’ll be as fresh as a rose when he gets through.”

Jimmieboy watched, and such a romp as followed he never had seen before. The jumping Billikins was everywhere all the time. One second he’d be riding pickaback on one man, the next you’d find him sitting on another man’s head trying to put his feet into the vest pockets of the third and fourth men, while with his hands he’d be playing tag with the others. There was no describing that romp, but as the tiger had said, before five minutes the men were exhausted and the jumping Billikins, fresh as ever, was bowing his thanks to the audience for their applause. Then he walked proudly from the ring and the worn-out men were carried off by the baboon’s assistants.

The next thing on the program was a talking contest between a parrot and a chatterbox, but this Jimmieboy never saw, for a sudden shriek from the engine waiting with the train at the station for his return called him away. The animals expressed their regret at his early departure and requested him to come again sometime, which the little fellow promised to do.

“I doan tink yo’ll go again, mistah,” said the porter, with a smile, as the train drew away from the station.

“Why not?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Because—” said the porter. “Be-cause—”

And then, strange to say, he faded out of sight and Jimmieboy, rubbing his eyes, was astonished to find that he wasn’t on a railway train at all but in his papa’s lap, where he had been all along.

•   5   •

AN ELECTRICAL ERROR

Jimmieboy’s father and mother had occasion to go to the city for a couple of days recently, and inasmuch as Jimmieboy is such a very movey young person they did not deem it well to leave him at home in the care of the nurse, who had as much as she could do taking care of his brothers, and so they took him along with them. One evening, having to go out to dinner, they invited a young man in Jimmieboy’s father’s employ to come up to the hotel and stay about and keep the little fellow amused until his bedtime, and to look out for him as well after that time until their return, which Fred was very willing to do since he received $2 reward for his trouble. He said afterward that he earned the two dollars in the first ten minutes playing Waterloo with Jimmieboy, in which pleasing game Jimmieboy was Wellington and Fred was Napoleon, but once a year he didn’t mind earning a dollar or two extra in that way.

After the game of Waterloo was over and the Napoleonic Fred had managed to collect the buttons which had been removed from his vest in the first half of the game, the Wellingtonian Jimmieboy decided that he was tired enough to go to bed, and inasmuch as Fred didn’t oppose him very hard, to bed he went, and a half hour later both the boys, young and old, were snoring away as though their lives depended on it. It was quite evident that neither of them was as yet sufficiently strong to stand the game of Waterloo for more than an hour—and I don’t really wonder at it, for my own experience has led me to believe that even Bonaparte and Wellington themselves would have been wearied beyond endurance by an hour’s play at that diversion, however well they may have stood up under the anxieties of the original battle. In my first game with Jimmieboy I lost five pounds, eight buttons, a necktie, two handfuls of hair and a portion of my temper. So, as I say, I do not wonder that they were exhausted by their efforts and willing to rest after them, though how either of them could sleep with the other snoring as loud as a factory whistle I could never understand.

Fred must have been unusually weary, for, as you will see, he slept more than Jimmieboy did—in fact, it wasn’t later than nine o’clock when the latter waked up.

“Say, Fred,” he cried.

Fred answered with a deeper snore than ever.

“Fred!” cried Jimmieboy again. “I want a drink of water.”

“Puggrrh,” snored Fred.

“Stop your growling and ring the telephone for some ice water,” said Jimmieboy, and again Fred answered with a snore, and in his sleep muttered something that sounded like “It’ll cost you $10 next time,” the meaning of which Jimmieboy didn’t understand, but which I think had some reference to what it would cost his father to secure Fred as a companion for Jimmieboy on another occasion.

“Guess I’ll have to ring it up myself,” said Jimmieboy, and with that he jumped out of bed and rushed to that delightful machine which is now to be found in most of the modern hotels, by means of which you can ring up anything you may happen to want, by turning a needle about on a dial until it points to the printed description of the thing you desire and pushing a red button.

“Wonder how they spell ice water,” said Jimmieboy. “E-y-e spells I, and s-e spells sss-e-y-e-s-e, ice.” But he looked in vain for any such thing on the dial.

“O, well,” he said, after searching and searching, “I’ll ring up anything, and when the boy comes with it I’ll order the ice water.”

So he gave the needle an airy twist, pushed the button, and sat down to wait for the boy. Meanwhile he threw a pillow at Fred, who still lay snoring away on the sofa, only now he was puffing like a freight train engine when its wheels slip on an icy railway track.

“Lazybones,” snickered Jimmieboy, as the pillow landed on Fred’s curly head. But Fred answered never a word, which so exasperated Jimmieboy that he got up with the intention of throwing himself at his sleeping companion, when he heard a queer noise over by the fireplace.

“Hullo, down there, 521. Is that you?” cried somebody.

Jimmieboy stared at the chimney in blank amazement.

“Hurry up below there, 521. Is that you?” came the voice again.

“This room is 521,” replied Jimmieboy, realizing all of a sudden that it was no doubt to him that these words were addressed.

“Well, then, look sharp, will you? Turn off the fire—put it out—do something with it. You can’t expect me to come down there with the fire burning, can you? I’m not fireproof, you know,” returned the voice.

“There isn’t any fire here,” said Jimmieboy.

“Nonsense,” cried the voice. “What’s that roaring I hear?”

“Oh—that,” Jimmieboy answered. “That’s Fred. He’s snoring.”

“Ah! Then I will come down,” came the voice, and in an instant there was a small fall of soot, a rustling in the chimney, and a round-faced, fat-stomached, white-bearded little old gentleman with a twinkling eye, appeared, falling like a football into the grate and bounding like a tennis ball out into the middle of the floor.

“Santa Claus, at your service,” he said, bowing low to Jimmieboy.

The boy looked at him breathless with astonishment for a moment.

“Well—well—” put in the old man impatiently. “What is it you want with me? I’m very busy, so pray don’t detain me. Is it one of my new Conversational Brownies you are after? If so, say so. Fine things, these Conversational Brownies.”

“I never heard of ’em,” said Jimmieboy.

“Coz why?” laughed Santa Claus, twirling airily about on the toes of his left foot. “Coz why? Bee-coz there ain’t never been any for you to hear about. I invented ’em all by myself. You have Brownies in books that don’t move. Good. I like ’em, you like ’em, we all like ’em. You have Brownies out of books. Better—but they can’t talk and all bee-coz they’re stuffed with cotton. It isn’t their fault. It’s the cotton’s fault. Take a man and stuff him with cotton and he wouldn’t be able to say a word, but stuff him with wit and anecdotes and he’ll talk. Wherefore I have invented a Conversational Brownie. He’s made of calico, but he’s stuffed with remarks, and he has a little metal hole in his mouth, and when you squeeze him remarks oozes out between his lips and there you are. Eh? Fine?”

“Bully,” said Jimmieboy.

“Was that what you rang for? Quick, hurry up, I haven’t any time to waste at this season of the year.”

“Well, no,” Jimmieboy answered. “Not having ever heard of ’em, of course.”

“Oh, then you wanted one of my live wood doll babies,” said Santa Claus. “Of course. They’re rather better than the Conversational Brownies, perhaps, I guess; I don’t know. Still, they last longer, as long as you water ’em. Was it one of those you wanted?”

“What is a live wood doll baby?” asked Jimmieboy.

“One o’ my newest new, new things,” replied Santa Claus. “’Stead o’ making wooden dolls out of dead wood, I makes ’em out o’ live wood. Keep some o’ the roots alive, make your doll, plant it proper, water it, and it’ll grow just like a man. My live oak dolls that I’m making this year, a hundred years from now will be great giants.”

“Splendid idea,” said Jimmieboy. “But how about the leaves. Don’t they sprout out and hide the doll?”

“Of course they do, if you don’t see that they’re pulled off,” retorted Santa Claus. “You don’t expect me to give you toys and look after ’em all at the same time, do you?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, it’s good you don’t,” said Santa Claus, turning a somersault backward. “It’s werry good you don’t, for should you had have you’d have been disappointed. But, I say, was that what you wanted, or were you after one of my new patent typewriters that you wind up? Don’t keep me waiting all night—”

“I never heard of your new patent typewriters that you wind up,” Jimmieboy answered.

“That isn’t the question,” interrupted Santa Claus nervously, “though I suppose it’s the answer, for if you had heard of my windable writer it would have been the thing you wanted. It’s a grand invention, that machine. You take a key, wind the thing up, having first loaded it with paper, and what do you suppose it does?”

“Writes?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Exactly,” replied Santa Claus. “It writes stories and poems and jokes. There are five keys goes with each machine—one poetry key, one joke key, one fairy tale key, a story of adventure key, and a solemn Sunday school story key that writes morals and makes you wonder whether you’re as good as you ought to be.”

“Well,” said Jimmieboy, “now that I know about that, that’s what I want, though as a matter of fact I rang you up for a glass of ice water.”

“What!” cried Santa Claus, indignantly, bounding about the room like a tennis ball again. “Me? Do you mean to say you’ve summoned me away from my work at this season of the year just to bring you a glass of ice water?”

“I—I didn’t mean for you to bring it,” said Jimmieboy, meekly. “I—I must have made a mistake—”

“It’s outrageous,” said Santa Claus, stamping his foot, “You hadn’t oughter make mistakes. I won’t bring you anything on Christmas—no, not a thing. You—”

A knock at the door interrupted the little old man, and Jimmieboy, on going to see who was there, discovered the hall boy with the pitcher of water.

“What’s that?” asked Santa, as Jimmieboy returned.

“It’s the water,” replied the little fellow. “So I couldn’t have made a mistake after all.”

“Hum!” said Santa, stroking his beard slowly and thoughtfully. “I guess—I guess the wires must be crossed—so it wasn’t your fault—and I will bring you something, but the man who ought to have looked after those wires and didn’t won’t find anything in his stocking but a big hole in the toe on Christmas.”

The old fellow then shook hands goodbye with the boy, and walked to the chimney.

“Let’s see—what shall I bring you?” he asked, pausing.

“The windable writer,” said Jimmieboy.

“All right,” returned Santa, starting up the chimney. “You can have one if I get it finished in time, but I am afraid this annoying delay will compel me to put off the distribution of those machines until some other year.”

And with that he was gone.

Meanwhile Jimmieboy is anxiously waiting for Christmas to see if it will bring him the windable writer. I don’t myself believe that it will, for the last I heard Santa had not returned to his workshop, but whether he got stuck in the hotel chimney or not nobody seems to know.

•   6   •

IN THE BROWNIES’ HOUSE

Jimmieboy, like every other right-minded youth, was a great admirer of the Brownies. They never paid any attention to him, but went about their business in the books as solemnly as ever no matter what jokes he might crack at their expense. Nor did it seem to make any difference to them how much noise was being made in the nursery, they swam, threw snowballs, climbed trees, floated over Niagara, and built houses as unconcernedly as ever. Nevertheless Jimmieboy liked them. He didn’t need to have any attention paid to him by the little folk in pictures. He didn’t expect it, and so it made no difference to him whatever whether they noticed him or not.

The other day, however, just before the Christmas vacation had come to an end Jimmieboy had a very queer experience with his little picture book acquaintances. He was feeling a trifle lonesome. His brothers had gone to a party which was given by one of the neighbors for the babies, and Jimmieboy at the last moment had decided that he would not go. He wasn’t a baby any more, but a small man. He had pockets in his trousers and wore suspenders exactly like his father’s, only smaller, and of course a proper regard for his own dignity would not permit him to take part in a mere baby party.

“I’ll spend my afternoon reading,” he said in a lordly way. “I don’t feel like playing ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’ now that I wear suspenders.”

So he went down into his father’s library where his mother had put a bookcase for him, on the shelves of which he kept his treasured books. They were the most beautiful fairy books you ever saw; Brownie books and true story books by the dozen; books of funny poetry illustrated by still funnier pictures, and, what I fancy he liked best of all, a half dozen or more big blank books that his father had given him, in which Jimmieboy wrote poems of his own in great capital letters, some of which stood on their heads and others on their sides, but all of which anybody who could read at all could make out at the rate of one letter every ten minutes. I never read much of Jimmieboy’s poetry myself and so cannot say how good it was, but his father told me that the boy never had the slightest difficulty in making Massachusetts rhyme with Potato, or Jacksonville with Lemonade, so that I presume they were remarkable in their way.

Arrived in the library Jimmieboy seated himself before his bookcase, and after gloating over his possessions for a few moments, selected one of the Brownie books, curled himself up in a comfortable armchair before the fire, and opened the book.

“Why!” he cried as his eye fell upon one of the picture pages. “That’s funny. I never saw that picture before. There isn’t a Brownie in it; nothing but an empty house and a yard in front of it. Where can the Brownies have gone?”

He hadn’t long to wait for an answer. He had hardly spoken when the little door of the house opened and the Dude Brownie poked his head out and said softly:

“’Tis not an empty house, my dear.

The Brownies all have come in here.

We’ve played so long to make you smile

We thought we’d like to rest awhile.

We’re every one of us in bed

With night-caps on each little head,

And if you’ll list you’ll hear the roar

With which the sleeping Brownies snore.”

Jimmieboy raised the book to his ear and listened, and sure enough, there came a most extraordinary noise out of the windows of the house. It sounded like a carpenter at work with a saw in a menagerie full of roaring lions.

“Well, that is funny,” said Jimmieboy as he listened. “I never knew before that Brownies ever got tired. I thought they simply played and played and played all the time.”

The Dude Brownie laughed.

“Now there, my boy, is where you make

A really elegant mistake,”

he said, and then he added,

“If you will open wide the book

We’ll let you come inside and look.

No other boy has e’er done that.

Come in and never mind your hat.”

“I wouldn’t wear my hat in the house anyhow,” said Jimmieboy. “But I say, Mr. Brownie, I don’t see how I can get in there. I’m too big.”

“Your statement makes me fancy that

You really don’t know where you’re at;

For, though you’re big and tall and wide,

Already, sir, you’ve come inside,”

replied the Dude Brownie, and Jimmieboy, rubbing his eyes as if he couldn’t believe it, looked about him and discovered that even as the Dude Brownie had said, he had without knowing it already accepted the invitation and stood in the hall of the Brownie mansion. And O! such a mansion! It was just such a house as you would expect Brownies to have. There were no stairs in it, though it was three stories high. On the walls were all sorts of funny pictures, pictures of the most remarkable animals in the world or out of it, in fact most of the pictures were of animals that Jimmieboy had never heard of before, or even imagined. There was the Brownie Elephant, for instance, the cunningest little animal you ever saw, with forty pairs of spectacles running all the way down its trunk; and a Brownie Pug-dog with its tail curled so tightly that it lifted the little creature’s hind legs off the floor; and most interesting of all, a Brownie Bear that could take its fur off in hot weather and put on a light flannel robe instead. Jimmieboy gazed with eyes and mouth wide open at these pictures.

“What queer animals,” he said. “Do you really have such animals as those?”

“Excuse me,” said the Dude Brownie anxiously, “but before I answer, must I answer in poetry or in prose? I’ll do whichever you wish me to, but I’m a little tired this afternoon, and poetry is such an effort!”

“I’m very fond of poetry,” said Jimmieboy, “especially your kind, but if you are tired and would rather speak the other way, you can.”

The Dude Brownie smiled gratefully.

“You’re a very kind little man,” he said. “This time I’ll talk the other way, but someday when I get it written I’ll send you my book of poetry to make up for it. You like our animals, do you?”

“Very much,” said Jimmieboy. “I’d like to see a Brownie zoo sometime.”

“I’ll attend to that,” said the Dude Brownie. “I’ll make a note of it on the wall so that we won’t forget it.”

Here he seized a huge pencil, almost as big as himself, and wrote something on the wall which Jimmieboy could not read, but which he supposed was the Brownie’s memorandum.

“Won’t you spoil your wall doing that?” queried the little visitor.

“Oh no,” said the Brownie. “All these walls are made of slate and we use ’em to write on. It saves littering the house all up with paper, and every Tuesday we have a house-cleaning bee and rub all the writing off. It’s a very good scheme and I wonder your grown-up people don’t have it, particularly in your nurseries. I’ve noticed children writing things on nursery walls lots of times and then they’ve been scolded for doing it because their nurses said it spoiled the paper. I can’t understand why they don’t have slate walls instead that can’t be spoiled. It’s such a temptation to write on a wall, but it does spoil paper. But to come back to our animals, they’re really lovely, and have such wonderfully sweet dispositions. There is the Brownie Elephant, for instance—he’s the most light-hearted creature you ever saw, and he has holes bored through his trunk like a flute and at night he plays the most beautiful music on it, while we Brownies sit around and listen to him.”

“What does he wear so many pairs of spectacles for?” asked Jimmieboy.

“He has weak eyes,” said the Brownie. “That is, he has at night. He can’t see his notes to play tunes by when it is dark, and so we’ve provided him with those spectacles to help him out. Then the Bear is very self-sacrificing. If anyone of us wants to go out anywhere in the cold he’ll let us have his robe just for the asking. The Pug-dog isn’t much use but he’s playful and intelligent. If you tell him to go to the post office for your mail he’ll rush out of the front door, down the road to the grocer’s and bring you back an apple or an orange, because he always knows that there isn’t any mail. One of your hired men wouldn’t know that, but would waste his time going to the post office to find it out if you told him to.”

Jimmieboy expressed his admiration of the intelligence of the Brownie Dog and the good nature of the other animals, and then asked if he mightn’t go upstairs, he was so curious to see the rest of the house.

“Certainly,” said the Dude Brownie, “only you’ll have to slide up the banisters. We haven’t any stairs.”

“Don’t think I know how,” said Jimmieboy. “I can slide down banisters, but I never learned to slide up ’em.”

“You don’t have to learn it,” returned the Brownie. “All you have to do is to get aboard and slide. It’s a poor banister that won’t work both ways. The trouble with your banisters is that they are poor ones. Climb aboard and let yourself go.”

The boy did as he was told, and pop! the first thing he knew he was in the midst of the Brownies on the second floor. Much to his surprise, while they were unquestionably snoring, they were all reading, or writing, or engaged in some other occupation.

“Well this beats everything!” said Jimmieboy. “I thought you said they were asleep?”

“They are,” said the Dude Brownie. “So am I, for that matter, but we don’t waste our time just because we happen to be asleep. Some of us do our best work while we are resting. The Chinese Brownie washes all our clothes while he’s asleep, and the Dutch Brownie does his practicing on his cornet at the same time. If people like you did the same thing you’d get twice as much work done. It’s all very well and very necessary too to get eight hours of sleep every day, but what’s the use of wasting that time? Take your sleep, but don’t loaf while you’re taking it. When I was only a boy Brownie I used to play all day and go to school after I’d gone to bed. In that way I learned a great deal and never got tired of school. You don’t get tired while you are asleep.”

“It’s a wonderful plan,” said Jimmieboy, “and I wish I knew how to work it. I’m not very fond of school myself and I’d a great deal rather play than go there in the daytime. Can’t you tell me how it’s done so that I can tell my papa all about it? Maybe he’d let me do it that way if I asked him.”

“Of course I’ll tell you,” said the Dude Brownie. “It’s just this way. You go to bed, pull the covers up over you, shut your eyes, fall asleep, and then—”

Alas! The sentence was never finished, for as the Brownie spoke a gong in the hallway below began to clang fearfully, and in an instant the whole Brownie troupe sprang to the banisters, slid down into the hall and rushed out into the yard. Their play time had come, and their manager had summoned them back to it. Jimmieboy followed, but he slid so fast that it made him dizzy. He thought he would never stop. Down the banisters he slid, out through the hall to the yard, over the heads of the Brownies he whizzed and landed with a thud in the soft embrace of the armchair once more, and just in time too, for hardly had he realized where he was when in walked his father and mother, and following in their train were his two baby brothers, their mouths and hands full of sweetmeats.

“Hullo,” said Jimmieboy’s father. “Where have you been, Jimmieboy?”

“In the Brown—” began the boy, but he stopped short. It seemed to him as if the Dude Brownie in the book tipped him a wink to be silent, and he returned the wink.

“I’ve been here, looking at my Brownie book,” he said.

“Indeed?” said his father. “And do you never get tired of it?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy quietly, “it seems to me I see something new in it every time I open it,” and then in spite of the Brownie’s wink he climbed out of the chair into his papa’s lap and told him all that occurred, and his papa said it was truly wonderful, especially that part which told about how much could be done by an intelligent creature when fast asleep.

•   7   •

JIMMIEBOY—and SOMETHING

It was a warm, summer afternoon—just the sort of an afternoon for a drowse, and when the weather was just right for it Jimmieboy was a great drowser. In fact, a little golden-haired fairy with a silver wand had just whispered to a butterfly that when it came to drowsing in an interesting way there was nobody in the world who could excel Jimmieboy in that accomplishment. Jimmieboy had overheard this much himself, but he had never told anybody about it, because he found drowsing so very easy, and the pleasures of it so great, that he was a little afraid somebody else might try it and make him divide up his fun with him. It was somewhat selfish of him to behave this way, perhaps, but then no one ever pretended that Jimmieboy was absolutely perfect, not even the boy himself.

It so happened, that upon this particular afternoon, Jimmieboy was swinging idly in the hammock under the trees. On one side of him babbled a little mountain stream, while on the other lay a garden full of beautiful flowers, where the bees hummed the whole day through, and whence when day was done and the night shadows were coming over all even the sun’s rays seemed sorry to go. In the house, a hundred feet away, Jimmieboy’s mamma was playing softly on a zither, and the music, floating out through the flower-scented air, set the boy to thinking, which with him is always the preliminary to a doze. His right eye struggled hard to keep awake, long after the left eye had given up the fight, and it was due possibly to this that Jimmieboy was wide enough awake at the time to hear a quaint little voice up in the tree calling to the tiger lilies over near the house.

“Say, Tige,” the little voice cried, “what time is it?”

“I can’t see the clock,” returned the lily. “But,” it added, dropping into verse:

“I judge from sundry tinkles

Of the bell upon the cow

That if it isn’t later,

It is pretty nearly now.”

“Thank you,” said the voice up the tree, “I was afraid I’d miss my train.”

“So! You are going away?” said another voice, which, if his ears did not deceive Jimmieboy, came this time from the rose bush.

“Yes,” said the voice up in the tree. “Yes, I’m going away. I don’t know where exactly, because I haven’t bought my ticket yet. I may be going to the North Pole, or I may only be coming here. In fact, if my ticket turns out to be a return ticket, it will amount to that, which makes me wonder what’s the use of going any way.”

“But when does your train go?” asked the voice in the rose bush.

“A week from next Thursday,” said the tree voice. “I didn’t know but that it was then now. You see I always get mixed up as to what time it is or what day it is. This isn’t a date tree, and I haven’t any calendar.”

“I guess you’ve got plenty of time,” chuckled the tiger lily, nodding its head gleefully at the hollyhock. “It won’t be a week from next Thursday for several days yet.”

“Heigho,” sighed the voice up in the tree. “Several days to wait, eh? I’m sure I don’t know what I shall do to pass the time away.”

“Oh, as for that,” observed the hollyhock; “I know an easy scheme for passing time. I learned it from a fairy I met once.

“‘Sit still and never raise your hands,’

Advised the little elf,

‘Pay no attention to the clock,

And time will pass itself.’

“You have nothing to do with it doing it that way,” the hollyhock added.

“That’s a good idea,” said the voice up in the tree. “It’s queer I never thought of it, and I’ve been thinking and thinking ever so many years, trying to get up a scheme to pass the time.”

“You’re not very deep, I’m afraid,” said the rose bush. “You can’t think very valuable thoughts, can you?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” the voice up the tree replied. “I’ve never tried to sell them, so of course I can’t tell whether they are valuable or not. Do you sell what you think?”

“Certainly I do,” returned the rose bush. “I suggested the idea of making honey to the bees. Wasn’t that a great thing to do?”

“Yes, indeed,” returned the voice. “It was splendid. I’ve never had any honey, but I’m told it’s fine. It’s very sticky, isn’t it?”

“Very,” said the rose bush. “I guess honey is about as sticky as anything can be.”

“And very useful for that reason,” said the voice up in the tree, kindly. “Very useful. I suppose, really, if it wasn’t for honey, people couldn’t make postage stamps stay on letters. You ought to be very happy to think that one of your thoughts has given people the idea of mucilage. Do they ever use honey for anything else but its stickiness?”

“Hoh!” jeered the rose bush. “Don’t you know anything?”

“Not much,” said the tree voice. “I know you, and me, and several other things, but that’s not much, is it? It’s really queer how little I know. Why, would you believe it, a sparrow asked me the other day what was the difference between a robin’s egg and a red blackberry, and I didn’t know.”

“What did you tell him?” asked the hollyhock.

“I told him I couldn’t tell until I had eaten them.”

“And what did he say?” put in the tiger lily, with a grin.

“He said that wasn’t the answer; that one was blue and the other was green, but how a red blackberry can be green I can’t see,” replied the voice up in the tree.

Jimmieboy smiled quietly at this, and the voice up the tree continued:

“Then he asked me what color blueberries were, and I told him they were blue; then he said he’d bet a mosquito I couldn’t tell him what color huckleberries were, and when I said they were of a delicate huckle he laughed, and said I owed him a mosquito. I may owe him a mosquito, but I haven’t an idea what he was laughing at.”

“That’s easy,” said the hollyhock. “He was laughing because there isn’t any such color as huckle.”

“I don’t think that’s funny, though,” said the voice in the tree. “Indeed, I think it’s sad, because it seems to me that a very pretty color could be made out of huckle. Why do you suppose there isn’t any such color?”

The lily and the rose and hollyhock bushes were silent for a moment, and then they said they didn’t know.

“I’m glad you don’t,” said the tree voice. “I’m glad to find that there are some things you don’t know. Just think how dreadful it would be if you knew everything. Why, if you knew everything, nobody could tell you anything, and then there’d never be any news in the world, and when you heard a joke you couldn’t ever laugh because you’d have known it before.”

Here Jimmieboy, impressed by the real good sense of this remark, leaned out of the hammock and peered up into the tree to see if possible who or what it was that was speaking.

“Don’t,” cried the voice. “Don’t try to see me, Jimmieboy, I haven’t got my company clothes on, and you make me nervous.”

“But I want to see who you are,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well you needn’t want that any more,” said the voice. “I’ll tell you why. Nobody knows what I am. I don’t even know myself.”

“But what do you look like?” asked Jimmieboy.

“I don’t know that, either. I never saw myself,” replied the voice. “I’m something, of course, but just what I don’t know. It may be that I am a horse and wagon, only I don’t think I am, because horses, and wagons don’t get up in trees. I saw a horse sitting on a whiffletree once, but that was down on the ground and not up here, so, of course, you see the chances are that I’m not that.”

“What do you think you are?” asked Jimmieboy.

“I haven’t thought much about it. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll tell you what, perhaps, I am, and maybe that will help you to find out, and if you do find out I beg that you will tell me, because I’ve some curiosity on the subject myself.”

“Go ahead,” said Jimmieboy. “You give me the perhapses and I’ll try to guess.”

“Well,” began the voice, slowly, as if, whatever it was, the thing was trying to think. Let me see.

“Perhaps I am a house and lot,

Perhaps I am a pussy cat,

Perhaps I am a schooner yacht,

Or possibly an inky spot,

Perhaps a beaver hat.”

“I’ve never seen any of those up a tree,” said Jimmieboy. “I guess you aren’t any of those.”

“Very likely not,” said the voice, “but I can try a few more.

“Perhaps I am a picture book,

It maybe I’m a candy box,

Perhaps I am a trolling-hook,

A tennis bat, or fancy cook,

Perhaps a pair of socks.

Perchance I am a pair of shears,

Perhaps a piece of kindling-wood,

Perhaps I am a herd of deers,

Perhaps two crystal chandeliers,

Or some old lady’s hood.

No man can say I’m not a pad

On which a poet scribbles verse,

It may be I’m a nice fresh shad,

Or something else not quite as bad,

Or maybe something worse.”

“But none of these things ever go up trees,” protested Jimmieboy. “Can’t you tell me some of the things that perhaps you are that are found up in trees?”

“No,” said the voice, sadly. “I can’t. I don’t know what kind of things go up trees—unless it’s pollywogs or Noah’s arks.”

“They don’t go up trees,” said Jimmieboy, scornfully.

“Well I was afraid they didn’t, and that’s why I didn’t mention them before. But you see,” the voice added with a mournful little tremor, “you see how useless it is to try to guess what I am. Why, if you really guessed, I wouldn’t know if you’d guessed right—so what’s the use?”

“I guess there isn’t any use,” said Jimmieboy. “If I could only see you once, though, maybe I could tell.”

Here he leaned far out of the hammock, in a vain effort to see the creature he was talking to. He leaned so far out, in fact, that he lost his balance and fell head over heels on to the soft green turf.

The mountain brook seemed to laugh at this mishap, and went babbling on to the great river that bore its waters to the sea, while Jimmieboy, somewhat dazed by his afternoon’s experience, walked wonderingly back to the house to make ready for supper. He was filled with regret that he had not been able to catch a glimpse of the strange little being in the tree, for he very much wished to know what manner of creature it was, so stupid and yet so kindly—as, indeed, would I, for really I haven’t any more idea as to who or what it was than he. What do you think it was?

•   8   •

JIMMIEBOY’S FIREWORKS

It was a very great misfortune indeed that Jimmieboy should make the acquaintance of the bumblebee at that particular time—that is to say, everybody thought it was. The bumblebee, as a rule, was one of the jolliest bees in the hive, and passed most of his days humming away as if he were the happiest of mortals; but at the particular moment when Jimmieboy, who wasn’t looking where he was going, ran into him, the bee was mad about something, and he settled down on Jimmieboy’s cheek and stung him. He was a very thorough bee, too, unhappily, and he never did anything by halves, which is why it was that the sting was about as bad a one and as painful as any bee ever stang. I use the word “stang” here to please Jimmieboy, by the way. It is one of his favorites in describing the incident.

Now, it is bad enough, I have found, to be stung by a bee at any time, but when it happens on the night of July Fourth, and is so painful that the person stung has to go to bed with a poultice over his cheek and eye, and so cannot see the fireworks he has been looking forward to for weeks and weeks, it is about the worst affliction that a small boy can have overtake him—at least it seems so at the time—and that was exactly poor Jimmieboy’s case. He had thought and thought and thought about those fireworks for days and days and days, and here, on Fourth of July night, he found himself lying in bed in his room, with one side of his face covered with a bandage, and his poor little other blue eye gazing at the ceiling, while his ears listened to the sizzling of the rockets and pin wheels and the thunderous booming of the bombs.

“Mean old bee!” he said, drowsily, as his other blue eye tried to peer out of the window in the hope of seeing at least one rocket burst into stars. “I didn’t mean to upset him.”

“I know you didn’t,” sobbed a little voice at his side. “And I didn’t mean to sting you, only I didn’t know it was you, and I was mad because somebody’s picked a rose I’d had my eye on for a week, and you ran into me and spilled all the honey I’d gug—gathered, and then I—I was so irritated I stuck my stingers out and stang you. Can’t you forgive me?”

Jimmieboy withdrew his other blue eye from the window in wonderment. He was used to queer things, but this seemed the queerest yet. The idea of a bumblebee coming to apologize to a boy for stinging him made him smile in spite of his disappointment and his pain.

“Who are you?” he said, looking toward the foot of the bed, whence the voice had come.

“I used to be a bumblebee,” sobbed the little voice, “but I’ve changed my first letter from ‘b’ to ‘h.’ I’m only an humble-bee now, and all because I’ve treated you so badly. I really didn’t mean to, and I’ve come to help you have a good time tonight, so that you won’t miss the fireworks because of my misbehavior.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Jimmieboy, kindly. “It was my fault, after all. I hadn’t ought to have run into you.”

“Yes, you had ought to have, too,” moaned the little bee. “You were just right in running into me. I hadn’t ought to have got in your way.”

“Well, anyhow, it’s all right,” said Jimmieboy. “You’re forgiven—though you did hurt me like everything.”

“I know it,” sobbed the bee. “I almost wish you’d get a pin and stick it into me once, so as to sort of just even things up. It would hurt me, I know, but then I’d feel better after I got well.”

“Indeed I won’t,” said Jimmieboy, with a determined shake of his head. “That won’t do any good, and what’s the use anyhow, as long as you didn’t mean it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” the bee answered. “I’m only a bug, after all, you know, and so I don’t understand things that human beings which has got brains can understand. I’ve noticed, though, that sometimes when a boy gets hurt it sort of makes him feel better if he hurts back.”

“I wouldn’t mind a bit if I could see the fireworks,” said Jimmieboy. “That’s what hurts the most.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what you do,” said the bee; “if that’s all you feel bad about, we can fix it up in a jiffy. Do you know what a jiffy is?”

“No, I don’t,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said the bee, “but don’t you ever tell:

“Sixty seconds make a minute,

Sixty minutes make an hour;

But a second has within it

Sixty jiffies full of power.

“In other words, a jiffy is just the same thing to a second as the second is to the minute or the minute to the hour; and, dear me, what billions of things can happen in a jiffy! Why, they’re simply enormous.”

“They must be,” said Jimmieboy, “if, as you say, you can fix me up in regard to the fireworks in a jiffy.”

“There isn’t any if about it,” returned the bee. “Just turn over and put your face into the pillow, and see what you can see.”

“I can’t see anything with both eyes in my pillow, much less with one,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well—try it,” said the bee. “I know what I’m buzzing about.”

So Jimmieboy, just to oblige his strange little friend, turned over and buried his face in the pillow. At first, as far as he could see, there was nothing going on in the pillow to make it worth while; but all of a sudden, just as he was about to withdraw his face, a great golden pin wheel began to whizz and whirr right in front of him, only instead of putting forth fire it spouted jewels and flowers, and finally right out of the middle of it there popped a tiny bit of a creature all dressed in spangles, looking for all the world like a Brownie. He bowed to Jimmieboy politely and requested him to open his mouth as wide as he could.

“What for?” asked Jimmieboy, naturally a little curious to know the meaning of this strange proceeding.

“I am going to set off the sugarplum bomb,” the little creature replied. “But of course if you don’t want the sugarplums you can keep your mouth closed.”

“Can’t I catch ’em in my hands?” said Jimmieboy.

“You can if you want to, but they won’t be of any use if you do,” returned the little creature. “You see, this bomb shoots out candy instead of sparks, but the candy is so delicate that, like the sparks in fire fireworks, it goes out just as soon as it comes down. If you catch ’em in your hands you won’t be able to see how good they taste, don’t you see?”

“Yeh,” said Jimmieboy, opening his mouth as wide as he could, and so speaking with difficulty. “Hire ahay!”—by which I presume he meant fire away, only he couldn’t say it plainly with his mouth open.

And then the little creature set off the sugarplum bomb, and the candies it put forth were marvelous in number and sweetness, and, strange to say, there wasn’t one of them that, in falling, came down anywhere but in the mouth of the small boy who had been “stang.”

“Got any cannon crackers?” asked Jimmieboy, delighted with what he had already seen, as soon as the sweet taste from the sugarplums died away. “I’m fond of noise, too.”

“Well,” said the little creature, “we have great big crackers, only they don’t break the silence in just the way you mean. They make a noise, but it isn’t just a plain ordinary crash such as your cannon crackers make. We call ’em our Grand Opera Crackers. I’ll set one off and let you see what I mean.”

So the little creature opened a big chest that in some way happened to come up out of the ground beside him, and with difficulty hauled from it a huge thing that looked like the ordinary giant crackers that Jimmieboy was used to seeing. It was twice as big as the little creature, but he got it out nevertheless.

“My!” cried Jimmieboy. “That’s fine. That ought to make lots of noise.”

“It will,” returned the little creature, touching a match to the fuse. “Just listen now.”

The fuse burned slowly along, and then, with a great puff of smoke, the cracker burst, but not into a mere crash as the little creature had hinted, but into a most entrancing military march, that was inspiring enough to set even the four legs of the heaviest dinner-table to strutting about the room. Jimmieboy could hardly keep his own feet still as the music went on, but he did not dare draw his face away from the pillow so that he might march about the room, for fear that by so doing he would lose what might remain of this wonderful exhibition, whose like he had never even dreamed of before, and alongside of which he felt that the display he had missed by having to go to bed must be as insignificant as a pin compared to Cleopatra’s great stone needle.

“That was fine!” he cried, ecstatically, as the last echoes of the musical cracker died away. “I wouldn’t mind having a hundred packs of those. Have you got any music torpedoes?”

“No,” returned the little creature. “But we’ve got picture torpedoes. Look at this.” The little creature here took a small paper ball from the chest, and, slamming it on the ground with all his might, it exploded, and the spot whereon it fell was covered with a gorgeous little picture of Jimmieboy himself, all dressed in sailor’s clothes and dancing a hornpipe.

“That’s a very good picture of you,” said the little creature, looking at the dancing figure. “It’s so full of motion, like you. Here’s another one,” he added, as the picture from the first torpedo faded away. “This shows how you’d look if you were a fairy.”

The second torpedo was slammed down upon the ground just as the first had been, and Jimmieboy had the pleasure of seeing himself in another picture, only this time he had gossamer wings and a little wand, and he was flying about a great field of poppies and laughing with a lot of other fairies, among whom he recognized his little brothers and a few of his playmates. He could have looked at this all night and not grown weary of it, but, like a great many other good things, the picture could not last forever, and just at the most interesting point, when he saw himself about to fly a race across the poppy-field with a robin, the picture faded away, and the little creature called out: “Now for the finest of the lot. Here goes the Fairy-Book Rocket!”

With a tremendous whizz, up soared the most magnificent rocket you ever saw. It left behind it a trail of golden fire that was dazzling, and then, when it reached its highest point in the sky, it burst as all other rockets do, but, instead of putting forth stars, all the people in Jimmieboy’s favorite fairy tales jumped out into the heavens. There was a glittering Jack chasing a dozen silver giants around about the moon; there was a dainty little Cinderella, with her gorgeous coach and four, driving up and down the Milky Way; Puss-in-Boots was hopping about from one cloud to another, as easily as if he were an ordinary cat jumping from an ordinary footstool on to an ordinary sofa. They were all there cutting up the finest pranks imaginable, when suddenly Jack of the beanstalk fame appeared at the side of the little creature who had set the rocket off, and planted a bean at his feet, and from it there immediately sprang forth a huge stalk covered with leaves of gold and silver, dropping showers of rubies and pearls and diamonds to the ground, as it grew rapidly upwards to where the fairyland folk were disporting themselves in the skies. These, when the stalk had reached its full growth, rushed toward it, and in a moment were clambering back to earth again, and then, when they were all safely down, they ranged themselves in a row, sang a beautiful good night song to the boy with his face in the pillow, and disappeared into the darkness.

“There!” said the little voice back of Jimmieboy. “That’s what one jiffy will do.”

Jimmieboy turned about and smiled happily at the bee—for it was the bee who had spoken.

“Sometime we’ll have another,” the bee added. “But now I must go—I’ve got to get ready for tomorrow, which will be bright and sunshiny, and in every way a great day for honey. Goodbye!”

And Jimmieboy, as the bee flew out of the window, was pleased to notice that the pain in his cheek was all gone. With a contented smile on his face he turned over and went to sleep, and when his papa came in to look at him as he lay there in his little bed, noticing the smile, he turned to his mamma and said, “Well, he doesn’t look as if he’d missed the fireworks very much, after all, does he?”

“No,” said his mamma. “He seems to be just the same happy little fellow he always was.”

And between us, I think they were both right, for we know that he didn’t miss the fireworks, and as for being happy, he was just as much so as are most boys who know what it is to be contented, and who, when trials come upon them, endeavor to make the best of them, anyhow.

•   9   •

HIGH JINKS IN THE BARN

It was unquestionably a hot day; so hot, indeed, that John, the hired man, said the thermometer had had to climb a tree to get high enough to record the degree of the heat. Jimmieboy had been playing out under the apple-trees for two or three hours, and now, “just for greens,” as the saying went, he had climbed into the old carriage in the barn, where it was tolerably cool and there was a soft cushion to lie on. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then a strange thing happened.

The Wheelbarrow over by the barn door unmistakably spoke. “Say,” it said to the Farm Wagon, “there’s one thing I like about you.”

“What’s that?” said the Wagon.

“You have such a long tongue, and yet you never say an unkind word about anybody,” replied the Barrow, with a creak of its wheel that sounded very much like a laugh.

“That may be so,” said the big gray Horse that was used with the fat old bay to pull the farm wagon. “It may be just as you say, but that tongue has come between me and one of my best friends many a time, I tell you.”

“I couldn’t help that,” retorted the Wagon. “The hired man made me do it; besides, I have a grudge against you.”

“What’s the grudge?” queried the Horse.

“You kicked me and my friend the Whiffletree that day you ran away down in the hay field,” replied the Wagon. “I was dreadfully upset that day.”

“I should say you were,” put in the Rake. “And when you were upset you fell on me and knocked out five of my teeth. I never had such a time.”

“You needed to have something done to those teeth, anyhow,” said the Sickle. “They were nearly all gone when that happened.”

“Oh, were they?” retorted the Rake. “And why were they nearly all gone? Do you know that?”

“I do not. I suppose you had been trying to crack chestnuts with them. Was that it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” retorted the Rake. “They were worn out cleaning up the lawns after you pretended to have finished them off.”

“You think you’re bright, don’t you?” replied the Sickle, with a sneer.

“Well, if I was as dull as you are,” returned the Rake, angrily, “I’d visit the Grindstone and get him to put a little more edge on me.”

“Come, come; don’t be so quarrelsome,” said the Hose. “If you don’t stop, I’ll drown the whole lot of you.”

“Tut!” retorted the Rake. “You look for all the world like a snake.”

“He is a snake,” put in the Currycomb. “He’s a water-snake. Aren’t you, Hosey?”

“I’d show you whether I am or not if the faucet hadn’t run dry.”

“Dear me!” laughed the Sled. “Hear Hosey talk! The idea of a faucet running! It hasn’t moved an inch since it came here. Why, I’ve got two runners that’ll beat it out of sight on the side of a hill.”

“Yes, the down side,” said the Pony. “Anything can run downhill. Even a stupid old millstone can do that. But when it comes to running uphill, I’m ahead of you all. Why, the biggest river or avalanche in the world couldn’t run uphill beside me.”

“That’s so,” put in the Riding-Whip. “And you and I know who makes you do it—eh?”

“I didn’t say anything about that,” said the Pony. “But I’ll tell you one thing: if you’ll come down here where I can reach you with one of my hind legs, I’ll show you what nice shoes I wear.”

“Much obliged,” said the Whip. “I don’t wear shoes myself, and am not interested in the subject. But if any man who is interested in bugs wants to know how to make a horse fly, I can show him.”

“You are a whipper-snapper,” said the Pony angrily.

“Ho! ho!” jeered the Whip.

“Anybody call me?” queried the Hoe, from the corner where he had been asleep while all this conversation was going on.

Then they all burst out laughing, and peace was restored.

“They say the Fence is worn out,” put in the Sickle.

“I should think it would be,” replied the Rake. “It’s been running all around this place night and day without ever stopping for the last twenty years.”

“How many miles is that?” queried the Wagon.

“Well, once around is half a mile, but if it has gone around every night and every day for twenty years,” said the Grindstone, “that’s one mile every twenty-four hours—365 miles a year—3,650 miles in ten years, and 7,300 miles in twenty years. Quite a record, eh?”

“That’s a good way for a Picket-fence to go,” said the Wheelbarrow. “It would kill me to go half that distance.”

“Well, if you live until you do go half that distance,” put in the Hose, “you’ll never die.”

“Ho! ho!” jeered the Barrow.

“Somebody did call me that time!” cried the Hoe, waking up again. “I’m sure I heard my name.”

“Yes, you did,” said the Rake. “We waked you up to tell you that breakfast would be ready in about a month, and to say that if you wanted any you’d do well to go down to the river and see if you can’t buy its mouth, because if you don’t, nobody knows how you can eat it.”

Here the loud and prolonged laugh caused Jimmieboy once more to open his eyes, and as his papa was standing by the side of the carriage holding out his hands to help him down and take him into the house to supper, the little fellow left the quarrelsome tools and horses and other things to themselves.

•   10   •

JIMMIEBOY’S VALENTINE

Jimmieboy had been watching for the postman all day and he was getting just a little tired of it. It was Valentine’s Day, and he was very naturally expecting that some of his many friends would remember that fact and send him a valentine. Still the postman, strange to say, didn’t come.

“He’ll be later than usual,” said Jimmieboy’s mamma. “The postman always is late on Valentine’s Day. He has so many valentines to leave at people’s houses.”

“Well, I wish he’d hurry,” said Jimmieboy, “because I want to see what my valentimes look like.”

Jimmieboy always called valentines valentimes, so nobody paid any attention to that mistake—and then the front door bell rang.

“I guess, maybe, perhaps that’s the postman—though I didn’t hear his whistle,” said Jimmieboy, rushing to the head of the stairs and listening intently, but no one went to the door and Jimmieboy became so impatient that he fairly tumbled down the stairs to open it himself.

“Howdy do,” he said, as he opened the door, and then he stopped short in amazement. There was no one there and yet his salutation was returned.

“Howdy do!” something said. “I’m glad you came to the door, because I mightn’t have got in if the maid had opened it. People who don’t understand queer things don’t understand me, and I rather think if the girl had opened that door and had been spoken to by something she couldn’t see she’d have started to run and hide, shrieking Lawk, meanwhile.”

“I’ve half a mind to shriek Lawk, myself,” said Jimmieboy, a little fearfully, for he wasn’t quite easy about this invisible something he was talking to. “Who are you, anyhow?”

“I’m not a who, I’m a what,” said the queer thing. “I’m not a person, I’m a thing—just a plain, homely, queer thing. I couldn’t hurt a fly, so there’s no reason why you should cry Lawk.”

“Well, what kind of a queer thing are you?” asked Jimmieboy. “Are you the kind of a queer thing I can invite into the house or would it be better for me to shut the door and make you stay outside.”

“I don’t like to say,” said the queer thing, with a pathetic little sigh. “I think I’m very nice and that anybody ought to be glad to have me in the house, but that’s only my opinion of myself. Somebody else might think differently. In fact somebody else has thought differently. You know rhinoceroses and crocodiles think themselves very handsome, and that’s why they sit and gaze at themselves in the water all the time. Everybody else though knows that they are very ugly. Now that’s the way with me. As I have said, I’m sure in my own mind that I am perfectly splendid, and yet your Uncle Periwinkle, who thought of me, wouldn’t write me and send me to you.”

“You must be very wise if you know what you mean,” said Jimmieboy. “I don’t.”

“Oh, no—I’m not so wise—I’m only splendid, that’s all,” said the other. “You see I’m a valentine, only I never was made. I was only thought of. Your Uncle Periwinkle thought of me and was going to send me to you and then he changed his mind and thought you’d rather have a box of candy; so he didn’t write me and sent you a box of chocolate creams instead. The postman’s got ’em and if he doesn’t find out what they are and eat ’em all up you’ll receive them this afternoon. Won’t you let me come in and tell you about myself and see if you don’t like me? I want to be liked—oh ever so much, and I was awfully disappointed when your uncle decided not to send me. I cried for eight minutes and then resolved to come here myself and see if after all he wasn’t wrong. Let me come in and if you don’t like me I’ll go right out again and never come back.”

“I like you already, without knowing what kind of a valentime you are,” said Jimmieboy, kindly. “Of course you can come in, and you can stay as long as you want to. I don’t believe you’ll be in anybody’s way.”

“Thank you very much,” said the valentine, gratefully, as it moved into the house, and, to judge from where its voice next came, settled down on the big sofa cushion. “I hoped you’d say that.”

“What kind of a valentime are you?” asked Jimmieboy in a moment. “Are you a funny one or a solemn one, with paper frills all over it in a box and a little cupid peeping out from behind a tree?”

“I am almost afraid to tell you,” said the valentine, timidly. “I am so afraid you won’t like me.”

“Oh, yes I will,” said Jimmieboy, hastily. “I like all kinds of valentimes.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said the other. “I’m comic.”

“Hooray!” cried Jimmieboy, “I just love comic valentimes with red and blue pictures in ’em and funny verses.”

“Do you really?” returned the valentine, cheerfully. “Then I can say hooray, too, because that’s what I was to be. I was to be a picture of a boy with red trousers on, sitting crosswise on a great yellow broomstick, galloping through a blue sky, toward a pink moon. How do you like that?”

“It is splendid, just as you said,” returned Jimmieboy, with a broad smile. “Those are my favorite colors.”

“You like those colors better than you do chocolate cream color?” asked the valentine.

“Oh, my yes,” said Jimmieboy. “Probably you wouldn’t be so good to eat as a chocolate cream, but for a valentime, you’re much better. I don’t want to eat valentimes, I want to keep ’em.”

“You don’t know how glad you make me,” said the pathetic little valentine, its voice trembling with happiness. “Now, if you like my verses as well as you do my picture, I will be perfectly content.”

“I guess I’ll like ’em,” said Jimmieboy. “Can you recite yourself to me?”

“I’m not written—didn’t I tell you?” returned the valentine. “That’s the good part of it. I can tell you what I might have been and you can take your choice.”

“That’s good,” said Jimmieboy. “Then I’m sure to be satisfied.”

“Just so,” said the valentine. “Now let me think what I might have been! Hum! Well, what do you think of this:

“If I had a cat with a bright red tail,

And a parrot whose voice was soft and low

I’d put ’em away in a water pail,

And send ’em to where the glowworm’s glow.

And then I would sit on an old whisk broom

And sail through the great, soft starlit sky,

To where the bright moonbeams gaily froom

Their songs to the parboiled Gemini.

And I’d say to the frooming moonbeams that,

I’d come from the home of the sweet woodbine,

Deserting my parrot and red-tailed cat,

To ask if they’d be my valentine.”

“I guess that’s good,” said Jimmieboy. “Only I don’t know what frooming is.”

“Neither do I,” said the valentine, “but that needn’t make any difference. You see, it’s a nonsense rhyme anyhow, and I couldn’t remember any word that rhymed with broom. Froom isn’t a bad word, and inasmuch as it’s new to us we can make it mean anything we want to.”

“That’s true,” said Jimmieboy. “But why do you send the cat and the parrot off?”

“They aren’t in the picture,” said the valentine, “and so of course we have to get rid of them before we have the boy start off on the broomstick. It would be very awkward to go sailing off through the sky on a broomstick with a parrot and cat in tow. Then to show the moonbeams how much the boy thinks of them you have to have him leave something behind that he thinks a great deal of, and that something might just as well be a parrot and a cat as anything else.”

“And what does it all mean?” asked Jimmieboy. “Is the boy supposed to be me?”

“No,” explained the valentine. “The boy is supposed to be Uncle Periwinkle, and you are the moonbeams. In putting the poem the way I’ve told you it’s just another and nonsense way of saying that he’ll be your valentine and will take a great deal of trouble and make sacrifices to do it if necessary.”

“I see,” said Jimmieboy. “And I think it very nice indeed—though I might like some other verse better.”

“Of course you might,” said the valentine. “That’s the way with everything. No matter how fine a thing may be, there may be something else that might be better, and the thing to do always is to look about and try to find that better thing. How’s this:

“‘The broom went around to Jimmieboy’s,

And cried, ‘Oh, Jimmieboy B.,

Come forth in the night, desert your toys,

And take a fine ride with me.

I’ll take you off through the starlit sky,

We’ll visit the moon so fine,

If you will come with alacrity,

And be my valentine.’”

“That isn’t so bad, either,” said Jimmieboy. “I sort of wish a broomstick would come after me that way and take me sailing off to the moon. I’d be its valentime in a minute if it would do that. I’d like to take a trip through all the stars and see why they twinkle and—”

“Why they twinkle?” interrupted the valentine. “Why they twinkle? Hoh! Why, I can tell you that—for as a secret just between you and me, I know a broomstick that has been up to the stars and he told me all about them. The stars twinkle because from where they are, they are so high up, they can see all that is going on in the world, and they see so many amusing things that it keeps ’em laughing all the time and they have to twinkle just as your eyes do when they see anything funny.”

“That’s it, is it?” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes, sir!” said the valentine, “and it’s fine, too, to watch ’em when you are feeling sad. You know how it is when you’re feeling sort of unhappy and somebody comes along who feels just the other way, who laughs and sings, how you get to feel better yourself right off? Well, remember the stars when you don’t feel good. How they’re always twinkling—watch ’em, and by and by you’ll begin to twinkle yourself. You can’t help it—and further, Jimmieboy,” added this altogether strange valentine, “when anybody tries to make you think that this world has got more bad things than good things in it, look at the stars again. They wouldn’t twinkle if that was so and until the stars stop twinkling and begin to frown, don’t you ever think badly of the world.”

“I won’t,” said Jimmieboy. “I always did like the world. As long as I’ve been in it I’ve thought it was a pretty fine place.”

“It is,” said the valentine. “Nobody can spoil it either—unless you do it yourself—but, I say, if you’d like to have me I’ll introduce you to my broomstick friend sometime and maybe someday he’ll give you that ride.”

“Will you?” cried Jimmieboy with delight. “That will be fine. You are the dearest old valentime that ever was.”

Saying which, forgetting in his happiness that the valentine was not to be seen and so could not be touched, Jimmieboy leaned over to hug him affectionately as he sat on the sofa cushion.

Which may account for the fact that when Jimmieboy’s papa came home he found Jimmieboy clasping the sofa cushion in his arms, asleep and unconscious of the fact that the postman had come and gone, leaving behind him six comic valentines, four “solemn ones,” and a package of chocolate creams from Uncle Periwinkle.

When he waked he was rejoiced to find them, but he has often told me since that the finest valentine he ever got was the one Uncle Periwinkle thought he wouldn’t like as well as the candy; and I believe he still has hopes that the invisible valentine may turn up again someday, bringing with him his friend the broomstick who will take Jimmieboy off for a visit to the twinkling stars.

•   11   •

THE MAGIC SLED

When Jimmieboy waked up the other morning the ground was white with snow and his heart was rejoiced. Like many another small youth Jimmieboy has very little use for green winters. He likes them white. Somehow or other they do not seem like winters if they haven’t plenty of snow and he had been much afraid that the season was going to pass away without bringing to him an opportunity to use the beautiful sled Santa Claus had brought him at Christmas.

It was a fine sled, one of the finest he had ever seen. It had a red back, yellow runners and two swan heads standing erect in front of it to tell it which way it should go. On the red surface of the back was painted its name in very artistic blue letters, and that name was nothing more nor less than “Magic.”

“Hooray,” he cried as he rushed to the window and saw the dazzling silver coating on the lawn and street. “Snow at last! Now I can see if Magic can slide.”

He dressed hastily—so hastily in fact that he had to undress again, because it was discovered by his mother, who came to see how he was getting along, that he had put on his stocking wrong side out, and that his left shoe was making his right foot uncomfortable.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” said his Mamma. “There was a man once who was always in such a hurry that he forgot to take his head downtown with him one day, and when lunch time came he hadn’t anything with him to eat his lunch with.”

“But I want to slide,” said Jimmieboy, “and I’m afraid there’ll be a slaw come along and melt the snow.”

Jimmieboy always called thaws slaws, so his mother wasn’t surprised at this remark, and in a few minutes the boy was ready to coast.

“Come along, Magic!” he said, gleefully catching up the rope. “We’ll see now if Uncle Periwinkle was right when he said he didn’t think you’d go more’n a mile a minute, unless you had a roller skate on both your runners.”

And then, though Jimmieboy did not notice it, the left-hand swan-head winked its eye at the other swan-head and whispered, “Humph! It’s plain Uncle Periwinkle doesn’t know that we are a magic sled.”

“Well, why should he?” returned the other swan-head, with a laugh. “He never slode on us.”

“I’m glad I’m not an uncle,” said the left-hand head. “Uncles don’t know half as much as we do.”

“And why should they!” put in the other. “They haven’t had the importunities we have for gaining knowledge. A man who has lived all his days in one country and which has never slad around the world like us has, don’t see things the way us would.”

And still Jimmieboy did not notice that the swan-heads were talking together, though I can hardly blame him for that, because, now that he was out of doors he had to keep his eyes wide open to keep from bumping his head into the snow balls the hired man was throwing at him. In a few minutes, however, he did notice the peculiar fact and he was so surprised that he sat plump down on the red back of the sled and was off for—well, where the sled took him, and of all the slides that ever were slid, that was indeed the strangest. No sooner had he sat down than with a leap that nearly threw him off his balance, the swans started. The steel runners crackled merrily over the snow, and the wind itself was soon left behind.

“C-can you sus-swans tut-talk?” Jimmieboy cried, in amazement, as soon as he could get his breath.

“Oh, no, of course not,” said the right-hand swan. “We can’t talk, can we Swanny?”

“No, indeed, Swayny,” returned the other with a laugh. “You may think we talk, you may even hear words from our lips, we might even recite a poem, but that wouldn’t be talk—oh, no, indeed. Certainly not.”

“It’s a queer question for him to ask, eh Swanny?” said the right-hand head.

“Extraordinary, Swayny,” said the one on the left. “Might as well ask a locomotive if it smokes.”

“Well, I only wanted to know,” said Jimmieboy.

“He only wanted to know, Swanny,” said Swayny.

“I presume that was why he asked—as though we didn’t know that,” said Swanny. “He’d ask a pie-man with a tray full of pies, if he had any pies, I believe.”

“Yes, or a cat if he could meow. Queer boy,” returned Swayny. And then he added:

“I think a boy, who’d waste his time

In asking questions such as that,

Would ask a man, who dealt in rhyme

If he’d a head inside his hat.”

Jimmieboy laughed.

“You know poetry, don’t you,” he said.

“Well, rather,” said Swayny. “That is to say, I can tell it from a church steeple.”

“Which reminds me,” put in Swanny, as strange to say, this wonderful sled began to slide up a very steep hill, “of a conundrum I never heard before. What’s the difference between writing poetry the way some people do and building a steeple as all people do?”

“I can’t say,” said Swayny, “though if you’ll tell me the answer now next time you ask that conundrum I’ll be able to inform you.”

“Some people who write poetry run it into the ground,” said Swanny, “and all people who build steeples, run ’em up into the air.”

“That’s not bad,” said Jimmieboy, with a smile.

“No,” said Swanny, “it is not—but you don’t know why.”

“I don’t indeed,” observed Jimmieboy. “Why?”

“Because my conundrums never are,” said Swanny.

“EUROPE!” cried Swayny. “Five minutes for refreshments.”

“What do you mean?” said Jimmieboy, as the sled came to a standstill.

“What does any conductor mean when he calls out the name of a station?” said Swayny scornfully. “He means that’s where you are at of course. Which is what I mean. We’ve arrived at Europe. That’s the kind of a fast mail sled we are. In three minutes we’ve carried you up hill and down dale, over the sea to Europe.”

“Really?” cried Jimmieboy, dumfounded.

“Certainly,” said Swanny. “You are now in Europe. That blue place you see over on the right is Germany, off to the left is France and that little pink speck is Switzerland. See that glistening thing just on the edge of the pink speck?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy.

“That’s an Alp,” said Swanny. “It’s too bad we’ve got to get you home in time for breakfast. If we weren’t in such a hurry, we’d let you off so that you could buy an Alp to take home to your brother. You could have snowballs all through the summer if you had an Alp in your nursery, but we can’t stop now to get it. We’ve got to runaway immediately. Ready Swayny?”

“Yes,” said Swayny. “ALL ABOARD FOR ENGLAND. Passengers will please keep their seats until the sled comes to a standstill in the station.”

And then they were off again.

“How did you like Europe?” asked Swanny, as they sped along through a beautiful country, which Swayny said was France.

“Very nice, what I saw of it,” said Jimmieboy. “But, of course I couldn’t see very much in five minutes.”

“Hoh! Hear that, Swayny?” said Swanny. “Couldn’t see much in five minutes. Why, you could see all Europe in five minutes, if you only looked fast enough. You kept your eye glued on that Alp, I guess.”

“That’s what he did,” said Swayny. “And that’s why it was so hard to get the sled started. I had to hump three times before I could get my runner off and it was all because he’d glued his eye on the Alp! Don’t do it again, Jimmieboy. We haven’t time to unglue your eye every time we start.”

“I don’t blame him,” said Swanny. “Those Alps are simply great, and I sometimes feel myself as if I’d like to look at ’em as much as forty minutes. I’d hate to be a hired man on an Alp, though.”

“So would I,” said Swayny. “It would be awful if the owner of the Alp made the hired man shovel the snow off it every morning.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that so much as I was of getting up every morning, early, to push the clouds away,” said Swanny. “People are very careless about their clouds on the Alps, and they wander here and there, straying from one man’s lawn onto another’s, just like cows where Jimmieboy lives. I knew a man once who bought the top of an Alp just for the view, and one of his neighbor’s clouds came along and squatted down on his place and simply killed the view entirely, and I tell you he made his hired man’s life miserable. Scolded him from morning until night, and fed him on cracked ice for a week, just because he didn’t scare the cloud off when he saw it coming.”

“I don’t see how a man could scare a cloud off,” said Jimmieboy.

“Easy as eating chocolate creams,” said Swayny. “You can do it with a fan, if you have one big enough—but, I say, Swanny, put on the brakes there quick, or we’ll run slam-bang into—”

“LONDON!” cried Swanny, putting on the brakes, and sure enough that’s where they were. Jimmieboy knew it in a minute, because there was a lady coming out of a shop preceded by a band of music, and wearing a big crown on her head, whom he recognized at once as the great and good Queen, whose pictures he had often seen in his story books.

“Howdy do, little boy,” said the Queen, as her eye rested on Jimmieboy.

“I’m very well, thank you, Ma’am,” said Jimmieboy, holding out his hand for Her Majesty to shake.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I’m sliding until breakfast is ready,” he replied.

“Until breakfast is ready?” she cried. “Why, what time do you have breakfast?”

“Eight o’clock, so’s papa can catch the 8:30 train, Ma’am,” said Jimmieboy.

“But—it is now nearly one o’clock!” said the Queen.

“That’s all right, Your Roily Highnishness,” said Swanny. “This is an American boy and he breakfasts on the American plan. It isn’t eight o’clock yet where he lives.”

“Oh, yes—so it isn’t,” said the Queen. “I remember now. The sun rises earlier here than it does in America.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” put in Swayny. “It has to in order to get to America on time. America is some distance from here as you may have heard.”

And before the Queen could say another word, the sled was sliding merrily along at such a rapid pace that Jimmieboy had to throw his arms about Swayny’s neck to keep from falling overboard.

“W-where are we g-g-gug-going to now?” he stammered.

“China,” said Swanny.

“Egypt,” said Swayny.

“I said China,” cried Swanny, turning his eyes full upon Swayny and glaring at him.

“I know you did,” said Swayny. “I may not show ’em, but I have ears. I, on the other hand said Egypt, and Egypt is where we are going. I want to show Jimmieboy the Pyramids. He’s never seen a Pyramid and he has seen Chinamen.”

“No doubt,” said Swanny. “But this time he’s not going to Egypt. I’m going to show him a Mandarin. He can build a Pyramid with his blocks, but he never in his life could build a Mandarin. Therefore, Ho for China.”

“You mean Bah! for China,” said Swayny, angrily. “I’m not going to China, Mr. William G. Swanny and that’s all there is about that. Last time I was there a Chinaman captured me and tied me to his pig-tail and I vowed I’d never go again.”

“And when I was in Egypt last time, I was stolen by a mummy, who wanted to broil and eat me because he hadn’t had anything to eat for two thousand years. So I’m not going to Egypt.”

Whereupon the two strange birds became involved in a dreadful quarrel, one trying to run the sled off toward China, the other trying, with equal vim, to steer it over to Egypt. The runners creaked; the red back groaned and finally, there came a most dreadful crash. Swanny flew off with his runner to the land of Flowers, and Swayny, freed from his partner, forgetting Jimmieboy completely, sped on to Egypt.

And Jimmieboy.

Well, Jimmieboy, fell in between and by some great good fortune, for which I am not at all prepared to account, landed in a heap immediately beside his little bed in the nursery, not dressed in his furs at all but in his night gown, while out of doors not a speck of snow was to be seen, and strangest of all, when he was really dressed and had gone downstairs, there stood Magic and the two swan heads, as spick and span as you please, still waiting to be tried.

•   12   •

THE STUPID LITTLE APPLE-TREE

Jimmieboy was playing in the orchard, and, as far as the birds and the crickets and the tumblebugs could see, was as happy as the birds, as lively as the crickets, and as tumbly as the tumblebugs. In fact, one of the crickets had offered to bet an unusually active tumblebug that Jimmieboy could give him ten tumbles start and beat him five in a hundred, but the tumblebug was a good little bug and wouldn’t bet.

“I’m put here to tumble,” said he. “That’s my work in life, and I’m going to stick to it. Other creatures may be able to tumble better than I can, but that isn’t going to make any difference to me. So long as I do the best I can, I’m satisfied. If you want to bet, go bet with the dandelions. They’ve got more gold in ’em than we tumblebugs have.”

Now, whether it was the sweet drowsiness of the afternoon, or the unusual number of tumbles he took on the soft, carpet-like grass in and out among the apple-trees, neither Jimmieboy nor I have ever been able to discover, but all of a sudden Jimmieboy thought it would be pleasant to rest awhile; and to accomplish this desirable end he could think of nothing better than to throw himself down at the foot of what he had always called the stupid little apple-tree. It was a very pretty tree, but it was always behind-time with its blossoms. All the other trees in the orchard burst out into bloom at the proper time, but the stupid little apple-tree, like a small boy in school who isn’t as smart as some other boys, was never ready, when the others were, and that was why Jimmieboy called it stupid.

“Jimmieboy! Jimmieboy!”

He turned about to see who had addressed him, but there was nothing in sight but a huge bumblebee, and he was entirely too busy at his daily stint to be wasting any time on Jimmieboy.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Jimmieboy asked.

“I’m—I’m a friend of yours,” said the voice. “Oh, a splendid friend of yours, even if I am stupid. Do you want to earn an apple?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “I’m very fond of apples—though I can get all I want without earning ’em.”

“That’s true enough,” returned the voice; “but an apple you have given you isn’t half so good as one you really earn all by yourself—that’s why I want you to earn one. Of course I’ll give you all the apples I’ve got, anyhow, but I’d like to have you earn one of ’em, just to show you how much better it tastes because you have earned it.”

“All right,” said Jimmieboy, politely. “I’m very much obliged to you, and I’ll earn it if you’ll tell me how. But, I say,” he added, “I can’t see you—who are you?”

“Can’t see me? That’s queer,” said the voice. “I’m right here—can’t you see the stupid little apple-tree that’s keeping the sun off you and stretching its arms up over you?”

“Yes,” Jimmieboy replied. “I can see that, but I can’t see you.”

“Why, I’m it,” said the voice. “It’s the stupid little apple-tree that’s talking to you. I’m me.”

Jimmieboy sat up and looked at the tree with a surprised delight. “Oh! that’s it, eh?” he said. “You can talk, can you?”

“Certainly,” said the tree. “You didn’t think we poor trees stood out here year in and year out, in cold weather and in warm, in storm and in sunshine, never lying down, always standing, without being allowed to talk, did you? That would be dreadfully cruel. It’s bad enough not to be able to move around. Think how much worse it would be if we had to keep silent all that time! You can judge for yourself what a fearfully dull time we would have of it when you consider how hard it is for you to sit still in school for an hour without speaking.”

“I just simply can’t do it,” said Jimmieboy. “That’s the only thing my teacher don’t like about me. She says I’m movey and loquacious.”

“I don’t know what loquacious means,” said the tree.

“Neither do I,” said Jimmieboy, “but I guess it has something to do with talking too much when you hadn’t ought to. But tell me, Mr. Tree, how can I earn the apple?”

“Don’t be so formal,” said the tree. “Don’t call me Mr. Tree. You’ve known me long enough to be more intimate.”

“Very well,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ll call you whatever you want me to. What shall I call you?”

“Call me Stoopy,” said the tree, softly. “Stoopy for short. I always liked that name.”

Jimmieboy laughed. “It’s an awful funny name,” he said. “Stoopy! Ha-ha-ha! What’s it short for?”

“Stupid,” said the tree. “That is, while it’s quite as long as Stupid, it seems shorter. Anyhow, it’s more affectionate, and that’s why I want you to call me by it.”

“Very well, Stoopy,” said Jimmieboy. “Now, about the apple. Have you got it with you?”

“No,” returned the tree. “But I’m making it, and it’s going to be the finest apple you ever saw. It will have bigger, redder cheeks than any other apple in the world, and it’ll have a core in it that will be just as good to eat as marmalade, and it’ll be all for you if you’ll do something for me tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it if I can,” said Jimmieboy.

“Of course—that’s what I mean,” said Stoopy. “Nobody can do a thing he can’t do; and if you find that you can’t do it, don’t do it; you’ll get the apple just the same, only you won’t have earned it, and it may not seem so good, particularly the core. I suppose you know that tomorrow is Decoration Day?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Jimmieboy. “Mamma’s going to send a lot of flowers to the Committee, and papa’s going to take me to see the soldiers, and after that I’m going over to the semingary to see them decorate the graves.”

“That’s what I thought,” said the tree, with a sigh. “I wish I could go. There’s nothing I’d like to do better than to go over there and drop a lot of blossoms around on the graves of the men who went to war and lost their lives so that you might have a country, and we trees could grow in peace without being afraid of having a cannonball shot into us, cutting us in two—but I want to tell you a little story about all that. You didn’t know I was planted by a little boy who went to the war and got killed, did you?”

“No,” returned Jimmieboy, softly. “I didn’t know that. I asked papa one day who planted you, and he said he guessed you just grew.”

“Well, that’s true, I did just grow,” said Stoopy, “but I had to be planted first, and I was planted right here by a little boy only ten years old. He was awfully good to me, too. He used to take care of me just as if I were a little baby. I wasn’t more than half as tall as he was when he set me out here, and I was his tree, and he was proud as could be to feel that he owned me; and he used to tell me that when I grew big and had apples he was going to sell the apples and buy nice things for his mother with the money he got for ’em. We grew up together. He took such good care of me that I soon got to be taller than he was, and the taller I became the prouder he was of me. Oh, he was a fine boy, Jimmieboy, and as he grew up his mother and father were awfully proud of him. And then the war broke out. He was a little over twenty years old then, and he couldn’t be kept from going to fight. He joined the regiment that was raised here, and after a little while he said goodbye to his mother and father, and then he came out here to me and put his arms around my trunk and kissed me goodbye too, and he plucked a little sprig of leaves from one of my branches and put it in his buttonhole, and then he went away. That was the last time I saw him. He was killed in his first battle.”

Here Stoopy paused for an instant, and trembled a little, and a few blossoms fell like trickling teardrops, and fluttered softly to the ground.

“They brought him home and buried him out there in the semingary,” the tree added, “and that was the end of it. His father and mother didn’t live very long after that, and then there wasn’t anybody to take care of his grave any more. When that happened, I made up my mind that I’d do what I could; but around here all the apple-blossoms are withered and gone by the time Decoration Day comes, and nobody would take plain leaves like mine to put on a soldier’s grave, so I began to put off blossoming until a little later than the other trees, and that’s how I came to be called the stupid little apple-tree. Nobody knew why I did it, but I did, and so I didn’t mind being called stupid. I was doing it all for him, and every year since then I’ve been late, but on Decoration Day I’ve always had blossoms ready. The trouble has been, though, that nobody has ever come for ’em, and I’ve had all my work and trouble so far for nothing. It’s been a great disappointment.”

“I see,” said Jimmieboy, softly. “What you want me to do is to take some of your blossoms over there tomorrow and put ’em—put ’em where you want ’em put.”

“That’s it, that’s it!” cried the stupid little apple-tree, eagerly. “Oh, if you only will, Jimmieboy!”

“Indeed I will,” said Jimmieboy. “I’ll come here in the morning and gather up the blossoms, and take every one you have ready over in a basket, and I’ll get papa to find out where your master’s grave is, and he’ll have every one of them.”

“Thank you, thank you,” returned Stoopy; “and you’ll find that all I’ve said about your apple will come true, and after this I’ll be your tree forever and forever.”

Jimmieboy was about to reply, when an inconsiderate tumblebug tripped over his hand, which lay flat on the grass, and in an instant all of the boy’s thoughts on the subject fled from his mind, and he found himself sitting up on the grass, gazing sleepily about him. He knew that he had probably been dreaming, although he is by no means certain that that was the case, for, as if to remind him of his promise, as he started to rise, a handful of blossoms loosened by the freshening evening breezes came fluttering down into his lap, and the little lad resolved that, dream or no dream, he would look up the whereabouts of the young soldier-boy’s grave, and would decorate it with apple-blossoms, and these from the stupid little apple-tree only.

And that is why one long-forgotten soldier’s grave in the cemetery across the hills back of Jimmieboy’s house was white and sweetly fragrant with apple-blossoms when the sun had gone down upon Decoration Day.

As for the stupid little apple-tree, it is still at work upon the marvelously red-cheeked apple which Jimmieboy is to claim as his reward.

More Tales
of Jimmieboy

(1895, 1907)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
PETER NEWELL

CONTENTS:

1 … Off with the Merboy
[Harper’s Round Table serial,
beginning 23 Apr, 1895]

2 … Jimmieboy and the Animals
[Harper’s Young People,
02 Apr, 1895]

3 … Bunkey, Monkey, and Jimmieboy
[Harper’s Young People,
19 Mar, 1895]

4 … Jimmieboy’s Tool Chest
[Newspaper syndication,
08 Dec, 1907]

•   1   •

OFF WITH THE MERBOY

I

It was a strange thing for the goldfish to do, but the goldfish did it, nevertheless. He winked at Jimmieboy, and asked him if he owned a bathing-unit.

THE GOLDFISH WINKED

“Yes, I do own a bathing-suit,” Jimmieboy replied, as soon as he had recovered from his astonishment that the goldfish should speak to him. “I own two bathing-suits—a red one and a blue one.”

“You are a very fortunate boy,” said the goldfish. “Two whole bathing-suits! Dear me, what richness! Do you find that two fit you better than one?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Jimmieboy.

“You must be feeling a little dull,” retorted the fish. “It is plain enough, I think, that if one bathing-suit fits you well, and another bathing-suit tits you well, the two together ought to fit you twice as well. Do they?”

“I can’t tell,” said Jimmieboy. “I never had a chance to find out.”

“Then you never wore ’em both at once?” asked the goldfish.

“Of course not,” said Jimmieboy, with a laugh at the absurdity of the idea. “Why should I?”

“You’ll have to ask me an easier one,” returned the goldfish. “I’m sure I don’t know why you should; but then there’s nothing very strange about that, for there are a number of things that I don’t know.

“I never knew why blackberries

Are green when they are red.

I never understood how seas

Could rest so calmly at their ease

With so much sand in bed.

I never knew what use are horns

To mooly cows and goats.

I don’t know why the rose has thorns,

Or why the sailor bold so scorns

Such craft as gravy-boats.

Indeed, I cannot well deny

That there are, on the land

As well as on the seas, things I,

No matter how much I may try,

Could never understand.”

“I’m kind of that way myself,” said Jimmieboy, leaning over the side of the aquarium and gazing down into the cool watery resting-place of the goldfish. “And the worst part of it is that my father, who knows most things—or used to did—is getting forgetful, and can’t tell me half what I want to know. I was wondering the other day if beds creaked at night because they were tired of never lying down, and he said he guessed so. I could have guessed so myself.”

“That was just his way of putting you off,” said the goldfish.

“Well, he puts me off a great deal nowadays,” said Jimmieboy, sadly, “though there was a time when he could explain everything. Why, he couldn’t even tell me last night if windows looked out of themselves; and when I asked him what part of the ocean you came from he told me flat as could be that he didn’t know.”

“He ought to have known that,” said the goldfish. “I didn’t come from any part of it. I was born in a goldmine.”

“Ever been in the ocean?” asked Jimmieboy, eagerly.

“Yes, several times. My uncle, the swordfish, lives there, and I’ve had plenty of invitations to go. I don’t accept very often, though,” said the fish.

“Why not?” asked Jimmieboy.

“I don’t care about going alone, for one reason,” said the goldfish; “and then I haven’t a bathing-suit, for another, so I can’t. I don’t want to go into the ocean in these clothes I have on. I’d get ’em wet, you know.”

“Ho!” ejaculated Jimmieboy, with a smile of amusement. “You’re pretty well soaked through now.”

“No, I’m not,” snapped the goldfish. “This place isn’t wet—that is, it isn’t anything like as wet as the ocean. How could it be? The ocean is several miles bigger than this, and of course is just so much wetter.”

“Why,” said Jimmieboy, in amazement, “is a pail of water any wetter than a drop of water?”

“Why not?” asked the goldfish. “Try it, and see. Got a drop of water and spill it on the floor, and then get a pailful and spill it on another floor, and then see which floor is the wettest. You think you are a white boy, but you are not. You’re the greenest boy I know, and I’ve half a mind not to borrow your extra bathing-suit.”

“I’m only a little boy,” said Jimmieboy, apologetically, “and of course there are lots of things I’ve got to learn, so don’t be cross with me.”

“All right,” said the fish, good-naturedly, “I won’t; and I’ll borrow your bathing-suit to wear when I visit my uncle in the ocean, if you’ll lend it to me.”

“I’ll let you have it,” said Jimmieboy. “That is, I will if—” Here he hesitated. The idea had just entered his head that he’d rather like to go off with the goldfish on his visit. The ocean had always possessed a great charm for him, and often when he was at the seashore he wondered what it was like down underneath the surging waters. His papa had tried to tell him all about it, but when pressed to say if he really knew that what he was saying was true or only story-telling, he had admitted that it was only story-telling, because he had never been under the sea himself.

“If what?” asked the goldfish, eying Jimmieboy closely. “You don’t want me to chip off one of my gold scales to pay you for the suit, do you? If you do, you might as well stop wanting that at once, for I shall never do it. It would be extravagance to pay gold for a thing I could get down on the seacoast for silver.” .

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “I don’t want any pay—I only thought perhaps I’d like to go with you, and I was going to say that if you would take me along I’d let you have the suit.”

“That would be fine,” said the goldfish, smiling so broadly that Jimmieboy expected to see all the water in the aquarium disappear down his throat. “You know I said I didn’t want to go alone. It always makes me blue to go alone, and when I get blue it’s very dangerous for me.”

“Why so?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Why! Because,” said the goldfish—“because your papa would have me baked for Sunday breakfast the minute I turned into a bluefish. People eat bluefish, but never touch goldfish. See?”

“Yes,” Jimmieboy answered. “I remember now. It was only yesterday papa told my mamma why didn’t she have some baked bluefish for breakfast, because that was what he was hungry for.”

The goldfish shuddered.

“I’m glad you told me,” he said. “I’ve been feeling a little blue lately, and I mustn’t give way to it, or perhaps I’ll he baked yet.” Here he paused, and thought deeply for a minute, and then his face brightened up as he said: “But I won’t be blue while you are with me, Jimmieboy, so trot out the bathing-suits and let’s have a look at ’em. If they are all right we can start along at once.”

So Jimmieboy rushed to the attic, where his bathing-suits were packed away until it should come time for him and his father and mother and brothers to go to the seashore again, and after rummaging about in the trunks for some time he finally found what he wanted.

“Here they are!” he cried, breathlessly; for he was very much excited as he thought over the prospect of the trip beneath tho water. “They’re in first-class shape.”

“I hope they haven’t any holes in ’em anywhere,” said the goldfish, anxiously. “It would be horrible if after we got out into the middle of the ocean we found that our suits leaked.”

Jimmieboy gazed searchingly into the eyes of the goldfish for nearly a minute to see if he were not joking when he spoke about leaks in bathing-suits—it seemed such a very droll idea—but the curious creature gave no sign of being anything else than serious.

“Never heard of leaks in bathing-suits,” said Jimmieboy.

“I guess you never heard of a great many things,” retorted the goldfish. “But that doesn’t prove anything. Of course it’s a bad thing to have a leak in a bathing-suit. The water’d get right in on you if it had a leak in it; and what would be even more dangerous, you might leak through, yourself. Suppose you were in swimming and your arm should leak through a hole you had forgotten to sew up, where would you be?”

“I haven’t an idea,” said Jimmieboy.

“You’d be in the water, that’s where, and one arm gone,” snapped the fish.

“I don’t quite see,” said Jimmieboy. “Where would the arm be gone to?”

“Through the hole in your bathing-suit, of course,” said the fish; “and then—well, I hesitate to think what would become of you then. But a boy in swimming with only one arm hasn’t much chance, unless it’s low tide and he has a rope about his waist.”

“Well, anyhow,” said Jimmieboy, inspecting the bathing-suits very carefully, “nothing can happen to us that way, because there isn’t a leak in either of these suits. Which’ll you have, the blue or the red?”

“Which is the larger of the two!” asked the goldfish. “I’ll have whichever one is the larger.”

“Humph!” said Jimmieboy. “Why do you do that? They’re both of ’em miles and miles too big for you.”

“I know that—but I can make ’em fit easy enough.”

“I can’t let you cut them up, you know,” said the boy. “Mamma wouldn’t like that.”

“Who’s going to cut ’em up! I’m not,” returned the fish. “That would take a year. I’m going to smallen mine up by shrinking it, and I want the biggest one, because, being the biggest, it has more room to shrink. See?”

“How shrink?” queried Jimmieboy, who could not quite comprehend.

“Why, they’re made of flannel, those suits are, and flannel shrinks like everything every time you get it wet. Do you know what shrinking is!”

“No, I don’t,” said Jimmieboy. “What is it?”

“Smallening up,” said the fish. “You put a yard of flannel in water, and then take it out and let it dry, and the chances are it’ll only be half a yard inside of a week. I put a No. 41 bathing-suit in the water and then dry it, and it becomes a No. 36. So I’ll keep on wetting it and drying it until it’s my size.”

“Is all this really and truly true?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Well, rather! Where have you been brought up, not to know things like that?” said the goldfish, scornfully. “I thought everybody knew about such simple things. Why, I know a man who had a beautiful flannel coat once that fitted him just to perfection until he had it washed, and it shrunk so he could hardly get into it. Then he gave it to his wife, and it fitted her just right, until she by accident let it drop into the lake one day, where it got soaked again. When it was dried she tried to put it on, and couldn’t, but it proved to be the right size for the baby, so the baby wore it. Orders were given not to put it in the wash ever again, but to clean it when necessary in other ways. Unfortunately the baby and his nurse got caught out in a rainstorm one afternoon, and that settled the jacket. It got simply dripping, and shrunk up so small it wouldn’t even fit the baby’s doll.”

“And then what became of it?” asked Jimmieboy, his interest very much aroused.

“The man it was made for used it as a pen-wiper for three years, and then one night somebody carelessly upset a glass of ice-water on it, and it just faded right out of sight,”said the fish, scratching his chin with his left fin. “Queer, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “Very. I should think maybe flannel might be dangerous to wear if sometime you had it on when it was sopping wet, and weren’t able to take it off until it had shrunk up. It might squeeze you to death.”

“Well, that all depends on the flannel,” said the fish. “If it’s awfully strong flannel you’ve got to be careful of it. I knew a bathing-master once who wore his bathing-suit all the time; and of course, so that it would wear well, he had it made of the strongest flannel he could get. He used to dash into the water for a minute, and then he’d come out and sit on the sand to dry. Then he’d dash in again and romp in the waves for a while, always sitting on the sand to dry right afterwards. He’d do that fifty times a day, and finally he mysteriously disappeared. Some people said he’d run away, and maybe he did—but I have my own notion as to what became of him.”

“What is it?” asked Jimmieboy. “Do you think he was drowned?”

“I do not,” said the fish. “I think that flannel suit just shrank out of existence with him in it.”

“I don’t think I’ll wear flannel,” said Jimmieboy, as he thought over the possible fate of the bathing-master. “I don’t want to be disappeared with.”

“Oh, you won’t be—there’s no danger at all if you know how to manage a suit,” said the fish. “I’d just as leave let a baby play with a bathing-suit. They aren’t dangerous unless you are foolish with them. But I say, are you most ready to start?”

“I’ll go at any time you say,” said Jimmieboy, starting up.

“All right. Run into the other room and put on your suit, and come back just as quickly as you can. It has been a beautiful day, and I guess it’s about as fine a time to visit the ocean as we shall ever have.”

II
THE START

Jimmieboy grabbed up his blue suit and in a very few minutes was arrayed in it, but on his return to the aquarium to join the goldfish he found it empty.

“Dear me!” he cried, “I wonder if he can have gone off without me.”

“No, he hasn’t,” came a silvery voice from behind him. Jimmieboy turned sharply about, and there, sitting upon the sofa arrayed in his red bathing suit, sat a beautiful boy of about his own age and size, with great masses of golden hair falling over his shoulders.

“Hallo!” said Jimmieboy, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise. “Who are you?”

“I am your goldfish,” laughed the boy. “Or, rather, I was. I am now my true self. I am a merboy, as, in fact, all goldfish are. See?” he added, holding up what Jimmieboy had taken for feet. “I have a tail like a fish instead of feet.”

Jimmieboy was delighted. He had heard all about mermen and mermaids, but merboys were something new.

“Now,” said the merboy, as a tremendous lashing of something in the aquarium began to ruffle up the water therein, “come along. Get into my carriage and we shall start.”

Mute with astonishment, Jimmieboy could do nothing but obey, and entering a huge vehicle that floated upon the surface of the water in the aquarium—which had, singularly enough, taken on tremendous proportions—the merboy gave a whistle, and they were off. The carriage had the appearance of a superb shell lined with mother-of-pearl, and studded all over with the most costly and lustrous jewels, and soon passing out from the limits of the aquarium, Jimmieboy found himself bounding over a great body of water, drawn by a pair of gayly caparisoned dolphins, which the smiling merboy guided with two golden ribbons.

STARTING OFF

“How do you feel?” asked the merboy, as, after driving along for several minutes, the travelers passed out of sight of land.

“First rate,” said Jimmieboy. “This is lots of fun.”

“I’m glad you find it so,” returned the merboy, with a smile of relief. “I was afraid you were not enjoying yourself very much. You looked a little anxious. Were you anxious?”

“Not exactly,” replied Jimmieboy. “But it did sort of bother me when I thought of what might happen if this wagon should upset.”

“I don’t see anything you need to bother about in that,” said the merboy, giving the near dolphin a flick with his whip for shying at a buoy. “It’s twice as safe as driving on land. The laud is hard, and if you were thrown out of a wagon there the chances are you’d be hurt; but here it is very different. Falling out here would be like tumbling into a featherbed. The water is very soft.”

“I understand that, of course,” said Jimmieboy, with a smile. “But what I was worrying about chiefly was that the water here is very deep. It must be two or three times over my head, and I can’t swim. I can only wade.”

“What of it? I don’t see anything in that to worry about,” retorted the merboy. “I might just as well get timid when we are near the shore because I can’t wade.”

“Wouldn’t I be drowned?” asked Jimmieboy.

The look which the ex-goldfish gave Jimmieboy as the latter said this was one of reproach. He was evidently latter said this was one of reproach. He was evidently deeply hurt by Jimmieboy’s remark.

“You aren’t a polite boy, I think,” he said. “The idea! Wouldn’t you be drowned! Let me ask you a question. If you were invited out to dinner by a person you knew, do you think while you were sitting at his table you’d go hunting about in your head for some ‘if’ that would end in your starving to death? Wouldn’t you know that being invited to eat with that man you’d get your dinner all right?”

“Certainly,” said Jimmieboy. “But what has that got to do with it?”

“Plenty,” snapped the merboy. “You are my guest, and I look after all the details, such as swimming and so forth, just as your other host would look after all the details, such us eating and so forth. If you are going to be a scarecat I’ll drive right back home again, for I don’t like cats of any kind.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Jimmieboy. “I trust you, Mermy.”

“Thank you,” said the merboy, dropping one rein to squeeze Jimmieboy’s hand. “Thank you very much. You will find your confidence is well placed, for as long as you are with me as my guest you can stand on your head miles deep in water without being in any danger of drowning. Why, if you couldn’t, I never should have thought of bringing you along, for in a very few minutes we come tn a turn in our road and then we shall drive down under the water three miles and a half, and, what is more, you won’t even know you are under water unless I tell you.”

So Jimmieboy was reassured on the one point concerning which he had been a little timid, and he proceeded at once to enjoy everything he saw. In silence they drove on and on, and as the ocean was as smooth as glass they covered s great many miles in a few minutes. Suddenly the merboy reined in his dolphins with a sharp jerk, which caused the carriage to stop with such suddenness that Jimmieboy was nearly thrown out of his sent.

“What’s the matter?” cried Jimmieboy, a little alarmed at this sudden stoppage. “Nothing wrong?”

“No,” said the merboy, shortly. “But there might have been. Look ahead of you there.”

Jimmieboy did as he was told, and saw in an instant why the merboy had stopped short. A great big ocean steamer was plowing its way through the waves at a tremendous rate of speed directly across their path.

“Don’t you see?” said the merboy, as the steaming monster passed on, leaving a great strip of white foam behind it; “we were nearly run down that time. It is dreadful the way these steamers are allowed to ignore the safety of the rightful occupants of the seas. On land, when a railroad crosses a driveway, they make the trains go over or under a road in many places, and where they don’t do that, they make them put up fences or bars and station men to signal people who are driving of the approach of trains. Out here they are perfectly lawless. They cross our drives on the level always, and never yet has one of the steamers whistled or rung a bell to warn a fish to get out of its way.”

“It doesn’t seem right, does it?” said Jimmieboy.

“No, it doesn’t,” replied the merboy; “and the meanest part of it all is the steamship people don’t care. If I had my way they’d be compelled to fence in their routes all the way over, and station signal-men in boats at road crossings to warn us of impending danger. Why, if it hadn’t been for our own police, police that we have to pay ourselves, you and I would have been run down just now.”

“You don’t mean to say you have police out here on the ocean?” said Jimmieboy.

“Yes,” said the merboy; “several of ’em. In fact, we have about a million of ’em altogether. You land people call ’em porpoises. Ever see a porpoise?”

“Lots of them,” Jimmieboy replied. “They come up our river sometimes, and papa has told me lots of stories about them, but he never said they were policemen.”

“They aren’t police-men,” laughed the merboy. “They are police-fish. What did he ever tell you about them?”

“Oh—well—he said he’d seen schools of them jumping about in the water when he was crossing the ocean on one of those big boats,” said Jimmieboy; “and one of them, he said, followed his ship for four days one time. The reason why I remember about it particularly is that he told me, maybe, if I would be a very good boy, he’d try to get me one for a pet that I could tie a chain to and lead around when we went rowing sometime.”

The merboy laughed.

“The idea!” he said. “As if a porpoise could be treated like a poodle! That shows how little you land people know about porpoises. Did your father say they went about in schools?”

“That’s what he told me,” said Jimmieboy, meekly. “Don’t they?”

“Humph!” said the merboy. “Don’t they! Well, let me tell you one thing. Don’t you ever let a porpoise heat you say he goes about in schools. Leave schools to minnows and moss-bunkers and children. Why, my dear boy, porpoises know too much to go about in schools. They’d be much more likely to go about in colleges, if they went in anything of the sort. Didn’t you ever hear the story of the Porpoise and the Land-sage?”

“I never did,” Jimmieboy answered. “I never heard of a land-sage either. What is a land-sage?”

“A land-sage is a creature like a man. In fact, he is a man, and he lives on the land, and thinks he knows everything, when in reality he only knows land things.”

“But isn’t it good to know land things?” Jimmieboy asked.

“Oh yes—in a way,” said the merboy, patronizingly. “But just because you know land things doesn’t make you the wisest thing in the world. It’s a great deal better to know sea things, because if you know sea things, you know more than you do if you only know land things. There’s three times as much sea as land in the world, and so, of course, sea sages are three times as wise as land-sages. What’s more, you who live on the land don’t begin to hear of a half of a millionth part of the things that happen under the sea, while we who live under the sea can get all the laud news we want by tapping your Atlantic cable.”

“Why, so you can,” said Jimmieboy. “I never thought of that.”

“Of course you didn’t. You haven’t got the kind of mind that thinks that kind of thoughts,” sneered the merboy. “You people think you are great when you are able to sit at your breakfast tables in New York on Friday morning and talk about what has happened in London that same Friday afternoon—and it is rather smart to be able to do that, I admit—but what do you know about what has been going on in Sealadelphia, or Sharkargo, or Whalington, or Moss-bunkerton! Not a thing, I’ll warrant. But these sea creatures know all you know, and all their own news besides. So, you see, when a land-sage begins swapping knowledge with a sea-sage he finds himself ’way behind.”

“And what was the story about the Porpoise and the Land-sage?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Well, as I remember it,” said the merboy, “it went this way:

THE PORPOISE AND THE LAND-SAGE

A Land-sage once, who thought he knew

All that there was to know,

Went out to sea without a crew,

And floated to and fro.

And then, before he was aware

Just what he was about,

A fearful wind did straightway tear

His jib and mainsail out.

“I’m all at sea!” he moaned and cried;

“Oh dear, what shall I do!

Would that I’d never come outside

Without my gallant crew.

Just as he spoke a Porpoise came.

The Land-sage cried, “What, ho!

Where are you from and what’s your name?

Hullo there, you! Hullo!”

“What do you wish?” the Porpoise said

In accents soft and meek.

“I’d like to be at home in bed—

What language do you speak?”

“Sea-doggerel,” the Porpoise then

Made answer with a grin,

“Unless I speak with Englishmen,

And then I speak in Finn.”

“Perhaps,” the Land-sage then observed,

“You can enlighten me

By telling me—I’m much unnerved—

Just where I chance to be.”

“Of course I can,” the fish said. “You,

I think ’tis very clear,

Are out of sight of Manitou

And just about off here.”

“Pray do not mock me,” quoth the sage;

“I’m truly badly off,

And ’tis not right one of your age

At one like me should scoff.

I am the most enlightened man

That e’er the world did see;

So help me home, sir, if you can,

And tell me where I be.”

“You make me laugh,” the Porpoise said.

“Why should you come to me?

If you’ve all knowledge in your head,

I truly cannot see

Why you should ask a Porpoise, who

Is ignorant and plain,

What in this instance you should do

To get back home again?

“But I will tell you what I’ll do:

If you will shed some light

Upon a few things—one or two—

I’ll get you back all right.”

“A bargain!” cried the Land-sage, loud.

“I pray you do begin.”

“I will,” the Porpoise said, and bowed.

“Why do you wear a chin?

“Why have you hair upon your head?

And why do men wear cuffs?

And why are cannon-crackers red?

And why is cream in puffs?

Why can’t you swim on mountaintops?

And why is water wet?

And why don’t hens, like lambs, have chops?

And why don’t roosters set?”

The Land-sage paled as to his cheek.

“I cannot say,” said he.

“Then why does Friday come each week?

And why do maids drink tea?

Oh tell me why all kittens mew?

And why do little boys

When with their daily tasks they’re through,

Make such a dreadful noise?

The Porpoise waited for the sage

To answer, but in vain.

It filled the wise man full of rage

To have to flunk again.

Whereat the Porpoise, with a sneer

And very scornful glance,

Remarked: “You’re very dull, I fear.

I’ll give you one more chance.

“Tell me one thing I never heard

In all my life before,

And I will pass to you my word

To see you safe ashore.

But don’t be rash, oh, sage,” said he;

Take all the time you need

To think of what to tell me

That’s truly new indeed.”

The Land-sage thought and thought all day,

He thought the long night through,

But not an idea came his way

That he was sure was new;

And finally, in great despair,

He thought that he would see

What could be done to ease his care

By simple flattery.

And so he spoke, “Oh, Mr. P—,

Oh, Porpoise, sleek and trim,

The thought has just occurred to me

My wisdom’s rather slim;

But I believe a creature that

’S as beautiful as you

Can’t have the heart to let a flat

Like me die in the blue.”

“You think me so?“the Porpoise said.

“I do!” the sage replied.

“You have the purest classic head

I ever have espied.

Your eyes are truly lovely,

And your mouth is full of grace,

And nothing nobler can one see

Than is your noble face.”

The Land-sage ceased; the Porpoise smoled

And winked his eyes of blue.

“You’ve won, professor. You have told

Me something truly new.

I never heard my beauty praised

In all my life before.”

And then his good right fin he raised

And towed the sage ashore.

III
UNDER WATER

“Isn’t that interesting?” asked the Merboy when he had finished.

“Very,” returned Jimmieboy. “But I don’t see how it proves that the Porpoise knew any more than the Professor. Did he know why men have chins and why boys are noisy?”

“I don’t suppose he did,” returned the Merboy; “but even if he didn’t his ignorance wasn’t any greater than that of the Professor, while the Professor had to admit that there wasn’t anything he could tell the Porpoise that the Porpoise hadn’t heard before. That proved that the Porpoise knew quite as much as the Professor did; and the fact that the Porpoise knew how to got the Professor home while the Professor didn’t, showed that the Porpoise knew more than he did. That simply proves what I have already said, that sea creatures know more than land creatures—even Porpoises, and they know less than any other kind of fish.”

“It looks true,” said Jimmieboy. “But I hardly believe it, though.”

“Well, you’d better,” retorted the Merboy. “Why, people of your kind say themselves that fish is good for their brains. Why should this be so if fish weren’t what I’ve said they are?”

“That’s so!” Jimmieboy answered, convinced at last. “But it seems queer.”

“That’s because you don’t understand it,” said the Merboy, patronizingly “If you were n fish you’d understand it, but being a boy you can’t be expected to. It’s simple enough. You people on land are kept so busy all day long earning your living that you don’t have time really to study. On the other hand, we sea people don’t do anything but swim about all day and think. Didn’t you ever notice me up there in the aquarium lying perfectly motionless in the water with my eyes gazing off on both sides of me with a faraway look in them?”

“Often,” said Jimmieboy. “And I’ve wondered every time what you really were doing. Were you always thinking at those times?”

“Always,” said the Merboy. “Always studying out something.”

“And did you ever find out anything?” queried Jimmieboy.

“Yes,” said the Merboy. “I’ve found out everything; but,” he added, hastily, “don’t ask me to tell you everything now because these Dolphins are n little skittish, and I’ve got to keep my mind on them or we’ll be upset.” Here one of the Dolphins, to show how skittish he could be when he tried, stood erect on his tail, and then took a header deep down into the water, and in a moment Jimmieboy found himself clinging in alarm to the Merboy’s arm.

“Don’t do that!” cried the Merboy, “or you’ll surely upset us.”

“I was afraid he’d drag us under,” panted Jimmieboy, releasing his hold. .

“Drag us under?” repeated the Merboy. “Why, my dear boy, we are under. We’ve been driving under water for ten minutes now. In ten more we shall be on the ocean’s bottom.”

Jimmieboy pressed his lips as tightly together as he possibly could. If, as the Merboy had said, he was under water and headed directly for the bottom of the sea, he was not going to run any risks by opening his mouth and getting it full of seawater, which he knew from experience was not the pleasantest-tasting stuff in the world. He was a cautious boy too, Jimmieboy was, and he had a distinct recollection of having heard his father warn a friend of his at the seashore one summer’s day not to open his mouth too widely when he was in bathing, for fear he might take in the ocean at a gulp, which would be a dreadful thing to do.

“Don’t make such fearful faces,” said the Merboy, noticing Jimmieboy’s efforts to squeeze his two lips into one. “You’ll frighten the whales.”

“Mwime mfwaid mgetting mwater in m’ mouf,” mumbled Jimmieboy.

“Excuse me,” said the Merboy, looking at him as if he thought he was crazy. “I never studied that language, and I don’t know what you are trying to say; open your mouth and speak English.”

“Mwime mfwaid,”mumbled Jimmieboy again, meaning to say “I’m afraid.”

“Whoa!” cried the Merboy, reining in his Dolphins. “Now look here, Jamesboy,” he added severely, as the carriage came to a stop, “I won’t take you any further if you don’t stop that. My relatives down here have been very anxious to meet you, because I’ve written to them several times telling them all about you; but I can tell you just one thing. If you are going to make faces like that, and talk with your lips tight closed and your voice way down in your boots, not to mention the horrible language you are using, they won’t have anything to do with you, and they’ll think I got you out of a circus instead of at your home. What’s come over you all of a sudden, anyhow?”

Poor Jimmieboy didn’t know what to do. He had no wish to offend the Merboy or to frighten whales or to prove unpleasant to the Merboy’s friends, but he also did not care to get a mouthful of salt water.

Fortunately at this moment a Porpoise, who was on duty as a policeman in that neighborhood came swimming up, attracted, no doubt, by the somewhat angry tones of the Merboy.

“What’s the matter here?” he said, frowning with his left eyebrow and using his right eye to look pleasant, for if everything was all right he wanted to look pleasant, while the frown was for use in case there was danger of a disturbance.

“Nothing, Mr. Policeman,” answered the Merboy, nodding familiarly at the Porpoise. “I am afraid my little friend here isn’t feeling very well, and I was only trying to find out what the trouble was.”

“IS HE TAKEN THIS WAY OFTEN?”

“He does look kind of queer like, doesn’t he?” said the Porpoise, gazing at Jimmieboy’s lips. “He looks to me as if he were trying to swallow his teeth. Is he taken this way often?”

“Never saw him like this before,” said the Merboy, anxiously. “It’s something new for him to keep his mouth shut up so tight, and I can’t understand it.”

“Perhaps—” the Porpoise began; “but no,” he added, “I was going to say I’d arrest him for being disorderly, for he certainly is out of order, but I’m afraid the judge would fine me. I lost my last month’s pay for arresting a shark by mistake. Some shark swallowed a whole school of whitebait last week, and as the teachers of the school complained about having their business ruined I had to arrest someone. These sharks are all alike, you know, and I got hold of the wrong one, and the judge let him off and made me pay the damages. I’m afraid we couldn’t make out a case against this young man.”

“No; and we shouldn’t try it if we could,” said the Merboy. “I don’t want to get him into trouble. He’s my friend.”

“Well—say,” said the Porpoise. “I’ll tell you how we can find out what’s the matter. There’s a bureau of information about two hundred and thirty fathoms up the street. They know everything there. You might drive up there and find out what ails him.”

“That’s a good idea,” said the Merboy. “Who is in charge of the bureau?”

“Nobody. It just lies there at the side of the street. You’ll find the most interesting information in the top drawer. You can’t miss the bureau, because it’s the only one in the ocean, and it has brass knobs on it, and a brush and comb on the top of it. So long.”

“Goodbye,” said the Merboy, as the Porpoise with another curious glance at Jimmieboy swam away. Then the Merboy, turning the Dolphins’ heads in the direction of the bureau, started them along. “I shall feel very badly if this is a case of lockjaw,” he said to himself. “His parents would drive me out of the house, and I don’t think I’d be likely to get as nice a place anywhere else.”

“M-mwi awent wot wockwaw,” mumbled Jimmieboy.

“Don’t say another word or you’ll drive me crazy,” returned the Merboy. “This is simply awful as it is, but when you talk it’s worse than awful, it is horrific. Ah, I fancy this must be the bureau,” he added, drawing up alongside of a beautiful piece of furniture that stood at the roadside and looked very much like a bureau. “Hold the Dolphins, Jimmieboy, and I’ll get out and see if there’s any information to be had in regard to your case.”

IV
THE BUREAU OF INFORMATION

Jimmieboy took the reins in hand, and the Merboy sprang lightly out of the carriage, and by means of his tail wiggled himself to where the bureau stood. He opened the top drawer, and from where he sat Jimmieboy, who was watching him with a great deal of interest could see that it was divided up into sections, in each of which lay a dozen or more large envelopes, each fat with contents of some kind or another.

“I guess this must be the information I want about your lockjaw,” said the Merboy, picking up an envelope. “Yes,” he continued, as he took great slips of paper out of it. “It is. This envelope tells how to take spots out of carpets. Ha! ha! Listen to this: ‘To remove an ink stain from the parlor carpet, take a pair of shears and cut out the spotted part.’ That’s good advice. Here’s another telling how to start a fire. It says: ‘First build your fire, and then procure a match. Any kind of match will do except one that has already been used. Light the match and apply the burning end to the kindling. If the kindling ignites, the fire is started. If it does not, light another match and apply the burning end to the kindling. Keep this up until the kindling does ignite!’”

As the Merboy finished reading this a great commotion was heard in the water directly overhead, and looking up Jimmieboy saw a huge whale rushing headlong down toward him. At first he was a little frightened, but as the whale drew nearer and smiled pleasantly at him, his fear for some reason or another disappeared entirely.

“Hullo, Merby,” said the Whale. “What are you doing?”

“I’m after information,” returned the Merboy, shaking the extended flipper of the Whale.

“So am I,” returned the Whale. “I’m in great trouble.”

“Indeed?” said the Merboy. “What’s the matter?”

“I got into a fight with some whalers in the Arctic Ocean, and one of ’em threw a harpoon at me, and it stuck in my back. I want to get it out, but I don’t know how. Which drawer has information for Whales in it?”

“I don’t know,” replied the Merboy. “I’m trying to find out what’s the matter with Jimmieboy here. I’m afraid he’s got lockjaw, but the only thing the bureau has told me so far is how to take spots out of carpets and start fires.”

“What nonsense!” said the Whale “Let me try it, will you! I’m suffering like everything.”

“Certainly,” said the Merboy, standing aside. “There isn’t any special hurry about our case.”

The Whale smiled gratefully and grabbed up an envelope. Opening it he extracted a slip of paper, and read: “‘To make a good peach pie get ten ripe sliced peaches, a tin plate, and enough dough to cover first the bottom of the plate and the top of the peaches. Put the whole into a hot oven and cook until done.’”

“Ho!” laughed the Merboy.

“This bureau’s a nuisance,” said the Whale. “The idea of telling a sea-monster with a harpoon in his back how to make peach pie.”

Here he selected another envelope. This one contained n slip which read: “It is not polite to sneeze in company. If you like to sneeze, and are going out to an evening party, contrive to do all your sneezing before you go. If during the evening party you feel a sneeze coming on, rub the bridge of your nose, or press the middle of your upper lip with your forefinger, and the desire to sneeze will disappear.”

“Nice advice to give a Whale,” sneered the monster. “Where is my upper lip, I’d like to know, or my forefinger for that matter? If I don’t catch the right answer this time I’ll hit that bureau with my tail and knock it all to pieces.”

The Whale made one more effort. This time the slip he took out read, “If your teeth ache go to the dentist and have them pulled.”

“That’s a little nearer right,” said the Merboy.

“I don’t see how,” retorted the Whale. “I haven’t a toothache. I have a backache. Shall I go and get my back pulled?”

“No,” said the goldfish, “but perhaps you could get the harpoon pulled.”

The Whale’s face wreathed with smiles.

“That’s so,” he said, eagerly. “Wonder I didn’t think of that before. It’s a good idea. The bureau is some use after all—though if it hadn’t been for you, Merby, I’d never have discovered it.”

“Oh, yes you would,” said the Merboy. “After you had thought it over a little while you’d have seen what was meant. Information isn’t any good unless you think about it a little.”

“Well, I’m obliged to you just the same,” said the Whale, backing off. “It’s pretty hard to think when one has a harpoon in his back. I suppose you don’t know where I can find a dentist, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” said the Merboy. “I’ve never had occasion to use one.”

“Oh, well, I suppose there are such things, and so I’ll set about finding one. Goodbye,” said the Whale, and off he started in search of a dentist.

“He’s a very dull creature,” said the Merboy, returning to the bureau. “He never thinks much even when he hasn’t a harpoon in his back. Now for our trouble again. This envelope looks as if it might tell us.”

Again was the little fellow doomed to disappointment. All the information contained in this envelope related to the killing of potato-bugs, and the best way to keep mosquitoes from biting.

“This is the worst failure of a bureau of information I ever saw, or else I don’t know how to manage it,” he said. “Suppose you try it. Jimmieboy. You may have better luck.”

Jimmieboy dropped the reins and alighted from the carriage. Walking to the bureau he opened the second drawer and found it full of books. They were very handsome books on the outside, and if one could judge from their titles they were attractive inside too. One of them, for instance, was named The Porpoise of the Mediterranean, or A Minnow’s Adventures on the Coast of Africa. Another was labeled Poems of A Swordfish. Another was called Jellyfish Jingles, a title which so interested Jimmieboy that he opened it and read some of them. In a minute he threw his head back and laughed loudly, opening his mouth as widely as possible in his mirth. He was so amused that he couldn’t keep his lips closed.

“Listen to this,” he said; “it’s called ‘The Unfortunate Tale of the Pollywog.”

“The small sea-toad he climbed a tree

One windy summer’s day,

And through the water chanced to see

A pollywog grown gray;

Whereat he cried, ‘Oh, Pollywog,

Come tell me, sir, I pray,

How is it you are not a frog

And yet have grown so gray?”

‘Because,’ the Pollywog replied,

His visage turning pale;

‘Because,’ and here he deeply sighed,

And sadly wagged his tail;

‘Because,’ he added, as the tide

Grew wavy in the gale;

‘Because I shed but tears; I’ve tried

But cannot shed my tail.’”

“That’s pretty good,” said the Merboy, with a smile, noticing with a great deal of relief that Jimmieboy had at last opened his month. “Are there any more?” he added, just to see if Jimmieboy’s cure were final.

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy. “Here’s one about ‘A Sad Sea-Dog.’

“Oh, the sad sea-dog he has no fin,

And he never moves, they say.

He sits as still as n piece of tin,

And he’s never known to smile or grin,

Or to wipe his tears away.

His chief delight is to bark and growl,

And to yelp and screech and snap;

He does not mind if the wild winds howl,

He never will stir for fish or fowl,

And cares not what may hap.

He shakes his flippers and wags his jaws,

Delights in the awful gale,

He breaks each one of the ocean’s laws,

And no one lives that can make him pause,

From sharks to the mammoth whale.

And it’s all because a fisherman—

A man with a great green eye—

Mistook him once for his black-and-tan,

And whistled to him, and called him ‘Fan,’

In the days long since gone by.

When a sea-dog’s name is Anthony

Montgomery Varian,

’Tis apt to sour his spirit to be

Miscalled as upon that day was he

By a mean land name like Fan!”

“I should think so,” said the Goldfish. “It’s like being christened Algernon at church and being known as Petie in school.”

“I don’t wonder he sulked,” said Jimmieboy.

“Nor I,” said the Merboy. “But, say, Jimmieboy, you are cured of your lockjaw, aren’t you?”

“Dear me, I forgot!” said Jimmieboy. “I wasn’t going to open my mouth under water at all.”

“Why not, pray?” asked the Merboy.

“For fear of swallowing the ocean,” replied Jimmieboy.

“Ha! ha!” laughed the Merboy. “Why, you couldn’t swallow a drop of it, much less the whole of it, the way I’ve fixed it. Is that all you were doing—just holding your month shut?”

“That’s all,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, well! The idea!” said the Merboy. “You ought to have known better.”

“Well, I didn’t,” said Jimmieboy, glad to find that it was not really necessary to keep his mouth closed.

“Apparently not—and it took the bureau of information to cure you. That’s a very useful bureau.”

“Very,” said Jimmieboy. “I’d like to go through some of the drawers if we have time. Have we?”

“Lots,” said the Merboy, taking the brush on the top of the bureau and fixing his hair with it. “We have ten times as much time as there is.”

“How can that be?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Well, never mind now,” said the Merboy. “But sometime you ask your papa how long a dream a boy can have who is asleep only ten seconds. You will he surprised at what he tells you. I once had a dream lasting forty years in a nap that was less than a minute long. So go ahead. You have plenty of time, and I dare say you will find lots of valuable information in the bureau. I will he back in a few minutes.”

“You aren’t going to leave me, are you?” asked Jimmieboy.

“No. I’m only going to drive the Dolphins around to the stable. I’ll he right hack.”

The Merboy entered the carriage again and drove off, while Jimmieboy turned his attention to the bureau of information. As he turned, his eye caught: sight of two little drawers that he had not noticed before on either side of the mirror which surmounted the bureau. He tried to open the right-hand drawer, but found it locked. The left-hand one opened easily, and in it. Jimmieboy found a little golden key. This, as it turned out, was the key to the other drawer, and which, no sooner had the key turned in the lock, slid out as though pushed by a spring, and from it jumped the funniest little old man Jimmieboy had ever seen, hardly taller than his thumb, and dressed from head to font in beautiful garments of silver and gold. In his left hand the little old man carried a jeweled staff, and his right hand he extended to Jimmieboy, as much as to say,

“Why, howdy do? I’m very glad to see you.”

V
THE WIZARD

Jimmieboy grasped the old man’s hand, and for a few moments was silent. He was so astonished that he could do nothing but gaze upon his new acquaintance in wonder. The little old man seemed very much pleased at Jimmieboy’s apparent wonderment, for he smiled broadly and said,

“Thank you, sir.”

“You are very welcome,” murmured Jimmieboy, “but I don’t know what for. I didn’t know that I had done anything for you to thank me for.”

“Yes, indeed, you have,” returned the little old man, letting go of Jimmieboy’s hand, and dancing a lively jig upon the broad marble top of the bureau. “You have done two things. You have released me from a long imprisonment, for one thing, and for another you have looked at me in a manner which proves that you think me a most interesting person. I like freedom better than anything in the world, and next to that I like being an interesting person.”

“And were you really shut up in that little drawer so that you couldn’t get out?” asked Jimmieboy, beginning to feel very glad that fortune had led him that way, and so enabled him to help the little old man out of his trouble.

“Yes,” answered the other. “I’ve been locked up in that drawer there for nearly fifty years.”

“Fifty years!” ejaculated Jimmieboy. “Why, that’s longer than I have lived.”

“No, not quite,” said the little old man. “They were dream years, and a dream year isn’t much longer than a day of your time; but they have seemed real years to me, and I am just as grateful to you for unlocking the drawer and letting me out as I should have been had the years

“Why should anyone want to lock you up in a drawer?” asked Jimmieboy. “Were you naughty?”

“No,” said the old man. “I never did a naughty thing in all my life, but they locked me up just the same—just as if I had been a poor little canary-bird.”

“Who did it?” queried Jimmieboy. “They must have been very wicked people to treat you that way.”

“They were. Awfully wicked,” said the little old man. “They were wickeder than they seem, because really, you know, they intended that I should stay locked up there forever and ever.”

“But how did they come to do it?” asked Jimmieboy.

“It’s a long story,” answered the little old man. “But if you want me to I’ll tell it.”

“Do,” said Jimmieboy.

“Very well, then, I will,” said the little old man. “But not here. It is too wet here. We’ll go inside the drawer ourselves, where we can be dry and comfortable, and we’ll take the key in with us and lock ourselves in so that nobody can interfere with us. Will you come?”

“I don’t see how I can,” said Jimmieboy, looking down at his own body and then pointing to the drawer. “Don’t you see I am two or three dozen times too big to get in there?”

“That doesn’t make any difference,” said the little old man with a laugh. “For I am a wizard, and I can make you large or small, just as I please. If you will say the word I’ll make you so small you couldn’t see yourself with a magnifying-glass.”

Jimmieboy thought a moment, and concluded very wisely, I think, that he would rather not be so small as that. “I don’t like to lose sight of myself,” he said.

“Very well, then,” said the other. “Suppose I make you just about my size? How would that do?”

“I’d like that very much,” replied Jimmieboy, kindly. “I think you are an awfully nice size.”

Again the little old man smiled with pleasure. “You are the pleasantest boy I know,” he said; “and you will find out before long that it is worth while to make friends with old Thumbhi, Lord High Wizard of the Sea, and Court Jester to the King of the Waves.”

“Are you all that?” said Jimmieboy, pleased to discover that his new-found friend was a person of so great importance.

“Yes indeed,” answered Thumbhi. “I am all that, and half a dozen things more. In fact, I am so much that if we had a million dream years together I couldn’t even begin to tell you all that I am. But come. Are you ready to be made smaller?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy, a little nervously. “What do I do first?”

“You must put on a coat I give you,” replied the wizard. “It will be a little small for you, perhaps, but you can get it on.”

The wizard opened one of the bureau drawers, and took therefrom a coat, in which Jimmieboy hastened to array himself. It was, as the old man had said, a little small for him, but he managed to get into it, and after wearing it a minute or two he found it quite comfortable.

“Now take it off,” said the wizard, taking a second coat out of the drawer, “and put this one on.”

Jimmieboy took off the coat. “Is this larger than the other?” he asked, as he began to put the second coat on.

“No; it is a trifle smaller,” replied the wizard. “That’s my scheme. You keep putting on coats that are smaller than the one you have just taken off. You stay in them until they fit you comfortably, and finally when you get the last one on you will be small enough to get into the drawer.”

“That’s a fine plan,” said Jimmieboy.

Then he went through the process of changing coats, each new coat being a little smaller than the other, until he had tried on at least fifty of them, when for the first time since he began he caught sight of himself in the glass.

“My!” he cried, in pleased astonishment. “I’m hardly any bigger than you are.”

“That’s so,” replied the little old man. “One more coat, and we can get you into the drawer.”

Jimmieboy put on the last coat. A little bit of a thing it was, hardly larger than a doll’s overcoat, and, if the truth be told, awfully tight; but, as with all the others, it soon became as comfortable as any coat he had ever worn, and then, looking at himself in the glass once more, Jimmieboy observed that he was actually no larger than Thumbhi.

“It didn’t hurt much, did it?” asked Thumbhi.

“Not a bit,” said Jimmieboy. “It was as easy and pleasant as could be.”

“That’s the great thing about my tricks,” said the wizard. “They never hurt anybody. It would he a good thing if all tricks were that way. Tricks that hurt people are mean, and I don’t have anything to do with them, and if you will take my advice you won’t either.”

“I’ll take anything you’ll give me,” said Jimmieboy.

The old wizard laughed heartily at this. “Most boys would,” said he, “but you are the first one I ever met who was willing to take advice. The boys I’ve known have all been like little Sammy. Ever hear about little Sammy?”

“No,” answered Jimmieboy. “What did he do?”

“Why.” said the wizard, “Sammy is the boy the poet wrote about, saying:

“Sammy was a pretty boy,

Sammy was his mother’s joy.

Sammy’d take

A piece of cake,

Sammy’d always take a toy.

Sammy’d take a top to spin,

Pie with fruit and raisins in.

Sammy’d take

A piece of steak,

Sammy’d take his medicine.

Sammy’d take a bowl of rice,

Sammy’d take a bit of spice.

Sammy’d take

A garden rake,

But he would not take advice.”

Here the wizard stopped.

“Is that all?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Certainly,” answered Thumbhi. “What more do you want?”

“Didn’t anything happen to Sammy?” queried Jimmieboy.

The wizard was about to say no, but than he suddenly remembered that something always does happen to boys that refuse to take advice, so he said: “The poet never told us about that, but I think it probable that something did happen to Sammy. Very likely he went out skating on a millpond one summer day in spite of his father’s warning, and got his feet so wet that he caught cold, and had to stay in bed while all the other boys went off on a picnic.”

This seemed to satisfy Jimmieboy, and Sammy was dropped as a subject of conversation.

“Now let us go into the drawer,” said the wizard.

VI
IN THE DRAWER

Jimmieboy clambered up the side of the bureau with some difficulty too, because he was now so small that the bureau was not so easy to climb. In a few minutes, however, he was comfortably fixed inside the drawer, and the Wizard, taking the key from the lock, followed him. Once inside he touched a spring on the side of the drawer, and with a bang it shut itself.

“There we are,” said the Wizard, locking the drawer from the inside. “How do you like it, Jimmieboy?”

“It’s awfully dark,” said the little fellow. “I can’t see an inch in front of my face.”

“Then take my hand,” said the Wizard, “and I’ll lead you to where it is light.”

Jimmieboy did as he was told, and the two little creatures groped their way along in the dark until the Wizard found a small door. Turning the knob to this he threw it wide open, and Jimmieboy looking through it saw a beautiful garden in which sweetly perfumed fountains were plashlng merrily, and through which there were scattered beds and beds of the loveliest and withal the most singular-looking flowers he had ever seen.

“My!” he cried in an ecstasy of delight. “Isn’t this magnificent!”

“Oh, yes—pretty good,” said Thumbhi. “I suppose when one sees it for the first time it must look like the most beautiful place in the world, but to one whose prison It has been it isn’t quite so beautiful. You never heard my song,

“‘I would rather be free in a dungeon cell

Than a captive at large in a flowered dell.’

Did you?”

“No,” said Jimmieboy, “I never did. How does it go?”

“This way,” replied the Wizard, and then he repeated these lines:

“I would rather be free in a dungeon cell

Than a captive at large in a flowered dell;

I would rather be free ’neath a load of chains

Than a prisoner roaming the country lanes.

I would rather be free in an ice-bound cave

Than to sit on a throne as another’s slave;

For all the great blessings with which man’s blest

’Tis freedom, sweet freedom that I love the best.’”

“That’s a pretty song,” said Jimmieboy. “And I think maybe you are right. I feel that way myself sometimes. Once in a while when I’m told I can’t do something, I feel that way. I always want to do that thing more than ever.”

“You are just like me, then—though really I didn’t think much about freedom and how nice it was, and what a dreadful thing captivity was, until I had a little chat one night with a songbird. She was cooped up in a cage, and sometimes she nearly broke her wings fluttering up against the bars of it trying to get out. As I watched her I wondered how she could sing so happily when she was shut up that way, and I asked her about it. She answered me softly, ‘It isn’t I that is happy. It is my song that is happy because it is free.’ And then she sang this little verse to me:

“Though they shut me close in these brazen bars,

Though they keep me a captive long,

Yet my notes will rise

Till they touch the skies.

No man can imprison my song.”

“I’ve always felt sorry for birds in cages,” said Jimmieboy, when the Wizard had spoken. “And I’ve wondered, too, how they could sing so sweetly when all the day long they were locked up with nothing to do but jump from one perch to another, or swing in that little swing at the top of the cage.”

“Well, there’s one thing that’s nice about their lives,” said the Wizard. “They don’t have anybody to quarrel with. I think that’s very fine.”

“That’s true,” said Jimmieboy. “And then, too, when one bird wants to swing there isn’t any other little bird that he has to give up to; but I’d rather be free, and take my chances of getting the swing, wouldn’t you?”

“Rather!” ejaculated the Wizard. “But, my dear fellow, we are wasting time. The Merboy will be back in a few minutes, and if you want to see all the wonders of this place we must hurry. Come. Let’s go out into the garden.”

The queer little fellow leading the way, the two new friends went out of the drawer. As they sauntered along, Thumbhi reached out his hands and plucked two pretty flowers from a bush at the side of the path, and putting one of them in his mouth handed the other to Jimmieboy.

“You must be hungry by this time,” he said. “Eat that.”

“Flowers aren’t good to eat, are they?” asked Jimmieboy.

“Cauliflowers and the flowers of this garden are. That is nothing but a biscuit-bush I plucked those from. Didn’t you ever see a biscuit-bush?”

“Never,” said Jimmieboy; “though I should think they’d be very nice.”

“They are,” said the Wizard.

“How do you make them grow?” asked Jimmieboy in surprise.

“Simple enough,” said Thumbhi. “Take the Buckwheat-cake bush, for instance. Buckwheat cakes are nothing more than cooked buckwheat, so instead of planting the seeds raw we plant them cooked, and when they grow up and sprout, instead of putting forth raw buckwheat out come the cakes. Try one.”

Jimmieboy needed no second bidding, for as the Wizard spoke he had reached over to the buckwheat-cake bed, and plucked a half-dozen hot, steaming cakes.

“My!” ejaculated Jimmieboy, as he swallowed the first one, somewhat greedily, perhaps, for he was very hungry. “My! How sweet they are.”

“Aren’t they!” said the Wizard. “And why shouldn’t they be? We water the Buckwheat-cake bushes with maple syrup.”

The idea was so overpoweringly lovely that Jimmieboy could not find words to express his delight over it. He simply let his eyes open a little wider, but the twinkle in them showed the Wizard how he felt.

“Now here,” said the Wizard, tapping a little door in a curious-looking summer-house—“here is where we keep our tools. They are the funniest tools you ever saw in your life. They do all their own work. I’ll introduce you to some of them. Mr. Rake?”

“Well?” came a voice from within. “Well, what’s wanted? If you are the gravel path you might as well trot away. I can’t smooth you off today, and if you are the weed path, I’ve asked Mr. Hoe to attend to you. I’m having trouble with my teeth.”

“It’s I—Thumbhi,” said the Wizard.

“Oh,” came the answer. “Why didn’t you say so.”

Here the door was opened, and the Rake hopped out.

“Good morning,” he said. “I didn’t know it was you or I wouldn’t have kept you waiting. Who is your young friend?”

“Jimmieboy,” returned the Wizard. “This is his first visit, and I didn’t know but what you’d show him how you do your work.”

“I’d be very glad to,” said the Rake, “but it’s impossible this morning. I spent all day yesterday raking the candy field, and it has made my teeth ache like seventy-two—which is twelve more than like sixty; but if he’s fond of jokes I can give him a few. Why is a—”

“Well, really,” said the Wizard, who knew the Rake’s jokes were very bad, and who was therefore anxious to spare Jimmieboy the trouble of hearing them, “we don’t like to bother you. We’ll run along—”

“No bother, I assure you,” said the Rake. “I know it by heart. Why is a trolley-car like a grindstone without any handle?”

“I couldn’t possibly guess,” said Jimmieboy, with a grin.

“They don’t either of them smoke cigarettes, of course,” said the Rake. “I should think anybody could have told that. Now, can you tell me why a—”

“Thumbhi!” came a voice in the distance.

“Excuse me for a minute,” said Thumbhi. “I think I hear somebody calling me,” and he was off.

“You’d better follow him, Jimmieboy,” said the Rake, kindly. “Don’t lose sight of him for an instant. This is his way of getting rid of you. He brought you in here to tell you his history, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Jimmieboy.

“Well, he hasn’t got one,” whispered the Rake. “He hasn’t got one, and he never had one, and this having himself called away is only one of his tricks. Keep your eye on him or you’re lost.”

With this the Rake slammed the door of the tool-house, and Jimmieboy, turning about, peered down the path at the Wizard, who was running as fast as his legs could carry him.

JIMMIEBOY STARTED IN PURSUIT

Jimmieboy started in pursuit—and what a pursuit it was! Like the wind they ran, mile after mile round and round the garden, through forests that turned up on the road here and there, and once in awhile with great bounds jumping over rivers and mountains, until finally Thumbhi turned suddenly, ran backwards directly past Jimmieboy, and before the little visitor had time to turn around was lost to sight.

Jimmieboy was now quite lost. He had no idea as to his whereabouts. The garden had long since disappeared, and so fast had he run the boy had failed to notice in what direction he had come.

“Humph!” he said, seating himself by the road to catch his breath. “Here’s a muddle. I wonder where the Merboy is?”

“Here I am,” came a subdued little voice that sounded miles away. “Take the first door to your right, open it, and you’ll find me.”

Jimmieboy started up and walked, it seemed to him, for hours, but no door appeared anywhere until, just as the sun was setting, he came to a big oak tree with a little bit of a door halfway up its trunk.

“I wonder if that’s it!” said the puzzled boy, scratching his head.

“Yes,” came the voice from the inside. “Climb up and come in.”

“I can’t climb ’way up there,” said Jimmieboy.

“Then we’ll let the door down,” returned the voice behind the door. Sure enough down came the door. Jimmieboy opened it and walked in, and there was the Merboy, only he had become a goldfish in the aquarium in the nursery again, and was swimming around as unconcernedly as if nothing had ever happened.

“Wasn’t it queer?” said Jimmieboy, as he told the story to his father.

“Very,“said his father, “but queer things often happen to boys who eat as much fruit cake as you do.” Which was the only explanation of his strange adventure that Jimmieboy ever got.

THE END

•   2   •

JIMMIEBOY AND THE ANIMALS

It was night and the Zoo was closed. In the center of the large tent in which the animals lived, a single electric light burned dimly, casting weird shadows over the cages of the animals now resting after a hard day’s work. How small Jimmieboy had managed to get there nobody knows—not even he himself, nor is he today exactly able to make up his mind as to how he ever managed to escape. At any rate he was there alone, and, strange to say, he felt very much at home. The animals, fierce as they were, frightened him not at all, and he patted the huge lion on his head, and poked his fingers into the leopard’s spots just as though they were a couple of kittens, and they smiled benignly upon him.

“HOW DO YOU LIKE US, JIMMIEBOY?”

“How do you like us, Jimmieboy?” asked the Lion, looking at him affectionately out of his great big eyes. “Don’t you think we are altogether the finest collection of animals you ever saw?”

“Yes, indeed, said Jimmieboy. “You are even finer than the pictures of you out on the fences, and I never expected you’d be that.”

“Well it’s pretty hard to live up to those pictures,” said the Bear with a yawn that gave Jimmieboy an idea of how easy it would be for a bear to swallow a mun at one gulp. “There’s one picture of me particularly that I wish they would take in. You know it, I guess—the one where I’m shown as squeezing three men, a boy, four guns, and a bowie-knife to death. I don’t like that picture, and I never did. I don’t remember ever to have squeezed more than two men and a boy at one time, and when people come in here expecting to see me hugging three men and a boy, and don’t, they are disappointed with me. As the Hyena—who always laughs at his own jokes—would say ‘they can’t bear me.’”

“They don’t give you enough men for it, anyhow, do they?” asked the Monkey.

“No,” returned the Bear. “But the people don’t know that.”

“Why don’t you tell them?” asked Jimmieboy. “Then they’d know.”

“It’s against the rules for the animals to talk to the audience,” said the Bear with a sigh. “Otherwise I’d do it.”

“Where was the Giraffe today?” asked the Leopard, sauntering up. “I didn’t see him anywhere.”

“He’s got a sore throat,“replied the Zebra, who is a great crony of the Giraffe.

“Dear me—much of a one?” asked the Elephant.

“Yes, I guess he must have five yards of it,” said the Zebra.

“How it must hurt him to swallow,” observed Jimmieboy.

“It does,” said the Zebra. “He can’t swallow anything, not even fairy stories or his youth, and he is so weak that he has to rest his neck on crutches all the time.”

“Poor fellow,” said Jimmieboy, “how he must suffer.”

“Dreadfully—particularly from disappointment,” said the Zebra. “He was going to sing at the Zoo concert next week, but now he can’t.”

“Does the Giraffe sing?” queried Jimmieboy, amazed to hear what the Zebra had just said.

“Does he?” ejaculated the Zebra. “Well, rather. Beautifully. Why, the Kangaroo, who is a good deal of a poet in his way, once wrote a poem to the Giraffe on the subject of his voice. Haven’t you heard it!”

“No,” said Jimmieboy. “But I’d like to hear it.”

“It was called, ‘To a Musical Giraffe,’ and it went this way,” said the Zebra:

“When my old friend Giraffe begins

To exercise his throat,

It knocks me off my nether pins

To hear one single note.

And when he finishes his song,

No matter what the tune—

However short, however long—

His audiences swoon.”

“What kind of a voice is it?” queried Jimmieboy. “Bass or tenor?”

“Both,” said the Zebra. “That’s the wonderful thing about it. The length of his throat gives him a tremendously long voice. I guess he must have seventeen octaves in it. He can go four inches lower than the basest note on the hand-organ, and when he gets to high notes, you’d think to hear him he was up in a balloon. I hoard him sing a duet with himself once, and really I was so overcome I couldn’t stand on one foot for two weeks. It was magnificent.”

“By the way, Zebu,” said the Lion, “you looked mighty well at the masquerade ball the other night.”

“Yes,” returned the Zebra, with a satisfied smile. “I think that was a great scheme of mine, don’t you?”

“First-rate,” said the Lion. “I knew what you meant to represent the minute I saw you.”

“So did I,”said the Bear. “Only I think you should have had a tennis-racket to carry out the effect.”

“What had the tennis-racket to do with it?” asked the Zebra.

“That’s what I want to bear,” said the Lion.

“You meant to appear as tennis-player—you had the striped blazer on,” explained the Bear.

“How stupid he is,” said the Lion. “He wasn’t a tennis-player at all.”

“Of course I wasn’t,” said the Zebra.

“Anybody could see you meant to be n piece of toast,” said the Lion.

“A what?” shrieked the Zebra.

“A piece of toast; you looked it too, Zebe.”

“I did nothing of the sort,”retorted the Zebra, angrily. “I meant to be an American flag. Didn’t you see the blue hat I had on with stars on it?”

Here the Hyena laughed, and the Zebra walked away in a huff.

“You have very deeply offended him,” said the Leopard. “he hates to be told that he looks like a piece of toast or a blazer, because he heard the clown say once that toast was insipid, and only fit for the ground-work of a Welsh rarebit, and blazers, as you all know, are very unfashionable.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings,” said the Lion, “but if he didn’t look like a piece of toast, he looked less like an American flag—why, he didn’t wave a bit, and his stripes weren’t red and white, but brown and yellow.”

“He wasn’t fastened to a pole, either,” said the Bear. “Was he, Lion?”

“No, he wasn’t. But never mind. He’ll be around again. Zebe is too fond of talking to sulk very long. How many peanuts did you get today, Jumbo?”

“Only one,” said Jumbo, sadly. “One peanut, a lemon pie, and a pair of opera-glasses.”

“How on earth did you happen to get the opera-glasses?” asked the Lion, with a loud laugh.

“It was a mistake,” returned the Elephant, wiggling his ear. “A very bad mistake on the part of a little girl who was carrying her mother’s opera-glasses in one hand and the most beautiful bun you ever saw in the other. The bun was for me, and the little girl was going to throw it into my month in the usual way, but she got so excited she didn’t know what she was doing, and threw the glasses clear down into my throat. It was terrible the way those glasses went down.”

“What made you swallow them?” asked the Gnu.

“I didn’t know of her mistake until I looked down at her and saw the glasses were gone, and the bun was still in her hand,” returned the Elephant. “I had my eyes turned up to the ceiling in an ecstasy of anticipation.”

“But couldn’t you tell by the taste of them?”

“Well, I thought it was the worst bun for its looks I’d ever had,” replied the Elephant. “But I took it for granted the child knew what she was about. I never even dreamed of getting the opera-glasses. I’ve had pretty nearly everything from a sealskin to a paper of tacks presented to me in that fashion, but never in my wildest moments did I ever hope for opera-glasses.”

“Were the tacks good?” asked Jimmieboy.

“First-rate,” replied the Elephant. “They were rather sharp, but not more so than red pepper, and I was really glad to get them at the time because it was springtime, and I felt sort of run down and needed a little iron. They set me right up again.”

“Tacks are first-rate to keep things from going to pieces,” observed the Bear with a wink at Jimmieboy.

“They held me together,” said the Elephant, and then they all laughed again, whereupon the Lion roared over to the Hippopotamus that they’d all like to hear his pathetic song about the Nile.

“Very well,” replied the Hippopotamus, “I’ll sing it with pleasure, but I warn you it makes me cry, and Jimmieboy will get his feet wet if I do.”

“Oh no, he won’t—not if he climbs up on the Giraffe’s neck,” said the Lion.

“But the Giraffe’s away,” said the Bear.

“Then let him get up on the trapeze,” said the Lion.

“No,” said the Hippopotamus, who was, by the way, one of the most agreeable and accommodating behemoths that ever lived.

“I’ll fix it. As I weep I’ll open my mouth and catch the tears as they flow and swallow them.”

“Thank you,” said Jimmieboy. “You are very kind, indeed.”

“Not at all,” returned the Hippopotamus, politely. “Its really a pleasure. I am very fond of salt water.”

And then he began his song:

“Oh, the River of the Nile

Is a truly wondrous stream,

It is longer than a mile,

And as green as pistache cream.

I was born there long ago,

On the river’s mossy bank,

Long before I had the woe

For to dwell here in a tank.

Oh, the things I had to eat

In those days were hard to beat,

For the Pickanninies on the Nile were wonderfully sweet.

Then the Hippopotami

Held the river in their grip—

In the days for which I sigh,

When its waters knew no ship.

With the festive Crocodile

And the roaring cataract,

That dear River of the Nile

Was an Eden for a fact.

Oh, the fun we used to see

In the happy apogee

Of our Kingdom on the River down in sunny Afrikee!”

Here the Hippopotamus began to show signs of emotion. Great tears measuring about a gallon apiece appeared at the outer corners of his eyes, and Jimmieboy grew somewhat fearful lest the huge creature should either forget his promise to catch them in falling, or else should be unable to do so, but the Hippopotamus did not forget, and showed himself a very ingenious creature in the way he managed his tears. He simply smiled until the corners of his mouth reached the corners of his eyes, and as they met the tears broke and coursed in a torrent down his throat. In a moment he had gathered in all there were—about eighty-seven gallons from each eye—when he began the last verse of his song:

“Oh! it makes me very sad

To be shut up in a Zoo

With a Hudson River Shad,

And an aged Kangaroo;

With a Grizznelly Bear

And a whisker-growing Yak;

With the Tortoise and the Hare,

And the balance of the pack.

Since my voice in grief must drop

My sad song at once I’ll stop,

With the statement that this life for that of old’s a losing swap.”

“Bravo!” cried the Lion, his voice trembling with sympathy.

“Don’t cry,” said the Bear to the weeping Hippopotamus. “It makes you look like a Hypochondriac, and I don’t like them.”

“What’s a Hypochondriac?” asked Jimmieboy.

“It’s an animal that can’t see any fun in life, and thinks when ever it hasn’t got mumps it has asthma or something else.”

“What a disagreeable animal,” said Jimmieboy. “Have you one here?”

“No,” returned the Lion. “We are only quadrupeds here. The Hypochondriac is a biped, according to the histories, but I don’t believe it’s true, because they never seem to me to have any legs at all. By the way, what time is it?”

“Five o’clock,” said the Bear.

“A.M. or P.M.?”queried the Lion.

“A.M.,” said the Bear.

“Then it’s time we began to roar for our breakfasts. Are you ready?”

“We are!” cried all the Beasts at once, and then the Lion counted “One—Two—Three!” whereupon they all began to roar with the full strength of their lungs. The noise was terrifying, and Jimmieboy, to keep from hearing it, covered his ears with his hands, and closed his eyes as tightly as he could. In a minute he opened his eyes again, and the animals had disappeared, so had the circus tent and everything connected with it. The sun was just sending its first morning rays through the closed blinds of the nursery window, and the clock bell was sounding the last stroke of six.

So as usual Jimmieboy scampered out of the nursery into his father’s room to tell him of the strange thing that happened in the night, and how indignant he was with his father after he had finished!

And well he might have been, for his father had the impudence to tell him he had imagined it all!

•   3   •

BUNKEY, MONKEY, AND JIMMIEBOY

Next to his father and mother and his aunts and uncles and his meals there was nothing Jimmieboy liked much better than Bunkey, unless, perchance, it happened to be Monkey. The three were always together. Bunkey—who began life as a flannel rabbit, and whose name of Bunnie had been changed by Jimmieboy to Bunkey for reasons best known to himself—was a very quiet creature. It was said by some of the other toys in the nursery that Bunkey was stuffed with cotton, and certain it was that his ears were made of kid; but he was very inoffensive in spite of it all, and never quarreled with anybody except by request. Monkey was not quite so retiring in his disposition as Bunkey—possibly because he was made of plush, and had real kitten’s fur for hair, and a large rubber elastic to swing on, all of which tended to make him proud. Nevertheless, he was a most agreeable companion, and always, even when engaged in one of the quarrels I have already mentioned, wore a smile on his face that was truly captivating. Jimmieboy’s father once said that the smile was a misfit one, being at least four sizes too large for Monkey’s face, but this made very little difference after you had known Monkey for a few days.

It was at night that Jimmieboy most strongly showed his attachment to Bunkey and Monkey. For some unexplained reason he could never go to sleep unless his two friends were at his side.

So it happened that on one beautiful moonlight night last summer, after a day of very hard play together, Jimmieboy and Bunkey and Monkey lay sleeping in the brass crib alongside of the big oak bedstead in which Jimmieboy’s papa slept. One of them was snoring very loud, which one I could not at the moment say, though I suspected it was Jimmieboy, since I had never seen a flannel rabbit or a plush monkey that could snore quite so successfully as the snore that night was being snored, and in a moment I knew that my suspicions were correct. The noise echoing through the, room waked Bunkey up.

“Dear me,” he said, “what a dreadful racket! It sounds as though somebody was trying to saw the house in two. Hi! Monkey!”

Monkey opened his eyes, sleepily, and shoved the bedclothes away from his smile, which was still there, broad as ever.

“What?” he said.

“I can’t sleep with all that noise going on, and I don’t see how you can,” said Bunkey.

“I couldn’t if I had heard it,” said Monkey; “and now that I do hear it, I can’t. Who’s doing it, anyhow?”

“I thought you were, at first,” returned Bunkey; “but as you are awake, and as wide-awake people don’t snore, I suppose it must be Jimmieboy. Shall I wake him up?”

“No,” answered Monkey, by this time thoroughly wide awake. “Don’t let’s wake him. Let’s take him off for a moonlight walk.”

“First-rate scheme,” returned Bunkey.

“Elegant,” murmured Jimmieboy, in his sleep. “Just what I’d like. Where shall we walk to?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Bunkey. “Perhaps

“We’ll skip across the deep blue sea,

Or scale the mountain height;

We’ll caper to the River Dee,

Or climb the moonbeams bright;

We’ll run across to ancient Rome,

We’ll seek the Scottish lakes—

At any rate, we’ll get back home

In time for buckwheat cakes.”

“Exactly,” said Monkey. “We’ll do that, unless

“We trot about old China’s walls,

Or rush through Germany,

Or visit Montmorenci Falls,

And thence to Tuscany;

Or out to see the frosty rime

Upon the Northern Coast—

But surely we’ll be back in time

For hard-boiled eggs and toast.”

ON A MOONLIGHT WALK

As Monkey recited these lines Jimmieboy seemed to see himself walking down a wooded lane. On one side of him walked Monkey, and on the other hopped the long-eared Bunkey, And never before had either of them acted in so undignified a manner. Bunkey, for instance, would stand on the tip of his ears, and recite such ludicrous rhymes as this:

“I met an Ant one summer’s day,

And, mercy, how he wept!

His tears quite flooded up the way,

As down his cheeks they crept.

‘See here, oh, Ant,’ I said to him.

‘Pray tell me why you cry?

Is it for trouble or a whim

That tears suffuse your eye?’

‘’Tis disappointment, gentle sir,’

He answered, sobbingly.

‘I am an Ant, when I’d prefer

An Uncle much to be.’”

And Monkey—well, his behavior was absolutely unaccountable. He would stand on the extreme point of his tail and whirl and whirl about until Jimmieboy was afraid he would turn into a top, and then he’d fall flat on the ground, never once forgetting his smile, and, beating time with all four of his legs, he would sing songs like this:

“If I looked like a battle-axe,

A shovel, or a rake;

The fish that furnish seal-skin sacques;

A cat or box of carpet-tacks;

A gaudy rattlesnake;

A greenhouse or a coffeepot;

An armchair or a gnu;

A hammock or a corner lot,

A tennis-court or piece of shot,

I don’t know what I’d do—

For I do think of all the things

There are on land or sea—

From cisterns up to noble Kings

The finest with or without wings

Are things that look like me.”

“It’s a good thing you are satisfied,” said Bunkey. “I admire that in you. To be satisfied under the circumstances would be too much of a strain on me.

“For candidly, oh, Monkey dear,

Although you’re very witty,

I really must remark, I fear,

You’re not what I call pretty.”

“No,” returned Monkey, “I don’t think myself that I am pretty. I am beautiful. But where shall we go?”

“Let us take Jimmieboy down that rabbit-hole I told you about,” replied Bunkey, “and show him the Undergroundies, and the Rootle-tootle birds, and the wonderful jewel-cave where the King of the Rabbits lives.”

“No,” returned Monkey. “It is too damp under the ground. He’ll catch cold there. Let’s take him up that Coconut-tree I was talking to you about night before last—the one that leads to the country of the Upintheairies.”

“I cannot consent to that,” said Bunkey. “If he should lose his grip while he was climbing and fall, he might break his leg or arm.

“And better a cold in the head say I,

And better a stuffed-up nose

Than an broken pate,

And an injured gait

From a couple of fractured toes.”

“But how are we going to settle our difference, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll have to leave it to Jimmieboy, I suppose,” said Monkey, with a sigh. “Though there isn’t any doubt that I am right.”

“That reminds me of a conundrum,” said Bunkey. “When is right wrong?”

“I don’t know,” observed Monkey. “When?”

“When you ought to go to the left,” returned Bunkey. “I guess we’ll have to leave it to Jimmieboy.”

So it was decided to let Jimmieboy settle the question for himself. Bunkey led him to a fallen tree at the side of the road, and sang to him as follows:

“If you would see a wonderful land,

A land all covered with gold,

The home most grand of a happy band,

A people of wealth untold—

If you would see why the rosebush grows,

The source of its sweet perfume,

You’ll turn your toes whither I propose,

Where the Undergroundies bloom.

We’ll slip right down in this rabbit-hole,

We’ll visit the oak tree’s root.

We’ll meet the droll and musical mole,

That plays on a one-stringed lute.

We’ll see the mines of copper and tin,

Of silver and coal and lead;

We’ll see the grin of the mannikin

Who sits at the Nation’s head.

So come, oh, come! Come along with me,

And come, as quick as you can,

If you would see an Undergroundy

Who’s never been seen by man.”

“Indeed I will,” cried Jimmieboy, with a broad smile. “I’ve often said I’d like to go underground sometime and see what there was there. Go ahead. I’ll follow.”

“Wait,” observed Monkey, laying his hand gently on Jimmie boy’s arm to detain him—“wait till you hear what I want you to do.

“If you would witness a wondrous sight,

A sight that is fair to see,

Just take up your flight with me tonight,

And climb up this leafy tree.

It leads to the land that knows no cares,

A land that is filled with joys,

That teems with pears and humorous bears,

And millions of funny toys.

Its streets are all paved with precious stones,

Of sugar the houses are made,

And nobody groans with aching bones,

And none of its flowers fade.

The boys all do whatever they please;

The brooks are teeming with fish;

There’s miles of cheese and honey and peas,

And all of the jam you wish.

So come, oh, come! Come along with me,

And come as quick as you can,

If you would see an L-A-N-D

That’s never been seen by man.”

“Perfectly lovely!” cried Jimmieboy, clapping his hands with glee, and rushing to the foot of the tree. “Give me a boost, Monkey.”

“Hold on!” yelled Bunkey, grabbing Jimmieboy by his gown. “Hold on. You were going down the rabbit-hole with me. Why, my dear boy, if you don’t go down there with me now you can never go, and then you’ll miss seeing the fountain-head of all the maple-syrup there is in the world; you’ll miss seeing Diamond River, which is an underground stream not far down that flows along like water, only it’s all diamonds, and the most beautiful ones that ever were made; you’ll miss meeting the Elves of the forests, the fairies of the flower-roots—in fact, you’ll miss everything.”

“I’d forgotten all about that,“said Jimmieboy, loosing his hold on the tree, and running to the mouth of the rabbit-hole. “Of course I can’t miss that. How do I do? Just jump right in?”

“Yes,” returned Bunkey.

“NO!” roared Monkey. “If you go with him you won’t see my place up the tree. Mind, I tell you. This is the only chance ever afforded any boy to go there, and if you say no this time it’s no forever; and I can tell you I wouldn’t miss seeing a country where taffy hangs from the trees, and doesn’t cost a cent; where soda-water, flavored any way you want it, can be pumped right out of the ground, and where there is a free circus going on all the time, and no school to interfere with it—I wouldn’t miss that for all the world.”

“Nor I,” said Jimmieboy, leaving the rabbit-bole, and standing very much perplexed in the middle of the road. “But I—I’d kind of like to see Bunkey’s place.”

“Then why don’t you come?” said Bunkey.

“Because I want to see Monkey’s place,” sobbed Jimmieboy.

“Oh, come along,” said Bunkey and Monkey together.

And each of the two small creatures took hold of one of Jimmieboy’s hands and tried to get him to go his way, and so hard did they pull that Jimmieboy thought they would tear him in two. To save himself from that horrible fate, Jimmieboy hurled them from him, and—well, Monkey hit a vase on the mantelpiece, and as for Bunkey, I am sorry to say that Bunkey landed squarely on Jimmieboy’s papa’s favorite eye, which made him cry out so loudly that Jimmieboy waked up and found that it was all a dream. That is, it was all a dream excepting as to the broken vase on the mantel-piece and papa’s eye. I know that these two things really happened, because the vase and eye were mine.

•   4   •

JIMMIEBOY’S TOOL CHEST

A Tale of Christmas Night

Jimmieboy was delighted when Christmas day dawned to find, not in his stocking, which was hardly large enough to contain anything so bulky, but hidden under a lot of books and other gifts piled up near the mantelpiece, a splendid tool chest, containing no end of fine weapons such as the carpenter uses in fighting the battles of life. There was a bright, shining saw that looked sharp enough to cut anything from a muffin of Jimmieboy’s own making to a petrified oak; a hammer that you’d almost think could drive a nail through the Rock of Gilbraltar; a jack-plane that could make a shaving a mile long if only you could find a piece of wood big enough to provide the material for it; and a screwdriver that—well, I’ve seen all sorts of drivers in my day, but never one that could drive like that screwdriver, no, not even in the circus. There were a lot of other things, too—gimlets, awls, augers—this auger was about the biggest bore you ever met in your life—a hatchet and a ruler. It was, as Jimmieboy’s Uncle Periwinkle remarked, just about the most “splendiferous tool chest that ever happened,” and when his uncle added that he believed the tools were bright enough to build a house all by themselves without asking any help from anybody, Jimmieboy began to think that Santa Claus had left him a very unusual present—and as a matter of fact he had, as subsequent events showed.

It happened to be an indoor Christmas that year where Jimmieboy lived, because outside they were having what grownup people called an old-fashioned snowstorm—the kind where it seems as if the sky must be filled with hired men throwing whole shovelfuls of snow down upon the earth all at once. One might almost think that someone had grabbed up an Alp or two, and was shaking it like a mastodon pepper-pot over Jimmieboy’s house, the way that snow came down. By two o’clock, with out any drifting at all, it was halfway up the front door; and when five o’clock came, and it began to grow dark, Uncle Periwinkle said he thought somebody ought to go up on the roof and hang a red lantern on the chimney, so that people passing by on foot wouldn’t stub their toes on it, or fall into it and come crashing down the fireplace, which would have been a most embarrassing thing if the person happened to be a perfect stranger. You can imagine from this not only how thoughtful a man Uncle Periwinkle was, but also how impossible it was for a youngster like Jimmieboy to play out of doors on such a day and why it was that the walls of the house, and the piano legs, and the polished hardwood floor, were in great danger all day long. It is a terrible thing to be cooped up in a house with a brand new tool chest staring you in the face, the saw just aching to plow its way through a nice smooth piano or table leg, the hammer perfectly possessed to drive a nail or two into the dining-room walls, and the jack-plane fairly itching to take a few shavings off the polished hardwood floor in the drawing-room. If Santa Claus had only remembered to bring along a wagon load of lumber, or three or four dozen planks to exercise the tool chest on, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but either in the hurry of his work, now that there are so many thousand more children to be looked after than there used to be, or in the endless number of other things the good old Saint had to think about at the time, he had forgotten to do this; and it took all the self-denial that Jimmieboy had to keep him from making use of the woodwork and furniture instead. I am inclined to think he did try the gimlet on one of the windowsills, because there is a little hole just below the sash in the south nursery window that I don’t believe came there all by itself, but I didn’t see him do it, so I can’t say positively whether he did or not—what I do know is that the gimlet and the little hole were a perfect fit, which, in addition to the fact that there were no mosquitoes around to bore a hole like that at that time of the year, was very suspicious.

At any rate, things so happened that when nightfall arrived neither Jimmieboy nor the tool chest had had a fair chance to make a working acquaintance with each other, which even the tools themselves realized, for strange to relate, just after supper, when their owner was engaged in a rather fierce contest with the Sandman, Jimmieboy heard the Hammer remark that if all Christmases were as dull as this one, he for one would rather be a snow-shovel.

Jimmieboy rubbed his eyes with astonishment, and failed to notice a grin on the face of the Sandman. What kind of a Hammer was this, pray, that it could talk?

“You’re perfectly right,” replied the Saw. “I never sawed such a day. I’d rather spend my time at the dentist’s having every one of my teeth filled than just sit around all day doing nothing at all.”

“They haven’t even fed us,” growled the Hatchet. “When I have to go without a chop it makes me feel so dull!”

“Such a bully day out, too.” said the Screw-Driver with a sigh. “There’s nothing I’d have liked better than to hitch up a couple of screws to a cutter and drive ’em off into the country for a ten-mile turn.”

“I’d rather drive a team of nails.” put in the Hammer. “They go much straighter. Screws are too twisty for me. They make me dizzy, twirling around the way they do.”

“Yes but they’re faster in the end,” said the Screw-Driver. “Then you have to keep knocking the nails to make ’em go, and I think that’s tiresome. It makes me shiver when I see you hitting those poor nails on the head the way you do, but with a well-trained screw just a turn of the hand makes him go just where you want him to.”

“You’re too tender-hearted,” said the Hammer. “Nails are naturally lazy, and you have to whack ’em to get them to do any work at all.”

“Well, I’m just bored to death.” said the Auger. “I feel like taking the bit in my teeth and bolting.”

“That’s because you haven’t had a chance to bore anybody else,” observed the Jack-Plane sarcastically.

“Well,” returned the Auger, “T don’t need a shave the way you do.”

Whereupon all the tools burst into a roar of laughter in which even the Jack-Plane himself joined.

“1 move we do something.” said the Hammer, after the merriment had subsided. “I’m ready for a strike.”

“I’m with you,” said the Claw-Hammer. “I’ll pull up stakes and go in for anything.

“We might build a house,” suggested the Chisel. There’s a first-class place for one out there on the lawn where the snow has been blown off.”

The tools all clambered out of the chest and, to Jimmieboy’s further delight, swarmed up to the windowsill and looked out.

“Fine,” cried the Hammer. “Just the thing. The snow has stopped coming down and the moon’s out.”

“Hooray!” shouted the Saw, grinning with joy, so that every tooth in his head was visible. “It’ll be such a lark!”

And then began such s merry scramble as Jimmieboy had never seen before and, oh, what awful things they did, too! In a minute, with the aid of the Chisel, they had pried open the window and one and all disappeared through it, jumping down softly onto the snow drifts below, and making rapidly for the hard, bare spot on the lawn to which the chisel had referred.

“There’s just a little ice here,” the Hammer was saying, as Jimmieboy, utterly unable to remain behind, followed the queer little party of workers through the window. “We’ve got to be careful or the house will go sliding downhill after we get it built.”

“I’ll fix that in a jiffy,” said the Jack-Plane, and he began sliding up and down upon the surface of the bare spot until he had it as clean and smooth as the top of a mahogany table.

“How’s that?” he asked when he had finished.

“Great,” said the Hammer, tapping the Jack-Plane approvingly on the back. “Now, how about a cellar?”

“I move we don’t have any,” said the Screw Driver. “Tn most houses a cellar is a terrible nuisance to keep clean, and it gets full of water at times, and besides I heard a man say it costs a lot of money to keep it full of coal.”

“It would take a week to bore one.” said the Auger, with a shake of his head.

“Not if you talked to it.” said the Jack-Plane, who was just a bit resentful of the Auger’s joke at his expense.

“Stop your quarreling!” cried the Ruler, rapping sharply on the ground, “or I’ll order the whole pack of you back home.”

“I don’t think we’d better build the house flat on the ground, though,” said the File. “It would keep the grass from growing under it.”

“That’s true—I have it,” cried the Saw, gleefully. “the Chisel and I will go into the house and get those piano legs off that old music machine up in the storeroom, and we’ll make the foundation out of them.”

“Just the thing.” said the Chisel, and before Jimmieboy could interfere, they were off, returning in a short while with the great pudgy rosewood legs of the old fashioned square piano that Jimmieboy’s father had had stored away for so many years in the attic. These were immediately placed at the four corners of the little plot, and the foundation was complete.

“Now,” said the Hammer, “how about the beams for the floors? You can’t build a house without beams, and I don’t know where we can find any. Do you, Filey!”

“Not unless we cut off some of those moonbeams,” answered the File, with a nod at the moon, which by this time was gazing smilingly down upon them.

“Filey, you’re a wonder—they’re the very thing. Suppose you go file off about twenty beams in lengths of ten feet each,” said the Hammer. “The Pinchers can catch ’em and you can cut ’em.”

“All aboard!” cried the Pinchers, grabbing hold of a half dozen moonbeams at once. “Ready.”

And the File, after the Ruler had measured the moonbeams to the desired length, promptly filed them off, and they were laid from piano leg to piano leg, securely fastened by screws, which the Screw-Driver drove, and everything was ready for the floor. This the Chisel and Mallet provided by removing the back door from Jimmieboy’s father’s barn.

“They’ll never miss it,” said the Hammer, “because nobody ever goes out that way’.”

Four clothes posts from the drying yard were then secured and set up on top of this, and the planks of the nursery floor were brought out and nailed on to these like clapboards, to complete the four walls of the house.

“I don’t know about this,” said the Ruler, shaking his head. “What will Jimmieboy’s father say when the nursery floor turns up missing?”

“That’s all right, Governor,” said the Mallet. “We put the carpet back, and unless they take it up, which is most unlikely at this time of the year, anyhow, nobody will notice that the floor is gone. “if they’d used rugs it would have been different.”

“Well, in that case,” the Ruler began.

“Now for the roof,” interrupted the Hammer. “We’ve got to have a roof. Anybody in this crowd got a small roof in his pocket?”

“I haven’t,” said the Saw, “but I know where we can got one. There’s a couple of blackboards leaning up against the wall up in the attic where the piano was, and an old, worn out rubber blanket hanging from a nail in the harness room in the stable. We can nail the blackboards on first and then stretch the rubber blanket over the top, to keep ’em from leaking.”

“Just the thing.” said the Hammer, enthusiastically. “Go out and get ’em, old man. They’ll top this mansion off to a T.”

And the Saw was off. Five minutes later, so actively did they work, that the roof was on according to the Saw’s plan, only the blackboards fell two feet short of covering the structure from end to end. They reached across all right, but were not quite long enough to cover the whole space.

“That’s as it should be,” said the Hammer. “It just leaves space for the chimney. Got any bricks?”

“There’s a pile of ’em alongside of the furnace in the cellar,” said the File. “I’ll bring them out.”

This he did, although it was pretty heavy work for so little a follow as the File.

“But we haven’t any mortar,” said the Ruler, when the bricks had been brought.

“Use snow,” suggested the Tack Hammer. “Snow packs nicely, and it’s so cold it’ll freeze as hard as cement in five minutes,”

And so the chimney was constructed and the house appeared to be finished.

“Looks like a pretty nice job on the outside,” said the Ruler, surveying the work proudly.

“Yes,” said “the Hammer, with a smile of satisfaction. “We’re a pretty good set of tools when we work together. Let’s go inside now and see how she looks.”

The little party started to go indoors, when the Jack-Plane made an extraordinary discovery.

“Ginger!” he cried. “We’ve built it without any doors!”

“Except the one we used for the floor,” roared the Gimlet.

And then they all sat down and laughed until their sides ached.

“Funny what a lot of things you have to think about when you’re building a house.” said the Hammer with a rueful smile. “How shall we ever get inside?”

“Never mind,” put in the Saw cheerfully. “I haven’t brought my teeth with me for nothing.” And with this he set himself actively to work and sawed an entrance in the front of the house which was plenty large enough to admit the whole party. The door thus provided, the builders all filed in, and Jimmieboy, not wishing to lose any part of the novel experience, crept up softly and peeped in after them. They looked as cozy as could be sitting around inside there, and the small boy was very much interested to note the soft, pleasant light which illuminated the room, streaming in, a little dimly, perhaps, but still there, from the floor

“That was great business, using the moonbeams for beams,” the Hammer was saying as Jimmieboy looked in. “They give out such a nice, golden light.”

“Yes,” said the Auger, “but it’s a little too dim, isn’t it? I think it would be a good plan if I bored a line of holes along the base of the walls where the moonbeams are, don’t you? It would look like a nice row of electric lights with the beams shining through—and then we shan’t need any windows at all.”

The idea was received with cheers of delight, and the Auger, assisted by the Gimlet and the Awl, soon had the place all aglow—and then the chimes in the church steeple down the street began to toll out the hour of midnight. The tools started up on the first stroke of the hour and made for the doorway.

“Hurry up, boys,” cried the Ruler. “Christmas is over, and if we aren’t back in our chest before the last stroke of twelve we’ll be lost. Quick!”

And such a scramble as there was! Hammer, Awl, Saw, Mallet and Jack-Plane—every one of the industrious workers, almost falling over each other in their mad race for safety, scampered home at as lively a rate as their little legs would permit, and when the last stroke of the hour sounded, were stored safely away in their chest, and lying so still that anyone not familiar with what they had been doing all the evening would have supposed they had been asleep for hours.

The next morning Jimmieboy looked out upon the lawn for a sight of the little house, but it was nowhere to be seen. The drifting snow had covered the whole spot ten or twelve feet in depth, and later, when the thaw came and the snow disappeared, the little house had disappeared with it, and, what was more, the nursery floor was back again where it belonged.

“Did you put that floor back?” asked Jimmieboy in a whisper of the Saw the next time he had him in hand. But the Saw said never a word—just seemed to smile pleasantly through his brilliantly shining teeth. The fact is, I don’t believe that except under the magic spell of Christmas the tools in Jimmieboy’s chest are ever able to speak a word, and even then they must be creatures of more than ordinary sharpness. In any event, Jimmieboy has since taken a greater interest in them than he ever took before, takes the best care of them, and has fully resolved when the spring comes to get them to help him in building a little house for himself.

Which is one of the best things in the world to do with tools, if only you let the piano legs, and clothes posts, and nursery floors alone when you are looking about for materials to make the house of.

Editing Notes

This is my own compilation. Text and images were obtained from multiple online sources.

From Project Gutenberg:
Ebook 34467 (Tin Soldier)
Ebook 39757 (Half-Hours)
Ebook 39871 (Bikey)

From the Internet Archive:
tiddledywinktale00bangrich
tiddledywinkspoe00bang
incampwithtinsol00banguoft
halfhourswithjim00bangrich
mantelpiecemins00banggoog
bikeyskicycleoth00banguoft

From HathiTrust:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c2650097
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.102873167

From the Library of Congress:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045396/1907-12-08/ed-1/seq-34/ocr/

OCR and printer’s errors were silently corrected; punctuation, diacritics, and italics formatted; some spelling and punctuation standardized to provide consistency.

Illustrations were manually cleaned, repaired, and located adjacent to the related text. Cover by ECM.

Story titles are cross-linked to individual Tables of Contents.

Validation by Pagina Epub Checker.

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