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+Project Gutenberg's Half-Hours with Jimmieboy, by John Kendrick Bangs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Half-Hours with Jimmieboy
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+Illustrator: Frank Verbeck
+             Charles Howard Johnson
+             J. T. Richards
+             P. Newell
+
+Release Date: May 22, 2012 [EBook #39757]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF-HOURS WITH JIMMIEBOY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Annie R. McGuire. This book was produced from
+scanned images of public domain material from the Internet
+Archive.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Book Cover]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "ALL ABOARD FOR SLEEP," SAID JIMMIEBOY.]
+
+
+
+
+HALF-HOURS WITH JIMMIEBOY.
+
+
+BY
+JOHN KENDRICK BANGS,
+AUTHOR OF
+_"Tiddledywink Tales," "In Camp with a Tin Soldier,"
+"Tiddledywink Poetry Book," etc._
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+FRANK VERBECK, CHARLES HOWARD JOHNSON,
+J. T. RICHARDS, P. NEWELL,
+AND OTHERS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+NEW YORK:
+R. H. RUSSELL & SON,
+MDCCCXCIII.
+
+
+
+
+TO MY SON,
+FRANCIS HYDE BANGS.
+
+
+
+
+Thanks are due to Messrs. Harper & Bros. for the
+privilege of re-printing several of the
+stories in this book.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+   1. CHRISTMAS EVE AT JIMMIEBOY'S                                    11
+   2. THE DWARF AND THE DUDE GIANT                                    24
+   3. JIMMIEBOY'S DREAM POETRY                                        35
+   4. A SUBTERRANEAN MUTINY                                           48
+   5. JIMMIEBOY IN THE LIBRARY                                        60
+   6. JIMMIEBOY'S SNOWMAN                                             72
+   7. THE BICYCLOPAEDIA BIRD                                           85
+   8. GIANT THE JACK KILLER                                          100
+   9. JIMMIEBOY AND THE FIREWORKS                                    109
+  10. JIMMIEBOY'S PHOTOGRAPH                                         124
+  11. JIMMIEBOY AND THE BLANK-BOOK                                   132
+  12. JIMMIEBOY AND THE COMET                                        146
+  13. JIMMIEBOY AND JACK FROST                                       156
+  14. JIMMIEBOY AND THE GAS-STOVE                                    168
+  15. IN THE HEART OF FROSTLAND                                      183
+  16. THE END OF THE STORY                                           201
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+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
+supper-time 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 fire-place.
+
+"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 some
+one 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
+fire-place. "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 fire-place, and
+by its light he noticed a short, ruddy-faced, merry-eyed old gentleman,
+with a snowy beard and a smile, tip-toeing 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 fire-place 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 some one 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."
+
+[Illustration: 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 sugar-plums,
+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 fish-pond 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 fire-place 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
+sugar-plum 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.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+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 head-gear 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 any one 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
+beavers, 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 lamp-post, 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 stand-still. 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 story teller.
+"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 down stairs, Jimmieboy thanked his
+father for the story and went into the nursery to dress for breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+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 waste-basket, 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.
+
+[Illustration: ARM IN ARM THEY TIPTOED SOFTLY ACROSS THE ROOM.]
+
+And then, arm in arm, they tip-toed 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 moulding.
+
+"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," 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."
+
+[Illustration: JIMMIEBOY FINDS NOTHING BUT DREAM-WRITING ON THE PAD.]
+
+Jimmieboy looked anxiously at the Pad, and this is what he saw:
+
+  I        seen      since,
+          memory's      wrong,
+  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. Good-by."
+
+"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.
+Good-by."
+
+"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."
+
+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 to-night, 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.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+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 half-way 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 life-time 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 window-panes
+    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.
+
+  "'T would 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 to-morrow, 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.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+JIMMIEBOY IN THE LIBRARY.
+
+
+"I'm going to sit in this comfor'ble arm-chair 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 up
+stairs, 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
+base-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 dinner-time, 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?"
+
+"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:
+
+[Illustration: THE CALIPEE AND THE ZOOPHAGAN.]
+
+"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 to-day?'
+
+        "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 to-day, 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.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+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 down stairs 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 door-bell 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 snow-drift 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 snow-drift 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 snow-drifts 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 draughty 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 snow-drift, 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 TO-NIGHT.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  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.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE BICYCLOPAEDIA 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 Encyclopaedia 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 Bicyclopaedia 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."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Bicyclopaedia 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 any one 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 Bicyclopaedia 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 angle-worm,
+  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 smoke-stack, 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 '_ling-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."
+
+[Illustration: "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.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+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
+fairy-land 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 staid 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
+good-by 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
+Bean-stalk 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 Bean-stalk 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.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+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
+fire-works 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 fire-crackers
+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 fire-works 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 up stairs 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 tip-toed softly down the stairs until he stood directly
+opposite the door of the room where the fire-works 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 fire-works, 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 fire-cracker 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 fire-works themselves. It was interesting, and
+at the same time alarming, for one or two reckless sky-rockets were
+smoking, a lot of foolish little fire-crackers 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 fire-cracker?"
+
+"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 fire-works 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 to-night," said the Cracker. "I'm very busy making ready
+my report for to-morrow."
+
+[Illustration: THE GIANT CRACKER SINGING HIS SONG.]
+
+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 river-bank sat down
+    Until the tide came in.
+  Then Wing-Hi whispered, sitting there,
+    With tear-drops in his eye,
+  'Good-by, Ah Din!' And, in despair,
+    She answered him, 'Good-by.'
+
+  "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 to-morrow. 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 Fire-crackers jeered a little at this, because there has always been
+more or less jealousy between the Torpedoes and the Fire-crackers, 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 Fire crackers 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
+short-cake. 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 butter-scotch, 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;
+  Sky-rockets 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 fire-flies
+  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."
+
+[Illustration: 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 fire-works, 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.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+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 pin-wheel.
+
+"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 any one 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 window-sill,
+    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 'good-by' 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.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+JIMMIEBOY AND THE BLANK-BOOK.
+
+
+[Illustration: "OH! DEAR!"]
+
+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 up stairs 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!"
+
+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 every-day 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 whirl-wind."
+
+"Or a clothes-line full of clothes before an east wind," suggested
+Jimmieboy.
+
+"Yes; or like buckwheat cakes before a hungry school-boy," 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 any one could be born
+so blind that he could not at least see a joke.
+
+[Illustration: "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 copy-book. 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 dreamt 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 any one 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."
+
+[Illustration: "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."
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+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 Broncho, 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+JIMMIEBOY AND JACK FROST--IN WHICH JACK GIVES OFFENCE.
+
+
+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 snow-balls, 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-tabs, 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 staid 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 staid 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 every one in the room should at
+once notice that there was a great red spot upon it.
+
+"Why, the poor little soul has been frost-bitten!" 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 ice-man, 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 ice-man, 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 any one
+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 fire-place 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 fire-place, 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 night-gown? 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 up stairs 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE GAS-STOVE TAPPED HIM LIGHTLY ON THE SHOULDER.]
+
+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, tip-toed in, and climbing
+upon the side of Jimmieboy's crib 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.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+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. Good-by. 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.
+
+[Illustration: "THIS IS PRETTY FINE, EH?" SAID THE GAS-STOVE.]
+
+"This is pretty fine, eh?" said the Gas Stove, with a smile, which, had
+any one 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 ginger-snap 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 in-doors 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 rose-bushes, 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.
+
+[Illustration: "HALT!" CRIED A VOICE IN FRONT.]
+
+"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--"
+
+[Illustration: THE SNOW MAN.]
+
+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.
+
+"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 chatter-box, 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 snow-balls 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 snow-bank or you'll fall into the river."
+
+Without waiting to think why, Jimmieboy obeyed the voice and threw
+himself headlong into a huge snow bank 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 row-boat made entirely
+of ice.
+
+"Row fast, now," said the Stove. "If you don't the boat will melt before
+we can get across."
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: "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 any one 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 snow-balls.
+
+"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."
+
+[Illustration: "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.
+
+[Illustration: "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 snow-ball. 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
+snow-drift 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
+some one 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:
+
+[Illustration: 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+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 road-side. "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. To-morrow 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 out-doors 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
+back-ache 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 intrusted 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."
+
+[Illustration: THE GAS-STOVE IS INTRODUCED TO THE KING.]
+
+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.
+
+"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 some one calling me--my papa, I
+think--and I guess it's time for me to get up."
+
+[Illustration: THE GAS-STOVE BURNING MERRILY AND WINKING AT HIM FROM THE
+FIREPLACE.]
+
+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 fire-place, and
+the friendly voice, as usual, nowhere to be seen, and now not even to be
+heard.
+
+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 END.)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Half-Hours with Jimmieboy, by John Kendrick Bangs
+
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