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+Project Gutenberg's Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers, by Various
+
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+Title: Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6326]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT STORY-TELLERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Scott Pfenninger, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+HALF-HOURS
+
+WITH
+
+GREAT STORY TELLERS.
+
+_ARTEMUS WARD, GEORGE MACDONALD,
+MAX ADELER, SAMUEL LOVER,
+AND OTHERS._
+
+
+1891
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+GREY DOLPHIN _Richard Harris Barham_
+
+MOSES, THE SASSY _Artemus Ward_
+
+MR. COLUMBUS CORIANDER'S GORILLA
+
+THE FATE OF YOUNG CHUBB _Max Adeler_
+
+BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE INN _Charles Dickens_
+
+THE ENTHUSIAST IN ANATOMY _John Oxenford_
+
+"THE LIGHT PRINCESS" _George Macdonald_
+
+LEGEND OF THE LITTLE WEAVER _Samuel Lover_
+
+
+
+
+
+GREY DOLPHIN.
+
+
+"He won't--won't he? Then bring me my boots," said the Baron.
+
+Consternation was at its height in the castle of Shurland--a catiff had
+dared to disobey the Baron; and--the Baron had called for his boots!
+
+A thunderbolt in the great hall had been a _bagatelle_ to it.
+
+A few days before, a notable miracle had been wrought in the
+neighborhood; and in those times miracles were not so common as they
+are now; no royal balloons, no steam, no railroads,--while the few
+saints who took the trouble to walk with their heads under their arms,
+or to pull the Devil by the nose, scarcely appeared above once in a
+century:--so the affair made the greatest sensation.
+
+The clock had done striking twelve, and the Clerk of Chatham was
+untrussing his points preparatory to seeking his truckle-bed; a half-
+emptied tankard of mild ale stood at his elbow, the roasted crab yet
+floating on its surface. Midnight had surprised the worthy functionary
+while occupied in discussing it, and with his task yet unaccomplished.
+He meditated a mighty draft: one hand was fumbling with his tags, while
+the other was extended in the act of grasping the jorum, when a knock
+on the portal, solemn and sonorous, arrested his fingers. It was
+repeated thrice ere Emmanuel Saddleton had presence of mind sufficient
+to inquire who sought admittance at that untimeous hour.
+
+"Open! open! good Clerk of St. Bridget's," said a female voice, small
+yet distinct and sweet,--an excellent thing in woman.
+
+The Clerk arose, crossed to the doorway, and undid the latchet.
+
+On the threshold stood a lady of surpassing beauty: her robes were
+rich, and large, and full; and a diadem, sparkling with gems that shed
+a halo around, crowned her brow: she beckoned the Clerk as he stood in
+astonishment before her.
+
+"Emmanuel!" said the lady; and her tones sounded like those of a silver
+flute. "Emmanuel Saddleton, truss up your points, and follow me!"
+
+The worthy Clerk stated aghast at the vision; the purple robe, the
+cymar, the coronet,--above all, the smile; no, there was no mistaking
+her; it was the blessed St. Bridget herself!
+
+And what could have brought the sainted lady out of her warm shrine at
+such a time of night? and on such a night? for it was dark as pitch,
+and metaphorically speaking, 'rained cats and dogs.'
+
+Emmanuel could not speak, so he looked the question.
+
+"No matter for that," said the saint, answering to his thought. "No
+matter for that, Emmanuel Saddleton; only follow me, and you'll see!"
+
+The Clerk turned a wistful eye at the corner cupboard.
+
+"Oh! never mind the lantern, Emmanuel; you'll not want it; but you may
+bring a mattock and a shovel." As she spoke, the beautiful apparition
+held up her delicate hand. From the tip of each of her long taper
+fingers issued a lambent flame of such surpassing brilliancy as would
+have plunged a whole gas company into despair--it was a 'Hand of
+Glory,' [Footnote: One of the uses to which this mystic chandelier was
+put, was the protection of secreted treasure. Blow out all the fingers
+at one puff, and you had the money.] such a one as tradition tells us
+yet burns in Rochester Castle every St. Mark's Eve. Many are the daring
+individuals who have watched in Gundulph's Tower, hoping to find it,
+and the treasure it guards; but none of them ever did.
+
+"This way, Emmanuel!" and a flame of peculiar radiance streamed from
+her little finger as it pointed to the pathway leading to the
+churchyard.
+
+Saddleton shouldered his tools and followed in silence.
+
+The cemetery of St. Bridget's was some half-mile distant from the
+Clerk's domicile, and adjoined a chapel dedicated to that illustrious
+lady, who, after leading but a so-so life, had died in the odor of
+sanctity. Emmanuel Saddleton was fat and scant of breath, the mattock
+was heavy, and the Saint walked too fast for him: he paused to take
+second wind at the end of the first furlong.
+
+"Emmanuel," said the holy lady, good-humoredly, for she heard him
+puffing: "rest awhile Emmanuel, and I'll tell you what I want with
+you."
+
+Her auditor wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and looked all
+attention and obedience.
+
+"Emmanuel," continued she "what did you and Father Fothergill, and the
+rest of you, mean yesterday by burying that drowned man so close to me?
+He died in mortal sin, Emmanuel; no shrift, no unction, no absolution:
+why he might as well have been excommunicated. He plagues me with his
+grinning, and I can't have any peace in my shrine. You must howk him up
+again, Emmanuel."
+
+"To be sure, madame,--my lady,--that is, your holiness," stammered
+Saddleton, trembling at the thought of the task assigned him. "To be
+sure, your ladyship; only--that is--"
+
+"Emmanuel," said the saint, "you'll do my bidding; or it would be
+better you had!" and her eye changed from a dove's eye to that of a
+hawk, and a flash came from it as bright as the one from her little
+finger. The Clerk shook in his shoes; and, again dashing the cold
+perspiration from his brow, followed the footsteps of his mysterious
+guide.
+
+The next morning all Chatham was in an uproar. The Clerk of St.
+Bridget's had found himself at home at daybreak, seated in his own
+armchair, the fire out,--and--the tankard of ale out too! Who had drunk
+it?--where had he been?--how had he got home?--all was mystery!--he
+remembered "a mass of things, but nothing distinctly;" all was fog and
+fantasy. What he could clearly recollect was, that he had dug up the
+Grinning Sailor, and that the Saint had helped to throw him into the
+river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were
+sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald
+had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at
+their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre;
+--Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of
+Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who
+had a soul to be saved, flocked with his offering to St. Bridget's
+shrine, and Emmanual Saddleton gathered more fees from the promiscuous
+piety of that one week, than he had pocketed during the twelve
+preceding months.
+
+Meanwhile, the corpse of the ejected reprobate oscillated like a
+pendulum between Sheerness and Gillingham Reach. Now borne by the
+Medway into the Western Swale,--now carried by the refluent tide back
+to the vicinity of its old quarters,--it seemed as though the River god
+and Neptune were amusing themselves with a game of subaqueous
+battledore, and had chosen this unfortunate carcass as a marine
+shuttlecock. For some time the alternation was kept up with great
+spirit, till Boreas, interfering in the shape of a stiffish "Nor'-
+wester," drifted the bone (and flesh) of contention ashore on the
+Shurland domain, where it lay in all the majesty of mud. It was soon
+discovered by the retainers, and dragged from its oozy bed, grinning
+worse than ever. Tidings of the godsend were of course carried
+instantly to the castle; for the Baron was a very great man; and if a
+dun cow had flown across his property unannounced by the warder, the
+Baron would have pecked him, the said warder, from the topmost
+battlement into the bottommost ditch,--a descent of peril, and one
+which "Ludwig the Leaper," or the illustrious Trenck himself, might
+well have shrunk from encountering.
+
+"An't please your lordship--" said Peter Periwinkle.
+
+"No, villain! it does not please!" roared the Baron.
+
+His lordship was deeply engaged with a peck of Faversham oysters,--he
+doted on shellfish, hated interruption at meals, and had not yet
+despatched more than twenty dozen of the "natives."
+
+"There's a body, my lord, washed ashore in the lower creek," said the
+seneschal.
+
+The Baron was going to throw the shells at his head; but paused in the
+act, and said with much dignity,
+
+"Turn out the fellow's pockets!"
+
+But the defunct had before been subjected to the double scrutiny of
+Father Fothergill and the Clerk of St. Bridget's. It was ill gleaning
+after such hands; there was not a single maravedi.
+
+We have already said that Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of the Isle of
+Sheppey, and of many a fair manor on the main land, was a man of
+worship. He had rights of free-warren, saccage and sockage, cuisage and
+jambage, fosse and fork, infang theofe and outfang theofe; and all
+waifs and strays belonged to him in fee simple.
+
+"Turn out his pockets!" said the knight.
+
+"An't please you, my lord, I must say as how they was turned afore, and
+the devil a rap's left."
+
+"Then bury the blackguard!"
+
+"Please your lordship, he had been buried once."
+
+"Then bury him again, and be--" The Baron bestowed a benediction.
+
+The seneschal bowed low as he left the room and the Baron went on with
+his oysters.
+
+"Scarcely ten dozen more had vanished, when Periwinkle reappeared.
+
+"An't please you, my lord, Father Fothergill says as how it's the
+Grinning Sailor, and he won't bury him anyhow."
+
+"Oh! he won't--won't he?" said the Baron. Can it be wondered at that he
+called for his boots?
+
+Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of Shurland and Minster, Baron of Sheppey
+in _comitatu_ Kent, was, as has been before hinted, a very great
+man. He was also a very little man; that is, he was relatively great,
+and relatively little--or physically little, and metaphorically great--
+like Sir Sidney Smith and the late Mr. Buonaparte. To the frame of a
+dwarf, he united the soul of a giant, and the valor of a gamecock.
+Then, for so small a man, his strength was prodigious; his fist would
+fell an ox, and his kick!--oh! his kick was tremendous, and, when he
+had his boots on, would--to use an expression of his own, which he had
+picked up in the holy wars--would "send a man from Jericho to June." He
+was bull-necked and bandy-legged; his chest was broad and deep, his
+head large and uncommonly thick, his eyes a little bloodshot, and his
+nose _retrousse_ with a remarkably red tip. Strictly speaking, the
+Baron could not be called handsome; but his _tout ensemble_ was
+singularly impressive; and when he called for his boots, everybody
+trembled and dreaded the worst.
+
+"Periwinkle," said the Baron, as he encased his better leg, "let the
+grave be twenty feet deep!"
+
+"Your lordship's command is law."
+
+"And, Perwinkle"--Sir Robert stamped his left heel into it's
+receptacle--"and, Periwinkle, see that it be wide enough to hold not
+exceeding two!"
+
+"Ye--ye--yes, my lord."
+
+"And, Periwinkle--tell Father Fothergill I would fain speak with his
+Reverence."
+
+"Ye--ye--yes, my lord."
+
+The Baron's beard was peaked; and his mustache, stiff and stumpy,
+projected horizontally like those of a Tom Cat; he twirled the one, he
+stroked the other, he drew the buckle of his surcingle a thought
+tighter, and strode down the great staircase three steps at a stride.
+
+The vassals were assembled in the great hall of Shurland Castle; every
+cheek was pale, every tongue was mute, expectation and perplexity were
+visible on every brow. What would his lordship do? Were the recusant
+anybody else, gyves to the heels and hemp to the throat were but too
+good for him; but it was Father Fothergill who had said "I won't;" and
+though the Baron was a very great man, the Pope was a greater, and the
+Pope was Father Fothergill's great friend--some people said he was his
+uncle.
+
+Father Fothergill was busy in the refectory trying conclusions with a
+venison pasty, when he received the summons of his patron to attend him
+in the chapel cemetery. Of course he lost no time in obeying it, for
+obedience was the general rule in Shurland Castle. If anybody ever said
+"I won't" it was the exception; and, like all other exceptions, only
+proved the rule the stronger. The Father was a friar of the Augustine
+persuasion; a brotherhood which, having been planted in Kent some few
+centuries earlier, had taken very kindly to the soil, and overspread
+the county much as hops did some few centuries later. He was plump and
+portly, a little thick-winded, especially after dinner, stood five feet
+four in his sandals, and weighed hard upon eighteen stone. He was,
+moreover, a personage of singular piety; and the iron girdle, which, he
+said, he wore under his cassock to mortify withal, might have been well
+mistaken for the tire of a cart-wheel. When he arrived, Sir Robert was
+pacing up and down by the side of a newly opened grave.
+
+"_Benedecite!_ fair son"--(the Baron was brown as a cigar)--
+"_Benedecite!_" said the Chaplain.
+
+The Baron was too angry to stand upon compliment. "Bury me that
+grinning caitiff there!" he, pointing to the defunct.
+
+"It may not be, fair son," said the friar, "he hath perished without
+absolution."
+
+"Bury the body!" roared Sir Robert.
+
+"Water and earth alike reject him," returned the Chaplain; "holy St.
+Bridget herself--"
+
+"Bridget me no Bridgets!--do me thine office quickly, Sir Shaveling! or
+by the Piper that played before Moses--" The oath was a fearful one;
+and whenever the Baron swore to do mischief, he was never known to
+perjure himself. He was playing with the hilt of his sword. "Do me
+thine office, I say. Give him his passport to heaven."
+
+"He is already gone to Hell!" stammered the Friar.
+
+"Then do you go after him!" thundered the Lord of Shurland.
+
+His sword half leaped from its scabbard. No!--the trenchant blade, that
+had cut Suleiman Ben Malek Ben Buckskin from helmet to chin, disdained
+to daub itself with the cerebellum of a miserable monk;--it leaped back
+again;--and as the Chaplain, scared at its flash, turned him in terror,
+the Baron gave him a kick!--one kick!--it was but one!--but such a one!
+Despite its obesity, up flew his holy body in an angle of forty-five
+degrees; then having reached its highest point of elevation, sunk
+headlong into the open grave that yawned to receive it. If the reverend
+gentleman had possessed such a thing as a neck, he had infallibly
+broken it! as he did not, he only dislocated his vertebrae--but that
+did quite as well. He was as dead as ditch-water!
+
+"In with the other rascal!" said the baron--and he was obeyed; for
+there he stood in his boots. Mattock and shovel made short work of it;
+twenty feet of superincumbent mould pressed down alike the saint and
+the sinner. "Now sing a requiem who list!" said the Baron, and his
+lordship went back to his oysters.
+
+The vassals at Castle Shurland were astounded, or, as the Seneschal
+Hugh better expressed it, "perfectly conglomerated," by this event.
+What! murder a monk in the odor of sanctity--and on consecrated ground
+too! They trembled for the health of the Baron's soul. To the
+unsophisticated many, it seemed that matters could not have been much
+worse had he shot a bishop's coach-horse--all looked for some signal
+judgment. The melancholy catastrophe of their neighbors at Canterbury
+was yet rife in their memories; no two centuries had elapsed since
+those miserable sinners had cut off the tail of the blessed St.
+Thomas's mule. The tail of the mule, it was well known, had been
+forthwith affixed to that of the Mayor; and rumor said it had since
+been hereditary in the corporation. The least that could be expected
+was, that Sir Robert should have a friar tacked on to his for the term
+of his natural life! Some bolder spirits there were, 'tis true, who
+viewed the matter in various lights, according to their different
+temperaments and dispositions; for perfect unanimity existed not even
+in the good old time. The verderer, roistering Hob Roebuck, swore
+roundly, "'Twere as good a deed as to eat, to kick down the chapel as
+well as the monk." Hob had stood there in a white sheet for kissing
+Giles Miller's daughter. On the other hand, Simpkin Agnew, the bell-
+ringer, doubted if the devil's cellar, which runs under the bottomless
+abyss, were quite deep enough for the delinquent, and speculated on the
+probability of a hole being dug in it for his especial accommodation.
+The philosophers and economists thought, with Saunders McBullock, the
+Baron's bagpiper, that a 'feckless monk more or less was nae great
+subject for a clamjamphrey,' especially as 'the supply exceeded the
+demand;' while Malthouse, the tapster, was arguing to Dame Martin that
+a murder now and then was a seasonable check to population, without
+which the isle of Sheppey would in time be devoured, like a mouldy
+cheese, by inhabitants of its own producing. Meanwhile the Baron ate
+his oysters and thought no more of the matter.
+
+But this tranquillity of his lordship was not to last. A couple of
+Saints had been seriously offended; and we have all of us read at
+school that celestial minds are by no means insensible to the
+provocations of anger. There were those who expected that St. Bridget
+would come in person, and have the friar up again, as she did the
+sailor; but perhaps her ladyship did not care to trust herself within
+the walls of Shurland Castle. To say the truth, it was scarcely a
+decent house for a female saint to be seen in. The Baron's gallantries,
+since he became a widower had been but too notorious; and her own
+reputation was a little blown upon in the earlier days of her earthly
+pilgrimage; then things were so apt to be misrepresented--in short, she
+would leave the whole affair to St. Austin, who being a gentleman,
+could interfere with propriety, avenge her affront as well as his own,
+and leave no loop-hole for scandal. St. Austin himself seems to have
+had his scruples, though of their precise nature it would be difficult
+to determine, for it were idle to suppose him at all afraid of the
+Baron's boots. Be this as it may, the mode which he adopted was at once
+prudent and efficacious. As an ecclesiastic, he could not well call the
+Baron out--had his boots been out of the question; so he resolved to
+have recourse to the law. Instead of Shurland Castle, therefore, he
+repaired forthwith to his own magnificent monastery, situate just
+without the walls of Canterbury, and presented himself in a vision to
+its abbot. No one who has ever visited that ancient city can fail to
+recollect the splendid gateway which terminates the vista of St. Paul's
+street, and stands there yet in all its pristine beauty. The tiny train
+of miniature artillery which now adorns its battlements is, it is true,
+an ornament of a later date; and is said to have been added some
+centuries after by a learned but jealous proprietor, for the purpose of
+shooting any wiser man than himself, who might chance to come that way.
+Tradition is silent as to any discharge having taken place, nor can the
+oldest inhabitant of modern days recollect any such occurrence.
+[Footnote: Since the appearance of the first edition of this Legend
+"the guns" have been dismounted. Rumor hints at some alarm on the part
+of the Town Council.] Here it was, in a handsome chamber, immediately
+over the lofty archway, that the Superior of the monastery lay buried
+in a brief slumber, snatched from his accustomed vigils. His mitre--for
+he was a mitred Abbot, and had a seat in parliament--rested on a table
+beside him: near it stood a silver flagon of Gascony wine, ready, no
+doubt, for the pious uses of the morrow. Fasting and watching had made
+him more than usually somnolent, than which nothing could have been
+better for the purpose of the Saint, who now appeared to him radiant in
+all the colors of the rainbow.
+
+"Anselm!" said the beatific vision,--"Anselm! are you not a pretty
+fellow to lie snoring there when your brethren are being knocked at
+head, and Mother Church herself is menaced?--It is a sin and a shame,
+Anselm!"
+
+"What's the matter?--Who are you?" cried the Abbot, rubbing his eyes,
+which the celestial splendour of his visitor had set a-winking. "Ave
+Maria! St. Austin himself! Speak, _Beatissime!_ what would you with the
+humblest of your votaries?"
+
+"Anselm!" said the saint, a "brother of our order, whose soul Heaven
+assoilzie! hath been foully murdered. He had been ignominiously kicked
+to the death, Anselm; and there he lieth check-by-jowl with a wretched
+carcass, which our sister Bridget has turned out of her cemetery for
+unseemly grinning. Arouse thee, Anselm!"
+
+"Ay, so please you, _Sanctssime!_" said the Abbot. "I will order
+forthwith that thirty masses be said, thirty _Paters,_ and thirty
+_Aves."_
+
+"Thirty fools' heads!" interrupted his patron, who was a little
+peppery.
+
+"I will send for bell, book, and candle--"
+
+"Send for an inkhorn, Anselm. Write me now a letter to his Holiness the
+Pope in good round terms, and another to the Sheriff, and seize me the
+never-enough-to-be anathematized villain who hath done this deed! Hang
+him as high as Haman, Anselm!--up with him!--down with his dwelling
+place, root and branch, hearth-stone and roof-tree,--down with it all,
+and sow the site with salt and sawdust."
+
+St. Austin, it will perceived, was a radical reformer.
+
+"Marry will I," quoth the Abbot, warming with the Saint's eloquence:
+"ay, marry will I, and that _instanter_. But there is one thing you have
+forgotten most Beatified--the name of the culprit."
+
+"Robert de Shurland."
+
+"The Lord of Sheppey! Bless me!" said the Abbot, crossing himself,
+"won't that be rather inconvenient? Sir Robert is a bold baron, and a
+powerful: blows will come and go, and crowns will be cracked and--"
+
+"What is that to you, since yours will not be of the number?"
+
+"Very true, _Beatissime!_--I will don me with speed and do your
+bidding."
+
+"Do so, Anselm!--fail not to hang the Baron, burn his castle,
+confiscate his estate, and buy me two large wax candles for my own
+particular shrine out of your share of the property."
+
+With this solemn injunction, the vision began to fade.
+
+"One thing more!" cried the Abbot, grasping his rosary.
+
+"What is that?" asked the Saint.
+
+"_O Beate Augustine, ora pro nobis!_"
+
+"Of course I shall," said St. Austin. _"Pax vo-biscum!"_--and Abbot
+Anselm was left alone.
+
+Within an hour all Canterbury was in commotion. A friar had been
+murdered,--two friars--ten, twenty; a whole convent had been
+assaulted, sacked, burnt,--all the monks had been killed, and all the
+nuns had been kissed! Murder! fire! sacrilege! Never was city in such
+an uproar. From St. George's gate to St. Dunstan's suburb, from the
+Donjon to the borough of Staplegate, it was noise and hubbub. "Where
+was it?"--"When was it?"--"How was it?" The Mayor caught up his chain,
+the Aldermen donned their furred gowns, the Town Clerk put on his
+spectacles. "Who was he?"--"What was he?"--"Where was he?"--He should
+be hanged,--he should be burned,--he should be broiled,--he should be
+fried,--he should be scraped to death with red-hot-oyster-shells! "Who
+was he?"--"What was his name?"
+
+The Abbot's Apparitor drew forth his roll and read aloud:--'Sir Robert
+de Shurland, Knight banneret, Baron of Shurland and Minster, and Lord
+of Sheppey.
+
+The Mayor put his chain in his pocket, the Aldermen took off their
+gowns, the Town Clerk put his pen behind his ear. It was a county
+business altogether;--the Sheriff had better call out the _posse
+comitatus_.
+
+While saints and sinners were thus leaning against him, the Baron de
+Shurland was quietly eating his breakfast. He had passed a tranquil
+night, undisturbed by dreams of cowl or capuchin; nor was his appetite
+more affected than his conscience. On the contrary, he sat rather
+longer over his meal than usual; luncheon-time came, and he was ready
+as ever for his oysters: but scarcely had Dame Martin opened his first
+half-dozen when the warder's horn was heard from the barbican.
+
+"Who the devil's that?" said Sir Robert. "I'm not at home, Periwinkle.
+I hate to be disturbed at meals, and I won't be at home to anybody."
+
+"An't please your lordship," answered the Seneschal, "Paul Prior hath
+given notice that there is a body--"
+
+"Another body!" roared the Baron. "Am I to be everlastingly plagued
+with bodies? No time allowed me to swallow a morsel. Throw it into the
+moat!"
+
+"So please you my lord, it is a body of horse,--and--and Paul says
+there is a still large body of foot behind it; and he thinks, my lord--
+that is, he does not know, but he thinks--and we all think, my lord,
+that they are coming to--to besiege the castle!"
+
+"Besiege the castle! Who? What? What for?"
+
+"Paul says, my lord, that he can see the banner of St. Austin, and the
+bleeding heart of Hamo de Crevecoeur, the Abbot's chief vassal; and
+there is John de Northwood, the sheriff, with his red cross engrailed;
+and Hever, and Leybourne, and Heaven knows how many more: and they are
+all coming on as fast as ever they can."
+
+"Periwinkle," said the Baron, "up with the draw-bridge; down with the
+portcullis; bring me a cup of canary, and my nightcap. I won't be
+bothered with them. I shall go to bed."
+
+"To bed, my lord!" cried Periwinkle, with a look that seemed to say,
+"He's crazy!"
+
+At this moment the shrill tones of a trumpet were heard to sound thrice
+from the champaign. It was the signal for parley; the Baron changed his
+mind; instead of going to bed, he went to the ramparts.
+
+"Well, rapscallions! and what now?" said the Baron.
+
+A herald, two pursuivants, and a trumpeter, occupied the foreground of
+the scene; behind them, some three hundred paces off, upon a rising
+ground, was drawn up in battle-array the main body of the
+ecclesiastical forces.
+
+"Hear you, Robert de Shurland, Knight, Baron of Shurland and Minster,
+and Lord of Sheppey, and know all men, by these presents, that I do
+hereby attach you, said Robert, of murder and sacrilege, now, or of the
+late, done and committed by you, the said Robert, contrary to the peace
+of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity: and I do hereby
+require and charge you, the said Robert, to forthwith surrender and
+give up your own proper person, together with the castle of Shurland
+aforesaid, in order that the same may be duly dealt with according to
+law. And here standeth John de Northwood, Esquire, good man and true,
+sheriff of this his Majesty's most loyal county of Kent, to enforce the
+same if need be, with his _posse comitatus_--"
+
+"His what?" said the Baron.
+
+"His _posse comitatus_, and--" "Go to Bath!" said the Baron.
+
+A defiance so contemptuous roused the ire of the adverse commanders. A
+volley of missiles rattled about the Baron's ears. Nightcaps avail
+little against contusions. He left the walls, and returned to the great
+hall. "Let them pelt away," quoth the Baron; "there are no windows to
+break, and they can't get in." So he took his afternoon nap, and the
+siege went on.
+
+Towards evening his lordship awoke, and grew tired of the din. Guy
+Pearson, too, had got a black eye from a brick bat, and the assailants
+were clambering over the outer wall. So the Baron called for his Sunday
+hauberk of Milan steel, and his great two-handed sword with the
+terrible name:--it was the fashion in feudal times to give names to
+swords: King Arthur's was christened Excalibar; the Baron called his
+Tickletoby, and whenever he took it in hand, it was no joke.
+
+"Up with the portcullis! down with the bridge!" said Sir Robert; and
+out he sallied followed by the _elite_ of his retainers. Then there was
+a pretty to-do. Heads flew one way--arms and legs another; round went
+Tickletoby, and, wherever it alighted, down came horse and man, the
+Baron excelled himself that day. All that he had done in Palestine faded
+in the comparison; he had fought for fun there, but now it was for life
+and lands. Away went John de Northwood; away went William of Hever, and
+Roger of Leybourne. Hamo de Crevecoeur, with the church vassals and the
+banner of St. Austin, had been gone some time. The siege was raised, and
+the Lord of Sheppey was left alone in his glory.
+
+But, brave as the Baron undoubtedly was, and total as had been the
+defeat of his enemies, it cannot be supposed that _La Stoccata_
+would be allowed to carry it away thus. It has before been hinted that
+Abbot Anselm had written to the Pope, and Boniface the Eight piqued
+himself on his punctuality as a correspondent in all matters connected
+with church discipline. He sent back an answer by return of post; and
+by it all Christian people were strictly enjoined to aid in
+exterminating the offender, on pain of the greater excommunication in
+this world and a million of years of purgatory in the next. But then,
+again, Boniface the Eight was rather at a discount in England just
+then. He had affronted Longshanks, as the royal lieges had nicknamed
+their monarch; and Longshanks had been rather sharp upon the clergy in
+consequence. If the Baron de Shurland could but get the King's pardon
+for what, in his cooler moments, he admitted to be a peccadillo, he
+might sniff at the Pope, and bid him 'to do his devilmost.'
+
+Fortune, who as the poet says, delights to favor the bold, stood his
+friend on this occasion. Edward had been for some time collecting a
+large force on the coast of Kent, to carry on his French wars for the
+recovery of Guienne; he was expected shortly to review it in person;
+but, then, the troops lay principally in cantonments about the mouth of
+the Thames, and his majesty was to come down by water. What was to be
+done?--the royal barge was in sight, and John de Norwood and Hamo de
+Crevecoeur had broken up all the boats to boil their camp-kettles. A
+truly great mind is never without resources.
+
+"Bring me my boots!" said the Baron.
+
+They brought him his boots, and his dapple-grey steed along with them.
+Such a courser; all blood and bone, short-backed, broad-chested, and--
+but that he was a little ewe-necked--faultless in form and figure. The
+Baron sprang upon his back, and dashed at once into the river.
+
+The barge which carried Edward Longshanks and his fortunes had by this
+time nearly reached the Nore; the stream was broad and the current
+strong, but Sir Robert and his steed were almost as broad, and a great
+deal stronger. After breasting the tide gallantly for a couple of
+miles, the knight was near enough to hail the steersman.
+
+"What have we got here?" said the King. "It's a mermaid," said one.
+"It's a grampus," said another. "It's the devil," said a third. But
+they were all wrong; It was only Robert de Shurland. "Gramercy" said
+the King, "that fellow was never born to be drowned!"
+
+It has been said before that the Baron had fought in the Holy Wars; in
+fact, he had accompanied Longshanks, when only heir-apparent, in his
+expedition twenty-five years before, although his name is unaccountably
+omitted by Sir Harris Nicolas in his list of crusaders. He had been
+present at Acre when Amirand of Joppa stabbed the prince with a
+poisoned dagger, and had lent Princess Eleanor his own tooth-brush
+after she had sucked out the venom from the wound. He had slain certain
+Saracens, contented himself with his own plunder, and never dunned the
+commissariat for arrears of pay. Of course he ranked high in Edward's
+good graces, and had received the honor of knighthood at his hands on
+the field of battle.
+
+In one so circumstanced, it cannot be supposed that such a trifle as
+the killing of a frowsy friar would be much resented, even had he not
+taken so bold a measure to obtain his pardon. His petition was granted,
+of course, as soon as asked; and so it would have been had the
+indictment drawn up by the Canterbury town-clerk, viz., "That he, the
+said Robert de Shurland, &c., had then and there, with several, to wit,
+one thousand pairs of boots, given sundry, to wit, two thousand kicks,
+and therewith and thereby killed divers, to wit, ten thousand, Austin
+friars," been true to the letter.
+
+Thrice did the gallant grey circumnavigate the barge, while Robert de
+Winchelsey, the chancellor and archbishop to boot, was making out,
+albeit with great reluctance, the royal pardon. The interval was
+sufficiently long to enable his Majesty, who, gracious as he was, had
+always an eye to business, just to hint that the gratitude he felt
+towards the Baron was not unmixed with a lively sense of services to
+come; and that, if life were now spared him, common decency must oblige
+him to make himself useful. Before the archbishop, who had scalded his
+fingers with the wax in affixing the great seal, had time to take them
+out of his mouth, all was settled, and the Baron de Shurland had
+pledged himself to be forthwith in readiness, _cum suis_, to accompany
+his liege lord to Guienne.
+
+With the royal pardon secured in his vest, boldly did his lordship turn
+again to the shore; and as boldly did his courser oppose his breadth of
+chest to the stream. It was a work of no common difficulty or danger; a
+steed of less "mettle and bone" had long since sunk in the effort; as
+it was, the Baron's boots were full of water, and Grey Dolphin's
+chamfrain more than once dipped beneath the wave. The convulsive snorts
+of the noble animal showed his distress; each instant they became more
+loud and frequent; when his hoof touched the strand, "the horse and his
+rider" stood once again in safety on the shore.
+
+Rapidly dismounting the Baron was loosening the girths of his demi-
+pique, to give the panting animal breath, when he was aware of as ugly
+an old woman as he ever clapped eyes upon, peeping at him under the
+horse's belly.
+
+"Make much of your steed, Robert Shurland! Make much of your steed!"
+cried the hag, shaking at him her long and bony finger." Groom to the
+hide, and corn to the manger! He has saved your life, Robert Shurland,
+for the nonce? but he shall yet be the means of your losing it for all
+that!"
+
+The Baron started: "What's that you say, you old faggot!" He ran round
+by his horse's tail; the woman was gone!
+
+The Baron paused: his great soul was not to be shaken by trifles! he
+looked around him, and solemnly ejaculated the word "Humbug!" then
+slinging the bridle across his arm, walked slowly on in the direction
+of the castle.
+
+The appearance, and still more, the disappearance of the crone, had,
+however, made an impression; "'Twould be deuced provoking, though, if
+he should break my neck after all." He turned and gazed at Dolphin with
+the eye of a veterinary surgeon. "I'll be shot if he is not groggy!"
+said the Baron.
+
+With his lordship, like another great commander, "Once to be in doubt,
+was once to be resolved:" it would never do to go to the wars on a
+ricketty prad. He dropped the rein, drew forth Tickletoby, and, as the
+enfranchised Dolphin, good easy horse, stretched out his ewe-neck to
+the herbage, struck off his head at a single blow. "There, you lying
+old beldame!" said the Baron; "now take him away to the knacker's."
+
+Three years were come and gone. King Edward's French wars were over;
+both parties having fought till they came to a standstill, shook hands,
+and the quarrel, as usual, was patched up by a royal marriage. This
+happy event gave his majesty leisure to turn his attention to Scotland,
+where things, through the intervention of William Wallace, were looking
+rather queerish. As his reconciliation with Philip now allowed of his
+fighting the Scotch in peace and quietness, the monarch lost no time in
+marching his long legs across the border, and the short ones of the
+Baron followed him of course. At Falkirk, Tickletoby was in great
+request; and in the year following, we find a contemporary poet hinting
+at his master's prowess under the walls of Caerlaverock--
+
+A quatrain which Mr. Simpkinson translates,
+
+  Ovec ens fu achiminez
+  Li beau Robert de Shurland
+  Ri kant seoit sur le cheval
+  Ne sembloit home ke someille.
+
+  With them was marching
+  The good Robert de Shurland,
+  Who, when seated on horseback,
+  Does not resemble a man asleep!
+
+So thoroughly awake, indeed, does he seem to have proved himself, that
+the bard subsequently exclaims in an ecstasy of admiration,
+
+  Si ie estoie une pucellete
+  Je li dourie ceur et cors
+  Tant est de lu bons li reeors.
+
+  If I were a young maiden,
+  I would give my heart and perso
+  So great is his fame!
+
+Fortunately the poet was a tough old monk of Exeter; since such a
+present to a nobleman, now in his grand climacteric, would hardly have
+been worth the carriage. With the reduction of this stronghold of the
+Maxwellsse, em to have concluded the Baron's military services; as on
+the very first day of the fourteenth century we find him once more
+landed on his native shore, and marching, with such of his retainers as
+the wars had left him, towards the hospitable shelter of Shurland
+Castle. It was then, upon that very beach, some hundred yards distant
+from high-water mark, that his eye fell upon something like an ugly
+woman in a red cloak. She was seated on what seemed to be a large
+stone, in an interesting attitude, with her elbows resting upon her
+knees, and her chin upon her thumbs The Baron started; the remembrance
+of his interview with a similar personage in the same place, some three
+years since, flashed upon his recollection. He rushed towards the spot,
+but the form was gone:--nothing remained but the seat it had appeared
+to occupy. This, on examination, turned out to be no stone, but the
+whitened skull of a dead horse! A tender remembrance of the deceased
+Grey Dolphin shot a momentary pang into the Baron's bosom: he drew the
+back of his hand across his face; the thought of the hag's prediction
+in an instant rose, and banished all softer emotions. In utter contempt
+of his own weakness, yet with a tremor that deprived his redoubtable
+kick of half its wonted force, he spurned the relic with his foot. One
+word alone issued from his lips, elucidatory of what was passing in his
+mind--it long remained imprinted on the memory of his faithful
+followers--that word was "Gammon!" The skull bounded across the beach
+till it reached the very margin of the stream:--one instant more and it
+would be ingulfed for ever. At that moment a loud "Ha! ha! ha!" was
+distinctly heard by the whole train to issue from its bleached and
+toothless jaws: it sank beneath the flood in a horselaugh.
+
+Meanwhile Sir Robert de Shurland felt an odd sort of sensation in his
+right foot. His boots had suffered in the wars. Great pains had been
+taken for their preservation. They had been "soled" and "heeled" more
+than once:--had they been "goloshed," their owner might have defied
+Fate! Well has it been said that "there is no such a thing as a
+trifle." A nobleman's life depended upon a question of ninepence.
+
+The Baron marched on: the uneasiness in his foot increased. He plucked
+off his boot; a horse's tooth was sticking in his great toe!
+
+The result may be anticipated. Lame as he was, his lordship, with
+characteristic decision, would hobble on to Shurland; his walk increased
+the inflammation; a flagon of _aqua vitae_ did not mend matters. He was
+in a high fever; he took to his bed. Next morning the toe presented the
+appearance of a Bedfordshire carrot; by dinner time it had deepened to
+beet-root; and when Bargrave, the leech, at last sliced it off, the
+gangrene was too confirmed to admit of remedy. Dame Martin thought it
+high time to send for Miss Margaret, who, ever since her mother's death,
+had been living with her maternal aunt, the abbess, in the Ursuline
+convent at Greenwich. The young lady came, and with her came one Master
+Ingoldsby, her cousin-german by the mother's side; but the Baron was too
+far gone in the dead-thraw to recognize either. He died as he lived,
+unconquered and unconquerable. His last words were--"tell the old hag
+she may go to--." Whither remains a secret. He expired without fully
+articulating the place of her destination.
+
+But who and what _was_ the crone who prophesied the catastrophe?
+Ay, "that is the mystery of this wonderful history."--Some say it was
+Dame Fothergill, the late confessor's mamma; others, St. Bridget
+herself; others thought it was nobody at all, but only a phantom
+conjured up by conscience. As we do not know, we decline giving an
+opinion.
+
+And what became of the Clerk of Chatham? Mr. Simkinson avers that he
+lived to a good old age, and was at last hanged by Jack Cade, with his
+inkhorn about his neck, for "setting boys copies." In support of this
+he adduces his name "Emmanuel," and refers to the historian
+Shakespeare. Mr. Peters, on the contrary, considers this to be what he
+calls one of Simkinson's "Anacreonisms," inasmuch as, at the
+introduction of Mr. Cade's reform measure, the Clerk, if alive, would
+have been hard upon two hundred years old. The probability is that the
+unfortunate alluded to was his great grandson.
+
+Margaret Shurland in due course became Margaret Ingoldsby: her portrait
+still hangs in the gallery at Tappington. The features are handsome,
+but shrewdish, betraying, as it were, a touch of the old Baron's
+temperament; but we never could learn that she actually kicked her
+husband. She brought him a very pretty fortune in chains, watches, and
+Saracen ear-rings; the barony, being a male fief, reverted to the
+Crown.
+
+In the Abbey-church at Minster may yet be seen the tomb of a recumbent
+warrior, clad in the chain-mail of the 13th century. His hands are
+clasped in prayer; his legs, crossed in that position so prized by
+Templars in ancient, and tailors in modern days, bespeak him a soldier
+of the faith in Palestine. Close behind his dexter calf lies sculptured
+in bold relief a horse's head: and a respectable elderly lady, as she
+shows the monument, fails not to read her auditors a fine moral lesson
+on the sin of ingratitude, or to claim a sympathizing tear to the
+memory of poor "Grey Dolphin!"
+
+RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+MOSES, THE SASSY;
+
+OR,
+
+THE DISGUISED DUKE.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ELIZY.
+
+
+My story opens in the classic presinks of Bostin. In the parler of the
+bloated aristocratic mansion on Bacon street sits a luvly young lady,
+whose hair is cuvered ore with the frosts of between 17 Summers. She
+had just sot down to the piany, and is warblin the popler ballad called
+"Smells of the Notion," in which she tells how with pensiv thought, she
+wandered by a C beat shore. The son is settin in its horizon, and its
+gorjus light pores in a golden meller flud through the winders, and
+makes the young lady twice as beautiful nor what she was before, which
+is onnecessary. She is magnificently dressed up in a Berage basque,
+with poplin trimmins, More Antique, Ball Morals and 3 ply carpeting.
+Also, considerable guaze. Her dress contains 16 flounders and her shoes
+is red morocker, with gold spangles onto them. Presently she jumps up
+with a wild snort, and pressin her hands to her brow, she exclaims,
+"Methinks I see a voice!"
+
+A noble youth of 27 summers enters. He is attired in a red shirt and
+black trowis, which last air turned up over his boots; his hat, which
+is a plug, being cockt onto one side of his classiual hed. In sooth, he
+was a heroic lookin person, with a fine shape. Grease, in its barmiest
+days near projuced a more hefty cavileer. Gazin upon him admirinly for
+a spell, Elizy (for that was her name) organized herself into a tabloo,
+and stated as follers:
+
+"Ha! do me eyes deceive me earsight? No, I reckon not! That frame! them
+store close! those nose! Yes, it is me own, me only Moses!"
+
+He (Moses) folded her to his hart, with the remark that he was a
+"hunkey boy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WAS MOSES OF NOBLE BIRTH?
+
+
+Moses was foreman of Engine Co. No. 40. Forty's fellers had just bin
+having an annual reunion with Fifty's fellers, on the day I intorjuce
+Moses to my readers, and Moses had his arms full of trofees, to wit: 4
+scalps, 5 eyes, 3 fingers, 7 ears (which he chawed off), and several
+half and quarter sections of noses. When the fair Elizy recovered from
+her delight at meetin Moses, she said:--"How hast the battle gonest?
+Tell me!"
+
+"We chawed 'em up--that's what we did!" said the bold Moses.
+
+"I thank the gods!" said the fair Elizy. "Thou did'st excellent well.
+And Moses," she continued, layin her hed confidinly again his weskit,
+"dost know I sumtimes think thou istest of noble birth?"
+
+"No!" said he, wildly ketchin hold of hisself. "You don't say so!"
+
+"Indeed do I! Your dead grandfather's sperrit comest to me the tother
+night."
+
+"Oh no, I guess it's a mistake," sed Moses.
+
+"I'll bet two dollars and a quarter he did!" replied Elizy. "He said:
+'Moses is a Disguised Juke.'"
+
+"You mean Duke," said Moses.
+
+"Dost not the actors all call it Juke?" said she. That settled the
+matter.
+
+"I hev thought of this thing afore," said Moses abstractedly. "If it is
+so, then thus it must be! 2 B or not 2 B! Which? Sow, sow! But enuff. O
+life! life!--_you're too many for me!_" He tore out some of his pretty
+yeller hair, stampt on the floor several times, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE PIRUT FOILED.
+
+
+Sixteen long and weary years has elapst since the seen narrated in the
+last chapter took place. A noble ship, the Sary Jane, is a-sailin from
+France to Ameriky via the Wabash Canal. The pirut ship is in hot
+pursoot of the Sary. The pirut capting isn't a man of much principle,
+and intends to kill all the people on bored the Sary and confiscate the
+walleables. The capting of the S. J. is on the pint of givin in, when a
+fine lookin feller in russet boots and a buffalo overcoat rushes
+forored and obsarves:
+
+"Old man! go down stairs! Retire to the starbud bulk-hed! I'll take
+charge of this Bote!"
+
+"Owdashus cuss!" yelled the capting, "away with thee or I shall do mur-
+rer-der-r-r!"
+
+"Skurcely," obsarved the stranger, and he drew a diamond-hilted-fish-
+knife and cut orf the capting's hed. He expired shortly, his last words
+bein, "We are governed too much."
+
+"People!" sed the stranger, "I'm the Juke de Moses!"
+
+"Old hoss!" sed a passenger, "methinks thou art blowin!" whareupon the
+Juke cut orf his hed also.
+
+"Oh that I should live to see myself a ded body!" screamed the
+unfortnit man. "But don't print any verses about my deth in the
+newspapers, for if you do I'll haunt ye!"
+
+"People!" sed the Juke, "I alone can save you from yon bloody pirut!
+Ho! a peck of oats!" The oats was brought, and the Juke, boldly mountin
+the jibpoop, throwed them onto the towpath. The pirut rapidly
+approached, chucklin with fiendish delight at the idee of increasin his
+ill-gotten gains. But the leadin hoss of the pirut ship stopt suddent
+on comin to the oats, and commenst for to devour them. In vain the
+piruts swore and throwed stones and bottles at the hoss--he wouldn't
+budge a inch. Meanwhile the Sary Jane, her hosses on the full jump, was
+fast leavin the pirut ship!
+
+"Onct agin do I escape deth!" said the Juke between his clencht teeth,
+still on the jibpoop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WANDERER'S RETURN.
+
+
+The Juke was the Sassy! Yes, it was!
+
+He had bin to France and now he was home agin in Bostin, which gave
+birth to a Bunker Hill!! He had some trouble in getting hisself
+acknowledged as Juke in France, as the Orleans Dienasty and Borebones
+were fernest him, he finely conkered. Elizy knowed him right off, as
+one of his ears and a part of his nose had bin chawed off in his fights
+with opposition firemen durin boyhood's sunny hours. They lived to a
+green old age, beloved by all, both grate and small. Their children, of
+which they have numerous, often go up onto the Common and see the
+Fountain squirt.
+
+This is my 1st attempt at writin a Tail & it is far from bein perfeck,
+but if I have indoosed folks to see that in 9 cases out of 10 they can
+either make Life as barren as the Dessert of Sarah, or as joyus as the
+flower garding, my objeck will have bin accomplished, and more too.
+
+ARTEMUS WARD.
+
+
+
+
+MR. COLUMBUS CORIANDER'S GORILLA.
+
+
+My article on the Origin of the Human Species had been months in
+preparation. Much of the fame which I have since secured by its
+publication in that widely circulated magazine, the _Interoceanic
+Monthly_, is due to the fact that I spent weeks in deep investigations
+in ethnological science, comparing results, and especially examining the
+points of resemblance which exist in the brute creation and the nobler
+race of man. To say that I utterly overthrew the Darwinian theory, and
+quite demolished the tribe of pretenders who have since attempted to
+imitate that great apostle of error, may not be strictly in accordance
+with modesty, but hosts of candid friends will admit that it is strictly
+true. I know very well that, though my untiring labors in the cause of
+science are not yet thoroughly appreciated, an admiring posterity will
+dwell with delight on the name of Samuel Simcox as the benefactor of his
+race, who showed where that race had its birth and from what primitive
+elements it sprang. For further particulars, see the _Interoceanic
+Monthly_ for June, 18--.
+
+My favorite haunt during the progress of this article was Coriander's
+Menagerie; having resolved that this should be the masterpiece of my
+life, I spared neither labor nor expense upon it, and actually procured
+a season ticket to the menagerie, and passed many pleasant hours in
+watching the wild animals, studying their habits, and drawing many
+valuable conclusions from their points of resemblance and difference.
+Consequently, though the apes and monkeys had furnished me with an
+inexhaustible fund of amusement and interest, I was delighted beyond
+measure when it was announced that Coriander had secured a live gorilla
+for his collection of wild beasts. An agent had been dispatched to
+Africa, and had sent home, with great secrecy, a real live specimen of
+this dreadful beast; and so well had all the negotiations been kept
+that nobody knew of what was being done, until the monster was fairly
+caged and on exhibition at Coriander's Menagerie. I entered with zest
+upon a study of the creature's habits and peculiarities; and while the
+idle curiosity of mere wonder-mongers kept a vast crowd about the cage
+wherein the furious beast was confined, calmly I surveyed it from a
+safe distance and made my scientific observations for the benefit of
+mankind. And when vulgar wonder at the strange beast had somewhat
+subsided, and I could get nearer the cage and watch the gorilla, I was
+more and more impressed with the human traits which I discovered in the
+extraordinary animal. His manner of reclining was, though impish, half
+human; and his grotesque gait, as he sprang from side to side of the
+narrow prison, was suggestive of his supposititious congener-man; even
+his terrible howl, which rent the air of the museum constantly, had a
+human shade of sound.
+
+One rainy day, when the great hall of the museum was unusually vacant
+of visitors, I almost leaned against the cage in my eager watch of the
+movements of the gorilla. I fancied him roaming his native African
+jungles, the terror of every living thing, or rearing, with a strange
+grotesque solicitude, his young family. I wondered how much akin to
+human love and hate were the passions that raged beneath that hairy
+breast, and how much of real feeling was in the loud and anguished howl
+that occasionally burst from those fanglike jaws. Thus speculating, I
+drew incautiously near the bars of the cage where the monster
+restlessly paced up and down, and was inexpressibly startled at feeling
+his hot breath on my cheek, while from his huge, hairy lips came the
+sound--"Sam!" I actually jumped with astonishment, whereupon the
+creature beseechingly said: "Hush, hush, for Heaven's sake do not leave
+me!" I mustered courage enough to ask what all this meant. The gorilla
+answered: "I am your old friend, Jack Gale; don't leave me."
+
+So Coriander's famous gorilla was no other than my old crony, Jack
+Gale.
+
+And this is how Jack happened to be a gorilla:
+
+Coriander's keepers were too watchful to permit much conversation, but
+taking from the gorilla--for such he still was to me--the address of
+Jack Gale, No. 1283, Morusmulticaulis Street, I went home to revise
+some of my deductions relative to the origin of the human species,
+founded on observations of the gorilla in a state of comparative
+wildness. The menagerie closed at ten o'clock in the evening, and
+precisely at half-past ten I was at Jack's lodgings, to which I climbed
+up four flights of crooked and very dark stairways. The room was small
+and cheerless; the windows were carefully guarded by thick curtains;
+three or four swinging bars depended from the ceiling for the practice
+of its inmate in acrobatic exercises; across the foot of the bed lay a
+well-dressed gorilla's skin, and at a small table, and absorbing the
+contents of a pot of beer, sat the wearer of this discarded robe. This
+was the haunt of the African gorilla. He told his story in a few words.
+
+"When you and I were used to talk with each other along the Tallapoosa
+and Athens wire, I never thought to meet you as a live gorilla; but
+here I am. After the war was over and the Government discharged so many
+telegraph operators, it was hard scratching for a while; and after you
+and I left the Decapolis office, I was well-nigh broke more than once,
+only a few cents standing between me and beggary. But I kept a stiff
+upper lip and struggled up to Cincinnati, where I met with Coriander.
+He was out there with his menagerie and was about to come on to this
+city and open a big show. He is a great old villain, but he has the
+sweetest, nicest little daughter that ever was given to man. You
+haven't seen Clara Coriander, have you? No? Well, you have not seen the
+loveliest and best girl in the world, then. But, as I was saying, old
+Coriander was preparing for a year's campaign in this city, and
+allotted a great deal on a real, live gorilla which had been captured
+in the wilds of Africa somewhere. Oh, curse that gorilla; I wish I had
+been dead before I ever heard of him."
+
+And here Jack groaned.
+
+"I love Clara Coriander. I suppose you have guessed that out already.
+But it was the old story; poor young man, without fortune or friends;
+cruel parents determined that their only daughter shall not marry a
+beggar; young lady inconsolable and devoted to aforesaid young man, but
+dreadfully afraid of papa, whose only child she is. Well, Coriander
+came on here and I followed, the old man giving me the job of writing
+his posters and advertisements--to keep me from starving, I suppose.
+The long-expected _Gooroo_ arrived from Zanzibar, but no gorilla was
+there on board for Mr. Coriander; there was a skin of that celebrated
+animal, the beast himself having departed this life off the island of
+St. Helena, an imitation of the example of another much-feared person
+who once resided in that locality.
+
+"Coriander was frantic. The great card of his menagerie was not to be
+his. His long-cherished plans were a wreck; his money was spent for
+naught; he had no gorilla. After all, I rather like the old wretch
+(Coriander, I mean). He has an absolute passion for his 'profession,'
+as he calls it, and was more in despair because he had no gorilla, than
+because it was a bad financial operation, which left him without that
+for which he had spent so much money. He was wretched in his
+disappointment, and postponed indefinitely the opening of his
+menagerie, though my elegant advertisements were in all the papers, and
+our flaming posters covered the walls of the city from one end to the
+other. Gloom reigned in the house of Coriander.
+
+"This was my opportunity. I was in love with Clara and without any
+permanent occupation. Presenting myself before the old man, I said:
+'Mr. Coriander, you want a gorilla?'
+
+"'To be sure,' said he, testily.
+
+"'I will furnish you with one.'
+
+"'The devil you will!'
+
+"'Look here,' said I, stepping back a few paces. Grasping the top of a
+heavy wardrobe that stood in the room, I swung myself up, clambered
+along the top, sprang up and down over chairs and tables, raced around
+the room with huge strides and jumps, and finally wound up my
+performances by rushing at the astonished Coriander, and, beating my
+breast, gave a terrific howl, that fairly made the old man quail as he
+writhed in his chair. I had not been practicing for nothing, evidently.
+Coriander was actually frightened.
+
+"'What does this mean,' he gasped, with some rage mingled with his
+perturbation.
+
+"'I am the live gorilla from the wilds of Africa,' said I. 'Give me my
+skin that arrived by the _Gooroo_ from Zanzibar, and I will scare
+this city out of its senses when the menagerie opens, after a brief
+delay on account of the difficulty of preparing for the enormous
+additions, which a discriminating public will be delighted to see.'
+
+"Old Coriander embraced me with tears in his eyes, declaring that I was
+a real genius, and was born to the show business.
+
+"'But,' said I, 'though I am poor and need the money which you will pay
+me, I have one other condition, and that is that you shall give me your
+daughter's hand if I succeed.'
+
+"The old man was rather taken aback at this, and flatly refused at
+first; and we wrangled over the matter for two or three days, but,
+after seeing me in the skin of the gorilla, and go through my antics
+and performances, he reluctantly gave in and agreed that after one year
+of gorilla life in his service, I should have the happiness of marrying
+Clara. He only stipulated that I should not hereafter tell anybody of
+the cheat, and that not even Clara should know of it now.
+
+"I am aware that my profession is not high art as you call it, and on
+hot days it is precious uncomfortable. But what won't a fellow do under
+the pressure of an exchequer in distress, and enticed by the promise of
+the hand of the prettiest and best girl in the world? The pay is not
+much, but I keep soul and body together, which is more than some poor
+devils do in this great city. By the way, Sam, have you got five
+dollars about you?"
+
+Now, if there was anything that Jack Gale specially loved, it was the
+state of being in debt. He was never so happy as when in debt, and when
+by accident, or the interference of friends, he got out of it, he was
+uneasy and wretched, apparently, until he got in again. The normal
+condition of the man was debt; so when he asked me for a loan, I could
+not help laughing; and I told him that he had undoubtedly found one of
+the greatest privations of his gorilla life to be the difficulty of
+contracting new debts.
+
+"That's a fact," said Jack. "The menagerie opens at eight o'clock in
+the morning; it takes me a good hour to get myself up for the day; and
+we don't shut up until ten o'clock at night; so you see my professional
+duties are very confining, and a real, live African gorilla is not
+supposed to have first-rate credit with the people who poke stale
+sandwiches and peanuts through his cage-bars by day."
+
+I promised Jack that if old Seanecks, of the _Interoceanic Monthly_,
+accepted my article on the Origin of the Human Species, I would divide
+the proceeds with him. Jack and I had shared and shared alike with our
+little gains too often in years gone by, for me to remember which owed
+the other now. Besides, I told him that I had studied his habits as a
+gorilla, and he had some claim upon the profits of an article in which
+his personal peculiarities figured so largely.
+
+During the next few days I observed the characteristics of Coriander's
+African gorilla with new interest. He performed wonderfully well; it
+was difficult to realize that the hairy, ravening, agile, and
+grotesquely-moving beast, from which every visitor shrank back aghast,
+was only jolly Jack Gale serving out his hard servitude for an
+anticipated bride, very much after the ancient fashion of Laban's
+kinsman. The cunning rascal had a fashion of leaping at the bars when
+curious people came too near, driving them away from a narrow
+inspection by his hideous yells and angry mouthings. But his roars,
+which were really artistic in their brutal sonorousness, served us a
+good purpose. As I was night editor on the _Daily Highflyer_, and
+kept pretty close from ten until three o'clock in the morning, and Jack
+was caged until the hour at which I went to work, it was not easy for
+us to meet. So we exchanged the salutations of the day and a few scraps
+of news by using our old signals, learned long ago in the telegraph
+office. Instead of the rat-tat-tat of the little instrument so familiar
+to both of us, Jack, by a series of long or short howls and grunts,
+gave me his message, to which I replied by careless taps of my cane or
+hand, nobody suspecting that my casual movements meant anything, nor
+supposing for an instant that a sudden burst of African forest yells,
+which sent a fat lady nearly into hysterics, and made two small
+children howl with apprehension, merely meant "She with the pink bonnet
+is my Clara."
+
+And it must be confessed that Clara Coriander was an exceedingly
+attractive young person. Blonde, slight in figure, and with one of
+those fair transparent complexions that make you think of a light
+shining through an alabaster vase, Clara Coriander was certainly as
+lovely a girl as one ever lays eyes upon. Besides, she was an only
+daughter, and old Coriander had grown rich in the menagerie business.
+Jack was a lucky dog (gorilla, I should say), to gain her hand--if he
+ever did; but one could not help thinking, as he noted her dainty
+manner and delicate, somewhat _distingue_ face, that she was
+hardly the girl to fancy a fellow who had personated a gorilla, even
+for her hand. I was afraid that Jack had made a mistake in thus
+debasing himself to the absurd passion of her cruel parent for the
+possession of a gorilla. Moreover, by debarring himself from her
+society for a greater portion of the time (Sundays only excepted), he
+left the field open for some more fortunate rival who might, in the
+meantime, carry off the prize.
+
+But Jack felt sure that he was all right, and by a precious bit of
+deception he had led Clara to believe that he was hard at work, night
+and day, at some legitimate calling, earning money for his future
+ambitious designs in life. The poor little thing believed in him, but
+Jack said it was very hard for him to be obliged to see his beloved
+flirting, right before his eyes at the menagerie (for the girl had a
+taste for natural history, and was there often), with some perfumed
+dangler who was in love with her pretty face and old Coriander's money.
+On these occasions, he hated himself for his mean disguise, and found
+satisfaction in howling at the gay party in such dreadful fashion as
+sent them quaking from his cage; and then he cursed himself for having
+driven away his lovely angel, and was smitten with sudden remorse as he
+saw her rose-hued cheeks blanch at his terrific cries. At such times he
+could with difficulty restrain himself from shouting: "Don't be
+frightened, dear, it's only Jack!" But he was fortunately preserved
+from such an untimely exposure.
+
+Old Seanecks was very mean, and, though he accepted my article on the
+Origin of the Human Species, only paid me the pitiful sum of twenty
+dollars for that valuable contribution to knowledge. Twenty dollars for
+the labor and thought of weeks! Was ever anything so absurd! And there
+was Jack confidently expecting at least twenty-five dollars to purchase
+a birth-day present for Clara. Jack loved to make presents, and the
+deeper he got into debt, the more presents did he bestow on his
+friends. Such another whole-souled fellow as he was, to be sure.
+
+But I pocketed the disappointment along with the money and went
+straightway to the menagerie. There was quite a little crowd about
+Jack's cage, standing at a respectful distance. In his capacity as the
+real African gorilla, Jack had just avenged himself on a dangerous
+rival by snatching off his matchless wig. This gentleman had long
+deceived his friends with his ambrosial locks, but Jack's quick eye had
+discovered the cheat, and he seized a favorable moment to make a grab
+for it. To his inexpressible joy, it came off in his paw, and the
+discomfitted gallant stood with his bare poll in the presence of the
+giggling and amused Clara Coriander. The amateur gorilla was in a
+frenzy of delight, and tore up and down his cage, scattering Mr.
+Jonquil's chestnut curls with savage glee. Old Coriander afterwards had
+to pay for the wig, of course, but he was so delighted with the stroke
+of showman genius displayed in its destruction, that he paid the bill
+without a murmur. None but a wild and savage animal, of course, would
+"snatch a gentleman bald-headed," as the old man expressed it. I
+suppose some of my readers, who now recollect the occurrence, will
+agree with Mr. Coriander in his opinion.
+
+After the little crowd which this amusing affair had drawn around the
+cage, dispersed in various directions, I drew near enough to hand Jack
+a ten-dollar note, which was his share of the proceeds of my article in
+_Interoceanic Monthly_. He snatched it furtively, for the keepers
+were not far off, and cramming it into his ferocious jaws (lined with
+blood-red velvet), he howled in his usual _staccato_ style, "Didn't I
+scalp old Jonquil, though!"
+
+One of the keepers approaching me, said, suspiciously, "Look a-here,
+young man, you make entirely too free with that ere beast. He's awful,
+he is, and some day he'll just go for you, if you ain't keerful. Why,
+this afternoon, he jest tore a gentleman's skelp clean off his head,
+and he was borne out in a fainting condition. Jest see the hair of him
+all scattered over the cage."
+
+I humbly thanked him for the caution, and drew off, asking for
+information as to the creatures's habits. He was very talkative, and
+enlightened me with much valuable knowledge relative to his diet,
+averring that he invariably was fed before the menagerie was opened,
+the raw meat and live rabbits which he devoured exasperating him by
+their blood to that degree, that it was not safe for any person but the
+keeper to come into his sight. The gorilla enjoyed this confidential
+communication, and roared his approval thus: "He's the head liar of
+this menagerie."
+
+Jack and I kept up a casual correspondence from day to day by means of
+our telegraphic signals, for I had little time to see him when off
+duty. Occasionally I strolled in of an evening to commiserate his
+_ennui_ and cheer him up with a friendly sign, or when opportunity
+offered, to chat furtively with the man-gorilla, who swore dreadfully
+at the bad bargain which he had made. His confinement was growing
+excessively irksome, and though his constant exercise kept him in good
+bodily health, poor Jack lost his spirits and grew positively wretched
+in mind. One night, when I had managed to find time to visit him at his
+"den" in Morusmulticaulis Street, he grew quite plaintive over his
+unhappy condition.
+
+"Hang it, Sam," said he, "you have no idea how mad it makes me to think
+that I have shut myself up in that cage for a year, and with no chance
+of getting out without telling Clara what I have been doing. And there
+she goes pottering about the out the least idea that Jack, unhappy
+Jack, is glowering at her from his cursed gorilla prison, longing to
+say the words that would bring confusion and dismay upon all of us. And
+then when I see some other fellow flirting around with her, and old
+Coriander leering over her head at me, knowing full well how aggravated
+I am, why, it just makes me wild."
+
+I comforted Jack as well as I could, and bade him hope that some stroke
+of luck would yet deliver him from his voluntary thraldom and bring him
+to his love. He was hopeful that old Coriander would find the gorilla
+business unprofitable, and would offer to buy him off, or consent to
+shorter terms. He vowed one day that unless relief soon came, he would
+address the crowd about his cage and inform them that he was an
+unmitigated humbug; that he was no gorilla at all, but only a
+distressed gentleman, John Gale by name, temporarily held in duress by
+that old rascal, Columbus Coriander. But he restrained himself and
+waited. It was well that he did.
+
+One evening, finding an unemployed half-hour at my disposal, I
+sauntered into the menagerie hall, and watched the poor weary beasts
+slowly composing themselves to their unquiet slumbers. It was nearly
+time to close the show for the night, and not many people were left to
+stroll about among the cages. Old Coriander was there with his fat
+wife, the lovely Clara floating about in a cloudy white dress, and
+followed by a train of admiring swains. The poor gorilla was stretched
+at full length on the floor of his cage, with his face sullenly turned
+to the rear partition. Passing by the poor fellow, with a little pang
+of regret, I stopped before a cage of apes, poor Jack's next door
+neighbors. No wonder that he felt blue sometimes.
+
+Suddenly there was a rush of hurrying feet; a strange confusion
+pervaded the whole place, lately so quiet and still; and above the
+pungent odor of the menagerie, I detected that of burning wood. The
+place was on fire, and instantly everybody ran for the exits. The hall
+was filled with blinding smoke; the red tongues of flame thrust
+themselves eagerly through the thin partitions which separated the main
+exhibition hall from the lumber-rooms in the rear. And the people who
+rushed selfishly down the narrow stairways fled not only from the
+flames, but from the poor beasts who cowered in their cages, or roared
+angrily as they caught the mad excitement around them. The scene was
+terrible; the crackling, roaring fires sweeping out into the long room;
+the wild terror of the caged animals; the shrieks and cries of flocks
+of suddenly-liberated strange birds; and the surging clouds of smoke
+which rolled through the high arches overhead. Passing near the
+gorilla's cage I heard Jack's voice, as he yelled with stentorian
+lungs: "Will nobody let me out? Oh, will nobody let me out?" Quick as
+thought I ran behind his cage, and unfastened the narrow flap that
+closed the opening. In another moment the African gorilla was out and
+across the hall, to where a blonde young lady in a white dress was
+being helplessly borne along by old Coriander, also encumbered by the
+stout mother of Miss Clara--for Jack had seen that his beloved was in
+mortal danger. Raising the fainting girl in his strong arms, the hairy
+monster rushed down the stairs, astounding the coming firemen with the
+sight of a ferocious gorilla carrying off a respectable young lady,
+whose flaxen curls lay lovingly over the dreadful shoulders of the
+beast, which, with ludicrous failure, endeavored to caress the pallid
+face of the young lady with his hairy jaws, stiff with padding and
+whalebone, and nicely lined with blood-red velvet.
+
+The gorilla fled up the street, bearing his dainty burden--for, once in
+sight, he could not stop with out exposure. Plodding travellers on the
+illuminated sidewalks were startled by the swift apparition of a
+gorilla carrying off a young lady, who was borne into dark alleys to be
+eaten in the obscurity of some hidden den. Casual wayfarers through
+back streets shrieked and ran as they beheld a flaming hairy dragon
+leaping with enormous strides, and carrying the corpse of a nice young
+person hanging over his shoulder. Good Mrs. Harris, who keeps the
+lodging-house at No. 1283, Morusmulticaulis Street, fell down in a
+deadly swoon at her own doorway, as she was returning from a class-
+meeting, to see the Evil One, equipped with the traditional head,
+horns, and tail, breathing fire and sulphurous smoke, violently
+deporting a beautiful young lady, who had for love of dress and other
+worldly vanities, sold herself to Old Nick. Vaulting over the prone
+body of the insensible Mrs. Harris, Jack eluded his few pursuers, and
+darted up the stairs to his own private den, were he shut and locked
+himself and his fair burthen from the world.
+
+The lovely Clara revived shortly, and opening her eyes shut them again
+with a great scream. She was in the den of the African gorilla. There
+was more fainting, and more anguish on the part of Jack, who cursed his
+luck and his folly together. "It's Jack; it's only Jack," he cried,
+with real agony, as he tore off his mask; and the young lady, slowly
+returning to her senses, once more opened her eyes and beheld her
+lover, a real African gorilla from his chin downwards, but possessing a
+very resolute yet anxious human head, very like Jack Gale's, with the
+scalp and grinning jaws of the defunct monster hanging behind his ears.
+
+This was an extraordinary situation; a nice young lady in a strange
+garret, confronted by an erratic young man in semi-gorilla costume; his
+countenance flushed with excitement and exercise; his eyes wild with
+anxiety and alarm, and his whole manner that of a person who is in a
+state of utter quandary. The truth of history compels me to record the
+fact that Miss Clara Coriander threw up her hands and laughed as she
+would die. She was a sensible girl, and liked a good joke. Old
+Coriander's plans were laid bare to her clear vision in one moment; she
+saw through the whole trick; and laughed in the face of the astonished
+Mr. Gale. "Oh, Jack," she said, as soon as she could recover her
+breath, "how could you be such a fool? Where Oh, oh, oh!" To all of
+which Jack could only reply by instalments. But by secluding the young
+lady on the stairway, he succeeded in preparing for their return to the
+Coriander mansion. Through the half-deserted streets the young couple
+went in different guise from that in which they had before astonished
+those who saw them flee. The gorilla delivered up the old man's
+daughter, and was glad to be told that the menagerie, not quite ruined,
+must needs he closed for a few months for repairs.
+
+The show opened again in due season with new attractions, under the
+management of Coriander and Gale. But in all the lines of cages of rare
+beasts, no African gorilla was to be found. In lieu thereof they showed
+a handsomely stuffed skin of the much lamented beast, which came to an
+untimely end in consequence of a cold caught by exposure at the great
+menagerie fire. Coriander's heart relented when Jack saved his daughter
+from the burning building, and he found his inventive genius invaluable
+in the show business.
+
+I have seen the only young gorilla born on American soil, of which
+there is any account. It has pink cheeks and blue eyes, and is learning
+to answer to the name of Clara Gale.
+
+
+
+
+THE FATE OF YOUNG CHUBB
+
+
+When Mr. Chubb, the elder, returned from Europe, he brought with him
+from Geneva, a miniature musical-box, long and very narrow, and
+altogether of hardly greater dimensions, say, then a large pocket-
+knife. The instrument played four cheerful little tunes, for the
+benefit of the Chubb family, and they enjoyed it. Young Henry Chubb
+enjoyed it to such an extent that one day, just after the machine had
+been wound up ready for action he got to sucking the end of it, and in
+a moment of inadvertence it slipped, and he swallowed it. The only
+immediate consequence of the accident was that a harmonic stomach-ache
+was organized upon the interior of Henry Chubb and he experienced a
+restlessness which he well knew would defy the soothing tendencies of
+peppermint and make a mockery of paregoric.
+
+And Henry Chubb kept his secret in his own soul and in his stomach,
+also determined to hide his misery from his father, and to spare the
+rod to the spoiled child--spoiled, at any rate, as far as his digestive
+apparatus was concerned.
+
+But that evening, at the supper table, Henry had eaten but one mouthful
+of bread, when strains of wild, mysterious music were suddenly wafted
+from under the table. The family immediately made an effort to discover
+whence the sounds came, although Henry Chubb set there filled with
+agony and remorse and bread and tunes, and desperately asserted his
+belief that the music came from the cellar where the hired girl was
+concealed with a harp. He well knew that Mary Ann was unfamiliar with
+the harp, but he was frantic with anxiety to hide his guilt. Thus it is
+that one crime leads to another.
+
+But he could not disguise the truth forever, and that very night, while
+the family was at prayers, Henry all at once began to hiccup, and the
+musicbox started off without warning, with "way down on the Swanee
+River," with variations. Whereupon the paternal Chubb arose from his
+knees and grasped Henry kindly but firmly by his hair and shook him up,
+and inquired what he meant by such conduct.
+
+And Henry asserted that he was practicing something for a Sunday-school
+celebration, which old Chubb intimated was a singularly thin
+explanation.
+
+Then they tried to get up that music-box, and every time they would
+seize Henry by the leg and shake him over the sofa-cushion, or would
+pour some fresh variety of emetic down his throat, the instrument would
+give some fresh sport, and joyously grind out "Listen to the Mocking
+Bird," or "Thou'lt Never Cease to love."
+
+At last, they were compelled to permit that musical box to remain
+within the sepulchral recesses of the epigastrium of young Chubb. To
+say that the unfortunate victim of the disaster was made miserable by
+his condition, would be to express in the feeblest manner the state of
+his mind. The more music there was in his stomach, the wilder and more
+chaotic became the discord in his soul. As likely as not, it would
+occur that while he lay asleep in bed in the middle of the night, the
+works would begin to revolve, and would play "Home, Sweet Home," for
+two or three hours, unless the peg happened to slip, when the cylinder
+would switch back again to "way down upon the Swanee River" and would
+rattle out that tune with variations and fragments of the scales, until
+Henry's brother would kick him out of bed in wild despair, and sit on
+him in a vain effort to subdue the serenade, which, how ever,
+invariably proceeded with fresh vigor when subjected to unusual
+pressure.
+
+And when Henry Chubb went to church it frequently occurred that, in the
+very midst of the most solemn portion of the sermon, he would feel a
+gentle disturbance under the lower button of his jacket, and presently,
+when everything was hushed, the undigested engine would give a
+preliminary buzz, and then reel off "Listen to the Mocking Bird," and
+"Thou'lt Never Cease to Love," and scales and exercises, until the
+clergyman would stop and glare at Henry over his spectacles, and
+whisper to one of the deacons.
+
+Then the sexton would suddenly tack up the aisle and clutch the unhappy
+Mr. Chubb by the collar, and scud down the aisle again to the
+accompaniment of "Home Sweet Home," and then incarcerate Henry in the
+upper portion of the steeple until after church. But the end came at
+last, and the miserable boy found peace. One day, while he was sitting
+in school, endeavoring to learn his multiplication table to the tune of
+"Thou'lt Cease to Love," his gastric juice triumphed. Something or
+other in the music-box gave way all at once, the springs were unrolled
+with alarming force, and Henry Chubb, as he felt the fragments of the
+instruments hurled right and left among his vitals, tumbled over on the
+floor and expired.
+
+At the _post-mortem_ examination they found several pieces of "Home,
+Sweet Home" in his liver, while one of his lungs was severely torn by a
+fragment of "Way down upon the Swanee river."
+
+Particles of "Listen to the Mocking Bird" were removed from his heart
+and breast-bone, and three brass pegs of "Thou'lt Never Cease to Love"
+were found firmly driven into his fifth rib.
+
+They had no music at the funeral. They lifted the machinery out of him
+and buried him quietly in the cemetery. Whenever the Chubbs buy musical
+boxes now, they get them as large as a piano, and chain them to the
+wall. MAX ADLER.
+
+
+
+
+BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE INN.
+
+
+Before the days of railways, and in the time of the old Great North
+Road, I was once snowed up at the Holly-tree Inn. Beguiling the days of
+my imprisonment there by talking at one time or other with the whole
+establishment, I one day talked with the Boots, when he lingered in my
+room.
+
+Where had he been in his time? Boots repeated when I asked him the
+question. Lord, he had been everywhere! And what had he been? Bless
+you, he had been everything you could mention a'most.
+
+Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. I should say so, he could
+assure me, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had come in
+_his_ way. Why, it would be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he
+hadn't seen than what he had. Ah! A deal, it would.
+
+What was the most curious thing he had seen? Well! He didn't know. He
+couldn't momently name what was the curiousest thing he had seen,
+unless it was a Unicorn,--and he see _him_ once at a Fair. But supposing
+a young gentleman not eight years old was to run away with a young woman
+of seven, might I think _that_ a queer start? Certainly? Then that was a
+start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the
+shoes they run away in,--and they was so little that he couldn't get his
+hand into 'em.
+
+Master Harry Walmer's father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down
+away by Shooter's Hill there, six or seven mile from Lunnon. He was a
+gentle man of spirit, and good-looking, and held his head up when he
+walked, and had what you may call fire about him. He wrote poetry, and
+he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, and he acted, and
+he done it all equally beautiful. He was uncommon proud of Master Harry
+as was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was a
+gentleman that had a will of his own. and a eye of his own, and that
+would be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the
+fine bright boy and was delighted to see him so fond of his fairy
+books, and was never tired of hearing him say, my name is Norval, or
+hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and
+When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept
+the command over the child, and the child _was_ a child, an it's to be
+wished more of 'em was!
+
+How did Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being under-
+gardener. Of course he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always about,
+in the summer time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and
+sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting
+acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master Harry
+hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you
+spell Norah, if you was asked?" and then begun cutting it in print all
+over the fence.
+
+He couldn't say that he had taken particular notice of children before
+that: but really it was pretty to see them two mites a going about the
+place together, deep in love. And the courage of the boy! Bless your
+soul, he'd have throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little
+sleeves, and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to meet
+one, and she been frightened of him. One day he stops, along with her,
+where Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up,
+"Cobbs," he says, "I like _you_." "Do you, sir? I'm proud to hear
+it." "Yes, I do, Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?" "Don't
+know, Master Harry, I am sure." "Because Norah likes you, Cobbs."
+"Indeed, sir? that's very gratifying." "Gratifying, Cobbs? It's better
+than millions of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah."
+"Certainly, sir." "You're going away, ain't you, Cobbs?" "Yes, sir."
+"Would you like another situation, Cobbs?" "Well, sir, I shouldn't
+object, if it was a good 'un." "Then, Cobbs," said he," you shall be
+our Head Gardener when we are married." And he tucks her in her little
+sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks away.
+
+Boots could assure me that it was better than a picture, and equal to a
+play, to see them babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their
+sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a rambling about the
+garden, deep in love. Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they
+was birds, and kept up with 'em, singing to please 'em. Sometimes they
+would creep under the Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms
+round one another's necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading
+about the Prince, and the Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and
+the king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would hear them planning about
+having a house in a forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely
+on milk and honey. Once he came upon them by the pond, and heard Master
+Harry say, "Adorable Norah, kiss me, and say you love me to
+distraction, or I'll jump in head-foremost." And Boots made no question
+he would have done it if she hadn't complied. On the whole, Boots said
+it had a tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himself,--only
+he didn't exactly know who with.
+
+"Cobbs," said master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the
+flowers, "I am going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my
+grandmamma's at York."
+
+"Are you indeed, sir? I hope you'll have a pleasant time. I am going
+into Yorkshire, myself, when I leave here."
+
+"Are you going to your grandmamma's, Cobbs?"
+
+"No, sir. I haven't got such a thing."
+
+"Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while,
+and then said, "I shall be very glad indeed to go, Cobbs,--Norah's
+going."
+
+"You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, "with your beautiful
+sweetheart by your side."
+
+"Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, "I never let anybody joke about
+it, when I can prevent them."
+
+"It wasn't a joke, sir," says Cobbs, with humility,--"wasn't so meant."
+
+"I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you're
+going to live with us.--Cobbs!"
+
+"Sir."
+
+"What do you think my grandmama gives me when I go down there?"
+
+"I couldn't so much as make a guess, sir."
+
+"A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs."
+
+"Whew!" says Cobbs, "that's a spanking sum of money, Master Harry."
+
+"A person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that,--
+couldn't a person, Cobbs?"
+
+"I believe you, sir!"
+
+"Cobbs," said the boy, "I'll tell you a secret. At Norah's house, they
+have been joking her about me, and pretending to laugh at our being
+engaged--pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!"
+
+"Such, sir," says Cobbs, "is the depravity of human nature."
+
+The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with
+his glowing face towards the sunset, and then departed with, "Good-
+night, Cobbs. I'm going in."
+
+If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a going to leave that
+place just at that present time, well, he couldn't rightly answer me.
+He did suppose he might have stayed there till now if he had been
+anyways inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he wanted
+change. That's what he wanted,--change. Mr. Walmers, he said to him
+when he gave him notice of his intentions to leave, "Cobbs," he says,
+"have you anything to complain of? I make the inquiry because if I find
+that any of my people really has anything to complain of, I wish to
+make it right if I can." "No, sir," says Cobbs; "thanking you, sir, I
+find myself as well situated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The
+truth is, sir, that I am going to seek my fortune." "O, indeed, Cobbs?"
+he says: "I hope you may find it." And Boots could assure me--which he
+did, touching his hair with his bootjack as a salute in the way of his
+present calling--that he hadn't found it yet.
+
+Well, sir! Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master
+Harry, he went down to the old lady's at York, which old lady would
+have given that child the teeth out of her head (if she had had any),
+she was so wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do--but cut away
+from that old lady's with his Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna
+Green and be married!
+
+Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it several
+times to better himself, but always come back through one thing or
+another), when one summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of
+the coach gets them two children. The Guard says to our Governor, "I
+don't quite make out these little passengers, but the young gentleman's
+words was, that they was to be brought here." The young gentleman gets
+out; hands his lady out; gives the Guard something for himself; says to
+our Governor "We're to stop here to-night, please. Sitting-room and two
+bed-rooms will be required. Chops and cherry pudding for two!" and
+tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into
+the house much bolder than Brass.
+
+Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was,
+when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into
+the Angel,--much more so, when he, who had seen them without their
+seeing him, give the Governor his views of the expedition they was
+upon. "Cobbs," says the Governor, "if this is so, I must set off myself
+to York, and quiet their friends minds. In which case you must keep
+your eye upon 'em, and humor 'em, till I come back. But before I take
+these measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to find from themselves
+whether your opinions is correct." "Sir, to you," says Cobbs, "that
+shall be done directly."
+
+So Boots goes up-stairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry,
+on a enormous sofa,--immense at any time, but looking like the Great
+Bed of Ware, compared with him,--a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with
+his pocket-handkechref. Their little legs was entirely off the ground,
+of course, and it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how
+small them children looked.
+
+"It's Cobbs! It's Cobbs!" cried Master Harry, and comes running to him,
+and catching hold of his hand. Miss Norah comes running to him on
+t'other side and catching hold of his t'other hand, and they both jump
+for joy.
+
+"I see you a getting out, sir," says Cobbs, "I thought it was you. I
+thought I couldn't be mistaken in your height and figure. What's the
+object of your journey, sir?--Matrimonial?"
+
+"We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green," returned the boy.
+"We have run away on purpose. Norah has been in rather low spirits,
+Cobbs; but she'll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend."
+
+"Thank you, sir, and thank _you_, miss," says Cobbs, "for your good
+opinion. _Did_ you bring any luggage with you, sir!"
+
+If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honor upon it,
+the lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of
+cold buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush,--
+seemingly a doll's. The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of
+string, a knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up
+surprising small, a orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.
+
+"What may be the exact nature of your plans, sir?" says Cobbs.
+
+"To go on," replied the boy,--which the courage of that boy was
+something wonderful!--"in the morning, and be married to-morrow."
+
+"Just so, sir," says Cobbs. "Would it meet your views, sir, if I was to
+accompany you?"
+
+When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, "O
+yes, yes, Cobbs! Yes!"
+
+"Well, sir," says Cobbs, "if you will excuse my having the freedom to
+give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this. I'm acquainted
+with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow, would
+take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior (myself driving, if you
+approved), to the end of your journey in a very short space of time. I
+am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-
+morrow, but even if you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be
+worth your while. As to the small account here, sir, in case you was to
+find yourself running at all short, that don't signify; because I'm a
+part proprietor of this inn, and it could stand over."
+
+Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy
+again, and called him "Good Cobbs!" and "Dear Cobbs!" and bent across
+him to kiss one another in the delight of their confiding heart, and he
+felt himself the meanest rascal for deceiving 'em that ever was born.
+
+"Is there any thing you want just at present, sir?" says Cobbs,
+mortally ashamed of himself.
+
+"We should like some cake after dinner," answered Master Harry, folding
+his arms, putting out one leg and looking straight at him, "and two
+apples,--and jam. With dinner we should like to have some toast and
+water. But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant
+wine at dessert. And so have I."
+
+"It shall be ordered at the bar, sir," says Cobbs; and away he went.
+
+Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as
+he had then, that he would far rather have it out in half a dozen
+rounds with the Governor, then have combined with him; and that he
+wished with all his heart there was any impossible place where those
+two babies could make an impossible marriage, and live impossibly happy
+ever afterwards. However, as it couldn't be, he went into the
+Governor's plans, and the Governor set off for York in half an hour.
+
+The way in which the women of that house--without exception--every one
+of 'em--married _and_ single--took to that boy when they heard the
+story, Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he could do to
+keep 'em from dashing into the room and kissing him. They climbed up
+all sorts of places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through
+a pane of glass. They were seven deep at the keyhole. Ihey were out of
+their minds about him and his bold spirit.
+
+In the evening, Boots went into the room to see how the runaway couple
+was getting on. The gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting the
+lady in his arms, she had tears upon her face, and was lying very tired
+and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.
+
+"Mrs. Henry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?" says Cobbs.
+
+"Yes, she is tired, Cobbs: but she is not used to be away from home,
+and she has been in low spirits again. Cobbs, do you think you could
+bring a biffin, please?"
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," says Cobbs. "What was it you--?"
+
+"I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very fond of
+them."
+
+Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he
+brought it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a
+spoon, and took a little himself; the lady being heavy with sleep, and
+rather cross. "What should you think, sir," says Cobbs, "of a chamber
+candlestick?" The gentleman approved; the chamber-maid went first, up
+the great staircase; the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed,
+gallantly escorted by the gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her
+door, and retired to his own apartment, where Boots softly locked him
+up.
+
+Boots couldn't but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver
+he was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet
+milk-and-water, and toast and currant jelly, over-night), about the
+pony. It really was as much as he could do, he don't mind confessing to
+me, to look them two young things in the face, and think what a wicked
+old father of lies he had grown up to be. Howsomever, he went on a
+lying like a Trojan about the pony. He told 'em that it did so
+unfort'nately happen that the pony was half clipped, you see, and that
+he couldn't be taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to
+his inside. But that he'd be finished clipping in the course of the
+day, and that to-morrow morning at eight o'clock the pheayton would be
+ready. Boots's view of the whole case, looking back upon it in my room,
+is, that Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to give in. She
+hadn't had her hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem
+quite up to brushing it herself, and its getting in her eyes put her
+out. But nothing put out Master Harry. He set behind his breakfast-cup,
+a tearing away at the jelly, as if he had been his own father.
+
+After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed
+soldiers,--at least, he knows that many such were found in the
+fireplace, all on horseback. In the course of the morning, Master Harry
+rang the bell,--it was surprising how that there boy did carry on,--and
+said, in a sprightly way, "Cobbs, is there any good walks in this
+neighborhood?"
+
+"Yes, sir," say Cobbs. "There's Love Lane."
+
+"Get out with you, Cobbs;"--that was that there boy's expression,--
+"you're joking."
+
+"Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, "there really is Love Lane. And
+a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and
+Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior."
+
+"Norah, dear," said Master Harry, "this is curious. We really ought to
+see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go
+there with Cobbs."
+
+Boots leaves me to judge what a beast he felt himself to be, when that
+young pair told him, as they jogged along together, that they had made
+up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head
+gardener, on account of his being so true a friend to 'em. Boots could
+have wished at that moment that the earth would have opened and
+swallered him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a-looking at
+him, and believing him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well
+as he could, and he took 'em down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and
+there Master Harry would have drownded himself, in half a moment more,
+a getting out a water-lily for her,--but nothing daunted that boy.
+Well, sir, they were tired out. All being so new and strange to 'em,
+they was tired as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of
+daisies, like the children of the wood, leastways meadows, and fell
+asleep.
+
+Boots don't know--perhaps I do,--but never mind, it don't signify
+either way--why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself to see them
+two pretty babies a lying there in the clear, still, sunny day, not
+dreaming half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was
+awake. But, Lord! when you come to think of yourself, if you know, and
+what game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle,
+and what a poor sort of a chap you are, and how it's always either
+Yesterday with you, or else To-morrow, and never To-day, that's where
+it is!
+
+Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty
+clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior's temper was
+on the move. When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he
+"teased her so;" and when he says, "Norah, my young May Moon, your
+Harry tease you?" she tells him, "Yes; and I want to go home!"
+
+A biled fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers
+up a little; but Boots could have wished, he must privately own to me,
+to have seen her more sensible of the voice of love, and less
+abandoning of herself to currants. However, master Harry, he kept up,
+and his noble heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very
+sleepy about dusk, and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off
+to bed as per yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.
+
+About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise,
+along with Mr. Walmers and an elderly lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused
+and very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, "We are much
+indebted to you, ma'am for your kind care of our little children, which
+we can never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray ma'am, where is my boy?"
+Our missis says, "Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir, Cobbs, show
+Forty!" Then he says to Cobbs, "Ah, Cobbs! I am glad to see _you_.
+I understood you was here!" And Cobbs says, "Yes, sir. Your most
+obedient sir."
+
+I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps; but Boots assures me
+that his heart beat like a hammer, going up stairs. "I beg your pardon,
+sir," says he, while unlocking the door; "I hope you are not angry with
+Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you
+credit and honor." And Boots signifies to me, that, if the fine boy's
+father had contradicted him in that daring state of mind in which he
+then was, he thinks he should have "fetched him a crack," and taken the
+consquence.
+
+But Mr. Walmers only says, "No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. Thank you!"
+And the door being opened, goes in. Boots goes in too, holding the
+light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to the bedside, bend gently down,
+and kiss the little sleeping face. Then he stands looking at it for a
+minute, looking wonderfully like it (they do say he ran away with Mrs.
+Walmers); and then he gently shakes the little shoulder.
+
+"Harry, my dear boy! Harry!"
+
+Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks at Cobbs too. Such is
+the honor of that mite, that he looks at Cobbs, to see whether he has
+brought him into trouble.
+
+"I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress yourself and come
+home."
+
+"Yes, pa."
+
+Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast begins to swell when
+he has nearly finished, and it swells more and more as he stands at
+last, a looking at his father: his father standing looking at him, the
+quiet image of him.
+
+"Please may I"--the spirit of that little creature, and the way he kept
+his rising tears down!--"please dear pa--may I--kiss Norah before I
+go?"
+
+"You may, my child."
+
+So he takes Master Harry by his hand, Boots leads the way with the
+candle, and they come to that other bedroom, where the elderly lady is
+seated by the bed and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmer, Junior, is fast
+asleep. There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he lays
+his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor
+unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to
+him--a sight so touching to the chamber-maids who are peeping through
+the door, that one of them calls out, "It's a shame to part 'em!" But
+the chamber-maid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one.
+Not that there was any harm in that girl. Far from it.
+
+Finally, Boots says, that's all about it. Mr. Walmers drove away in the
+chaise, having hold of Master Harry's hand. The elderly lady and Mrs.
+Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married a Captain long
+afterwards, and died in India), went off next day. In conclusion, Boots
+puts it to me whether I hold with him in two opinions: firstly, that
+there are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as
+innocent of guile as those two children; secondly, that it would be a
+jolly good thing for a great many couples on their way to be married,
+if they could only be stopped in time, and brought back separately.
+
+CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENTHUSIAST IN ANATOMY.
+
+
+The youth whom we shall call "Tom"--and nothing but "Tom," was one of
+those individuals who labor with a fierce, burning anxiety to burst
+through the trammels imposed upon them by a limited education,--one of
+those votaries of science, whose energy seems to grow all the more,
+because it has nothing to feed upon. He was very slightly formed, and
+had eyes so bright and shining that when one gazed on him, one was
+inclined to overlook all his other thin, sharply defined features.
+Never was there a more complete appearance of a clear intelligence in a
+corporeal form.
+
+The few half-pence which Tom was enabled to save from his scanty
+earnings at a laborious trade, he regularly expended at the bookstall;
+and on one occasion was highly delighted at picking up a small book on
+anatomy. The work was one of those that had long been superseded by
+more modern and better treatises, and the little plates were as ill and
+coarsely done as possible. Nevertheless, with him it had not the
+disadvantage of comparison. He thought it a mine of science yet
+unexplored, and he suffered his whole soul to be absorbed by it.
+
+In a few weeks he had transferred the entire contents of the work into
+his own brain; and though he invariably carried the book in his pocket,
+it was more out of respect to it, as an old friend, than from any
+further benefit to be derived from it. The names of eery bone,
+cartilage, ligament, and muscle of which he had read, were deeply
+imprinted in his mind; and he could have passed with glory through the
+sharpest examination, provided it had been based on the contents of the
+little book.
+
+But Tom, in spite of his knowledge, was too intelligent not to perceive
+the defective state of his acquirements. He soon felt that his anatomy
+was after all, a science of names, rather than of things--that though
+he could have described accurately all the intricate bones of the
+skull, and all the muscles of the extremities, his descriptions would
+have been little more than a repetition of words committed to memory.
+He had not seen a single real object connected with his science. If he
+could but have set eyes upon a skeleton, what an advantage it would
+have been.
+
+We once read of a celebrated anatomist, who, far from admiring human
+beauty, regarded the skin, as an impertinent obstacle to the
+acquisition of science, concealing, as it does, the play of the
+muscles. Whether such a clear notion as this ever entered the mind of
+our hero, we cannot say, but certainly if some tall, lean beggar passed
+him on the road, he would clutch convulsively at his knife, and follow
+the man with a sad, wistful look.
+
+One autumnal evening he sat in the ale-house parlor, watching the smoke
+of his pipe, and indulging in his own reflections; for though the
+conversation in the room was noisy and animated, it had no interest for
+him. Devoted to his own pursuits, births, deaths and marriages were to
+him things of nought, and he paid no heed to the constant discussions
+which were held in the village, on the extraordinary case of old
+Ebenezer Grindstone, who had been thought extremely rich, but in whose
+house not a farthing had been found after his decease, to the great
+disappointment of his creditors.
+
+Soon, however, there was such a violent dash of rain against the
+window, that even Tom was compelled to start, when he saw the door
+open, and a stranger enter, completely muffled in a cloak. The new
+comer stood before the fire as if to dry himself, and seemed to be of
+the same taciturn disposition as Tom, for he made no answer to the
+different questions that were addressed to him, nor did he even
+condescend to look at the speakers. The shower having ceased, the moon
+shining brightly through the window, the stranger walked out again,
+without the sign of leave-taking.
+
+"That be a queer chap," said the ostler, "I'll run and see where he's
+going," and he followed the stranger, who had awakened a curiosity in
+every one except Tom. Scarcely five minutes had elapsed, when the
+ostler rushed into the room, pale as death.
+
+"Udds buddikins!" said he, and it was not before a glass of spirits had
+been poured down his throat, that he could state the cause of his
+alarm. "Old chap just gone out got no proper face like--only a death's
+head--he just looked around on me in the moonlight."
+
+"Do you mean to say," exclaimed Tom, "that he is nothing but a
+skeleton?"
+
+"Aye, sure I do," said the ostler.
+
+"And which way did he go?"
+
+"Why, towards the church-yard, sure," said the ostler. Tom waited for
+no more, but, dashing down his pipe, he rushed out of the room, and
+tore along the road to the churchyard. When he had got there, he saw
+the stranger standing by the tomb of old Ebenezer Grindstone. The moon
+was shining full upon him, and, as Tom approached, the cloak fell down,
+leaving nothing but a bare skeleton before him.
+
+"Thank my stars!" exclaimed Tom, "I have seen a skeleton at last!"
+
+"Young man!" said the skeleton, in a hollow voice, while it hideously
+moved its jaws, "attend!"
+
+"How beautifully," cried Tom, enraptured, "can I see the play of the
+lower maxillary!"
+
+"Attend!" repeated the skeleton; "but, rash man! what are you about?"
+it added, turning suddenly round. The fact is, Tom was running his
+fingers down the vertebrae, and counting to see if their number
+corresponded with that given in his book. "Seven cervical, twelve
+dorsal!" he cried with immense glee.
+
+The skeleton lost all patience, and, raising its arm, shook its fist
+angrily at Tom, who, with his eyes fixed on the elbow, merely shouted
+his joy, at perceiving the "ginglymoid" movement.
+
+The skeleton, who had been accustomed to terrify other people, was
+completely amazed at the scientific position taken by the young
+anatomist. In fact, the most extraordinary scene that can be conceived
+presently occurred; for the apparition, feeling panic-struck at Tom's
+coolness and scientific spirit, darted away from him, and endeavored to
+escape by dodging among the tomb-stones. Tom was too anxious to pursue
+his studies to allow himself to be baffled in this way; and putting
+forth all his strength, soon overtook the skeleton, and held him tight,
+a conversation ensued, in the course of which the skeleton explained
+that he was old Grindstone himself, who had buried a quantity of money
+underground, and could not rest in peace till it was dug up and
+distributed among the creditors. This office he requested Tom to
+perform.
+
+"It will be some trouble," said Tom, "and the affair is none of mine--
+but lookye--I'm willing to comply with your request, if, as a reward,
+you will allow me to come and study you every night for the next month.
+You may then retire to rest for as long a time as you please."
+
+"Agreed," said the skeleton; and, quite recovered from his alarm, he
+shook hands with Tom in ratification of the bargain.
+
+Tom found the money, distributed it among the creditors, and passed
+every night for the next month in the old churchyard, observing his
+beloved skeleton, which as it moved into any position he desired, gave
+him an opportunity of studying the motion of the bones, in a way that
+had not been enjoyed by any other anatomist.
+
+The young enthusiast, sitting at midnight with the strange assistant to
+his pursuits, would have been a delightful sight, had any one possessed
+the courage to stop and look at the party. When the month had expired,
+Tom and his good friend shook hands and parted with great regret; but
+Tom had completely retained in his mind all he had seen and laid the
+foundation of that profound anatomical science by which he was
+afterwards so much distinguished.
+
+It is needless to add that this is the true account of the early career
+of the celebrated Dr.----, and that all others are baseless
+fabrications.
+
+JOHN OXENFORD.
+
+
+
+
+"THE LIGHT PRINCESS"
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+WHAT! NO CHILDREN?
+
+
+Once upon a time, so long ago that I have quite forgotten the date,
+there lived a king and queen who had no children.
+
+"And the king said to himself: 'All the queens of my acquaintance have
+children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my
+queen has not one. I feel ill-used.' So he made up his mind to be cross
+with his wife about it. But she bore it all like a good, patient queen,
+as she was. Then the king grew very cross indeed. But the queen
+pretended to take it all as a joke, and a very good one too.
+
+"'Why don't you have any daughters, at least?' said he, 'I don't say
+_sons;_ that might be too much to expect.'
+
+"'I am sure, clear king, I am very sorry,' said the queen.
+
+"'So you ought to be,' retorted the king; 'you are not going to make a
+virtue of _that_, surely.'
+
+"But he was not an ill-tempered king; and, in any matter of less
+moment, he would have let the queen have her own way, with all his
+heart. This, however, was an affair of state.
+
+"The queen smiled.
+
+"'You must have patience with a lady, you know, dear king,' said she.
+
+"She was, indeed, a very nice queen, and heartily sorry that she could
+not oblige the king immediately.
+
+"The king tried to have patience, but he succeeded very badly. It was
+more than he deserved, therefore, when, at last, the queen gave him a
+daughter,--as lovely a little princess as ever cried."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WON'T I, JUST?
+
+
+The day drew near when the infant must be christened. The king wrote
+all the invitations with his own hand. Of course somebody was
+forgotten.
+
+"Now it does not generally matter, if somebody is forgotten; but you
+must mind who. Unfortunately, the king forgot without intending it; and
+the chance fell upon the Princess Makemnoit, which was awkward; for the
+princess was the king's own sister, and he ought not to have forgotten
+her. But she made herself so disagreeable to the old king, their
+father, that he had forgotten her in making his will; and so it was no
+wonder that her brother forgot her in writing his invitations. But poor
+relations don't do anything to keep you in mind of them. Why don't
+they? The king could not see into the garret she lived in, could he?
+She was a sour, spiteful creature. The wrinkles of contempt crossed the
+wrinkles of peevishness, and made her face as full of wrinkles as a pat
+of butter. If ever a king could be justified in forgetting anybody,
+this king was justified in forgetting his sister, even at a
+christening. And then she was so disgracefully poor! She looked very
+odd, too. Her forehead was as large as all the rest of her face, and
+projected over it like a precipice. When she was angry, her little eyes
+flashed blue. When she hated anybody, they shone yellow and green. What
+they looked like when she loved anybody, I do not know; for I never
+heard of her loving anybody but herself, and I do not think she could
+have managed that, if she had not somehow got used to herself. But what
+made it highly imprudent in the king to forget her, was--that she was
+awfully clever. In fact, she was a witch; and when she bewitched
+anybody, he very soon had enough of it: for she beat all the wicked
+fairies in wickedness, and all the clever ones in cleverness. She
+despised all the modes we read of in history, in which offended fairies
+and witches have taken their revenges; and, therefore, after waiting
+and waiting in vain for an invitation, she made up her mind at last to
+go without one, and make the whole family miserable, like a princess
+and a philosopher.
+
+"She put on her best gown, went to the palace, was kindly received by
+the happy monarch, who forgot that he had forgotten her, and took her
+place in the procession to the royal chapel. When they were all
+gathered around the font, she contrived to get next to it, and throw
+something into the water. She maintained a very respectful demeanor
+till the water was applied to the child's face. But at that moment she
+turned round in her place three times, and muttered the following
+words, loud enough for those beside her to hear:--
+
+"Light of spirit, by my charms, Light of body, every part, Never weary
+human arms--Only crush thy parent's heart!"
+
+"They all thought she had lost her wits, and was repeating some foolish
+nursery rhyme; but a shudder went through the whole of them. The baby,
+on the contrary, began to laugh and crow; while the nurse gave a start
+and a smothered cry, for she thought she was struck with paralysis; she
+could not feel the baby in her arms. But she clasped it tight, and said
+nothing.
+
+"The mischief was done."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+SHE CAN'T BE OURS.
+
+
+Her atrocious aunt had deprived the child of all her gravity. If you
+ask me how this was effected, I answer: In the easiest way in the
+world. She had only to destroy gravitation. And the princess was a
+philosopher, and knew all the _ins_ and _outs_ of the laws of
+gravitation as well as the _ins_ and _outs_ of her boot-lace. And being
+a witch as well, she could abrogate those laws in a moment, or at least
+so clog their wheels and rust their bearings, that they could not work
+at all. But we have more to do with what followed than with how it was
+done.
+
+"The first awkwardness that resulted from this unhappy privation was
+that the moment the nurse began to float the baby up and down, she flew
+from her arms towards the ceiling. Happily, the resistance of the air
+brought her ascending career to a close within a foot of it. There she
+remained, horizontal as when she left her nurse's arms, kicking and
+laughing amazingly. The nurse in terror flew to the bell, and begged
+the footman, who answered it, to bring up the house-steps directly.
+Trembling in every limb, she climbed upon the steps, and had to stand
+upon the very top, and reach up, before she could catch the floating
+tail of the baby's long clothes.
+
+"When the strange fact came to be known, there was a terrible commotion
+in the palace. The occasion of its discovery by the king was,
+naturally, a repetition of the nurse's experience. Astonished that he
+felt no weight when the child was laid in his arms, he began wave her
+up and--not down, for she slowly ascended to the ceiling as before, and
+there remained floating in perfect comfort and satisfaction, as was
+testified by her peals of tiny laughter. The king stood staring up in
+speechless amazement and trembled so that his beard shook like grass in
+the wind. At last, turning to the queen, who was just as horror-struck
+as himself, he said, gasping, staring, and stammering:--
+
+"'She _can't_ be ours, queen.'
+
+"Now the queen was much cleverer than the king, and had begun already
+to suspect that 'this effect defective came by cause.'
+
+"'I am sure she is ours,' answered she. 'But we ought to have taken
+better care of her at the christening. People who were never invited
+ought not to have been present.'
+
+"'Oh, ho!' said the king, tapping his forehead with his forefinger, 'I
+have it all. I've found her out. Don't you see it, queen? Princess
+Makemnoit has bewitched her.'
+
+"'That's just what I say,' answered the queen.
+
+"'I beg your pardon, my love, I did not hear you. John, bring the steps
+I get on my throne with.'
+
+"For he was a little king with a great throne, like many other kings.
+
+"The throne-steps were brought, and set upon the dining-table, and John
+got upon the top of them. But he could not reach the little princess,
+who lay like a baby-laughter-cloud in the air, exploding continuously.
+
+"'Take the tongs, John,' said his majesty, and getting up on the table,
+he handed them to him.
+
+"John could reach the baby now, and the little princess was handed down
+by the tongs."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+WHERE IS SHE.
+
+
+One fine summer day, a month after these her first adventures, during
+which time she had been very carefully watched, the princess was lying
+on the bed in the queen's own chamber, fast asleep. One of the windows
+was open, for it was noon, and the day so sultry that the little girl
+was wrapped in nothing less ethereal than slumber itself. The queen
+came into the room, and, not observing that the baby was on the bed,
+opened another window. A frolicsome fairy wind, which had been watching
+for a chance of mischief, rushed in at the one window, and, taking its
+way over the bed where the child was lying, caught her up, and rolling
+and floating her long like a piece of flue, or a dandelion-seed,
+carried her with it through the opposite window, and away. The queen
+went downstairs, quite ignorant of the loss she had herself occasioned.
+When the nurse returned, she supposed that her majesty had carried her
+off, and, dreading a scolding delayed making inquiry, about her. But,
+hearing nothing, she grew uneasy, and went at length to the queen's
+boudoir, where she found her majesty.
+
+"'Please your majesty, shall I take the baby?' said she.
+
+"'Where is she?' asked the queen.
+
+"'Please forgive me. I know it was wrong.'
+
+"'What do you mean?' said the queen looking grave.
+
+"'Oh! don't frighten me, your majesty!' exclaimed the nurse, clasping
+her hands.
+
+"The queen saw that something was amiss, and fell down in a faint. The
+nurse rushed about the palace, screaming, 'My baby! my baby!'
+
+"Every one ran to the queen's room. But the queen could give no orders.
+They soon found out, however, that the princess was missing, and in a
+moment the palace was like a beehive in a garden. But in a minute more,
+the queen was brought to herself by a great shout and clapping of
+hands. They had found the princess fast sleep under a rosebush to which
+the wind puff had carried her, finishing its mischief by shaking a
+shower of red rose-leaves all over the little white sleeper. Startled
+by the noise the servants made, she woke; and furious with glee,
+scattered the rose-leaves in all directions, like a shower of spray in
+the sunset.
+
+"She was watched more carefully after this, no doubt; yet it would be
+endless to relate all the odd incidents resulting from this peculiarity
+of the young princess. But there never was a baby in a house, not to
+say a palace, that kept a household in such constant good-humor, at
+least below stairs. If it was not easy for her nurses to hold her,
+certainly she did not make their arms ache. And she was so nice to play
+at ball with! There was positively no danger of letting her fall. You
+might throw her down, or knock her down, or push her down, but but you
+couldn't _let_ her down. It is true, you might let her fly into
+the fire or the coal-hole, or through the window; but none of these
+accidents had happened as yet. If you heard peals of laughter
+resounding from some unknown region, you might be sure enough of the
+cause. Going down into the kitchen, or _the room_ you would find
+Jane and Thomas, and Robert and Susan, all and sum, playing at ball
+with the little princess. She was the ball herself and did not enjoy it
+the less for that. Away she went, flying from one to another,
+screeching with laughter. And the servants loved the ball itself better
+even than the game. But they had to take care how they threw her, for,
+if she received an upward direction, she would never come down with out
+being fetched."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WHAT IS TO BE DONE.
+
+
+But above stairs it was different. One day, for instance, after
+breakfast, the king went into his counting-house, and counted out his
+money. The operation gave him no pleasure.
+
+"'To think,' said he to himself, 'that every one of these gold
+sovereigns weighs a quarter of an ounce, and my real, live flesh-and-
+blood princess, weighs nothing at all!'
+
+"And he hated his gold sovereigns, as they lay with a broad smile of
+self-satisfaction all over their yellow faces.
+
+"The queen was in the parlor, eating bread and honey. But at the second
+mouthful, she burst out crying, and could not swallow it. The king
+heard her sobbing. Glad of anybody, but especially of his queen, to
+quarrel with, he dashed his gold sovereigns into his money-box, clapped
+his crown on his head, and rushed into the parlor.
+
+"'What is all this about?' exclaimed he. 'What are you crying for,
+queen?'
+
+"'I can't eat it,' said the queen, looking ruefully it the honey-pot.
+
+"'No wonder!' retorted the king. 'You've just eaten your breakfast,--
+two turkey eggs, and three anchovies.'
+
+"'Oh! that's not it!' sobbed her majesty. It's my child, my child!'
+
+"' Well, what's the matter with your child? She's neither up the
+chimney nor down the draw-well. Just hear her laughing. Yet the king
+could not help a sigh, which he tried to turn into a cough, saying:--
+
+"'It is a good thing to be light-hearted, I am sure, whether she be
+ours or not.'
+
+"'It is a bad thing to be light-headed, answered the queen, looking,
+with prophetic soul, far into the future.
+
+"'Tis a good thing to be light-handed,' said the king.
+
+"'Tis a bad thing to be light-fingered,' answered the queen.
+
+"'Tis a good thing to be light-footed,' said the king.
+
+"'Tis a bad thing,' began the queen; but the king interrupted her.
+
+"'In fact.' said he, with the tone of one who concludes an argument in
+which he has had only imaginary opponents, and in which, therefore, he
+has come off triumphant,--'in fact, it is a good thing altogether to be
+light-bodied.'
+
+"'But it is a bad thing altogether to be light-minded.' retorted the
+queen, who was beginning to lose her temper.
+
+"This last answer quite discomfited his majesty, who turned on his
+heel, and betook himself to his counting-house again. But he was not
+half-way towards it, when the voice of his queen, overtook him:--
+
+"'And it's a bad thing to be light-haired," screamed she, determined to
+have more last words, now that her spirit was roused.
+
+"The queen's hair was black as night; and the king's had been, and his
+daughter's was golden as morning. But it was not this reflection on his
+hair that troubled him; it was the doubled use of the word _light_. For
+the king hated all witticisms, and punning especially. And besides he
+could not tell whether the queen meant light-_haired_ or light-_heired_;
+for why might she not aspirate her vowels when she was ex-asperated
+herself?"
+
+"He turned upon his other heel, and rejoined her. She looked angry
+still, because she knew that she was guilty, or, what was much the
+same, knew that he thought so.
+
+"'My dear queen,' said he, 'duplicity of any sort is exceedingly
+objectionable between married people, of any rank, not to say kings and
+queens; and the most objectionable form it can assume is that of
+punning.'
+
+"'There!' said the queen, 'I never made a jest, but I broke it in the
+making. I am the most unfortunate woman in the world!'
+
+"She looked so rueful, that the king took her in his arms; and they sat
+down to consult.
+
+"'Can you bear this?' said the king.
+
+"'No I can't,' said the queen.
+
+"'Well, what is to be done?' said the king.
+
+"'I'm sure I don't know,' said the queen. 'But might you not try an
+apology?'
+
+"To my old sister, I suppose you mean?' said the king.
+
+"'Yes,' said the queen.
+
+"'Well, I don't mind,' said the king.
+
+"So he went the next morning to the garret of the princess, and, making
+a very humble apology, begged her to undo the spell. But the princess
+declared, with a very grave face, that she knew nothing at all about
+it. Her eyes, however, shone pink, which was a sign that she was not
+happy. She advised the king and queen to have patience, and to mend
+their ways. The king returned disconsolate. The queen tried to comfort
+him.
+
+"'We will wait till she is older. She may then be able to suggest
+something. She will know at least how she feels, and explain things to
+us.
+
+"'But what if she should marry!' exclaimed the king, in sudden
+consternation at the idea.
+
+"'Well, what of that?' rejoined the queen.
+
+"'Just think? If she were to have any children! In the course of a
+hundred years the air might be as full of floating children as of
+gossamers in autumn.'
+
+"'That is no business of ours,' replied the queen. 'Besides, by that
+time, they will have learned to take care of themselves.'
+
+"A sigh was the king's only answer.
+
+"He would have consulted the court physicians; but he was afraid they
+would try experiments upon her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SHE LAUGHS TOO MUCH.
+
+
+Meantime, notwithstanding awkward occurrences, and griefs that she
+brought her parents to, the little princess laughed and grew,--not fat,
+but plump and tall. She reached the age of seventeen, without having
+fallen into any worse scrape than a chimney; by rescuing her from
+which, a little bird-nesting urchin got fame and a black face. Nor,
+thoughtless as she was, had she committed any thing worse than laughter
+at everybody and everything that came in her way. When she heard that
+General Clanrunfort was cut to pieces with all his forces she laughed;
+when she heard that the enemy was on his way to besiege her papa's
+capital, she laughed hugely; but when she heard that the city would
+most likely be abandoned to the mercy of the enemy's soldiery,--why
+then she laughed immoderately. These were merely reports invented for
+the sake of experiment. But she never could be brought to see the
+serious side of anything. When her mother cried she said:--
+
+"'What queer faces mamma makes! And she squeezes water out her cheeks?
+Funny mamma!'
+
+"And when her papa stormed at her, she laughed, and danced round and
+round him, clapping her hands, and crying:--
+
+"'Do it again, papa. Do it again! It's such fun. Dear funny papa!'
+
+"And if he tried to catch her, she glided from him in an instant; not
+in the least afraid of him, but thinking it part of the game not to be
+caught. With one push of her foot, she would be floating in the air
+above his head; or she would go dancing backwards and forwards and
+sideways, like a great butterfly. It happened several times, when her
+father and mother were holding a consultation about her in private,
+that they were interrupted by vainly repressed outbursts of laughter
+over their heads; looking up with indignation, saw her floating at full
+length in the air above them, whence she regarded them with the most
+comical appreciation of the position.
+
+"One day an awkward accident happened. The princess had come out upon
+the lawn with one of her attendants, who held her by the hand. Spying
+her father at the other side of the lawn, she snatched her hand from
+the maid's and sped across to him. Now when she wanted to run alone her
+custom was to catch up a stone in each hand, so that she might come
+down again after a bound. Whatever she wore as part of her attire had
+no effect in this way; even gold, when it thus became as it were a part
+of herself, lost all its weight for the time. But whatever she only
+held in her hands retained its downward tendency. On this occasion she
+could see nothing to catch up, but a huge toad, that was walking across
+the lawn as if he had a hundred years to do it in. Not knowing what
+disgust meant, for this was one of her peculiarities, she snatched up
+the toad, and bounded away. She had almost reached her father, and he
+was holding out his arms to receive her and take from her lips the kiss
+which hovered on them like butterfly on a rosebud, when a puff of wind
+blew her aside into the arms of a young page, who had just been
+receiving a message from his majesty. Now it was no great peculiarity
+in the princess that once she was set a-going, it always cost her time
+and trouble to check herself. On this occasion there was no time. She
+_must_ kiss,--and she kissed the page. She did not mind it much;
+for she had no shyness on his composition; and she knew, besides, that
+she could not help it. So she only laughed like a musical-box. The poor
+page fared the worst. For the princess, trying to correct the
+unfortunate tendency of the kiss, put out her hands to keep her off the
+page; so that, along with the kiss, he received on the other cheek a
+slap with a huge black toad, which she poked right into his eye. He
+tried to laugh too; but it resulted in a very odd contortion of
+countenance, which showed that there was no danger of him pluming
+himself on the kiss. Indeed it is not safe to be kissed by princesses.
+As for the king, his dignity was greatly hurt, and he did not speak to
+the page for a whole month.
+
+"I may here remark that it was very amusing to see her run, if her mode
+of progression could properly be called running. For first, she would
+make a bound; then having alighted, she would run a few steps, and make
+another bound. Sometimes she would fancy she had reached the ground
+before she actually had, and her feet would go backwards and forwards,
+running upon nothing at all, like those of a chicken on its back. Then
+she would laugh like the very spirit of fun; only in her laugh there
+was something missing. What it was I find myself unable to describe. I
+think it was a certain tone, depending upon the possibility of
+sorrow,--_morbidezza_, perhaps. She never smiled."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+TRY METAPHYSICS.
+
+
+After a long avoidance of the painful subject, the king and queen
+resolved to hold a counsel of three upon it; and so they sent for the
+princess. In she came, sliding and flitting and gliding from one piece
+of furniture to another, and put herself at last in an arm chair, in a
+sitting posture. Whether she could be said _to sit,_ seeing she
+received no support from the seat of the chair, I do not pretend to
+determine.
+
+"'My dear child,' said the king, you must be aware that you are not
+exactly like other people.'
+
+"'O you dear funny papa! I have got a nose and two eyes and all the
+rest. So have you. So has mamma.'
+
+"'Now be serious, my dear, for once,' said the queen.
+
+"'No, thank you, mamma; I had rather not.'
+
+"'Would you not like to be able to walk like other people?' said the
+king.
+
+"'No indeed, I should think not. You only crawl. You are such slow
+coaches!
+
+"'How do you feel, my child?' he resumed, after a pause of
+discomfiture.
+
+"'Quite well, thank you.'
+
+"'I mean, what do you feel like?'
+
+"'Like nothing at all, that I know of.'
+
+"'You must feel like something.'
+
+"'I feel like a princess, with such a funny papa and such a dear pet of
+a queen-mamma!'
+
+"'Now really!" began the queen; but the princess interrupted her
+
+"'Oh! yes,' she added, 'I remember. I have a curious feeling sometimes,
+as if I were the only person that had any sense in the whole world.'
+
+"She had been trying to behave herself with dignity; but now she burst
+into a violent fit of laughter, threw herself backwards over the chair,
+and went rolling about the floor in an ecstasy of enjoyment. The king
+picked her up easier than one does a down quilt, and replaced her on
+her former relation to the chair. The exact preposition expressing this
+relation I do not happen to know.
+
+"'Is there nothing you wish for?' resumed the king, who had learned by
+this time that it was quite useless to be angry with her.
+
+"'O you dear papa!--yes,' answered she.
+
+"'What is it, my darling?'
+
+"'I have been longing for it,--oh such a time; Ever since last night.'
+
+"'Tell me what it is.'
+
+"'Will you promise to let me have it?'
+
+"The king was on the point of saying _yes_; but the wiser queen checked
+him with a single motion of her head.
+
+"'Tell me what it is first? said he.
+
+"'No, no. Promise first'
+
+"'I dare not What is it?'
+
+"'Mind I hold you to your promise. It is--to be tied to the end of a
+string,--a very long string indeed, and be flown like a kite. Oh, such
+fun! I would rain rose-water, and hail sugar-plums, and snow whipt-
+cream, and, and, and--'
+
+"A fit of laughing checked her; and she would have been off again, over
+the floor, had not the king started up and caught her just in time.
+Seeing that nothing but talk could be got out of her, he rang the bell,
+and sent her away with two of her ladies-in-waiting.
+
+"'Now, queen,' he said, turning to her majesty, 'what is to be done?'
+
+"'There is but one thing left,' answered she. 'Let us consult the
+college of metaphysicians.'
+
+"'Bravo?' cried the king; 'we will.'
+
+"Now at the head of this college were two very wise Chinese
+philosophers, by name, Hum-Drum, and Kopy-Keck. For them the king went,
+and straight-way they came. In a long speech, he communicated to them
+what they knew very well already,--as who did not?--namely, the
+peculiar condition of his daughter in relation to the globe on which
+she dwelt and requested them to consult together as to what might be
+the cause and probable cure of her _infirmity_. The king laid
+stress upon the word, but failed to discover his own pun. The queen
+laughed; but Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck heard with humility and retired in
+silence. Their consultation consisted chiefly in propounding and
+supporting, for the thousandth time, each his favorite theories. For
+the condition of the princess afforded delightful scope for the
+discussion of every question arising from the the division of thought,--
+in fact of all the Metaphysics of the Chinese Empire. But it is only
+justice to say that they did not altogether neglect the discussion of
+the practical question, _what was to be done?_
+
+"Hum-Drum was a Materialist, and Kopy-Keck was a Spiritualist. The
+former was slow and sententious; the latter was quick and flighty; the
+latter had generally the first word; the former the last.
+
+"'I assert my former assertion.' began Kopy-Keck, with a plunge. 'There
+is not a fault in the princess, body, or soul; only they are wrong put
+together. Listen to me now, Hum-Drum, and I will tell in brief what I
+think. Don't speak. Don't answer me. I _won't_ hear you till I
+have done. At that decisive moment, when souls seek their appointed
+habitations, two eager souls met, rebounded, lost their way, and
+arrived each at the wrong place. The soul of the princess was one of
+those, and she went far astray. She does not belong by rights to this
+world at all, but to some other planet, probably Mercury. Her
+proclivity to her true sphere destroys all the natural influence which
+this orb would otherwise possess over her corporeal frame. She cares
+for nothing here. There is no relation between her and this world.
+
+"'She must therefore be taught, by the sternest compulsion, to take an
+interest in the earth as the earth. She must study every department of
+its history,--its animal history; its vegetable history; its mineral
+history; its social history; its moral history; its political history;
+its scientific history; its literary history; its musical history; its
+artistical history; above all, its metaphysical history. She must begin
+with the Chinese Dynasty, and end with Japan. But, first of all, she
+must study Geology, and especially the history of the extinct races of
+animals,--their natures, their habits their loves, their hates their
+revenges. She must--'
+
+"'Hold, h-o-o-old!' roared Hum-Drum. 'It is certainly my turn now. My
+rooted and insubvertible conviction is that the cause of the anomalies
+evident in the princess' condition are strictly and solely physical.
+But that is only tantamount to acknowledging that they exist. Hear my
+opinion. From some cause or other, of no importance to our inquiry, the
+motion of her heart has been reversed. That remarkable combination of
+the suction and the force pump works the wrong way,--I mean in the case
+of the unfortunate princess: it draws in where it should force out, and
+forces out where it should draw in. The offices of the auricles and the
+ventricles are subverted. The blood is sent forth by the veins, and
+returns by the arteries. Consequently it is running the wrong way
+through all her corporeal organism,--lungs and all. Is it then at all
+mysterious, seeing that such is the case, that on the other particular
+of gravitation as well, she should differ from normal humanity? My
+proposal for the cure is this:--
+
+"'Phlebotomize until she is reduced to the last point of safety. Let it
+be effected, if necessary, in a warm bath. When she is reduced to a
+state of perfect asphyxia, apply a ligature to the left ankle, drawing
+it as tight as the bone will bear. Apply, at the same moment, another
+of equal tension around the right wrist. By means of plates constructed
+for the purpose, place the other foot and hand under the receivers of
+two air-pumps. Exhaust the receivers. Exhibit a pint of French brandy,
+and await the result.'
+
+"'Which would presently arrive in the form of grim Death, said Kopy-
+Keck.
+
+"'If it should, she would yet die in doing our duty,' retorted Hum-
+Drum.
+
+"But their majesties had too much tenderness for their volatile
+offspring to subject her to either of the schemes of the equally
+unscrupulous philosophers. Indeed, the most complete knowledge of the
+laws of nature would have been unserviceable in her case; for it was
+impossible to classify her. She was a fifth imponderable body, sharing
+all the other properties of the ponderable."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+TRY A DROP OF WATER.
+
+
+Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been falling in
+love. But how a princess who had no gravity at all could fall into
+anything, is a difficulty, perhaps the difficulty. As for her own
+feelings on the subject, she did not even know that there was such a
+beehive of honey and stings, to be fallen into. And now I come to
+mention another curious fact about her.
+
+"The palace was built on the shore of the loveliest lake in the world,
+and the princess loved this lake more than father or mother. The root
+of this preference, no doubt,--although the princess did not recognize
+it as such,--was that the moment she got into it, she recovered the
+natural right of which she had been so wickedly deprived,--namely,
+gravity. whether this was owing to the fate that water had been
+employed as the means of conveying the injury, I do not know. But it is
+certain that she could swim and dive like the duck that her old nurse
+said she was. The way that this alleviation of her misfortune was
+discovered, was as follows: One summer evening, during the carnival of
+the country, she had been taken upon the lake by the king and queen, in
+the royal barge. They were accompanied by many of the courtiers in a
+fleet of little boats. In the middle of the lake, she wanted to get
+into the lord chancellor's barge, for his daughter, who was a great
+favorite with her, was in with her father, The old king rarely
+condescended to make light of his misfortune, but on this occasion he
+happened to be in a particularly good-humor, and as the barges
+approached each other, he caught up the princess to throw her into the
+chancellor's barge. He lost his balance, however, and dropping into the
+bottom of the barge, lost his hold of his daughter, not, however,
+before imparting to her the downward tendency of his own person, though
+in a somewhat different directions for as the king fell into the boat,
+she fell into the water. With a burst of delighted laughter, she
+disappeared in the lake. A cry of horror ascended from the boats. They
+had never seen the princess go down before. Half the men were under
+water in a moment, but they had all, one after another, come up to the
+surface again for breath, when,--tinkle, tinkle, babble and gush, came
+the princess' laugh over the water from far away. There she was,
+swimming like a swan. Nor would she come out for king or queen,
+chancellor or daughter. But though she was obstinate, she seemed more
+sedate than usual. Perhaps that was because a great pleasure spoils
+laughing. After this the passion of her life was to get into the water,
+and she was always the better behaved and the more beautiful, the more
+she had of it. Summer and winter it was all the same, only she could
+not stay quite so long in the water when they had to break the ice to
+let her in. Any day, from morning till evening, she might be descried,--
+a streak of white in the blue water,--lying as still as the shadow of
+a cloud, or shooting along like a dolphin, disappearing, and coming up
+again far off, just where one did not expect her. She would have been
+in the lake of a night too, if she could have had her way, for the
+balcony of her window overhung a deep pool in it, and through a shallow
+reedy passage she could have swum out into the wide wet water, and no
+one would have been any the wiser. Indeed, when she happened to wake in
+the moonlight, she could hardly resist the temptation. But there was
+the sad difficulty of getting into it. She had as great a dread of the
+air as some children have of water. For the slightest gush of wind
+would blow her away, and a gust might arise in the stillest moment.
+And, if she gave herself a push towards the water and just failed of
+reaching it, her situation would be dreadfully awkward, irrespective of
+the wind, for at best there she would have to remain, suspended in her
+nightgown till she was seen and angled for by somebody from the window.
+
+"'Oh! if I had my gravity,' thought she, contemplating the water, 'I
+would flash off this balcony like a long white sea-bird, headlong into
+the darling wetness. Heigh-ho!'
+
+"This was the only consideration that made her wish to be like other
+people.
+
+"Another reason for being fond of the water was, that, in it alone, she
+enjoyed any freedom. For she could not walk out without a cortege,
+consisting in part of a troop of light horse, for fear of the liberties
+which the wind might take with her. And the king grew more apprehensive
+with increasing years, till, at last, he would not allow her to walk
+abroad without some twenty silken cords fastened to as many parts of
+her dress, and held by twenty noblemen. Of course horseback was out of
+the question. But she bade good by to all this ceremony, when she got
+into the water. So remarkable were its effects upon her, especialy, in
+restoring her for the time to the ordinary human gravity, that, strange
+to say, Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck agreed in recommending the king to bury
+her alive for three years, in the hope that, as the water had done her
+so much good, the earth would do her yet more. But the king had some
+vulgar prejudices against the experiment, and would not give consent.
+Foiled in this, they yet agreed in another recommendation, which,
+seeing that the one imported his opinions from China and the other from
+Thibet, was very remarkable indeed. They said, that if water of
+external origin and application could be so efficatious, water from a
+deeper source might work a perfect cure; in short, that if the poor,
+afflicted princess could by any means be made to cry, she might recover
+her lost gravity.
+
+"But how was this to be brought about? Therein lay the difficulty. The
+philosophers were not wise enough for this. To make the princess cry
+was as impossible as to make her weigh. They sent for a professional
+beggar, commanded him to prepare his most touching oracle of woe,
+helped him, out of the court charity-box, to whatever he wanted for
+dressing up, and promised great rewards in the event of his success.
+But it was all in vain. She listened to the mendicant artist's story,
+and gazed at his marvellous make-up till she could contain herself no
+longer, and went into the most undignified contortions for relief,
+shrieking,--positively screeching with laughter.
+
+"When she had a little recovered herself, she ordered her attendants to
+drive him away, and not give him a single copper; whereupon his look of
+mortified discomfiture wrought her punishment and his revenge, for it
+sent her into violent hysterics, from which she was with difficulty
+recovered.
+
+"But so anxious was the king that the suggestion should have a fair
+trial, that he put himself in a rage one day, and rushing up to her
+room, gave her an awful whipping. But not a tear would flow. She looked
+grave, and her laughing sounded uncommonly like screaming,--that was
+all. The good old tyrant, though he put on his best gold spectacles to
+look, could not discover the smallest cloud in the serene blue of her
+eyes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+PUT ME IN AGAIN.
+
+
+It must have been about this time that the son of a king, who lived a
+thousand miles from Lagobel, set out to look for the daughter of a
+Queen. He travelled far and wide but as sure as he found a princess he
+found some fault with her. Of course he could not marry a mere woman,
+however beautiful; and there was no princess to be found worthy of him.
+Whether the prince was so near perfection that he had a right to demand
+perfection itself, I cannot pretend to say. All I know is, that he was
+a fine, handsome, brave, generous, well-bred and well-behaved youth, as
+all princes are.
+
+"In his wanderings, he had come across some reports about our princess;
+but, as everybody said she was bewitched, he never dreamed that she
+could bewitch him. For what indeed could a prince do with a princess
+that had lost her gravity? Who could tell what she might not lose next?
+She might lose her visibility, or her tangibility; or, in short, the
+power of making impressions upon the radical sensorium; so that he
+should never be able to tell whether she was dead or alive. Of course,
+he made no further inquiries about her.
+
+"One day he lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests
+are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a
+sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow
+their fortunes. In this, they have the advantage of the princesses, who
+are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our
+princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.
+
+"One lovely evening, after wandering about for many days, he found that
+he was approaching the outskirts of this forest; for the trees had got
+so thin that he could see the sunset through them; and he soon came
+upon a kind of heath. Next, he came upon signs of human neighborhood;
+but, by this time it was getting late, and there was nobody in the
+fields to direct him.
+
+"After travelling for another hour, his horse, quite worn out with long
+labor and lack of food, fell, and was unable to rise again. So he
+continued his journey on foot. At length, he entered another wood,--not
+a wild forest, but a civilized wood, through which a footpath led him
+to the side of a lake. Along this path, the prince pursued his way
+through the gathering darkness. Suddenly, he paused, and listened.
+Strange sounds came across the water. It was, in fact, the princess
+laughing. Now, there was something odd in her laugh, as I have already
+hinted; for the hatching of a real hearty laugh requires the incubation
+of gravity; and, perhaps, this was how the prince mistook the laughter
+for screaming. Looking over the lake, he saw something white in the
+water; and, in an instant, he had torn off his tunic, kicked off his
+sandals, and plunged in. He soon reached the white object, and found
+that it was a woman. There was not light enough to show that she was a
+princess, but quite enough to show that she was a lady, for it does not
+want much light to see that.
+
+"Now, I cannot tell how it came about,--whether she pretended to be
+drowning, or whether he frightened her, or caught her so as to embarass
+her; but certainly he brought her to shore in a fashion ignominious to
+a swimmer, and more nearly drowned than she ever expected to be; for
+the water had got into her throat as often as she had tried to speak.
+
+"At the place to which he bore her, the bank was only a foot or two
+above the water, so he gave her a strong lift out of the water, to lay
+her on the bank. But, her gravitation ceasing the moment she left the
+water, away she went, up into the air, scolding and screaming:--
+
+"'You naughty, _naughty_, NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY, man!'
+
+"No one had ever succeeded in putting her into a passion before. When
+the prince saw her ascend he thought he must have been bewitched, and
+have mistaken a great swan for a lady. But the princess caught hold of
+the topmost cone upon a lofty fir. This came off; but she caught at
+another, and in fact, stopped herself by gathering cones, dropping them
+as the stalks gave way. The prince, meantime, stood in the water,
+forgetting to get out. But the princess disappearing, he scrambled on
+shore, and went in the direction of the tree. He found her climbing
+down one of the branches, towards the stem. But in the darkness of the
+wood, the prince continued in some bewilderment as to what the
+phenomenon could be; until, reaching the ground, and seeing him
+standing there, she caught hold of him, and said:--
+
+"'I'll tell papa.'
+
+"'Oh, no, you won't!' rejoined the prince.
+
+"'Yes, I will,' she persisted. 'What business had you to pull me down
+out of the water, and throw me to the bottom of the air? I never did
+you any harm.'
+
+"'I am sure I did not mean to hurt you.'
+
+"'I don't believe you have any brains; and that is a worse loss than
+your wretched gravity. I pity you.'
+
+"The prince now saw that he had come upon the bewitched princess, and
+had already offended her. Before he could think what to say next, the
+princess, giving a stamp with her foot that would have sent her aloft
+again, but for the hold she had of his arm, said angrily:
+
+"'Put me up directly.'
+
+"'Put you up where, you beauty?' asked the prince.
+
+"He had fallen in love with her, almost, already; for her anger made
+her more charming than anyone else had ever beheld her; and, as far as
+he could see, which certainly was not far, she had not a single fault
+about her, except, of course, that she had no gravity. A prince,
+however, must be incapable of judging of a princess by weight. The
+loveliness of a foot, for instance, is hardly to be estimated by the
+depth of the impression it can make in mud!
+
+"'Put you up where, you beauty?' said the prince.
+
+"'In the water, you stupid!' answered the princess. "'Come, then,' said
+the prince.
+
+"The condition of her dress, increasing her usual difficulty in
+walking, compelled her to cling to him; and he could hardly persuade
+himself that he was not in a delightful dream, notwithstanding the
+torrent of musical abuse with which she overwhelmed him. The prince
+being in no hurry, they reached the lake at quite another part, where
+the bank was twenty-five feet high at least. When they stood at the
+edge, the prince, turning towards the princess, said:--
+
+"'How am I to put you in?'
+
+"'That is your business,' she answered, quite snappishly. 'You took me
+out,--put me in again.'
+
+"'Very well,' said the prince; and, catching her up in his arms, he
+sprang with her from the rock. The princess had just time to give one
+delightful shriek of laughter before the water closed over them. When
+they came to the surface, the princess, for a moment or two, could not
+even laugh, for she had gone down with such a rush, that it was with
+difficulty that she recovered her breath. The moment they reached the
+surface:--
+
+"'How do you like falling in?' said the prince.
+
+"After a few efforts, the princess panted out:--
+
+"'Is that what you call _falling in_?'
+
+"'Yes,' answered the prince,'I should think it a very tolerable
+specimen.'
+
+"'It seemed to me like going up,' rejoined she.
+
+"'My feeling was certainly one of elevation, too,' the prince conceded.
+
+"The princess did not appear to understand him, for she retorted his
+first question:--
+
+"'How do _you_ like falling in?'
+
+"'Beyond everything,' answered he; 'for I have fallen in with the only
+perfect creature I ever saw.'
+
+"'No more of that; I am tired of it,' said the princess.
+
+"Perhaps she shared her father's aversion to punning.
+
+"'Don't you like falling in, then?' said the prince.
+
+"'It is the most delightful fun I ever had in my life,' answered she.
+'I never fell before. I wish I could learn. To I think I am the only
+person in my father's kingdom that can't fall!'
+
+"Here the poor princess looked almost sad.
+
+"'I shall be most happy to fall in with you any time you like,' said
+the prince devotedly.
+
+"'Thank you. I don't know. Perhaps it would not be proper. But I don't
+care. At all events, as we have fallen in, let us have a swim
+together.'
+
+"' With all my heart,' said the prince.
+
+"And away they went, swimming, and diving, and floating, until at last
+they heard cries along the shore, and saw lights glancing in all
+directions. It was now quite late, and there was no moon.
+
+"'I must go home,' said the princess. 'I am very sorry, for this is
+delightful.'
+
+"'So am I,' responded the prince. 'But I am glad I haven't a home to go
+to,--at least, I don't exactly know where it is.'
+
+"'I wish I hadn't one either,' rejoined the princess: 'it is so stupid!
+I have a great mind,' she continued, 'to play them all a trick. Why
+couldn't they leave me alone? They won't trust me in the lake for a
+single night! You see where that green light is burning? That is the
+window of my room. Now if you would just swim there with me very
+quietly, and when we are all but under the balcony, give me such a
+push--_up_ you call it--as you did a little while ago, I should be
+able to catch hold of the balcony, and get in at the window; and then
+they may look for me till to-morrow morning!'
+
+"With more obedience than pleasure," said the prince, gallantly; and
+away they swam, very gently.
+
+"'Will you be in the lake tomorrow night?' the prince ventured to ask.
+
+"'To be sure I will. I don't think so. Perhaps,'--was the princess'
+somewhat strange answer.
+
+"But the prince was intelligent enough not to press her further; and
+merely whispered, as he gave her the parting lift: 'Don't tell.' The
+only answer the princess returned was a roguish look. She was already a
+yard above his head. The look seemed to say: 'Never fear. It is too
+good fun to spoil that way.'
+
+"So perfectly like other people had she been in the water, that even
+yet the prince could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw her ascend
+slowly, grasp the balcony, and disappear through the window. He turned,
+almost expecting to see her still by his side. But he was alone in the
+water. So he swam away quietly, and watched the lights roving about the
+shore for hours after the princess was safe in her chamber. As soon as
+they disappeared he landed in search of his tunic and sword, and after
+some trouble, found them again. Then he made the best of his way round
+the lake to the other side. There the wood was wilder, and the shore
+steeper,--rising more immediately towards the mountains which
+surrounded the lake on all sides, and kept sending it messages of
+silvery streams from morning to night, and all night long. He soon
+found a spot whence he could see the green light in the princess' room,
+and where, even in the broad daylight, he would be in no danger of
+being discovered from the opposite shore. It was a sort of cave in the
+rock, where he provided himself a bed of withered leaves, and lay down
+too tired for hunger to keep him awake. All night long he dreamed that
+he was swimming with the princess."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+LOOK AT THE MOON.
+
+
+Early the next morning, the prince set out to look for something to
+eat, which he soon found at a forester's hut, where, for many following
+days, he was supplied with all that a brave prince could consider
+necessary. And, having plenty to keep him alive for the present, he
+would not think of wants not yet in existence. Whenever Care intruded,
+this prince always bowed him out in the most princely manner.
+
+"When he returned from his breakfast to his watch-cave, he saw the
+princess already floating about in the lake, attended by the king and
+queen,--whom he knew by their crowns,--and a great company in lovely
+little boats, with canopies of all the colors of the rainbow, and flags
+and streamers of a great many more. It was a very bright day, and soon
+the prince, burned up with the heat, began to long for the water and
+the cool princess. But he had to endure till the twilight; for the
+boats had provisions on board, and it was not till the sun went down,
+that the gay party began to vanish. Boat after boat drew away to the
+shore, following that of the king and queen, till only one, apparently
+the princess' own boat, remained. But she did not want to go home even
+yet, and the prince thought he saw her order the boat to the shore
+without her. At all events, it rowed away; and now, of all the radiant
+company, only one white speck remained. Then the prince began to sing.
+
+"And this was what he sang:
+
+ "Lady fair,
+  Swan-white,
+  Lift thine eyes,
+  Banish night
+  By the might
+  Of thine eyes.
+  Snowy arms,
+  Oars of snow,
+  Oar her hither.
+  Flashing low,
+  Soft and slow,
+  Oar her hither
+
+ "Stream behind her
+  O'er the lake,
+  Radiant whiteness!
+  In her wake
+  Following, following for her sake,
+  Radiant whiteness!
+
+ "Cling about her,
+  Waters blue;
+  Part not from her,
+  But renew
+  Cold and true
+  Kisses round her.
+  Lap me round,
+  Waters sad
+  That have left her;
+  Make me glad,
+  For he had
+  Kissed her ere ye left her.
+
+"Before he had finished his song, the princess was just under the
+place where he sat, and looking up to find him. Her ears had led her
+truly.
+
+"'Would you like a fall, princess?' said the prince, looking down.
+
+"'Ah! there you are. Yes, if you please, prince,' said the princess
+looking up.
+
+"How do you know I am a prince, princess,' said the prince.
+
+"'Because you are a very nice young man, prince, said the princess.
+
+"'Come up then, princess.'
+
+"'Fetch me, prince.'
+
+"Then the prince took off his scarf, then his sword-belt, then his
+tunic, and tied them all together, and let them down. But the line was
+far too short. He unwound his turban, and added it to the rest, when it
+was all but long enough, and his purse completed it. The princess just
+managed to lay hold of the knot of money, and was beside him in a
+moment. This rock was much higher than the other, and the splash and
+the dive were tremendous. The princess was in ecstasies of delight and
+their swim was delicious.
+
+"Night after night, they met, and swam about in the dark, clear lake,
+where such was the prince's delight, that (whether the princess' way of
+looking at things infected him, or he was actually getting light-
+headed) he often fancied that he was swimming in the sky instead of the
+lake. But when he talked about being in heaven, the princess laughed at
+him dreadfully.
+
+"When the moon came, she brought them fresh pleasure. Everything looked
+strange and new in her light, with an old, withered, yet unfading
+newness. When the moon was nearly full, one of their great delights
+was, to dive deep in the water, and then, turning round, look up
+through it at the great blot of light close above them, shimmering and
+trembling and wavering, spreading and contracting, seeming to melt
+away, and again grow solid. Then they would shoot up through it; and
+lo! there was the moon, far off, clear and steady and cold, and very
+lovely, at the bottom of a deeper and bluer lake than theirs, as the
+princess said.
+
+"The prince soon found out that, while in the water, the princess was
+very like other people. And, besides this, she was not so forward in
+her questions, or pert in her replies at sea as on shore. Neither did
+she laugh so much; and when she did laugh it was more gently. She
+seemed altogether more modest and maidenly in the water than out of it.
+But when the prince, who had really fallen in love when he fell in the
+lake, began to talk to her about love, she always turned her head
+towards him and laughed. After a while, she began to look puzzled, as
+if she were trying to understand what he meant, but could not--
+revealing a notion that he meant something. But as soon as ever she
+left the lake, she was so altered, that the prince said to himself: 'If
+I marry her, I see no help for it, we must turn merman and mermaid, and
+go out to sea once."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+HISS!
+
+
+The princess' pleasure in the lake had grown to a passion, and she
+could scarcely bear to be out of it for an hour. Imagine, then, her
+consternation, when, diving with the prince one night, a sudden
+suspicion seized her, that the lake was not so deep as it used to be.
+The prince could not imagine what had happened. She shot to the surface
+and, without a word, swam at full speed towards the higher side of the
+lake. He followed, begging to know if she was ill, or what was the
+matter. She never turned her head, or took the smallest notice of his
+question. Arrived at the shore she coasted the rocks with minute
+inspection. But she was not able to come to a conclusion, for the moon
+was very small, and so she could not see well. She turned therefore and
+swam home, without saying a word to explain her conduct to the prince,
+of whose presence she seemed no longer conscious. He withdrew to his
+cave, in great perplexity and distress.
+
+"Next day she made many observations, which, alas! strengthened her
+fears. She saw that the banks were too dry, and that the grass on the
+shore and the trailing plants on the rocks were withering away. She
+caused marks to be made along the borders, and examined them day after
+day, in all directions of the wind, at last the horrible idea became a
+certain fact,--that the surface of the lake was slowly sinking.
+
+"The poor princess nearly went out of the little mind she had. It was
+awful to her, to see the lake which she loved more than any living
+thing, lie dying before her eyes. It sank away, slowly vanishing. The
+tops of rocks that had never been seen before began to appear far down
+in the clear water. Before long, they were dry in the sun. It was
+fearful to think of the mud that would lie baking and festering full of
+lovely creatures dying, and ugly creatures coming to life, like the
+unmaking of a world. And how hot the sun would be without any lake! She
+could not bear to swim in it, and began to pine away. Her life seemed
+bound up with it, and, ever as the lake sank, she pined. People said
+she would not live an hour after the lake was gone. But she never
+cried.
+
+"Proclamation was made to all the kingdom, that whosoever should
+discover the cause of the lake's decrease would be rewarded after a
+princely fashion. Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck applied themselves to their
+physics and metaphysics, but in vain. No one came forward to suggest a
+cause.
+
+"Now the fact was, that the old princess was at the root of the
+mischief. When she heard that her niece found more pleasure in the
+water than any one else had out of it, she went into a rage, and cursed
+herself for her want of foresight.
+
+"'But,' said, 'I will soon set all right. The king and the people shall
+die of thirst; their brains shall boil and frizzle in their skulls,
+before I shall lose my revenge.
+
+"And she laughed a ferocious laugh, that made the hairs on the back of
+her black cat, stand erect with terror.
+
+"Then she went to an old chest in the room, and, opening it, took out
+what looked like apiece of dried sea-weed. This she threw into a tub of
+water. Then she threw some powder into the water, and stirred it with
+her bare arm, muttering over it words of hideous sound, and yet more
+hideous import. Then she set the tub aside, and took from her chest a
+huge bunch of a hundred rusty keys, that clattered in her shaking
+hands. Then she sat down and proceeded to oil them all. Before she had
+finished, out from the tub, the water of which had kept a slow motion
+ever since she had ceased stirring it, came the head and half the body
+of a huge gray snake. But the witch did not look round. It grew out of
+the tub, waving itself backwards and forwards with a slow, horizontal
+motion, till it reached the princess, when it laid its head upon her
+shoulder, and gave a low hiss in her ear. She started--but with joy;
+and, seeing the head resting on her shoulder, drew it towards her and
+kissed it. Then she drew it all out of the tub, and wound it round her
+body. It was one of those dreadful creatures which few have ever
+beheld,--the White Snakes of Darkness.
+
+"Then she took the keys and went down cellar; and, as she unlocked the
+door, she said to herself:--
+
+"'This _is_ worth living for'!
+
+"Locking the door behind her, she descended a few steps into the
+cellar, and crossing it, unlocked another door into a dark, narrow
+passage. This also she locked behind her, and descended a few more
+steps. If any one had followed the witch-princess, he would have heard
+her unlock exactly one hundred doors, and descend a few steps after
+unlocking each. When she had unlocked the last, she entered a vast
+cave, the roof of which was supported by huge natural pillars of rock.
+Now this roof was the underside of the bottom of the lake.
+
+"She then untwined the snake from her body and held it by the tail high
+above her. The hideous creature stretched up its head towards the roof
+of the cavern, which it was just able to reach. It then began to move
+its head backwards and forwards, with a slow, oscillating motion, as if
+looking for something At the same moment, the witch began to walk round
+and round the cavern, coming nearer to the centre every circuit; while
+the head of the snake described the same path over the roof that she
+did over the floor. for she held it up still. And still it kept slowly
+oscillating. Round and round the cavern they went thus, ever lessening
+the circuit, till, at last, the snake made a sudden dart, and clung
+fast to the roof with its mouth. 'That's right, my beauty?' cried the
+princess; 'drain it dry.'
+
+"She let it go, left it hanging, and sat down on a great stone, with
+her black cat, who had followed her all around the cave, by her side.
+Then she began to knit, and mutter awful words. The snake hung like a
+huge leech, sucking at the stone; the cat stood with his back arched,
+and his tail like a piece of cable, looking up at the snake; and the
+old woman sat and knitted and muttered. Seven days and seven nights
+they sat thus; when suddenly the serpent dropped from the roof, as if
+exhausted, and shrivelled up like a piece of dried sea-weed on the
+floor. The witch started to her feet, picked it up, put it in her
+pocket, and looked up at the roof. One drop of water was trembling on
+the spot where the snake had been sucking. As soon as she saw that, she
+turned and fled, followed by her cat. She shut the door in a terrible
+hurry, locked it, and, having muttered some frightful words, sped to
+the next, which also she locked and muttered over: and so with all the
+hundred doors, till she arrived in her own cellar. There she sat down
+on the floor ready to faint, but listening with malicious delight to
+the rushing of the water, which she could hear distinctly through all
+the hundred doors.
+
+"But this was not enough. Now that she had tasted revenge, she lost her
+patience. Without further measures, the lake would be too long in
+disappearing. So the next night, with the last shred of the dying old
+moon rising, she took some of the water in which she had revived the
+snake, put it in a bottle, and set out, accompanied by her cat. Ere she
+returned, she had made the entire circuit of the lake, muttering
+fearful words as she crossed every stream, and casting into it some of
+the water out of her bottle. When she had finished the circuit, she
+muttered yet again, and flung a handful of the water towards the moon.
+Every spring in the country ceased to throb and bubble, dying away like
+the pulse of a dying man. The next day there was no sound of falling
+water to be heard along the borders of the lake. The very courses were
+dry; and the mountains showed no silvery streaks down their dark sides.
+And not alone had the fountains of mother Earth ceased to flow; for all
+the babies throughout the country were crying dreadfully,--only without
+tears."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+WHERE IS THE PRINCE?
+
+
+Never since the night when the princess left him so abruptly, had the
+prince had a single interview with her. He had seen her once or twice
+in the lake; but as far as he could discover, she had not been in it
+any more at night. He had sat and sung, and looked in vain for his
+Nereid; while she, like a true Nereid, was wasting away with her lake,
+sinking as it sank, withering as it dried. When at length he discovered
+the change that was taking place in the level of the water, he was in
+great alarm and perplexity. He could not tell whether the lake was
+dying because the lady had forsaken it; or whether the lady would not
+come because the lake had begun to sink. But he resolved to know so
+much at least.
+
+"He disguised himself, and, going to the palace, requested to see the
+lord chamberlain. His appearance at once gained his request; and the
+lord chamberlain being a man of some insight, perceived that there was
+more in the princess solicitation than met the ear. He felt likewise
+that no one could tell whence a solution of the present difficulties
+might arise. So he granted the prince's prayer to be made shoeblack to
+the princess. It was rather knowing in the prince to request such an
+easy post; for the princess could not possibly soil as many shoes as
+other princesses.
+
+"He soon learned all that could be told about the princess. He went
+nearly distracted; but, after roaming about the lake for days, and
+diving in every depth that remained, all that he could do was to put an
+extra polish on the dainty pair of boots that was never called for.
+
+"For the princess kept her room, with the curtains drawn to shut out
+the dying lake. But she could not shut it out of her mind for a moment.
+It haunted her imagination so that she felt as if her lake were her
+soul, drying up within her, first to become mud, and then madness and
+death. She brooded over the change, with all its dreadful
+accompaniments, till she was nearly out of her mind. As for the prince,
+she had forgotten him. However much she had enjoyed his company in the
+water, she did not care for him without it, But she seemed to have
+forgotten her father and mother too.
+
+"The lake went on sinking. Small slimy spots began to appear, which
+glittered steadily amidst the changeful shine of the water. These grew
+to broad patches of mud, which widened and spread, with rocks here and
+there, and floundering fishes and crawling eels swarming about. The
+people went everywhere catching these, and looking for anything that
+might have been dropped into the water.
+
+"At length the lake was all but gone; only a few of the deepest pools
+remaining unexhausted.
+
+"It happened one day that a party of youngsters found themselves on the
+brink of one of these pools in the very centre of the lake. It was a
+rocky basin of considerable depth. Looking in, they saw at the bottom
+something that shone yellow in the sun. A little boy jumped in and
+dived for it. It was a plate of gold, covered with writing. They
+carried it to the king.
+
+"On one side of it stood these words:--
+
+  "'Death alone from death can save,
+  Love is death, and so is brave.
+  Love can fill the deepest grave.
+  Love loves on beneath the wave.'
+
+"Now this was enigmatical enough to the king and courtiers. But the
+reverse of the plate explained it a little. Its contents amounted to
+this:
+
+"'If the lake should disappear, they must find the hole through which
+the water ran. But it would be useless to try to stop it by any
+ordinary means. There was but one effectual mode. The body of a living
+man could alone stanch the flow. The man must give himself of his own
+will; and the lake must take his life as it filled. Otherwise the
+offering would be of no avail. If the nation could not provide one
+hero, it was time it should perish.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+HERE I AM.
+
+
+This was a very disheartening revelation to the king. Not that he was
+unwilling to sacrifice a subject, but that he was hopeless of finding a
+man willing to sacrifice himself. No time could be lost, however; for
+the princess was lying motionless on her bed, and taking no nourishment
+but lake-water, which was now none of the best. Therefore the king
+caused the contents of the wonderful plate of gold to be published
+throughout the country.
+
+"No one, however, came forward.
+
+"The prince having gone several days' journey into the forest, to
+consult a hermit whom he had met there on his way to Lagobel, knew
+nothing of the oracle till his return.
+
+"When he had acquainted himself with all the particulars, he sat down
+and thought.
+
+"'She would die, if I didn't do it; and life would be nothing to me
+without her; so I shall lose nothing by doing it. And life will be as
+pleasant to her as ever, for she will soon forget me, and there will be
+so much more beauty and happiness in the world. To be sure, I shall not
+see it.'--Here the poor prince gave a sigh.--'How lovely the lake will
+be in the moonlight, with that glorious creature sporting in it like a
+wild goddess! It is rather hard to be drowned by inches, though. Let me
+see,--that will be seventy inches of me to drown.'--Here he tried to
+laugh, but could not--'The longer the better, however,' he resumed;
+'for can I not bargain that the princess shall be beside me all the
+time? So I can see her once more,--kiss her perhaps, who knows?--and
+die looking into her eyes. It will be no death. At least I shall not
+feel it. And to see the lake filling for the beauty again!--All right I
+I am ready.'
+
+"He kissed the princess' boot, laid it down, and hurried to the king's
+apartment. But feeling, as he went, that anything sentimental would be
+disagreeable, he resolved to carry off the whole affair with burlesque.
+So he knocked at the door of the king's counting-house, where it was
+all but a capital crime to disturb him. When the king heard the knock,
+he started up, and opened the door in a rage. Seeing only the
+shoeblack, he drew his sword. This, I am sorry to say, was his usual
+mode of asserting his regality, when he thought his dignity was in
+danger. But the prince was not in the least alarmed.
+
+"'Please your majesty, I'm your butler.' said he.
+
+"'My butler! you lying rascal! What do you mean?'
+
+"'I mean, I will cork your big bottle.'
+
+"'Is the fellow mad?' bawled the king, raising the point of his sword.
+
+"'I will put a stopper,--plug,--what you call it, in your leaky lake,
+grand monarch,' said the prince.
+
+"The king was in such a rage, that before he could speak he had time to
+cool, and to reflect that it would be great waste to kill the only man
+who was willing to be useful in the present emergency, seeing that, in
+the end, the insolent fellow would be as dead as if he had died by his
+majesty's own hand.
+
+"'Oh!' said he, at last, putting up his sword with difficulty,--it was
+so long; 'I am obliged to you, you young fool? Take a glass of wine?'
+
+"'No, thank you,' replied the prince.
+
+"'Very well,' said the king. 'Would you like to run and see your
+parents before you make your experiment?'
+
+"'No, thank you,' said the prince.
+
+"'Then we will go and look for the hole at once,' said his majesty, and
+proceeded to call some attendants.
+
+"'Stop, please your majesty; I have a condition to make,' interposed
+the prince.
+
+"'What!' exclaimed the king; 'a condition! and with me! How dare you?'
+
+"'As you please,' said the prince, coolly. 'I wish your majesty good-
+morning.'
+
+"'You wretch! I will have you put in a sack, and stuck in the hole.'
+
+"'Very well, your majesty,' replied the prince, becoming a little more
+respectful, least the wrath of the king should deprive him of the
+pleasure of dying for the princess. 'But what good will that do your
+majesty? Please to remember that the oracle says that the victim must
+offer himself.'
+
+"'Well, you _have_ offered yourself,' retorted the king.
+
+"'Yes, upon one condition.'
+
+"'Condition again!' roared the king, once more drawing his sword.
+'Begone! Somebody else will be glad enough to take the honor off your
+shoulders.'
+
+"'Your majesty knows it will not be easy to get one to take my place.'
+
+"'Well, what is your condition?' growled the king, feeling that the
+prince was right.
+
+"'Only this,' replied the prince: 'that, as I must on no account die
+before I am fairly drowned, and the waiting will be rather wearisome,
+the princess, your daughter, shall go with me, feed me with her own
+hands, and look at me now and then, to comfort me; for you must confess
+it is rather hard. As soon as the water is up to my eyes, she may go
+and be happy, and forget her poor shoeblack.'
+
+"Here the prince's voice faltered, and he very nearly grew sentimental,
+in spite of his resolutions.
+
+"'Why didn't you tell me before what your condition was? Such a fuss
+about nothing!' exclaimed the king.
+
+"'Do you grant it?' persisted the prince.
+
+"'I do,' replied the king
+
+"'Very well. I am ready.'
+
+"'Go and have some dinner, then, while I set my people to find the
+place.'
+
+"The king ordered out his guards, and gave directions to the officers
+to find the hole in the lake at once. So the bed of the lake was marked
+out in divisions, and thoroughly examined; and in an hour or so the
+hole was discovered. It was in the middle of a stone, near the centre
+of the lake, in the very pool where the golden plate had been found. It
+was a three-cornered hole, of no great size. There was water all round
+the stone, but none was flowing through the hole."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THIS IS VERY KIND OF YOU.
+
+
+The prince went to dress for the occasion, for he was resolved to die
+like a prince. "When the princess heard that a man had offered to die
+for her, she was so transported that she jumped off the bed, feeble as
+she was, and danced about the room for joy. She did not care who the
+man was; that was nothing to her. The hole wanted stopping; and if only
+a man would do, why, take one. In an hour or two more, everything was
+ready. Her maid dressed her in haste, and they carried her to the side
+of the lake. When she saw it, she shrieked, and covered her face with
+her hands. They bore her across to the stone, where they had already
+placed a little boat for her. The water was not deep enough to float
+it, but they hoped it would be, before long. They laid her on cushions,
+placed in the boat wines and fruits and other nice things, and
+stretched a canopy over all.
+
+"In a few minutes, the prince appeared. The princess recognized him at
+once; but did not think it worth while to acknowledge him.
+
+"'Here I am,' said the prince. 'Put me in.
+
+"'They told me it was a shoeblack,' said the princess.
+
+"'So I am,' said the prince. 'I blacked your little boots three times a
+day, because they were all I could get of you. Put me in.'
+
+"The courtiers did not resent his bluntness, except by saying to each
+other that he was taking it out in impudence.
+
+"But how was he to be put in? The golden plate contained no
+instructions on this point. The prince looked at the hole, and saw but
+one way. He put both his legs into it, sitting on the stone, and,
+stooping forward, covered the two corners that remained open with his
+two hands. In this uncomfortable position he resolved to abide his
+fate, and, turning to the people, said:--
+
+"'Now you can go.'
+
+"The king had already gone home to dinner.
+
+"'Now you can go,' repeated the princess after him, like a parrot.
+
+"The people obeyed her, and went.
+
+"Presently a little wave flowed over the stone, and wetted one of the
+prince's knees. But he did not mind it much. He began to sing, and the
+song he sang was this:--
+
+  "'As a world that has no well,
+  Darkly bright in forest-dell:
+  As a world without the gleam
+  Of the downward-going stream;
+  As a world without the glance
+  Of the ocean's fair expanse;
+  As a world where never rain
+  Glittered on the sunny plain,--
+  Such, my heart, thy world would be,
+  If no love did flow in thee.
+
+  "'As a world without the sound
+  Of the rivulets under ground;
+  Or the bubbling of the spring
+  Out of darkness wandering;
+  Or the mighty rush and flowing
+  Of the river's downward going;
+  Or the music-showers that drop
+  On the out-spread beech's top;
+  Or the ocean's mighty voice,
+  When his lifted waves rejoice,--
+  Such my soul, thy world would be,
+  If no love did sing in thee.
+
+  "'Lady, keep thy world's delight;
+  Keep the waters in thy sight;
+  Love hath made me strong to go,
+  For thy sake, to realms below,
+  Where the water's shine and hum
+  Through the darkness never come
+  Let, I pray, one thought of me
+  Spring, a little well, in thee;
+  Lest thy loveless soul be found
+  Like the dry and thirsty ground.'
+
+"'Sing again, prince. It makes it less tedious,' said the princess.
+
+"But the prince was too much overcome to sing any more. And a long
+pause followed.
+
+"'This is very kind of you, prince,' said the princess at last, quite
+coolly, as she lay in the boat with her eyes shut.
+
+"' I am sorry I can't return the compliment,' thought the prince; 'but
+you are worth dying for, after all.'
+
+"Again a wavelet, and another, and another, flowed over the stone, and
+wetted both the prince's knees thoroughly; but he did not speak or
+move. Two--three--four hours passed in this way, the princess
+apparently fast asleep, and the prince very patient. But he was much
+disappointed in his position, for he had none of the consolation he had
+hoped for.
+
+"At last he could bear it no longer.
+
+"'Princess!' said he.
+
+"But at the moment, up started the princess, crying:--
+
+"'I'm afloat! I'm afloat!'
+
+"'And the little boat bumped against the stone.
+
+"'Princess!' repeated the prince, encouraged by seeing her wide awake,
+and looking eagerly at the water.
+
+"'Well?' said she, without once looking around.
+
+"'Your papa promised that you should look at me; and you haven't looked
+at me once.'
+
+"'Did he? Then I suppose I must. But I am so sleepy!'
+
+"'Sleep, then, darling, and don't mind me,' said the poor prince.
+
+"'Really, you are very good,' replied the princess. 'I think I will go
+to sleep again.'
+
+"'Just give me a glass of wine and a biscuit, first,' said the prince
+very humbly.
+
+"'With all my heart,' said the princess, and gaped as she said it.
+
+"She got the wine and the biscuit, however, and coming nearer with
+them:--
+
+"'Why, prince,' she said, 'you don't look well? Are you sure you don't
+mind it?'
+
+"'Not a bit,' answered he, feeling very faint indeed. 'Only, I shall
+die before it is of any use to you, unless I have something to eat.'
+
+"'There, then!' said she, holding out the wine to him.
+
+"'Ah! you must feed me. I dare not move my hands. The water would run
+away directly.'
+
+"'Good gracious!' said the princess, and she began at once to feed him
+with bits of biscuit, and sips of wine.
+
+"As she fed him, he contrived to kiss the tips of her fingers now and
+then. She did not seem to mind it, one way or the other. But the prince
+felt better.
+
+"'Now for your own sake, princess,' said he, 'I cannot let you go to
+sleep. You must sit and look at me, else I shall not be able to keep
+up.'
+
+"'Well, I will do anything I can to oblige you,' answered she, with
+condescension, and, sitting down, she did look at him, and kept looking
+at him, with wonderful steadiness, considering all things.
+
+"The sun went down, and the moon came up, and gush after gush the
+waters were flowing over the rock. They were up to the prince's waist,
+now.
+
+"'Why can't we go and have a swim?' said the princess. 'There seems to
+be water enough just about here.'
+
+"'I shall never swim more,' said the prince.
+
+"'Oh! I forgot,' said the princess, and was silent.
+
+"So the water grew and grew, and rose up and up on the prince. And the
+princess sat and looked at him. She fed him now and then. The night
+wore on. The waters rose and rose. The moon rose likewise, higher and
+higher, and shone full on the face of the dying prince. The water was
+up to his neck.
+
+"'Will you kiss me, princess?' said he, feebly, at last, for the fun
+was all out of him now.
+
+"'Yes, I will,' answered the princess, and kissed him with a long,
+sweet, cold kiss.
+
+"'Now,' said he, with a sigh of content, 'I die happy.'
+
+"He did not speak again. The princess gave him some wine for the last
+time: he was past eating. Then she sat down again, and looked at him.
+The water rose and rose. It touched his chin. It touched his lower lip.
+It touched between his lips. He shut them hard to keep it out. The
+princess began to feel strange. It touched his upper lip. He breathed
+through his nostrils. The princess looked wild. It covered his
+nostrils. Her eyes looked scared, and shone strange in the moonlight.
+His head fell back; the water closed over it; and the bubbles of his
+last breath bubbled up through the water. The princess gave a shriek,
+and sprang into the lake.
+
+"She laid hold first of one leg, then of the other, and pulled and
+tugged, but she could not move either. She stopped to take breath, and
+that made her think that he could not get any breath. She was frantic.
+She got hold of him, and held his head above the water, which was
+possible, now his hands were no longer on the hole. But it was of no
+use, for he was past breathing.
+
+"Love and water brought back all her strength. She got under the water,
+and pulled and pulled with her whole might, till, at last, she got one
+leg out. The other hastily followed. How she got him into the boat she
+never could tell; but when she did she fainted away. Coming to herself,
+she seized the oars, kept herself steady as best she could, and rowed
+and rowed, though she had never rowed before. Round rocks, and over
+shallows, and through mud, she rowed, till she got to the landing
+stairs of the palace. By this time, her people were on the shore, for
+they had heard her shriek. She made them carry the prince to her own
+room, and lay him in her bed, and light a fire, and send for the
+doctors.
+
+"'But the lake, your Highness,' said the chamberlain, who, roused by
+the noise, came in, in his nightcap.
+
+"'Go and drown yourself in it,' said she.
+
+"This was the last rudeness of which the princess was ever guilty, and
+one must allow that she had good cause to feel provoked with the lord
+chamberlain.
+
+"Had it been the king himself, he would have fared no better. But both
+he and the queen were fast asleep. And the chamberlain went back to
+bed. So the princess and her old nurse were left with the prince.
+Somehow, the doctors never came. But the old nurse was a wise woman,
+and knew what to do.
+
+"They tried everything for a long time without success. The princess
+vas nearly distracted between hope and fear, but she tried on and on,
+one thing after another, and everything over and over again.
+
+"At last, when they had all but given it up, just as the sun rose, the
+prince opened his eyes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+LOOK AT THE RAIN!
+
+
+The princess burst into a passion of tears, and _fell_ on the floor.
+There she lay for an hour, and her tears never ceased. All the pent-up
+crying of her life was spent now. And a rain came on, such as had never
+been seen in that country. The sun shone all the time, and the great
+drops, which fell straight to the earth, shone likewise. The palace was
+in the heart of a rainbow. It was a rain of rubies, and sapphires, and
+emeralds, and topazes. The torrents poured from the mountains like
+molten gold, and if it had not been for its subterraneous outlet, the
+lake would have overflowed and inundated the country. It was full from
+shore to shore.
+
+"But the princess did not heed the lake. She lay on the floor and wept.
+And this rain within doors was far more wonderful than the rain out of
+doors. For when it abated a little, and she proceeded to rise, she
+found, to her astonishment, that she could not. At length, after many
+efforts, she succeeded in getting upon her feet. But she tumbled down
+again directly. Hearing her fall, her old nurse uttered a yell of
+delight, and ran to her, screaming:--
+
+"'My darling child! She's found her gravity!'
+
+"'Oh! that's it, is it?' said the princess rubbing her shoulder and her
+knee alternately. 'I consider it very unpleasant. I feel as if I should
+be crushed to pieces.'
+
+"'Hurrah!' cried the prince, from the bed. 'If you're all right,
+princess, so am I. How's the lake?'
+
+"'Brimful! answered the nurse.
+
+"'Then we're all jolly.'
+
+"'That we are indeed!' answered the princess, sobbing.
+
+"And there was rejoicing all over the country that rainy day. Even the
+babies forgot their past troubles, and danced and crowed amazingly. And
+the king told stories, and the queen listened to them. And he divided
+the money in his box, and she the honey in her pot, to all the
+children. And there was such jubilation as was never heard of before.
+
+"Of course the prince and princess were betrothed at once. But the
+princess had to learn to walk, before they could be married with any
+propriety."
+
+And this was not so easy, at her time of life, for she could walk no
+more than a baby. She was always falling down and hurting herself.
+
+"'Is this the gravity you used to make so much of?' said she one day to
+the prince. 'For my part, I was a great deal more comfortable without
+it.
+
+"' No, no; that's not it. This is it,' replied the prince, as he took
+her up, and carried her about like a baby, kissing her all the time.
+'This is gravity.'
+
+"'That's better,' said she. 'I don't mind that so much.'
+
+"And she smiled the sweetest, loveliest smile in the prince's face. And
+she gave him one little kiss, in return for all his, and he thought
+them overpaid, for he was beside himself with delight. I fear she
+complained of her gravity more than once after this, notwithstanding.
+
+"It was a long time before she got reconciled to walking. But the pain
+of learning it was quite counterbalanced by two things, either of which
+would have been sufficient consolation. The first was, that the prince
+himself was her teacher; and the second, hat she could tumble into the
+lake as often as she pleased. Still, she preferred to have the prince
+jump in with her, and the splash they made before was nothing to the
+splash they made now.
+
+"The lake never sank again. In process of time it wore the roof of the
+cavern quite through, and was twice as deep as before.
+
+"The only revenge the princess took upon her aunt was to tread pretty
+hard on her gouty toe the next time she saw her. But she was sorry for
+it the very next day, when she heard that the water had undermined her
+house, and that it had fallen in the night, burying her in its ruins;
+whence no one ever ventured to dig up her body. There she lies to this
+day.
+
+"So the prince and princess lived and were happy, and had crowns of
+gold, clothes of cloth, shoes of leather, and children of boys and
+girls, not one of whom was ever known, on the most critical occasion,
+to lose the smallest atom of his or her due proportion of gravity."
+
+GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF THE LITTLE WEAVER.
+
+
+You see, there was a Waiver lived, wanst upon a time, in Duleek here,
+hard by the gate, and a very honest, industherous man he was, by all
+accounts. He had a wife, and of coorse they had childhre, and small
+blame to them, and plenty of them, so that the poor little Waiver was
+obleeged to work his fingers to the bone a'most, to get them the bit
+and the sup; but he did'nt begridge that, for he was an industherous
+crayther, as I said before, and it was up airly and down late wid him,
+and the loom was never standin' still. Well, it was one mornin' that
+his wife called to him, and he sittin' very busy throwin' the shuttle,
+and, says she, "Come here," says she, "jewel, and ate the breakquest,
+now that it's ready." But he niver minded her, but went on workin': So
+in a minit or two more says she, callin' out to him again, 'Arrah! lave
+off slavin' yourself, my darlin', and ate your bit of breakquest while
+it is hot."
+
+"Lave me alone," says he, and he dhruv the shuttle faster nor before.
+
+Well, in a little time more, she goes over to him where he sot, and,
+says she, coaxin' him like, "Thady, dear," says she, "the stirabout
+will be stone cowld, if you don't give over that weary work and come
+and ate it at wanst."
+
+"I'm busy with a patthern here that is brakin my heart." says the
+Waiver, "and intil I complate it, and masther it intirely, I won't
+quit."
+
+"Oh, think of the illigant stirabout, that'll be spilte intirely."
+
+"To the divil with the stirabout," says he.
+
+"God forgive you," says she, "for cursing your good breakquest."
+
+"Aye, and you too," says he,
+
+"Troth, you're as cross as two sticks this blessed morning, Thady,"
+says the poor wife, "and it's a heavy handful I have of you when you
+are craked in your temper; but stay there if you like, and let your
+stirabout grow cowld, and not one o' me'll ax you agin," and with that
+off she went, and the Waiver, sure enough. was mighty crabbed, and the
+more the wife spoke to him the worse he got, which, you know, is only
+nathral.
+
+Well, he left the loom at last, and wint over to the stirabout, and
+what would you think but when he luked at it, it was as black as a
+crow; for you see it was the hoighth o' summer, and the flies lit upon
+it to that degree, that the stirabout was fairly covered with ihem.
+
+"Why then bad luck to your impidence," says the Waiver, "would no place
+sarve you but that? and is it spiling my breakquest yez are, you dirty
+bastes?"
+
+And with that, being altogether craked tempered at the time, he lifted
+his hand, and he made one great slam at the dish of stirabout, and
+killed no less than threescore and tin flies at the one blow. It was
+threescore and tin exactly, for he counted the carcasses one by one,
+and laid them out on a clane plate, for to view them.
+
+Well, he felt a powerful spirit risin' in him, when he seen the
+slaughter he done at one blow, and with that he got as consaited as the
+very dickens, and not a stroke more work he'd do that day, but out he
+wint, and was fractious and impidint to everyone he met, and was
+squarin' up into their faces and sayin':
+
+"Look at that fist! that's the fist that killed threescore and tin at
+one blow--whoo!"
+
+With that all the neighbors thought he was cracked, and faith the poor
+wife herself thought the same, when he kem home in the evenin', after
+shpendin' every rap he had in dhrink, and swaggering about the place,
+and lookin' at his hand every minit.
+
+"Indade an' your hand is very dirty, sure enough, Thady jewel," said
+the poor wife, and thrue for her, for he rowled into a ditch comin'
+home, "you'd betther wash it, darlin'." "How dare you say dirty to the
+greatest hand in Ireland," says he, going to bate her.
+
+"Well, it's not dirty," says she.
+
+"It's throwin' away my time I have been all my life," says he, "livin'
+with you at all, and stuck at a loom nothin' but a poor Waiver, whin
+it's Saint George or the Dhraggin I ought to be, which is two of the
+sivin champions of Christendom."
+
+"Well, suppose they christened him twice as much," says the wife,
+"sure, what's that to us?"
+
+"Don't put in your prate." says he, "you ignorant shtrap," says he,
+"you're vulgar, woman,--you're vulgar--mighty vulgar; but I'll have
+nothin' more to say to any dirty snakin' trade agin--divil a more
+waivin' I'll do."
+
+"Oh, Thady dear, and what'll the childre do then!"
+
+"Let them go and play marvels," said he.
+
+"That would be but poor feedin' for them, Thady."
+
+"They shan't want for feedin'," says he, "for it's a rich man I'll be
+soon, and a great man too."
+
+"Usha, but I'm glad to hear it, darlin'--though I donna how it's to be,
+but I think you had betther go to bed, Thady."'
+
+"Don't talk to me of any bed, but the bed of glory, woman," says he--
+lookin' mortial grand.
+
+"Oh, God sind we'll all be in glory yet," says the wife, crassin'
+herself, "but go to sleep, Thady, for this present."
+
+"I'll sleep with the brave yit," says he.
+
+"Indeed, and a brave sleep will do you a power o' good, my darlin',"
+says she.
+
+"And it's I that will be the knight!" says he.
+
+"All night, if you plaze, Thady," says she.
+
+"None o' your coaxin'," says he, "I'm detarmined on it, and I'll set
+off immediately, and be a knight arriant."
+
+"A what?" says she.
+
+"A knight arriant, woman."
+
+"Lord be good to me, what's that?" says she.
+
+"A knight arriant is a rale gintleman," says he, "goin' round the world
+for sport, with a swoord by his side, takin' whatever he plazes for
+himself, and that's a knight arriant," says he.
+
+Well sure enough, he wint about among his neighbors the next day, and
+he got an owld kettle from one, and a saucepan from another, and he
+took them to the tailor, and he sewed him up a suit of tin clothes like
+any knight arriant, and he borrowed a pot lid, and _that_ he was very
+partikler about, bekase it was his shield, and he wint to a friend
+o' his, a painther and glazier, and made him paint on his shield in big
+letters.
+
+"I'M THE MAN OF ALL MIN THAT KILLED THREESCORE AND TIN AT A BLOW."
+
+"When the people sees _that_," says the Waiver to himself, "the sorra
+one will dar' for to come near me."
+
+And with that he found the wit to scour out the small iron pot for him
+for says he, "it will make an illigant helmet--and when it was done, he
+put it on his head, and the wife said, "Oh murther, Thady jewel, is it
+puttin' a great heavy iron pot on your head you are, by way iv a hat?"
+
+"Sartainly," says he, "for a knight arriant should always have a
+_weight on his brain_."
+
+"But, Thady dear," said the wife, "there's a hole in it, and it can't
+keep out the weather."
+
+"It will be the cooler," says he, puttin' it on him,--"besides, if I
+don't like it, it is aisy to stop it up with a wisht o' straw, or the
+like o' that."
+
+"The three legs of it looks mighty quare, stickin up," says she.
+
+"Every helmet has a spike stickin' out o' the top of it," says the
+Waiver, "and if mine has three, it is only the grandther it is"
+
+"Well," says the wife, getting bitther at last, "all I can say is, it
+isn't the first sheep's head was dhressed in it."
+
+"Your sarvent ma'am," says he; and off he set.
+
+Well, he was in want of a horse, and so he wint to a field hard by,
+where the miller's horse was grazin' that used to carry the ground corn
+around the counthry.
+
+"This is the idintical horse for me," says the Waiver, "he is used to
+carryin' flour and male; and what am I but the flower o' shovelry in a
+coat of mail; so that the horse won't be put out of his way in the
+laste."
+
+But as he was ridin' him out of the field, who should see him but the
+miller.
+
+"Is it stalin' my horse, you are, honest man?" says the miller.
+
+"No," says the Waiver, "I am only goin, to exercise him," says he, "in
+the cool o' the evenin', it will be good for his health."
+
+"Thank you kindly," said the miller, "but lave him where he is, and
+you'll obleege me."
+
+"I can't afford it," says the Waiver, running his horse at the ditch.
+
+"Bad luck to your impidence," says the miller. "you've as much tin
+about you as a thravelin' tink but youv'e more brass. Come back here,
+you vagabone," says he.
+
+But he was late;--away galloped the Waiver, and tuk the road to Dublin,
+for he thought the best thing he could do was to go to the King o'
+Dublin (for Dublin was a grate place then, and had a king iv its own),
+and he thought maybe the King o' Dublin would give him work. Well, he
+was four days goin' to Dublin, for the baste was not the best, and the
+roads worse, not all as one was now; but there was no turnpike then,
+glory be to God! whin he got to Dublin he wint shtraight to the palace,
+and whin he got into the coort yard, he let his horse go and graze
+about the place, for the grass was growin' out betune the stones:
+everythin' was flourishin' thin in Dublin, you see.
+
+Well, the king was lookin' out in his dhrawin' room, for divarshun,
+whin the Waiver came in, but the Waiver purtended not to see him, and
+he wint over to a stone sait under the windy--for you see there was
+stone sates all round about the place for the accommodation of the
+people, for the king was a dacent obleegin' man,--well, as I said, the
+Waiver wint over and lay down on one of the sates, just undher the
+king's windy, and purtended to go asleep: but he tuk care to turn out
+the front of his shield that had the letthers an it--well, my dear,
+with that the king calls out to wan of the lords of his coort that was
+shtandin' behind him, howldin' up the skirt iv his coat, accordin' to
+raison, and says he:
+
+"Look here," says he, "what do you think of a vagabone like that,
+comin' under my very to nose go to sleep? It's thrue I'm a very good
+king," says he, "and I 'commodate the people by having sates for them
+to sit down and enjoy the raycreation and contimplation of seein' me
+here lookin' out o' my drawing room windy for divarsion; but that is no
+raison they're to make a hotel iv the place, and come and sleep here.
+Who is it at all?" says the king.
+
+"Not a one o' me knows, plaze your majesty."
+
+"I think he must be a furriner," says the king, "bekase his dress is
+outlandish."
+
+"And doesn't know manners, more betoken," says the lord.
+
+"I'll go and circumspect him myself," says the king,--"folly me," says
+he to the lord, waivin' his hand at the same time in the most
+dignacious mannar.
+
+Down he wint accordainly, followed by the lord, and whin he wint over
+to where the Waiver was lyin', sure the first thing he seen was his
+shield with the big letthers an it, and with that says he to the lord
+"by dad," says he, "this is the very man I want."
+
+"For what, plaze your majesty?" says the lord.
+
+"To kill that vagabone dhraggin'," says the king.
+
+"Sure, do you think he could kill him," says the lord, "whin all the
+stoutest lords in the land wasn't aquil to it, but never kem back, and
+was ate up alive by the cruel desaiver."
+
+"Sure, don't you see there," says the king pointin' at the shield,
+"that he killed threescore and tin at one blow, and the man that done
+_that_ I think is a match for anything."
+
+So with that he went over to the Waiver and shook him by the shoulder
+for to wake him, and the Waiver rubbed his eyes as if just wakened, and
+the king says to him: "God save you," says he.
+
+"God save you kindly," says the Waiver, purtendin' he was quite
+unknowst who he was spakin to.
+
+"Do you know who I am?" says the king, "that you make so free, good
+man."
+
+"No indade," says the waiver, "you have the advantage of me."
+
+"To be sure I have," says the king, mighty high; "sure, aint I the king
+o' Dublin," says he.
+
+The Waiver dropped down on his two knees forninst the king, and says
+he, "I beg God's pardon and yours for the liberty I tuk, plaze your
+holiness I hope you'll excuse it."
+
+"No offence," says the king, "get up, good man. And what brings you
+here," says he.
+
+"I'm in want of work, plaze your rivirence," says the Waiver.
+
+"Well, suppose I give you work?" says the king.
+
+"I'll be proud to sarve you, my lord," says the Waiver.
+
+"Very well," says the king, "you killed threescore and tin at one blow,
+I undershtan'," says the king.
+
+"Yis," says the Waiver, "that was the last thrifle o' work I done, and
+I'm afeard my hand'll go out o' practice if I don't get some job to do,
+at wanst."
+
+"You shall have a job to do immidiately," says the king. "It's not
+threescore and tin or any fine thing like that, it is only a blaguard
+dhraggin, that is disturbin' the counthry and ruinating my tinanthry
+wid aitin' their powlthry, and I'm lost for want of eggs," says the
+king.
+
+"Troth, thin plaze your worship," says the waiver, "you look as yellow
+as if you'd swallowed twelve yolks this minit."
+
+"Well, I want this dhraggin to be killed," says the king. "It will be
+no throuble in life to you; and I am only sorry that it isn't betther
+worth your while, for he isn't worth fearin' at all; only I must tell
+you that he lives in the county Galway, in the middle of a bog, and he
+has an advantage in that."
+
+"Oh, I don't value it in the laste," says the Waiver, "for the last
+three-score and tin I killed was in a soft place."
+
+"When will you undhertake the job, then?" says the king.
+
+"Let me at him at wanst," says the Waiver.
+
+"That is what I like," says the king, "you're the very man for my
+money," says he.
+
+"Talkin' of money," says the waiver, "by the same token I'll want a
+thrifle o' change from you for my thravellin' charges."
+
+"As much as you plaze," says the king, and with the word, he brought
+him into his closet, where there was an owld stockin' in an owld chest,
+burstin' wid golden guineas.
+
+"Take as many as you plaze," says the king, and sure enough, my dear,
+the little waiver stuffed his tin clothes as full as they could howld
+with them.
+
+"Now I'm ready for the road," says the waiver.
+
+"Very well," says the king; "but you must have a fresh horse," says he.
+
+"With all my heart," says the waiver, who thought he might as well
+exchange the miller's owld garron for a betther.
+
+And maybe its wondthering you are, that the Waiver would think of goin'
+to fight the dhraggin afther what he heerd about him, whin he was
+purtendin' to be asleep; but he had no sitch notion, all he intended
+was to fob the goold; and ride back to Duleek with his gains and a good
+horse. But you see, 'cute as the Waiver was, the king was 'cuter still;
+for these high quolity, you see, is great desaivers; and so the horse
+the Waiver was put an was learned an purpose, and, sure, the minit he
+was mounted, away powdhered the horse, and the divil a toe he'd go but
+right down to Galway.
+
+Well, for four days he was goin' ever more, antil at last the Waiver
+seen a crowd o' people runnin' as if owld Nick was at their heels, and
+they shoutin' a thousand murdhers, and cryin' "The dhraggin, the
+dhraggin!" and he couldn't stop the horse nor make him turn back, but
+away he pelted right forninst the terrible baste that was comin' up to
+him, and there was the most nefarious smell o' sulphur, savin' your
+presence, enough to knock you down; and, faith, the Waiver seen he had
+no time to lose, and so he threw himself off the horse, and made to a
+three that was growin' nigh hand, and away he clambered up into it as
+nimble as a cat; and not a minit had he to spare, for the dhraggin kem
+up in a powerful rage, and he devoured the horse, body and bones, in
+less than no time; and thin he began to sniffle and scent about for the
+Waiver, and at last he clapt his eye on him, where he was, up in the
+three, and says he:
+
+"In troth you might as well come down out o' that," says he, "for I'll
+have you as sure as eggs is mate."
+
+"Divil a foot I'll go down," says the Waiver.
+
+"Sorra care I care," says the dhraggin, "for you're as good as ready
+money in my pocket this minit; for I'll lie undher this tree" says he,
+"and sooner or later you must fall to my share."
+
+And sure enough he sot down, and began to pick his teeth with his tail,
+afther the heavy breakquest he made that mornin' (for he ate a whole
+village, let alone a horse) and he got dhrowsy at last, and fell
+asleep; but before he wint to sleep, he wound himself all round about
+the three, all as one as a lady windin' ribbon round her finger, so
+that the waiver could not escape.
+
+Well, as soon as the Waiver knew he was dead asleep, by the snorin' of
+him--and every snore he get out of him was like a clap o' thunder--that
+minit the Waiver began to creep down the three as cautious as a fox,
+and he was very nigh hand the bottom, whin bad cess to it, a thievin'
+branch he was dipindin' an bruk, and down he fell right a top of the
+dhraggin: but if he did good luck was an his side, for where should he
+fall but with his two legs right acrass the draggin's neck, and my
+jew'l, he laid howlt o' the baste's ears, and there he kept his grip,
+for the dhraggin wakened and endayvored for to bite him, but, you see,
+by raison the Waiver was behind his ears, he could not come at him, and
+with that, he endayvored for to shake him off; but the divil a stir
+could he stir the waiver; and though he shuk all the scales in his
+body, he cud not turn the scale agin the Waiver.
+
+"By the hokey, this is too bad, intirely," says the dhraggin; "but if
+you won't let go," says he, "by the powers o' wild fire, I'll give you
+a ride that'll astonish your sivin small sinses, my boy;" and with
+that, away he flew like mad, and where do you think did he fly? by dad,
+he flew straight for Dublin, divil a less. But the Waiver bein' an his
+neck was a great disthress to him, and he would rather have had him an
+_inside passenger;_ but anyway he flew and he flew till he kem slap up
+agin the palace of the king, or bein' blind with the rage he never seen
+it, and he knocked his brains out; that is, the small trifle he had, and
+down he fell spacheless. An' you see, good luck would have it, that the
+king o' Dublin was lookin' out in his dhrawin room windy for divarshun,
+that day also, and whin he seen the Waiver ridin' an the fiery dhraggin
+(for he was blazin' like a tar barrel) he called out to his coortyers to
+come and see the show.
+
+"By the powdhers of war here comes the knight arriant," says the king
+"riding the dhraggin that's all a fire, and if he gets _into the palace_
+yis must be ready with the fire ingines [Footnote: Showing the antiquity
+of these machines.] says he" for to _put him out._
+
+But whin they seen the dhraggin fall outside, they all run down stairs
+and scampered into the palace yard for to circumspect the curiosity;
+and by the tune they got down, the Waiver had got off the dhraggin's
+neck, and, running up to the king, says he,
+
+"Plaze your holiness," says he, "I did not think myself worthy of
+killin' this facetious baste, so I brought him to yourself for to do
+him the honor of decripitation by your own royal five fingers. But I
+tamed him first, before I allowed him the liberty for to dar' to appear
+in your royal prisance, and you'll oblige me if you'll just make your
+mark upon the onruly baste's neck."
+
+And with that the king, sure enough, drew out his swoord and took the
+head off the dirty brute, as _clane_ as a new pin. Well, there was
+great rejoicin' in the coort that the dhraggin was killed, and says the
+king to the little Waiver, says he.
+
+"You are a knight arriant as it is so it would be no use for to knight
+you over agin; but I will make you a lord," says he.
+
+"Oh Lord!" says the Waiver, thunderstruck like at his own good luck.
+
+"I will," says the king, "and as you're the first man I ever heerd tell
+of that rode a dhraggin, you shall be called Lord Mount Dhraggin," says
+he.
+
+"And where's my estates? plaze your holiness," says the Waiver, who
+always had a sharp look out after the main chance.
+
+"Oh, I didn't forget that," says the king, "It's my royal pleasure to
+provide well for you, and for that raison I make you a present of all
+the dhraggins in the world, and give you power over thim from this
+out," says he.
+
+"Is that all?" says the Waiver.
+
+"All?" says the king, "why you ongrateful little vagabone, was the like
+ever given to any man before?"
+
+"I believe not indeed," says the Waiver: "many thanks to your Majesty."
+
+"But that is not all I do for you," says the king; "I'll give you my
+daughter too in marriage," says he.
+
+Now you see that was nothin' more than what he promised the Waiver in
+his first promise; for by all accounts the king's daughter was the
+greatest dhraggin ever was seen, and had the divil's own tongue, and a
+beard a yard long, which she purtinded was put an her by way of a
+penance, by Father Mulcahy, her confissor; but it was well known was in
+the family for ages, and no wondher it was so long, by raison of that
+same.
+
+SAMUEL LOVER.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT STORY-TELLERS ***
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