THE SPRITE'S STORY.
"When I was not more than a thousand years old--" said the sprite.
"Excuse me," interrupted the major. "But what was the figure?"
"One thousand," returned the sprite. "That was nine thousand years
ago--before this world was made. I celebrated my
ten-thousand-and-sixteenth birthday last Friday--but that has nothing to
do with my story. When I was not more than a thousand years of age, my
parents, who occupied a small star about forty million miles from here,
finding that my father could earn a better living if he were located
nearer the moon, moved away from my birthplace and rented a good-sized,
four-pronged star in the suburbs of the great orb of night. In the old
star we were too far away from the markets for my father to sell the
products of his farm for anything like what they cost him; freight
charges were very heavy, and often the stage-coach that ran between
Twinkleville and the moon would not stop at Twinkleville at all, and
then all the stuff that we had raised that week would get stale, lose
its fizz, and have to be thrown away."
"Let me beg your pardon again," put in the major. "But what did you
raise on your farm? I never heard of farm products having fizz to lose."
"We raised soda-water chiefly," returned the sprite, amiably.
"Soda-water and suspender buttons. The soda-water was cultivated and the
suspender buttons seemed to grow wild. We never knew exactly how; though
from what I have learned since about them, I think I begin to understand
the science of it; and I wish now that I could find a way to return to
Twinkleville, because I am certain it must be a perfect treasure-house
of suspender buttons by this time. Even in my day they used to lie about
by the million--metallic buttons every one of them. They must be worth
to-day at least a dollar a thousand."
"What is your idea about the way they happened to come there, based on
what you have learned since?" asked the major.
"Well, it is a very simple idea," returned the sprite. "You know when a
suspender button comes off it always disappears. Of course it must go
somewhere, but the question is, where? No one has ever yet been known to
recover the suspender button he has once really lost; and my notion of
it is simply that the minute a metal suspender button comes off the
clothes of anybody in all the whole universe, it immediately flies up
through the air and space to Twinkleville, which is nothing more than a
huge magnet, and lies there until somebody picks it up and tries to sell
it. I remember as a boy sweeping our back yard clear of them one
evening, and waking the next morning to find the whole place covered
with them again; but we never could make money on them, because the moon
was our sole market, and only the best people of the moon ever used
suspenders, and as these were unfortunately relatives of ours, we had to
give them all the buttons they wanted for nothing, so that the button
crops became rather an expense to us than otherwise. But with soda-water
it was different. Everybody, it doesn't make any difference where he
lives, likes soda-water, and it was an especially popular thing in the
moon, where the plain water is always so full of fish that nobody can
drink it. But as I said before, often the stage-coach wouldn't or
couldn't stop, and we found ourselves getting poorer every day. Finally
my father made up his mind to lease, and move into this new star, sink a
half-dozen soda-water wells there, and by means of a patent he owned,
which enabled him to give each well a separate and distinct flavor,
drive everybody else out of the business."
"You don't happen to remember how that patent your father owned worked,
do you?" asked the major, noticing that Jimmieboy seemed particularly
interested when the sprite mentioned this. "If you do, I'd like to buy
the plan of it from you and give it to Jimmieboy for a Christmas
present, so that he can have soda-water wells in his own back yard at
home."
"No, I can't remember anything about it," said the sprite. "Nine
thousand years is a long time to remember things of that kind, though I
don't think the scheme was a very hard one to work. For vanilla cream,
it only required a well with plain soda-water in it with a quart of
vanilla beans and three pints of cream poured into it four times a week;
same way with other flavors--a quart of strawberries for strawberry,
sarsaparilla for sarsaparilla, and so forth; but the secret was in the
pouring; there was something in the way papa did the pouring; I never
knew just what it was. He always insisted on doing the pouring himself.
But if you don't stop asking questions I'll never finish my story."
"You shouldn't make it so interesting if you don't want us to have our
curiosity excited by it," said Jimmieboy. "I'd have asked those
questions if the major hadn't. But go ahead. What happened?"
"Well, we moved, and in a very short time were comfortably settled in
the suburban star I have mentioned," continued the sprite. "As we
expected, my father grew very, very rich. He was referred to in the moon
newspapers as 'The Soda-water King,' and once an article about him said
that he owned the finest suspender-button mine in the universe, which
was more or less true, but which, as it turned out, was unfortunate in
its results. Some moon people hearing of his ownership of the
Twinkleville Button Mines came to him and tried to persuade him that
they ought to be worked. Father said he didn't see any use of it,
because the common people didn't wear suspenders, and so didn't need the
buttons.
"'True,' said they, 'but we can compel them to need them, by making a
law requiring that everybody over sixteen shall wear suspenders.'
"'That's a good idea,' said my father, and he tried to have it made a
law that every one should wear suspenders, high or low, and as a result
he got everybody mad at him. The best people were angry, because up to
that time the wearing of suspenders had been regarded as a sign of noble
birth, and if everybody, including the common people, were to have them
they would cease to be so. The common people themselves were angry,
because to have to buy suspenders would simply be an addition to the
cost of living, and they hadn't any money to spare. In consequence we
were cut off by the best people of the moon. Nobody ever came to see us
except the very commonest kind of common people, and they came at night,
and then only to drop pailfuls of cod-liver oil, squills, ipecac, and
other unpopular things into our soda-water wells, so that in a very
short time my poor father's soda-water business was utterly ruined.
People don't like to order ten quarts of vanilla cream soda-water for
Sunday dinner, and find it flavored with cod-liver oil, you know."
"Yes, I do know," said Jimmieboy, screwing his face up in an endeavor to
give the major and the sprite some idea of how little he liked the taste
of cod-liver oil. "I think cod-liver oil is worse than measles or
mumps, because you can't have measles or mumps more than once, and there
isn't any end to the times you can have cod-liver oil."
"I'm with you there," said the major, emphasizing his remark by slapping
Jimmieboy on the back. "In fact, sir, on page 29 of my book called
'Musings on Medicines' you will find--if it is ever published--these
lines:
"The oils of cod!
The oils of cod!
They make me feel tremendous odd,
Nor hesitate
I here to state
I wildly hate the oils of cod."
"Bravo!" cried the sprite. "When I start my autograph album I want you
to write those lines on the first page."
"With pleasure," returned the major. "When shall you start the album?"
"Never, I hope," replied the sprite, with a chuckle. "And now suppose
you don't interrupt my story again."
Clouds began to gather on the major's face again. The sprite's rebuke
had evidently made him very angry.
"Sir," said he, as soon as his feelings permitted him to speak. "If you
make any more such remarks as that, another duel may be necessary after
this one is fought--which I should very much regret, for duels of this
sort consume a great deal of time, and unless I am much mistaken it will
shortly rain cats and dogs."
"It looks that way," said the sprite, "and it is for that very reason
that I do not wish to be interrupted again. Of course ruin stared father
in the face."
"How rude of ruin!" whispered the major to Jimmieboy, who immediately
silenced him.
"Trade having fallen away," continued the sprite, "we had to draw upon
our savings for our bread and butter, and finally, when the last penny
was spent, we made up our minds to leave the moon district entirely and
try life on the dog-star, where, we were informed, people only had one
eye apiece, and every man had so much to do that it took all of his one
eye's time looking after his own business so that there wasn't any left
for him to spend on other people's business. It seemed to my father that
in a place like this there was a splendid opening for him."
"In what line?" queried the major.
"Renting out his extra eye to blind men," roared the sprite.
Jimmieboy fell off the rock with laughter, and the major, angry at being
so neatly caught, rose up and walked away but immediately returned.
"If this wasn't a duel I wouldn't stay here another minute," he said.
"But you can't put me to flight that way. Go on and finish."
"The question now came up as to how we should get to the dog-star,"
resumed the sprite. "Our money was all gone. Nobody would lend us any.
Nobody would help us at all."
"I should think they'd have been so glad you were leaving they'd have
paid your fare," said the major, but the sprite paid no attention.
"There was no regular stage line between the moon and the dog-star,"
said he, "and we had only two chances of really getting there, and they
were both so slim you could count their ribs. One was by getting aboard
the first comet that was going that way, and the other was by jumping.
The trouble with the first chance was that as far as any one knew there
wasn't a comet expected to go in the direction of the dog-star for eight
million years--which was rather a long time for a starving family to
wait, and besides we had read of so many accidents in the moon papers
about people being injured while trying to board comets in motion that
we were a little timid about it. My father and I could have managed
very well; but mother might not have--ladies can't even get on horse
cars in motion without getting hurt, you know.
"Then the other scheme was equally dangerous. It's a pretty big jump
from the moon to the dog-star, and if you don't aim yourself right you
are apt to miss it, and either fall into space or land somewhere else
where you don't want to go. For instance, a cousin of mine
who lived on Mars wanted to visit us when we lived at Twinkleville, but
he was too mean to pay his fare, thinking he could jump it cheaper.
Well, he jumped and where do you suppose he landed?"
"In the sun!" cried the major, in horror.
"No. Nowhere!" returned the sprite. "He's jumping yet. He didn't come
anywhere near Twinkleville, although he supposed that he was aimed in
the right direction."
"Will you tell me how you know he's falling yet?" asked the major, who
didn't seem to believe this part of the sprite's story.
"Certainly. I saw him yesterday through a telescope," replied the
sprite.
The major began to whistle.
"And he looked very tired, too," said the sprite. "Though as a matter of
fact he doesn't have to exert himself any. All he has to do is fall,
and, once you get started, falling is the easiest thing in the world.
But of course with the remembrance of my cousin's mistake in our minds,
we didn't care so much about making the jump, and we kept putting it off
and putting it off until finally some wretched people had a law made
abolishing us from the moon entirely, which meant that we had to leave
inside of twenty-four hours; so we packed up our trunks with the few
possessions we had left and threw them off toward the dog-star; then
mother and father took hold of hands and jumped and I was to come along
after them with some of the baggage that we hadn't got ready in time.
"According to my father's instructions I watched him carefully as he
sped through space to see whether he had started right, and to my great
joy I observed that he had--that very shortly both he and mother would
arrive safely on the dog-star--but alas! My joy was soon turned to
grief, for a terrible thing happened. Our great heavy family trunk that
had been dispatched first, and with truest aim, landed on the head of
the King of the dog-star, stove his crown in and nearly killed him.
Hardly had the king risen up from the ground when he was again knocked
down by my poor father, who, utterly powerless to slow up or switch
himself to one side, landed precisely as the trunk had landed on the
monarch's head, doing quite as much more damage as the trunk had done in
the beginning. When added to these mishaps a shower of hat-boxes and
hand-bags, marked with our family name, fell upon the Lord Chief
Justice, the Prime Minister and the Heir Apparent, my parents were
arrested and thrown into prison and I decided that the dog-star was no
place for me. Wild with grief, and without looking to see where I was
going, nor in fact caring much, I gave a running leap out into space and
finally through some good fortune landed here on this earth which I have
found quite good enough for me ever since."
Here the sprite paused and looked at Jimmieboy as much as to say, "How
is that for a tale of adventure?"
"Is that all?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Mercy!" cried the major, "Isn't it enough?"
"No," said Jimmieboy. "Not quite. I don't see how he could have jumped
so many years before the world was made and yet land on the world."
"I was five thousand years on the jump," explained the sprite.
"It was leap-year when you started, wasn't it?" asked the major, with a
sarcastic smile.
"And your parents? What finally became of them?" asked Jimmieboy,
signaling the major to be quiet.
"I hadn't the heart to inquire. I am afraid they got into serious
trouble. It's a very serious thing to knock a king down with a trunk and
land on his head yourself the minute he gets up again," sighed the
sprite.
"But didn't you tell me your parents were unfairies?" put in Jimmieboy,
eying the sprite distrustfully.
"Yes; but they were only my adopted parents," explained the sprite.
"They were a very rich old couple with lots of money and no children, so
I adopted them not knowing that they were unfairies. When they died they
left me all their bad habits, and their money went to found a storeroom
for worn out lawn-mowers. That was a sample of their meanness."
"Well that's a pretty good story," said Jimmieboy.
"Yes," said the sprite, with a pleased smile. "And the best part of it
is it's all true."
"Tut!" ejaculated the major, scornfully. "Wait until you hear mine."