THE MAJOR'S TALE.
"A great many years ago when I was a souvenir spoon," said the major, "I
belonged to a very handsome and very powerful potentate."
"I didn't quite understand what it was you said you were," said the
sprite, bending forward as if to hear better.
"At the beginning of my story I was a souvenir spoon," returned the
major.
"Did you begin your career as a spoon?" asked the sprite.
"I did not, sir," replied the major. "I began my career as a nugget in a
lead mine where I was found by the king of whom I have just spoken, and
on his return home with me he gave me to his wife who sent me out to a
lead smith's and had me made over into a souvenir spoon--and a mighty
handsome spoon I was too. I had a poem engraved on me that said:
'Aka majo te roo li sah,
Pe mink y rali mis tebah.'
Rather pretty thought, don't you think so?" added the major as he
completed the couplet.
"Very!" said the sprite, with a knowing shake of his head.
"Well, I don't understand it at all," said Jimmieboy.
"Ask this native of Twinkleville what it means," observed the major with
a snicker. "He says it's a pretty thought, so of course he understands
it--though I assure you I don't, for it doesn't mean anything. I made it
up, this very minute."
The sprite colored deeply. It was quite evident that he had fallen into
the trap the major had set for him.
"I was only fooling," he said, with a sickly attempt at a smile. "Go on
with your story."
"I think perhaps the happiest time of my life was during the hundreds of
years that I existed in the royal museum as a spoon," resumed the major.
"I was brought into use only on state occasions. When the King of
Mangapore gave a state banquet to other kings in the neighborhood I was
the spoon that was used to ladle out the royal broth."
Here the major paused to smack his lips, and then a small tear appeared
in one corner of his eye and trickled slowly down the side of his nose.
"I always weep," he said, as soon as he could speak, "when I think of
that broth. Here is what it was made of:
'Seven pies of sweetest mince,
Then a ripe and mellow quince,
Then a quart of tea.
Then a pint of cinnamon,
Next a roasted apple, done
Brown as brown can be.
Add of orange juice, a gill,
And a sugared daffodil,
Then a yellow yam.
Sixty-seven strawberries
Should be added then to these,
And a pot of jam.
Mix with maple syrup and
Let it in the ice-box stand
Till it's good and cold--
Throw a box of raisins in,
Stir it well--just make it spin--
Till it looks like gold.'
Oh, my!" cried the major. "What a dish it was, and I, I used to be
dipped into a tureen full of it sixteen times at every royal feast,
and before the war we had royal feasts on an average of three times
a day."
"Three royal banquets a day?" cried Jimmieboy, his mouth watering to
think of it.
"Yes," returned the major. "Three a day until the unhappy war broke out
which destroyed all my happiness, and resulted in the downfall of
sixty-four kings."
"How on earth did such a war as that ever happen to be fought?" asked
the sprite.
"I am sorry to say," replied the major, sadly, "that I was the innocent
cause of it all. It was on the king's birthday that war was declared. He
used to have magnificent birthday parties, quite like those that boys
like Jimmieboy here have, only instead of having a cake with a candle in
it for each year, King Fuzzywuz used to have one guest for each year,
and one whole cake for each guest. On his twenty-first birthday he had
twenty-one guests; on his thirtieth, thirty, and so on; and at every one
of these parties I used to be passed around to be admired, I was so very
handsome and valuable."
"Absurd!" said the sprite, with a sneering laugh. "The idea of a lead
spoon being valuable!"
"If you had ever been able to get into the society of kings," the major
answered, with a great deal of dignity, "you would know that on the
table of a monarch lead is much more rare than silver and gold. It was
this fact that made me so overpoweringly valuable, and it is not
surprising that a great many of the kings who used to come to these
birthday parties should become envious of Fuzzywuz and wish they owned a
treasure like myself. One very old king died of envy because of me, and
his heir-apparent inherited his father's desire to possess me to such a
degree that he too pined away and finally disappeared entirely. Just
regularly faded out of sight. Didn't die, you know, as you would, but
vanished.
"So it went on for years, and finally on his sixty-fourth birthday King
Fuzzywuz gave his usual party, and sixty-four of the choicest kings in
the world were invited. They every one came, the feast was made ready,
and just as the guests took their places around the table, the broth
with me lying at the side of the tureen was brought in. The kings all
took their crowns off in honor of my arrival, when suddenly pouf! a gust
of wind came along and blew out every light in the hall. All was
darkness, and in the midst of it I felt myself grabbed by the handle and
shoved hastily into an entirely strange pocket.
"'What, ho, without there!' cried Fuzzywuz. 'Turn off the wind and bring
a light.'
"The slaves hastened to do as they were told, and in less time than it
takes to tell it, light and order were restored. And then a terrible
scene ensued. I could see it very plainly through a button-hole in the
cloak of the potentate who had seized me and hidden me in his pocket.
Fuzzywuz immediately discovered that I was missing.
"'What has become of our royal spoon?' he roared to the head-waiter,
who, though he was an African of the blackest hue, turned white as a
sheet with fear.
"'It was in the broth, oh, Nepotic Fuzzywuz, King of the Desert and most
noble Potentate of the Sand Dunes, when I, thy miserable servant,
brought it into the gorgeous banqueting hall and set it here before
thee, who art ever my most Serene and Egotistic Master,' returned the
slave, trembling with fear and throwing himself flat upon the
dining-hall floor.
"'Caitiff!' cried the king. 'I believe thou hast played me false. Do
spoons take wings unto themselves and fly away? Are they tadpoles that
they develop legs and hop as frogs from our royal presence? Do spoons
evapidate----'
"'Evaporate, my dear,' suggested the queen in a whisper.
"'Thanks,' returned the king. 'Do spoons evaporate like water in the
sun? Do they raise sails like sloops of war and thunder noiselessly out
of sight? No, no. Thou hast stolen it and thou must bear the penalty of
thy predilection----'
"'Dereliction,' whispered the queen, impatiently.
"'He knows what I mean,' roared the king, 'or if he doesn't he will when
his head is cut off.'"
"Is that what all those big words meant?" asked Jimmieboy.
"As I remember the occurrence, it is," returned the major. "What the
king really meant was always uncertain; he always used such big words
and rarely got them right. Reprehensibility and tremulousness were great
favorites of his, though I don't believe he ever knew what they meant.
But, to continue my story, at this point the king rose and sharpening
the carving knife was about to behead the slave's head off when the
potentate who had me in his pocket cried out:
"'Hold, oh Fuzzywuz! The slave is right. I saw the spoon myself at the
side of yon tureen when it was brought hither.'
"'Then,' returned the king, 'it has been percolated----'
"'Peculated,' whispered the queen.
"'That's what I said,' retorted Fuzzywuz, angrily. 'The spoon has been
speculated by some one of our royal brethren at this board. The point to
be liquidated now is, who has done this deed. What, ho, without there! A
guard about the palace gates--and lock the doors and bar the windows. We
shall have a search. I am sorry to say, that every king in this room
save only myself and my friend Prince Bigaroo, who at the risk of his
kingly dignity deigned to come to the rescue of my slave, must repeal--I
should say reveal--the contents of his pockets. Prince Bigaroo must be
innocent or he would not have ejaculated as he hath.'
"You see," said the major, in explanation, "Bigaroo having stolen me was
smart enough to see how it would be if he spoke. A guilty person in nine
cases out of ten would have kept silent and let the slave suffer. So
Bigaroo escaped; but all the others were searched and of course I was
not found. Fuzzywuz was wild with sorrow and anger, and declared that
unless I was returned within ten minutes he would wage war upon, and
utterly destroy, every king in the place. The kings all turned
pale--even Bigaroo's cheek grew white, but having me he was determined
to keep me and so the war began."
"Why didn't you speak and save the innocent kings?" asked the sprite.
"How could I?" retorted the major. "Did you ever see a spoon with a
tongue?"
The sprite made no answer. He evidently had never seen a spoon with a
tongue.
"The war was a terrible one," said the major, resuming his story. "One
by one the kings were destroyed, and finally only Bigaroo remained, and
Fuzzywuz not having found me in the treasures of the others, finally
came to see that it was Bigaroo who had stolen me. So he turned his
forces toward the wicked monarch, defeated his army, and set fire to his
palace. In that fire I was destroyed as a souvenir spoon and became a
lump of lead once more, lying in the ruins for nearly a thousand years,
when I was sold along with a lot of iron and other things to a junk
dealer. He in turn sold me to a ship-maker, who worked me over into a
sounding lead for a steamer he had built. On my first trip out I was
sent overboard to see how deep the ocean was. I fell in between two
huge rocks down on the ocean's bed and was caught, the rope connecting
me with the ship snapped, and there I was, twenty thousand fathoms under
the sea, lost, as I supposed, forever. The effect of the salt water upon
me was very much like that of hair restorer on some people's heads. I
began to grow a head of green hair--seaweed some people call it--and to
this fact, strangely enough, I owed my escape from the water. A sea-cow
who used to graze about where I lay, thinking that I was only a tuft of
grass gathered me in one afternoon and swallowed me without blinking,
and some time after, the cow having been caught and killed by some giant
fishermen, I was found by the wife of one of the men when the great cow
was about to be cooked. These giants were very strange people who
inhabited an island out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which was
gradually sinking into the water with the weight of the people on it,
and which has now entirely disappeared. There wasn't one of the
inhabitants that was less than one hundred feet tall, and in those days
they used to act as light-houses for each other at night. They had but
one eye apiece, and when that was open it used to flash just like a
great electric light, and they'd take turns at standing up in the
middle of the island all night long and turning round and round and
round until you'd think they'd drop with dizziness. I staid with these
people, I should say, about forty years, when one morning two of the
giants got disputing as to which of them could throw a stone the
farthest. One of them said he could throw a pebble two thousand miles,
and the other said he could throw one all the way round the world. At
this the first one laughed and jeered, and to prove that he had told the
truth the second grabbed up what he thought was a pebble, but which
happened to be me and threw me from him with all his force."
"Did you go all the way around?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Did I? Well, rather. I went around once and a half. And sad to say I
killed the giant who threw me," returned the major. "I went around the
world so swiftly that when I got back to the island the poor fellow
hadn't had time to get out of my way, and as I came whizzing along I
struck him in the back, went right through him, and leaving him dead on
the island went on again and finally fell into a great gun manufactory
in Massachusetts where I was smelted over into a bullet, and sent to the
war. I did lots of work for George Washington. I think I must have
killed off half a dozen regiments of his enemies, and between you and
me, General Washington said I was his favorite bullet, and added that as
long as he had me with him he wasn't afraid of anybody."
Here the major paused a minute to smile at the sprite who was beginning
to look a little blue. It was rather plain, the sprite thought, that the
major was getting the best of the duel.
"Go on," said Jimmieboy. "What next? How long did you stay with George
Washington?"
"Six months," said the major. "I'd never have left him if he hadn't
ordered me to do work that I wasn't made for. When a bullet goes to war
he doesn't want to waste himself on ducks. I wanted to go after hostile
generals and majors and cornet players, and if Mr. Washington had used
me for them I'd have hit home every time, but instead of that he took me
off duck shooting one day and actually asked me to knock over a
miserable wild bird he happened to want. I rebelled at this. He
insisted, and I said, 'very well, General, fire away.' He fired, the
duck laughed, and I simply flew off into the woods on the border of the
bay and rested there for nearly a hundred years. The rest of my story
is soon told. I lay where I had fallen until six years ago when I was
picked up by a small boy who used me for a sinker to go fishing with,
after which I found my way into the smelting pot once more, and on the
Fifteenth of November, 1892, I became what I am, Major Blueface, the
handsomest soldier, the bravest warrior, the most talented tin poet that
ever breathed."
A long silence followed the completion of the major's story. Which of
the two he liked the better Jimmieboy could not make up his mind, and he
hoped his two companions would be considerate enough not to ask him to
decide between them.
"I thought they had to be true stories," said the sprite, gloomily. "I
don't think it's fair to tell stories like yours--the idea of your being
thrown one and a half times around the world!"
"It's just as true as yours, anyhow," retorted the major, "but if you
want to begin all over again and tell another I'm ready for you."
"No," said the sprite. "We'll leave it to Jimmieboy as it is."
"Then I win," said the major.
"I don't know about that, major," said Jimmieboy. "I think you are just
about even."
"Do you really think so?" asked the sprite, his face beaming with
pleasure.
"Yes," said Jimmieboy. "We'll settle it this way: we'll give five points
to the one who told the best, five points to the one who told the
longest, and five points to the one who told the shortest story. As the
stories are equally good you both get five points for that. The major's
was the longest, I think, so he gets five more, but so does the sprite
because his was the shortest. That makes you both ten, so you both win."
"Hurrah!" cried the major. "Then I do win."
"Yes," said the sprite, squeezing Jimmieboy's hand affectionately, "and
so do I."
Which after all, I think, was the best way to decide a duel of that
sort.