Last Sunday morning at six o'clock in the evening as I was sailing over
the tops of the mountains in my little boat, I met two men on horseback
riding on one mare: So I asked them, "Could they tell me whether the
little old woman was dead yet who was hanged last Saturday week for
drowning herself in a shower of feathers?" They said they could not
positively inform me, but if I went to Sir Gammer Vans he could tell me
all about it. "But how am I to know the house?" said I. "Ho, 't is easy
enough," said they, "for 't is a brick house, built entirely of flints,
standing alone by itself in the middle of sixty or seventy others just
like it."
"Oh, nothing in the world is easier," said I.
"Nothing _can_ be easier," said they: so I went on my way.
Now this Sir G. Vans was a giant, and a bottle-maker. And as all giants
who _are_ bottle-makers usually pop out of a little thumb-bottle from
behind the door, so did Sir G. Vans.
"How d'ye do?" says he.
"Very well, I thank you," says I.
"Have some breakfast with me?"
"With all my heart," says I.
So he gave me a slice of beer, and a cup of cold veal; and there was a
little dog under the table that picked up all the crumbs.
"Hang him," says I.
"No, don't hang him," says he; "for he killed a hare yesterday. And if
you don't believe me, I'll show you the hare alive in a basket."
So he took me into his garden to show me the curiosities. In one corner
there was a fox hatching eagle's eggs; in another there was an iron
apple tree, entirely covered with pears and lead; in the third there was
the hare which the dog killed yesterday alive in the basket; and in the
fourth there were twenty-four _hipper switches_ threshing tobacco, and
at the sight of me they threshed so hard that they drove the plug
through the wall, and through a little dog that was passing by on the
other side. I, hearing the dog howl, jumped over the wall; and turned it
as neatly inside out as possible, when it ran away as if it had not an
hour to live. Then he took me into the park to show me his deer: and I
remembered that I had a warrant in my pocket to shoot venison for his
majesty's dinner. So I set fire to my bow, poised my arrow, and shot
amongst them. I broke seventeen ribs on one side, and twenty-one and a
half on the other; but my arrow passed clean through without ever
touching it, and the worst was I lost my arrow: however, I found it
again in the hollow of a tree. I felt it; it felt clammy. I smelt it; it
smelt honey. "Oh, ho," said I, "here's a bee's nest," when out sprang a
covey of partridges. I shot at them; some say I killed eighteen; but I
am sure I killed thirty-six, besides a dead salmon which was flying over
the bridge, of which I made the best apple-pie I ever tasted.