THE WELL IN THE WOOD
_BOOKS BY BERT LESTON TAYLOR_
A PENNY WHISTLE
THE SO-CALLED HUMAN RACE
THE WELL IN THE WOOD
_And others in a uniform collected edition, to be ready later_
_New York: Alfred · A · Knopf_
[Illustration: AND NOW VANISHED IN THE DEPTHS OF THE WELL.]
The Well in the
Wood
by
Bert Leston Taylor
_With illustrations by
F. Y. Cory_
New York 1922
Alfred · A · Knopf
COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1922, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_Published, September, 1922_
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
“THE BACILLUS DEDICATORY”
I had intended dedicating this little book to Mr. Henry B. Fuller,
to whose friendship and criticism I owe much; but finally I decided
it were wiser to refrain. The explanation of my change of mind is
contained in the paragraph which follows:
“In this part of the world,” wrote Mr. Fuller, not long ago, “the
bacillus dedicatory hardly survives within us up to middle age, but
there is no denying that it is terribly active in most beginners, and
that the ingenuous gratitude of these gives their established elders
considerable cause for embarrassment. Have I written a successful
story? Then I cast about for some well-known name, ‘higher up,’ with
which to adorn thy fly-leaf and to ease my overpowering sense of
obligation. The effort on the part of these various celebrities to
elude my homage is the liveliest side of the literary game, and not the
least instructive phase of unwritten literary history.”
THE STORIED ROADS OF FAIRYLAND
The dinner done, the lamp is lit,
And in its mellow glow we sit
And talk of matters, grave and gay,
That went to make another day.
Comes Little One, a book in hand,
With this request--nay, this command--
(For who’d gainsay the little sprite):
“Please--will you read to me to-night?”
Read to you, Little One? Why, yes.
What shall it be to-night? You guess
You’d like to hear about the bears--
Their bowls of porridge, beds and chairs?
Well, that you shall.... There! that tale’s done!
And now--you’d like another one?
To-morrow evening, Curly Head,
It’s “hass-pass seven!” Off to bed!
So each night another story:--
Wicked dwarfs and giants gory;
Dragons fierce and princes daring,
Forth to fame and fortune faring;
Wandering tots, with leaves for bed;
Houses made of gingerbread;
Witches bad and fairies good;
And all the wonders of the wood.
“I like the witches best,” says she
Who nightly nestles on my knee;
But why by them she sets such store
Psychologists must puzzle o’er.
Her likes are mine, and I agree
With all that she confides to me.
And thus we travel, hand in hand,
The storied roads of Fairyland.
Ah, Little One, when years have fled,
And left their silver on my head,
And when the dimming eyes of age
With difficulty scan the page,
Perchance I’ll turn the tables then;
Perchance _I’ll_ put the question, when
I borrow of your better sight:
“Please--will you read to me to-night?”
CONTENTS
I ENCHANTER’S NIGHTSHADE 1
II ON THE WAY TO BEAVERTOWN 9
III THE LAZIEST BEAVER 17
IV “WHY DOES A RABBIT WABBLE HIS NOSE?” 27
V THE GUINEA-PIG WHOSE EYES FELL OUT 38
VI THE WHITE BLACKBIRD 47
VII A TRAVELED DONKEY 61
VIII OLD SAWS IN NEW SETTINGS 72
IX TROUBLES OF A BEAR 81
X THE WEE BEAR’S BIRTHDAY PARTY 91
XI A LONG DISPUTE ENDED 105
XII THE FLIGHT OF THE LOON 114
XIII “MARY’S LITTLE LAMB” 125
XIV “ONE FROM TWO LEAVES FOUR” 138
XV AT THE CORNER 149
XVI A FROLIC IN THE FOREST 158
XVII DOCTOR GOOSE’S LECTURE 170
XVIII THE WELL IN THE WOOD 177
XIX DISENCHANTMENT 186
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
AND NOW VANISHED IN THE DEPTHS OF THE WELL _Frontispiece_
AND LED THE WAY INTO A THICKET 13
WHICH GREW FAINTER AND FAINTER 25
BUT I’VE CAUGHT YOU 54
THEY SET OFF THROUGH THE WOOD 77
I MEAN I CAN’T SLEEP 89
HAVE YOU HEARD “NOBODY KNOWS”? 120
AND BEHOLD THEY _Were_ ROSES 127
THE WELL IN THE WOOD
CHAPTER I
ENCHANTER’S NIGHTSHADE
“Colonel, you ’diculous dog, you’re so hot _now_ you can hardly
breathe. No; you needn’t bark. It’s too warm to play any more.”
Buddie was sitting on the fallen, mossy trunk of a cedar tree, just
inside the edge of the wood, throwing little sticks for her dog Colonel
to fetch. Being a young dog, Colonel wanted to play all day long, and
he could not understand why Buddie should tire of throwing sticks when
_he_ never wearied of recovering them. So when she bent to tie her
shoe-string he assumed that another stick was coming, and, yelping with
delight, he crouched for the spring.
But Buddie, in bending over, had made a discovery that put an end to
playing with sticks, for that day at least.
“Oh, what pretty flowers!” she cried; and she began to make a bouquet
of some white blossoms that grew among the mosses of the fallen cedar.
Before you learn about this strange flower, Little One, I must tell you
something of the small person who found it, and of the wood in which it
grew.
“Buddie” was her every-day name. It is short and easy to say,
especially if one is in a hurry, as Buddie’s mother always was. On
Sundays her name was Ethel Elvira, which quite became a dress with a
great deal of starch, a sash with a great deal of rustle and new shoes
with a great deal of squeak.
Her home was a log house in the wild Northland, just where the
pine-trees came down to peep into the mirror of a great lake. It was
a lonely shore and not at all the kind that you, Little One, would
like, for there was no sandy beach to dig in. Here and there were short
stretches of gravel, but mostly it was black rock and deep water,
which the sun never succeeded in warming. As far as one could see up
and down the lake there was no other house, and the only blur on the
wide sweep of dark blue water was the tattered sail of a restless
Indian or the trailing smoke of a distant steamer.
In all the country round about there was only one road, and this kept
so close to the lake--for fear, very likely, it would get lost--that
there was just room between it and the water for the log house and a
small back yard for the chickens. Across the road was a cleared space,
sloping up over a little hill, in which grew potatoes, turnips and
other vegetables that could stand a cold climate; for Buddie’s home was
so far north that real winter lasted six months, and sometimes longer.
There wasn’t any spring to speak of--without complaining--and nobody
could tell when summer ended and autumn began.
Buddie had two brothers younger than herself. One was a wee tot who
slept in a hammock near the kitchen stove, where the mother could keep
the pot a-boiling and the cradle a-swinging at the same time; the other
usually spent his time “helping father” to improve the road, which was
in a sad way, or to hunt for the cows, which sometimes went deep into
the wood to escape the tormenting flies.
As there was no other little girl to play with, Buddie had to amuse
herself as best she could. One way was to turn the pages of a big, fine
book of animal stories, a Christmas gift from a city friend of the
family; and when all the pictures had been looked at for the hundredth
time, she would call Colonel and ramble along the edge of the wood, in
the hope of seeing some of the animals pictured in her book.
She never went more than a very little way into the wood.
“For if you do,” her mother would say, “the bears will eat you up.” So
it was that the wood came to have a great fascination for her, as it
would for you or me, Little One, if we could not go into it. A great
many of us always wish to do what we are told not to do, which is very
wrong, of course, and discourages the wise and patient people who write
books on Ethics.
It was a wonderful wood, not at all like the wood in your favorite
fairy tale. You can hardly realize, Little One, how far away it
stretched--hundreds and hundreds of miles--away to the ice and snow of
the far, far North. There were no roads, as in your fairy-tale wood,
and no paths except a few old trails which had not been used for years,
and over which the wild grasses and shrubs ran again. From the shore
road you could see into it only a little way, because there were so
many trees that had branches close to the ground, and such a tangle of
old dead trees and thickly growing young ones. During the day, when
the sunlight crept in through every crack, it was quite cheerful among
the pines and firs and birches, and a great deal seemed to be going on
there; but when night came on it grew dark and still, and the only
speck of light for miles and miles came from the lamp in the log house
window.
Rather a lonely place, one would say, for a little girl to grow up in.
But Buddie never thought of that. She was always busy, and the days
passed quickly enough. Colonel was a lively companion, if he was only a
dog, and a yellow one at that; and he had one good quality which even a
yellow dog can have--he was entirely devoted to his young mistress. If
she wandered too far up or down the road, or seemed to be disregarding
her mother’s command to keep out of the wood, he would take hold of her
dress with his teeth and gently pull her back.
[Illustration]
And now to return to the strange flower Buddie found. Pay attention,
Little One: if it were not for the flower I should not be telling you
this story.
[Illustration]
Botanists call it _Circæa Alpina_, but you never could remember that.
The other name for it is “Enchanter’s Nightshade,” which you may not
forget so easily. It is a small plant, and the flower books do not say
much about it; but I feel quite sure it must have originated on the
Ææan Isle, where Circe the Enchantress lived, ever so many years ago. I
think very likely Ulysses, whom you have read about or will read about
some day, carried off a bouquet of it when he sailed away from the
isle, and in the course of time the seeds reached our land. Anyhow, you
must have guessed that there was some sort of enchantment in Buddie’s
bouquet, even if I had not tried to explain; for no sooner had she
fastened it under her hair-ribbon than Colonel exclaimed, in “really
talk”:
“_Who cares for flowers! Throw me a stick to fetch!_”