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CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY AND OTHER STORIES
BY W. D. HOWELLS
[Illustration: "HAVING BONFIRES IN THE BACK YARD OF THE PALACE."
[Page 130.]
CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY
AND OTHER STORIES
TOLD FOR CHILDREN
BY W. D. HOWELLS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1892, by W. D. HOWELLS.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY 3
TURKEYS TURNING THE TABLES 25
THE PONY ENGINE AND THE PACIFIC EXPRESS 51
THE PUMPKIN-GLORY 71
BUTTERFLYFLUTTERBY AND FLUTTERBYBUTTERFLY 111
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_"Having Bonfires in the Back Yard of the Palace"_ Frontispiece
_"The Old Gobbler 'First Premium' said They were Going to
Turn the Tables Now"_ 35
_Two Little Pumpkin Seeds_ 75
_Took the First Premium at the County Fair_ 83
_"'Here's that little fool pumpkin,' said the farmer"_ 85
_"Caught His Trousers on a Shingle-nail, and Stuck"_ 93
_"'My sakes! it's comin' to life!'"_ 103
_Tail-piece_ 107
_"'Fix dusters! Make ready! Aim! Dust!'"_ 121
_"The General-in-Chief used to go behind the Church and
Cry"_ 125
_"The Young Khan and Khant entered the Kingdom with a
Magnificent Retinue"_ 131
_"She was Going to Take the Case into Her own Hands"_ 135
_"The Imam put His Head to the Floor"_ 139
_"They began to scream, 'Oh, the cow! the cow!'"_ 143
CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY.
The little girl came into her papa's study, as she always did Saturday
morning before breakfast, and asked for a story. He tried to beg off
that morning, for he was very busy, but she would not let him. So he
began:
"Well, once there was a little pig--"
She put her hand over his mouth and stopped him at the word. She said
she had heard little pig-stories till she was perfectly sick of them.
"Well, what kind of story _shall_ I tell, then?"
"About Christmas. It's getting to be the season. It's past Thanksgiving
already."
"It seems to me," her papa argued, "that I've told as often about
Christmas as I have about little pigs."
"No difference! Christmas is more interesting."
"Well!" Her papa roused himself from his writing by a great effort.
"Well, then, I'll tell you about the little girl that wanted it
Christmas every day in the year. How would you like that?"
"First-rate!" said the little girl; and she nestled into comfortable
shape in his lap, ready for listening.
"Very well, then, this little pig--Oh, what are you pounding me for?"
"Because you said little pig instead of little girl."
"I should like to know what's the difference between a little pig and a
little girl that wanted it Christmas every day!"
"Papa," said the little girl, warningly, "if you don't go on, I'll
_give_ it to you!" And at this her papa darted off like lightning, and
began to tell the story as fast as he could.
Well, once there was a little girl who liked Christmas so much that
she wanted it to be Christmas every day in the year; and as soon as
Thanksgiving was over she began to send postal-cards to the old
Christmas Fairy to ask if she mightn't have it. But the old fairy
never answered any of the postals; and after a while the little girl
found out that the Fairy was pretty particular, and wouldn't notice
anything but letters--not even correspondence cards in envelopes; but
real letters on sheets of paper, and sealed outside with a
monogram--or your initial, anyway. So, then, she began to send her
letters; and in about three weeks--or just the day before Christmas,
it was--she got a letter from the Fairy, saying she might have it
Christmas every day for a year, and then they would see about having
it longer.
The little girl was a good deal excited already, preparing for the
old-fashioned, once-a-year Christmas that was coming the next day, and
perhaps the Fairy's promise didn't make such an impression on her as
it would have made at some other time. She just resolved to keep it to
herself, and surprise everybody with it as it kept coming true; and
then it slipped out of her mind altogether.
She had a splendid Christmas. She went to bed early, so as to let
Santa Claus have a chance at the stockings, and in the morning she was
up the first of anybody and went and felt them, and found hers all
lumpy with packages of candy, and oranges and grapes, and pocket-books
and rubber balls, and all kinds of small presents, and her big
brother's with nothing but the tongs in them, and her young lady
sister's with a new silk umbrella, and her papa's and mamma's with
potatoes and pieces of coal wrapped up in tissue-paper, just as they
always had every Christmas. Then she waited around till the rest of
the family were up, and she was the first to burst into the library,
when the doors were opened, and look at the large presents laid out on
the library-table--books, and portfolios, and boxes of stationery, and
breastpins, and dolls, and little stoves, and dozens of handkerchiefs,
and ink-stands, and skates, and snow-shovels, and photograph-frames,
and little easels, and boxes of water-colors, and Turkish paste, and
nougat, and candied cherries, and dolls' houses, and waterproofs--and
the big Christmas-tree, lighted and standing in a waste-basket in the
middle.
She had a splendid Christmas all day. She ate so much candy that she
did not want any breakfast; and the whole forenoon the presents kept
pouring in that the expressman had not had time to deliver the night
before; and she went round giving the presents she had got for other
people, and came home and ate turkey and cranberry for dinner, and
plum-pudding and nuts and raisins and oranges and more candy, and then
went out and coasted, and came in with a stomach-ache, crying; and her
papa said he would see if his house was turned into that sort of
fool's paradise another year; and they had a light supper, and pretty
early everybody went to bed cross.
Here the little girl pounded her papa in the back, again.
"Well, what now? Did I say pigs?"
"You made them _act_ like pigs."
"Well, didn't they?"
"No matter; you oughtn't to put it into a story."
"Very well, then, I'll take it all out."
Her father went on:
The little girl slept very heavily, and she slept very late, but she
was wakened at last by the other children dancing round her bed with
their stockings full of presents in their hands.
"What is it?" said the little girl, and she rubbed her eyes and tried
to rise up in bed.
"Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!" they all shouted, and waved their
stockings.
"Nonsense! It was Christmas yesterday."
Her brothers and sisters just laughed. "We don't know about that. It's
Christmas to-day, anyway. You come into the library and see."
Then all at once it flashed on the little girl that the Fairy was
keeping her promise, and her year of Christmases was beginning. She
was dreadfully sleepy, but she sprang up like a lark--a lark that had
overeaten itself and gone to bed cross--and darted into the library.
There it was again! Books, and portfolios, and boxes of stationery,
and breastpins--
"You needn't go over it all, papa; I guess I can remember just what was
there," said the little girl.
Well, and there was the Christmas-tree blazing away, and the family
picking out their presents, but looking pretty sleepy, and her father
perfectly puzzled, and her mother ready to cry. "I'm sure I don't see
how I'm to dispose of all these things," said her mother, and her
father said it seemed to him they had had something just like it the
day before, but he supposed he must have dreamed it. This struck the
little girl as the best kind of a joke; and so she ate so much candy
she didn't want any breakfast, and went round carrying presents, and
had turkey and cranberry for dinner, and then went out and coasted,
and came in with a--
"Papa!"
"Well, what now?"
"What did you promise, you forgetful thing?"
"Oh! oh yes!"
Well, the next day, it was just the same thing over again, but
everybody getting crosser; and at the end of a week's time so many
people had lost their tempers that you could pick up lost tempers
anywhere; they perfectly strewed the ground. Even when people tried to
recover their tempers they usually got somebody else's, and it made
the most dreadful mix.
The little girl began to get frightened, keeping the secret all to
herself; she wanted to tell her mother, but she didn't dare to; and
she was ashamed to ask the Fairy to take back her gift, it seemed
ungrateful and ill-bred, and she thought she would try to stand it,
but she hardly knew how she could, for a whole year. So it went on and
on, and it was Christmas on St. Valentine's Day and Washington's
Birthday, just the same as any day, and it didn't skip even the First
of April, though everything was counterfeit that day, and that was
some _little_ relief.
After a while coal and potatoes began to be awfully scarce, so many
had been wrapped up in tissue-paper to fool papas and mammas with.
Turkeys got to be about a thousand dollars apiece--
"Papa!"
"Well, what?"
"You're beginning to fib."
"Well, _two_ thousand, then."
And they got to passing off almost anything for turkeys--half-grown
humming-birds, and even rocs out of the _Arabian Nights_--the real
turkeys were so scarce. And cranberries--well, they asked a diamond
apiece for cranberries. All the woods and orchards were cut down for
Christmas-trees, and where the woods and orchards used to be it
looked just like a stubble-field, with the stumps. After a while they
had to make Christmas-trees out of rags, and stuff them with bran,
like old-fashioned dolls; but there were plenty of rags, because
people got so poor, buying presents for one another, that they
couldn't get any new clothes, and they just wore their old ones to
tatters. They got so poor that everybody had to go to the poor-house,
except the confectioners, and the fancy-store keepers, and the
picture-book sellers, and the expressmen; and _they_ all got so rich
and proud that they would hardly wait upon a person when he came to
buy. It was perfectly shameful!
Well, after it had gone on about three or four months, the little
girl, whenever she came into the room in the morning and saw those
great ugly, lumpy stockings dangling at the fire-place, and the
disgusting presents around everywhere, used to just sit down and
burst out crying. In six months she was perfectly exhausted; she
couldn't even cry any more; she just lay on the lounge and rolled her
eyes and panted. About the beginning of October she took to sitting
down on dolls wherever she found them--French dolls, or any kind--she
hated the sight of them so; and by Thanksgiving she was crazy, and
just slammed her presents across the room.
By that time people didn't carry presents around nicely any more. They
flung them over the fence, or through the window, or anything; and,
instead of running their tongues out and taking great pains to write
"For dear Papa," or "Mamma," or "Brother," or "Sister," or "Susie," or
"Sammie," or "Billie," or "Bobbie," or "Jimmie," or "Jennie," or
whoever it was, and troubling to get the spelling right, and then
signing their names, and "Xmas, 18--," they used to write in the
gift-books, "Take it, you horrid old thing!" and then go and bang it
against the front door. Nearly everybody had built barns to hold their
presents, but pretty soon the barns overflowed, and then they used to
let them lie out in the rain, or anywhere. Sometimes the police used
to come and tell them to shovel their presents off the sidewalk, or
they would arrest them.
"I thought you said everybody had gone to the poor-house," interrupted
the little girl.
"They did go, at first," said her papa; "but after a while the
poor-houses got so full that they had to send the people back to their
own houses. They tried to cry, when they got back, but they couldn't
make the least sound."
"Why couldn't they?"
"Because they had lost their voices, saying 'Merry Christmas' so much.
Did I tell you how it was on the Fourth of July?"
"No; how was it?" And the little girl nestled closer, in expectation of
something uncommon.
Well, the night before, the boys stayed up to celebrate, as they
always do, and fell asleep before twelve o'clock, as usual, expecting
to be wakened by the bells and cannon. But it was nearly eight o'clock
before the first boy in the United States woke up, and then he found
out what the trouble was. As soon as he could get his clothes on he
ran out of the house and smashed a big cannon-torpedo down on the
pavement; but it didn't make any more noise than a damp wad of paper;
and after he tried about twenty or thirty more, he began to pick them
up and look at them. Every single torpedo was a big raisin! Then he
just streaked it up-stairs, and examined his fire-crackers and
toy-pistol and two-dollar collection of fireworks, and found that they
were nothing but sugar and candy painted up to look like fireworks!
Before ten o'clock every boy in the United States found out that his
Fourth of July things had turned into Christmas things; and then they
just sat down and cried--they were so mad. There are about twenty
million boys in the United States, and so you can imagine what a noise
they made. Some men got together before night, with a little powder
that hadn't turned into purple sugar yet, and they said they would
fire off _one_ cannon, anyway. But the cannon burst into a thousand
pieces, for it was nothing but rock-candy, and some of the men nearly
got killed. The Fourth of July orations all turned into Christmas
carols, and when anybody tried to read the Declaration, instead of
saying, "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary," he
was sure to sing, "God rest you, merry gentlemen." It was perfectly
awful.
The little girl drew a deep sigh of satisfaction.
"And how was it at Thanksgiving?"
Her papa hesitated. "Well, I'm almost afraid to tell you. I'm afraid
you'll think it's wicked."
"Well, tell, anyway," said the little girl.
Well, before it came Thanksgiving it had leaked out who had caused all
these Christmases. The little girl had suffered so much that she had
talked about it in her sleep; and after that hardly anybody would play
with her. People just perfectly despised her, because if it had not
been for her greediness it wouldn't have happened; and now, when it
came Thanksgiving, and she wanted them to go to church, and have
squash-pie and turkey, and show their gratitude, they said that all
the turkeys had been eaten up for her old Christmas dinners, and if
she would stop the Christmases, they would see about the gratitude.
Wasn't it dreadful? And the very next day the little girl began to
send letters to the Christmas Fairy, and then telegrams, to stop it.
But it didn't do any good; and then she got to calling at the Fairy's
house, but the girl that came to the door always said, "Not at home,"
or "Engaged," or "At dinner," or something like that; and so it went
on till it came to the old once-a-year Christmas Eve. The little girl
fell asleep, and when she woke up in the morning--
"She found it was all nothing but a dream," suggested the little girl.
"No, indeed!" said her papa. "It was all every bit true!"
"Well, what _did_ she find out, then?"
"Why, that it wasn't Christmas at last, and wasn't ever going to be, any
more. Now it's time for breakfast."
The little girl held her papa fast around the neck.
"You sha'n't go if you're going to leave it _so_!"
"How do you want it left?"
"Christmas once a year."
"All right," said her papa; and he went on again.
Well, there was the greatest rejoicing all over the country, and it
extended clear up into Canada. The people met together everywhere, and
kissed and cried for joy. The city carts went around and gathered up
all the candy and raisins and nuts, and dumped them into the river;
and it made the fish perfectly sick; and the whole United States, as
far out as Alaska, was one blaze of bonfires, where the children were
burning up their gift-books and presents of all kinds. They had the
greatest _time_!
The little girl went to thank the old Fairy because she had stopped
its being Christmas, and she said she hoped she would keep her promise
and see that Christmas never, never came again. Then the Fairy
frowned, and asked her if she was sure she knew what she meant; and
the little girl asked her, Why not? and the old Fairy said that now
she was behaving just as greedily as ever, and she'd better look out.
This made the little girl think it all over carefully again, and she
said she would be willing to have it Christmas about once in a
thousand years; and then she said a hundred, and then she said ten,
and at last she got down to one. Then the Fairy said that was the good
old way that had pleased people ever since Christmas began, and she
was agreed. Then the little girl said, "What're your shoes made of?"
And the Fairy said, "Leather." And the little girl said, "Bargain's
done forever," and skipped off, and hippity-hopped the whole way home,
she was so glad.
"How will that do?" asked the papa.
"First-rate!" said the little girl; but she hated to have the story
stop, and was rather sober. However, her mamma put her head in at the
door, and asked her papa:
"Are you never coming to breakfast? What have you been telling that
child?"
"Oh, just a moral tale."
The little girl caught him around the neck again.
"_We_ know! Don't you tell _what_, papa! Don't you tell _what_!"
TURKEYS TURNING THE TABLES.
"Well, you see," the papa began, on Christmas morning, when the little
girl had snuggled in his lap into just the right shape for listening,
"it was the night after Thanksgiving, and you know how everybody feels
the night after Thanksgiving."
"Yes; but you needn't begin that way, papa," said the little girl; "I'm
not going to have any moral to it this time."
"No, indeed! But it can be a true story, can't it?"
"I don't know," said the little girl; "I like made-up ones."
"Well, this is going to be a true one, anyway, and it's no use
talking."
All the relations in the neighborhood had come to dinner, and then
gone back to their own houses, but some of the relations had come from
a distance, and these had to stay all night at the grandfather's. But
whether they went or whether they stayed, they all told the
grandmother that they did believe it was the best Thanksgiving dinner
they had ever eaten in their born days. They had had cranberry sauce,
and they'd had mashed potato, and they'd had mince-pie and pandowdy,
and they'd had celery, and they'd had Hubbard squash, and they'd had
tea and coffee both, and they'd had apple-dumpling with hard sauce,
and they'd had hot biscuit and sweet pickle, and mangoes, and frosted
cake, and nuts, and cauliflower--
"Don't mix them all up so!" pleaded the little girl. "It's perfectly
confusing. I can't hardly tell _what_ they had now."
"Well, _they_ mixed them up just in the same way, and I suppose that's
one of the reasons why it happened."
Whenever a child wanted to go back from dumpling and frosted cake to
mashed potato and Hubbard squash--they were old-fashioned kind of
people, and they had everything on the table at once, because the
grandmother and the aunties cooked it, and they couldn't keep jumping
up all the time to change the plates--and its mother said it
shouldn't, its grandmother said, Indeed it should, then, and helped it
herself; and the child's father would say, Well, he guessed _he_ would
go back, too, for a change; and the child's mother would say, She
should think he would be ashamed; and then they would get to going
back, till everything was perfectly higgledy-piggledy.
"Oh, _shouldn't_ you like to have been there, papa?" sighed the little
girl.
"You mustn't interrupt. Where was I?"
"Higgledy-piggledy."
"Oh yes!"
Well, but the greatest thing of all was the turkey that they had. It
was a gobbler, I tell you, that was nearly as big as a giraffe.
"Papa!"
It took the premium at the county fair, and when it was dressed it
weighed fifteen pounds--well, maybe twenty--and it was so heavy that
the grandmothers and the aunties couldn't put it on the table, and
they had to get one of the papas to do it. You ought to have heard the
hurrahing when the children saw him coming in from the kitchen with
it. It seemed as if they couldn't hardly talk of anything but that
turkey the whole dinner-time.
The grandfather hated to carve, and so one of the papas did it; and
whenever he gave anybody a piece, the grandfather would tell some new
story about the turkey, till pretty soon the aunties got to saying,
"Now, father, stop!" and one of them said it made it seem as if the
gobbler was walking about on the table, to hear so much about him, and
it took her appetite all away; and that made the papas begin to ask
the grandfather more and more about the turkey.
"Yes," said the little girl, thoughtfully; "I know what _papas_ are."
"Yes, they're pretty much all alike."
And the mammas began to say they acted like a lot of silly boys; and
what would the children think? But nothing could stop it; and all
through the afternoon and evening, whenever the papas saw any of the
aunties or mammas round, they would begin to ask the grandfather more
particulars about the turkey. The grandfather was pretty forgetful,
and he told the same things right over. Well, and so it went on till
it came bedtime, and then the mammas and aunties began to laugh and
whisper together, and to say they did believe they should dream about
that turkey; and when the papas kissed the grandmother good-night,
they said, Well, they must have his mate for Christmas; and then they
put their arms round the mammas and went out haw-hawing.
"I don't think they behaved very dignified," said the little girl.
"Well, you see, they were just funning, and had got going, and it was
Thanksgiving, anyway."
Well, in about half an hour everybody was fast asleep and dreaming--
"Is it going to be a dream?" asked the little girl, with some
reluctance.
"Didn't I say it was going to be a _true_ story?"
"Yes."
"How can it be a dream, then?"
"You said everybody was fast asleep and dreaming."
"Well, but I hadn't got through. Everybody _except_ one little girl."
"Now, papa!"
"What?"
"Don't you go and say her name was the same as mine, and her eyes the
same color."
"What an idea!"
_This_ was a very _good_ little girl, and very respectful to her papa,
and didn't suspect him of tricks, but just believed everything he
said. And she was a very pretty little girl, and had red eyes, and
blue cheeks, and straight hair, and a curly nose--
"Now, papa, if you get to cutting up--"
"Well, I won't, then!"
Well, she was rather a delicate little girl, and whenever she
over-ate, or anything,
"Have bad dreams! Aha! I _told_ you it was going to be a dream."
"You wait till I get through."
She was apt to lie awake thinking, and some of her thinks were pretty
dismal. Well, that night, instead of thinking and tossing and turning,
and counting a thousand, it seemed to this other little girl that she
began to see things as soon as she had got warm in bed, and before,
even. And the first thing she saw was a large, bronze-colored--
"Turkey gobbler!"
"No, ma'am. Turkey gobbler's _ghost_."
"Foo!" said the little girl, rather uneasily; "whoever heard of a
turkey's ghost, I should like to know?"
"Never mind, that," said the papa. "If it hadn't been a ghost, could the
moonlight have shone through it? No, indeed! The stuffing wouldn't have
let it. So you see it must have been a ghost."
It had a red pasteboard placard round its neck, with FIRST PREMIUM
printed on it, and so she knew that it was the ghost of the very
turkey they had had for dinner. It was perfectly awful when it put up
its tail, and dropped its wings, and strutted just the way the
grandfather said it used to do. It seemed to be in a wide pasture,
like that back of the house, and the children had to cross it to get
home, and they were all afraid of the turkey that kept gobbling at
them and threatening them, because they had eaten him up. At last one
of the boys--it was the other little girl's brother--said he would
run across and get his papa to come out and help them, and the first
thing she knew the turkey was after him, gaining, gaining, gaining,
and all the grass was full of hen-turkeys and turkey chicks, running
after him, and gaining, gaining, gaining, and just as he was getting
to the wall he tripped and fell over a turkey-pen, and all at once she
was in one of the aunties' room, and the aunty was in bed, and the
turkeys were walking up and down over her, and stretching out their
wings, and blaming her. Two of them carried a platter of chicken pie,
and there was a large pumpkin jack-o'-lantern hanging to the bedpost
to light the room, and it looked just like the other little girl's
brother in the face, only perfectly ridiculous.
[Illustration: "THE OLD GOBBLER 'FIRST PREMIUM' SAID THEY WERE GOING TO
TURN THE TABLES NOW."]
Then the old gobbler, First Premium, clapped his wings, and said,
"Come on, chick-chickledren!" and then they all seemed to be in her
room, and she was standing in the middle of it in her night-gown,
and tied round and round with ribbons, so she couldn't move hand or
foot. The old gobbler, First Premium, said they were going to turn the
tables now, and she knew what he meant, for they had had that in the
reader at school just before vacation, and the teacher had explained
it. He made a long speech, with his hat on, and kept pointing at her
with one of his wings, while he told the other turkeys that it was her
grandfather who had done it, and now it was their turn. He said that
human beings had been eating turkeys ever since the discovery of
America, and it was time for the turkeys to begin paying them back, if
they were ever going to. He said she was pretty young, but she was as
big as he was, and he had no doubt they would enjoy her.
The other little girl tried to tell him that she was not to blame, and
that she only took a very, very little piece.
"But it was right off the breast," said the gobbler, and he shed
tears, so that the other little girl cried, too. She didn't have much
hopes, they all seemed so spiteful, especially the little turkey
chicks; but she told them that she was very tender-hearted, and never
hurt a single thing, and she tried to make them understand that there
was a great difference between eating people and just eating turkeys.
"What difference, I should like to know?" says the old hen-turkey,
pretty snappishly.
"People have got souls, and turkeys haven't," says the other little
girl.
"I don't see how _that_ makes it any better," says the old hen-turkey.
"It don't make it any better for the _turkeys_. If we haven't got any
souls, we can't live after we've been eaten up, and you _can_."
The other little girl was awfully frightened to have the hen-turkey
take that tack.
"I should think she would 'a' been," said the little girl; and she
cuddled snugger into her papa's arms. "What _could_ she say? Ugh! Go
on."
Well, she didn't know what to say, that's a fact. You see, she never
thought of it in that light before. All she could say was, "Well,
people have got reason, anyway, and turkeys have only got instinct; so
there!"
"You'd better look out," says the old hen-turkey; and all the little
turkey chicks got so mad they just hopped, and the oldest little
he-turkey, that was just beginning to be a gobbler, he dropped his
wings and spread his tail just like his father, and walked round the
other little girl till it was perfectly frightful.
"I should think they would 'a' been ashamed."
Well, perhaps old First Premium _was_ a little; because he stopped
them. "My dear," he says to the old hen-turkey, and chick-chickledren,
"you forget yourselves; you should have a little consideration.
Perhaps you wouldn't behave much better yourselves if you were just
going to be eaten."
And they all began to scream and to cry, "We've _been_ eaten, and
we're nothing but turkey ghosts."
"_There_, now, papa," says the little girl, sitting up straight, so as
to argue better, "I _knew_ it wasn't true, all along. How could turkeys
have ghosts if they don't have souls, I should like to know?"
"Oh, easily," said the papa.
"Tell how," said the little girl.
"Now look here," said the papa, "are you telling this story, or am I?"
"You are," said the little girl, and she cuddled down again. "Go on."
"Well, then, don't you interrupt. Where was I? Oh yes."
Well, he couldn't do anything with them, old First Premium couldn't.
They acted perfectly ridiculous, and one little brat of a spiteful
little chick piped out, "I speak for a drumstick, ma!" and then they
all began: "I want a wing, ma!" and "I'm going to have the wish-bone!"
and "I shall have just as much stuffing as ever I please, shan't I,
ma?" till the other little girl was perfectly disgusted with them; she
thought they oughtn't to say it before her, anyway; but she had hardly
thought this before they all screamed out, "They used to say it before
_us_," and then she didn't know what to say, because she knew how
people talked before animals.
"I don't believe I ever did," said the little girl. "Go on."
Well, old First Premium tried to quiet them again, and when he
couldn't he apologized to the other little girl so nicely that she
began to like him. He said they didn't mean any harm by it; they were
just excited, and chickledren would be chickledren.
"Yes," said the other little girl, "but I think you might take some
older person to begin with. It's a perfect shame to begin with a
little girl."
"Begin!" says old First Premium. "Do you think we're just _beginning_?
Why, when do you think it is?"
"The night after Thanksgiving."
"What year?"
"1886."
They all gave a perfect screech. "Why, it's Christmas Eve, 1900, and
every one of your friends has been eaten up long ago," says old First
Premium, and he began to cry over her, and the old hen-turkey and the
little turkey chicks began to wipe their eyes on the backs of their
wings.
"I don't think they were very neat," said the little girl.
Well, they were kind-hearted, anyway, and they felt sorry for the other
little girl. And she began to think she had made some little impression
on them, when she noticed the old hen-turkey beginning to untie her
bonnet strings, and the turkey chicks began to spread round her in a
circle, with the points of their wings touching, so that she couldn't
get out, and they commenced dancing and singing, and after a while that
little he-turkey says, "Who's _it_?" and the other little girl, she
didn't know why, says, "_I'm_ it," and old First Premium says, "Do you
promise?" and the other little girl says, "Yes, I promise," and she knew
she was promising, if they would let her go, that people should never
eat turkeys any more. And the moon began to shine brighter and brighter
through the turkeys, and pretty soon it was the sun, and then it was not
the turkeys, but the window-curtains--it was one of those old
farm-houses where they don't have blinds--and the other little girl--
"Woke up!" shouted the little girl. "There now, papa, what did I tell
you? I _knew_ it was a dream all along."
"No, she didn't," said the papa; "and it wasn't a dream."
"What was it, then?"
"It was a--trance."
The little girl turned round, and knelt in her papa's lap, so as to take
him by the shoulders and give him a good shaking. That made him promise
to be good, pretty quick, and, "Very well, then," says the little girl;
"if it wasn't a dream, you've got to prove it."
"But how can I prove it?" says the papa.
"By going on with the story," says the little girl, and she cuddled down
again.
"Oh, well, that's easy enough."
As soon as it was light in the room, the other little girl could see
that the place was full of people, crammed and jammed, and they were
all awfully excited, and kept yelling, "Down with the traitress!"
"Away with the renegade!" "Shame on the little sneak!" till it was
worse than the turkeys, ten times.
She knew that they meant her, and she tried to explain that she just
_had_ to promise, and that if they had been in her place they would
have promised too; and of course they could do as they pleased about
keeping her word, but she was going to keep it, anyway, and never,
never, never eat another piece of turkey either at Thanksgiving or at
Christmas.
"Very well, then," says an old lady, who looked like her grandmother,
and then began to have a crown on, and to turn into Queen Victoria,
"what _can_ we have?"
"Well," says the other little girl, "you can have oyster soup."
"What else?"
"And you can have cranberry sauce."
"What else?"
"You can have mashed potatoes, and Hubbard squash, and celery, and
turnip, and cauliflower."
"What else?"
"You can have mince-pie, and pandowdy, and plum-pudding."
"And not a thing on the list," says the Queen, "that doesn't go with
turkey! Now you see."
The papa stopped.
"Go on," said the little girl.
"There isn't any more."
The little girl turned round, got up on her knees, took him by the
shoulders, and shook him fearfully. "Now, then," she said, while the
papa let his head wag, after the shaking, like a Chinese mandarin's, and
it was a good thing he did not let his tongue stick out. "Now, will you
go on? What _did_ the people eat in place of turkey?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know, you awful papa! Well, then, what did the little girl
eat?"
"She?" The papa freed himself, and made his preparation to escape. "Why
she--oh, _she_ ate goose. Goose is tenderer than turkey, anyway, and
more digestible; and there isn't so much of it, and you can't overeat
yourself, and have bad--"
"Dreams!" cried the little girl.
"Trances," said the papa, and she began to chase him all round the
room.
THE PONY ENGINE AND THE PACIFIC EXPRESS.
Christmas Eve, after the children had hung up their stockings and got
all ready for St. Nic, they climbed up on the papa's lap to kiss him
good-night, and when they both got their arms round his neck, they said
they were not going to bed till he told them a Christmas story. Then he
saw that he would have to mind, for they were awfully severe with him,
and always made him do exactly what they told him; it was the way they
had brought him up. He tried his best to get out of it for a while; but
after they had shaken him first this side, and then that side, and
pulled him backward and forward till he did not know where he was, he
began to think perhaps he had better begin. The first thing he said,
after he opened his eyes, and made believe he had been asleep, or
something, was, "Well, what did I leave off at?" and that made them just
perfectly boiling, for they understood his tricks, and they knew he was
trying to pretend that he had told part of the story already; and they
said he had not left off anywhere because he had not commenced, and he
saw it was no use. So he commenced.
"Once there was a little Pony Engine that used to play round the
Fitchburg Depot on the side tracks, and sleep in among the big
locomotives in the car-house--"
The little girl lifted her head from the papa's shoulder, where she had
dropped it. "Is it a sad story, papa?"
"How is it going to end?" asked the boy.
"Well, it's got a moral," said the papa.
"Oh, all right, if it's got a moral," said the children; they had a good
deal of fun with the morals the papa put to his stories. The boy added,
"Go on," and the little girl prompted, "Car-house."
The papa said, "Now every time you stop me I shall have to begin all
over again." But he saw that this was not going to spite them any, so he
went on: "One of the locomotives was its mother, and she had got hurt
once in a big smash-up, so that she couldn't run long trips any more.
She was so weak in the chest you could hear her wheeze as far as you
could see her. But she could work round the depot, and pull empty cars
in and out, and shunt them off on the side tracks; and she was so
anxious to be useful that all the other engines respected her, and they
were very kind to the little Pony Engine on her account, though it was
always getting in the way, and under their wheels, and everything. They
all knew it was an orphan, for before its mother got hurt its father
went through a bridge one dark night into an arm of the sea, and was
never heard of again; he was supposed to have been drowned. The old
mother locomotive used to say that it would never have happened if she
had been there; but poor dear No. 236 was always so venturesome, and she
had warned him against that very bridge time and again. Then she would
whistle so dolefully, and sigh with her air-brakes enough to make
anybody cry. You see they used to be a very happy family when they were
all together, before the papa locomotive got drowned. He was very fond
of the little Pony Engine, and told it stories at night after they got
into the car-house, at the end of some of his long runs. It would get up
on his cow-catcher, and lean its chimney up against his, and listen till
it fell asleep. Then he would put it softly down, and be off again in
the morning before it was awake. I tell you, those were happy days for
poor No. 236. The little Pony Engine could just remember him; it was
awfully proud of its papa."
The boy lifted his head and looked at the little girl, who suddenly hid
her face in the papa's other shoulder. "Well, I declare, papa, she was
putting up her lip."
"I wasn't, any such thing!" said the little girl. "And I don't care!
So!" and then she sobbed.
"Now, never you mind," said the papa to the boy. "You'll be putting up
_your_ lip before I'm through. Well, and then she used to caution the
little Pony Engine against getting in the way of the big locomotives,
and told it to keep close round after her, and try to do all it could to
learn about shifting empty cars. You see, she knew how ambitious the
little Pony Engine was, and how it wasn't contented a bit just to grow
up in the pony-engine business, and be tied down to the depot all its
days. Once she happened to tell it that if it was good and always did
what it was bid, perhaps a cow-catcher would grow on it some day, and
then it could be a passenger locomotive. Mammas have to promise all
sorts of things, and she was almost distracted when she said that."
"I don't think she ought to have deceived it, papa," said the boy. "But
it ought to have known that if it was a Pony Engine to begin with, it
never could have a cow-catcher."
"Couldn't it?" asked the little girl, gently.
"No; they're kind of mooley."
The little girl asked the papa, "What makes Pony Engines mooley?" for
she did not choose to be told by her brother; he was only two years
older than she was, anyway.
"Well; it's pretty hard to say. You see, when a locomotive is first
hatched--"
"Oh, are they hatched, papa?" asked the boy.
"Well, we'll _call_ it hatched," said the papa; but they knew he was
just funning. "They're about the size of tea-kettles at first; and it's
a chance whether they will have cow-catchers or not. If they keep their
spouts, they will; and if their spouts drop off, they won't."
"What makes the spout ever drop off?"
"Oh, sometimes the pip, or the gapes--"
The children both began to shake the papa, and he was glad enough to go
on sensibly. "Well, anyway, the mother locomotive certainly oughtn't to
have deceived it. Still she had to say _something_, and perhaps the
little Pony Engine was better employed watching its buffers with its
head-light, to see whether its cow-catcher had begun to grow, than it
would have been in listening to the stories of the old locomotives, and
sometimes their swearing."
"Do they swear, papa?" asked the little girl, somewhat shocked, and yet
pleased.
"Well, I never heard them, _near by_. But it sounds a good deal like
swearing when you hear them on the up-grade on our hill in the night.
Where was I?"
"Swearing," said the boy. "And please don't go back, now, papa."
"Well, I won't. It'll be as much as I can do to get through this story,
without going over any of it again. Well, the thing that the little Pony
Engine wanted to be, the most in this world, was the locomotive of the
Pacific Express, that starts out every afternoon at three, you know. It
intended to apply for the place as soon as its cow-catcher was grown,
and it was always trying to attract the locomotive's attention, backing
and filling on the track alongside of the train; and once it raced it a
little piece, and beat it, before the Express locomotive was under way,
and almost got in front of it on a switch. My, but its mother was
scared! She just yelled to it with her whistle; and that night she sent
it to sleep without a particle of coal or water in its tender.
"But the little Pony Engine didn't care. It had beaten the Pacific
Express in a hundred yards, and what was to hinder it from beating it as
long as it chose? The little Pony Engine could not get it out of its
head. It was just like a boy who thinks he can whip a man."
The boy lifted his head. "Well, a boy _can_, papa, if he goes to do it
the right way. Just stoop down before the man knows it, and catch him by
the legs and tip him right over."
"Ho! I guess you see yourself!" said the little girl, scornfully.
"Well, I _could_!" said the boy; "and some day I'll just show you."
"Now, little cock-sparrow, now!" said the papa; and he laughed. "Well,
the little Pony Engine thought he could beat the Pacific Express,
anyway; and so one dark, snowy, blowy afternoon, when his mother was off
pushing some empty coal cars up past the Know-Nothing crossing beyond
Charlestown, he got on the track in front of the Express, and when he
heard the conductor say 'All aboard,' and the starting gong struck, and
the brakemen leaned out and waved to the engineer, he darted off like
lightning. He had his steam up, and he just scuttled.
"Well, he was so excited for a while that he couldn't tell whether the
Express was gaining on him or not; but after twenty or thirty miles, he
thought he heard it pretty near. Of course the Express locomotive was
drawing a heavy train of cars, and it had to make a stop or two--at
Charlestown, and at Concord Junction, and at Ayer--so the Pony Engine
did really gain on it a little; and when it began to be scared it gained
a good deal. But the first place where it began to feel sorry, and to
want its mother, was in Hoosac Tunnel. It never was in a tunnel before,
and it seemed as if it would never get out. It kept thinking, What if
the Pacific Express was to run over it there in the dark, and its mother
off there at the Fitchburg Depot, in Boston, looking for it among the
side-tracks? It gave a perfect shriek; and just then it shot out of the
tunnel. There were a lot of locomotives loafing around there at North
Adams, and one of them shouted out to it as it flew by, 'What's your
hurry, little one?' and it just screamed back, 'Pacific Express!' and
never stopped to explain. They talked in locomotive language--"
"Oh, what did it sound like?" the boy asked.
"Well, pretty queer; I'll tell you some day. It knew it had no time to
fool away, and all through the long, dark night, whenever, a locomotive
hailed it, it just screamed, 'Pacific Express!' and kept on. And the
Express kept gaining on it. Some of the locomotives wanted to stop it,
but they decided they had better not get in its way, and so it whizzed
along across New York State and Ohio and Indiana, till it got to
Chicago. And the Express kept gaining on it. By that time it was so
hoarse it could hardly whisper, but it kept saying, 'Pacific Express!
Pacific Express!' and it kept right on till it reached the Mississippi
River. There it found a long train of freight cars before it on the
bridge. It couldn't wait, and so it slipped down from the track to the
edge of the river and jumped across, and then scrambled up the
embankment to the track again."
"Papa!" said the little girl, warningly.
"Truly it did," said the papa.
"Ho! that's nothing," said the boy. "A whole train of cars did it in
that Jules Verne book."
"Well," the papa went on, "after that it had a little rest, for the
Express had to wait for the freight train to get off the bridge, and the
Pony Engine stopped at the first station for a drink of water and a
mouthful of coal, and then it flew ahead. There was a kind old
locomotive at Omaha that tried to find out where it belonged, and what
its mother's name was, but the Pony Engine was so bewildered it couldn't
tell. And the Express kept gaining on it. On the plains it was chased by
a pack of prairie wolves, but it left them far behind; and the antelopes
were scared half to death. But the worst of it was when the nightmare
got after it."
"The nightmare? Goodness!" said the boy.
"I've had the nightmare," said the little girl.
"Oh yes, a mere human nightmare," said the papa. "But a locomotive
nightmare is a very different thing."
"Why, what's it like?" asked the boy. The little girl was almost afraid
to ask.
"Well, it has only one leg, to begin with."
"Pshaw!"
"Wheel, I mean. And it has four cow-catchers, and four head-lights, and
two boilers, and eight whistles, and it just goes whirling and
screeching along. Of course it wobbles awfully; and as it's only got one
wheel, it has to keep skipping from one track to the other."
"I should think it would run on the cross-ties," said the boy.
"Oh, very well, then!" said the papa. "If you know so much more about it
than I do! Who's telling this story, anyway? Now I shall have to go back
to the beginning. Once there was a little Pony En--"
They both put their hands over his mouth, and just fairly begged him to
go on, and at last he did. "Well, it got away from the nightmare about
morning, but not till the nightmare had bitten a large piece out of its
tender, and then it braced up for the home-stretch. It thought that if
it could once beat the Express to the Sierras, it could keep the start
the rest of the way, for it could get over the mountains quicker than
the Express could, and it might be in San Francisco before the Express
got to Sacramento. The Express kept gaining on it. But it just zipped
along the upper edge of Kansas and the lower edge of Nebraska, and on
through Colorado and Utah and Nevada, and when it got to the Sierras it
just stooped a little, and went over them like a goat; it did, truly;
just doubled up its fore wheels under it, and jumped. And the Express
kept gaining on it. By this time it couldn't say 'Pacific Express' any
more, and it didn't try. It just said 'Express! Express!' and then
''Press! 'Press!' and then ''Ess! 'Ess!' and pretty soon only ''Ss!
'Ss!' And the Express kept gaining on it. Before they reached San
Francisco, the Express locomotive's cow-catcher was almost touching the
Pony Engine's tender; it gave one howl of anguish as it felt the Express
locomotive's hot breath on the place where the nightmare had bitten the
piece out, and tore through the end of the San Francisco depot, and
plunged into the Pacific Ocean, and was never seen again. There, now,"
said the papa, trying to make the children get down, "that's all. Go to
bed." The little girl was crying, and so he tried to comfort her by
keeping her in his lap.
The boy cleared his throat. "What is the moral, papa?" he asked,
huskily.
"Children, obey your parents," said the papa.
"And what became of the mother locomotive?" pursued the boy.
"She had a brain-fever, and never quite recovered the use of her mind
again."
The boy thought awhile. "Well, I don't see what it had to do with
Christmas, anyway."
"Why, it was Christmas Eve when the Pony Engine started from Boston, and
Christmas afternoon when it reached San Francisco."
"Ho!" said the boy. "No locomotive could get across the continent in a
day and a night, let alone a little Pony Engine."
"But this Pony Engine _had_ to. Did you never hear of the beaver that
clomb the tree?"
"No! Tell--"
"Yes, some other time."
"But how _could_ it get across so quick? Just one day!"
"Well, perhaps it was a year. Maybe it was the _next_ Christmas after
that when it got to San Francisco."
The papa set the little girl down, and started to run out of the room,
and both of the children ran after him, to pound him.
When they were in bed the boy called down-stairs to the papa, "Well,
anyway, I didn't put up my lip."
THE PUMPKIN-GLORY
[Illustration]
The papa had told the story so often that the children knew just exactly
what to expect the moment he began. They all knew it as well as he knew
it himself, and they could keep him from making mistakes, or forgetting.
Sometimes he would go wrong on purpose, or would pretend to forget, and
then they had a perfect right to pound him till he quit it. He usually
quit pretty soon.