it had no moral, so that when it was all over, they could feel that they
had not been excited just for the moral. The first time the little girl
heard it she began to cry, when it came to the worst part; but the boy
had heard it so much by that time that he did not mind it in the least,
and just laughed.
The story was in season any time between Thanksgiving and New Years; but
the papa usually began to tell it in the early part of October, when the
farmers were getting in their pumpkins, and the children were asking
when they were going to have any squash pies, and the boy had made his
first jack-o'-lantern.
"Well," the papa said, "once there were two little pumpkin seeds, and
one was a good little pumpkin seed, and the other was bad--very proud,
and vain, and ambitious."
The papa had told them what ambitious was, and so the children did not
stop him when he came to that word; but sometimes he would stop of his
own accord, and then if they could not tell what it meant, he would
pretend that he was not going on; but he always did go on.
"Well, the farmer took both the seeds out to plant them in the
home-patch, because they were a very extra kind of seeds, and he was not
going to risk them in the cornfield, among the corn. So before he put
them in the ground, he asked each one of them what he wanted to be when
he came up, and the good little pumpkin seed said he wanted to come up a
pumpkin, and be made into a pie, and be eaten at Thanksgiving dinner;
and the bad little pumpkin seed said he wanted to come up a
morning-glory.
"'Morning-glory!' says the farmer. 'I guess you'll come up a
pumpkin-glory, first thing _you_ know,' and then he haw-hawed, and told
his son, who was helping him to plant the garden, to keep watch of that
particular hill of pumpkins, and see whether that little seed came up a
morning-glory or not; and the boy stuck a stick into the hill so he
could tell it. But one night the cow got in, and the farmer was so mad,
having to get up about one o'clock in the morning to drive the cow out,
that he pulled up the stick, without noticing, to whack her over the
back with it, and so they lost the place.
"But the two little pumpkin seeds, they knew where they were well
enough, and they lay low, and let the rain and the sun soak in and swell
them up; and then they both began to push, and by-and-by they got their
heads out of the ground, with their shells down over their eyes like
caps, and as soon as they could shake them off and look round, the bad
little pumpkin vine said to his brother:
"'Well, what are you going to do now?'
"The good little pumpkin vine said, 'Oh, I'm just going to stay here,
and grow and grow, and put out all the blossoms I can, and let them all
drop off but one, and then grow that into the biggest and fattest and
sweetest pumpkin that ever was for Thanksgiving pies.'
[Illustration: TWO LITTLE PUMPKIN SEEDS.]
"'Well, that's what I am going to do, too,' said the bad little pumpkin
vine, 'all but the pies; but I'm not going to stay here to do it. I'm
going to that fence over there, where the morning-glories were last
summer, and I'm going to show them what a pumpkin-glory is like. I'm
just going to cover myself with blossoms; and blossoms that won't shut
up, either, when the sun comes out, but 'll stay open, as if they hadn't
anything to be ashamed of, and that won't drop off the first day,
either. I noticed those morning-glories all last summer, when I was
nothing but one of the blossoms myself, and I just made up my mind that
as soon as ever I got to be a vine, I would show them a thing or two.
Maybe I _can't_ be a morning-glory, but I can be a pumpkin-glory, and I
guess that's glory enough.'
"It made the cold chills run over the good little vine to hear its
brother talk like that, and it begged him not to do it; and it began to
cry--
"What's that?" The papa stopped short, and the boy stopped whispering in
his sister's ear, and she answered:
"He said he bet it was a girl!" The tears stood in her eyes, and the boy
said:
"Well, anyway, it was _like_ a girl."
"Very well, sir!" said the papa. "And supposing it was? Which is better:
to stay quietly at home, and do your duty, and grow up, and be eaten in
a pie at Thanksgiving, or go gadding all over the garden, and climbing
fences, and everything? The good little pumpkin vine was perfectly
right, and the bad little pumpkin would have been saved a good deal if
it had minded its little sister.
"The farmer was pretty busy that summer, and after the first two or
three hoeings he had to leave the two pumpkin vines to the boy that had
helped him to plant the seed, and the boy had to go fishing so much, and
then in swimming, that he perfectly neglected them, and let them run
wild, if they wanted to; and if the good little pumpkin vine had not
been the best little pumpkin vine that ever was, it _would_ have run
wild. But it just stayed where it was, and thickened up, and covered
itself with blossoms, till it was like one mass of gold. It was very
fond of all its blossoms, and it couldn't bear hardly to think of losing
any of them; but it knew they couldn't every one grow up to be a very
large pumpkin, and so it let them gradually drop off till it only had
one left, and then it just gave all its attention to that one, and did
everything it could to make it grow into the kind of pumpkin it said it
would.
"All this time the bad little pumpkin vine was carrying out its plan of
being a pumpkin-glory. In the first place it found out that if it
expected to get through by fall it couldn't fool much putting out a lot
of blossoms and waiting for them to drop off, before it began to devote
itself to business. The fence was a good piece off, and it had to reach
the fence in the first place, for there wouldn't be any fun in being a
pumpkin-glory down where nobody could see you, or anything. So the bad
little pumpkin vine began to pull and stretch towards the fence, and
sometimes it thought it would surely snap in two, it pulled and
stretched so hard. But besides the pulling and stretching, it had to
hide, and go round, because if it had been seen it wouldn't have been
allowed to go to the fence. It was a good thing there were so many
weeds, that the boy was too lazy to pull up, and the bad little pumpkin
vine could hide among. But then they were a good deal of a hinderance,
too, because they were so thick it could hardly get through them. It had
to pass some rows of pease that were perfectly awful; they tied
themselves to it and tried to keep it back; and there was one hill of
cucumbers that acted ridiculously; they said it was a cucumber vine
running away from home, and they would have kept it from going any
farther, if it hadn't tugged with all its might and main, and got away
one night when the cucumbers were sleeping; it was pretty strong,
anyway. When it got to the fence at last, it thought it was going to
die. It was all pulled out so thin that it wasn't any thicker than a
piece of twine in some places, and its leaves just hung in tatters. It
hadn't had time to put out more than one blossom, and that was such a
poor little sickly thing that it could hardly hang on. The question was,
How can a pumpkin vine climb a fence, anyway?
"Its knees and elbows were all worn to strings getting there, or that's
what the pumpkin thought, till it wound one of those tendrils round a
splinter of the fence, without thinking, and happened to pull, and then
it was perfectly surprised to find that it seemed to lift itself off the
ground a little. It said to itself, 'Let's try a few more,' and it
twisted some more of the tendrils round some more splinters, and this
time it fairly lifted itself off the ground. It said, 'Ah, I see!' as if
it had somehow expected to do something of the kind all along; but it
had to be pretty careful getting up the fence not to knock its blossom
off, for that would have been the end of it; and when it did get up
among the morning-glories it almost killed the poor thing, keeping it
open night and day, and showing it off in the hottest sun, and not
giving it a bit of shade, but just holding it out where it could be seen
the whole time. It wasn't very much of a blossom compared with the
blossoms on the good little pumpkin vine, but it was bigger than any of
the morning-glories, and that was some satisfaction, and the bad little
pumpkin vine was as proud as if it was the largest blossom in the world.
"When the blossom's leaves dropped off, and a little pumpkin began to
grow on in its place, the vine did everything it could for it; just gave
itself up to it, and put all its strength into it. After all, it was a
pretty queer-looking pumpkin, though. It had to grow hanging down, and
not resting on anything, and after it started with a round head, like
other pumpkins, its neck began to pull out, and pull out, till it looked
like a gourd or a big pear. That's the way it looked in the fall,
hanging from the vine on the fence, when the first light frost came and
killed the vine. It was the day when the farmer was gathering his
pumpkins in the cornfield, and he just happened to remember the seeds he
had planted in the home-patch, and he got out of his wagon to see what
had become of them. He was perfectly astonished to see the size of the
good little pumpkin; you could hardly get it into a bushel basket, and
he gathered it, and sent it to the county fair, and took the first
premium with it."
"How much was the premium?" asked the boy. He yawned; he had heard all
these facts so often before.
[Illustration: TOOK THE FIRST PREMIUM AT THE COUNTY FAIR.]
"It was fifty cents; but you see the farmer had to pay two dollars to
get a chance to try for the premium at the fair; and so it was _some_
satisfaction. Anyway, he took the premium, and he tried to sell the
pumpkin, and when he couldn't, he brought it home and told his wife they
must have it for Thanksgiving. The boy had gathered the bad little
pumpkin, and kept it from being fed to the cow, it was so funny-looking;
and the day before Thanksgiving the farmer found it in the barn, and he
said,
"'Hollo! Here's that little fool pumpkin. Wonder if it thinks it's a
morning-glory yet?'
"And the boy said, 'Oh, father, mayn't I have it?'
"And the father said, 'Guess so. What are you going to do with it?'
"But the boy didn't tell, because he was going to keep it for a
surprise; but as soon as his father went out of the barn, he picked up
the bad little pumpkin by its long neck, and he kind of balanced it
before him, and he said, 'Well, now, I'm going to make a pumpkin-glory
out of _you_!'
[Illustration: "'HERE'S THAT LITTLE FOOL PUMPKIN,' SAID THE FARMER."]
"And when the bad little pumpkin heard that, all its seeds fairly
rattled in it for joy. The boy took out his knife, and the first thing
the pumpkin knew he was cutting a kind of lid off the top of it; it was
like getting scalped, but the pumpkin didn't mind it, because it was
just the same as war. And when the boy got the top off he poured the
seeds out, and began to scrape the inside as thin as he could without
breaking through. It hurt awfully, and nothing but the hope of being a
pumpkin-glory could have kept the little pumpkin quiet; but it didn't
say a word, even after the boy had made a mouth for it, with two rows of
splendid teeth, and it didn't cry with either of the eyes he made for
it; just winked at him with one of them, and twisted its mouth to one
side, so as to let him know it was in the joke; and the first thing it
did when it got one was to turn up its nose at the good little pumpkin,
which the boy's mother came into the barn to get."
"Show how it looked," said the boy.
And the papa twisted his mouth, and winked with one eye, and wrinkled
his nose till the little girl begged him to stop. Then he went on:
"The boy hid the bad pumpkin behind him till his mother was gone,
because he didn't want her in the secret; and then he slipped into the
house, and put it under his bed. It was pretty lonesome up there in the
boy's room--he slept in the garret, and there was nothing but broken
furniture besides his bed; but all day long it could smell the good
little pumpkin, boiling and boiling for pies; and late at night, after
the boy had gone to sleep, it could smell the hot pies when they came
out of the oven. They smelt splendid, but the bad little pumpkin didn't
envy them a bit; it just said, 'Pooh! What's twenty pumpkin pies to one
pumpkin-glory?'"
"It ought to have said 'what _are_,' oughtn't it, papa?" asked the
little girl.
"It certainly ought," said the papa. "But if nothing but it's grammar
had been bad, there wouldn't have been much to complain of about it."
"I don't suppose it had ever heard much good grammar from the farmer's
family," suggested the boy. "Farmers always say cowcumbers instead of
cucumbers."
"Oh, _do_ tell us about the Cowcumber, and the Bullcumber, and the
little Calfcumbers, papa!" the little girl entreated, and she clasped
her hands, to show how anxious she was.
"What! And leave off at the most exciting part of the pumpkin-glory?"
The little girl saw what a mistake she had made; the boy just gave her
_one look_, and she cowered down into the papa's lap, and the papa went
on.
"Well, they had an extra big Thanksgiving at the farmer's that day. Lots
of the relations came from out West; the grandmother, who was living
with the farmer, was getting pretty old, and every year or two she
thought she wasn't going to live very much longer, and she wrote to the
relations in Wisconsin, and everywhere, that if they expected to see her
alive again, they had better come this time, and bring all their
families. She kept doing it till she was about ninety, and then she just
concluded to live along and not mind how old she was. But this was just
before her eighty-ninth birthday, and she had drummed up so many sons
and sons-in-law, and daughters and daughters-in-law, and grandsons and
great-grandsons, and granddaughters and great-granddaughters, that the
house was perfectly packed with them. They had to sleep on the floor, a
good many of them, and you could hardly step for them; the boys slept in
the barn, and they laughed and cut up so the whole night that the
roosters thought it was morning, and kept crowing till they made their
throats sore, and had to wear wet compresses round them every night for
a week afterwards."
When the papa said anything like this the children had a right to pound
him, but they were so anxious not to have him stop, that this time they
did not do it. They said, "Go on, go on!" and the little girl said, "And
then the tables!"
"Tables? Well, I should think so! They got all the tables there were in
the house, up stairs and down, for dinner Thanksgiving Day, and they
took the grandmother's work-stand and put it at the head, and she sat
down there; only she was so used to knitting by that table that she kept
looking for her knitting-needles all through dinner, and couldn't seem
to remember what it was she was missing. The other end of the table was
the carpenter's bench that they brought in out of the barn, and they put
the youngest and funniest papa at that. The tables stretched from the
kitchen into the dining-room, and clear through that out into the hall,
and across into the parlor. They hadn't table-cloths enough to go the
whole length, and the end of the carpenter's bench, where the funniest
papa sat, was bare, and all through dinner-time he kept making fun. The
vise was right at the corner, and when he got his help of turkey, he
pretended that it was so tough he had to fasten the bone in the vise,
and cut the meat off with his knife like a draw-shave."
"It was the drumstick, I suppose, papa?" said the boy. "A turkey's
drumstick is all full of little wooden splinters, anyway."
"And what did the mamma say?" asked the little girl.
[Illustration: "CAUGHT HIS TROUSERS ON A SHINGLE-NAIL, AND STUCK."]
"Oh, she kept saying, 'Now you behave!' and, 'Well, I should think you'd
be ashamed!' but the funniest papa didn't mind her a bit; and everybody
laughed till they could hardly stand it. All this time the boys were out
in the barn, waiting for the second table, and playing round. The
farmer's boy went up to his room over the wood-shed, and got in at the
garret window, and brought out the pumpkin-glory. Only he began to
slip when he was coming down the roof, and he'd have slipped clear off
if he hadn't caught his trousers on a shingle-nail, and stuck. It made a
pretty bad tear, but the other boys pinned it up so that it wouldn't
show, and the pumpkin-glory wasn't hurt a bit. They all said that it was
about the best jack-o'-lantern they almost ever saw, on account of the
long neck there was to it; and they made a plan to stick the end of the
neck into the top of the pump, and have fun hearing what the folks would
say when they came out after dark and saw it all lit up; and then they
noticed the pigpen at the corner of the barn, and began to plague the
pig, and so many of them got up on the pen that they broke the middle
board off; and they didn't like to nail it on again because it was
Thanksgiving Day, and you mustn't hammer or anything; so they just stuck
it up in its place with a piece of wood against it, and the boy said he
would fix it in the morning.
"The grown folks stayed so long at the table that it was nearly dark
when the boys got to it, and they would have been almost starved if the
farm-boy hadn't brought out apples and doughnuts every little while. As
it was, they were pretty hungry, and they began on the pumpkin pie at
once, so as to keep eating till the mother and the other mothers that
were helping could get some of the things out of the oven that they had
been keeping hot for the boys. The pie was so nice that they kept eating
at it all along, and the mother told them about the good little pumpkin
that it was made of, and how the good little pumpkin had never had any
wish from the time it was nothing but a seed, except to grow up and be
made into pies and eaten at Thanksgiving; and they must all try to be
good, too, and grow up and do likewise. The boys didn't say anything,
because their mouths were so full, but they looked at each other and
winked their left eyes. There were about forty or fifty of them, and
when they all winked their left eyes it made it so dark you could hardly
see; and the mother got the lamp; but the other mothers saw what the
boys were doing, and they just shook them till they opened their eyes
and stopped their mischief."
"Show how they looked!" said the boy.
"I can't show how fifty boys looked," said the papa. "But they looked a
good deal like the pumpkin-glory that was waiting quietly in the barn
for them to get through, and come out and have some fun with it. When
they had all eaten so much that they could hardly stand up, they got
down from the table, and grabbed their hats, and started for the door.
But they had to go out the back way, because the table took up the
front entry, and that gave the farmer's boy a chance to find a piece of
candle out in the kitchen and some matches; and then they rushed to the
barn. It was so dark there already that they thought they had better
light up the pumpkin-glory and try it. They lit it up, and it worked
splendidly; but they forgot to put out the match, and it caught some
straw on the barn floor, and a little more and it would have burnt the
barn down. The boys stamped the fire out in about half a second; and
after that they waited till it was dark outside before they lit up the
pumpkin-glory again. Then they all bent down over it to keep the wind
from blowing the match anywhere, and pretty soon it was lit up, and the
farmer's boy took the pumpkin-glory by its long neck, and stuck the
point in the hole in the top of the pump; and just then the funniest
papa came round the corner of the wood-house, and said:
"'What have you got there, boys? Jack-o'-lantern? Well, well. That's a
good one!'
"He came up and looked at the pumpkin-glory, and he bent back and he
bent forward, and he doubled down and he straightened up, and laughed
till the boys thought he was going to kill himself.
"They had all intended to burst into an Indian yell, and dance round the
pumpkin-glory; but the funniest papa said, 'Now all you fellows keep
still half a minute,' and the next thing they knew he ran into the
house, and came out, walking his wife before him with both his hands
over her eyes. Then the boys saw he was going to have some fun with her,
and they kept as still as mice, and waited till he walked her up to the
pumpkin-glory; and she was saying all the time, 'Now, John, if this is
some of your fooling, I'll _give_ it to you.' When he got her close up
he took away his hands, and she gave a kind of a whoop, and then she
began to laugh, the pumpkin-glory _was_ so funny, and to chase the
funniest papa all round the yard to box his ears, and as soon as she had
boxed them she said, 'Now let's go in and send the rest out,' and in
about a quarter of a second all the other papas came out, holding their
hands over the other mothers' eyes till they got them up to the
pumpkin-glory; and then there was such a yelling and laughing and
chasing and ear-boxing that you never heard anything like it; and all at
once the funniest papa hallooed out: 'Where's gramma? Gramma's got to
see it! Grandma'll enjoy it. It's just gramma's kind of joke,' and then
the mothers all got round him and said he shouldn't fool the
grandmother, anyway; and he said he wasn't going to: he was just going
to bring her out and let her see it; and his wife went along with him to
watch that he didn't begin acting up.
"The grandmother had been sitting all alone in her room ever since
dinner; because she was always afraid somehow that if you enjoyed
yourself it was a sign you were going to suffer for it, and she had
enjoyed herself a good deal that day, and she was feeling awfully about
it. When the funniest papa and his wife came in she said, 'What is it?
What is it? Is the world a-burnin' up? Well, you got to wrap up warm,
then, or you'll ketch your death o' cold runnin' and then stoppin' to
rest with your pores all open!'
"The funniest papa's wife she went up and kissed her, and said, 'No,
grandmother, the world's all right,' and then she told her just how it
was, and how they wanted her to come out and see the jack-o'-lantern,
just to please the children; and she must come, anyway; because it was
the funniest jack-o'-lantern there ever was, and then she told how the
funniest papa had fooled her, and then how they had got the other papas
to fool the other mothers, and they had all had the greatest fun then
you ever saw. All the time she kept putting on her things for her, and
the grandmother seemed to get quite in the notion, and she laughed a
little, and they thought she was going to enjoy it as much as anybody;
they really did, because they were all very tender of her, and they
wouldn't have scared her for anything, and everybody kept cheering her
up and telling her how much they knew she would like it, till they got
her to the pump. The little pumpkin-glory was feeling awfully proud and
self-satisfied; for it had never seen any flower or any vegetable
treated with half so much honor by human beings. It wasn't sure at first
that it was very nice to be laughed at so much, but after a while it
began to conclude that the papas and the mammas were just laughing at
the joke of the whole thing. When the old grandmother got up close,
it thought it would do something extra to please her; or else the heat
of the candle had dried it up so that it cracked without intending to.
Anyway, it tried to give a very broad grin, and all of a sudden it split
its mouth from ear to ear."
[Illustration: "'MY SAKES! IT'S COMIN' TO LIFE!'"]
"You didn't say it had any ears before," said the boy.
"No; it had them behind," said the papa; and the boy felt like giving
him just one pound; but he thought it might stop the story, and so he
let the papa go on.
"As soon as the grandmother saw it open its mouth that way she just gave
one scream, 'My sakes! It's comin' to life!' And she threw up her arms,
and she threw up her feet, and if the funniest papa hadn't been there to
catch her, and if there hadn't been forty or fifty other sons and
daughters, and grandsons and daughters, and great-grandsons and
great-granddaughters, very likely she might have fallen. As it was,
they piled round her, and kept her up; but there were so many of them
they jostled the pump, and the first thing the pumpkin-glory knew, it
fell down and burst open; and the pig that the boys had plagued, and
that had kept squealing all the time because it thought that the people
had come out to feed it, knocked the loose board off its pen, and flew
out and gobbled the pumpkin-glory up, candle and all, and that was the
end of the proud little pumpkin-glory."
"And when the pig ate the candle it looked like the magician when he
puts burning tow in his mouth," said the boy.
"Exactly," said the papa.