skyscraper.... Look at it!... It is thirty stories high. On top is a
flagpole for a flag to go up. Halfway down is a clock, with the hands
gone. On the first floor is a restaurant with signs, ‘Watch Your Hats
and Overcoats.’ Here is the office of the building, with a sign on the
wall, ‘Be Brief.’ Here the elevators ran up and down in a hurry. On
doors are signs, bankers, doctors, lawyers, life insurance, fire
insurance, steam hoist and operating engineers, bridge and structural
iron and steel construction engineers, stocks, bonds, securities,
architects, writers, detectives, window cleaners, jewelry, diamonds,
cloaks, suits, shirts, sox, silk, wool, cotton, lumber, brick, sand,
corn, oats, wheat, paper, ink, pencils, knives, guns, land, oil, coal,
one door with a big sign, ‘We Buy and Sell Anything,’ another door, ‘We
Fix Anything,’ and more doors, ‘None Such,’ ‘The World’s Finest,’ ‘The
Best in the World,’ ‘Oldest Establishment in the World,’ ‘The World’s
Greatest,’ ‘None Greater,’ ‘Greatest in the World,’ ‘Greatest Ever
Known.’”
And Hoom Slimmer put his arms around the skyscraper, lifted it on his
shoulder, and carried it upstairs where Peter Potato Blossom said to put
it, in a corner of her sleeping room. And she took out of her
handkerchief the railroad train with the engine hooked on ahead and the
smoking car, coaches and sleeping cars, hooked on behind. And she put
the railroad train just next to the bottom floor of the skyscraper so
people on the train could step off the train and step right into the
skyscraper.
“Little railroad trains and little skyscrapers are just as big for
little people as big railroad trains and big skyscrapers are for big
people—is it not such?” she asked Hoom Slimmer.
And for an answer he gave her a looking glass half as long as her little
finger and said, “The women in that skyscraper used to look at
themselves from head to foot in that looking glass.”
Then Peter sang out like a spring bird song, “Now we are going to forget
the pickax pigs sneezing rusty dust, and the Pig’s Eye Valley and the
Pickax Mountains. We are going out where the bye-low is whistling his
bye-low and bye-low again, where it is spring in the tall timbers and
over the soft black lands, where the hoo hoo and the biddywiddies come
north to make a home again and the booblow blossoms put their cool white
lips out into the blue mist.”
And they sat under a tree where the early green of spring crooned in the
black branches, and they could hear Hannah, Hannah More and
Susquehannah, whispering yes-yes, no-no, and a hesitating stutter
halfway between yes-yes, and no-no, always hesitating.
10. Three Stories About the Letter X and How It Got into the Alphabet.
_People_: An Oyster King
Shovel Ears
Pig Wisps
The Men Who Change the Alphabets
A River Lumber King
Kiss Me
Flax Eyes
Wildcats
A Rich Man
Blue Silver
Her Playmates, Singing
There are six hundred different stories told in the Rootabaga Country
about the first time the letter X got into the alphabet and how and why
it was. The author has chosen three (3) of the shortest and strangest of
those stories and they are told in the next and following pages.
[Illustration]
Pig Wisps
There was an oyster king far in the south who knew how to open oysters
and pick out the pearls.
He grew rich and all kinds of money came rolling in on him because he
was a great oyster opener and knew how to pick out the pearls.
The son of this oyster king was named Shovel Ears. And it was hard for
him to remember.
“He knows how to open oysters but he forgets to pick out the pearls,”
said the father of Shovel Ears.
“He is learning to remember worse and worse and to forget better and
better,” said the father of Shovel Ears.
Now in that same place far in the south was a little girl with two
braids of hair twisted down her back and a face saying, “Here we
come—where from?”
And her mother called her Pig Wisps.
Twice a week Pig Wisps ran to the butcher shop for a soup bone. Before
starting she crossed her fingers and then the whole way to the butcher
shop kept her fingers crossed.
If she met any playmates and they asked her to stop and play
cross-tag or jackstones or all-around-the-mulberry-bush or
the-green-grass-grew-all-around or drop-the-handkerchief, she told
them, “My fingers are crossed and I am running to the butcher shop
for a soup bone.”
One morning running to the butcher shop she bumped into a big queer boy
and bumped him flat on the sidewalk.
“Did you look where you were running?” she asked him.
“I forgot again,” said Shovel Ears. “I remember worse and worse. I
forget better and better.”
“Cross your fingers like this,” said Pig Wisps, showing him how.
He ran to the butcher shop with her, watching her keep her fingers
crossed till the butcher gave her the soup bone.
“After I get it then the soup bone reminds me to go home with it,” she
told him. “But until I get the soup bone I keep my fingers crossed.”
Shovel Ears went to his father and began helping his father open
oysters. And Shovel Ears kept his fingers crossed to remind him to pick
out the pearls.
He picked a hundred buckets of pearls the first day and brought his
father the longest slippery, shining rope of pearls ever seen in that
oyster country.
“How do you do it?” his father asked.
“It is the crossed fingers—like this,” said Shovel Ears, crossing his
fingers like the letter X. “This is the way to remember better and
forget worse.”
It was then the oyster king went and told the men who change the
alphabets just what happened.
When the men who change the alphabets heard just what happened, they
decided to put in a new letter, the letter X, near the end of the
alphabet, the sign of the crossed fingers.
On the wedding day of Pig Wisps and Shovel Ears, the men who change the
alphabets all came to the wedding, with their fingers crossed.
Pig Wisps and Shovel Ears stood up to be married. They crossed their
fingers. They told each other other they would remember their promises.
And Pig Wisps had two ropes of pearls twisted down her back and a sweet
young face saying, “Here we come—where from?”
[Illustration]
Kiss Me
Many years ago when pigs climbed chimneys and chased cats up into the
trees, away back, so they say, there was a lumber king who lived in a
river city with many wildcats in the timbers near by.
And the lumber king said, “I am losing my hair and my teeth and I am
tired of many things; my only joy is a daughter who is a dancing shaft
of light on the ax handles of morning.”
She was quick and wild, the lumber king’s daughter. She had never
kissed. Not her mother nor father nor any sweetheart ever had a love
print from her lips. Proud she was. They called her Kiss Me.
She didn’t like that name, Kiss Me. They never called her that when she
was listening. If she happened to be listening they called her Find Me,
Lose Me, Get Me. They never mentioned kisses because they knew she would
run away and be what her father called her, “a dancing shaft of light on
the ax handles of morning.”
But—when she was not listening they asked, “Where is Kiss Me to-day?” Or
they would say, “Every morning Kiss Me gets more beautiful—I wonder if
she will ever in her young life get a kiss from a man good enough to
kiss her.”
One day Kiss Me was lost. She went out on a horse with a gun to hunt
wildcats in the timbers near by. Since the day before, she was gone. All
night she was out in a snowstorm with a horse and a gun hunting
wildcats. And the storm of the blowing snow was coming worse on the
second day.
[Illustration: Out into the snowstorm Flax Eyes rode that day]
It was then the lumber king called in a long, loose, young man with a
leather face and hay in his hair. And the king said, “Flax Eyes, you are
the laziest careless man in the river lumber country—go out in the
snowstorm now, among the wildcats, where Kiss Me is fighting for her
life—and save her.”
“I am the hero. I am the man who knows how. I am the man who has been
waiting for this chance,” said Flax Eyes.
On a horse, with a gun, out into the snowstorm Flax Eyes rode that day.
Far, far away he rode to where Kiss Me, the quick wild Kiss Me, was
standing with her back against a big rock fighting off the wildcats.
In that country the snowstorms make the wildcats wilder—and Kiss Me was
tired of shooting wildcats, tired of fighting in the snow, nearly ready
to give up and let the wildcats have her.
Then Flax Eyes came. The wildcats jumped at him, and he threw them off.
More wildcats came, jumping straight at his face. He took hold of those
wildcats by the necks and threw them over the big rock, up into the
trees, away into the snow and the wind.
At last he took all the wildcats one by one and threw them so far they
couldn’t come back. He put Kiss Me on her horse, rode back to the lumber
king and said lazy and careless, “This is us.”
The lumber king saw the face of Flax Eyes was all covered with cross
marks like the letter X. And the lumber king saw the wildcats had torn
the shirt off Flax Eyes and on the skin of his chest, shoulders, arms,
were the cross marks of the wildcats’ claws, cross marks like the letter
X.
So the king went to the men who change the alphabets and they put the
cross marks of the wildcats’ claws, for a new letter, the letter X, near
the end of the alphabet. And at the wedding of Kiss Me and Flax Eyes,
the men who change the alphabets came with wildcat claws crossed like
the letter X.
[Illustration]
Blue Silver
Long ago when the years were dark and the black rains used to come with
strong winds and blow the front porches off houses, and pick chimneys
off houses, and blow them onto other houses, long ago when people had
understanding about rain and wind, there was a rich man with a daughter
he loved better than anything else in the world.
And one night when the black rain came with a strong wind blowing off
front porches and picking off chimneys, the daughter of the rich man
fell asleep into a deep sleep.
In the morning they couldn’t wake her. The black rain with the strong
wind kept up all that day while she kept on sleeping in a deep sleep.
Men and women with music and flowers came in, boys and girls, her
playmates, came in—singing songs and calling her name. And she went on
sleeping.
All the time her arms were crossed on her breast, the left arm crossing
the right arm like a letter X.
Two days more, five days, six, seven days went by—and all the time the
black rain with a strong wind blowing—and the daughter of the rich man
never woke up to listen to the music nor to smell the flowers nor to
hear her playmates singing songs and calling her name.
She stayed sleeping in a deep sleep—with her arms crossed on her
breast—the left arm crossing the right arm like a letter X.
So they made a long silver box, just long enough to reach from her head
to her feet.
And they put on her a blue silver dress and a blue silver band around
her forehead and blue silver shoes on her feet.
There were soft blue silk and silver sleeves to cover her left arm and
her right arm—the two arms crossed on her breast like the letter X.
They took the silver box and carried it to a corner of the garden where
she used to go to look at blue lilacs and climbing blue morning glories
in patches of silver lights.
Among the old leaves of blue lilacs and morning glories they dug a place
for the silver box to be laid in.
And men and women with music and flowers stood by the silver box, and
her old playmates, singing songs she used to sing—and calling her name.
When it was all over and they all went away they remembered one thing
most of all.
And that was her arms in the soft silk and blue silver sleeves, the left
arm crossing over the right arm like the letter X.
Somebody went to the king of the country and told him how it all
happened, how the black rains with a strong wind came, the deep sleep,
the singing playmates, the silver box—and the soft silk and blue silver
sleeves on the left arm crossing the right arm like the letter X.
Before that there never was a letter X in the alphabet. It was then the
king said, “We shall put the crossed arms in the alphabet; we shall have
a new letter called X, so everybody will understand a funeral is
beautiful if there are young singing playmates.”
[Illustration]
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.