sound came from. After a while, he saw a dozen or more very odd,
queer-looking creatures, sitting on the broad, round leaves of the
water-lilies, that floated on the surface of the lake. These little
people had white caps, for all the world like the white lily blossoms
that were bobbing up and down around them. In fact, it took Larkin some
time to make out clearly that they were not lilies. But finally he saw
their faces peeping out, and noticed that they had no hands, but only
fins instead. Then he noticed that their coats were beautifully mottled,
like the sides of the pickerel, and their feet flattened out, like a
fish's tail. Soon he saw that others of the same kind were coming up, all
dripping, from the water, and taking their places on the leaves; and as
each new-comer arrived, the others kept saying,
"Ha! ha! lazy fellow! very lazy fellow!"
And then the others would look at him, and shake their speckled sides
with laughter, and say, "Lazy fellow! ha! ha!"
Poor Larkin was used to being laughed at, but it was provoking to be
laughed at by these queer-looking folk, sitting on the lilies in the
water. Soon he saw that there were nearly a hundred of them gathered.
"Come on, Joblilies!" cried one of them, who carried a long fish-bone,
and seemed to be leader; "let's make a Joblily of him."
Upon that the whole swarm of them came ashore. The leader stuck his
fish-bone in Larkin, and made him cry out. Then they all set up another
laugh, and another cry of "lazy fellow!"
"Bring me three grains of silver-white sand from the middle of the lake,"
said the leader; and two of them jumped into the water and disappeared.
"Now fetch three blades of dry grass from the lining of the kingfisher's
nest," he said; and immediately two others were gone.
When the four returned, the leader dropped the grains of sand in Larkin's
eyes, saying,
"Three grains of silver sand,
From the Joblily's hand!
Where shall the Joblily lie,
When the young owl learns to fly?"
Then they all jumped upon him and stamped, but Larkin could not move hand
or foot. In fact, he found that his hands were flattening out, like fins.
The leader then put the three blades of grass in Larkin's mouth, and
said,
"Eat a dry blade! eat a dry blade!
From the nest that the kingfisher made!
What will the Joblilies do,
When the old owl cries tu-whoo?"
And then the whole party set up such a cry of "tu-whoo! tu-whoo!" that
Larkin was frightened beyond measure; and they caught him and rolled him
over rapidly, until he found himself falling with a great splash into the
water. On rising to the surface, he saw that he was changed into a
Joblily himself.
Then the whole party broke out singing,
"When the sun shines the Joblilies roam;
When the storm comes we play with the foam;
When the owl hoots Joblilies fly home!"
When they had sung this, they all went under the water; and the leader,
giving Larkin a thrust with his fish-bone, cried out, "Come along!" and
Lazy Larkin had nothing to do but to swim after them. Once under the
water, the scene was exceedingly beautiful. The great umbrella-like
leaves of the lilies made spots of shadow in the water and on the pebbles
of the bottom, while the streaks of sunshine that came down between
flecked everything with patches of glorious light, just as you have seen
the hills and valleys made glorious by alternate patches of light and
shade, produced by the shadows of the clouds. And the tall lily stems, in
the soft light, appeared to be pillars, while the great variety of water
weed, that wound about them in strange festoons, was glorious beyond
description. There were beautiful bass turning their sides up to the sun,
and darting about through these strange, weird scenes, seeming to enjoy
their glorious abode.
"You have an easy time of it, no doubt," said Larkin, to one of these
fish.
"Easy time of it, indeed! I have rather a happy time of it, because I
have plenty to do; but you are a strange Joblily if you do not know that
I have anything but an easy time of it. Chasing minnows, jumping three
feet out of water after a butterfly, catching wigglers and mosquitoes,
and keeping a sharp lookout for unlucky grasshoppers that may chance to
fall in my way; all these are not easy. I tell you, there is no family of
our social position that has more trouble to earn a living than the bass
family."
"Come along," said the Joblily, giving another punch with his fish-bone;
and Larkin travelled on.
Presently they came to a log with something growing on it.
"What beautiful moss!"
"Moss, indeed!" said one of the Joblilies; "that is a colony of small
animals, all fast to one stem."
"They have an easy time of it, I suppose," said Lazy Larkin; "they don't
have to travel, for they cannot move."
"True, but these beautiful, transparent moss animals have to get their
living by catching creatures so small that you cannot see them. They have
great numbers of little fingers or feelers that are going all the time."
Larkin touched one, and it immediately drew itself in,--really _swallowed
itself_; for these little things take this way of saving themselves from
harm.
And so Larkin swam on, and found that it was a busy world beneath the
lake. He saw mussels slowly crawling through the sand; he found that the
pickerel, which he had supposed idle, was really standing guard over her
nest, and fanning the water with her fins all day long, that a current of
fresh water might be supplied to her eggs. And all the time the Joblilies
kept singing--
"Work! work!
Never shirk!
There is work for you,
Work for all to do!
Happy they who do it,
They that shirk shall rue it!"
And after their long swim around the lake, the Joblilies came back to
Duck Point again, and climbed out on the lily leaves. No sooner had
Larkin seated himself with the rest than he heard a great owl cry,
"Tu-whit! tu-whoo!"
Immediately the Joblilies leaped into the air, and the whole hundred of
them dashed into the water like so many bull-frogs, crying, as they came
down,
"What will the Joblily do,
When the great owl cries tu-whoo?"
Larkin looked around suddenly to see whither they had gone, but could
discover no trace of them. A moment after, he found himself sitting under
the same tree that he was under when the Joblilies came for him. The boys
had gone, and he was forced to walk home alone. He thought carefully over
his trip with the Joblilies, and, I am glad to say, gradually learned to
be more industrious, though it took him a long while to overcome his lazy
habits, and still longer to get rid of the name of Lazy Larkin. But he
remembered the jingle of the Joblilies, and I trust you will not forget
it:
"Work! work!
Never shirk!
There is work for you,
Work for all to do!
Happy they who do it,
They that shirk shall rue it!"
THE PICKANINNY.
It was rather a warm day in autumn. Aunt Cheerie had given the
sewing-machine and the piano a holiday, and was sitting in the woodshed,
paring apples for preserves. Wherever Aunt Cheerie was, the children were
sure to be; and so there was Sunbeam, knife in hand, and Fairy, cutting a
paring something less than half an inch thick, while the dear little
Chicken was wiping apples for the others to pare, and little Tow-head,
baby-brother, was trying to upset the peach-box, in which were a couple
of pet chickens, that were hatched out too late, and that had to be kept
in-doors to secure them from Jack Frost. For you must know that at "The
Nest" Sunbeam is called the "Old Hen." That is, she has charge of the
chickens. They know her so well that, when she feeds them, they fly up on
her shoulders and eat out of her hands. And if there is any unfortunate
one, it is well cared for. One poor, little wayward pullet wandered into
our neighbor's garden. She was very naughty, doubtless, but she got
severely punished; for our neighbor thinks a great deal of his garden,
and not much of chickens, unless they are fricasseed. He shot at our
little runaway pullet, and the poor thing came home dragging a broken and
useless leg. Now, if any chicken ever had good care, our little "Lamey"
has. After weary weeks of suffering in hot weather, it is at last able to
walk on both feet, though the broken leg is sadly crooked. The children
do not object to having the other chickens killed for the table, but
little Lamey's life is insured.
But how did I get to talking about chickens? I was going to say that when
I came home, and found the folks paring apples, I went out in the shed,
too, and sat down by the Little Chick.
And Chicken Little jerked her head and looked mischievously out of her
bright eyes, and said: "See how nice we is peelin' apples. We's makin'
peserves, we is; 'cause they is good to eat, they is. And you mus' tell
me a story, you mus', 'cause I'm a-helpin' Aunt Cheerie, I am."
For you must know that the Small Chick is not very polite, and doesn't
say "please," when she can help it.
"Lend us a hand at the apples, too," said Aunt Cheerie.
"No, I can't tell stories and pare apples, too."
"Does you need your fingers to tell stories wid, like the dumbers that we
heard talk without saying anything?"
Chicken Small had been to an exhibition of Professor Gillett's deaf and
dumb pupils.
"Well, no," I said; "but you see, Chicken, I never could make my tongue
and my fingers go at the same time."
"I should think you had never done much with your fingers, then," said
Aunt Cheerie; "for I never knew your tongue to be still, except when you
were asleep."
I felt a little anxious to change the subject, and so began the story at
once.
"Little Sukey Gray----"
"What a funny name!" cried the Fairy.
Yes, and a funny girl was Sukey Gray. She had yellow hair that was tied
up in an old-fashioned knot, behind, though she was only eleven years
old; for you must know that Sukey lived in a part of the country where
chignons and top-knots of the latest style were unknown. Now Sukey's way
of doing up her hair in a great knot, behind, with an old-fashioned tuck
comb, was not pretty. But Susan Gray lived in what was called the
"White-Oak Flats;" a region sometimes called the "Hoop-Pole Country." It
was not the most enlightened place in the world, for there was no school,
except for a short time in winter, and the people were very
superstitious, believing that if they carried a hoe through the house, or
broke a looking-glass, somebody "would die before long," and thinking
that a screech-owl's scream and the howling of a dog were warnings; and
that potatoes must be planted in the "dark of the moon," because they
grew underground, and corn in the "light of the moon," because it grew
above ground; and that hogs must be killed in the increase of the moon,
to keep the pork from frying away to gravy!
As Sukey had always lived in the White-Oak Flats, she did not know that
they were dreary, for she was always happy, doing her work cheerfully.
But one of Susan's cousins, who lived a hundred miles away, had made her
a visit. This cousin, like Sukey, lived in the country, but she had
plenty of books and had read many curious and wonderful things, with
which she was accustomed to delight Sukey.
But when Cousin Annie was gone, Sukey found the Flats a dreary place. She
wished there were some pagodas, such as they have in India, or that there
were some cannibals living near her. She thought if she were rich, she
would buy an omnibus, with four "blaze-faced" sorrel horses, to drive for
her own amusement. She got tired of the pumpkins and cabbages, and longed
for grizzly bears and red Indians. She hated to wash dishes and feed the
chickens, but thought she would like to be a slave on a coffee plantation
in Ceylon.
"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "I wish I was out of the Hoop-Pole Country. There
is nothing beautiful or curious in these flats. I am tired of great
yellow sunflowers and hollyhocks and pumpkin blossoms. I wish I could see
something curious or beautiful."
Now, isn't it strange that any little girl should talk so, with plenty of
birds and trees and sunshine? But so it is with most of us. We generally
refuse to enjoy what is in our reach, and long for something that we
cannot get. Just as Chicken Little, here, always wants milk when there is
none, and always asks for tea when you offer her milk.
"Well, 'cause I'm firsty, that's the reason," said the Chicken.
Now, when Sukey said this, she was up in the loft, or second story, if
you could call it story, of her father's house. She sat on a bench,
looking out of the gable window at the old stick chimney, made by
building a square _cob-house_ arrangement of sticks of wood, tapering
toward the top, and plastering it with clay. The top of the chimney was
surrounded by a barrel with both ends open, through which the smoke
climbed lazily up into the air. Near by stood an oak-tree, in which a
jay-bird was screaming and dancing in a jerky way. Sukey then looked
away into the blue sky, and the clouds seemed to become pagodas, and
palm-trees, and golden ships floating drowsily away. All at once she
heard somebody say, in a queer, birdlike voice--
"Pray, look this way, little Sukey Gray. May I make bold to say you are
looking grum to-day? You neither laugh nor play; now what's the reason,
pray?"
Sukey started up to see where this funny jingle came from. There, in the
oak-tree, where the jay-bird had stood a few minutes before, was a
queer-looking little chap, in blue coat and pants, with a top-knot cap
and a rather sharp nose. He looked a little like a jay-bird, but had a
most comical face and blinky eyes, and brought his words out in short
jerks, making them rhyme in an odd sort of jingle. And all the time he
was dancing and laughing and turning rapid somersaults, as if the little
blue coat could hardly hold so much fun.
"Well, now," broke out Sukey, "you are the only curious thing in all the
Hoop Pole Country. I've been wishing for something odd or strange, and I
am glad you have come, for there is nothing beautiful or curious in all
the White-Oak Flats."
"Why, Sukey Gray! What's that you say? You must be blind as a pumpkin
rind, or a leather-winged bat; this White-Oak Flat is just the place to
look the beautiful right in the face. Now come with me, and we will see
that the little bee, or this great oak tree, or the bright, blue skies,
are beautiful things, if we open our eyes."
All the while the little fellow was getting off this queer speech, he was
swinging and tumbling along up the great limb that reached out toward the
window at which Sukey sat. By the time he had finished it, he was
standing on the window-sill, where he had alighted after a giddy
somersault. He laughed heartily--so heartily that Sukey laughed, too,
though she could not tell why. Then he took off his cap, and said,
"A pickaninny, at your service, Sukey Gray! Will you take a walk with me
to-day? Now jump, while you may!" and he took hold of her two hands and
jumped, and she jumped after him, feeling as light as a feather.
They alighted on the branch of the oak-tree. He immediately began to pull
lichens off the bark, and show Sukey how curious they were. He showed her
how curiously one kind of lichen grew upon another, omitting its own
stalk and leaves, and making use of those of the other. Then he laughed
at her, because he had found curious things within ten feet of her
window.
Next he took her to her own rosebush, and showed her how the limbs were
swelled in some places. Then breaking off the twig, he placed it against
a tree, and began to pound it with his fist. But his little arm was not
strong, and he had to strike it several times before he could break it
open. When it did fly open, Sukey started back at seeing it full of
plant-lice, or aphides.
"Now," said the pickaninny, "in this little house what curious things!
These little aphides have no wings. But their great-great-grandfathers,
and their great-great-grandmothers had. Their mothers and grandmothers
and great-grandmothers had none, and their children will have none, and
their grandchildren will have none, and their great-grandchildren will
have none; but their great-great-grandchildren will have wings again, for
every ninth generation can fly."
"How curious!" said Sukey.
Then the pickaninny found a swamp blackbird's nest, and showed her how
strangely it was made; then they climbed down the chimney of the
school-house, and he showed her how the chimney swallow glued her nest
together; and he coaxed a katydid to fiddle with his wings, that she
might see that. At last they entered the pumpkin patch.
"Well," said Sukey, "there's nothing curious here. I know all about
pumpkins."
With that the pickaninny commenced to jump up and down on one, but he was
so light that he could not break it. He kept jumping higher and higher;
now he was bouncing up ten feet in the air, then fifteen, then twenty,
until at last he leaped up as high as the top of the oak-tree, and coming
down, he struck his heels through the pumpkin. Sukey laughed till the
tears ran off her chin. The pickaninny thrust his arm in and took out a
seed. Then breaking that open, he showed Susan that the inside of a
pumpkin seed was two white leaves, the first leaves of the young pumpkin
vine. And so an hour passed while the pickaninny showed her many curious
things, of which I have not time to tell you.
At last he said, "Now, Sukey Gray, pray let me fly away!"
"I shall not keep you if you want to go," said Susan.
"Then pluck the mistletoe, and let me go."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I cannot go until you pluck the mistletoe."
Sukey pulled a piece of mistletoe from the limb where they were standing,
and he bowed and said,
"Now, Sukey Gray, good-day. Don't waste your sighs, but use your eyes."
With that he leaped into the air. Susy looked up, but there was only the
bluejay, crying, "Jay! jay! jay!" in a peevish way, and herself looking
out the window.
"What a wonderful country the White-Oak Flats must be," she said. And the
more she used her eyes, the more she was satisfied that the Hoop-Pole
Country was the most wonderful in the world.
THE GREAT PANJANDRUM HIMSELF.
Chicken Little was a picture, sitting on the floor by the window, with a
stereoscope--"the thing 'at you look fru," she calls it--in her hand, and
the pictures scattered about her.
Now some of the children think that I have been "making up" Chicken
Little, and that there is no such a being. A few weeks ago, after I had
been talking to a great church full of people, there came up to me a very
sweet little girl.
"Do you write stories in _The Little Corporal_?" she asked.
When I told her I did, she looked up, and asked, earnestly, "Well, is
there any real, live Chicken Little?"
Now there may be others of the great army of _The Little Corporal_ that
want to know whether there is any "real, live Chicken Little." I tell you
there is. If you could see her merry mischievous face; if you could see
her when she stands up on my shoulders like a monkey; if you had heard
her, yesterday, explain that God could see in the stove when all the
doors were shut; if you could see how she always manages to do what you
don't want her to do, and then find a good excuse for it afterward; you
would think there was a live, real "Chicken Little." If you could have
seen the old, funny twinkle in her eye, when I found her with the
stereoscope, you would have thought she was a real, live Chicken, sure
enough.
"Now, then, you've got to tell me a story," she said.
"'_Got to_' don't tell stories."
"Well, p'ease tell me one, then."
"Yes," said Sunbeam, peeping in, "about the Great Panjandrum himself."
"Ah! you little mink," I said, "how did you get hold of my secret?"
"Why, I knew it all the time."
Now, you see, the case was this; I did not know that the children
understood where the names of the Garuly and the Joblily, and the
Pickaninny came from. But Sunbeam, who dips a little here and there into
a great many books, and who never forgets anything she hears, had somehow
gotten hold of my secret. It was this. There was a man who could repeat
whatever he read once. One of his friends undertook to write something
that he could not remember. So he wrote nonsense, and the man with the
long memory failed to remember it. The nonsense, which I read when I was
a boy, is, if I remember it rightly, as follows:
"She went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and
a great she-bear coming down the street thrust his head into the shop.
'What, no soap?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber.
And there were present the Garulies, and the Joblilies, and the
Pickaninnies, and the Great Panjandrum himself, with his little, round
button-at-the-top; and they all fell to playing the game of
'Catch-as-catch-can,' till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their
boots."
Now you see where the Garulies and the Joblilies and the Pickaninnies
came from. And that's why the children thought the next story should be
about the Great Panjandrum. And so I began:
I was wandering, one day, in the Land of Nod, in that part of it known as
the state of Dreams, and in the county of Sleep, and in Doze township,
not far from the village of Shuteyetown, in Sleepy Hollow, where stands
the Church of the Seven Sleepers, on the corner of Snoring Lane and
Sluggard Avenue, near Slumber Hall, owned by the Independent Association
of Sleepy-headed Nincompoops.
"What a place!" said Fairy.
Well, as I was going to say, I was walking through Sleepy Hollow, when I
met some children.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"We want to find a four-leaved clover and a beetle with one eye," said
one of them; "for if we can find them, we shall be able to get into the
Great Panjandrum's place, and there we can learn whether there is a bag
of gold at the end of the rainbow or not."
Now, I was seized with a great desire to see the illustrious Panjandrum
for myself, and to know what he had to say of that wonderful bag of gold
that was to be found at the place where the rainbow touched the ground.
And so I fell to work with the happy boys and girls, looking for a
one-eyed beetle and a four-leaved clover. The clover was soon found, but
it was a long time before we got the beetle. At last we came to a log on
which two of that sort of beetles that children call "pinch-bugs" were
fighting. Whether they were prize-fighters, engaged in a combat for one
thousand dollars a side, or whether they were fighting a duel about some
affair of honor, I do not know; but I did notice that they fought most
brutally, scratching away savagely on each other's hard shells, without
doing a great deal of damage, however. But one of them had lost one eye
in the fight, and so we seized him and made off, leaving the other to
snap his tongs together in anger because he had nobody to pinch. It must
be a dreadful thing to want to hurt somebody and have nobody to hurt.
When we had gone some distance, we came to a gate that had a very curious
sign over it. It read, "The Great Panjandrum Himself." There was a Garuly
with a club standing by the gate, and a Pickaninny, in a blue coat with
a long tail, hopping around on top of it. We showed the one-eyed beetle
and the four-leaved clover, and the Garuly immediately hit the gate a
ringing blow with his club, and shouted, "Beetle! beetle! beetle!" in a
wonderfully sharp and squeaking voice, while the Pickaninny on top jerked
a little bell rope, and sung out "Clover." Then we could see through the
gate a Joblily lifting his head up out of a pond, inside the enclosure.
"How many eyes?" he asked.
"One," said the Garuly.
"How many leaves?" he said, again.
"Four," returned the Pickaninny.
"Then let them in that they may see the Great Panjandrum himself, and
learn whether there be a bag of gold at the end of the rainbow." Saying
this the Joblily went under the water and the gate opened.
We passed three gates, that were opened in the same manner, and found
ourselves in front of a queer old house, with seventy-seven gables and
ever so many doors, and over every door was written, "The Great
Panjandrum Himself." There was a great bustle about the place, dried-up
Garulies running around, dandy-looking Pickaninnies hopping about, and
Joblilies swimming in the lake. We asked what it all meant, and were told
that "she was going to marry the barber;" and then they all tittered, and
we could not for the life of us tell what this pother meant. When we told
a Garuly that we wanted to see the Great Panjandrum himself, and to find
out whether there was a bag of gold at the end of the rainbow, he took
our one-eyed beetle, and gave the four-leaved clover to a Pickaninny.
Together they took them into the house, and a Joblily came out in a
moment to tell us that the Great Panjandrum was having his little round
button-at-the-top brushed up, and that if we chose we could wait for him
in the museum.