"The Pollywog's a perfect type
Of amiability.
He never uses angry speech
Wherever he may be.
He never calls his brother names,
Or tweaks his sister's nose;
He never pulls the sea-dog's tail,
Or treads upon his toes.
"He never says an unkind word,
And frown he never will.
A smile is ever on his lips,
E'en when he's feeling ill.
And this is why: when Pollywog
The first came on the scene,
He had a temper like a cat's--
His eye with it was green.
"Now, just about the time when he
Began to lose his tail,
To change into a croaking frog,
He came across a nail--
A nail so rusty that it looked
Just like an angle-worm,
Except that it was straight and stiff,
And so could never squirm.
"And Polly, feeling hungry, to
Assuage his appetite,
Swam boldly up to that old nail,
And gave it such a bite,
He nearly broke his upper jaw;
His lower jaw he bent.
And then he got so very mad,
His temper simply went.
"He lost it so completely as
He lashed and gnashed around,
That though this happened years ago,
It has not since been found.
And that is why, at all times, in
The Pollywog you see,
A model of that virtue rare--
True Amiability."
"Now, I dare say," continued the Bird--"I dare say you might have asked
your father--who really knows a great deal, considering he isn't my twin
brother--sixteen million four hundred and twenty-three times why the
Pollywog is always so good-natured, and he couldn't have answered you
more than once out of the whole lot, and he'd have been wrong even
then."
"It must be lovely to know so much," said Jimmieboy.
"It is," said the Bird; "that is, it is lovely when you don't have to
keep it all to yourself. It's very nice to tell things. That's really
the best part of secrets, I think. It is such fun telling them. Now,
why does the sun rise in the morning?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"For the same reason that you do," returned the sage Bird. "Because it
is time to get up."
"Well, here's a thing I don't know about," said Jimmieboy. "What is 'to
alarm?'"
"To frighten--to scare--to discombobulate," replied the Bird. "Why?"
"Well, I don't see why an alarm-clock is called an alarm-clock, because
it doesn't ever alarm anybody," said Jimmieboy.
"Oh, it doesn't, eh?" cried the Bird. "Well, that's just where you are
mistaken. It alarms the people or the animals you dream about when you
are asleep, and they make such a noise getting away that they wake you
up. Why, an alarm-clock saved my life once. I dreamed that I fell asleep
on board a steamboat that went so fast hardly anybody could stay on
board of her--she just regularly slipped out from under their feet, and
unless a passenger could run fast enough to keep up with her, or was
chained fast enough to keep aboard of her, he'd get dropped astern every
single time. I dreamed I was aboard of her one day, and that to keep on
deck I chained myself to the smoke-stack, and then dozed off. Just as I
was dozing, a Misinformation Bird, who was jealous of me, sneaked up and
cut the chain. As he expected, the minute I was cut loose the boat
rushed from under me, and the first thing I knew I was struggling in the
water. While I was struggling there, I was attacked by a Catfish. Cats
are death to birds, you know, and I really had given myself up for lost,
when '_ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling_' went the alarm-clock in the corner of
my cage; the fish turned blue with fear, swished his tail about in his
fright, and the splashing of the water waked me up, and there I was
standing on one wheel on my perch, safe and sound. If that clock hadn't
gone off and alarmed that Catfish, I am afraid I should have been
forever lost to the world."
"I see now; but I never knew before why it was called an alarm-clock,
and I've wondered about it a good deal," said Jimmieboy. "Now, here's
another thing I've bothered over many a time: What's the use of weeds?"
"Oh, that's easy," said the Bird, with a laugh. "To make lawns look
prettier next year than they do this."
"I don't see how that is," said Jimmieboy.
"Clear as window-glass. This year you have weeds on your lawn, don't
you?"
"Yes," returned Jimmieboy.
"And you make them get out, don't you?" said the Bird.
"Yes," assented Jimmieboy.
"Well, there you are. By getting out they make your lawns prettier.
That's one of the simplest things in the world. But here's a thing I
should think you'd wonder at. Why do houses have shutters on their
windows?" asked the Bird.
"I know why," said Jimmieboy. "It's to keep the sun out."
"That's nonsense, because the sun is so much larger than any house that
was ever built it couldn't get in if it tried," returned the feathered
sage.
"Then I don't know why. Why?" asked Jimmieboy.
"So as to wake people up by banging about on windy nights, and they are
a mighty useful invention too," said the Bird. "I knew of a whole family
that got blown away once just because they hadn't any shutters to bang
about and warn them of their danger. It was out in the West, where they
have cyclones, which are things that pick up houses and toss them about
just as you would pebbles. A Mr. and Mrs. Podlington had built a house
in the middle of a big field for themselves and their seventeen
children. Mr. Podlington was very rich, but awful mean, and when the
house was finished, all except the shutters, he said he wasn't going to
have any shutters because they cost too much, and so they hadn't a
shutter on the house. One night after they had lived where they were
about six months they all went to bed about nine o'clock, and by ten
they were sound asleep, every one of them. At eleven o'clock a breeze
sprang up. This grew very shortly into a gale. Then it became a
hurricane, and by two o'clock it was a cyclone. One cyclone wouldn't
have hurt much, but at three o'clock two more came along, and the first
thing the Podlington family knew their house was blown off its
foundations, lifted high up in the air, and at breakfast-time was out of
sight, and, what is worse, it has never come down anywhere, and all this
happened ten years ago."
"But where did it go?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Nobody knows. Maybe it landed in the moon. Maybe it's being blown about
on the wings of those cyclones yet. I don't believe we'll ever know,"
answered the Bird. "But you can see just why that all happened. It was
Mr. Podlington's meanness about the shutters, and nothing else. If he
had had shutters on that house, at least one of them would have flopped
bangety-bang against the house all night, and the chances are that they
would all have been waked up by it before the cyclone came, and in
plenty of time to save themselves. In fact, I think very likely they
could have fastened the house more securely to the ground, and saved it
too, if they had waked up and seen what was going on."
[Illustration: "I'LL NEVER BUILD A HOUSE WITHOUT SHUTTERS."]
"I'll never build a house without shutters," said Jimmieboy, as he tried
to fancy the condition of the Podlingtons whisking about in the air for
ten long years--nearly five years longer than he himself had lived. If
they had landed in the moon it wouldn't have been so bad, but this other
possible and even more likely fate of mounting on the wind ever higher
and higher and not landing anywhere was simply dreadful to think about.
"I wouldn't, especially in the cyclone country," returned the voice in
the bush. "But I'll tell you of one thing that would save you if you
really did have to build a house without shutters; build it with wings.
You've heard of houses with wings, of course?"
"Yes, indeed," said Jimmieboy. "Why, our house has three wings. One of
'em was put on it last summer, so that we could have a bigger
kitchen."
"I remember," said the Bird. "I wondered a good deal about that wing
until I found out it was for a kitchen, and not to fly with. The house
had enough wings to fly with without the new one. In fact, the new one
for flying purposes would be as useless as a third wheel to a bicycle."
"What do you mean by to fly with?" asked Jimmieboy, puzzled at this
absurd remark of the Bird.
"Exactly what I say. Wings are meant to fly with, aren't they? I hope
you knew that!" said the Bird. "So if the Podlingtons' house had had
wings it might have got back all right. It could have worked its way
slowly out of the cyclone, and then sort of rested on its wings a little
until it was prepared to swoop down on to its old foundations, alighting
just where it was before. A trip through the air under such
circumstances would have been rather pleasant, I think--much pleasanter
than going off into the air forever, without any means of getting back."
"But," asked Jimmieboy, "even if Mr. Podlington's house had had wings,
how could he have made them work?"
"Why, how stupid of you!" cried the Bird. "Don't you know that he could
have taken hold of the----"
"Ting-a-ling-a-ling a-ling-a-ling!" rang the alarm-clock up in the
cook's room, which had been set for six o'clock in the afternoon instead
of for six in the morning by some odd mistake of Mary Ann's.
"The alarm! The alarm!" shrieked the Bird, in terror.
And then the invisible creature, if Jimmieboy could judge by the noise
in the bush, seemed to make off as fast as he could go, his cries of
fear growing fainter and fainter as the wise Bird got farther and
farther away, until finally they died away in the distance altogether.
Jimmieboy sprang to his feet, looked down the road along which his
strange friend had fled, and then walked into the house, wishing that
the alarm-clock had held off just a little longer, so that he might have
learned how the wings of a house should be managed to make the house fly
off into the air. He really felt as if he would like to try the
experiment with his own house.