_THE MAGIC SLED_
When Jimmieboy waked up the other morning the ground was white with snow
and his heart was rejoiced. Like many another small youth Jimmieboy has
very little use for green winters. He likes them white. Somehow or other
they do not seem like winters if they haven't plenty of snow and he had
been much afraid that the season was going to pass away without bringing
to him an opportunity to use the beautiful sled Santa Claus had brought
him at Christmas.
It was a fine sled, one of the finest he had ever seen. It had a red
back, yellow runners and two swan heads standing erect in front of it to
tell it which way it should go. On the red surface of the back was
painted its name in very artistic blue letters, and that name was
nothing more nor less than "Magic."
"Hooray," he cried as he rushed to the window and saw the dazzling
silver coating on the lawn and street. "Snow at last! Now I can see if
Magic can slide."
He dressed hastily--so hastily in fact that he had to undress again,
because it was discovered by his mother, who came to see how he was
getting along, that he had put on his stocking wrong side out, and that
his left shoe was making his right foot uncomfortable.
"Don't be in such a hurry," said his Mamma. "There was a man once who
was always in such a hurry that he forgot to take his head down town
with him one day, and when lunch time came he hadn't anything with him
to eat his lunch with."
"But I want to slide," said Jimmieboy, "and I'm afraid there'll be a
slaw come along and melt the snow."
Jimmieboy always called thaws slaws, so his mother wasn't surprised at
this remark, and in a few minutes the boy was ready to coast.
"Come along, Magic!" he said, gleefully catching up the rope. "We'll see
now if Uncle Periwinkle was right when he said he didn't think you'd go
more'n a mile a minute, unless you had a roller-skate on both your
runners."
And then, though Jimmieboy did not notice it, the left-hand swan-head
winked its eye at the other swan-head and whispered, "Humph! It's plain
Uncle Periwinkle doesn't know that we are a magic sled."
"Well, why should he?" returned the other swan-head, with a laugh. "He
never slode on us."
"I'm glad I'm not an uncle," said the left-hand head. "Uncles don't
know half as much as we do."
"And why should they!" put in the other. "They haven't had the
importunities we have for gaining knowledge. A man who has lived all his
days in one country and which has never slad around the world like us
has, don't see things the way us would."
And still Jimmieboy did not notice that the swan-heads were talking
together, though I can hardly blame him for that, because, now that he
was out of doors he had to keep his eyes wide open to keep from bumping
his head into the snow balls the hired man was throwing at him. In a few
minutes, however, he did notice the peculiar fact and he was so
surprised that he sat plump down on the red back of the sled and was off
for--well, where the sled took him, and of all the slides that ever were
slid, that was indeed the strangest. No sooner had he sat down than
with a leap that nearly threw him off his balance, the swans started.
The steel runners crackled merrily over the snow, and the wind itself
was soon left behind.
"C-can you sus-swans tut-talk?" Jimmieboy cried, in amazement, as soon
as he could get his breath.
"Oh, no, of course not," said the right-hand swan. "_We_ can't talk, can
we Swanny?"
"No, indeed, Swayny," returned the other with a laugh. "You may think we
talk, you may even hear words from our lips, we might even recite a
poem, but that wouldn't be talk--oh, no, indeed. Certainly not."
"It's a queer question for him to ask, eh Swanny?" said the right-hand
head.
"Extraordinary, Swayny," said the one on the left. "Might as well ask a
locomotive if it smokes."
"Well, I only wanted to know," said Jimmieboy.
"He only wanted to know, Swanny," said Swayny.
"I presume that was why he asked--as though we didn't know that," said
Swanny. "He'd ask a pie-man with a tray full of pies, if he had any
pies, I believe."
"Yes, or a cat if he could miaou. Queer boy," returned Swayny. And then
he added:
"I think a boy, who'd waste his time
In asking questions such as that,
Would ask a man, who dealt in rhyme
If he'd a head inside his hat."
Jimmieboy laughed.
"You know poetry, don't you," he said.
"Well, rather," said Swayny. "That is to say, I can tell it from a
church steeple."
"Which reminds me," put in Swanny, as strange to say, this wonderful
sled began to slide up a very steep hill, "of a conundrum I never heard
before. What's the difference between writing poetry the way some people
do and building a steeple as all people do?"
"I can't say," said Swayny, "though if you'll tell me the answer now
next time you ask that conundrum I'll be able to inform you."
"Some people who write poetry run it into the ground," said Swanny, "and
all people who build steeples, run 'em up into the air."
"That's not bad," said Jimmieboy, with a smile.
"No," said Swanny, "it is not--but you don't know why."
"I don't indeed," observed Jimmieboy. "Why?"
"Because my conundrums never are," said Swanny.
"EUROPE!" cried Swayny. "_Five minutes for refreshments._"
"What _do_ you mean?" said Jimmieboy, as the sled came to a standstill.
"What does any conductor mean when he calls out the name of a station?"
said Swayny scornfully. "He means that's where you are at of course.
Which is what I mean. We've arrived at Europe. That's the kind of a fast
mail sled we are. In three minutes we've carried you up hill and down
dale, over the sea to Europe."
"Really?" cried Jimmieboy, dumfounded.
"Certainly," said Swanny. "You are now in Europe. That blue place you
see over on the right is Germany, off to the left is France and that
little pink speck is Switzerland. See that glistening thing just on the
edge of the pink speck?"
"Yes," said Jimmieboy.
"That's an Alp," said Swanny. "It's too bad we've got to get you home in
time for breakfast. If we weren't in such a hurry, we'd let you off so
that you could buy an Alp to take home to your brother. You could have
snow-balls all through the summer if you had an Alp in your nursery, but
we can't stop now to get it. We've got to runaway immediately. Ready
Swayny?"
"Yes," said Swayny. "ALL ABOARD FOR ENGLAND. Passengers will please keep
their seats until the sled comes to a standstill in the station."
And then they were off again.
"How did you like Europe?" asked Swanny, as they sped along through a
beautiful country, which Swayny said was France.
"Very nice what I saw of it," said Jimmieboy. "But, of course I couldn't
see very much in five minutes."
"Hoh! Hear that, Swayny?" said Swanny. "Couldn't see much in five
minutes. Why you could see all Europe in five minutes, if you only
looked fast enough. You kept your eye glued on that Alp, I guess."
"That's what he did," said Swayny. "And that's why it was so hard to get
the sled started. I had to hump three times before I could get my runner
off and it was all because he'd glued his eye on the Alp! Don't do it
again, Jimmieboy. We haven't time to unglue your eye every time we
start."
"I don't blame him," said Swanny. "Those Alps are simply great, and I
sometimes feel myself as if I'd like to look at 'em as much as forty
minutes. I'd hate to be a hired man on an Alp, though."
"So would I," said Swayny. "It would be awful if the owner of the Alp
made the hired man shovel the snow off it every morning."
"I wasn't thinking of that so much as I was of getting up every morning,
early, to push the clouds away," said Swanny. "People are very careless
about their clouds on the Alps, and they wander here and there, straying
from one man's lawn onto another's, just like cows where Jimmieboy
lives. I knew a man once who bought the top of an Alp just for the view,
and one of his neighbor's clouds came along and squatted down on his
place and simply killed the view entirely, and I tell you he made his
hired man's life miserable. Scolded him from morning until night, and
fed him on cracked ice for a week, just because he didn't scare the
cloud off when he saw it coming."
"I don't see how a man could scare a cloud off," said Jimmieboy.
"Easy as eating chocolate creams," said Swayny. "You can do it with a
fan, if you have one big enough--but, I say, Swanny, put on the brakes
there quick, or we'll run slam-bang into----"
"LONDON!" cried Swanny, putting on the brakes, and sure enough that's
where they were. Jimmieboy knew it in a minute, because there was a lady
coming out of a shop preceded by a band of music, and wearing a big
crown on her head, whom he recognized at once as the great and good
Queen, whose pictures he had often seen in his story books.
"Howdy do, little boy," said the Queen, as her eye rested on Jimmieboy.
"I'm very well, thank you, Ma'am," said Jimmieboy, holding out his hand
for Her Majesty to shake.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I'm sliding until breakfast is ready," he replied.
"Until breakfast is ready?" she cried. "Why, what time do you have
breakfast?"
"Eight o'clock, so's papa can catch the 8:30 train, Ma'am," said
Jimmieboy.
"But--it is now nearly one o'clock!" said the Queen.
"That's all right, Your Roily Highnishness," said Swanny. "This is an
American boy and he breakfasts on the American plan. It isn't eight
o'clock yet where he lives."
"Oh, yes--so it isn't," said the Queen. "I remember now. The sun rises
earlier here than it does in America."
"Yes, Ma'am," put in Swayny. "It has to in order to get to America on
time. America is some distance from here as you may have heard."
And before the Queen could say another word, the sled was sliding
merrily along at such a rapid pace that Jimmieboy had to throw his arms
about Swayny's neck to keep from falling overboard.
"W-where are we g-g gug-going to now?" he stammered.
"China," said Swanny.
"Egypt," said Swayny.
"I said China," cried Swanny, turning his eyes full upon Swayny and
glaring at him.
"I know you did," said Swayny. "I may not show 'em, but I have ears. I,
on the other hand said Egypt, and Egypt is where we are going. I want to
show Jimmieboy the Pyramids. He's never seen a Pyramid and he has seen
Chinamen."
"No doubt," said Swanny. "But this time he's not going to Egypt. I'm
going to show him a Mandarin. He can build a Pyramid with his blocks,
but he never in his life could build a Mandarin. Therefore, Ho for
China."
"You mean Bah! for China," said Swayny, angrily. "I'm not going to
China, Mr. William G. Swanny and that's all there is about that. Last
time I was there a Chinaman captured me and tied me to his pig-tail and
I vowed I'd never go again."
"And when I was in Egypt last time, I was stolen by a mummy, who wanted
to broil and eat me because he hadn't had anything to eat for two
thousand years. So _I_'m not going to Egypt."
Whereupon the two strange birds became involved in a dreadful quarrel,
one trying to run the sled off toward China, the other trying, with
equal vim, to steer it over to Egypt. The runners creaked; the red back
groaned and finally, there came a most dreadful crash. Swanny flew off
with his runner to the land of Flowers, and Swayny, freed from his
partner, forgetting Jimmieboy completely, sped on to Egypt.
And Jimmieboy.
Well, Jimmieboy, fell in between and by some great good fortune, for
which I am not at all prepared to account, landed in a heap immediately
beside his little bed in the nursery, not dressed in his furs at all but
in his night gown, while out of doors not a speck of snow was to be
seen, and strangest of all, when he was really dressed and had gone down
stairs, there stood Magic and the two swan heads, as spick and span as
you please, still waiting to be tried.