By this time you should have noticed, if you ever stop to think, that
Marmaduke was quite a traveller. It was really remarkable the trips
and voyages that boy took--not only to the town, and Apgar's Woods,
and the Leaning Mill on Wally's Creek, but to the South Seas, The Cave
of the Winds, the Ole Man in the Moon, the Fields of Golden Stars, and
to all sorts of beautiful cities and kingdoms, some of which you may
find in your geographies, and some not on any map in the world. And he
didn't have much money for fares, either. It was hard to tell just how
he managed all these journeys, but sometimes, do you know, I suspect
he paid for his fare with a ticket of dreams. What do you think? Well,
anyway, one day he went to China.
And this is the way it all came about:
First he went to town--with the Toyman, of course, and Old Methusaleh.
That old white horse was tied to the hitching-post in front of
Trennery's Grocery Store, with his nose deep in a feed-bag. While the
Toyman was talking to Mr. Trennery--Mr. Will Trennery, and his brother
Lish--Marmaduke sat on the seat of the buggy and watched the people.
There were a lot of them, more than he ever saw on the farm, all at
one time. There must have been almost fifty on the street. Some of
them were lounging around the soldier who stood on the big stone with
a gun that never went off; some were hitching up their horses, or
"giddyapping" to them; while a crowd was going in the side door of the
"City Hotel," and another stood in front of Trennery's Grocery Store,
telling who'd be the next president. They were very wise, they
thought, but Marmaduke was sure the Toyman could tell them a thing or
two--and that was just what the Toyman was doing.
After a while Marmaduke tired of listening to all their talk about
presidents and the new Justice of the Peace, and he looked at the
other stores and all their signs. He noticed a new one that had just
come to town. It stood between Trennery's and Candlemas' Emporium, and
it was even more interesting than the candy store. It had a red sign
above the door with white letters which read:--
"Hop Sing
Laundry."
In the windows were parcels of shirts, tied with white string, with
little slips of paper under the string. These slips of paper were
colored like the petunias in Mother's garden, and on them were funny
black letters that looked like chicken-, and rabbit-, and fox-tracks,
all mixed up.
Inside the store three little men were ironing, ironing away on boards
covered with sheets, and jabbering in a strange language. And they
wore clothes that were as strange as the words they spoke--clothes
that looked like pajamas with dark blue tops and light blue trousers.
And each of the little men had a yellow face, slant eyes, and a black
pigtail.
It was Saturday, and a group of town-boys stood around the door,
gazing in at the three strange little men and mocking them:--
"Ching, ching Chinaman,
Bow, wow, wow!"
Then one of the boys would shout in through the door,--"Bin eatin' any
ole stewed rats, Chinky?" and another would ask,--"Give us a taste of
yer bird's-nest pudding?" They thought they were very smart, and that
wasn't all, for, after calling the Chinamen all the names they could
think of, the boys reached down into the ditch, which some men were
digging for a sewer, and scooped up handfuls of mud and threw it
straight into the laundry and all over the snow-white shirts the
little men were ironing; at which, the Chinamen grew very angry and
came to the door, shaking their flat-irons in their hands and
calling,--
[Illustration]
And the boys ran away, still mocking them. You could hear their shouts
dying away in the distance:--
"Chinky, chinky Chinaman,
Bow, wow, wow!"
Not long after this the Toyman came out from Trennery's and climbed on
the seat; and he and Marmaduke and Old Methusaleh jogged along towards
home. All the way, Marmaduke couldn't help thinking of the three
little men in their blue pajamas and their black pigtails; and he
asked the Toyman a lot of questions, even more than you will find in
his arithmetic, I guess, all about what those letters on the packages
of shirts meant, and if the Chinamen braided their pigtails every
night and morning just like girls, and if they really did eat "ole
rats," and bird's-nest puddings, and all that.
The Toyman could hardly keep up with the questions; and he hadn't
answered them all, either, by the time they reached the White House
with the Green Blinds by the Side of the Road.
On the afternoon of that same day, Marmaduke was sitting like a
hoptoad, watching the Toyman dig post-holes in the brook pasture. The
sun shone so soft and warm, and the cedar posts smelled so nice and
fragrant, that he began to feel drowsy. He didn't sit like a hoptoad
any more, but lay on his elbow, and his head nodded--nodded----nodded.
Rather faintly he heard the Toyman say:
"Well, that's pretty deep. A little more, and I'd reach down into
China."
The little boy rubbed his eyes and looked down into the deep brown
hole.
"If you dug a little more," he asked, "would you really go down
through the earth, all the way to China--where the Chinamen live?"
"Sure," replied the Toyman, who never liked to disappoint little boys.
"Then," said Marmaduke, "please dig a little more--for--I'd like--to
see--where--the Chinamen--live--." His voice sounded very sleepy.
The Toyman dug another shovelful or two, and all the while the little
boy's head kept nodding, nodding in the sun--then--as the last
shovelful fell on the pile at his side, he looked down in the hole
once more and heard voices--strange voices.
Words were coming up out of that hole, and it seemed to Marmaduke that
he could see those words as well as hear them. Now that is a very odd
thing, but it is actually what happened--he could both see and hear
them--and they looked like the funny music on phonograph
advertisements--something like this:
[Illustration]
And, way down at the bottom of the hole, he saw three black heads with
pigtails that curled upward in the hole like smoke coming from a
chimney.
He tried to grab hold of them, but he fell, and Wienerwurst after him,
right plump among the pigtails, landing on the three Chinamen way down
in the hole, and knocking them flat on their backs until their feet
with the funny black slippers kicked in the air.
Then they all got up and rubbed their tummies under the blue pajamas.
"Velly wude little Mellican boy," said the first little Chinaman,
whose name was Ping Pong.
"Velly bad manners," said the second, who was called Sing Song.
"You beggy our pardon," the third, whose name was Ah See.
Now Marmaduke intended to do that very thing--that is, beg their
pardon, for he was very polite for an American boy.
"I'm very sorry--I didn't mean to hurt you," he explained, "I just
fell down that hole."
At this he looked up the sides of the hole. It seemed as if he were at
the bottom of a great round stove-pipe, or a well with brown sides.
Far, far above him was a little circle of light blue, the top of the
hole where he had fallen in.
After he had begged their pardon so nicely, the three little yellow
men said, all together,--
"Little Mellican boy velly politely; he has honorable ancestors."
Marmaduke looked around again and saw that they were standing, not on
the bottom of the hole, but on a little landing like that on a
stairway. Below them the hole kept on descending into the darkness,
curving round and round like a corkscrew or the stairways in old
castles--down, down, down.
"Little Mellican boy like see China?" asked Ping Pong.
"Very much, thank you," replied Marmaduke, trying to be as polite as
they were.
But the Toyman would miss him. He looked way up at the circle of light
at the top of the hole and shouted:
"Say, Toyman, can I go to China--just for a little while?"
The Toyman's face appeared in the circle of light at the top.
"Sure, sonny, have a good time," he shouted back, and his voice coming
way down that hole sounded hollow, as if he were hollering down a
well.
Marmaduke waved to him.
"Goodbye, I won't be long," he called.
Then, turning, he saw that the three Chinamen had flat-irons in their
hands. They were fitting the handles to them. Ah See handed Marmaduke
a fourth iron for himself.
"Mellican boy wide on this--now, velly caleful," said he.
"But how can I ride on such a small iron?" asked Marmaduke.
"Watchee and see,
Allee samee as me."
And at once all the three little Chinamen mounted the irons and curled
their tiny slippered feet under them. And Marmaduke curled up on his
iron just as they did.
"Allee weady!" shouted Ping Pong, and all-of-a-sudden they started
scooting down that curving brown hole, round and round, down through
the deep earth. Wienerwurst had no iron to slide on, but he did pretty
well on his haunches, and how swiftly the brown sides of the earth
slipped by them! How fast the air whistled past!
After a fine ride they saw ahead of them a great red light. It looked
like the sky that time when Apgar's barn was on fire.
They stopped with a bump and a bang. Marmaduke waited until he had
caught his breath, then he looked around. They had stopped on a
gallery, or sort of immense shelf, that extended around a tremendous
pit or hole in the earth. In the centre of it stood a big giant,
shovelling coal in a furnace. The furnace was as high as the Woolworth
Building in New York City, which Marmaduke had seen on picture
post-cards. And the Giant was as big as the furnace himself.
He had a beard, and eyes as large and round as the wheels of a wagon;
and he was naked to the waist. Great streams of sweat, like brooks in
flood-time, poured off his body. When these rivers of sweat struck the
ground, they sizzled mightily and turned into fountains of steam that
rose in the air like the geysers in Yellowstone Park, it was so hot in
the place.
Marmaduke felt pretty warm himself, and he mopped his face with the
handkerchief which he had won in the Jack Horner pie at the church
sociable. It had pictures of pink and blue ducks and geese on it, and
it looked very small beside the handkerchief with which the Giant was
mopping his face. That was as big as a circus tent. Marmaduke himself
looked very small beside the stranger. When the little boy stretched out
his hand, he just reached the nail on the Giant's great toe.