Half-Hours with Jimmieboy
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"Oh, that would be lovely!" said Jimmieboy. "I'd just like to see you with two humps on your back – one for me, and one for my little brother."
"Dear me!" said a gruff voice at Jimmieboy's side – "Dear me! The idea of a boy of your age, with two sets of alphabet picture blocks and a dictionary right in the house, not knowing that a dromedary has only one hump! Ridiculous! Next thing you'll be trying to say that the one-eyed catteraugus has two eyes."
Jimmieboy leaned over the arm of the chair to see who it could be that spoke. It wasn't his father, that much was certain, because his father had often said that it wasn't possible to do more than three things at once, and he was now doing that many – smoking a cigar, reading a book, and playing with the locket on the end of his watch-chain.
"Who are you, anyhow?" said Jimmieboy, as he peered over the arm, and saw nothing but the Dictionary.
"I'm myself – that's who," was the answer, and then Jimmieboy was interested to see that it was nothing less than the Dictionary itself that had addressed him. "You ought to be more careful about the way you talk," added the Dictionary. "Your diction is airy without being dictionary, if you know what that means, which you don't, as the Rose remarked to the Cauliflower, when the Cauliflower said he'd be a finer Rose than the Rose if he smelled as sweet."
"I'm very sorry," Jimmieboy replied, meekly, "I forgot that the dromedary only had one hump."
"I don't believe you'd know a dromedary from a milk dairy if they both stood before you," retorted the Dictionary. "Now would you?"
"Yes, I think I would," said Jimmieboy. "The milk dairy would have cream in bottles in its windows, and the dromedary wouldn't."
"Ah, but you don't know why!" sang the Dictionary. "You don't even begin to know why the dromedary wouldn't have cream in bottles in its windows."
"No," said Jimmieboy, "I don't. Why wouldn't he?"
"Because he has no windows," laughed the Dictionary; "and between you and me, that's one of the respects in which the dromedary is like a base-drum – there isn't a solitary window in either of 'em."
"You know a terrible lot, don't you?" said Jimmieboy, patronizingly.
"Terrible isn't the word. I'm simply hideously learned," said the Dictionary. "Why, I've been called a vocabulary, I know so many words."
"I wish you'd tell me all you know," said Jimmieboy, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair, and putting his chin on the palms of his two hands. "I'd like to know more than papa does – just for once. Do you know enough to tell me anything he doesn't know?"
"Do I?" laughed the Dictionary. "Well, don't I? Rather. Why, I'm telling him things all the time. He came and asked me the other night what raucous meant, and how to spell macrobiotic."
"And did you really know?" asked Jimmieboy, full of admiration for this wonderful creature.
"Yes; and a good deal more besides. Why, if he had asked me, I could have told him what a zygomatic zoophagan is; but he never asked me. Queer, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Jimmieboy. "What is one of those things?"
"A zygomatic zoophagan? Why that's a – er – let me see," said the Dictionary, turning over his leaves. "I like to search myself pretty thoroughly before I commit myself to a definition. A zygomatic zoophagan is a sort of cheeky animal that eats other animals. You are one, though I wouldn't brag about it if I were you. You are an animal, and at times a very cheeky animal, and I've seen you eat beef. That's what makes you a zygomatic zoophagan."
"Do I bite?" asked Jimmieboy, a little afraid of himself since he had learned what a fearful creature he was.
"Only at dinner-time, and unless you are very careless about it and eat too hastily you need not be afraid. Very few zygomatic zoophagans ever bite themselves. In fact, it never happened really but once that I know of. That was the time the zoophagan got the best of the eight-winged tallahassee. Ever hear about that?"
"No, I never did," said Jimmieboy. "How did it happen?"
"This way," said the Dictionary, as he stood up and made a bow to Jimmieboy. And then he recited these lines:
"THE CALIPEE AND THE ZOOPHAGAN.""The yellow-faced ZoophaganWas strolling near the sea,When from the depths of oceanSprang forth that dread amp-hib-ian,The mawkish Calipee."The Tallahassee bird sometimesThe Calipee is called.His eyes are round and big as dimes,He has eight wings, composes rhymes,His head is very bald."Now if there are two creatures inThis world who disagree —Two creatures full of woe and sin —They are the Zo-oph, pale and thin,And that bad Calipee."Whene'er they meet they're sure to fight,No matter where they are;Nor do they stop by day or night,Till one is beaten out of sight,Or safety seeks afar."And, sad to say, the CalipeeIs stronger of the two;And so he'd won the victoryAt all times from his enemy,The slight and slender Zoo."But this time it went otherwise,For, so the story goes,As yonder sun set in the skies,The Calipee, to his surprise,Was whacked square on the nose."Which is the fatal, mortal partOf all the Calipees;Much more important than the heart,For life is certain to departWhen Cali cannot sneeze."The world, surprised, asked 'How was it?How did he do it so?Where did the Zoo get so much wit?How did he learn so well to hitSo fatally his foe?'"''Twas but his strategy,' then criedThe friends of little Zoo;'As Cali plunged, our hero shied,Ran twenty feet off to one side,And bit himself in two."'And then, you see, the CalipeeWas certainly undone;The Zo-oph beat him easily,As it must nearly always beWhen there are two to one.'"Rather a wonderful tale that," continued the Dictionary. "I don't know that I really believe it, though. It's too great a tale for any dog to wag, eh?"
"Yes," said Jimmieboy. "I don't think I believe it either. If the zoophagan bit himself in two, I should think he'd have died. I know I would."
"No, you wouldn't," said the Dictionary; "because you couldn't. It isn't a question of would and could, but of wouldn't and couldn't. By-the-way, here's a chance for you to learn something. What's the longest letter in the alphabet?"
"They're all about the same, aren't they?" asked Jimmieboy.
"They look so, but they aren't. L is the longest. An English ell is forty-five inches long.[Pg 67][Pg 68] Here's another. What letter does a Chinaman wear on his head?"
"Double eye!" cried Jimmieboy.
"That's pretty good," said the Dictionary, with an approving nod; "but you're wrong. He wears a Q. And I'll tell you why a Q is like a Chinaman. Chinamen don't amount to a row of beans, and a Q is nothing but a zero with a pig-tail. Do you know why they put A at the head of the alphabet?"
"No."
"Because Alphabet begins with an A."
"Then why don't they put T at the end of it?" asked Jimmieboy.
"They do," said the Dictionary. "I-T – it."
Jimmieboy laughed to himself. He had no idea there was so much fun in the Dictionary. "Tell me something more," he said.
"Let me see. Oh, yes," said the Dictionary, complacently. "How's this?
"'Oh, what is a yak, sir?' the young man said;'I really much wish to hear.''A queer-looking cad with a bushy head,A buffalo-robe all over him spread,And whiskers upon his ear.'"And tell me, I pray,' said the boy in drab,Just what's a Thelphusi-an?''A great big crab with nippers that nabWhatever the owner desires to grab —A crusty crustace-an.""'I'm obliged,' said the boy, with a wide, wide smirk,As he slowly moved away.'Will you tell me, sir, ere I go to work —To toil till the night brings along its murk —How high peanuts are to-day?'"And I had to give in,For I couldn't say;And the boy, with a grin,Moved off on his way.""That was my own personal experience," said the Dictionary. "The boy was a very mean boy, too. He went about telling people that there were a great many things I didn't know, which was very true, only he never said what they were, and his friends thought they were important things, like the meaning of sagaciousness, and how many jays are there in geranium, and others. If he'd told 'em that it was things like the price of peanuts, and how are the fish biting to-day, and is your mother's seal-skin sack plush or velvet, that I didn't know, they'd not have thought it disgraceful. Oh, it was awfully mean!"
"Particularly after you had told him what those other things were," said Jimmieboy.
"Yes; but I got even with him. He came to me one day to find out what an episode was, and I told him it was a poem in hysterical hexameters, with a refrain repeated every eighteenth line, to be sung to slow music."
"And what happened?" asked Jimmieboy.
"He told his teacher that, and he was kept in for two months, and made to subtract two apples from one lunch every recess."
"Oh, my, how awful!" cried Jimmieboy.
"But it served him right. Don't you think so?" said the Dictionary.
"Yes, I do," said Jimmieboy. "But tell me. What'll I tell papa that he doesn't know?"
"Tell him that a sasspipedon is a barrel with four sides, and is open at both ends, and is a much better place for cigar ashes than his lap, because they pass through it to the floor, and so do not soil his clothes."
"Good!" said Jimmieboy, peering across the room to where his father still sat smoking. "I think I'll tell him now. Say, papa," he cried sitting up, "what is a sasspipedon?"
"I don't know. What?" answered Jimmieboy's father, laying his paper down, and coming over to where the little boy sat.
"It's a – it's a – it's an ash-barrel," said the little fellow, trying to remember what the Dictionary had said.
"Who said so?" asked papa.
"The Dictionary," answered Jimmieboy.
And when Jimmieboy's father came to examine the Dictionary on the subject, the disagreeable old book hadn't a thing to say about the sasspipedon, and Jimmieboy went up to bed wondering what on earth it all meant, anyhow.
VI.
JIMMIEBOY'S SNOWMAN
The snow had been falling fast for well-nigh forty-eight hours and Jimmieboy was almost crazy with delight. He loved the snow because it was possible to do so much with it. One didn't need to go into a store, for instance, and part with ten cents every time one happened to want a ball, when there was snow on the ground. Then, too, Jimmieboy had a new sled he wanted to try, but best of all, his father had promised to make him a snowman, with shoe-buttons for eyes and a battered old hat on his head, if perchance there could be found anywhere in the house a hat of that sort. Fortunately a battered old hat was found, and the snowman when finished looked very well in it. I say fortunately because Jimmieboy had fully made up his mind that a battered hat was absolutely necessary to make the snowman a success, and had not the old one been found I very much fear the youth would have taken his father's new one and battered that into the state of usefulness required to complete the icy statue to his satisfaction.
After the snowman was finished Jimmieboy romped about him and shouted in great glee for an hour or more, and then, growing a little weary of the sport, he ran up into his nursery to rest for a little while. He had not been there very long however when he became, for some unknown reason, uneasy about the funny looking creature he had left behind him. Running to the window he looked out to see if the snowman was all right, and he was much surprised to discover that he wasn't there at all. He couldn't have melted, that was certain, for the air was colder than it had been when the snowman was put up. No one could have stolen him because he was too big, and so, well, it certainly was a strange conclusion, but none the less the only one, he must have walked off himself.
"It's mighty queer!" thought Jimmieboy. "He was there ten minutes ago."
Then he ran down stairs and peered out of the window. At the front of the house no snowman was in sight. Then he went to a side window and looked out. Still no snowman. And then the door-bell rang, and Jimmieboy went to the door and opened it, and, dear me! how he laughed when he saw who it was that had rung the bell, as would also have you, for, honestly, it was no one else than the snowman himself.
"What do you want?" asked Jimmieboy. The snowman made a low bow to Jimmieboy, and replied:
"I got so weary standing there,I thought I'd ask you for a chair;'Tis rather cool of me, I know,But coolness in a man of snowIs quite the fashion in these days,And to be stylish always pays.""Won't you come in?" asked Jimmieboy politely.
The snowman stared at Jimmieboy with all the power of the shoe-buttons. He was evidently surprised. In a moment or two, however, he recovered and said:
"Indeed, I'll enter not that door,I've tried it once or twice before.""What of that?" asked Jimmieboy. "Didn't you like it?"
"Oh, yes; I liked it well enough,Although it used me pretty rough;I lost a nose and foot and ear,Last time I happened to come here.""Do you always speak in rhyme?" asked Jimmieboy, noticing the snowman's habit for the first time.
"Always, except when I speak in prose," said the snowman. "But perhaps you don't like rhyme?"
"Yes, I do like rhyme very much," said Jimmieboy.
"Then you like me," said the snowman, "because I'm mostly rime myself. But say, don't stand there with the door open letting all the heat out into the world. If you want to talk to me come outside where we can be comfortable."
"Very well," said Jimmieboy. "I'll come, if you'll wait until I bundle up a little so as to keep warm."
"All right, I'll wait," the snowman answered, "only don't you get too warm. I'll take you up to where I live and introduce you to my boys if you like – only hurry. If a thaw should set in we might have trouble.
"Of all mean things I ever sawThe meanest of them is a thaw."Jimmieboy, pondering deeply over his curious experience, quickly donned his overcoat and rubber boots, and in less time than it takes to tell it was out of doors again with the snowman. The huge white creature smiled happily as Jimmieboy came out, and taking him by the hand they went off up the road together.
"I'm glad you weren't offended with me because I wouldn't go in and sit down in your house," said the snowman, after they had walked a little way. "I had a very narrow escape thirty winters ago when I was young and didn't know any better than to accept an invitation of that sort. I lived in Russia then, and a small boy very much like you asked me to go into his house with him and see some funny picture-books he had. I said all right, and in I went, never thinking that the house was hot and that I'd be in danger of melting away. The boy got out his picture-books and we sat down before a blazing log fire. Suddenly the boy turned white as I was, and cried out:
"'Hi! What have you done with your leg?'
"'I brought it in with me, didn't I?' I said, looking down to where the leg ought to be, and noticing much to my concern that it was gone.
"'I thought so,' said the boy. 'Maybe you left it down on the hat-rack with your hat and cane.'
"'Well I wish you'd go and see,' said I, very nervously. 'I don't want to lose that leg if I can help it.'
"So off the boy went," continued the snowman, "and I waited there before the fire wondering what on earth had become of the missing limb. The boy soon came back and announced that he couldn't find it.
"'Then I must hop around until I do find it,' I put in, starting up. Would you believe it, Jimmieboy, that the minute I tried to rise and hop off on the search I discovered that my other leg was gone too?"
"Dear me!" said Jimmieboy. "How dreadful."
"It was fearful," returned the snowman, "but that wasn't half. I raised my hand to my forehead so as to think better, when off dropped my right arm, and as I reached out with my left to pick it up again that dropped off too. Then as my vest also disappeared, the boy cried out:
"'Why, I know what's the matter. You are melting away!'
"He was right. The heat of the log fire was just withering me right up. Fortunately as my neck began to go and my head rolled off the chair onto the floor, the boy had presence of mind enough to pick it up – it was all that was left of me – and throw it out of the window. If it hadn't been for that timely act of his I should have met the horrid fate of my cousin the iceberg."
"What was that?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Oh, he wanted to travel," said the snowman, "so he floated off down to South America and waked up one morning to find himself nothing but a tankful of the Gulf of Mexico. We never saw the poor fellow again."
"I understand now why you didn't want to come in," said Jimmieboy, "and I'm glad you didn't do as I asked you, for I don't think mamma would have been pleased if you'd melted away in the parlor."
"I know she wouldn't," said the snowman. "She's like the woman mentioned in the poem, who
" – hated flies and muddy shoes,As well as pigs and kangaroos;But most of all she did abhor,A melted snow-drift on the floor.""Do you live near here?" asked Jimmieboy as he trudged along at the snowman's side.
"Well," replied the snowman, "I do, and I don't. When I do, I do, and when I don't, it's otherwise. This climate doesn't agree with me in the summer, and so when summer comes I move up to the North Pole. Ever been there?"
"No," said Jimmieboy, "what sort of a place is it?"
"Fine," returned the snowman. "The thermometer is always at least twenty miles below zero, even on the hottest days, and fire can't by any possibility come near us. Only one fire ever tried to and it was frozen stiff before it got within a hundred leagues of us. In winter, however, I come to places like this, and bring my little boys with me. We hire a convenient snow-drift and live in that. There's mine now right ahead of you."
Jimmieboy peered curiously along the road, at the far end of which he could see a huge mound of snow like the one the famous blizzard had piled up in front of his father's house some time before Jimmieboy and the world came to know each other.
"Do you live in that?" he asked.
"Yes," said the snowman. "And I will say that it's one of the most conveniently arranged snow-drifts I ever lived in. The house part of it is always as cold as ice – it's cooled by a special kind of refrigerator I had put in, which consumes about half a ton of ice a week."
Jimmieboy laughed.
"It's a cold furnace, eh?" he said.
"Precisely," answered the snowman. "And besides that the house is deliciously draughty so that we have no difficulty in keeping cold. Once in a while my boys run in the sun and get warmed through, but I dose 'em up with ice-water and cold cream and they soon get chilled again. But come, shall we go in?"
The pedestrians had by this time reached the side of the snow-drift, and Jimmieboy was pleased to see a door at one side of it. This the snowman opened, and they entered together a marvelously beautiful and extensive garden glistening with frosty flowers and snow-clad trees. At the end of the garden was a little white house that looked like the icing on Jimmieboy's birthday cake. As they approached it, the door of the little house was thrown open and a dozen small-sized snow boys rushed out and began to pelt the snowman and Jimmieboy with tennis balls.
"Hold up, boys," cried the snowman. "I've brought a friend home to see you."
The boys stopped at once, and Jimmieboy was introduced to them. For hours they entertained him in the gardens and in the house. They showed him wondrous snow toys, among which were rocking horses, railway trains, soldiers – all made of the same soft fleecy substance from which the snowman and his children were constructed. When he had played for a long time with these they gave him caramels and taffy and cream cakes, these also made of snow, though as far as their taste went they were better than those made of sugar and chocolate and cream, or, at least, it seemed so to Jimmieboy at the time.
After this bit of luncheon the boys invited him out to coast, and he went along with them to the top of a high hill without any snow upon it, and for hours he and they slid from summit to base in great red-wheeled wagons. It took his breath away the first time he went down, but when he got used to it he found the sport delightful. He was glad, however, when a voice from the little white house called to the children to return.
"Come in now, boys," it said. "It is getting too warm for you to stay out."
The boys were obedient to the word and they all – a dozen of them at least – trooped back into the house where Jimmieboy was welcomed by his friend the snowman again. The snowman looked a little anxious, Jimmieboy thought, but he supposed this was because the littlest snowboy had overheated himself at his play and had come in minus two fingers and an ear. It was not this, however, that bothered him, as Jimmieboy found out in a few minutes, for the snowman simply restored the missing fingers and the ear by making a new lot for the little fellow out of a handful of snow he got in the garden. Anything so easily replaced was not worth worrying over. The real cause of his anxiety came out when the father of this happy little family of snow boys called Jimmieboy to one side.
"You must go home right away," he said. "I'm sorry, but we have got to fly just as hard as we can or we are lost."
"But – " said Jimmieboy.
"Don't ask for reasons," returned the snowman, gathering his little snowboys together and rushing off with them in tow. "I haven't time to give them. Just read that and you'll see. Farewell."
Then he made off down the garden path, and as he fled with his babies Jimmieboy picked up the thing the snowman had told him to read, and wandered back into the house, holding it in his hand. It was only a newspaper, but at the top of the first column was an announcement in huge letters:
WARM WAVE TO-NIGHTWISE SNOWMEN WILL MOVE NORTH AT ONCEWhen Jimmieboy saw this he knew right away why he had been deserted, but to this day he doesn't know how he knew it, because at the time this happened he had not learned how to read. At all events he discovered what the trouble was instantly, and then he decided that as he had been left by all of his new friends he would go home. He walked to the front door and opened it, and what do you suppose it opened into?
The garden?
Not a bit of it.
Into Jimmieboy's nursery itself, and when the door closed upon him after he had stepped through it into the nursery and Jimmieboy turned to look at it, lo, and behold it wasn't there!
Nor was the snowman to be found the next morning. It was quite evident that he had got away from the warm wave that appeared on the scene the night before, for there wasn't even a sign of the shoe-button eyes or the battered hat, as there certainly would have been had he melted instead of run away.
VII.
THE BICYCLOPÆDIA BIRD
"Boo!" said something.
And Jimmieboy of course was startled. So startled was he that, according to his own statement, he jumped ninety-seven feet, though for my own part I don't believe he really jumped more than thirty-three. He was too sleepy to count straight anyhow. He had been lolling under his canvas tent down near the tennis-court all the afternoon, getting lazier and lazier every minute, and finally he had turned over square on his back, put his head on a small cushion his mamma had made for him, closed his eyes, and then came the "Boo!"
"I wonder – " he said, as he gazed about him, seeing no sign of any creature that could by any possibility say "Boo!" however.
"Of course you do. That's why I've come," interrupted a voice from the bushes. "More children of your age suffer from the wonders than from measles, mumps, or canthaves."
"What are canthaves?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Canthaves are things you can't have. Don't you ever suffer because you can't have things?" queried the voice.
"Oh, yes, indeed!" returned Jimmieboy. "Lots and lots of times."
"And didn't you ever have the wonders so badly that you got cross and wouldn't eat anything but sweet things for dinner?" the voice asked.
"I don't know exactly what you mean by the wonders," replied Jimmieboy.
"Why, wonders is a disease that attacks boys who want to know why things are and can't find out," said the voice.
"Oh, my, yes I've had that lots of times," laughed Jimmieboy. "Why, only this morning I asked my papa why there weren't any dandelionesses, and he wouldn't tell me because he said he had to catch a train, and I've been wondering why ever since."