In Camp With A Tin Soldier
- -
- 100%
- +
"I don't know what else to do," said Jimmieboy. "I'm obeying orders. The colonel told me to get those things, and I supposed I ought to get 'em."
"It doesn't pay to suppose," said the Parallelopipedon. "Many a victory has been lost by a supposition. As that old idiot Major Blueface said once, when he tried to tell an untruth, and so hit the truth by mistake:
'Success always comes toThe mortal who knows,And never to him whoDoes naught but suppose.For knowledge is certain,While hypotheseesOft drop defeat's curtainOn great victories.'""What are hypothesees?" asked Jimmieboy.
"They are ifs in words of four syllables," said the Parallelopipedon, "and you want to steer clear of them as much as you can."
"I'll try to," said Jimmieboy. "But how am I to get knowledge instead of hypotheseeses? I have to take what people tell me. I don't know everything."
"Well, that's only natural," said the Parallelopipedon, kindly. "There are only two creatures about here that do know everything. They – between you and me – are me and myself. The others you meet here don't even begin to know everything, though they'll try to make you believe they do. Now I dare say that tin colonel of yours would try to make you believe that water is wet, and that fire is hot, and other things like that. Well, they are, but he doesn't know it. He only thinks it. He has put his hand into a pail of water and found out that it was wet, but he doesn't know why it is wet any more than he knows why fire is hot."
"Do you?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Certainly," returned the Parallelopipedon. "Water is wet because it is water, and fire is hot because it wouldn't be fire if it wasn't hot. Oh, it takes brains to know everything, Jimmieboy, and if there's one thing old Colonel Zinc hasn't got, it's brains. If you don't believe it, cut his head off some day and see for yourself. You won't find a whole brain in his head."
"It must be nice to know everything," said Jimmieboy.
"It's pretty nice," said the Parallelopipedon, cautiously. "But it's not always the nicest thing in the world. If you are off on a long journey, for instance, it's awfully hard work to carry all you know along with you. It has given me a headache many a time, I can tell you. Sometimes I wish I did like your papa, and kept all I know in books instead of in my head. It's a great deal better to do things that way; then, when you go travelling, and have to take what you know along with you, you can just pack it up in a trunk and make the railroad people carry it."
"Do you know what's going to happen to-morrow and the next day?" asked Jimmieboy, gazing in rapt admiration at the spot whence the voice proceeded.
"Yes, indeed. That's just where the great trouble comes in," answered the Parallelopipedon. "It isn't so much bother to know what has been – what everybody knows – but when you have to store up in your mind thousands and millions of things that aren't so now, but have got to be so some day, it's positively awful. Why, Jimmieboy," he said, impressively, "you'd be terrified if I told you what is going to be known by the time you go to school; it's awful to think of all the things you will have to learn then that aren't things yet, but are going to be within a year or two. I'm real sorry for the little boys who will live a hundred years from now, when I think of all the history they will have to learn when they go to school – history that isn't made yet. Just take the Presidents of the United States, for instance. In George Washington's time it didn't take a boy five seconds to learn the list of Presidents; but think of that list to-day! Why, there are twenty-five names on it now, and more to come. It gets harder every year. Now I – I know the names of all the Presidents there's ever going to be, and it would take me just eighteen million nine hundred and sixty-seven years, eleven months and twenty-six days, four hours and twenty-eight minutes to tell you all of them, and even then I wouldn't be half through."
"Why, it's terrible," said Jimmieboy.
"Yes, indeed it is," returned the Parallelopipedon. "You ought to be glad you are a little boy now instead of having to wait until then. The boys of the year 19,605,726,422 are going to have the hardest time in the world learning things, and I don't believe they'll get through going to school much before they're ninety years old."
"I guess the colonel is glad he doesn't know all that," said Jimmieboy, "if it's so hard to carry it around with you."
"Indeed he ought to be, if he isn't," ejaculated the Parallelopipedon. "There's no two ways about it; if he had the weight of one half of what I know on his shoulders, it would bend him in two and squash him into a piece of tin-foil."
"Say," said Jimmieboy, after a moment's pause. "I heard my papa say he thought I might be President of the United States some day. If you know all the names of the Presidents that are to come, tell me, will I be?"
"I don't remember any name like Jimmieboy on the list," said the Parallelopipedon; "but that doesn't prove anything. You might get elected on your last name. But don't let's talk about that – that's politics, and I don't like politics. What I want to know is, do you really want to capture me?"
"Yes, I do," said Jimmieboy.
"Then you'd better give up trying to get the peaches and cherries," said the Parallelopipedon, firmly. "I won't have 'em. You can shoot 'em at me at the rate of a can a minute for ninety-seven years, and I'll never surrender. I hate 'em."
"But what am I to do, then?" queried the little general. "What must I do to capture you?"
"Get something in the place of the cherries and peaches that I like, that's all. Very simple matter, that."
"But I don't know what you like," said Jimmieboy. "I never took lunch with you."
"No – and you never will," answered the Parallelopipedon. "And for a very good reason. I never eat lunch, breakfast, tea, or supper. I never eat anything but dinner, and I eat that four times a day."
Jimmieboy laughed, half with mirth at the oddity of the Parallelopipedon's habit of eating, and half with the pleasure it gave him to think of what a delectable habit it was. Four dinners a day seemed to him to be the height of bliss, and he almost wished he too were a Parallelopipedon, that he might enjoy the same privilege.
"Don't you ever eat between meals?" he asked, after a minute of silence.
"Never," said the Parallelopipedon. "Never. There isn't time for it in the first place, and in the second there's never anything left between meals for me to eat. But if you had ever dined with me you'd know mighty well what I like, for I always have the same thing at every single dinner – two platefuls of each thing. It's a fine plan, that of having the same dishes at every dinner, day after day. Your stomach always knows what to expect, and is ready for it, so you don't get cholera morbus. If you want me to, I'll tell you what I always have, and what you must get me before you can coax me back."
"Thank you," said Jimmieboy. "I'll be very much obliged."
And then the Parallelopipedon recited the following delicious bill of fare for the young general.
"THE PARALLELOPIPEDON'S DINNERFirst bring on a spring mock-turtleStuffed with chestnuts roasted through,Served in gravy; then a fertileSteaming bowl of oyster stew.Then about six dozen tartletsFull of huckleberry jam,Edges trimmed with juicy Bartletts —Pears, these latter – then some ham.Follow these with cauliflower,Soaked in maple syrup sweet;Then an apple large and sour,And a rich red rosy beet.Then eight quarts of cream – vanillaIs the flavor I like best —Acts sublimely as a chiller,Gives your fevered system rest.After this a pint of coffee,Forty jars of marmalade,And a pound of peanut toffee,Then a pumpkin pie – home-made.Top this off with pickled salmon,Cold roast beef, and eat it fourTimes each day, and ghastly famineNe'er will enter at your door.""H'm! h'm! h'm!" cried Jimmieboy, dancing up and down, and clapping his hands with delight at the very thought of such a meal. "Do you mean to say that you eat that four times a day?"
"Yes," said the Parallelopipedon, "I do. In fact, general, it is that that has made me what I am. I was originally a Parallelogram, and I ate that four times a day, and it kept doubling me up until I became six Parallelograms as I am to-day. Get me those things – enough of them to enable me to have 'em five times a day, and I surrender. Without them, I go on and stay escaped forever, and the longer I stay escaped, the worse it will be for these people who live about here, for I shall devastate the country. I shall chew up all the mowing-machines in Pictureland. I'll bite the smoke-stack off every railway engine I encounter, and throw it into the smoking car, where it really belongs. I'll drink all the water in the wells. I'll pull up all the cellars by the roots; I may even go so far as to run down into your nursery, and gnaw into the wire that holds this picture country upon the wall, and let it drop into the water pitcher. But, oh dear, there's the major coming down the road!" he added, in a tone of alarm. "I must go, or he'll insist on telling me a poem. But remember what I say, my boy, and beware! I'll do all I threaten to do if you don't do what I tell you. Good-by!"
There was a slight rustling among the leaves, and the Parallelopipedon's voice died away as Major Blueface came galloping up astride of his panting, lather-covered steed.
CHAPTER V.
THE MAJOR RETURNS
"WELL," said Jimmieboy, as the major dismounted, "did you catch up with them?"
"No, I didn't," returned the major, evidently much excited. "I should have caught them but for a dreadful encounter I had up the road, for between you and me, Jimmieboy, I have had a terrible adventure since I saw you last, and the soldiers I went to order back have been destroyed to the very last man."
"Dear me!" cried Jimmieboy. "I am glad I didn't go with you. What happened?"
"I was attacked about four miles up the road by a tremendous sixty-pound Quandary, and I was nearly killed," said the major. "The soldiers had only got four and a half miles on their way, and hearing the disturbance and my cries for help they hastened to the rescue, and were simply an-ni-hi-lated, which is old English for all mashed to pieces."
"But how did you escape?" said the boy.
"Oh, I had a way, and it worked, that's all. I'm the safest soldier in the world, I am. You can capture me eight times a day, but I am always sure to escape," said the major, proudly. "But, my dear general, how is it that you do not tremble? Are you not aware that under the circumstances you ought to be a badly frightened warrior?"
"I don't tremble, because I don't know whether you are telling the truth or not," said Jimmieboy. "Besides, I never saw a Quandary, and so I can't tell how terrible he is. Is he dreadful?"
"He's more than dreadful," returned the major. "No word of two syllables expresses his dreadfulness. He is simply calamitous; and if there was a longer word in the dictionary applying to his case I'd use it, if it took all my front teeth out to say it."
"That's all very well," said Jimmieboy, "but you can't make me shiver with fear by saying he's calamitous. What does he do? Bite?"
"Bite? Well, I guess not," answered the major, scornfully. "He doesn't need to bite. Would you bite an apple if you could swallow it whole?"
"I think I would," said Jimmieboy. "How would I get the juice of it if I didn't?"
"You'd get just as much juice whether you bit it or not," snapped the major, who did not at all like Jimmieboy's coolness under the circumstances. "The Quandary doesn't bite anything, because his mouth is so large there isn't anything he can bite. He just takes you as you stand, gives a great gulp, and there you are."
"Where?" queried Jimmieboy, who could not quite follow the major.
"Wherever you happen to be, of course," said the major, gruffly. "You aren't a very sharp general, it seems to me. You don't seem to be able to see through a hole with a millstone in it. I have to explain everything to you just as if you were a baby or a school-teacher, but I can just tell you that if you ever were attacked by a Quandary you wouldn't like it much, and if he ever swallowed you you'd be a mighty lonesome general for a little while. You'd be a regular land Jonah."
"Don't get mad at me, major," said Jimmieboy, clapping his companion on the back. "I'll be frightened if you want me to. Br-rr-rrr-rrr-rrrrr! There, is that the kind of a tremble you want me to have?"
"Thank you, yes," the major replied, his face clearing and his smile returning. "I am very much obliged; and now to show you that you haven't made any mistake in getting frightened, I'll tell you what a Quandary is, and what he has done, and how I managed to escape; and as poetry is the easiest method for me to express my thoughts with, I'll put it all in rhyme.
"THE QUANDARYHe is a fearful animal,That quaint old Quandary —A cousin of the tragicalAnd whimsically magicalDilemma-bird is he.He has an eye that's wonderful —'Tis like a public school:It has a thousand dutiful,Though scarcely any beautiful,Small pupils 'neath its rule.And every pupil – marvelousIndeed, sir, to relate —When man becomes contiguous,Makes certainty ambiguous —Which is unfortunate.For when this ambiguityHas seized upon his prize,Whate'er man tries, to do it heWill find when he is through it, heHad best done otherwise.And hence it is this animal,Of which I sing my song,This creature reprehensible,Is held by persons sensibleResponsible for wrong.So if a friend or foe you seeDeparting from his aim,Be full, I pray, of charity —He may have met the Quandary,And so is not to blame.""That is very pretty," said Jimmieboy, as the major finished; "but, do you know, major, I don't understand one word of it."
Much to Jimmieboy's surprise the major was pleased at this remark.
"Thank you, Jimmieboy," he said. "That proves that I am a true poet. I think there's some meaning in those lines, but it's so long since I wrote them that I have forgotten exactly what I did mean, and it's that very thing that makes a poem out of the verses. Poetry is nothing but riddles in rhyme. You have to guess what is meant by the lines, and the harder that is, the greater the poem."
"But I don't see much use of it," said Jimmieboy. "Riddles are fun sometimes, but poetry isn't."
"That's very true," said the major. "But poetry has its uses. If it wasn't for poetry, the poets couldn't make a living, or if they did, they'd have to go into some other business, and most other businesses are crowded as it is."
"Do people ever make a living writing poetry?" Jimmieboy asked.
"Once in a while. I knew a man once who did. He called himself the Grocer-Poet, because he was a grocer in the day-time and a poet at night. He sold every poem he wrote, too," said the major.
"To a newspaper?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Oh, no," said the major. "He bought 'em from himself. When he'd wake up in the morning as a grocer he'd read what he had written the night before as a poet, and then he'd buy the verses from himself and throw them into the fire. But to return to the Quandary. He has awfully bad manners. He stares you right in the face whenever he meets you, and no matter what you want to do he tries to force you to do the other thing. The only way to escape him is not to do anything, but go back where you started from, and begin all over again."
"Where did you meet him?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Where? Why, where he's always met, of course, at a fork in the road. That's where he gets in his fine work," said the major. "Suppose, for instance, you were out for a stroll, and you thought you'd like to go – well, say to Calcutta. You stroll along, and you stroll along, and you stroll along. Then you come to a place where the road splits, one half going to the right and one to the left, or, if you don't like right and left, we'll say one going to Calcutta by way of Cape Horn, and the other going to Calcutta by way of Greenland's icy mountains."
"It's a long walk either way," said Jimmieboy.
"Yes. It's a walk that isn't often taken," assented the major, with a knowing shake of the head. "But at the fork of this road the Quandary attacks you. He stops you and says, 'Which way are you going to Calcutta?' and you say, 'Well, as it is a warm day, I think I'll go by way of Greenland's icy mountains.' 'No,' says the Quandary, 'you won't do any such thing, because it may snow. You'd better go the other way.' 'Very well,' say you, 'I'll go the other way, then.' 'Why do you do that?' queries the Quandary. 'If it should grow very warm you'd be roasted to death.' 'Then I don't know what to do,' say you. 'What is the matter with going both ways?' says the Quandary, to which you reply, 'How can I do that?' 'Try it and see,' he answers. Then," continued the major, his voice sinking to a whisper – "then you do try it and you do see, unless you are a wise, sagacious, sapient, perspicacious, astute, canny, penetrating, needle-witted, learned man of wisdom like myself who knows a thing or two. In that case you don't try, for you can see without trying that any man with two legs who tries to walk along two roads leading in different directions at once is just going to split into at least two halves before he has gone twenty miles, and that is just what the Quandary wants you to do, for it's over such horrible spectacles as a man divided against himself that he gloats, and when he is through gloating he swallows what's left."
"And what does the wise, sagacious, sappy, perspiring man of wisdom like yourself who knows a thing or two do?" asked Jimmieboy.
"I didn't say sappy or perspiring," retorted the major. "I said sapient and perspicacious."
"Well, anyhow, what does he do?" asked Jimmieboy.
"He gives up going to Calcutta," observed the major.
"Oh, I see. To gain a victory over the Quandary you turn and run away?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Yes, that's it. That's what saved me. I cried for help, turned about, and ran back here, and I can tell you it takes a brave man to turn his back on an enemy," said the major.
"And why didn't the soldiers do it too?" queried Jimmieboy.
"There wasn't anybody to order a retreat, so when the Quandary attacked them they marched right on, single file, and every one of 'em split in two, fell in a heap, and died."
"But I should think you would have ordered them to halt," insisted Jimmieboy.
"I had no power to do so," the major replied. "If I had only had the power, I might have saved their lives by ordering them to march two by two instead of single file, and then when they met the Quandary they could have gone right ahead, the left-hand men taking the left-hand road, the right-hand men the right, but of course I only had orders to tell them to come back here, and a soldier can only obey his orders. It was awful the way those noble lives were sacrifi – "
Here Jimmieboy started to his feet with a cry of alarm. There were unmistakable sounds of approaching footsteps.
"Somebody or something is coming," he cried.
"Oh, no, I guess not," said the major, getting red in the face, for he recognized, as Jimmieboy did not, the firm, steady tread of the returning soldiers whom he had told Jimmieboy the Quandary had annihilated. "It's only the drum of your ear you hear," he added. "You know you have a drum in your ear, and every once in a while it begins its rub-a-dub-dub just like any other drum. Oh, no, you don't hear anybody coming. Let's take a walk into the forest here and see if we can't find a few pipe plants. I think I'd like to have a smoke."
"Why, you naughty major!" cried Jimmieboy, shaking his arm, which his companion had taken, free from the major's grasp. "You've been telling me a great big fib, because there are the soldiers coming back again."
"What!" ejaculated the major, in well-affected surprise. "Well, I declare! So they are. Dear me! Why, do you know, general, that is the most marvelous cure I ever saw in my life. To think that all those men whom I saw not an hour ago lying dead on the field of battle, all ready for the Quandary's luncheon, should have been resusitated in so short a time, as – "
"Halt!" roared Jimmieboy, interrupting the major in a most unceremonious fashion, for the soldiers by this time had reached a point in the road directly opposite where he was sitting.
The soldiers halted.
"Break ranks!" cried Jimmieboy, after the corporal had told him the proper order to give next.
The soldiers broke ranks, and in sheer weariness threw themselves down on the soft turf at the side of the road – all except the corporal, who at Jimmieboy's request came and sat down at the general's side to make his report.
"This is fine weather we are having, corporal," said the major, winking at the subordinate officer, and trying to make him understand that the less he said about the major the better it would be for all concerned.
"Yes," returned the corporal. "Better for sleeping than for military duty, eh, major?"
Here the major grew pale, but had the presence of mind to remark that he thought it might rain in time for tea.
"There's something behind all this," thought Jimmieboy; "and I'm going to know what it all means."
Then he said aloud, "You have had a very speedy recovery, corporal."
Here the major cleared his throat more loudly than usual, blushed rosy red, and winked twice as violently at the corporal as before.
"Did you ever hear my poem on the 'Cold Tea River in China'?" he asked.
"No," said the corporal, "I never did, and I never want to."
"Then I will recite it for you," said the major.
"After the corporal has made his report, major," said Jimmieboy.
"It goes this way," continued the major, pretending not to hear.
"Some years ago – 'way back in '69 – aFriend and I went for a trip through China,That pleasant land where rules King Tommy Chang,Where flows the silver river Yangtse-Wang —Through fertile fields, through sweetest-scented bowersOf creeping vinous vines and floral flowers.""My dear major," interrupted Jimmieboy, "I do not want to hurt your feelings, but much as I like to hear your poetry I must listen to the report of the corporal first."
"Oh, very well," returned the major, observing that the corporal had taken to his heels as soon as he had begun to recite. "Very well. Let the corporal proceed."
Jimmieboy then saw for the first time that the corporal had fled.
"Why, where is he?" he asked.
"I do not know," returned the major, coldly. "I fancy he has gone to the kitchen to cook his report. He always goes off when I recite."
"Oh, well, never mind," said Jimmieboy, noticing that the major was evidently very much hurt. "Go on with the poem about 'Cold Tea River.'"
"No, I shall not," replied the major. "I shall not do it for two reasons, general, unless you as my superior officer command me to do it, and I hope you will not. In the first place, you have publicly humiliated me in the presence of a tin corporal, an inferior in rank, and consequently have hurt my feelings more deeply than you imagine. I am not tall, sir, but my feelings are deep enough to be injured most deeply, and in view of that fact I prefer to say nothing more about that poem. The other reason is that there is really no such poem, because there is really no such a stream as Cold Tea River in China, though there might have been had Nature been as poetic and fanciful as I, for it is as easy to conceive of a river having its source in the land of the tea-trees, and having its waters so full of the essence of tea gained from contact with the roots of those trees, that to all intents and purposes it is a river of tea. Had you permitted me to go on uninterrupted I should have made up a poem on that subject, and might possibly by this time have had it done, but as it is, it never will be composed. If you will permit me I will take a horseback ride and see if I cannot forget the trials of this memorable day. If I return I shall be back, but otherwise you may never see me again. I feel so badly over your treatment of me that I may be rash enough to commit suicide by jumping into a smelting-pot and being moulded over again into a piece of shot, and if I do, general, if I do, and if I ever get into battle and am fired out of a gun, I shall seek out that corporal, and use my best efforts to amputate his head off so quickly that he won't know what has happened till he tries to think, and finds he hasn't anything to do it with."