Mr. Munchausen

V

THE STORY OF JANG

“Did you ever own a dog, Baron Munchausen?” asked the reporter of the Gehenna Gazette, calling to interview the eminent nobleman during Dog Show Week in Cimmeria.

“Yes, indeed I have,” said the Baron, “I fancy I must have owned as many as a hundred dogs in my life. To be sure some of the dogs were iron and brass, but I was just as fond of them as if they had been made of plush or lamb’s wool. They were so quiet, those iron dogs were; and the brass dogs never barked or snapped at any one.”

“I never saw a brass dog,” said the reporter. “What good are they?”

“Oh they are likely to be very useful in winter,” the Baron replied. “My brass dogs used to guard my fire-place and keep the blazing logs from rolling out into my room and setting fire to the rug the Khan of Tartary gave me for saving his life from a herd of Antipodes he and I were hunting in the Himalaya Mountains.”

“I don’t see what you needed dogs to do that for,” said the reporter. “A fender would have done just as well, or a pair of andirons,” he added.

“That’s what these dogs were,” said the Baron. “They were fire dogs and fire dogs are andirons.”

Ananias pressed his lips tightly together, and into his eyes came a troubled look. It was evident that, revolting as the idea was to him, he thought the Baron was trying to deceive him. Noting his displeasure, the Baron inwardly resolving to be careful how he handled the truth, hastened on with his story.

“But dogs were never my favourite animals,” he said. “With my pets I am quite as I am with other things. I like to have pets that are entirely different from the pets of other people, and that is why in my day I have made companions of such animals as the sangaree, and the camomile, and the – ah – the two-horned piccolo. I’ve had tame bees even – in fact my bees used to be the wonder of Siam, in which country I was stationed for three years, having been commissioned by a British company to make a study of its climate with a view to finding out if it would pay the company to go into the ice business there. Siam is, as you have probably heard, a very warm country, and as ice is a very rare thing in warm countries these English people thought they might make a vast fortune by sending tug-boats up to the Arctic Ocean, and with them capture and tow icebergs to Siam, where they might be cut up and sold to the people at tremendous profit. The scheme was certainly a good one, and I found many of the wealthy Siamese quite willing to subscribe for a hundred pounds of ice a week at ten dollars a pound, but it never came to anything because we had no means of preserving the icebergs after we got them into the Gulf of Siam. The water was so hot that they melted before we could cut them up, and we nearly got ourselves into very serious trouble with the coast people for that same reason. An iceberg, as you know, is a huge affair, and when a dozen or two of them had melted in the Gulf they added so to the quantity of water there that fifty miles of the coast line were completely flooded, and thousands of valuable fish, able to live in warm water only, were so chilled that they got pneumonia, and died. You can readily imagine how indignant the Siamese fishermen were with my company over the losses they had to bear, but their affection for me personally was so great that they promised not to sue the company if I would promise not to let the thing occur again. This I promised, and all went well. But about the bees, it was while I was living in Bangkok that I had them, and they were truly wonderful. There was hardly anything those bees couldn’t do after I got them tamed.”

“How did you tame them, Baron,” asked Ananias.

“Power of the eye, my boy,” returned the Baron. “I attracted their attention first and then held it. Of course, I tried my plan on one bee first. He tamed the rest. Bees are very like children. They like to play stunts – I think it is called stunts, isn’t it, when one boy does something, and all his companions try to do the same thing?”

“Yes,” said Ananias, “I believe there is such a game, but I shouldn’t like to play it with you.”

“Well, that was the way I did with the bees,” said Mr. Munchausen. “I tamed the king bee, and when he had learned all sorts of funny little tricks, such as standing on his head and humming tunes, I let him go back to the swarm. He was gone a week, and then he came back, he had grown so fond of me – as well he might, because I fed him well, giving him a large basket of flowers three times a day. Back with him came two or three thousand other bees, and whatever Jang did they did.”

“Who was Jang?” asked Ananias.

“That was the first bee’s name. King Jang. Jang is Siamese for Billie, and as I was always fond of the name, Billie, I called him Jang. By and by every bee in the lot could hum the Star Spangled Banner and Yankee Doodle as well as you or I could, and it was grand on those soft moonlight nights we had there, to sit on the back porch of my pagoda and listen to my bee orchestra discoursing sweet music. Of course, as soon as Jang had learned to hum one tune it was easy enough for him to learn another, and before long the bee orchestra could give us any bit of music we wished to have. Then I used to give musicales at my house and all the Siamese people, from the King down asked to be invited, so that through my pets my home became one of the most attractive in all Asia.

“And the honey those bees made! It was the sweetest honey you ever tasted, and every morning when I got down to breakfast there was a fresh bottleful ready for me, the bees having made it in the bottle itself over night. They were the most grateful pets I ever had, and once they saved my life. They used to live in a hive I had built for them in one corner of my room and I could go to bed and sleep with every door in my house open, and not be afraid of robbers, because those bees were there to protect me. One night a lion broke loose from the Royal Zoo, and while trotting along the road looking for something to eat he saw my front door wide open. In he walked, and began to sniff. He sniffed here and he sniffed there, but found nothing but a pot of anchovy paste, which made him thirstier and hungrier than ever. So he prowled into the parlour, and had his appetite further aggravated by a bronze statue of the Emperor of China I had there. He thought in the dim light it was a small-sized human being, and he pounced on it in a minute. Well, of course, he couldn’t make any headway trying to eat a bronze statue, and the more he tried the more hungry and angry he got. He roared until he shook the house and would undoubtedly have awakened me had it not been that I am always a sound sleeper and never wake until I have slept enough. Why, on one occasion, on the Northern Pacific Railway, a train I was on ran into and completely telescoped another while I was asleep in the smoking car, and although I was severely burned and hurled out of the car window to land sixty feet away on the prairie, I didn’t wake up for two hours. I was nearly buried alive because they thought I’d been killed, I lay so still.

“But to return to the bees. The roaring of the lion disturbed them, and Jang buzzed out of his hive to see what was the matter just as the lion appeared at my bed-room door. The intelligent insect saw in a moment what the trouble was, and he sounded the alarm for the rest of the bees, who came swarming out of the hive in response to the summons. Jang kept his eye on the lion meanwhile, and just as the prowler caught sight of your uncle peacefully snoring away on the bed, dreaming of his boyhood, and prepared to spring upon me, Jang buzzed over and sat down upon his back, putting his sting where it would do the most good. The angry lion, who in a moment would have fastened his teeth upon me, turned with a yelp of pain, and the bite which was to have been mine wrought havoc with his own back. Following Jang’s example, the other bees ranged themselves in line over the lion’s broad shoulders, and stung him until he roared with pain. Each time he was stung he would whisk his head around like a dog after a flea, and bite himself, until finally he had literally chewed himself up, when he fainted from sheer exhaustion, and I was saved. You can imagine my surprise when next morning I awakened to find a dying lion in my room.”

“But, Baron,” said Ananias. “I don’t understand one thing about it. If you were fast asleep while all this was happening how did you know that Jang did those things?”

“Why, Jang told me himself,” replied the Baron calmly.

“Could he talk?” cried Ananias in amazement.

“Not as you and I do,” said the Baron. “Of course not, but Jang could spell. I taught him how. You see I reasoned it out this way. If a bee can be taught to sing a song which is only a story in music, why can’t he be taught to tell a story in real words. It was worth trying anyhow, and I tried. Jang was an apt pupil. He was the most intelligent bee I ever met, and it didn’t take me more than a month to teach him his letters, and when he once knew his letters it was easy enough to teach him how to spell. I got a great big sheet and covered it with twenty-six squares, and in each of these squares I painted a letter of the alphabet, so that finally when Jang came to know them, and wanted to tell me anything he would fly from one square to another until he had spelled out whatever he wished to say. I would follow his movements closely, and we got so after awhile that we could converse for hours without any trouble whatsoever. I really believe that if Jang had been a little heavier so that he could push the keys down far enough he could have managed a typewriter as well as anybody, and when I think about his wonderful mind and delicious fancy I deeply regret that there never was a typewriting machine so delicately made that a bee of his weight could make it go. The world would have been very much enriched by the stories Jang had in his mind to tell, but it is too late now. He is gone forever.”

“How did you lose Jang, Baron?” asked Ananias, with tears in his eyes.

“He thought I had deceived him,” said the Baron, with a sigh. “He was as much of a stickler for truth as I am. An American friend of mine sent me a magnificent parterre of wax flowers which were so perfectly made that I couldn’t tell them from the real. I was very proud of them, and kept them in my room near the hive. When Jang and his tribe first caught sight of them they were delighted and they sang as they had never sung before just to show how pleased they were. Then they set to work to make honey out of them. They must have laboured over those flowers for two months before I thought to tell them that they were only wax and not at all real. As I told Jang this, I unfortunately laughed, thinking that he could understand the joke of the thing as well as I, but I was mistaken. All that he could see was that he had been deceived, and it made him very angry. Bees don’t seem to have a well-developed sense of humour. He cast a reproachful glance at me and returned to his hive and on the morning of the third day when I waked up they were moving out. They flew to my lattice and ranged themselves along the slats and waited for Jang. In a moment he appeared and at a given signal they buzzed out of my sight, humming a farewell dirge as they went. I never saw them again.”

Here the Baron wiped his eyes.

“I felt very bad about it,” he went on, “and resolved then never again to do anything which even suggested deception, and when several years later I had my crest designed I had a bee drawn on it, for in my eyes my good friend the bee, represents three great factors of the good and successful life – Industry, Fidelity, and Truth.”

Whereupon the Baron went his way, leaving Ananias to think it over.

VI

HE TELLS THE TWINS OF FIRE-WORKS

There was a great noise going on in the public square of Cimmeria when Mr. Munchausen sauntered into the library at the home of the Heavenly Twins.

“These Americans are having a great time of it celebrating their Fourth of July,” said he, as the house shook with the explosion of a bomb. “They’ve burnt powder enough already to set ten revolutions revolving, and they’re going to outdo themselves to-night in the park. They’ve made a bicycle out of the two huge pin-wheels, and they’re going to make Benedict Arnold ride a mile on it after it’s lit.”

The Twins appeared much interested. They too had heard much of the celebration and some of its joys and when the Baron arrived they were primed with questions.

“Uncle Munch,” they said, helping the Baron to remove his hat and coat, which they threw into a corner so anxious were they to get to work, “do you think there’s much danger in little boys having fire-crackers and rockets and pin-wheels, or in little girls having torpeters?”

“Well, I don’t know,” the Baron answered, warily. “What does your venerable Dad say about it?”

“He thinks we ought to wait until we are older, but we don’t,” said the Twins.

“Torpeters never sets nothing afire,” said Angelica.

“That’s true,” said the Baron, kindly; “but after all your father is right. Why do you know what happened to me when I was a boy?”

“You burnt your thumb,” said the Twins, ready to make a guess at it.

“Well, you get me a cigar, and I’ll tell you what happened to me when I was a boy just because my father let me have all the fire-works I wanted, and then perhaps you will see how wise your father is in not doing as you wish him to,” said Mr. Munchausen.

The Twins readily found the desired cigar, after which Mr. Munchausen settled down comfortably in the hammock, and swinging softly to and fro, told his story.

“My dear old father,” said he, “was the most indulgent man that ever lived. He’d give me anything in the world that I wanted whether he could afford it or not, only he had an original system of giving which kept him from being ruined by indulgence of his children. He gave me a Rhine steamboat once without its costing him a cent. I saw it, wanted it, was beginning to cry for it, when he patted me on the head and told me I could have it, adding, however, that I must never take it away from the river or try to run it myself. That satisfied me. All I wanted really was the happiness of feeling it was mine, and my dear old daddy gave me permission to feel that way. The same thing happened with reference to the moon. He gave it to me freely and ungrudgingly. He had received it from his father, he said, and he thought he had owned it long enough. Only, he added, as he had about the steamboat, I must leave it where it was and let other people look at it whenever they wanted to, and not interfere if I found any other little boys or girls playing with its beams, which I promised and have faithfully observed to this day.

“Of course from such a parent as this you may very easily see everything was to be expected on such a day as the Tenth of August which the people in our region celebrated because it was my birthday. He used to let me have my own way at all times, and it’s a wonder I wasn’t spoiled. I really can’t understand how it is that I have become the man I am, considering how I was indulged when I was small.

“However, like all boys, I was very fond of celebrating the Tenth, and being a more or less ingenious lad, I usually prepared my own fire-works and many things happened which might not otherwise have come to pass if I had been properly looked after as you are. The first thing that happened to me on the Tenth of August that would have a great deal better not have happened, was when I was – er – how old are you Imps?”

“Sixteen,” said they. “Going on eighteen.”

“Nonsense,” said the Baron. “Why you’re not more than eight.”

“Nope – we’re sixteen,” said Diavolo. “I’m eight and Angelica’s eight and twice eight is sixteen.”

“Oh,” said the Baron. “I see. Well, that was exactly the age I was at the time. Just eight to a day.”

“Sixteen we said,” said the Twins.

“Yes,” nodded the Baron. “Just eight, but going on towards sixteen. My father had given me ten thalers to spend on noises, but unlike most boys I did not care so much for noises as I did for novelties. It didn’t give me any particular pleasure to hear a giant cracker go off with a bang. What I wanted to do most of all was to get up some kind of an exhibition that would please the people and that could be seen in the day-time instead of at night when everybody is tired and sleepy. So instead of spending my money on fire-crackers and torpedoes and rockets, I spent nine thalers of it on powder and one thaler on putty blowers. My particular object was to make one grand effort and provide passers-by with a free exhibition of what I was going to call ‘Munchausen’s Grand Geyser Cascade.’ To do this properly I had set my eye upon a fish pond not far from the town hall. It was a very deep pond and about a mile in circumference, I should say. Putty blowers were then selling at five for a pfennig and powder was cheap as sand owing to the fact that the powder makers, expecting a war, had made a hundred times as much as was needed, and as the war didn’t come off, they were willing to take almost anything they could get for it. The consequence was that the powder I got was sufficient in quantity to fill a rubber bag as large as five sofa cushions. This I sank in the middle of the pond, without telling anybody what I intended to do, and through the putty blowers, sealed tightly together end to end, I conducted a fuse, which I made myself, from the powder bag to the shore. My idea was that I could touch the thing off, you know, and that about sixty square feet of the pond would fly up into the air and then fall gracefully back again like a huge fountain. If it had worked as I expected everything would have been all right, but it didn’t. I had too much powder, for a second after I had lit the fuse there came a muffled roar and the whole pond in a solid mass, fish and all, went flying up into the air and disappeared. Everybody was astonished, not a few were very much frightened. I was scared to death but I never let on to any one that I was the person that had blown the pond off. How high the pond went I don’t know, but I do know that for a week there wasn’t any sign of it, and then most unexpectedly out of what appeared to be a clear sky there came the most extraordinary rain-storm you ever saw. It literally poured down for two days, and, what I alone could understand, with it came trout and sunfish and minnows, and most singular to all but myself an old scow that was recognised as the property of the owner of the pond suddenly appeared in the sky falling toward the earth at a fearful rate of speed. When I saw the scow coming I was more frightened than ever because I was afraid it might fall upon and kill some of our neighbours. Fortunately, however, this possible disaster was averted, for it came down directly over the sharp-pointed lightning-rod on the tower of our public library and stuck there like a piece of paper on a file.

“The rain washed away several acres of finely cultivated farms, but the losses on crops and fences and so forth were largely reduced by the fish that came with the storm. One farmer took a rake and caught three hundred pounds of trout, forty pounds of sun-fish, eight turtles, and a minnow in his potato patch in five minutes. Others were almost as fortunate, but the damage was sufficiently large to teach me that parents cannot be too careful about what they let their children do on the day they celebrate.”

“And weren’t you ever punished?” asked the Twins.

“No, indeed,” said the Baron. “Nobody ever knew that I did it because I never told them. In fact you are the only two persons who ever heard about it, and you mustn’t tell, because there are still a number of farmers around that region who would sue me for damages in case they knew that I was responsible for the accident.”

“That was pretty awful,” said the Twins. “But we don’t want to blow up ponds so as to get cascadeses, but we do want torpeters. Torpeters aren’t any harm, are they, Uncle Munch?”

“Well, you can never tell. It all depends on the torpedo. Torpedoes are sometimes made carelessly,” said the Baron. “They ought to be made as carefully as a druggist makes pills. So many pebbles, so much paper, and so much saltpeter and sulphur, or whatever else is used to make them go off. I had a very unhappy time once with a carelessly made torpedo. I had two boxes full. They were those tin-foil torpedoes that little girls are so fond of, and I expected they would make quite a lot of noise, but the first ten I threw down didn’t go off at all. The eleventh for some reason or other, I never knew exactly what, I hurled with all my force against the side of my father’s barn, and my, what a surprise it was! It smashed in the whole side of the barn and sent seven bales of hay, and our big farm plough bounding down the hillside into the town. The hay-bales smashed down fences; one of them hit a cow-shed on its way down, knocked the back of it to smithereens and then proceeded to demolish the rear end of a small crockery shop that fronted on the main street. It struck the crockery shop square in the middle of its back and threw down fifteen dozen cups and saucers, thirty-two water pitchers, and five china busts of Shakespeare. The din was frightful – but I couldn’t help that. Nobody could blame me, because I had no means of knowing that the man who made the torpedoes was careless and had put a solid ball of dynamite into one of them. So you see, my dear Imps, that even torpedoes are not always safe.”

“Yes,” said Angelica. “I guess I’ll play with my dolls on my birthday. They never goes off and blows things up.”

“That’s very wise of you,” said the Baron.

“But what became of the plough, Uncle Munch?” said Diavolo.

“Oh, the plough didn’t do much damage,” replied Mr. Munchausen. “It simply furrowed its way down the hill, across the main street, to the bowling green. It ploughed up about one hundred feet of this before it stopped, but nobody minded that much because it was to have been ploughed and seeded again anyhow within a few days. Of course the furrow it made in crossing the road was bad, and to make it worse the share caught one of the water pipes that ran under the street, and ripped it in two so that the water burst out and flooded the street for a while, but one hundred and sixty thousand dollars would have covered the damage.”

The Twins were silent for a few moments and then they asked:

“Well, Uncle Munch, what kind of fire-works are safe anyhow?”

“My experience has taught me that there are only two kinds that are safe,” replied their old friend. “One is a Jack-o-lantern and the other is a cigar, and as you are not old enough to have cigars, if you will put on your hats and coats and go down into the garden and get me two pumpkins, I’ll make each of you a Jack-o’-lantern. What do you say?”

“We say yes,” said the Twins, and off they went, while the Baron turning over in the hammock, and arranging a pillow comfortably under his head, went to sleep to dream of more birthday recollections in case there should be a demand for them later on.

VII

SAVED BY A MAGIC LANTERN

When the Sunday dinner was over, the Twins, on Mr. Munchausen’s invitation, climbed into the old warrior’s lap, Angelica kissing him on the ear, and Diavolo giving his nose an affectionate tweak.

“Ah!” said the Baron. “That’s it!”

“What’s what, Uncle Munch?” demanded Diavolo.

“Why that,” returned the Baron. “I was wondering what it was I needed to make my dinner an unqualified success. There was something lacking, but what it was, we have had so much, I could not guess until you two Imps kissed me and tweaked my nasal feature. Now I know, for really a feeling of the most blessed contentment has settled upon my soul.”

“Don’t you wish you had two youngsters like us, Uncle Munch?” asked the Twins.

“Do I wish I had? Why I have got two youngsters like you,” the Baron replied. “I’ve got ’em right here too.”