The Last of the Huggermuggers Part 4

"Friends, I feel that I shall never see your country--and why should I wish it? How could such a huge being as I live among you? For a little while I should be amused with you, and you astonished at me. I might find friends here and there, like you; but your people could never understand my nature, nor I theirs. I should be carried about as a spectacle; I should not belong to myself, but to those who exhibited me. There could be little sympathy between your people and mine. I might, too, be feared, be hated. Your climate, your food, your houses, your laws, your customs--every thing would be unlike what mine has been. I am too old, to weary of life, to begin it again in a new world."

So, my young readers, not to weary you with any more accounts of Huggermugger's sickness, I must end the matter, and tell you plainly that he died long before they reached America, much to Mr. Nabb.u.m's vexation. Little Jacket and his friends grieved very much, but they could not help it, and thought that, on the whole, it was best it should be so. Zebedee Nabb.u.m wished they could, at least, preserve the giant's body, and exhibit it in New York. But it was impossible. All they could take home with them was his huge skeleton; and even this, by some mischance, was said to be incomplete.

Some time after the giant's death, Mr. Scrawler, one day when the ship was becalmed, and the sailors wished to be amused, fell into a poetic frenzy, and produced the following song, which all hands sung, (rather slowly) when Mr. Nabb.u.m was not present, to the tune of Yankee Doodle:--

Yankee Nabb.u.m went to sea A huntin' after lions; He came upon an island where There was a pair of giants.

He brought his nets and big harpoon, And thought he'd try to catch 'em; But Nabb.u.m found out very soon There was no need to fetch 'em.

Yankee Nabb.u.m went ash.o.r.e, With Jacky and some others; But Huggermugger treated them Just like his little brothers.

He took 'em up and put 'em in His thunderin' big fish basket;-- He took 'em home and gave them all they wanted, ere they asked it.

The giants were as sweet to them As two great lumps of sugar,-- A very Queen of Candy was Good Mrs. Huggermugger.

But, Ah! The good fat woman died, The giant too departed, And came himself on Nabb.u.m's ship, Quite sad and broken hearted.

He came aboard and sailed with us,

A sadder man and wiser-- But pretty soon, just like his wife, He sickened and did die, Sir.

But Nabb.u.m kept his mighty bones-- How they will stare to see 'em, When Nabb.u.m has them all set up in Barnum's great Museum!

Nothing is dearly known, strange to say, as to what became of this skeleton. In the Museum, at Philadelphia, there are some great bones, which are usually supposed to be those of the Great Mastodon. It is the opinion, however, of others, that they are none other than those of the great Huggermugger--all that remains of the last of the giants.

NOTE:--I was told, several years hence, that Mr. Scrawler's narrative of his adventures in Huggermugger's Island, was nearly completed, and that he was only waiting for a publisher. As, however, nothing has as yet been heard of his long expected book, I have taken the liberty to print what I have written, from the story, as I heard it from Little Jacket himself, who is now grown to be a man. I have been told that Little Jacket, who is now called Mr. John Cable, has left the sea, and is now somewhere out in the Western States, settled down as a farmer, and has grown so large and fat, that he fears he must have eaten some of those strange sh.e.l.l-fish, by which the Huggermugger race grew to be so great. Other accounts, however, say that he is as fond of the sea as ever, and has got to be the captain of a great ship; and that he and Mr. Nabb.u.m are still voyaging round the world, in hopes of finding other Huggermuggers.