The So-called Human Race Part 25

INGENIOUS CALIFORNIA PARADOX.

[From the Oakland Post.]

The Six-Minute Ferry route across the bay will take only eighteen to twenty minutes.

ALMOST.

Sir: S. Fein has put his name on the door of his orange-colored taxicab.

Can you whittle a wheeze out of that?

R. A. J.

Knut Hamsun, winner of the n.o.bel prize for literature, used to be a street-car conductor in Chicago. This is a hint to column conductors.

Get a transfer.

The Witch's Holiday.

A TALE FOR CHILDREN ONLY.

I.

Matters had gone ill all the day; and, to cap what is learnedly called the perverseness of inanimate things, it came on to rain just as the Boy, having finished his lessons, was on the point of setting out for a romp in the brown fields.

"Isn't it perfectly mean, Mowgli?" he complained to his dog. The water spaniel wagged a noncommittal tail and stretched himself before the wood fire with a deep drawn sigh. The rain promised to hold, so the Boy took down a book and curled up in a big leather chair.

It was a very interesting book--all about American pioneers, trappers, and Indians; and although the writer of it was a German traveler, no American woodsman would take advantage of a worthy German globe trotter and tell him things which were not exactly so. For example, if you and a trapper and a dog were gathered about a campfire, and the dog were asleep and dreaming in his sleep, and the trapper should affirm that if you tied a handkerchief over the head of a dreaming dog and afterwards tied it around your own head, you would have the dog's dream,--if the trapper should tell you this with a perfectly serious face, you naturally would believe him, especially if you were a German traveler.

The Boy got up softly and began the experiment. Mowgli opened an inquiring eye, stretched himself another notch, and fell asleep again.

His master waited five minutes, then unloosed the handkerchief and knotted it under his own chin.

For a while Mowgli's slumbers were untroubled as a forest pool, his breathing as regular as the tick-tock of the old wooden clock under the stair. Out of doors the rain fell sharply and set the dead leaves singing. The wood fire dwindled to a glow. Tick-tock! tick-tock! drummed the ancient timepiece. The Boy yawned and settled deeper in the leather chair.

Tick-tock! Tick-tock!

Mowgli was breathing out of time. He was twitching, and making funny little smothered noises, which, if he were awake, would probably be yelps. Something exciting was going on in dreamland.

Tick-tock! Tick----

+Hullo!+ There goes a woodchuck!

II.

The Boy gave chase across the fields, only to arrive, out of breath, at the entrance to a burrow down which the woodchuck had tumbled. He had not a notion where he was. He seemed to have raced out of the world that he knew into one which was quite unfamiliar. It was a broad valley inclosed by high hills, through which a pleasant little river ran; and the landscape wore an odd aspect--the hills were bluer than hills usually are, the trees were more fantastically fashioned, and the waving gra.s.s and flowers were more beautiful than one commonly sees.

"Good morning, young sir!"

On the other side of the stream stood a tall man wrapped in a cloak and leaning with both hands upon a staff. He was well past the middle years, as wrinkles and a beard turned gray gave evidence; but his eyes were youthful and his cheeks as ruddy as a farm lad's. His clothing was worn and dust-laden, but of good quality and unpatched, and there was an air about him that said plainly, "Here is no common person, I can tell you."

"You are wondering who I may be," he observed. "Well, then, I am known as the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare."

"A queer sort of knight, this!" thought the Boy.

"And you--may I ask whither you are bound?" said the stranger. "We may be traveling the same road."

The Boy made answer that he had set forth to chase a woodchuck, and that having failed to catch it he had no better plan than to return home.

At the word "home" the Knight put on a melancholy smile, and cutting a reed at the river edge he fashioned it into a pipe and began to play. A wonderful tune it was. Tom the Piper's Son knew the way of it, and to the same swinging melody the Pied Piper footed the streets of Hamelin town; for the burden of the tune was "Over the Hills and Far Away," and the Boy's feet stirred at the catch of it.

"That," said the Knight, "is the tune I have marched to for many a year, and a pretty chase it has led me." He put down the pipe. "Knocking about aimlessly does very well for an old man, but youth should have a definite goal."

The Boy did not agree with this. With that magic melody marching in his head it was hey for the hills and the westering sun, and the pleasant road to Anywhere.

"What lies yonder?" he queried, pointing to a deep notch in the skyline.

"The Kingdom of Rainbow's End," replied the Knight. "It is an agreeable territory, and you would do very well to journey thither. The King of the country is no longer young, and as he has nothing to say about affairs of state, or anything else for that matter, he spends his time tramping about from place to place, in much the same fashion as myself."

"And who governs while he is away?"

"+She!+" said the Knight solemnly--"+She That Bosses Everybody!+"

III.

"You see," said the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare, "the King made a grave mistake some years ago. It is a foolish saying that when a man marries his troubles begin; but it is the law of Rainbow's-End that when a man marries he may chloroform his mother-in-law or not, just as he pleases. But if he forfeit the right he may never again claim it, and the deuce take him for a soft-hearted simpleton."

The Boy thought it a barbarous law and so declared.

"There is something to be said for it," returned the Knight. "A mother-in-law is like the little girl with the little curl. It so happens that the King's mother-in-law is a very unpleasant old party, and the King made a sad mess of it when he threw the chloroform bottle out of the window."

"Tell me about Rainbow's-End," the Boy entreated. "Is there a beautiful Princess, with many suitors for her hand?"

"The Princess Aralia is a very pretty girl, as princesses go." The Knight opened a locket attached to a long gold chain and exhibited an exquisite miniature. "I don't mind saying," said he, "that the Princess Aralia and I are on very good terms, and a word from me will procure you a cordial reception. The question is, how shall we set about it? You can't present yourself at court as you are; you must have a horse and a fine costume, and all that sort of thing."

"Perhaps there's a good fairy in the neighborhood," said the Boy hopefully.

The Knight shook his head. "Not within a dozen leagues. But stop a bit--it is just possible that Aunt Jo can manage the matter. Aunt Jo is the sister of my wife's mother, and one of the cleverest witches in the country. She stands very high in her profession and is thoroughly schooled in every branch of deviltry; and with the exception of my wife's mother, I can think of no person whose society is less desirable.

But one day in each year she takes a day off, during which she is as affable and benevolent an old dame as you can possibly imagine; really, you would never know it was the same person. These annual breathing spells do her a world of good, she tells me; for incessant wickedness is just as monotonous and wearisome as unbroken goodness."