Chapter II: Part 2

"I'm going to sit in this comfor'ble arm-chair by the fire," said Jimmieboy, climbing up into the capacious easy-chair in his father's library, and settling down upon its soft cushioned seat. "I've had my supper, and it was all of cold things, and I think I ought to get 'em warmed up before I go to bed."

"Very well," said his papa. "Only be careful, and keep your feet awake. It wouldn't be comfortable if your feet should go to sleep just about the time your mamma wanted you to go to bed. I'd have to carry you up stairs, if that should happen, and the doctor says if I carry you much longer I'll have a back like a dromedary."

"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 Zoophagan
Was strolling near the sea,
When from the depths of ocean
Sprang forth that dread amp-hib-ian,
The mawkish Calipee.

"The Tallahassee bird sometimes
The 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 in
This 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 Calipee
Is stronger of the two;
And so he'd won the victory
At 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 part
Of all the Calipees;
Much more important than the heart,
For life is certain to depart
When 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 hit
So fatally his foe?'

"''Twas but his strategy,' then cried
The 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 Calipee
Was certainly undone;
The Zo-oph beat him easily,
As it must nearly always be
When 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. 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 nab
Whatever 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 snow
Is 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 saw
The 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-NIGHT.

* * * * *

WISE SNOWMEN WILL MOVE NORTH AT ONCE.

When 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 BICYCLOPAEDIA 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."

"I thought you'd had it; all boys do get it sooner or later, and it's a thing you can have any number of times unless you have me around," said the voice.

"What are you anyhow?" asked Jimmieboy.

"I'm what they call the Encyclopaedia Bird. I'm a regular owl for wisdom. I know everything--just like the Cyclopaedia; and I have two wheels instead of legs, which is why they call me the Bicyclopaedia Bird. I can't let you see me, because these are not my office hours. I can only be seen between ten and two on the thirty-second of March every seventeenth year. You can get a fair idea of what I look like from my photograph, though."

As the voice said this, sure enough a photograph did actually pop out of the bush, and land at Jimmieboy's feet. He sprang forward eagerly, stooped, and picking it up, gazed earnestly at it. And a singular creature the Bicyclopaedia Bird must have been if the photograph did him justice. He had the head of an owl, but his body was oblong in shape, just like a book, and, as the voice had said, in place of legs were two wheels precisely like those of a bicycle. The effect was rather pleasing, but so funny that Jimmieboy really wanted to laugh. He did not laugh, however, for fear of hurting the Bird's feelings, which the Bird noticed and appreciated.

"Thank you," he said, simply.

"What for?" asked Jimmieboy, looking up from the photograph, and peering into the bush in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of the Bird itself.

"For not laughing," replied the Bird. "If you had laughed I should have biked away at once because I am of no value to any one who laughs at my personal appearance. It always makes me forget all I know, and that does me up for a whole year. If I forget all I know, you see, I have to study hard to learn it all over again, and that's a tremendous job, considering how much knowledge there is to be had in the world. So you see, by being polite and kind enough not to laugh at me, who can't help being funny to look at, and who am not to blame for looking that way, because I am not a self-made Bird, you are really the gainer, for I promise you I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"That's very nice of you," returned Jimmieboy; "and perhaps, to begin with, you'll tell me something that I ought to want to know, whether I do or not."

"That is a very wise idea," said the Bicyclopaedia Bird, "and I'll try to do it. Let me see; now, do you know why the Pollywog is always amiable?"

"No," returned Jimmieboy. "I never even knew that he was, and so couldn't really wonder why."

"But you wonder why now, don't you?" asked the voice, anxiously. "For if you don't, I can't tell you."

"I'm just crazy to know," Jimmieboy responded.

"Then listen, and I will tell you," said the voice. And then the strange bird recited this poem about

THE POLLYWOG.

"The Pollywog's a perfect type
Of amiability.
He never uses angry speech
Wherever he may be.
He never calls his brother names,
Or tweaks his sister's nose;
He never pulls the sea-dog's tail,
Or treads upon his toes.

"He never says an unkind word,
And frown he never will.
A smile is ever on his lips,
E'en when he's feeling ill.
And this is why: when Pollywog
The first came on the scene,
He had a temper like a cat's--
His eye with it was green.

"Now, just about the time when he
Began to lose his tail,
To change into a croaking frog,
He came across a nail--
A nail so rusty that it looked
Just like an angle-worm,
Except that it was straight and stiff,
And so could never squirm.

"And Polly, feeling hungry, to
Assuage his appetite,
Swam boldly up to that old nail,
And gave it such a bite,
He nearly broke his upper jaw;
His lower jaw he bent.
And then he got so very mad,
His temper simply went.

"He lost it so completely as
He lashed and gnashed around,
That though this happened years ago,
It has not since been found.
And that is why, at all times, in
The Pollywog you see,
A model of that virtue rare--
True Amiability."

"Now, I dare say," continued the Bird--"I dare say you might have asked your father--who really knows a great deal, considering he isn't my twin brother--sixteen million four hundred and twenty-three times why the Pollywog is always so good-natured, and he couldn't have answered you more than once out of the whole lot, and he'd have been wrong even then."

"It must be lovely to know so much," said Jimmieboy.

"It is," said the Bird; "that is, it is lovely when you don't have to keep it all to yourself. It's very nice to tell things. That's really the best part of secrets, I think. It is such fun telling them. Now, why does the sun rise in the morning?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"For the same reason that you do," returned the sage Bird. "Because it is time to get up."

"Well, here's a thing I don't know about," said Jimmieboy. "What is 'to alarm?'"

"To frighten--to scare--to discombobulate," replied the Bird. "Why?"

"Well, I don't see why an alarm-clock is called an alarm-clock, because it doesn't ever alarm anybody," said Jimmieboy.

"Oh, it doesn't, eh?" cried the Bird. "Well, that's just where you are mistaken. It alarms the people or the animals you dream about when you are asleep, and they make such a noise getting away that they wake you up. Why, an alarm-clock saved my life once. I dreamed that I fell asleep on board a steamboat that went so fast hardly anybody could stay on board of her--she just regularly slipped out from under their feet, and unless a passenger could run fast enough to keep up with her, or was chained fast enough to keep aboard of her, he'd get dropped astern every single time. I dreamed I was aboard of her one day, and that to keep on deck I chained myself to the smoke-stack, and then dozed off. Just as I was dozing, a Misinformation Bird, who was jealous of me, sneaked up and cut the chain. As he expected, the minute I was cut loose the boat rushed from under me, and the first thing I knew I was struggling in the water. While I was struggling there, I was attacked by a Catfish. Cats are death to birds, you know, and I really had given myself up for lost, when '_ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling_' went the alarm-clock in the corner of my cage; the fish turned blue with fear, swished his tail about in his fright, and the splashing of the water waked me up, and there I was standing on one wheel on my perch, safe and sound. If that clock hadn't gone off and alarmed that Catfish, I am afraid I should have been forever lost to the world."

"I see now; but I never knew before why it was called an alarm-clock, and I've wondered about it a good deal," said Jimmieboy. "Now, here's another thing I've bothered over many a time: What's the use of weeds?"

"Oh, that's easy," said the Bird, with a laugh. "To make lawns look prettier next year than they do this."

"I don't see how that is," said Jimmieboy.

"Clear as window-glass. This year you have weeds on your lawn, don't you?"

"Yes," returned Jimmieboy.

"And you make them get out, don't you?" said the Bird.

"Yes," assented Jimmieboy.

"Well, there you are. By getting out they make your lawns prettier. That's one of the simplest things in the world. But here's a thing I should think you'd wonder at. Why do houses have shutters on their windows?" asked the Bird.

"I know why," said Jimmieboy. "It's to keep the sun out."

"That's nonsense, because the sun is so much larger than any house that was ever built it couldn't get in if it tried," returned the feathered sage.

"Then I don't know why. Why?" asked Jimmieboy.

"So as to wake people up by banging about on windy nights, and they are a mighty useful invention too," said the Bird. "I knew of a whole family that got blown away once just because they hadn't any shutters to bang about and warn them of their danger. It was out in the West, where they have cyclones, which are things that pick up houses and toss them about just as you would pebbles. A Mr. and Mrs. Podlington had built a house in the middle of a big field for themselves and their seventeen children. Mr. Podlington was very rich, but awful mean, and when the house was finished, all except the shutters, he said he wasn't going to have any shutters because they cost too much, and so they hadn't a shutter on the house. One night after they had lived where they were about six months they all went to bed about nine o'clock, and by ten they were sound asleep, every one of them. At eleven o'clock a breeze sprang up. This grew very shortly into a gale. Then it became a hurricane, and by two o'clock it was a cyclone. One cyclone wouldn't have hurt much, but at three o'clock two more came along, and the first thing the Podlington family knew their house was blown off its foundations, lifted high up in the air, and at breakfast-time was out of sight, and, what is worse, it has never come down anywhere, and all this happened ten years ago."

"But where did it go?" asked Jimmieboy.

"Nobody knows. Maybe it landed in the moon. Maybe it's being blown about on the wings of those cyclones yet. I don't believe we'll ever know," answered the Bird. "But you can see just why that all happened. It was Mr. Podlington's meanness about the shutters, and nothing else. If he had had shutters on that house, at least one of them would have flopped bangety-bang against the house all night, and the chances are that they would all have been waked up by it before the cyclone came, and in plenty of time to save themselves. In fact, I think very likely they could have fastened the house more securely to the ground, and saved it too, if they had waked up and seen what was going on."

"I'll never build a house without shutters," said Jimmieboy, as he tried to fancy the condition of the Podlingtons whisking about in the air for ten long years--nearly five years longer than he himself had lived. If they had landed in the moon it wouldn't have been so bad, but this other possible and even more likely fate of mounting on the wind ever higher and higher and not landing anywhere was simply dreadful to think about.

"I wouldn't, especially in the cyclone country," returned the voice in the bush. "But I'll tell you of one thing that would save you if you really did have to build a house without shutters; build it with wings. You've heard of houses with wings, of course?"

"Yes, indeed," said Jimmieboy. "Why, our house has three wings. One of 'em was put on it last summer, so that we could have a bigger kitchen."

"I remember," said the Bird. "I wondered a good deal about that wing until I found out it was for a kitchen, and not to fly with. The house had enough wings to fly with without the new one. In fact, the new one for flying purposes would be as useless as a third wheel to a bicycle."

"What do you mean by to fly with?" asked Jimmieboy, puzzled at this absurd remark of the Bird.

"Exactly what I say. Wings are meant to fly with, aren't they? I hope you knew that!" said the Bird. "So if the Podlingtons' house had had wings it might have got back all right. It could have worked its way slowly out of the cyclone, and then sort of rested on its wings a little until it was prepared to swoop down on to its old foundations, alighting just where it was before. A trip through the air under such circumstances would have been rather pleasant, I think--much pleasanter than going off into the air forever, without any means of getting back."

"But," asked Jimmieboy, "even if Mr. Podlington's house had had wings, how could he have made them work?"

"Why, how stupid of you!" cried the Bird. "Don't you know that he could have taken hold of the----"

"Ting-a-ling-a-ling a-ling-a-ling!" rang the alarm-clock up in the cook's room, which had been set for six o'clock in the afternoon instead of for six in the morning by some odd mistake of Mary Ann's.

"The alarm! The alarm!" shrieked the Bird, in terror.

And then the invisible creature, if Jimmieboy could judge by the noise in the bush, seemed to make off as fast as he could go, his cries of fear growing fainter and fainter as the wise Bird got farther and farther away, until finally they died away in the distance altogether.

Jimmieboy sprang to his feet, looked down the road along which his strange friend had fled, and then walked into the house, wishing that the alarm-clock had held off just a little longer, so that he might have learned how the wings of a house should be managed to make the house fly off into the air. He really felt as if he would like to try the experiment with his own house.

VIII.

GIANT THE JACK KILLER.

Jimmieboy was turning over the pages of his fairy book the other night, trying to refresh his memory concerning the marvelous doings of the fairy-land people by looking at the pictures. His papa was too tired to read to him, and as no one else in the house was willing to undertake the task, the boy was doing his best to entertain himself, and as it happened he got more out of his own efforts than he ever derived from the efforts of others. He had dallied long over the weird experiences of Cinderella, and had just turned over the pages which lead up to the story of Jack the Giant Killer, when something in the picture of the Giant's castle seemed to move.

Looking a little more closely at the picture in a startled sort of way, Jimmieboy saw that the moving thing was the knob of the castle door, and in a jiffy the door itself opened, and a huge homely creature whom Jimmieboy recognized at once as an ogre stuck his head out. For a moment the little fellow felt disposed to cry for help. Surely if the Giant could open the door in the picture there was no reason why he should not step out of the book entirely and make a speedy meal of Jimmieboy, who, realizing that he was entirely unarmed, was inclined to run and hide behind his papa's back. His fast oozing courage was quickly restored, however, by the Giant himself, who winked at him in a genial sort of fashion as much as to say: "Nonsense, boy, I wouldn't eat you, if I could." The wink he followed up at once with a smile, and then he said:

"That you, Jimmieboy?"

"Yes, sir," said Jimmieboy, very civilly indeed. "I'm me. Are you you?"

The Giant laughed.

"Yes," he replied, "and so, of course, we are ourselves. Are you very busy?"

"Not very," said Jimmieboy. "Why?"

"I want a little advice from you," the Giant answered. "I think it's about time the tables were turned on that miserable little ruffian Jack. The idea of a big thing like me being killed every day of his life by a mosquito like Jack is very tiresome, and I want to know if you don't think it would be fair if I should kill him just once for the sake of variety. It won't hurt him. He'll come to life again right away just as we Giants do----"

"Don't you stay dead when Jack kills you?" asked Jimmieboy.

"You know the answer to that as well as I do," said the Giant. "You've had this story read to you every day now for three years, haven't you?"

"About that," said Jimmieboy.

"Well, if we staid dead how do you suppose we'd be on hand to be killed again the next time you had the story read to you?"

"I never thought of that," said Jimmieboy.

"Never thought of it?" echoed the ogre. "Why, what kind of thoughts do you think, anyhow? It's the only thought for a thinker to think I think, don't you think so?"

"Say that again, will you?" said Jimmieboy.

"Couldn't possibly," said the ogre. "In fact, I've forgotten it. But what do you think of my scheme? Don't you think it would be wise if I killed Jack just once?"

"Perhaps it would," said the boy. "That is if it wouldn't hurt him."

"Hurt him? Didn't I tell you it wouldn't hurt him?" said the Giant. "I wouldn't hurt that boy for all the world. If I did I'd lose my position. Why, all I am I owe to him. The fairy people let me live in this magnificent castle for nothing. They let me rob them of all their property, and all I have to do in return for this is to be killed by Jack whenever any little boy or girl in your world desires to be amused by a tragedy of that sort. So you see I haven't any hard feelings against him, even if I did call him a miserable little ruffian."

"Well, I don't exactly like to have Jack killed," said Jimmieboy. "I've always rather liked him. What do you suppose he would say to it?"

"That's just the point. I wouldn't kill him unless he was willing. That would be a violation of my agreement with him, and when he came to he might sue me for what the lawyers call a breach of contract," said the ogre. "Now, it seemed to me that if you were to go to Jack and tell him that you were getting a little tired of having this story end the way it does all the time, and that you thought it only fair to me that I should have a chance to celebrate a victory, say once a week--every Saturday night for instance--he'd be willing to do it."

"Where can I find him?" asked Jimmieboy. "I just as lief ask him."

"He's in the picture, two pages farther along, sharpening his sword," said the ogre.

"Very well, I'll go see him at once," said Jimmieboy. Then he said good-by to the Giant, and turned over the pages until he came to the pictures showing how Jack sharpened his sword on the soles of the shoes of another giant, whom he had bound and strapped to the floor.

At first Jimmieboy did not know how to address him. He had often spoken to the figures in the pictures, but they had never replied to anything he had said. However, he made a beginning.

"Ahem!" he said.

The effect was pleasing, for as he said this Jack stopped sharpening his blade and turned to see who had spoken.

"Ah, Jimmieboy!" said the small warrior. "Howdy do. Haven't seen much of you this week. You've been paying more attention to Hop o' My Thumb than to me lately."

"Well, I love you just the same," said Jimmieboy. "I've just seen the Giant that lives up in the castle with the dragon on the front stoop."

"He's a good fellow," said Jack. "I'm very fond of him. He never gives me any trouble, and dies just as easy as if he were falling off a log, and out of business hours we're great chums. He's had something on his mind lately, though, that I don't understand. He says being killed every day is getting monotonous."

"That's what he said to me," said Jimmieboy.

"Well, I hope he doesn't resign his position," said Jack, thoughtfully. "I know it isn't in every way a pleasant one, but he might go farther and fare worse. The way I kill him is painless, but if he got into that Bean-stalk boy's hands he'd be all bruised up. You can't fall a mile without getting hurt, you know, and I like the old fellow too well to have him go over to that Bean-stalk cousin of mine."

"He likes you, too," said Jimmieboy, pleased to find that there was so much good feeling between the two creatures. "But he thinks he ought to get a chance to win once in a while. He said if he could arrange it with you to have him kill you once a week--Saturday nights, for instance--he'd be perfectly contented."

"That's reasonable enough," said Jack, nodding his head approvingly. "Did he say how he would like to do it?"

"No, only that he'd kill you tenderly, so that you wouldn't suffer," said Jimmieboy.

"Oh, I know that!" said Jack, softly. "He's too tender-hearted to hurt anybody. I'm very much inclined to agree to the proposition, but he must let me choose the manner of the killing. He hasn't had much practice killing people, and if he were to do it by hitting me on the head with a stick of wood I'd be likely to wake up with a headache next day; neither should I like to be smothered because while that doesn't bruise one or break any bones its awfully stuffy, and if there's one thing I like it is fresh air."

"Perhaps he might eat you," suggested Jimmieboy.

"He isn't big enough to do that comfortably," said Jack, shaking his head. "He'd have to cut me up and chew me, because his throat isn't large enough for him to swallow me at one gulp. But I'll tell you what you can do. You go back to him, and tell him that I'll agree to his proposition, if he'll have me cooked in a plum-pudding four hundred feet in circumference. I'm very fond of plum-pudding, and while he is eating it from the outside I could be eating it from the inside, and, of course, I shouldn't be burned in the cooking, because in the middle of a pudding of that size the heat never could reach me."

"But when he reached you," said Jimmieboy, "you'd have the same trouble you said you'd have if he ate you up. He'd have to cut you to pieces and chew you."

"Ah!" said Jack, "don't you see my point? By the time he reached me he would have eaten so much plum-pudding that he wouldn't have room for me, so I'd escape."

"But, then, you wouldn't be killed," said Jimmieboy.

"That wouldn't make any difference," said Jack. "We'd stop the story before I escaped and everybody would think I'd been eaten up, and that's all he wants. He just wants to seem to win once. He doesn't really care about killing me dead. Don't you see."

"Yes, I think I do," said Jimmieboy, "and I'll go back and tell him what you say."

"Thank you," said Jack. "And while you are there give him my love, and tell him I'll be around to kill him as usual after tea."

All of which Jimmieboy did and the Giant readily agreeing to the plum-pudding scheme, said good-night to his little visitor, and retired into the castle, closing the door after him.

Then Jimmieboy went to bed in a great hurry, because he knew how sleep made time seem shorter than it really was, and he was very anxious to have Saturday night come around so that he could see how the new ending to the story of Jack the Giant Killer worked.

As yet that Saturday night has not turned up, so that I really cannot tell you whether or not the arrangement was a success.

IX.

JIMMIEBOY AND THE FIREWORKS.

There was whispering going on somewhere, and Jimmieboy felt that it was his duty to find out where it was, who it was that was doing it, and what it was that was being whispered. It was about an hour after supper on the evening of July 3d when it all happened. A huge box full of fire-works had arrived only a few hours before, and Jimmieboy was somewhat afraid that the whisperings might have come from burglars who, knowing that there were thirty-five rockets, twenty Roman candles, colored lights by the dozen, and no end of torpedoes and fire-crackers and other things in the house, had come to steal them, and, if he could help himself, Jimmieboy was not going to allow that. So he began to search about, and in a few minutes he had located the whisperers in the very room at the foot of the back stairs in which the fire-works were. His little heart almost stopped beating for a moment when he realized this. It isn't pleasant to feel that perhaps you will be deprived, after all, of something you have looked forward to for a whole month, and upon the very eve of the fulfillment of your dearest hopes at that.

"I'll have to tell papa about this," he said; and then, realizing that his papa was not at home, and that his mamma was up stairs trying to convince his small brother that it would be impossible to get the moon into the nursery, although it looked much smaller even than the nursery window, Jimmieboy resolved that he would take the matter in hand himself.