Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Thumbling looked at the buckets. They were two enormous hogsheads, ten feet high and six broad. It would have been much easier for him to drown himself in them than to move them.

"O, ho!" shouted the giant, as he saw his hesitation; "and so you are stuck at the first thing, my boy! Do what I do, you know, and get the water."

"What is the good of that?" replied Thumbling, calmly; "I will go and get the spring itself, and put that in the pot."

"No! no!" said the Troll; "that won't do. You have already half spoiled my forest, and I don't want you to take my spring away, lest to-morrow I shall go dry. You may attend to the fire, and I will go and get the water."

After having hung up the kettle, the giant put into it an ox cut into pieces, fifty cabbages, and a wagon-load of carrots. He then skimmed the broth with a frying-pan, tasting it every now and then, to see if it was done. When all was ready, he turned to Thumbling, and said:--

"Now to the table. We'll see if you can do what I can there. I feel like eating the whole ox, and you into the bargain. I think I will serve you for dessert."

"All right," said Thumbling; but before sitting down to the table, he slipped under his jacket his stout leather bag, which reached down to his feet.

The two champions now set to work. The Troll ate and ate, and Thumbling wasn't idle; only he pitched everything, beef, cabbage, carrots, and all, into his bag, when the giant wasn't looking.

"Ouf!" at last grunted the Troll; "I can't do much more; I have got to unbutton the lower button of my waistcoat."

"Eat away, starveling!" cried Thumbling, sticking the half of a cabbage into his bag.

"Ouf!" groaned the giant; "I have got to unbutton another button. But what sort of an ostrich's stomach have you got, my son? I should think you were used to eating stones!"

"Eat away, lazy-bones!" said Thumbling, sticking a huge junk of beef into his bag.

"Ouf!" sighed the giant, for the third time; "I have got to unbutton the third button. I am almost suffocated; and how is it with you, sorcerer?"

"Bah!" answered Thumbling; "it is the easiest thing in the world to relieve yourself; and so saying he took his knife, and slit his jacket and the bag under it the whole length of his stomach.

"It is your turn now," he said to the giant; "do as I do, you know, _if you can_."

"Your humble servant," replied the Troll; "pray excuse me! I had rather be your servant than do that; _my_ stomach don't digest steel!"

No sooner said than done; the giant kissed Thumbling's hand in token of submission, and taking his little master on one shoulder, and a huge bag of gold on the other, he started off for the king's palace.

V.

They were having a great feast at the palace, and thinking no more of Thumbling than if the giant had eaten him up a week before; when, all of a sudden, they heard a terrible noise that shook the palace to its very foundations. It was the Troll, who, finding the great gateway too low for him to enter, had overturned it with a single kick of his foot. Everybody ran to the windows, the king among the rest, and there saw Thumbling quietly seated on the shoulder of his terrible servant.

Our adventurer sprang lightly to the balcony of the second story, where he saw his betrothed, and, bending gracefully on one knee, he said:--

"Princess, you asked me for a slave; I present you two."

This gallant speech was published the next morning in the Court Gazette; but at the moment it was said it was quite embarrassing to the poor king; and as he didn't know how to reply to it, he drew the princess one side, and thus addressed her:--

"My child, I have now no possible excuse for refusing your hand to this daring young man; sacrifice yourself, my darling, to your country; remember that princesses do not marry to please themselves."

"Pardon me, father," answered the princess, courtesying; "princess or not, every woman likes to marry according to her taste. Let me defend my rights as I think best."

"Thumbling," added she, aloud, "you are brave and lucky; but that is not enough alone to please women."

"I know that," answered Thumbling; "it is necessary besides to do their pleasure, and submit to their caprices."

"You are a witty fellow," said the princess; "and since you understand me so well, I am going to propose another trial to you. You need not be alarmed, for this time you will only have me for an antagonist. Let us try and see who will be the sharpest and quickest, and my hand shall be the prize of the battle."

Thumbling assented, with a low bow, and followed the court into the great hall of audience, where the trial was to take place. There, to the affright of all, the Troll was found, sprawling on the floor; for, as the hall was only fifteen feet high, the poor fellow couldn't get up. On a sign of his young master, he crawled humbly to him, happy and proud to obey. It was Force itself, in the service of Wit.

"Now," said the princess, "let us begin with some nonsense. It is an old story that women are not afraid to lie; and we will see which of us will stand the biggest story without objection. The first one who says, '_That is too much_,' will be beaten."

"I am always at the service of your Royal Highness," answered Thumbling; "whether to lie in sport, or to tell the truth in sober earnest."

"I am sure," began the princess, "that you haven't got a farm half as beautiful as ours; and it is so large, that, when two shepherds are blowing their horns at each end of it, neither can hear the other."

"That is nothing at all," said Thumbling; "my father's farm is so large, that, if a heifer two months old goes in at the gate on one side of it, when she goes out at the other she takes a calf of her own with her."

"That don't surprise me," continued the princess; "but you haven't got a bull half as big as ours; a man can sit on each of his horns, and the two can't touch each other with a twenty-foot pole."

"That is nothing at all," replied Thumbling; "my father's bull is so large, that a servant sitting on one of his horns can't see the servant sitting on the other."

"That don't surprise me," said the princess; "but you haven't got half so much milk at your farm as we have; for we fill, every day, twenty hogsheads, a hundred feet high; and every week, we make a pile of cheese as high as the big pyramid of Egypt."

"That is nothing at all," said Thumbling. "In my father's dairy they make such big cheeses, that once, when my father's mare fell into the press, we only found her after travelling seven days, and she was so much injured that her back was broken. So to mend that I made her a backbone of a pine-tree, that answered splendidly; till one fine morning the tree took it into its head to grow, and it grew and grew until it was so high that I climbed up to Heaven on it. There I looked down, and saw a lady in a white gown spinning sea-foam to make gossamer with. I went to take hold of it, and snap! the thread broke, and I fell into a rat-hole. There I saw your father and my mother spinning; and as your father was clumsy, lo and behold, my mother gave him such a box on the ear, that it made his old wig shake----"

"_That is too much!_" interrupted the princess. "My father never suffered such an insult in all his life."

"She said it! she said it!" shouted the giant "Now, master, the princess is ours!"

VI.

But the princess said, blushing: "Not quite yet. I have three riddles to give you, Thumbling; guess them, and I will obey my father, and become your wife without any more objections. Tell me, first, what that is which is always falling, and is never broken?"

"Oh!" answered Thumbling, "my mother told me that a long time ago; it is a waterfall."

"That is so," interrupted the giant; "but who would have thought of that."

"Tell me, next," continued the princess, with a slight trembling in her voice, "what is that that every day goes the same journey, and yet never returns on its steps?"

"Oh!" answered Thumbling, "my mother told me that a long time ago; it is the sun."

"You are right," said the princess, pale with emotion. "And now for my last question, which you will never guess. What is that that you think, and that I don't think? What is that we both think, and what is that we neither of us think?"

Thumbling bent his head, and seemed embarrassed; and the Troll whispered to him: "Master, don't be disturbed. If you can't guess it, just make a sign to me, and I will carry off the princess, and make an end of the matter at once."

"Be silent, slave!" answered Thumbling. "Force alone can do nothing, my poor friend, and no one ought to know it better than you. Let me have my own way."

"Madame," said he then to the princess, in the midst of a profound silence, "I hardly dare guess; and yet in this riddle I plainly perceive my own happiness. I dared to think that your questions would have no difficulty for me, while you thought the contrary; you have the goodness to believe that I am not unworthy to please you, while I have hardly the boldness to think so; finally," added he, smilingly, "what we both think is, that there are bigger fools in the world than you and I; and what we neither of us think is, that the king, your august father, and this poor giant have as much--"

"Silence!" interrupted the princess; "here is my hand."

"What were you thinking about me?" asked the king; "I should be delighted to know."

"My dear father," said the princess, embracing him, "we think that you are the wisest of kings, and the best of fathers."

"It is well!" replied the king, loftily; "and now I must do something for my subjects. Thumbling, from this moment you are a Duke!"

"Long live Duke Thumbling! long live my master!" shouted the giant, with a terrific roar, that sounded like a clap of thunder breaking over the palace. But, luckily, there was no harm done, save badly frightening everybody, and breaking all the windows.

VII.

It would be unnecessary to give a full account of the wedding of the princess and Duke Thumbling. All weddings are alike; the difference is in what follows after them. Nevertheless, it would be improper in a truthful historian not to say that the presence of the Troll added a great deal to the magnificent display. For instance, when the happy couple were returning from the church, the giant, in the excess of his joy, found nothing better to do than to take the royal carriage on the top of his head, and to carry the wedded pair back to the palace. This is an incident worth noting, because it doesn't happen every day.

At night there was a splendid feast at the palace, with suppers, orations, poems, fireworks, illuminations, and everything. Nothing was wanting, and the joy was universal. Everybody in the palace laughed, sung, ate, or drank, save one man, who, seated sullenly alone in a dark corner, amused himself in a very different way from everybody else. It was the surly Paul, who rejoiced that his ears had been cut off, because he had become deaf, and consequently couldn't hear the praises all were showering on his brother. On the other hand, he was unhappy, because he couldn't help seeing the happiness of the bride and bridegroom. So he rushed out into the forest, where the bears speedily made an end of him; and I wish a like punishment to all envious people like him.

Thumbling was such a little fellow that it was hard work for his subjects to respect him; but he was so wise, so affable, and so kind, that he very soon conquered the love of his wife, and the affection of all his people.

After the death of his father-in-law, he succeeded to the throne, which he occupied fifty-two years, without anybody ever having thought of a revolution; a fact that would be incredible, if it were not attested by the official records of his reign. He was so wise, says history, that he always divined what could best serve or please the humblest of his subjects, while he was so good, that the pleasures of others constituted his greatest happiness. He only lived for others.

But why praise his goodness? Is not that the virtue of all men of intelligence and wit? Whatever others may say, _I_ don't believe there are such things as good brutes here on earth; I speak now of featherless brutes that go on two legs. When a man is brutal, he cannot be kind and good; when a man is good, he cannot be brutal;--believe my long experience, which has learned it. If all blockheads are not vicious,--and I think they are,--all wicked men are necessarily foolish. And that is the moral of this story, if you can't find a better one. If you will find me a better, I will go and tell it to the Pope of Rome himself.

_From the Finnish._

THE RED-COATS.

There was commotion in Leafland. All the cities of the Great Republic were smitten with sudden dismay. Oakwich, Mapleton, Ashby, Elmthorpe, Beechworth, Sumachford, Nutham, trembled from centre to circumference. There were hurried consultations, desperate resolutions rejected as soon as adopted, eager inventories taken of domestic property, and a fearful looking-for of coming calamity. For, on the fine September morning when the sun poured out golden showers, and Leafland sat fair and smiling in robes of green, and so the whole universe was golden-green, there came a messenger flying from the North country,--a wandering Wood-thrush, deserted, draggled, and forlorn, faltering on weary wing through the lovely lanes of Leafland. The men begged him to tarry; the women promised him the daintiest tidbit in the sweetest bower on the sunniest bough; and the little Leaf-people clapped their tiny hands, and danced on the tips of their tiny toes for glee. For so admirably managed in Leafland are the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, that you might think the Leaflanders had solved the great problem of universal brotherhood. The stranger that is within their gates is all one with him who is bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. No sooner does a foreigner enter their borders, than he is presented with the freedom of all their cities. They provide for his wants, protect him from danger, and cherish his home as tenderly as if he were one of themselves. Robin the Red-breast and shy little Veery, Pewee the plaintive and cheerful Chewink, Long-sparrow, Bluebird, and sweet Chickadee, all glide freely in and out of their green and golden halls, flit through their winding streets, and take part in all their delights. Nor have the Leaflanders any trouble to understand bird-language. They have not, like the old Ger-men, eaten the hearts of birds, but by a more excellent way have they entered into all their secrets. Through long summer days and the silence of dewy nights, they lean so lovingly over them, they stir so softly around the still bird-cradles, they coo so tenderly to the sweet egg-nestlings and the helpless baby-birds, that one heart-language springs up between them, and shines familiarly through all foreign phrase. Nor is it the birds alone who take out naturalization-papers in Leafland. All manner of nations and peoples partake of its hospitalities and remember it for blessing. You have only to be pure-hearted, and you may become at once a Leaflander.

So it came to pass that the Leaflanders were sore grieved at heart to see the weary Wood-thrush deaf to all their entreaties, and bent alone on pursuing his solitary way. But as he wheeled slowly above their heads, as he seemed just about to vanish into the blue distance, they heard his faint voice--whether in terror or weakness they could not tell--only the words fell distinctly on their ears,--

"_I see! I see! I see! The Red-coats are coming!_"

Faint and far and clarion-clear, it trembled through Leafland, low but ominous. Mapleton heard it and wondered; Elmthorpe and Ashby and Nutham repeated it, looking into one another's eyes for a meaning. Proud old Oakwich tried to assume a grave aspect, but was inwardly at her wits' end. "The Red-coats are coming." All the ancient men and women, great-great-great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers, whose childhood lay wellnigh lost in the infinite past of April days, said it over to each other with thin, quavering voices; but all their experience gave them no key to the mysterious message. Then the post-riders were brought into requisition. The whole corporation of Gale, Breeze, Zephyr, & Co., Express Company, all their clerks, agents, and errand-boys, were sent to and fro through the Commonwealth, to see if any one anywhere had a little light to bestow upon the subject. Alas! the light came all too soon, and brought infinite sighing and sobbing. A thought suddenly broke loose in Oakwich, and up spake an old Oakwichian. "Oh! and oh! and woe is me for my miserable land now, now about to be bereft of her children! All her strength destroyed, all her loveliness laid desolate!"

Straightway throughout Leafland rose the voice of wailing, "Woe! woe! woe! for the miserable land!" but none of them knew what they were crying for; only the Oakwichian began it, and nothing better occurred to them to do than to join in; which soon made the sunny day overcast, and all the people walking in Netherworld where it approaches Leafland wrapped their old cloaks about them, and said spitefully, "What a disagreeable, raw east-wind it is, to be sure!"

But by and by, when their throats were quite dry and sore with wailing, one of the Mapletonians, a very sensible young woman, quite famous indeed for her wisdom, bethought herself to inquire what it was all about. Then there was a very pretty outburst of indignation. For a moment they forgot their grief, and, what was still worse, their good manners, and turned upon the unfortunate young woman.

"And so you set yourself above your betters, and fiddle while Leafland is burning!" cried one.

"And pray, Miss Wiseacre," asked another, "how came _you_ to know so much more than any one else? Who told _you_ that nothing was the matter?"

"Oh! if women would only mind the house, and not meddle with what does not belong to them!" exclaimed a third.

All very unjust as you see, for surely the destruction of Leafland concerned the women as much as the men, and poor "Miss Wiseacre" had not so much as made an assertion,--only asked a question. However, the Leaflanders must be excused, because they were quite beside themselves with terror, and, moreover, a question is sometimes more exasperating than fire and sword.

But the old Oakwichian was more reasonable, and, ever glad, even in the article of death, to disseminate useful knowledge, interposed. "I will tell you what the matter is," he said. "Well I remember in the far-away past, in the sunny summer-days that will return, alas! no more,"--here a burst of sorrow prevented speech, but he presently recovered himself,--"how a little maid used to walk in Netherworld, and rest under the shadow of our greatness, toying with the light. She was a favorite with every one hereabouts. Gold was her hair like a spun sunbeam, blue her eyes like our own June sky, and her voice might sing the lowest lullaby of the Red Mavis, or his song to his love in her nest. Sometimes the little maiden looked up wistfully to us, her eyes all a-gleam with her glowing fancies. Then we pelted her with sunshine, and caressed her with shade, and then she was happiest of all. But sometimes she brought with her hateful things, tasks and tools, useless, awkward, bungling, sharp weapons, that hurt her tender fingers, long cords that she pulled aimlessly back and forth, huge books with harsh names, that blurred her dear eyes and gloomed her bright face. First we tried to shame and then to woo her away from them, but some invisible old dragon stood over her, and forced her on; and so we learned at length to watch and wait till the hated task was over. Thereby we learned many strange and wonderful things; but this alone is to the purpose, that I surely recall how for many days she kept reading about the Red-coats, and I peeped down over her shoulder, as we swayed in the dance one afternoon, and saw pictures of these same Red-coats, a great destroying army, fierce and fell, who burn villages, and talk piously, and slay men, women, and children. Them has friend Wood-thrush verily seen, and against them he strove to warn us. But, ah! what avails it? What can we do, or whither shall we flee! Can a nation take wing like a Wood-thrush? Can Leafland flit about like a Swallow? And who should warrant us that the Red-coats should not pursue us to remotest fastnesses? Nay, they may be even now upon us. Woe! woe is me! We were Leaflanders; Oakwich was, and the great glory of the Elmthorpians! But now we be all dead men!"

At this, the Leaflanders only paused long enough to upbraid the young woman. "See now whether anything is the matter!" and immediately fell to upon their despair.

"A nation in ruins!" cried the statesman. "Leafland falls from its lofty summit, and I live to see the day."

"I behold the gods departing from Leafland," spake the scholar. "This is the end of the fates of Leafland."

"Now I do not care for your gods and your fates and your what-all," sobbed a nervous little lady. "I never could see that they were of any use in housekeeping; but who shall watch over the tender birdlings when we are gone?"

"And never any more dances! Forever, never, never, forever!" You may know it was a belle said that.

"Dances are but the vanity of this world," moaned a sedate matron; "but woe for my dear pet Aphides, with their six hundred thousand children, who will be dead before they are born!"

"Bother your six hundred thousand children!" growled a crusty philosopher. "If they _are_ dead, it is the only good thing ever I heard about them. It might be worth while to have one's country crashing about one's ears occasionally, for the sake of being well rid of such trash. Here are all our laboratories broken up, and the sun's occupation gone, and you making a to-do about a parcel of babies!"

"O the sweet sunshine!" wept a poet, but most musically,--"the warm, delicious sunshine, that our hungry souls can feed upon no more, nor ever fill our drinking-cups with nectared dew!"

And so in Mapleton and Sumachford and through all Leafland was nothing heard but the voice of lamentation, and nothing seen but floods of tears, and nothing thought of but how to avert or escape the threatened calamity; and, in their terror and trouble, the Leaflanders almost lost their fine tempers, and were often on the brink of quarrelling; and the people walking in Netherworld met each other under blue cotton umbrellas, and exclaimed, "What a spell of weather!" and altogether it was very uncomfortable, both in Leafland and Netherworld.

Just at this time a gay young Chipmonk appeared upon the scene,--a careless, dashing, saucy fellow, very popular among the young Leaflanders of the rapid sort. He came skipping and frisking into Nutham, as his manner was, both pockets full of corn which he had _confiscated_, he remarked significantly, from a field down yonder. He nodded jauntily right and left, and then disposed himself comfortably in a corner, and began cracking his dainties in a very free-and-easy manner, not noticing the woe-begone aspect of his friends. All at once, however, he awoke to a realizing sense of things, and showed his sympathy after his own fashion, by giving a sudden flirt with his tail, and calling out, irreverently, "What's the row?"

Amid tears and sighs, the sad story was related to him, in all its length and breadth and thickness; but, instead of the answering tear and sigh which his auditors expected, he only thrust his paws into his pockets, and whisked his tail over his back in frantic convulsions of laughter; muttering, as breath came to him in the pauses, "O, what a gony! For that matter, O, what a pack of gonies!"

Now the Leaflanders were quite too well-bred ever to have used or heard so barbarous a word as "gony." Nevertheless, reason and instinct both taught them, as it will teach all people of refined sensibilities, that to be called a gony is to be called something very disagreeable; and if anything can heighten the unpleasant sensation, it is to be called "a pack of gonies." Consequently the Leaflanders began to look at each other blankly, and even to suspect that possibly they had been making fools of themselves. But Chipmonk did not leave them long in suspense. "Your terrible Red-coats are your own selves," he cried. "I have heard of people being frightened by their own shadow; but never, in all my born days, did I hear of any one being frightened by his own shine."

"Now will you explain yourself?" cried one of the young ladies, her curiosity getting the better of her chagrin. All the old men and the young men were longing to know, but were too proud to ask; but the question being asked for them, they were glad enough to crowd in, and hear the answer.

"It is only this, and nothing more," answered Chipmonk, ejecting a pine-seed from his mouth. "You are all going to have a new suit of clothes, more splendid than you ever saw in your lives,--yellow and brown and spotted, and all manner of magnificent colors, but chiefly red; and then you will be Red-coats, won't you? Wood-thrush came from north, where the tailoring began; and he saw it, and told you. It is a sign for him to be up and flying. He thought it would be his excuse for declining your invitation, instead of which you all went thrusting your heads into a bramble-bush. O my!"

"But say, Chipmonk, do you know this? Are you sure of it? It seems too good news to be true."

"Well, all I can say is, I have lived here, man and boy, nigh on to forty months; and I know it always _has_ happened about this time. I am young for a Chipmonk; but I was in full career long before the oldest crone among you was born; and if there is anything hereabouts that I don't know, you may take your affidavit it isn't worth knowing." And he sat back, and betook himself once more to his "confiscated" corn with the most indifferent superiority.

Oh! but there was gladness then in Leafland, you may be sure. All their sadness was turned to rejoicing; and even then the work of transformation--called, in squirrelicular, "tailoring"--began. Old and young, men and maids, felt a glory in their blood. All the essence of the summer-long sunshine seemed to pour itself into their hearts. From one end of Leafland to another was only singing and dancing and delight. Mapleton crowned herself with a golden crown, and Oakwich wreathed her brows with the sunset. All the beauty of the past was dull and sombre to this new splendor, this royal magnificence, born of the ineffable light.

A poet and a publisher walked through the Essex woods one October afternoon; and they remarked that the foliage was very brilliant this year, which was quite true; but if I had not been born, you never would have known all about it.

_Gail Hamilton._

THE COLOR-BEARER

Was a fortress to be stormed:
Boldly right in view they formed,
All as quiet as a regiment parading:
Then in front a line of flame!
Then at left and right the same!
Two platoons received a furious enfilading.
To their places still they filed,
And they smiled at the wild
Cannonading.

"'T will be over in an hour!
'T will not be much of a shower!
Never mind, my boys," said he, "a little drizzling!"
Then to cross that fatal plain,
Through the whirring, hurtling rain
Of the grape-shot, and the minie-bullets' whistling!
But he nothing heeds nor shuns,
As he runs with the guns
Brightly bristling!

Leaving trails of dead and dying
In their track, yet forward flying
Like a breaker where the gale of conflict rolled them,
With a foam of flashing light
Borne before them on their bright
Burnished barrels,--O, 't was fearful to behold them!
While from ramparts roaring loud
Swept a cloud like a shroud
To enfold them!

O, his color was the first!
Through the burying cloud he burst,
With the standard to the battle forward slanted!
Through the belching, blinding breath
Of the flaming jaws of Death,
Till his banner on the bastion he had planted!
By the screaming shot that fell,
And the yell of the shell,
Nothing daunted.

Right against the bulwark dashing,
Over tangled branches crashing,
'Mid the plunging volleys thundering ever louder!
There he clambers, there he stands,
With the ensign in his hands,--
O, was ever hero handsomer or prouder?
Streaked with battle-sweat and slime,
And sublime in the grime
Of the powder!

'T was six minutes, at the least,
Ere the closing combat ceased,--
Near as we the mighty moments then could measure,--
And we held our souls with awe,
Till his haughty flag we saw
On the lifting vapors drifting o'er the embrasure!
Saw it glimmer in our tears,
While our ears heard the cheers
Rend the azure!

Through the abatis they broke,
Through the surging cannon-smoke,
And they drove the foe before like frightened cattle!
O, but never wound was his,
For in other wars than this,
Where the volleys of Life's conflict roar and rattle,
He must still, as he was wont,
In the front bear the brunt
Of the battle.

He shall guide the van of Truth!
And in manhood, as in youth,
Be her fearless, be her peerless Color-Bearer!
With his high and bright example,
Like a banner brave and ample,
Ever leading through receding clouds of Error,
To the empire of the Strong,
And to Wrong he shall long
Be a terror!

_J. T. Trowbridge._

THE LITTLE PRISONER.