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NIM AND CUM AND

THE WONDER-HEAD STORIES

Nim and Cum

and

The Wonder-Head Stories

Catharine Brooks Yale

Chicago Way and Williams

1895

COPYRIGHT

By WAY & WILLIAMS

CHICAGO, 1895

DECORATIONS BY BRUCE ROGERS

WRITTEN FOR, AND DEDICATED TO

GEORGE SPENCER FULLER

CONTENTS.

NIM-AND CUM; = 0 5% WONDER-HEAD STORIES, - 25

CHUCKLE-DE-DUM, - : - : 32

CHECKERBERRY TOES, - : : 58

SOMETHING FUNNY, - = : : 76

THE OLD GRAY DUCK, - : : 85

A RIDE TO FROST-LAND, - : - 96

LETTER FROM NEW BABEL, : : 11r

NIM AND CUM

CARRY Sen eae 33. ee RSD OS ES

———— Z

NIM AND CUM

‘Riddle-me, riddle-me ree! Pr’aps you can’t tell me what this may be.

Two lofty, vague figures loomed up above one of the highest peaks of the Alleghany mountains. One was called Nim, that was the man;

the other was Cum, that was the

woman. Cum said to Nim: ‘I am very warm hurrying all

the way from the Atlantic coast,

give me your hat,’ and she took Nim’s hat and began to fan herself furiously.

10 NIM AND CUM

There was a large city at the

foot of the mountain, and when

Cum began to fan herself all the

people said: ‘How the wind blows! See

those thunder-caps on the top of

the mountain. I believe we are

going to have a thunder-shower or a hurricane.’

Then a newspaper man ran to

his office and wrote a report of a

terrible gale that had sprung up

and was blowing off the roofs of

houses and the tops of chimneys;

but before he had finished the paragraph, the wind suddenly -

ceased.

When Cum stopped fanning her-

self, she said:

‘Nim, I’m thirsty.

Nim kindly offered to get her

some water, and he reached up

NIM AND CUM It

and took down the Big Dipper from the sky where it always hangs pointing to the North Star; and moving away a little, he dip- ped it into Lake Superior and

brought a nice cool draught to Cum, who drank all she wanted

and then threw the rest out and handed the Dipper back to Nim, who hung it up in the sky in its usual place. When Cum emptied the Dipper,

the people in the city at the foot of the mountain said:

“How it rains! It pours, see it

pour! we shall have a flood.’ Then the newspaper man ran as

fast as he could to his office, and

wrote: ‘It is raining heavily; people are in great fear of a terrible freshet.’

But before he had finished the

12 NIM AND CUM

item, Nim and Cum were rested

and had moved away from the mountain; and as they had noth-

ing in particular to do, they concluded to take a little foot bath in Niagara Falls, so they each

put down one foot at a time under

the largest cataract and took a

good spray bath. They felt cool

and light after this, so they up

and away, and chased each other

over lakes and mountains and

rivers and prairies until they were fairly tired out, and then they

stopped on a peak of the Rocky

Mountains and took a good long

rest. After a while Nim said:

‘T believe I will go a-fishing.’ ‘Where's your rod?’ asked Cum.

‘TI will show you,’ said Nim; and he stepped up to the North Pole,

NIM AND CUM 13

and taking hold of it firmly, wiggled it a little and out it came. Then he seized it, and with a few strides reached the Equator, and there he unwound the equinoctial line and tied it tothe pole. Then he went back and showed Cum his nice rod and line with great pride.

‘But,’ said he, ‘I am still minus a hook.’

“Why won’t this do?’ asked ‘Cum, and she just pulled the meridian of longitude she was sitting on, right out, bent it into the shape

of a fish-hook, and handed it to Nim, who tied it on his line.

When Nim took out the North Pole and unwound and took away the equinoctial line, and when Cum pulled out the meridian of longi-

14 NIM AND CUM

tude, the people in the cities down

below felt a jar and exclaimed:

‘It is an earthquake, a fearful

earthquake!’

And the newspaper man hurried

to his office and wrote:

‘There have been remarkable

meteorological disturbances for an

hour past, and tremors of the

earth that are without doubt an

earthquake.’

By this time, Nim had cast his

line into the Pacific Ocean. After

waiting a while for a bite, he found

his hook was entangled in some-

thing, and he tried in vain to get

it free. Cum said:

‘Maybe it is a leviathan.’

‘No,’ said Nim, ‘I know levia-

thans and their tricks and their

manners, and they don’t act like

NIM AND CUM 15

this,’ and he gave a little jerk, and up flopped a fine large ocean steamer.

‘Pshaw,’ said Nim, ‘it is nothing but a few sticks stuck together, —some child’s toy,’ and he set down the steamer very carefully on the coast of San Francisco.

Then all the people in the city ran about the streets calling out:

“Here’s a wreck! a wreck! a wreck! a wreck of a large and beautiful steamer! Struck by lightning! See the hole where it was struck!’

But the crew and passengers, who were all safe, said it was not lightning that had struck them, but that they had been drawn up by a water spout or something and carried along through the air and

16 NIM AND CUM

then had been left as mysteriously

as they had been taken. And the

newspaper man wrote it all down in his paper.

Nim did not fish any more. Cum

said she thought there was a kind

of wobbling motion of the earth, and that she believed it was because the North Pole was out. So

Nim put it back, while Cum carefully restored the meridian of longitude to its place, and then

she helped Nim tie the equinoctial line around the equator where it belonged.

Just as they had finished doing this, Cum saw hanging over the

Cape Verde Islands a beautiful

rainbow, and she said to Nim:

‘How would such a scarf as that become me?’

NIM AND CUM 17

Nim answered, ‘We will see,’ and he reached out his hand and took the rainbow, and threw it over Cum’s shoulders, and kissed her.

The man of the newspaper in the city below wrote:

“A wonderful display of clouds and rainbow were seen yesterday, and a peculiar reverberation in the air indicated an electrical storm in the clouds.’

But before the people read this, Nim and Cum had stepped over the ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and sitting down near Mt. Vesuvius, they both said they were tired and hungry,

“Well, what will you have?’ said Nim.

Cum said she did not see any-

18 NIM AND CUM

thing around there that she cared

for, and then Nim asked how

Ursa Major would do, broiled over

the crater.

‘You might try it,’ answered

Cum.

So Nim made an exertion and trapped the Great Bear. Then

they broiled it over the crater of

Vesuvius, which was just hot

enough to do it toa turn. It was

rather a heavy meal, but Cum pre-

tended to enjoy it, and after it was

over she said:

“We ought to have some kind

of dessert.’

Of course Nim thought he could

furnish a dessert, and he at once

reached up his arm, and taking

the Little Dipper he punched some

holes in the bottom of it with the

NIM AND CUM 19

‘point of view’ he always carried in his pocket, and then he skimmed

it lightly over the Milky Way and took the cream off; then reaching his hand up to the Frigid Zone, he

took a handful of ice, and crush-

ing it and shaking it up in the Dipper, he had in a few moments

some delicious ice cream, which

Cum enjoyed very much. But it was too hot near the

crater, so they moved off soon

after dinner, and Nim proposed

they should go and see the sun set. So they went westward until they came in sight of the sun actually setting on his nest of years, months, weeks, and days. Nim said:

‘Let us wait here until the sun comes off his nest, for then we shall have a To-morrow.

20 NIM AND CUM

They waited, and Nim amused himself dressing Cum in curious and beautiful things. He took the Temperate Zone and put it around her waist for a belt. Immediately, far below in the city, the newspaper man sat down at his desk and wrote:

“We are having singularly hot weather, and we seem to be laps- ing into the Torrid Zone.

Nim then reached up and took one of Saturn’s rings, and putting it on Cum’s forefinger, asked:

“Do you know what that means?” Cum looked down, and blushed

and glowed beautifully. After turning her ring around

on her finger silently for a minute or two, she said, ‘ Yes.’

When she looked up, Nim was

NIM AND CUM 21

bending over her, and she arose and they both mounted higher and higher into the heavens, darting here and there in rosy glory.

The newspaper man in the city

below ran to his paper, and wrote:

‘We are having the most glor- ious Aurora Borealis that was ever seen in this latitude, and it

seems in some way related to the remarkable phenomena of rain, and heat, and hurricanes,

and earthquakes we have recently had.’

And Nim and Cum floated on away and away into a higher re- gion, and they danced and they danced until the sun rose from his nest, and To-morrow flew out all fresh and young.

‘Isn’t this funny? said Cum.

22 NIM AND CUM

‘This To-morrow that has just

come out of its nest is To-day!’

‘Yes,’ said Nim, ‘ Yesterday, To-

day was To-morrow,’ and he rub-

bed his eyes and said he did not understand it exactly; he felt as if he had lost something.

“You have lost something;’ answered Cum; ‘when you reached up and took that ring from Saturn,

I saw you drop Time and Space.’

WONDER-HEAD STORIES

h fig

lS

—>

SEAS NY

Ss ee ———

WONDER-HEAD STORIES

Once there was an old woman who lived among the mountains in

a valley hollowed out very much in the shape of a bowl, with a notch on one side, where a stream ran out. There was a pretty village in the valley; and the sides of the

hills were green in summer and covered with berries and flowers;

and in the autumn there were hick- ory nuts and chestnuts and butter- nuts, so that the children and

squirrels had a splendid time; and in the winter—oh, the beautiful

25

26 WONDER-HEAD STORIES

coasting down the sides of those

hills, and the skating on the river!

Well, as I was saying, an old

woman lived among the hills, and

this old woman the children called

Aunt Frity. One cold day in win-

ter Aunt Frity said to the man

Gad, who lived with her:

‘Gad, you may put Skittymist’

(that was the name of her white horse), ‘in the sleigh, Iam going to drive down to see the Fussy

Mussies.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ said Gad.

Pretty soon the horse was at the

door, and Aunt Frity came out of

the house with shaggy gray coat

on, and a tippet and muff, anda

bonnet gay with feathers and lace

and red feather poppies, and as

she got into the sleigh she said to

Gad:

WONDER-HEAD STORIES 27

‘Pull the wolf-skin pretty well

up and tuck it snugly around me, it is very cold.’

Gad answered as usual, ‘ Yes,

ma’am, and handed her fur mit-

tens to her and placed a hot foot-

stone under her feet; then gave

her the lines and off Skittymist

started. Thestring of little bright

bells jingled on the harness, the

tails of the wolf-skin robe bobbed

about Aunt Frity, and her long

gray curls and ribbons flew back

in the wind. She drove fast; it

was smooth sleighing and much of

the way down-hill; and it was so

cold that the wind bit her cheeks,

and stung her nose, and her tippet

was thick with frost where she

breathed.

If the horse slackened his pace

going up hill, Aunt Frity would say:


‘That’s right, Skittymist, my

beauty, take your time for the

hills,’ and he would prick back his

ears and half turn his head as if

he was saying: ‘I thank you, mad-

am, I intend to.’

But going down hill Aunt Frity

chirruped:

‘Skit, flit, my little Misty, we

must get to the Fussy Mussies be-

fore the sun goes down.’

And Skittymist seemed to under-

stand this too, as he swung his

long tail, and quickened his trot;

and the sleigh bumped along over

ridges and down slopes full as fast

as Aunt Frity wished to go. It

was so cold there was not a bird or

a squirrel to be seen; but a lively

little brook ran so fast the ice

could not freeze up its pleasant


song, so it was company for Aunt Frity all the way down the mountain.

It was just after sunset when Skittymist stopped before the door of the Fussy Mussies. A man came from the porch and took the horse; and Aunt Frity, who was quite stiff with the cold, ran as fast as she could into the house, and

through a long hall, and rapped at the door of the sitting-room where the family usually were. But at this time there was nobody in the room but two little Fussy Mussies,

Wonder-head and Bobberty, and they were running and shouting and rattling their playthings in such a way they could hardly have heard a clap of thunder, much less Aunt Frity’s ta, tap, tap.


So she opened the door into the

Fussy Mussy room, and _ behold,

all the chairs were in a line in the middle for a train of cars, and the

sofa was pulled around at the end

of them for a locomotive. Wonder-

head was helping, or rather throw-

ing the passengers on board; and

these passengers were a white

woolly dog with a broken nose, a cat, a wooden sheep that had lost

its tail, some dolls of china and

india-rubber with only a head or two among them all, wooden roost-

ers without their tail-feathers, and

cotton rabbits without their ears.

Bobberty was blowing a whistle for the train to start, but Aunt

Frity, being very cold, did not wait

for the train but set up a dreadful


yelping and barking like a little dog in distress.

This attracted the Fussy Mus- sies; and when they saw who it was, they left the cars and ran to Aunt Frity, who opened her arms and hugged first one and then the other and gave each a great kiss.

Somebody came in and took her

bonnet and muff and satchel, and

then she laid off her coat and sat

down by the stove.

It was not long before Wonder- head came up to her chair and

began to poke her dress away to make room for himself beside her,

and when he was settled he said:

“Tell me a story.’ Aunt Frity laid her hand softly

among the gold-brown shadows of


the dear Wonder-head, and turned

so that she could look into his

eyes, and asked:

“What shall I tell you about ?’

‘Chuckle -de- dum,’ answered

Wonder-head, and so Aunt Frity

told him what he called—

THE CHUCKLE-DE-DUM STORY.

Peterkin, when he was a little

boy, came to his mother one warm

day toward the end of the month

of May, and said:

“Mother, what do boys do when

the leaves of the maple trees are

about as large as a mouse’s ear ?’

“They hoe in the garden,’ she an-

swered; ‘ They make chicken coops,

run of errands for their mothers,

and study and read a little every

afternoon.’


‘No szyv, replied Peterkin in a

shocking slangy way, ‘they don’t

do any such thing; they go trout-

fishing. Yes, my dear mother, all

good little boys go trout-fishing when the leaves of the maples are

about as large as a mouse’s ear,’

and then he up with his saucy face and kissed his mother, and added;

‘I have my fishing-rod and tackle all ready, and my shoes and my bas-

ket, and now, mother dear, I want

you to go with me trout-fishing.’

His mother knew why the sly rogue wanted her to go with him

—he wanted her to drive the horse

while he fished down the brook,

and be ready at evening to bring

him home; but she answered :

‘You are very kind, but are you sure I shall not be in your way ?’

34. WONDER-HEAD STORIES.

‘Oh, not in the least,—I want

you to go.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘bring your

horse and your buggy to the door.

I will be ready.’

They hopped into the buggy

and were soon out of the village.

Peterkin was very happy, and

seemed to enjoy every sight and

sound, and pretty soon he said:

‘How many robins there are in

that orchard, and they always

sing this song:

“ Gentlemen jillet,

Scour the skillet.”’

‘Yes,’ his mother answered, ‘I

don’t believe you would sing so

merrily if you had to hop around

as early as they do and get your

own breakfast.’

Peterkin looked around slyly at


her, and said: ‘Don’t you think the Phebes are regular scolds ?’ Then he imitated their petulant, worried tone, ‘ Phe-e-e-e-be, Phe-

e-e-e-be, Phe-e-e-e-be.’

His mother understood his joke and answered accordingly :

“Yes, to be sure they do seem a little out of patience, but I suppose the little Phebes won’t bring in the

wood when they are told to, and

that they make a fuss about getting their arithmetic lessons and writing compositions, and bang the doors and throw their caps on the floor.’

‘O mother, how ridiculous!’

Peterkin exclaimed, and his mother

added :

‘Phebes must work and Phebes must eat,

There’s little to earn, and many to keep.’


‘Are you making poetry, moth-

er ?’ asked Peterkin.

‘Nothing but a parody, my dear.’

‘What is a parody, mother dear?’

inquired Peterkin.

‘Your dictionary will tell you,’

she answered; and just then Peter-

kin happened to see some lambs

taking their breakfast from their

patient mothers, and the way they

wiggled their tails made them both

laugh heartily.

The road, by and by, led into

woods away from any houses, and

meadows and pastures; and finally

it came upon a brook that gurgled

and rushed over rocks and stones,

and Peterkin stopped the horse

when they came to a deep pool,

and said, standing up in the buggy:

‘What will you bet there isn’t a


trout right down there in that dark

water by that log ?’

‘Bet, my dear ! is that what you

might. call an elegant way of ad-

dressing your mother ?’

‘Beg your pardon, mother; let

us tie our horse here,’ and Peter-

kin led him to a birch tree and

fastened him, and the horse began

to eat the leaves as if he thought

they were put there on purpose for

his breakfast.

Peterkin put his rod together,

and tied to his line a cunning little

fly made of yellow floss silk and

part of a brown feather called

‘hackle,’ from a rooster’s tail.

Then he put on his fishing shoes,

which had nails driven in the soles

to keep him from slipping on the

wet rocks when he was wading.


He then went cautiously, so that

the trout should not see him, and

cast his fly on the dark pool by the

rock. It hardly touched the water

before his mother heard a splash

and saw something shine, and

Peterkin called out: ‘I’ve got

him! I’ve got him!’ and some-

thing flopped in the grass at her

feet. Peterkin came and took

from the hook a beautiful trout,

waved with brown on its back, and

speckled with gold on its sides,

with dots of pink here and there

on the shiny white of the under-

side. Peterkin stroked it admir-

ingly, saying as he laid it in some

grass in his basket: ‘Isn’t he a

handsome fellow?’

‘Yes,’ his mother answered, ‘al-

most as pretty as my lilies and


pinks. But I could not pull upmy

pretty things out of their beds as you do; I leave them to enjoy their own life.’

‘Ah, but you wait till you see my next posy,’ Peterkin proudly answered, not a bit sorry that he

had art enough to draw these “water posies,’ as he called them afterward, jokingly, from their hidden beds; and he went off to

cast his fly again. His mother did not wait to see

what success he had with the next cast, but went up the bank into

the deep woods to a flat rock, and knowing that Peterkin would soon be hungry, she opened the basket that she had brought and began toset a table. That is, she spread

a napkin on the flat rock and put


on it bread and butter, and cold

meat, and hard-boiled eggs, and

some seed-cakes of which Peter-

kin was very fond. When she had

the table set, she lay down beside

it, with her head on a little pillow

covered with dry moss, and con-

trary to all her intentions she fell

asleep.

She had a whistle tied wit a

string to a buttonhole in her dress

with which she intended to call

Peterkin to dinner. But the wind

whispered softly among the trees.

It was sweet and cool and she was

tired with her ride, so she slept on

and on.

Meanwhile Peterkin had taken

seven beautiful trout, and having

laid them in grass in his. basket so

that they would keep cool and not


get jammed, and not hearing any whistle for dinner as he expected, he came up to the rock where his mother was asleep. Seeing the table and all the nice things, he

just put the seed-cakes into his pocket and hid the eggs in some moss, and scattered the bread as if

a squirrel or something had _ nib- bled at it; then came close to his

mother, and carefully taking the whistle, blew it long and very loud. ‘This wakened her so suddenly

she sprang to her feet bewildered, and looked around. Peterkin took off his hat and wiped his jolly, fat

face, made a bow, and said:

“Mother dear, I am afraid I waked you rather suddenly.’ When his mother’s eyes rested

on the table, she began to wonder


what had become of the things.

Peterkin tried to look very grave,

and suggested that there were a

good many chipmucks around, and

he presumed they were fond of

seed-cakes, and he was sure weas-

els were fond of eggs. But his

mother saw the twinkle in his eye,

and she just made him turn his

pockets inside out, and bring the

eggs back, and put the table in

order again.

Then he brought some water in

a leather cup from a spring near

by, and they both sat down to

their rock table and ate with great

appetites, and called their dinner

delicious.

When Peterkin had finished, he

lay down on his back, and looking

up into the tree-tops said :

WONDER-HEAD:- STORIES 43

‘This is nice; let us be gypsies and always live in the woods.’

While his mouth was open saying this, his mother dropped into

it a crumb of cake, just as an old robin feeds her young ones ; then, while he dozed, she watched ants

and spiders and other funny in- sects run and creep around and

sometimes over him. She won- dered what they thought of sucha big boy-mountain lying right in their path, and so she said to Peter- kin:

‘Don’t you suppose this spider that is running over your hair thinks he is in a very thick, dark,

dreadful forest ?’ She thought Peterkin would

spring up at this remark and brush


off the creature, but he only an-

swered sleepily: ‘Very likely.’ Thenshe added: ‘That daddy-

long-legs seems to be making di-

rectly for your nose; I presume

he thinks it is the Hoosac Tunnel.’

‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ was the lazy

answer.

‘There is a worm about to ex-

plore your ear, my dear ; I suppose

it is the Mammoth Cave.’

‘No, youdon’t,’ exclaimed Peter-

kin, thoroughly aroused at last ;

and jumping up, he brushed him-

self off and gathered up his things

and trudged off towards the brook,

saying as he went:

‘You can drive down the road

and meet me at the farm-house at

the foot of the hill, mother dear.’

‘Very well, don’t fish very late,

WONDER-HEAD STORIES’ 45

my dear,’ his mother answered, and began to gather up the dishes and put them into the basket. When she had it ready, she wan-

dered slowly through the woods, picking the young fern leaves that are covered with down as thick as rabbit’s fur. She found, too, the

nodding dog-tooth violet, and the dainty blue blossoms of Innocence.

After she got to the roadside, and was reaching up to a maple tree to get some of its blood red blossoms, she heard a sweet voice call out: ‘How d’ye do?’

She looked around. startled enough to hear a girl’s voice in this lonely place, and there sitting on a hillock was Hetty Swan, a little neighbor of whom Peterkin and his mother were very fond.


She had come with her father, who was washing sheep in the brook near by, but she was glad to get an invitation to ride home with Aunt Frity, and after getting permission from her father trotted off toward the carriage, picking checker-berries as she went along.

They untied the horse and he whinnied with delight to have his head turned toward home. They rode slowly along, blowing their whistle once in a while, and Peter- kin answered from the brook which ran down the hill in the woods a little way from the road. After a while the birds began to sing their evening songs, and the cows in the pastures far off ‘mooed’ to go home. Suddenly a horrid kind of noise came from a tree not far off,


and Hetty started from her seat and whispered :

“What's that ?’ ‘Nothing but a screech-owl, it

won't hurt you,’ said Peterkin’s mother, and then she told her all

about the different kinds of owls,

the cat-owl, the hoot-owl, and the

screech-owl. The sun was quite down when

they came to the farm-house where

they were to wait for Peterkin. The cows were in the barn-yard,

and a girl came out to milk them. She looked smilingly at the two

people in the buggy and they told her what they were waiting for, and she sat down on her milking- stool, while they listened to the quick streams of milk as they struck the bottom of the tin pail,


and to the foamy sound as the pail began to fill.

‘I wish I could have a cup of milk,’ whispered Hetty.

Peterkin’s mother asked the girl if she would give her some.

‘Yes,’ she answered; ‘if she will

come and squat down here by me.’

So Hetty got out of the buggy and did as she was told.

“Now open your moun said the girl.

Hetty did so, and the girl milked right in her open mouth; then

Hetty laughed, and after she had swallowed said she liked it better

than to drink from a cup, and

wanted more. While she was sit-

ting there with her head thrown

back, her mouth open, and her

eyes shut, Peterkin, who had come


up and stood surprised a moment ‘to see Hetty there and what was going on, stole carefully behind her, and just as the stream was

coming into her mouth bent down and kissed her, and the milk went

all over both their faces. Then there was a great shout from all, and the cow whisked her tail and stepped almost into the pail, and the girl fell off her stool, and the

horse started to go. The girl called ‘so, so!’ to the cow and

Peterkin’s mother told the horse to ‘Whoa!’ while Peterkin laughing till he could hardly stand, pretended to wipe. Hetty’s face. with some of the grass that had covered the trout in the fish-basket.

Finally Peterkin. and Hetty hopped into the buggy, and one


said, ‘You must sit there,’ and the

other said, ‘You must sit here,’

and it ended by both of them sit- ©

ting down and riding all the way

home in the bottom of the buggy,

with Peterkin’s mother driving

with the whole seat to herself.

When they were seated Peter-

kin looked around into Hetty’s

face and at her pretty curls and

seemed to think she was prettier

than even a trout.

Hetty carried the fishing-rod,

and they chatted together about

everything they saw or heard on

the road; and they tried to count

the different sounds—the evening

chippers of the different birds, the

barking of dogs, the bleating of

sheep, the sounds of wagons and

the voices of people.


Soon they came to a swamp,

where there seemed to bea million

-of peepers, peeping as fast as they

could.

‘How many frogs do you suppose

there are in that pond, Peterkin?’

asked Hetty.

‘Those are not frogs,’ he an-

swered, ‘that you hear in that

swamp.’

Hetty laughed and said: ‘ What

are they? Birds ?’

Peterkin repeated: ‘They are

not frogs.’

‘May be you think they are

grasshoppers,’ said Hetty.

‘No, I think they are newts,’ Peterkin replied.

‘Newts! What are newts?’ asked

Hetty.

‘They are a kind of lizard, soa


man told me,’ answered Peterkin,

‘and he said they are the things

that peep in the spring in the

swamps, and that they are not

frogs at all.’

‘Do you believe a word he says?

Hetty asked, turning to Peter-

kin’s mother. She answered: ‘It

is all new-t to me,’ and said she

had read that the peepers were

Hylodes, or what we call tree-

toads, but she thought they had

better hunt in books of Natural

History and find out, before they

went fishing again, what the noisy

little creatures really were.

Then Peterkin said: ‘I will tell

you what frogs really do say,’ and

he puffed out his chin as big as he

could, like a green bull-frog, and

in a deep voice he said:


‘Chuckle-de-dum, Chuckle-de-dum.

I am emphatically some,

Creation’s culmination come,

Chuckle-de-dum, Chuckle-de-dum.

I poise my head on a lily pad,

And I leisurely leer at the moon,

Chuckle-de-dum, Chuckle-de-dum,

Ke-buck.’

‘When the frog dives into the

water, Hetty, andsays: ‘Ke-buck,’

all the little frogs call out, ‘ Guie,

Gu-i-e, Gu-i-e.’

Hetty was much amused at the

frog-poetry, and she made Peter-

kin repeat it over and over again.

Then she said :

‘I know a kind of frog-song ;’

and when Peterkin urged her to

sing it she did so in a sweet voice:

‘ The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad,

And so is the cat-o-mountain,

The ant and the mole both sit in a hole,

And the frog leaps up at the fountain,’


By the time she had finished her song they were at her gate, and she jumped out, saying: ‘Good-night, good-night, I don’t believe they are newts, they are frogs.’

Peterkin called back: ‘Newts,’ she answered . louder, ‘Frogs.’ Then he repeated ‘Newts,’ and she ‘Frogs,’ until they got to Peterkin’s home, which was next door to Hetty’s.

Peterkin showed his trout to the family, and like all tired fishermen he ate a hearty supper and hurried off to bed, saying as he kissed his mother good-night, ‘Isn’t Hetty Swan a jolly girl, mother dear?’ And he disappeared singing :

‘Chuckle-de-dum, Chuckle-de-dum.’


When Aunt Frity finished this

story it was time for Wonder-head

to go to bed, so she and his father

made with their four hands what

they called a chair, as children do

at school, and Wonder-head sat on

it as loftily as a little Prince and

they carried him up-stairs to bed.

When Aunt Frity kissed him, he

asked :

‘Did the little Chuckle-de-dums

sit on lily pads?’ The next morning after break-

fast Aunt Frity sat down in a big arm-chair, and took a small

streaked red-and-white stocking

out of her pocket, and began to knit. Wonder-head and Bobberty

ran out into the hall and climbed

up the stairs, and pulled out the

Stair-rods. When their mother


stopped that mischief, they chased each other into the kitchen around the stove, and were very much in the cook’s way.

But they stopped when a trap was brought in with a frozen squirrel in it, and Wonder-head said:

“O let me see that catamouse!’ Wonder-head’s father used to

tell him stories about bears and wolves and catamounts, so he called any strange animal a ‘ catamouse.’ After he got tired of the squirrel, he climbed up to the table where Bridget was skim- ming milk, and once in a while

his fingers slid into the bowl of cream. When Bridget saw that, she dumped him on the floor very suddenly. He gathered himself


up and seeing the outside door

open, he and Bobberty ran out

on the porch.

There they tried to ride the

black dog, Major, then they played

with three cats that lay in the sun-

shine, and finally found some ici-

cles in awater tank. They threw

them on the floor to see them

break into beautiful bright pieces;

but finally their fingers got as red

as cranberries and began to ache,

and then they came crying into the

house.

Aunt Frity pretended not to

hear them cry and did not give

them a word of pity, but said very briskly :

“Let us pick up all the playthings and throw them into the

rocking carriage, and then sit on


cushions like Turks, and tell stories.’

So they scrambled up the playthings and threw them into the carriage, and when it was full, they

drew it into a corner; then they took two cushions from the sofa and put them on the floor, and

crossed their legs as Aunt Frity told them the Turks do. Then she said :

‘T will tell you a story about— about—let me see, about—

CHECKERBERRY TOES.

One time there was a little boy who was very fond of playing by a brook below a steep hill behind his mother’s house. He had a little pail and a shovel, and he used to build dams and houses, and as


he had no little brothers or sisters he often talked to himself. Some- times he found little snail-shells,

and beetles, and he would play they were sheep or cows, and make pens for them. Then he would

chase butterflies or throw sticks at the little squirrels—not to hurt them, but to see them run.

_ One day in the spring-time, he had his little pail in his hand, and was just stooping down to get a

bright red checkerberry that grew

on a mossy knoll, when a low,

musical laugh, and a rustle as if somebody was near him, made him

start and look all around.

There was nobody in sight, so he stooped down again and hunted

around in the moss; and he was

just about to put his little fingers


on the checkerberry when there came the same little rustle and funny, low laugh as before. He raised himself up and looked all around in every direction, expect- ing to see a little boy or girl behind a bush or tree, but there was

no boy or girl to be seen. He concluded it must be the

brook running over the stones, or some strange kind of bird, and he went to hunting again for the checkerberry; but now it was gone, and he could find nothing of it, although he looked under the winter- green leaves and everywhere in the moss. Fora minute his little head was quite bewildered by what had happened, but he spied a spring beauty near by in the corner of the fence, so he ran to it and was just


looking into the blossom, veined with pink like a little girl’s cheek— he had even got his fingers on the stem, when a merrier laugh than before seemed to come right up from the ground. He looked around again just as he did before, and when he looked back the spring beauty was gone.

He stood a minute like a little boy or girl that has been asleep and remembers their dreams. Then he walked slowly toward the brook, and as he went along look-

ing on the ground two hepaticas like soft, blue eyes seemed to smile at him from among brown, moist

leaves. Then he spoke right out, ‘I will have you, anyhow!’ But

before his fingers touched the stems, such a gay, saucy laughcame


from—he did not know where, he

was fairly bewildered.

He whispered, ‘I wonder what

it is,’ and then he grew bold and

called out very loud, ‘Boo, who

are you! you can’t catch me!’ He

ran among the elder bushes and

into the corners of the fence, and

around the rocks, but nothing ran

after him and he found nothing

that could laugh.

He stopped running to look at

a splendid orange-colored mush-

room that was shaped like a cap,

and as he bent toward it a yellow

butterfly flew before him. Its

wings had a beautiful border, and

spots like eyes, which seemed to

look right at him, and at the same

time a spider’s web swung out

from a tree and stuck to his hand


and caught on his eyes, and the sweetest, clearest laugh he had ever heard seemed to come from everything around him. It wasas clear as a flute and as merry as

bells.

Little Wispy now began to run in earnest, and the laugh ran too,

through the elder bushes, up the hill, and down to the brook. Some-

times the laugh floated off on the

air as if it was going away, then

back again it came close to his own giddy little head. Wispy be-

came very hot and tired, and at

last just stopped short and threw

off his cap and said : ‘Laugh if you want to, I don’t

care.’ It was not a minute before he

was lying under some witch-hazel


bushes on a green hillock. The

soft winds blew over him, a blue-

jay sang in a tree near him, and a

bumble-bee hummed close to his

ear. Hewatched the leaves trem-

ble in the wind and the clouds far

upinthesky. Some poppy leaves

fell on his eyelids; they closed, and

he saw stranger things than he had

ever seen before.

The wind, with forms and faces

of little girls, began to dance

around him, and to play bo-peep,

and to swing around their puffed-

out dresses, and make curtsies to

him. Thenthey shook scarfs over

him full of the odor of violets,

waving and dancing and laughing all the time. As he was watching

them something seemed to come from behind a large tree and stand


between the great roots near the ground. At first he could hardly tell it from the bark, then he seemed to see a bright orange cap like a mushroom, then the cap ap- peared to be on a head, and the head to have two pretty blue eyes like hepaticas; and as he looked more and more closely, there cer- tainly seemed to be a pretty face there with pink cheeks like spring beauties.

He now looked very eagerly, and he could see the figure had on a silky, gray gown like the bark of birch trees—it was curly, and fringy about the neck and the bottom of the dress. What delighted him more than anything was to see, among the moss and vines, little red toes, peeping out, like the


very checkerberries that had played

such a funny hide-and-seek with

him.

‘It’s you, Checkerberry Toes, I

know you!’ Wispy called out, and

when he said this the little winds

began to puff out their cheeks and

to blow at this little girl, and she

rose up in the air, and as she was

blown along, her bark gown fell

off, and the leaves and vines that

had clung to her, and the mush-

room cap fell from her head and

she settled down at Wispy’s feet,

dressed all in white like a wind- flower; but she had the same pink-

veined cheeks like spring beauties that she had under the tree, and

the same little red checkerberry toes.

Wispy was going to speak to


her, when she put out her little hand and brushed the poppy-leaves from his eyes. He sprang up as light as a feather, and began to run with the winds, and to blow

Checkerberry Toes about. He soon noticed that all the things around him were prettier and

more curious than anything he ever saw in his life. Hecould see right into the ant-hills and the way the ants build their houses with little pillars and walls; and he saw the food they lay up, and he was

much astonished to learn that some

ants keep a dairy of little creatures called aphides, which they milk,

something as he had seen cows

milked. He saw _ gold-and-blue beetles, and some with white-and-

yellow spots, but he learned for


the first time that these handsome beetles were as cruel as tigers in getting their food. Besides these, he saw the roads and tunnels that mice and moles make _ under ground; he could come close to moths and butterflies, and found

there were not only wonderful pictures but words on their wings. Wispy ran from one thing to an-

other perfectly delighted. Check- erberry Toes went with him and showed him wonderful little eggs, some as clear as pearl, some white like ivory, and some as yellow as gold.

‘What apretty place!’ exclaimed Wispy, ‘I never saw so many pretty things in all my life.’

‘Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet; wait till I show you these


things I am getting,’ called Check-

erberry Toes, and she brought her

hands full of flowers and leaves,

and they sat down ona rock of

shining crystals to look them over.

‘Oh, see this!’ one would say,

unrolling fern leaves, or opening

alder-buds, or shaking out birch

tassels, and then the other would

read stories that were written on

these leaves or that were rolled up

in the buds. There were stories

about wind and rain, and dew, and

frost, and snow; there were pic-

tures of fishes and toads and frogs

and turtles—oh, more things than

could be told in a thousand years!

While they were looking at

these things they heard a sound

whir-r-r-r, whir-r-r-r, whir-r-r-r,

and when it came near they looked


up. There was a beautiful carriage made of shells and fish-bone, so neatly put together that it rolled along after the little white mice that drew it so fast you could only see it twinkle and it was gone.

“These are the Fays come to dinner,’ said Checkerberry Toes, and she rose and tapped on one of the crystals on the rock.

It opened into a bright circular room. They stepped down some shining steps of crystal, and the light from the dome above softened into red, yellow and violet mist.

There was a round table set in the middle of the room, and little

people in handsome clothes of all colors and very curious forms were

just sitting down to it. There were the wind family, and the Miss


Dews, and Mr. Jack Frost, and all

his relations, and the lively water-

sprites, old and young, and Father

Graylock had come down from the

mountain in an old-fashioned car-

riage made of moose-wood and

acorns, drawn by two bats. The little Miss Elves had tripped the

whole way on foot. They all sat

down to the table, talking and

laughing, and drank from their

glasses a kind of wine called Daf-

fydown-dilly. Then they had a

soup of frog’s toes, and after that

humming-birds’ eggs boiled, served

with squirrel-corn. Their dessert

was poppy-seeds and honey. While

they were sipping their Daffy-

down-dilly, a band of music began

to play. Wispy looked up to see

where it was, and saw on an ele-


vated platform a mosquito sound- ing his horn and two blue-bottle flies playing their bag-pipes, anda bumble-bee with his big bass-viol. The music was very lively, and all the Elves and Sprites began to dance, excepting old Father Gray- lock, who lay down on a lounge stuffed with thistle-down, covered

himself with a spider's web, and

went to sleep.

The winds danced as if they were crazy, the Water Sprites waltzed to and fro in excellent time, and the Fays were lively and graceful. Checkerberry Toes whirled Wispy round and round, and made his feet go so fast they could not be seen at all. Faster and faster they went, everything began to whirl, the gauze dresses


flirted before him, the tassels

shook, the fine dust of flowers and

their odors blinded and choked

him. He fixed his eyes on Check-

erberry Toes to make her stop,

but she looked at him with eyes

growing brighter and brighter; she

seemed to come nearer and nearer,

and to grow thinner and thinner.

Wispy felt that he was going to

lose her, and he clung to her, but

faster and faster she flew, thinner

and thinner she grew, and her eyes

began to burn right into his eyes.

Then he cried out with all his

strength, ‘Checkerberry Toes!’

and in an instant elves and fairies

were all gone, and Wispy lay with

large wondering eyes under the

witch-hazel bushes looking through

the leaves at the sun.


When Aunt Frity had finished this long story she found Bobberty

was fast asleep, and Wonder-head

had pulled all the needles out of the red-and-white stocking that

she had laid down while she was talking, so she knewthey had both had a good time. The next day

at table Wonder-head poured the milk from his silver cup into his plate, and began to paddle in it with his spoon. His mamma told

him not to, but he did not stop. “Wonder - head, Wonder - head,’

she said, ‘you must not do so. I shall take your plate away if you don’t stop!’ and she took hold of it.

Then he began to scream and cry, and to get very red in the face, and he kicked and made allthe


noise he could. Aunt Frity called him a ‘Storm Child,’ and said:

“You ought to go and live with mad waters in the sea, or with crazy winds in caves.’

This made Wonder-head think about stories and it was not more than a minute before his blue eyes shone through his tears and he said in the sweetest voice: ‘Tell me a story.’

So they ran into the parlor, Aunt Frity lay on the sofa and Wonder-

head climbed and curled down behind her with his hands in his lap, and his eyes full of wonder about the story he was going to hear this time. Aunt Frity said:

‘Now I am going to tell you — tell you — let me see — tell you—


SOMETHING FUNNY,’

I knew three children once who. lived on the high bank of a river; two of them were boys, the oldest and youngest, but the sister always played with them, the same as if she had been a boy. They slept in an attic chamber in a little tower, and stairs led up to it from below, where their parents slept. One morning their mother was awakened very early by a great stir in the attic, and she could hear

Flurry, the dear little Flurry, saying:

“Don’t make a noise, Tumblety. There, see, I’ve got on one boot for you.’

Then the older brother said:


‘Keep still, you'll wake papa and mamma.’

‘Sh-sh-sh, —here’s your sack,’ whispered Flurry.

‘Did I scratch you? Never mind, don’t cry,’ said Jock, the oldest

brother, and added, ‘Oh, hush,

there go all my marbles,’ when

there was a great rolling and hunting, and then Flurry said: ‘Don’t let us pick them up now, here are the stairs; don’t fall, Tumblety.’

Jock led the way down and it

was just light enough for mamma

to see first one booted little foot,

then another, then dim outlines of

little bodies and curly heads, as

they tip-toed, and stumbled, and

halted, and whispered, and helped

Tumblety from one stair to an-

other, until they got down the last


one. They stole carefully through

the chamber and then went into

the hall and down another flight

of stairs, and again they had a

good deal of trouble in getting fat little Tumblety from one stair to

another. Their mother could hear

Flurry say:

‘There you are most down, step

softly, down-y-daisy; you don’t cry,

do you, Tumblety?’

‘You'll see what I’ve got,’ said Jock. Then they went through

the sitting-room, and what they

said could no longer be heard, only

there were more stumblings on

the kitchen stairs into the base-

ment, where the cook was just making a fire.

Papa, who had heard all this,

said: ‘ Little witches,’ and went to


sleep again, but mamma lay awake

wondering where the ‘little witches’ could be going so early.

It was too dark to go to the barn to feed Fanny, the horse, or

to hunt hens’ nests, or to make

mud-pies in the hollow, or to sail boats in the brook, or to go to the

shop to see the blacksmith strike

sparks from the red-hot iron, or

up to the swamp for berries.

Where could they have gone?

Mamma lay thinking and think-

ing, but although she was anxious

about them, she was glad she did

not ask them where they were going; she liked to have them enjoy

their little secret, for she did not

believe it was anything bad.

By and byit became light enough

to get up. Mamma began to dress


herself, then a great noise arose

from the kitchen, and there was

hurrying of little feet up the stairs,

and the dog was following them,

and one child called ‘Mamma,’ and

another ‘Papa,’ and another push- ing up the stairs faster called out, ‘You can’t guess what!’ and then there was a strife to see which

should get into the room first, and

then they all exclaimed at once:

“Oh, we have got such a bi-i-g!’ The dog Logan here pushed in

among them, and wagged his tail

against Tumblety, and pushed him

down, and stepped on Mamma’s clean collar with his muddy feet, and came near frisking papa’s

watch off the stand, and there was

a general scramble, and among it

all Flurry kept calling:


“Come down and see it, papa! Oh, it is such a big !— Down, Lo-

gan!’ And then there was a clat- tering toward the door, and the

dog, children, papa and mamma, all tumbled along down stairs together.

The children’s boots were wet,

and their clothes were drabbled up to their knees, and Logan was all mud; it was evident they had been in the grass and near the river. They kept talking alto- gether:

‘When we found the—

Oh, I was so frightened!’

‘“Tumblety ran like everything and kept falling down,’ said Flurry. ‘I saw it was all twisted around the log, and Flurry was afraid to touch it, and—


‘So were you afraid, Jock. Oh, Logan, get away!’

‘There, papa!’ Out of the kitchen door they all

pushed, followed by the cook, Bridget, with a fork in her hand.

Before the kitchen door, around a -

large elm tree, a long fish-line was wound, a rod lay on the ground, and on the end of the line there was—

‘Oh, mamma, isn’t it—’

‘ Be-s they always wigglin’ their- selves that way?’ asked Bridget.

“Well done,’ said papa.

“Is it possible ?? said mamma. “We run fas’ we could,’ said

Tumblety. ‘It was twisted around the log

in the edge of the water. I bet Flurry was afraid when she saw


me untwist it,’ said Jock again,

proudly.

‘Well, so were you afraid, when

you dragged it up the hill,’ said

Flurry, ‘it flopped; O, papa, you ought to see it flop!’

‘Brave little fishermen,’ said

mamma.

‘An’ sure, I’d be afraid to be

meddlin’ with such a craither,’ said

Bridget.

‘Jock, did run, didn’t you Jock?’

hinted Flurry.

‘Well, I didn’t scream or fall

down,’ answered Jock.

‘Big eel, papa, isn’t it?’

They measured the eel, and it

was three feet long.

The Fussy Mussies had a great

many questions to ask about the


eel, whether it was as big as a ‘“Catamouse,’ whether it had teeth

and could bite, and what Jock did with it. Aunt Frity told them everything she knew about it, then got a book that had pictures of fishes in it and showed them the picture of an eel. Wonder-head did not like the looks of it; he

doubled up his little fist and said: ‘If a old eel comes to bite me,

P’H—T’ll shoot him’ (Wonder-head had a little pop-gun), ‘and I’ll bang him.’ Here he was very fierce and began to thrust his hands toward the picture as if it was a terrible live thing. After they got through looking at the pictures the Fussy Mussies went off to play, and Aunt Frity took a nap. In the evening after the


lamps were lighted, Aunt Frity got

a piece of paper and made pictures

for Wonder-head, and one of them

was a picture of a duck. When

she had drawn it she asked the

Fussy Mussies if they would like

a story about

THE OLD GRAY DUCK.

Once I lived in a cottage on the

shore of a beautiful lake. In the morning, when the farmer went to

the barn to feed the horses and

milk the cows, and to give the lit-

tle red-and-white calf its break-

fast, I used to take a big pan of

meal-and-water and go out in the

yard near the barn and call: ‘ Bid-

dy, Biddy, Biddy—here Biddy,

Biddy, Biddy,’ and in a minute

hens and ducks came running and


flying toward me to get their breakfast.

There were black hens, and

white hens, and speckled hens,

and hens with top-nots, and ban- tams, and shanghais, some pretty,

some ugly, and I knew every one of them, and had different names

for them. There was Mary Jane, a nice speckled hen, and Polly, a

little white bantam; Eugenie was a black Spanish hen, and there

were any number of common hon-

est biddies, that were called Thank-

ful, and Patience, and Delight, and

Finis, and such names. A splendid rooster with a magnificent red comb and long sweeping tail-feathers I called Ulysses. The ducks, too, had each a name; a slow old

drake was Uncle Sam, and one that


had a handsome purple-and-green neck was named Shoddy.

There was one large, gray, sim- ple-minded old duck, and she was Mrs. Boffin. Mrs. Boffin became very irregular at her meals. I asked the farmer about it and he said she was ‘setting,’ and that if I looked back of the barn near the pond I should see her nest. So

after my breakfast I walked along by the bank of a brook until I

came to the pond, and there I found

Mrs. Boffin under the shade of a

large oak tree near the pond. It was a pretty place fora calm and reflective mind like Mrs. Boffin’s.

She could hear the ‘chip, chip, chip,’ of the squirrels that ran up

and down the tree under which she sat, and the birds and the tinkle


of the brook, and the waving of

the trees, all the long summer day.

There could not be a nicer place

for Mrs. Boffin’s nest but for one thing—she had some bad neigh-

bors, very bad neighbors indeed;

not chatty, playful neighbors like the squirrels; not gay neighbors

like the birds; but dismal neighbors that were hardly ever seen, but yet were always on the watch for Mrs. Boffin. Whenever she left her nest to get something to eat, or to take a swim inthe pond,

they sneaked out of their holes and around her nest to suck her eggs, and she even feared they would get hold of her and kill her,

and eat her all up but her feathers

and toes.

These neighbors had coarse


black-and-white hair, and long,

meddlesome - looking noses, but

their eyes were pleasant, and their

teeth were very white and regular, and they had handsome bushy

tails. If they had been friendly

and well-mannered nobody would

have found fault with their coarse

hair or their noses, but they were

not friendly, and their manners

were bad, very bad. They did

not come out honestly in the day-

time to get their living, but stole

out slyly inthe dark, and ate eggs,

‘and killed chickens and sometimes

large hens and ducks, and then

crept back to their houses in the

ground and kept out of sight as

long as they could.

Mrs. Boffin was almost worried

out of her wits by their dreadful


habits and unpleasant odor. The farmer and I concluded we must protect her or she would never get her little ducks into the world and bring them off the nest alive.

So we got some boards and stakes and stones, and built a for- tification all around her nest. There was quite a large yard within the outer wall and a large roof over her nest, so that she was safe from rain and out of sight of her enemies. But we had to leave an open place for her to goin and out, and where she could go ‘her bad-smelling neighbors, the Snook- noses could go, so we did not feel at rest about her after all.

Everything, however, went on safely until at last I found, one

day, all her eggs broken, and four

WONDER-HEAD STORIES gI1

little downy Boffins cuddling around their mother

For a few days I fed them at

the fort, but they were soon strong

enough to come to the kitchen door, and everything would have been delightful to Mrs. Boffin if it

had not been for those horrid

Snook-noses. There was not a night they did not spoil her rest, and make her almost sic with

their vile behavior.

At last the farmer and I concluded we would move Mrs. Boffin and her family to another barn,

off some distance on a hill, and

entirely out of the neighborhood

of the Snook-noses. So we put

old Billy in the wagon and drove

up to the fort, and took Mrs. Boffin

very gently from her nest and put


her in a bashel-busket and her four little ones carefully beside her, and then put the basket in the wagon and drove them safely to their new home. It was evening and the Boffins did not have a glimpse of the scenery, or much of a view of the barn-yard where we left them in some hay in a corner.

Here comes the funny part of my story. The very next morning as I was standing among my hens and ducks in the yard with my tin pan in my hand, calling them by their names, telling Sarah Jane not to be greedy, and Betsy Ann not to push, and Patience to come forward, what should I see but Mrs. Boffin waddling into the big open gate.

WONDER-HEAD STORIES. 93

She looked very tiredand dread- fully cast down, and had only three little ducks with her. That she had come over that strange road, down the hill, through the woods

and over the bridge, astonished me. I suppose she was homesick in the night, and said to the little

Boffins, ‘Qua-a-c-k, qua-a-a-ck,

qua-a-a-a-ck!’ in a low, sad voice,

and they understood her. ‘I don’t like this place, I hate

it; hear those pigs grunt, you never heard such noises at our

fort. I don’t hear any brook here.

What are we to do without a brook

and a pond? Oh, how lonesome

it is! Let us go back, will you,

my little ducks?’ Then I suppose they made an-

swer in little quacks:


“Yes, mother, go ahead.’

Then I suppose she started, and

what a time she must have had getting through fences, down hills, by strange houses and barns,—oh, she must have been terribly anxious! Sometimes she must have looked this way and that, uncer- tain whether she was on the right road; sometimes she must have

tried wrong paths, and I have no

doubt she often fancied the Snook- noses were watching to waylay her

and to eat up her little ones, every

Boffin of them.

It would seem that one of her little ones gave out entirely and probably died on the road, for I never saw it afterward. I suppose it made a feeble little quack which meant:


‘O mother, I cannot go a step further, not a step; I haven’t a bit of strength left in my legs, and my

bill is so dry I can hardly quack at all, and then most likely he fell and never quacked again.

I suppose Mrs. Boffin waddled

on, sad as it was to leave this lit-

tle one behind, and in order to

keep up the spirits of the rest, she

probably quacked in this lively

manner: “We are most home; don’t you

hear the brook? See, there is one

of our squirrels running up a tree!

and as sure as you live, there is

Aunt Frity! She has got her tin

pan in her hand; let us hurry, and

we can have our breakfast with

the rest.’

It was just as she was saying


this, probably, that I saw her com-

ing into the gate. For several

days after this, she quacked a good

deal, and I found afterward that

she was making poetry. The walk,

so long and so dangerous, and the

death of her little Boffin had made

her a poetess. And here is some

duck poetry by Mrs. Boffin:

‘Fly, birds, fly,

Into the sky;

Run, brook, run,

It is your fun;

Stray, turkeys, stray, Straggle, straggle,

Gobble, waggle;

But here I stay, Night and day,

Forever by this puddle,

Muddle, muddle;

Glad I’m back, Quack, quack, quack!’

The last day of Aunt Frity’s visit came; it was a splendid bright


day, so she and the Fussy Mussies went out and ran in the carriage- drive a while, and then went to the stable to see Skittymist. Aunt Frity put Wonder-head and Bob- berty where they could see him, but told them not to follow her, then she went right by Skitty- mist’s heels, up to his fore-legs, and held out her hand saying: ‘Good morning.’

Skittymist lifted up his foot as if to shake hands. Aunt Frity shook hands, and then gave him an apple from her pocket. His great eyes looked very kind and yet a little disappointed, so Aunt Frity ran into the house and got: some lumpsofsugar. These suited Skittymist exactly, and he ate them and rubbed his nose around Aunt


Frity’s dress for more. He got

only a few pats, and then all went

away to slide down-hill.

Aunt Frity sat down on the sled,

took Bobberty in her lap, and

clasped him tightly with one hand,

and with the other held the lines,

and away they flew—down, down,

down to the bottom of the hill, but

in stopping, over they rolled into

the snow. They hopped up with

their eyes and mouths and coats

and tippets all covered with snow,

and Wonder-head called out from

the top of the hill:

‘Hullo! Hul-lo!’

The next time, Aunt Frity put

Wonder-head on the sled and gave

him the lines, and sent him off

with a gentle push. At first he

went slowly, then faster and faster,


and at last plump he went into a snow-drift head over heels. Then Aunt Frity called out just as he did from the top of the hill:

“Hullo! Hul-lo!’ and Bobberty laughed as loud as he could.

The next time, Aunt Frity took Bobberty in her lap, and Wonder- head sat behind and held on to Aunt Frity’s coat.

This time they had not got half down the hill before the sled slid

around and over they all went; and they got so much snow into their mittens, and leggins, they thought they had had fun enough, and went into the house. Atdinner Aunt Frity said:

‘I must go home this afternoon.’ Wonder-head began to tease to

go with her. Aunt Frity was de-


lighted, and asked permission to take him. His mother put on his beautiful best coat, and tippet, and

a velvet cap with a red feather set right up in front. They had furs, and shawls, and a hot stove for

their feet. Wonder-head looked very brave when his mother kissed him, and as he drove off with Aunt

Frity, he sat up as straight asa soldier.

The first thing they met was a load of wood with a man sitting high up on the top; they drove carefully by, for they had to turn out into the snow. Soon they crossed a bridge, and Skittymist’s feet clattered over it with an even sound like this:

‘Nelly Bly shuts her eye,

Nelly Bly shuts her eye.’


After they got over the bridge

they heard the cars coming, and

the engine go ‘Chug, chug, chug,’

and the smoke of its great pipe

rolled off in a long dark line. By- and-by they passed by a little red

sleigh drawn by two black Shet- land ponies; a boy was driving it,

and both seats were filled with boys and girls laughing and _ talking and singing. Then they went

through a village, and up a hill,

and there was not a house to be

seen for a long time. Up, up they

went, as if they were going into

the blue sky. Some white-breasted snow-birds flew around dry stocks

in a field,and Wonder-head said: .

“See the birds!’

Aunt Frity told him they were

hunting for seeds, and said:


‘When we get home, we will

throw some crumbs around our

door, and put some little bones

where they can find them, and then

you will have a visit from them

every day.’

They saw rabbit tracks in the

snow, and a squirrel flourishing

his plumy tail along a rail fence,

but as they climbed higher up the

hill, it grew stiller and whiter, until

they themselves hardly spoke

above a whisper. The snow that

had fallen the day before, had covered the branches of the pines

and hemlocks, and the laurel

bushes. As they went on, the

snow on the branches changed

into a kind of floss, and lay in feathery crystals one above an-

other, so heavy they bent the


sprays and branches down almost

to the ground, and made shadows

strange and beautiful. Aunt Frity

stopped to look into this fairy

world, so still and white. She

whispered to Wonder-head:

‘Wouldn’t you like to be a little

Frost elf and live in this fairy

world?’

He did not understand her, but

thought there was something very

solemn about it, and whispered

back: ‘No.’

Then she whispered: ‘Not if

you could have white rabbits and

squirrels to play with, and birds

with white feathers?’

And Wonder-head whispered

again: ‘No.’

‘Not if all the catamouses were

white, and the Chuckle-de-dums?’


He said ‘No,’ again, and then

Aunt Frity asked in a whisper: ‘“Wouldn’t you be a Frost-fairy

if all the children were white, and

had white hearts and never got angry, and never told lies, and never said wicked words?’

Still Wonder-head whispered ‘No.’

“Wouldn’t you live in Frost-

land if you could have alittle house of white crystals, and white ponies,

and a white cow with pearl horns,

and a white dog, and have your playthings white and a little Frost- sister all perfectly white?’

Wonder-head, who had _ been

very much awed by Aunt Frity’s

hushed voice and the still white place, suddenly looked at her as if he discovered a joke, and


wrinkled up his funny little nose,

and cried out in a loud voice,

‘Bow wow!’ ‘That's right, you are no Frost-

elf, that’s certain, my spunky little

Wonder-head,’ said Aunt Frity,

laughing heartily, and giving him

a little hug and tucking him a lit-

tle more snugly into the wolf-robe,

for it was growing colder on the

mountain and she drove on ina

very lively trot. Then she said:

‘No, my little Wonder-head can

have a white heart, but it need

not be a frost-heart. He can speak

pure words, but they need not be

frost-words. He can live with

good people, but they need not be

frost-people.’

Wonder-head did not pay much

attention to this speech,— he was


getting tired and sleepy; so Aunt Frity made a place in her lap

for his head and drove on rap- idly, and it was not long before they got home, where there was a great fuss made over Wonder- head. He was taken out of his wrappings and shown to one and another, and then led to tea in a

room with a bright fire and lamps. He was the little hero of the evening for having ridden so far from home, so bravely. When Aunt Frity put him to bed, she kissed

him and said:

‘May the whitest of Fairies give

you white dreams, my Prince of Wonder-heads!’

Wonder-head stayed with Aunt

Frity a week, and was very con-

tented. The day after his arrival,


Aunt Frity went to the village and bought him a small sled, and bright ribbons and leather fora harness. She had a little bushy- faced Scotch terrier named Not- withstanding (she called him ‘Not,’ generally), and she thought Won- der-head could harness him in the little sled and teach him to draw

it, and it would be great fun. When the harness was done and

put on ‘Not,’ he looked very much interested; but when they hitched him to the sled, he turned roundand

round, and tried to slip out of the

harness, and it was a long time before they could get him forward at

all. They did not whip him, but

coaxed him with a chicken-bone

and candy. ‘Not’ was as fond of

candy as any little boy or girl.


They taught him at last to draw the sled, but he had sudden fits of

disgust at his new accomplishment, and would sit down every few minutes in a very dogged way, and his eyes twinkled under his shaggy brows and seemed to say:

‘I won't be a horse.’ When Wonder-head got tired

of ‘Not,’ a young girl named Ellen came out of the house in a short dress and high boots and with thick gloves on, and she and

Wonder-head built a fort of snow. Sometimes Ellen would make a snow-manand Wonder-head would stay out and help until his cheeks were as red as cranberries, and

his hands almost frozen. In the house, Ellen contrived a great many things that were very amus-


ing to Wonder-head. She made little scales, and weighed tiny bags of flour; she shaped little cradles out of egg-shells and bound the edges with pink ribbon; then made tiny bits of dolls out of white cotton, with dots of silk for eyes, and lines of silk for nose and mouth. Then she made little beds for the cradles and laid the babies on them, and set Wonder-head to rocking them.

One day she took him into the

kitchen and let him help her bake

some loaves of bread; they were

about as large as robin’s eggs, and she made some cakes and

pies. She set the table in the

dining-room and put on her doll-

dishes, and invited a little girl,

Addy, to come and take tea with


Wonder-head. They had ‘Not’

at the table in a high-chair, and a

yellow kitten in another high-chair.

Little napkins were put at each

plate, but Ellen tucked ‘Not’s’

into his silver collar.

They had just begun to eat, and

Ellen had made a pig out of soft

bread and put it on the table, and

they were all laughing at it, when

the door-bell rang. Somebody

came in, Wonder-head looked up

—there was his papa come to carry

him home!

Aunt Frity did not see the Fussy

Mussies after this for a long time.

The snow went off and Aunt Frity

went off. I don’t mean that she

sunk into the ground or floated

off into the sky, but that she went

off in the cars to a large city. One


day, in a great, lonesome white marble hotel, she wrote this letter to Wonder-head and Bobberty:

New BaBEL, May 1, 1870.

My DEAR Fussy Mussis: Ah, you little rogues! are you

forgetting Aunt Frity? Spring has come, I know, and

you do not need any more stories, for you can be out of doors and see and hear more pleasant things in a minute than I can tell you aboutinaday. You careno more about my old stories than you do about the buzzings of a last year’s fly or a bumble-bee. Well, I don’t blame you! IfI could ridethrough green meadows in a cart, or make

houses in the sand, or wade ina

brook, and have all the sky and


all the sunshine that you do, little

should I care for stories. But

here in New Babel, Fussy Mussies

have no meadows, no carts to ride

in, no brooks to fish in, no sand-

banks to make houses in, no barns

to climb in, no calves to feed, no

lambs to take care of, no funny

little white pigs, no ducks, no

chickens.

When New Babel Fussy Mus-

sies go out to walk, they have to

walk on flat stones called side-

walks. If they ride, they jar over

round stones pounded into the

ground called pavements. And there are really no soft, green flowery paths for their little feet.

Sometimes Fussy Mussies stop

to look into the windows of flower

stores, at bunches of violets, and at


roses and japonicas, that have been brought into the city from greenhouses, and they like to see the bright waters of the fountain that plays over them to keep them fresh; but the brook in your meadows, with little shiners in it and frogs on its bank, and the dande- lions that shine like spots of gold inthe green grass, are so much prettier than the flower store, you would almost despise the window that New Babel Fussy Mussies stand at so long.

In little places called squares, there is nice green grass, but Fussy Mussies must not walk onit. They can only drive their hoops in the walks, and draw their little carts there; but they generally sit with their nurses on benches and are

II4. WONDER-HEAD STORIES

all dressed up in horrid fine

clothes, and I am sure they get

very tired looking at the people

and the carriages and omnibuses

that pass and repass in the streets

all day long like ants around an

ant-hill. In some places a little Fussy

Mussy has to hurry as fast as he

can when he wants to cross the

street, or he will be run over.

Sometimes a horse’s head comes

right up against people, and a man

with a blue coat on and a star on

his breast, who is called a police-

man, takes hold of the horse or

leads the people safely across the

street. Poor little Italian boys go

around with violins, and some-

times a big man with a harp, and

they play very pretty tunes; then


they pass around a hat for money

and anybody who has a penny

would be ashamed, I should think,

not to give it to the poor strangers

who look so pale and hungry. But the men on your farm going

to the fields with shovels or rakes on their shoulders look so much

happier than these street musi-

cians, I wonder somebody doesn’t

tell them how to go to a good

country farm and work for their

living. But thereis one place almost out

of this great Babel of a city that

is really a lovely place for Fussy

Mussies. It is called Central Park,

and you have to ride beyond all

the stores and churches and houses,

until you see real woods far off,

and begin to feel that you are in

116 WONDER-HEAD STORIES:

the country. Ah, but I have not

time to tell you all the things you

will see when you get there! First

you see, if you stop at the en-

trance that most Fussy Mussies

like best, a large building, and

when you come up to it, what do

you guess there isin it and around

it? Maybe you will hear some-

thing growl as you come nearer,

and when you turn into the park,

you. will see a long row of cages.

Bears, wolves, foxes, deer, rac-

coons, zebras, and a camel witha

great hump that looks as if a buf-

falo skin had been folded and laid

on his back; and as you go on and

on, strange little animals from all

parts of the world will keep you

looking and looking and you will

forget their names as I have until


finally you are glad to hear some-

body say: ‘Here are the mon-

keys!’

The monkeys are in a large

building by themselves; and oh, :

how many there are! And how

they look at you, and make a lit-

tle peeping answer if you talk to

them, and how they jump in and

out of the rings that are hung up

for them to play with, and leap

from their bars, and clim®°up the

ladders as if they were perform-

ing for your admiration! There

are some old mother-monkeys

with babies, and they look very

patient and fond and tired, and

seem proud of their little families

just like human mothers. I heard

of a monkey the other day that

was sent from the Viceroy of Egypt


to a gentleman in this country as a present. He was a little bit of a fellow about a foot long, and the hair on his head grew up high in a sort of turban shape, and looked

as if it might have been done by a fashionable city hair-dresser. He was a handsome little fellow alto- gether, and was about the color of a maltese cat. One day he got out of the house and ran away. It was in the city, and probably he would never have been found if one of the servants of the house

had not happened to pass through

the street to which he had wan-

dered. She saw some boys throw-

ing sticks and running after something, and when she stopped to

see what it was, lo, and behold!

there was poor Jocko, almost fright-

WONDER-HEAD ‘STORIES Iig

ened to death, trying to get away

from the boys and not knowing

which way to go. The girl called

him and reached out her arms and

Jocko ran to her, and he was so

overcome with the fright the boys

had given him, and with joy at

getting away from them, that he

fainted,—yes, he just collapsed and

sunk all away ina faint. And if

I had been there, I should have

sprinkled cologne on his forehead

and treated him just as I would

any nice little lady, and I should

have advised him to always carry

a bottle of hartshorn in his pocket,

and a fan. Yes, monkeys are

very interesting to little Fussy

Mussies, and to big ones, too; and

when you get a little older and

want to know why, read a book


written by Mr. Darwin and it will

tell you all about it. We go from the room where the

monkeys are, to see the birds.

These are so wonderful and so

beautiful and there are so many, Ican give you no idea of them. Think of eagles, and owls, and

pigeons, and pheasants, of flam-

ingoes as red as fire, of parrots as

green as grass, of storks as white

as snow, of birds as blue as the

sky, of large birds as high as your

head, and of little humming-birds

not bigger than your thumb. It seems to me, I could spend all my life looking at these birds, but we

have to hurry along, for we must

go inside another building to see the lions and tigers and hyenas,

and other animals that are very


terrible, and I could not help thinking when I saw them, how one would feel to meet them in the street as the servant-girl met poor little Jocko. I guess the fainting would be the other way. I cannot describe any of these creatures to you. I dare say you know more about them than I do

from seeing them in your picture-

books and in menageries, and from

reading about them, or from hearing stories.

After we get through with these

animals, we go up-stairs and see a

very large room full of stuffed birds, and glass cases full of butterflies and moths and _ beetles.

We see all kinds of snakes pre-

served in glass jars, and horrible

boa-constrictors and cobras stuffed;


we see sharks with their ugly jaws and teeth, and innocent badgers and beavers, and a great many’ other stuffed creatures just as natural as life. In the room above, are curiosities you would not care so much about, they are skeletons of immense animals no longer living on the earth.

After we have seen the curiosities in this large building, we go down-stairs and walk around in nice paths. Fussy Mussies all stop to look at some ostriches that are shut up in a yard and they almost alwayssay: ‘Oh, what funny legs!’ and everyone asks: ‘Don’t they ever have feathers on their legs?’

Now my dear Wonder-head and Bobberty, I must confess I don’t know whether they ever have


feathers on their legs or not, but these ostriches that I saw had legs as pink and smooth as yours, and I wish you would find out and

tell me if they are always so, or whether these had shed _ their feathers and had not got their new

ones. But how tall they are! They

could not stand up in your parlor, and their necks are so long and

so small, and they stretch them

around in such a queer way, they seem like some squirming kind of

animal distinct from the body. The long, beautiful, fluffy feathers

that ladies wear on their hats, grow

on the back part of the ostrich’s

body and set out like a lady’s short

skirt. His feet look like a hand

in a mitten, with the thumb on the


outside; it is very ugly, but so strong it is said that one blow will kill a person.

Well now, my little Fussies, we must be going or we shall never see any of the Park but these animals. But where would you like to go first? To the lake to see the swans like great beautiful water-lilies sitting on the water? Would you like to sail in a boat, or would you like to swing, or see the boys play ball, or the girls play croquet? Oh, this is a wonderful place! What beautiful flowers all along, what handsome carriages and horses and people there are on the roads and walks! What beautiful bridges, and arches, and rocks, and grottoes!

Here we can stop at a dairy


house and drink pure, sweet milk,

and we can have some crackers

or bread, but we will not buy any

candy, because it will spoil our

teeth. Is it not nice to have a

real dairy in a Park? Somebody

must have loved Fussy Mussies

when this dairy was planned.

But what is this? Here is the

nicest thing yet, a real little Fussy

Mussy carriage with two seats, a

real harness, and two large elegant

goats to drive! Yes, you can ride;

you cannot go all over the Park,

‘for that covers miles and miles of ground, but you can drive, and

thatis fun enough. It would take

you days and weeks to see all the

interesting things in Central Park,

and I have hardly begun to tell

you of them, because,—because,—


I am going to bring you here some

day to see them all yourselves. Yes, that is what Iam going to do.

And now farewell, Wonder-

head and Bobberty, I should rather kiss you this minute than to have a bite out of a banana or.an orange, or from a stick of candy. If, while

Mamma has been reading this long letter, you have fallen asleep, I

kiss you all the same, for to all Fussy Mussies asleep or awake,

summer or winter,

I am lovingly, Aunt Frity.

PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO. AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO : MDCCCXCV

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