it seemed rather strange that it should have been left there, and yet jimmieboy was glad that in grading his papa's tennis-court the men had left that bit of flat rock to show up on the surface of the lawn. it had afforded him no end of pleasure since he had first discovered it. as a make-believe island in a raging sea of grass, he had often used it to be cast away upon, but chiefly had he employed it as a vantage ground from which to watch his father and his father's friends at their games of tennis. the rock was just about large enough for the boy to sit upon and pretend that he was umpire, or, as his father said, mascot for his father's opponents, and it rarely happened that a game of tennis was played upon the court that was not witnessed by jimmieboy seated upon his rocky coigne.
the strangest experience that jimmieboy ever[pg 49] had with this bit of stone, however, was one warm afternoon last summer. it was at the drowsy period of the day. the tennis players were indulging in a game, which, to the little onlooker, was unusually dull, and he was on the point of starting off in pursuit of something, it mattered not what, so long as it was interesting enough to keep him awake, when he observed a most peculiar thing about the flat stone. it had unquestionably become transparent! jimmieboy could see through it, and what he saw was of most unexpected quality.
"dear me!" he ejaculated, "how very queer. this rock is made of glass."
then he peered down through it, and saw a beautiful marble staircase running down into the earth, at the foot of which was a great door that looked as though it was made of silver, and the key was of gold. at the sides of the staircase, hanging upon the walls, were pictures of strange little men and women, but unlike the men and women in other pictures, they moved about, and talked, and romped, and seemed to enjoy themselves hugely. great pictures were they indeed to jimmieboy's mind, because they were constantly changing, like the designs in his kaleidoscope.
[pg 50]
"i must get down there," he said, softly, to himself. "but how?"
as he spoke the door at the foot of the steps opened, and a small creature, for all the world like the goblin in jimmieboy's fairy book, poked his head out. the goblin looked all about him, and then turning his eyes upward until they met those of the boy, he cried out:
"hullo! are you the toy peddler?"
"no," replied jimmieboy.
"then you are the milk broker, or the potato merchant, and we don't want any milk or any potatoes."
the goblin slammed the door when he had said this, and with such a bang that all the little people in the pictures ran to the edge of the frame and peered out to see what was the matter. one poor little fellow, who had been tending sheep in a picture half-way up the stairs, leaned out so far that he lost his balance and tumbled out head over heels. the sheep scampered over the hill and disappeared in the background of the painting.
"poor little shepherd boy!" said jimmieboy. "i hope you are not hurt!"
the shepherd boy looked up gratefully at the speaker, and said he wasn't, except in his feelings.
[pg 51]
"is there any way for me to get in there?" asked jimmieboy.
"no, sir," said the shepherd boy. "that is, not all of you. part of you can come in."
"ho!" said jimmieboy. "i can't divide myself up."
"yes, you can," returned the shepherd boy. "it's easy enough, when you know how, but i suppose you don't know how, not having studied arithmetic. you can't even add, much less divide."
"maybe you can tell me how," said jimmieboy.
"certainly, i can," said the shepherd boy. "the part of you that can come in is your eye, and your ear, and your voice. all the rest of you must stay out."
"but how do i get 'em in?" asked jimmieboy.
"they are in now," said the other. "you can see me, you can hear me, and i can hear you."
"but i can't see what's beyond that door."
"oh, we'll fix that," said the little shepherd. "i'll knock on the door, and when it is opened you can tell the goblin that you want to see what he's got, and he'll show it all to you if you tell him that your father is the man who didn't blast the rock out."
[pg 52]
the shepherd boy then went softly down the stairs, knocked on the door, and before it was opened had flown back to his duties in the picture. then, as he had intimated, the goblin opened the door again, and poking his head out as before, cried:
"is that you, milk broker?"
"no," answered jimmieboy. "i am the son of the man who didn't blast away the flat rock, and my eye and my ear and my voice want to come in."
"why, certainly," said the goblin, throwing the door wide open. "i didn't know you were you. let 'em walk right in."
jimmieboy was about to say that he didn't know how his eye or his ear or his voice could walk anywhere, but he was prevented from so doing by the sudden disappearance of the staircase, and the substitution therefor of a huge room, the splendor of which was so great that it for a moment dazzled his eyes.
"who comes here?" said a voice in the corner of the room.
"the eye and the ear and the voice of the son of the man who did not blast the flat stone," observed the goblin, and then jimmieboy perceived, seated upon a lustrous golden throne,[pg 53] a shriveled-up dwarf, who looked as if he might be a thousand years old, but who, to judge from the crown he wore upon his head, was a king.
the dwarf was clad in garments of the richest texture, and his person was luminous with jewels of the rarest sort. as the goblin announced the visitor the king rose up, and descending from the throne, made a courtly bow to jimmieboy.
"thrice welcome, o son of the man who did not blast the flat rock," he said. "it is only fitting that one who owes so much to the father should welcome the eye and the ear and the voice of the son, for know, o boy, that i am the lord of the undergroundies whose kingdom would have been shattered but for your father's kindly act in sparing it."
"i suppose that blasting the rock would have spoiled all this," said jimmieboy's voice, as his eye took in the royal magnificence of the place, while to his ears came strains of soft and sweet music. "it would have been dreadful!"
"much more dreadful than you imagine," replied the little king. "it would have worked damage that a life-time could not have repaired."
then the king turned to a tall, pale creature in black who sat writing at a mahogany table in one corner of the throne room, and commanded[pg 54] him to recite into jimmieboy's ear how dreadful it would have been.
"compose, o laureate," he said to the tall, pale creature, "compose a song in which the dire effects of such a blast are fully set forth."
the laureate rose from his seat, and bowing low before the king and jimmieboy's eye, began his song, which ran in this wise:
"a half a pound of dynamite
set in that smooth, flat stone.
our palace would quite out of sight
most certainly have blown.
"it would have blown our window-panes
to high gibraltar's ledge,
and all our streets and country lanes
it would have set on edge.
"it would have knocked our royal king
as far up as the moon;
beyond the reach of anything—
beyond the best balloon.
"it would have taken all our pears,
our candy and our toys,
and hurled them where the polar bears
indulge in horrid noise.
"it would have spoiled the music-box,
and ruined all our books—
knocked holes in all our woolen socks,
[pg 55]and ruined thus their looks.
"'t would have destroyed our chandeliers,
to dough turned all our pie;
and, worst of all, my little dears,
it would have injured i."
"is that dreadful enough?" asked the laureate, turning to the king.
"it suits me," said the king. "but perhaps our friend jimmieboy would like to have it made a little more dreadful."
"in that case," said the laureate, "i can compose a few more verses in which the blast makes the tennis-court over us cave in and bury all the cake and jam we have in the larder, or if he thinks that too much to sacrifice, and would like a little pleasure mixed in with the terribleness, the cod-liver oil bottle might be destroyed."
"i wouldn't spoil the cake and jam," said jimmieboy's voice, in reply to this. "but the cod-liver oil might go."
"very well," said the laureate, and then he bowed low again and sang:
"but there is balm for our annoy,
for next the blast doth spoil
six hundred quarts—o joy! o joy!—
of vile cod-liver oil."
"i should think you would have liked that," said jimmieboy's voice.
[pg 56]
"i would have," said the king, "because you know the law of this country requires the king to consume a bottle of cod-liver oil every day, and if the bottles were all broken, perhaps the law, too, would have been crushed out of existence. but, after all, i'd rather be king with cod-liver oil than have my kingdom ruined and do without it. how would you like to see our gardens?"
"very much," said jimmieboy. "i'm fond of flowers."
the king laughed.
"what a droll idea," he said, turning to the laureate. "the idea of flowers growing in gardens! write me a rhyme on the drollness of the idea."
the laureate sighed. it was evident that he was getting tired of composing verses to order.
"i hear and obey," he replied, shortly, and then he recited as follows:
"to think of wasting: any time
in raising flowers, i think,
is worse than writing nonsense-rhyme,
or frying purple ink.
"it's queerer really than the act
of painting sword-fish green;
or sailing down a cataract
[pg 57]to please a magazine.
"indeed, it really seems to me,
who now am very old,
the drollest bit of drollery
that ever has been drolled."
"but what do you raise in your gardens?" asked jimmieboy, as the laureate completed his composition.
"nothing, of course," said the king. "what's a garden for, anyhow? pleasure, isn't it?"
"yes," said jimmieboy's voice, "but——"
"there isn't any but about it," said the king. "if a garden is for pleasure it must not be worked in. business and pleasure are two very different things, and you cannot raise flowers without working."
"but how do you get pleasure out of a garden when you don't raise anything in it?"
"aren't you dull!" ejaculated the king. "write me a quatrain on his dullness, o laureate."
"confound his dullness!" muttered the laureate. "i'm rapidly wearing out, poetizing about this boy." then he added, aloud: "certainly, your majesty. here it is:
"he is the very dullest lad
i've seen in all my life;
for dullness he is quite as bad
as any oyster-knife."
[pg 58]
"is that all?" asked the king, with a frown.
"i'm afraid four lines is as many as i can squeeze into a quatrain," said the laureate, returning the frown with interest.
"then tell this young man's ear, sirrah, how it comes that we get pleasure out of a garden in which nothing grows."
"if i must—i suppose i must," growled the laureate; and then he recited:
"the plan is thus, o little wit,
you'll see it in a minute;
we get our pleasures out of it,
because there's none within it."
"that is very poor poetry, laury!" snapped the king.
"if you don't like it, don't take it," retorted the laureate. "i'm tired of this business, anyhow."
"and what, pray," cried the king, striding angrily forward to the mutinous poet, "what are you going to do about it?"
"i'm going to get up a revolution," retorted the laureate, shaking his quill pen fiercely at the king. "if i go to the people to-morrow, and promise not to write any more poetry, they'll all be so grateful they'll make me king, and set you to work wheeling coal in the mines for the mortals."
[pg 59]
the king's face grew so dark with anger as the laureate spoke that jimmieboy's eye could hardly see two inches before itself, and in haste the little fellow withdrew it from the scene. what happened next he never knew, but that missiles were thrown by the quarreling king and poet he was certain, for there was a tremendous shout, and something just tipped the end of his ear and went whizzing by, and rubbing his eyes, the boy looked about him, and discovered that he was still lying face downward upon the flat rock, but it was no longer transparent.
off in the bushes directly back of him was his father, looking for a tennis ball. this, some people say, is the object that whizzed past jimmieboy's ear, but to this day the little fellow believes that it was nothing less than the king's crown, which that worthy monarch had hurled at the laureate, that did this.
for my part i take sides with neither, for, as a matter of fact, i know nothing about it.
