John Kendrick Bangs

“ I'm heavy, as you found out when you tried to get me to jump over the lawn mower, but if I could only do a thing I want to you could go sailing over a church steeple as easily as you can ride me over a lawn."
"You mean to say you'd fly?" asked Jimmieboy, delighted at the idea.
"No—not exactly," returned Bikey. "I never could fly and never wanted to. Birds do that, and you can buy a bird for two dollars; but a bicycle costs you anywhere from fifty to a hundred, which shows how much more valuable bicycles are than birds. No, I don't want to fly, but I would like to float." ”

“ III A SUDDEN STOP AT THE TYRED INN
"This is a great place," said Bikey as they sped along. "I've coasted on pretty much every kind of coasting thing there is, and I think I never struck anything like this before. It beats the North Pole all hollow."
"You never coasted on the North Pole, did you?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Oh, didn't I just!" laughed Bikey. "It's made of ice, that North Pole is, and it's so slippery that you can even slide up it—that's awful slippery, when you come to think of it—and as for coming down, well, you'd almost think you were falling off a roof." ”

“ From the parlor there came the most beautiful strains of music, as from a fine brass and string orchestra, all of which was managed by the merest bit of a midget sitting astride of a safety and working the pedals, which in turn worked the great musical instrument that occupied the whole of the lower end of the room. Upon the walls were all sorts of curious pictures, and for a decoration of the ceiling there were automatic frescoes presenting a constantly moving bicycle scene. ”

“ You kept your eye glued on that Alp, I guess."
"That's what he did," said Swayny. "And that's why it was so hard to get the sled started. I had to hump three times before I could get my runner off and it was all because he'd glued his eye on the Alp! Don't do it again, Jimmieboy. We haven't time to unglue your eye every time we start."
"I don't blame him," said Swanny. "Those Alps are simply great, and I sometimes feel myself as if I'd like to look at 'em as much as forty minutes. I'd hate to be a hired man on an Alp, though." ”

“ And then the little creature set off the sugar-plum bomb, and the candies it put forth were marvelous in number and sweetness, and, strange to say, there wasn't one of them that, in falling, came down anywhere but in the mouth of the small boy who had been "stang."
"Got any cannon crackers?" asked Jimmieboy, delighted with what he had already seen, as soon as the sweet taste from the sugar-plums died away. "I'm fond of noise, too."
"Well," said the little creature, "we have great big crackers, only they don't break the silence in just the way you mean. ”

“ It will have bigger, redder cheeks than any other apple in the world, and it'll have a core in it that will be just as good to eat as marmalade, and it'll be all for you if you'll do something for me to-morrow."
"I'll do it if I can," said Jimmieboy.
"Of course—that's what I mean," said Stoopy. "Nobody can do a thing he can't do; and if you find that you can't do it, don't do it; you'll get the apple just the same, only you won't have earned it, and it may not seem so good, particularly the core. I suppose you know that to-morrow is Decoration Day?" ”

“ I should think you'd have better sense than to sprinkle the road with tacks in this way."
"Why, what an ungrateful creature you are," cried the landlord of the Tyred Inn, for that was who the pudgy little old fellow was. "If it hadn't been for those tacks I'd like to know where you'd be at this moment. You'd have smashed into that stone wall and busted yourself and your rider all to pieces."
"That's so, Bikey," said Jimmieboy. "Those tacks saved our lives." ”

“ If you feel sick, you are sick. If you feel good, you are good, and if you feel sorry, you are sorry, and so, don't you see, if you feel small you are small. The only point is, now, do you feel small enough to get into this room?"
"I think I do," returned Jimmieboy, [Pg 100] brightening up considerably, because his one great desire now was not to be a big grown-up man, like his papa, who could sharpen lead-pencils, and go out of doors in snow-storms, but to visit the Imp in his own quarters. ”

“ You know how it is when you're feeling sort of unhappy and somebody comes along who feels just the other way, who laughs and sings, how you get to feel better yourself right off? Well, remember the stars when you don't feel good. How they're always twinkling—watch 'em, and by and by you'll begin to twinkle yourself. You can't help it—and further, Jimmieboy," added this altogether strange valentine, "when anybody tries to make you think [Pg 287] that this world has got more bad things than good things in it, look at the stars again. ”

“ Haven't you seen a boy doubled up after eating an apple? Of course you have; perhaps you were the boy. At any rate there is no reason why, if an apple can work that way, it can't work the other. It's a poor rule that won't work both ways, and an apple is pretty good, as a rule, and so you have it proved without trying that what I say is true. Here's the apple; [Pg 96] eat it as quickly as you can and give me the core."
Jimmieboy took the dainty piece of fruit in his hand and ate it with much relish, for it was a very sweet apple, and he was fond of that sort of thing. ”

“ And that is why one long-forgotten soldier's grave in the cemetery across the hills back of Jimmieboy's house was white and sweetly fragrant with apple-blossoms when the sun had gone down upon Decoration Day. ”

“ People are very careless about their clouds on the Alps, and they wander here and there, straying from one man's lawn onto another's, just like cows where Jimmieboy lives. I knew a man once who bought the top of an Alp just for the view, and one of his neighbor's clouds came along and squatted down on his place and simply killed the view entirely, and I tell you he made his hired man's life miserable. ”

“ The idea of anything having everything that was worth having was too much for him to imagine, for bicycles have very little imagination.
"I wish I could be one," he said wistfully, after a moment's silence. "It must be awfully nice to have everything you want."
Jimmieboy thought so, too, but he was too much interested in getting to Saturn to say [Pg 31] anything, so he, too, kept silent and pedalled away as hard as he could. Together and happily they went on until Jimmieboy said:—
"Bikey, what's that ahead? Looks like the side of a great gold cheese." ”

“ A bicycle that could float in the air would be the finest thing in the world."
"That's very likely true," said Jimmieboy, "but how are you going to do it? You can't soar."
"Not with my tires filled with air," replied Bikey, "but if you'll take the hose from the gas stove and fasten one end to the supply valve of my tires, the other to the gas fixture, fill the tires up with gas and get aboard I'll bet you we can have a ride that'll turn out to be a regular sky-scraper." ”

“ Jimmieboy expressed his admiration of the intelligence of the Brownie Dog and the good nature of the other animals, and then asked if he mightn't go upstairs he was so curious to see the rest of the house.
"Certainly," said the Dude Brownie, "only you'll have to slide up the banisters. We haven't any stairs."
"Don't think I know how," said Jimmieboy. "I can slide down banisters, but I never learned to slide up 'em."
"You don't have to learn it," returned the Brownie. "All you have to do is to get aboard and slide. It's a poor banister that won't work both ways. ”

“ Fill my rubber tires with gas and up we'll go. What do you say?"
"I'll do it," cried Jimmieboy with enthusiasm. "I'd love more than anything else to go biking through the clouds, for to tell the truth clouds look a great deal softer than grocery carts and lawn mowers, and I wouldn't mind running into one of them so much. Skybicycling"——
"Pooh! What a term," retorted Bikey. "Skybicycling! Why don't you use your mind a little and call it skycycling?" ”

“ People who don't understand queer things don't understand me, and I rather think if the girl had opened that door and had been spoken to by something she [Pg 277] couldn't see she'd have started to run and hide, shrieking Lawk, meanwhile."
"I've half a mind to shriek Lawk, myself," said Jimmieboy, a little fearfully, for he wasn't quite easy about this invisible something he was talking to. "Who are you, anyhow?"
"I'm not a who, I'm a what," said the queer thing. "I'm not a person, I'm a thing—just a plain, homely, queer thing. ”

“ It must have taken the pelican a long time to teach those dudes to pick up their [Pg 191] chrysanthemums and place them in their little button-holes with such military precision as they displayed. Everybody applauded this wildly and a great roar of laughter greeted the dudes' acknowledgment of the applause, for the magnificent way in which they took off their silk hats and bowed was truly droll.
"It's hard to believe they are merely human!" said the tiger to Jimmieboy. "Their intelligence is more that of the pelican than of the human kind." ”

“ Jimmieboy had been watching for the postman all day and he was getting just a little tired of it. It was Valentine's Day, and he was very naturally expecting that some of his many friends would remember that fact and send him a valentine. Still the postman, strange to say, didn't come.
"He'll be later than usual," said Jimmieboy's mamma. "The postman always is late on Valentine's Day. He has so many valentines to leave at people's houses." ”

“ When it comes to things like that, boys are much stronger than men. I've known a boy of five to stand banging on a drum for seven hours, when his father couldn't stand it for seven minutes. Nobody need go crazy over my bicycle ceiling though," continued the landlord. "I just press a button and it's all over—see?"
As the little man spoke he pressed a button on the side wall, and instantly the fresco bicycles stopped moving, the little plaster wheelmen jumped off and threw themselves down upon the soft grassy borders of the painted roadside and all was still. ”

“ Now, this inn wouldn't earn a cent of money if biklemen didn't stop here. See that?"
"Yes," said Bikey. "That's plain enough, but that doesn't account for the tacks or the stone wall."
"Yes, it does, too," retorted the landlord. "I ran this inn two years before that stone wall was built, and I paid the government $500 a week for being allowed to do it, but nobody ever stopped. Every bikleman in the universe went coasting by here and never a one stopped in, so I never got a cent and was paying $26,000 a year to the government into the bargain. ”

“ And then the door opened again, and the landlord and Dr. Pump and the nurses and all the patients and a platoon of policemen crashed into the room.
"Catch him, quick!" cried the landlord. But Jimmieboy had already jumped, landing upon the friendly saddle of Bikey. In an instant he found himself speeding away through space.
"Are we still on Saturn?" he gasped.
"Not we!" cried Bikey. "That place is too hot for us. We're not on anything. I'm simply tumbling through the clouds and whirring my wheels for fun. I like to see the wheels go round. Don't bother. We'll land somewhere." ”

“ Jimmieboy laughed.
"You know poetry, don't you," he said.
"Well, rather," said Swayny. "That is to say, I can tell it from a church steeple."
"Which reminds me," put in Swanny, as [Pg 297] strange to say, this wonderful sled began to slide up a very steep hill, "of a conundrum I never heard before. What's the difference between writing poetry the way some people do and building a steeple as all people do?" ”

“ We had to stop that, too, because the last time they did it the men were so strong that the bar was pulled apart and both tuggers went flying off on one wheel so fast that they have never managed to get back—not that we want them back, but that we don't want people to set bicycling down as a dangerous sport. It means so much to us. We get all our money from our big ring here; bicyclists come from all parts of the universe to ride around it, and as they pay for the privilege why we get millions of dollars a year, which is divided up among the people. ”

“ Jimmieboy turned about, and sure enough there stood his neglected wheel.
"I hope you weren't hurt by your tumble," said the little bicycle standing up on its hind wheel and putting its treadles softly on Jimmieboy's shoulders, as if it were caressing him.
"No," said Jimmieboy. "The only thing was that it took away my appetite, and it was on apple pie day. It isn't pleasant to [Pg 15] feel as if you couldn't eat a thing with a fine apple pie staring you in the face. ”

“ The Imp then arranged the wires so that the Poetry Book could recite itself to Jimmieboy, after which he went back to his office to see who it was that had been ringing the bell.
"My first poem," said a soft silvery voice from the top shelf, towards which Jimmieboy immediately directed his attention—"my first poem is a perfect gem. I have never seen anything anywhere that could by any possibility be finer than it is, unless it be in my new book, which contains millions of better ones. ”

“ Jimmieboy watched, and such a romp as followed he never had seen before. The jumping Billikins was everywhere all the time. One second he'd be riding pickaback on one man, the next you'd find him sitting on another man's head trying to put his feet into the vest pockets of the third and fourth men, while with his hands he'd be playing tag with the others. ”

“ It's a thing like a gold hoople that angels wear on their heads."
"I'll have to get one," said Bikey. "I heard somebody say I was an angel of a bicycle. [Pg 30] I don't know what she meant, though. What is an angel?"
"It's a—a—good thing with wings," said Jimmieboy.
"Humph!" said Bikey, "I'm afraid I'm not one of those. Don't they ever have wheels? I'm a good thing, but I haven't any wings."
"I never heard of an angel with wheels," said Jimmieboy. "But I suppose they come. Angels have everything that's worth having."
Bikey was silent. ”

“ Brownie Elephant, for instance, the cunningest little animal you ever saw, with forty pairs of spectacles running all the way down its trunk; and a Brownie Pug-dog with its tail curled so tightly that it lifted the little creature's hind legs off the floor; and most interesting of all, a Brownie Bear that could take its fur off in hot weather and put on a light flannel robe instead. Jimmieboy gazed with eyes and mouth wide open at these pictures.
"What queer animals," he said. "Do you really have such animals as those?" ”