John Kendrick Bangs

“ I am an unfairy."
"What's that?" asked Jimmieboy.
"You know what a fairy is, don't you?" said the dwarf.
"Yes. It's a dear lovely creature with wings, that goes about doing good."
"That's right. An unfairy is just the opposite," explained the dwarf. "I go about doing unfair things. I am the fairy that makes things go wrong. When your hat blows off in the street the chances are that I have paid the bellows man, who works up all these big winds we have, to do it. ”

“ In that case you don't try, for you can see without trying that any man with two legs who tries to walk along two roads leading in different directions at once is just going to split into at least two halves before he has gone twenty miles, and that is just what the Quandary wants you to do, for it's over such horrible spectacles as a man divided against himself that he gloats, and when he is through gloating he swallows what's left."
"And what does the wise, sagacious, sappy, perspiring man of wisdom like yourself who knows a thing or two do?" asked Jimmieboy. ”

“ Much to Jimmieboy's surprise the major was pleased at this remark.
"Thank you, Jimmieboy," he said. "That proves that I am a true poet. I think there's some meaning in those lines, but it's so long since I wrote them that I have forgotten exactly what I did mean, and it's that very thing that makes a poem out of the verses. Poetry is nothing but riddles in rhyme. You have to guess what is meant by the lines, and the harder that is, the greater the poem." ”

“ And then they all laughed again.
"I am afraid," said the soldier on horseback, with a kindly smile which won Jimmieboy's heart, "that you do not understand what the duties of a general are in this country. We aren't bound down by the notions of you nursery people, who seem to think that all a general is good for is to be stood up in front of a cannon loaded with beans, and knocked over half a dozen times in the course of a battle. Have you ever read those lines of High-private Tinsel in his little book, 'Poems in Pewter,' in which he tells of the trials of a general of the tin soldiers?" ”

“ We will withdraw to that moss-covered rock underneath the trees in there, gather enough huckleberries and birch bark for our luncheon, and catch a mess of trout from the brook to go with them, and then we can fight our duel all the rest of the afternoon."
"But how's that going to satisfy my wounded honor?" asked the major.
"I'll tell one story," said the sprite, "and you'll tell another, and when we are through, the one that Jimmieboy says has told the best story will be the victor. That is better than trying to hurt each other, I think." ”

“ JIMMIEBOY MEETS THE ENEMY. AS the noise made by the clattering hoofs of Major Blueface's horse grew fainter and fainter, and finally died away entirely in the distance, Jimmieboy was a little startled to hear something that sounded very like a hiss in the trees behind him. ”

“ This last word of the major's was a sort of ecstatic cluck such as boys often make after having tasted something they are particularly fond of.
"What's the use of scaring the boy, Blueface?" said the sprite, angrily, as he noted Jimmieboy's alarm. "I won't have anymore of that. You can be as brave and terrible as you please in the presence of your enemies, but in the presence of my friends you've got to behave yourself." ”

“ To be futile means that you are wasting time, eh?"
"That's it," said the major. "I'm glad you said it and not I, because that makes it true. If I'd said it, it wouldn't have been so."
"Well, all I've got to say," said Jimmieboy, "is that if anybody ever came to me and asked me where he could find a futile person, I'd send him over to you. Here we've wasted nearly the whole afternoon and we haven't got a single thing. We haven't even talked of anything but peaches and cherries, and we've got to get jam and sugar and almonds yet." ”

“ He used to have magnificent birthday parties, quite like those that boys like Jimmieboy here have, only instead of having a cake with a candle in it for each year, King Fuzzywuz used to have one guest for each year, and one whole cake for each guest. On his twenty-first birthday he had twenty-one guests; on his thirtieth, thirty, and so on; and at every one of these parties I used to be passed around to be admired, I was so very handsome and valuable."
"Absurd!" said the sprite, with a sneering laugh. "The idea of a lead spoon being valuable!" ”

“ Beautiful!" he said. "Do you know, Jimmieboy, I've half a mind to turn mean again for just a minute, and go back and frighten that sheep back into the bushes just for the bliss of helping her out once more."
"I wouldn't do that," said Jimmieboy, with a shake of his head. "I'd just change myself into a good fairy if I were you, and go about doing kind things. When you see people having a picnic, push the rain cloud away from them instead of over them. ”

“ I am going to stop being a man of war. The tremendous victory we have won to-day is the result entirely of the efforts of myself, General Jimmieboy and Major Sprite—for to the latter I now give the title I have borne so honorably for so many years. ”

“ We don't do as you do in your country. We don't shoot the enemy with lead bullets, and try to kill him and make him unhappy. We try to coax him back by shooting sweetmeats at him, and if he won't be coaxed, we bombard him with pickled peaches until they make him sick, and then he has to surrender."
[35] "It must be pretty fine to be an enemy," said Jimmieboy, smacking his lips as he thought of being bombarded with sweetmeats.
"It is," exclaimed the colonel, with enthusiasm. "It's so nice, that they have to do the right thing by me in the matter of jam to keep me from being an enemy myself." ”

“ The boy was pained to note the destruction of the little man who had tried to throw the stone at the robin, because he was always sorry for everybody upon whom trouble had come, but he was not, on the whole, surprised at the soldier's plight, for the simple reason that he had been taught that boys who threw stones at the harmless little birds in the trees were naughty and worthy of punishment, and he could not see why a tin soldier should not be punished for doing what a small boy of right feelings would disdain to do. ”

“ He's a queer bird, that major. He's so anxious to read his poem to somebody that he always forgets his orders, and when he does half remember what he is sent to do, we can tell what the orders are by what he doesn't say."
"I shouldn't think he'd be a good man to look after the luggage if he forgets everything that way," said Jimmieboy.
"That's just where he's great," returned the corporal. "For, don't you see, every man in the regiment wants to carry about three times as much luggage as he ought to, and the major makes it all right by forgetting two-thirds of it. ”

“ He sold every poem he wrote, too," said the major.
"To a newspaper?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Oh, no," said the major. "He bought 'em from himself. When he'd wake up in the morning as a grocer he'd read what he had written the night before as a poet, and then he'd buy the verses from himself and throw them into the fire. But to return to the Quandary. He has awfully bad manners. He stares you right in the face whenever he meets you, and no matter what you want to do he tries to force you to do the other thing. ”

“ Jimmieboy [117] smiled over it; the sprite snickered, and the major threw himself down on the grass in a perfect paroxysm of laughter. When he had finished he got up again and said:
"Well, what are we going to do about it? I propose we attack Fortyforefoot unawares and tie his hands behind his back. Then Jimmieboy will be safe."
"You are a wonderfully wise person," retorted the sprite. "How on earth is Fortyforefoot to show his tricks if we tie his hands?"
"By means of his tricks," returned the major. "If he is any kind of a magician he'll get his hands free in less than a minute." ”

“ And stole a bale of hay,"
snored the corporal with a yawn.
"That can't be it! that can't be it!" cried Jimmieboy, so excited to hear what happened to little Tom in the lions' cage that he began to shake the corporal almost fiercely.
"What can't be what?" asked the corporal, sitting up and opening his eyes. "What are you trying to talk about, general?"
"Tom—and the circus—what happened to him in the lions' cage when he took off his coat?" cried Jimmieboy.
"Tom? And the circus? I don't know anything about any Tom or any circus," replied the corporal, with a sleepy nod. ”

“ I feel so badly over your treatment of me that I may be rash enough to commit suicide by jumping into a smelting-pot and being moulded over again into a piece of shot, and if I do, general, if I do, and if I ever get into battle and am fired out of a gun, I shall seek out that corporal, and use my best efforts to amputate his head off so quickly that he won't know what has happened till he tries to think, and finds he hasn't anything to do it with. ”

“ Les down the cheek of me."
"Oh, that's it," said Jimmieboy. "Well, let's stop fooling now and get those supplies."
"All right," assented the major. "Where are the soldiers who accompanied you? We'll give 'em their orders, and you'll have the supplies in no time."
"How's that?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Why, don't you see," said the major, "that's the nice thing about being a general. If you have to do something you don't know how to do, you command your men to go and do it. That lifts the responsibility from your shoulders to theirs. They don't dare disobey, and there you are." ”

“ The minute Spritey turned into Bludgeonhead you ran away just about as fast as your tin legs could carry you—frightened to death evidently."
"Jimmieboy," said the major, his voice husky [177] with emotion, "any other person than yourself would have had to fight a duel with me for casting such a doubt as you have just cast upon my courage. The idea of me, of I, of myself, Major Mortimer Carraway Blueface, the hero of a hundred and eighty-seven real sham fights, the most poetic as well as the handsomest man in the 'Jimmieboy Guards' being accused of running away! Oh! It is simply dreadful! ”

“ You stroll along, and you stroll along, and you stroll along. Then you come to a place where the road splits, one half going to the right and one to the left, or, if you don't like right and left, we'll say one going to Calcutta by way of Cape Horn, and the other going to Calcutta by way of Greenland's icy mountains."
"It's a long walk either way," said Jimmieboy.
"Yes. It's a walk that isn't often taken," assented the major, with a knowing shake of the head. ”

“ Why, Jimmieboy, suppose he should overeat himself and die? He's the only one in the world, and we can't afford to lose an animal like that; besides, after he has ruined all the country around the turn, it's just as like as not he'll begin on the rest of the picture, and eat it all up, frame and all. ”

“ I have in my pocket here a real live general that I have captured. Now between you and me, I don't eat generals. I don't care for them—they fight so. I prefer preserved cherries and pickled peaches and—er—strawberry jam and powdered sugar and almonds, and other things like that, you know, and it occurred to me that if I let you have the general you would supply me with what I needed of the others."
"You have come to the right place, Bludgeonhead," said Fortyforefoot, eagerly. ”

“ Water is wet because it is water, and fire is hot because it wouldn't be fire if it wasn't hot. Oh, it takes brains to know everything, Jimmieboy, and if there's one thing old Colonel Zinc hasn't got, it's brains. If you don't believe it, cut his head off some day and see for yourself. ”

“ This, as it turned out, was a very rash promise for Jimmieboy to make, for after he and the tin soldiers had got the birthday cake and were ready to enter Pictureland once more, they found that not one of them could do it, the frame was so high up and the picture itself so hard and [193] impenetrable. Jimmieboy felt so badly to be unable to return to his friends, that, following the major's hint about sleep bringing forgetfulness of trouble, he threw himself down on the nursery couch, and closing his brimming eyes dozed off into a dreamless sleep. ”

“ You might find them anywhere."
"Thank you," said Jimmieboy. "I feel easier now that I know all this. I don't know what I should have done if I hadn't met you, major."
"It's very unkind of you to say so," said the major, very much pleased by Jimmieboy's appreciation. "Of course you know what I mean."
"Yes," answered Jimmieboy, "I do. Now I'll tell you what I think. I think pickled peaches come in cans and bottles."
"Bottles and cans,
Bottles and cans,
When a man marries it ruins his plans,"
quoted the major. "I got married once," he added, "but I became a bachelor again right off. ”

“ I've always hated division—particularly division of apples and peaches. There is no meaner sum in any arithmetic in the world [98] than that I used to have to do every time I got an apple when I was your age."
"What was the sum?" asked Jimmieboy. ”

“ Bludgeonhead turned back and jumped over the mountain half a dozen times until Jimmieboy was satisfied and then he resumed his journey.
"This," he said, after trudging along in silence for some time, "this is Fortyforefoot Valley, and in a short time we shall come to the giant's castle; but meanwhile I want you to see what a wonderful place this is. The valley itself will give you a better idea of Fortyforefoot's great power as a magician than anything else that I know of. ”

“ I hate 'em."
"But what am I to do, then?" queried the little general. "What must I do to capture you?"
"Get something in the place of the cherries and peaches that I like, that's all. Very simple matter, that."
"But I don't know what you like," said Jimmieboy. "I never took lunch with you."
"No—and you never will," answered the Parallelopipedon. "And for a very good reason. I never eat lunch, breakfast, tea, or supper. I never eat anything but dinner, and I eat that four times a day." ”