"THREE VILLANOUS-LOOKING BODIES, AND A FOURTH, WHICH DAWSON RECOGNIZED AS HIS OWN""THREE VILLANOUS-LOOKING BODIES, AND A FOURTH, WHICH DAWSON RECOGNIZED AS HIS OWN"
Dawson's emotion was so overpowering that the valet was really frightened, and he fled below, whence he shortly reappeared, pushing before him a small wheeling vehicle in which sat three villanous-looking bodies,and a fourth, which Dawson, with a gasp of relief, recognized as his own.
"I thought you said I had five of these things?" he demanded, inspecting the bodies.
"So you have, sir. The one you wear for evening, sir, is being pressed. You fell asleep in it the other night, sir, and got it all wrinkled."
"That golf fellow's a gay-looking prig!" laughed Dawson. "Let me try him on."
The valet stood the body up, and, opening a small door at the top of the skull, ingeniously concealed by the hair, invited Dawson to enter. Without even knowing how it came about, Dawson soon found himself in full possession. Then he walked over to the glass and peered in at himself.
"Humph!" he said. "Not much to look at, am I? Bring me a driver."
James obeyed, and Dawson tried the swing.
"Why, the darned thing's left-handed!" he said, after some awkward work. "I don't like that."
"You picked it out for yourself, sir," replied the valet. "You said a left-handedplayer always rattled the other man, and, besides, it was the only one you ever had that could keep its eye on the ball."
"Let me out! Let me out!" screamed Dawson. "I don't like it, and I won't have it. I'm suffocating. Open my head and let me out."
The valet unfastened the little door, and Dawson emerged. "What's that tough-looking one for?" he asked, after a pause, during which his brain throbbed with the excitement of his novel experience.
"Prize-fights," said James.
"And the strange-looking thing that appears to have been designed for a fancy-dress ball?"
"Nobody knows what you intended that for, Mr. Dawson. You had it sent up yourself from the bodydasher's last week, sir."
"Well, take it away," roared Dawson. "This may be 3568, but I haven't lost my self-respect entirely. Give it to—ah—give it to the children to play with."
"Really, Mr. Dawson," said the valet, anxiously, "wouldn't I better ring up the President and have him send a doctor here from the Department of Physic? Youseem all astray this morning. There aren't any children any more, sir."
"Wha—what? Nochildren?" cried Dawson.
"They were abolished three centuries ago, sir," explained the valet.
"Then how the deuce is the world populated?" demanded Dawson.
"It was sufficiently populated at the time the law abolishing children was passed, sir."
"But people die, don't they?"
"Never," replied the valet. "When Dr. Perkinbloom discovered how to separate man's mental from his physical side, by means of this little door in the cranium, all the perishable portions of man were done away with, which is how it is, sir, that, for convenience' sake, after the world was as full of consciousness as it could be comfortably, it was decided not to have any more of it."
"But these bodies, James—these bodies?"
"Oh, they are manufactured—"
"But how?"
"That, sir, is the secret of the inventor," replied the valet, "a secret which he is permittedby our government to retain, although the factories are maintained under the supervision of the Tailor-General."
Dawson was silent. He was absolutely overpowered by the revelation.
"James," he said, after a pause of nearly five minutes, "let me—let me back into my old self just for a moment, please. I—I feel faint, and sort of uncomfortable. I feel lost, don't you know. I can grasp some of your ideas, but—Christmas without children! It does not seem possible."
The valet respectfully raised up the original Dawson, opened the little door in the top of its head, and Dawson slipped in.
"Now lock that door," said Dawson, quickly, once he was safe inside. The valet obeyed nervously.
"Give me the key," said Dawson. "Quick!"
"Yes, sir," said James, handing it over, eying his master anxiously meanwhile.
Dawson looked at it. It was a fragile bit of gold, but gold did not appeal to him at the moment, and before the valet could interfere to stop him he had hurled it far out of the window into the busy streetbelow, where it was lost in the maze of traffic.
"There," said Dawson; "I guess you'll have a hard time getting me out of this again. You needn't try. And meanwhile, James, you can kick those other bodies out into the street and dump the gold into the river; after which you may present my compliments to your darned old government, and tell it that it can go where the woodbine twineth. A government that abolishes children can go hang, so far as I am concerned."
James sprang towards Dawson as if he had been stung. His face grew white with wrath.
"Sir," he hissed, passionately, "the words that you have spoken are treason, and merit punishment."
"What's that?" cried Dawson, wrathfully.
"Treason is what I said," retorted the valet, aroused. "If I thought you were in your right mind and knew what you were saying, I should conduct you forthwith to the police-station and inform against you to the Secretary of Justice."
"Get out of here, you—you—you impertinent ass!" cried Dawson. "Leave the room! I—I—I discharge you! You forget your position!"
"It is you who forget your position," returned the valet. "Discharge me! I like that. You might just as well try to discharge the President of the United States as me."
Here the valet gave a scornful laugh, and leered maddeningly at Dawson. The latter gazed at him coldly.
"You are my servant?" he demanded.
"By government appointment, at your service," replied James, with a satirical bow. "You have overlooked the fact that the government since 1900 has gradually absorbed all business—every function of labor is now governmental—and a man who arbitrarily bounces a cook, as the ancients used to put it, strikes at the administration. Charges may be preferred against a servant, but he cannot be deprived of his office except upon the report of a committee to the Department of Intelligence. As the President is your servant, so am I."
Dawson sat down aghast, and clutched his forehead with his hands.
"But," he cried, jumping to his feet, "that is intolerable. The logic of the thing makes you, while your party is in power—"
"Your governor," interrupted the valet. "Come," he added, firmly. "You called me an impertinent ass a moment ago, and my patience is exhausted. I shall inform against you. If you aren't sent to Patagonia before night, my name is not James Wilkins."
He laid his hand on Dawson's shoulder roughly. A shock, as of electricity, went through Dawson's person. His old-time strength returned to him, and, turning viciously upon the impudent fellow, he grasped him about his middle with both arms, and, after a struggle that lasted several minutes, dragged him to the window and hurled him, even as he had the key, down into the street below.
This done, he fell unconscious to the floor.
A year has passed since the episode, and Dawson has become the happiest man inthe world, for on his return to consciousness, instead of finding himself in the hands of a revengeful valet, backed by a socialistic government, the past had been restored to him and the future relegated to its proper place. It was only the other night that he spoke of the value of his experience, however.
"It has made me happier, in spite of my many troubles," he said. "If there's anything that can make the present endurable it is the thoughtof what the future may have in store for us. A guaranteed income, and a detachable spirit, and no taxes, and a variety of imperishable bodies are all very nice, but servants with the manners of custom-house officials, and children abolished! No, thank you. Curious dream, though," he added, "don't you think?"
"No," said I, "not very. It strikes me as a reasonable forecast of what is likely to be if things keep on as they are going. Especially in that matter of our servants."
"Maybe it wasn't a dream," said Dawson. "Maybe, time having neitherbeginning nor ending, the future is, and I stumbled into it."
"Maybe so," said I. "I think, however, you'll have some difficulty in finding that $15,000 again."
"I don't want to," observed Dawson. "For don't you see I'd find James Wilkins's dead body beside it, and, in spite of its drawbacks, I prefer life in New York to the possibility of Patagonia."
Decorative H
ans Pumpernickel was for many years regarded by his friends and neighbors in the little town of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz as the most industrious boy they had ever known. Where Hans came from no one knew. He had appeared in Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz when he was not more than six years old. His name was all that he would confide to the curious.
"I'm Hans Pumpernickel," he had answered, in response to the inquiries of the inquisitive. "But where I came from is neither here nor there."
Some said that this statement was only half true, though many others believed it wholly. Certain it is, however, that if one has a hailing-place, a native town, it must be either here or there. If it is not here, it must be there, said some; but Hans nevertook the trouble to say anything further on the subject.
"And what are you going to do to live?" asked the Mayor's wife, who took a great interest in the pretty little stranger when first she saw him.
"Breathe," said Hans, simply. "For you see, ma'am, I cannot live without breathing, and so I have decided to do that."
The Mayor said that this was impudence; but the good lady, who had made that somewhat crabbed old person's life more happy than he deserved, only laughed, and said that she thought it was droll, and only wished her little boy, who was stupid like his father, could have said something as bright.
"But you cannot breathe unless you eat," the Mayor's wife had said, when Hans had spoken. "What are you going to eat?"
"I do not know," said Hans. "What have you got?"
Again the Mayor growled "Impudence!" and again did the good lady laugh.
"We have sausages and cake and apples," she said.
"Then," said Hans, "I will have some sausages and cake and apples."
"But we don't give away things of that kind," said the lady. "Those who would eat must work."
"I cannot work unless I breathe," said Hans; "and you yourself have said that I cannot breathe unless I eat. Therefore, if you would have me work, you must let me eat."
"Logic!" cried the Mayor, beginning to take an interest in Hans. "Give the boy an apple."
So Hans was given the apple, and he ate it so thoroughly that the Mayor decided that he was just the boy to do little errands for him, for thoroughness was a quality he greatly admired, and from that time on Hans lived in the Mayor's family; and when the stupid little son of that exalted personage ran away from home and became a cabin-boy on a man-of-war, the Mayor adopted Hans, and he took the place of the boy who had gone away, refusing, however, much to the Mayor's sorrow, to change his name from Pumpernickel to Ehrenbreitstein, which happened to be the last name of the Mayor.
"Pumpernickel was I born," said Hans, "and Pumpernickel will I remain. Why should I, a Pumpernickel who am bound to make a name for myself sooner or later, take the name of some one else, and shed the lustre of my fame uponhisfamily?"
All of which was very sensible, though Mayor Ehrenbreitstein did not appreciate that fact.
So Hans went on making himself very useful to the Mayor and his wife. He would shell pease in the morning for the Lady Mayor, and in the afternoon he would write speeches for the Mayor to deliver on public occasions; and people said that as a public speaker the Mayor was improving, while all who had the pleasure of dining with the head of the city frequently complimented the Lady Mayor upon the excellence of the pease served at her banquets. In every way was Hans satisfactory to all for whom he worked. After a while such confidence did he inspire in his employers that Frau Ehrenbreitstein let him do all her shopping for her, and most of the Mayor's duties were intrusted to the boy. He could matchribbons and veto or approve the doings of the aldermen of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz with equal perfection. The ribbons he matched and the worsteds he chose for his kind mistress always looked well, and the lady soon became in the popular estimation a person of unusually good taste, while the vetoes and other public papers were so well phrased that even his opponents were forced to admit that the magistrate was right.
Hans bore all his prosperity with modesty, and for the fifteen years during which he faithfully served his employers he developed no conceit whatsoever, as many a weaker boy might reasonably have done, and, barring one peculiarity, none of the eccentricities of the truly great ever manifested themselves. This one peculiarity excited much curiosity among those who had heard of it, but despite all questionings Hans declined to say why he had it. It was a peculiarity that was indeed peculiar. It was noticed that from the time he first ate with the family of the Mayor he would set apart one full third of every dainty that was placed upon his plate, and when the meal was over hewould take it away from the table rolled up in a napkin. For instance, if at breakfast three sausages fell to the lot of Hans, he would eat two of them, and the third he would wrap up in a napkin, and take it to his room. So it was with everything else that came his way. Out of every three apples one would go untouched into the napkin; and later, when he began to earn a little money, one-third of it also would be saved. It was noticed, too, that on every Friday afternoon Hans would send away a big box by the express carrier, but to whom the box was sent no one could learn. The express carrier would not tell, and Hans himself, when asked about it, would say to the one who asked him:
"Let me see. You are in what business?"
"I am a baker," or, perhaps, "I am a butcher," the inquisitive one would say.
"Then," said Hans, "if I were you, I would stick to baking or to butching, and not embark on enterprises which are not allied to the making of bread or the slaughter of roast beef."
The people so addressed would turn away chagrined, but with proper apologies; andwhen they apologized Hans would say, with a smile, "Pray don't mention it," so kindly that the meddlers would be pacified, and no ill feeling ever resulted from the young boy's request that they mind their own business.
At the end of the fifteen years of faithful work, however, a great change seemed to come over Hans. He began to show a great distaste for the labors that he had hitherto spent his time in performing. When Frau Ehrenbreitstein gave him a skein of pink zephyr to take to town to match, he would try to beg off, and when he could not beg off he did worse. He went to town and brought back, not the new skein of pink zephyr that his mistress wanted, but a roll of green and yellow wall-paper, and, when she expressed surprise, he said that that was the best he could do.
"But I didn't want wall-paper," cried the Lady Mayor.
"Well, you never told me that," said Hans. "You said, I admit, that you wanted pink zephyr; but then one might wish for that and still want a roll of green and yellow wall-paper."
"Are you crazy?" returned the good lady, much mystified.
"I think not; and the mere fact that Ithinknot shows that I am not," Hans replied, "for the very good reason that if I had lost my mind I could not think at all."
"Very well," said Frau Ehrenbreitstein, reassured by this perfectly logical answer. "You may go and shell the pease."
Whereupon Hans went down into the kitchen and shelled the pease, only he retained the pods this time, and threw the pease to the pigs.
"It is very evident to me," observed his good mistress to her husband that night, when the pods were served at dinner, "that Hans Pumpernickel has something on his mind."
"Yes, my dear," answered the Mayor. "I know he has, and I know what it is."
"He is not in love, I hope?" said Frau Ehrenbreitstein.
"Not he!" cried the Mayor. "He is thinking about what I shall say to the Emperor next week when his Imperial Majesty and the Chancellor pass through Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz on theirway to the Schutzenfest at Würtemburger-Darmstadt. I have told Hans that the imperial train stops at our station to water the engine, and during the five minutes or so in which the Emperor honors our burg with his presence it is only fitting that I, as Lord Mayor, should greet him with an address of welcome. It will be the opportunity of my life, and the boy is trying to enable me to be equal to it. Heaven forbid that he should fail!"
This explanation eased the mind of the Mayor's wife, and she refrained from asking Hans to shell pease and match zephyrs until after the Emperor had come and gone. Unfortunately, however, this was not the real cause of the trouble with Hans, as the speech he wrote for the Mayor to deliver to his imperial master showed; for, to the dismay of Mayor Ehrenbreitstein, when the Emperor's train stopped at Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, and he had unrolled the address Hans had written, he discovered that Hans had not written a speech at all, but a comic poem, in which his Imperial Majesty was referred to as a royal turkey-cock, with a crow like the squeakof a penny flute. The poor Mayor nearly expired when his eyes rested on the lines Hans had written; but he went bravely ahead and made up a speech of his own, which his Majesty fortunately did not hear, owing to the noise made by the steam escaping from the engine whistle.
When the Emperor had departed, the Mayor returned home in a rage, and you may be sure that Hans could not get in a word edgewise even until his employer had told him what he thought of him.
"Excuse me," said Hans, when the Mayor had finished, after an hour's angry tirade—"excuse me, but would you mind saying that over again? I was thinking of something else."
"Say it over again?" shrieked the Mayor. "Never. I shall never speak to you again."
"But what have I done?" asked Hans, so innocently that the Mayor relented and repeated his tirade, and then Hans broke down.
"Did I do that?" he said. "Then it is very plain that I need a vacation."
"I think so," retorted the Mayor. "You may take the next thousand years without pay."
"One year will be sufficient," said Hans. "Though I thank you just as kindly for the others." Then he wept, and the Mayor's wife took pity on him, and asked him to tell her what it was that had so occupied his mind of late that he had committed so many grievous errors, and Hans told her all.
"It's my great-great-great-great-great-granduncle's fault," he sobbed.
"Your what?" cried his mistress.
"HE'S THE WORST BABY YOU EVER SAW""HE'S THE WORST BABY YOU EVER SAW"
"My great-great-great-great-great-granduncle, the perpetual baby," said Hans, wiping his eyes. "He's the worst baby you ever saw. He yells and howls and howls and yells all the time, and if he is left alone or put down for a moment he has a convulsion of rage that is terrible to witness. He breaks his toys the minute he gets them, and for fifteen years he has made a slave of my poor father, who has not let the child out of his lap in all that time."
"Fifteen years?" cried Frau Ehrenbreitstein. "Whatdoyou mean? How old is this baby?"
"Three hundred and forty-seven years, six months, and eight days," said Hans,ruefully, consulting a pocket calendar he had with him. "During my time with you," he added, "I have supported them. Father is alone in the house with the infant; we could not afford a servant, and the child yells so all the time that my father cannot get employment anywhere. It was this that drove me out into the world to earn a living for them. When I got only my food and bed, I shared my food with them, sending off a third of it every week. Then when money came along, I gave them a third of that; but the baby is as bad as ever, and father has written to say that he can stand it no more, and I must return home or he will send the baby to me here."
"But, mercy me!" roared the Mayor, who had come in and heard the story, "why doesn't the child grow?"
"He can't," sobbed Hans. "His mother once made a wish that he might always remain a baby, and it happened that she made the wish at the one instant of the year when all wishes are granted by the fairies."
"Nonsense," said the Mayor. "There are no fairies."
"Indeed, there are," said Hans. "There is my great-great-great-great-great-granduncle, the baby, to prove it. He's a little tyrant, and he has worn out every generation of the family since, making them look after him. It's terrible, and in trying to think what to do to relieve my poor father and still support myself I have neglected everything else, and that is why I—boo-hoo!—I wrote the wall-paper and matched a pink Emperor with a green and yellow comic poem."
"Poor lad!" said the Mayor's wife. "Poor lad! It is a cruel story."
"It is that," agreed the Mayor. "But cheer up, Hans. If there is an instant in every year when wishes are always granted by the fairies, why don't you wish the baby as he ought to be at the right moment?"
"That's the trouble," said Hans, sadly. "There are many instants in a year, and the lucky moment changes every twelve months. It is never the same. I wish, andwish, but never at the right moment. Sometimes I forget it; the instant comes and is gone, though I don't know it."
"Well," said the Mayor's wife, "thereis but one thing you can do. That is, to devote a whole year to nothing else but that wish. I shall fix you up a chair in the kitchen, give you a pipe, and on New-Year's morning you may begin. You shall have no other duties but to wish for a restoration of things as they should be. You will be sure to hit the right moment if you are faithful to your work."
"As I always am," said Hans, drying his tears.
"IT WAS A WEARY VIGIL, BUT HE WAS TRUE""IT WAS A WEARY VIGIL, BUT HE WAS TRUE"
And so it was that Hans Pumpernickel began his long vigil. He sat in the kitchen, silent, smoking, gazing at the ceiling, wishing. It was weary work indeed, but he was true, and last year, on the sixteenth day of July, at half-past one o'clock in the morning, his fidelity was rewarded, though he did not know it until the next morning, when the expressman brought him a message from his father to the following effect:
"July 16, 1893.
"My dear Hans,—Don't worry; everything is serene again. At half-past one o'clock this morning, just as the clock struck, your great-great-great-great-great-granduncle began to grow at a most rapid pace. I had hardly time to drop him when he was taller thanI, and twice as stout as I am told you are. A beard sprouted on his face with equal rapidity, and, just as I thought to ask him what he was going to do next, he gave a deafening shout of laughter and disappeared entirely. The whole affair didn't last more than five seconds. The spell has been removed, and the perpetual baby is no more. Come over and see me, and we'll celebrate our emancipation.
"My dear Hans,—Don't worry; everything is serene again. At half-past one o'clock this morning, just as the clock struck, your great-great-great-great-great-granduncle began to grow at a most rapid pace. I had hardly time to drop him when he was taller thanI, and twice as stout as I am told you are. A beard sprouted on his face with equal rapidity, and, just as I thought to ask him what he was going to do next, he gave a deafening shout of laughter and disappeared entirely. The whole affair didn't last more than five seconds. The spell has been removed, and the perpetual baby is no more. Come over and see me, and we'll celebrate our emancipation.
"Affectionately your daddy,"Rupert Pumpernickel."
Hans read this letter with a joyful face, and rushed up-stairs to tell the Mayor and his faithful helpmate of his good fortune, and there was great rejoicing for several days. Then Hans visited his father, and the two happy creatures spent weeks and weeks rambling contentedly about the country together, at the end of which time Hans returned toSchnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, where, the Emperor having retired the Mayor on a liberal pension for his attentions and kind expressions of regard in the speech Hans did not write for him, he was chosen to succeed his former master.
Decorative E
verybody said it was an extraordinary affair altogether, and for once everybody was right. Baron Humpfelhimmel himself would say nothing about it for two reasons. The first reason was that nobody dared ask him what he thought about it, and the second was that he was too proud to speak to anybody concerning any subject whatsoever, unless questioned. That he always laughed, no matter what happened, was the melancholy fact, and had been a melancholy fact from his childhood's earliest hour. He was born laughing. He laughed in church, he laughed at home. When his father spanked him he roared with laughter, and when he suffered from the measles he could not begin to restrain his mirth.
The situation seemed all the more singularwhen it was remembered that Rudolf von Pepperpotz, the previous Baron Humpfelhimmel, and father of the Laughing Baron, as he was called, was never known to smile from his childhood's earliest hour to his dying day, and, strangest of all, was a far more amiable person, despite his solemnity, than the present Baron for all his laughter.
"What does it mean, do you suppose?" Frau Ehrenbreitstein once asked of Hans Pumpernickel, her husband's private secretary, of whom you have already had some account.
"I cannot tell," Hans had answered, "and I have my reason for saying that I cannot tell," he added, significantly.
"What is that reason, Hans?" asked the good lady, her curiosity aroused by the boy's manner.
"It is this," said Hans, his voice sinking to a whisper. "I cannot tell, because—because I do not know!"
And this, let me say in passing, was why Hans Pumpernickel was thought by all to be so wise. He had a reason always for what he did, and was ever willing to give it.
"They say," the good Lady Ehrenbreitstein went on—"they do say that when last winter the Baron while hunting boars was thrown from his horse, breaking his leg and two of his ribs, they could not be set because of his convulsions of laughter, though for my part I cannot see wherein having one's leg and ribs broken is provocative of merriment."
"Nor I," quoth Hans. "I have an eye for jokes. In most things I can see the fun, but in the breaking of one's bones I see more cause for tears than smiles."
And it was true. As Frau Ehrenbreitstein had heard, the Baron Humpfelhimmel had broken one leg and two ribs—only it was while hunting wolves and not in a boar chase—and when the Emperor's physician, who was one of the party, came to where the suffering man lay he found him roaring with laughter.
"Good!" cried the physician, leaning over his prostrate form. "I am glad to see that you are not hurt. I feared you were injured."
"I am injured," the Baron replied, with a loud laugh. "My left leg—ha-ha-ha!—is nearly killing me—hee-hee!—withp-pain, and if I mistake not, either my heart—ha-ha-ha-ha!—or my ribs—hee-hee-hee!—are broken in nineteen places."
Then he went off into such an explosion of mirth as not only appeared unseemly, but also deprived him of the power of speech for five or six minutes.
"I fail to see the joke," said the physician, as the Baron's laughter echoed and reechoed throughout the forest.
"Th-there—hee-hee!—there isn't a-any joke," the Baron answered, smiling. "Confound you—ha-ha-ha-ha!—oho-ho-ho!—can't you see I'm suffering?"
"I see you are laughing," the physician replied—"laughing as if you were reading a comic paper full of real jokes. What are you laughing at?"
"Ha-ha! I—I d-dud-don't know," stammered the Baron, vainly endeavoring to suppress his mirth. "I—I don't feel like laughing—hee-hee!—but I can't help it." And off he went into another gale. Nor did he stop there. The physician tried vainly to quiet him down so that he could set the fractured bones, but in spite of all he could do for him the Baron either wouldnot or could not stop laughing. When he was able to move about again it was only with a limp, and even that appeared to have its humorous side, for whenever the Baron appeared on the public streets he was always smiling, and when the Mayor ventured to express his sympathy with him over his misfortune the Baron laughed again, and mirthfully requested him to mind his own business.
Then it was recalled how that ten years before, when the famous Von Pepperpotz Castle was destroyed by fire, the Baron was found writing in his study by the messenger who brought the news.
"Baron," the messenger cried—"Baron, the château is burning. The flames have already destroyed the armory, and are now eating their way through the corridors to the state banquet-hall."
The Baron looked the messenger in the eye for an instant, and then his face wreathed with smiles.
"MY CASTLE'S BURNING, EH? HA-HA!""MY CASTLE'S BURNING, EH? HA-HA!"
"My castle's burning, eh? Ha-ha-ha!" was what he said; and then, rising hurriedly from his desk, he hastened, shouting with laughter, to the scene, where no one workedharder than he to stay the devastating course of the flames.
"You seem to be pleased," said one who noticed his merriment.
The Baron's answer was a blow which knocked the fellow down, and then, striking him across the shoulders with his staff, he walked away, muttering to himself:
"Pleased! Ha-ha-ha! Does ruin please anybody—tee-hee-hee! If the churls only—tee-hee!—only knew—ha-ha-ha-ha!"
That was it! If they only knew! And no one did know until after the Baron had died without children—for he had never married—and all his possessions and papers became the property of the state. Through these papers the secret of the Baron's laughter became known to the good people of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, and through them it became known to me. Hans Pumpernickel himself told me the tale, and as he has risen to the exalted position of Mayor of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, an honor conferred only on the truly good and worthy, I have no reason to doubt that the story is in every way truthful.
"When Baron Humpfelhimmel died," said Hans, as he and I walked together along the beautiful sylvan path that runs by the side of the Zugvitz River, "I am sorry to say there were few mourners. A man who laughs, as a rule, is popular, but the man who laughs always, without regard to circumstances, makes enemies. One learns to love a person who laughs at one's jests, but one who laughs at funerals, at conflagrations, at beggars, at the needy and the distressed, does not become universally beloved. Such was the habit of Fritz von Pepperpotz, last of the Barons Humpfelhimmel. If you were to go to him with a funny story, none would laugh more heartily than he; but equally loud would he laugh were you to say to him that you had a racking headache, and should it chance that you were to inform him you had been desperately ill, his mirth would know no bounds. Even in his greatest frenzies of rage he would smirk and laugh, and so it happened that the popularity which you would expect would go with a mirthful disposition was the last thing in the world he could hope for. I donot exaggerate when I say that Baron Humpfelhimmel could not have been elected office-boy to the Mayor on a popular vote, even if there were no opposing candidate. Now that it is all over, however, and we know the truth, we have changed our minds about it, and already several hundred of our citizens have raised a fund of twenty marks to go towards putting up a monument to the memory of the Laughing Baron.
"Fritz von Pepperpotz, my friend," said Hans to me, in explanation of the situation, "laughed because he could not help it, as a statement found among his papers after he died showed. The statement contained the whole story, and in some of its details it is a sad one. It was all the fault of the grandfather of the late Baron that he could do nothing but laugh all his days, that he died unmarried, and that the name of Von Pepperpotz has died off the face of the earth forever, unless some one else chooses to assume that name, which, I imagine, no one is crazy enough to do. The only thing that could reconcile me to such a name would be the estates that formerly went with it, but now that they have become theproperty of the government the house has lost all of its attractions, retaining, however, every bit of its homeliness. Pumpernickel is bad enough, but it is beautiful beside Von Pepperpotz."
Here Hans sighed, and to comfort him, rather than to say anything I really meant, I observed that I thought Pumpernickel was a good strong name.
"Yes," Hans said, with a pleased smile. "It certainly is strong. I have had mine twenty-five years now, and it doesn't show the slightest sign of wear. It's as good as the day it was made. But to return to the Von Pepperpotz family and its mysterious affliction.
"According to the Baron's statement, while he himself could not restrain his mirth, no matter how badly he felt, his father, Rupert von Pepperpotz, could never smile, although he was a man of most genial disposition. Just as Fritz was ushered into the world, grinning like a Cheshire cheese—"
"Cat," I suggested, noting Hans's error.
"Cat, is it?" he said. "Well, now, doyou know I am glad to hear that? I always supposed the term used was cheese, and positively I have lain awake night after night trying to comprehend how a cheese could grin, and finally I gave it up, setting it down as one of the peculiarities of the English language. If it's Cheshire cat, and not Cheshire cheese, why, it's all clear as a pikestaff. But, as I was saying, just as Fritz was born grinning like a Cheshire cat, his father Rupert was born frowning apparently with rage. He was the most ill-natured-looking baby you ever saw, according to the chronicles. Nothing seemed to please him. When you or I would have cooed, Rupert von Pepperpotz would wrinkle up his forehead until the furrows, if his nurse tells the truth, were deep enough to hide letters in.
"RUPERT WAS ALWAYS MERRY""RUPERT WAS ALWAYS MERRY"
"And yet he was rarely cross, and never disobedient. It was the strangest thing in the world. Here was a being who always frowned and never laughed, and yet who was as obliging in his actions as could be. As he grew older his active amiability increased, but his frown grew more terrible than ever. He became a great wit. Ashe walked through the streets of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz he was always merry, though none would have guessed it to look at him. He had a pleasant voice, and his neighbors all said it was a most startling thing to hear in the distance a jolly, roistering song, and then to walk along a little way and see that it was this forbidding-looking person who was doing the singing.
"How Rupert got Wilhelmina de Grootzenburg to become his wife, considering his seeming solemnity, which made him appear to be positively ugly, nobody ever knew. It is probable, however, that it was sympathy which moved her to like him, unless it was that his ugliness fascinated her. Rupert himself said that it was not sympathy for his inability to laugh or smile, because he did not want sympathy for that. He didn't feel badly about it himself. He never had smiled, and so did not know the pleasure of it. Consequently he didn't miss it. Smiling was an idiotic way of expressing pleasure anyhow, he said. Why just because a man thought of a funny idea he should stretch his mouth he couldn'tsee. No more could he understand why it was necessary to show one's appreciation of a funny story by shaking one's stomach and saying Ha-ha! On the whole, he said that he was satisfied. He could talk and could tell people he enjoyed their stories without having to shake himself or disturb the corners of his mouth. When little Fritz was born, and did nothing but laugh even when he had the colic, the solemn-looking Rupert observed that the baby simply proved the truth of what he said.
"'What a donkey the child is,' he cried, 'to spoil his pretty face by stretching his mouth so that you almost fear his ears will drop into it! And those wild whoops, which you call laughter, what earthly use are they? I can't see why, if he is glad about something, he can't just say, "I'm glad about so and so," mildly, instead of making me deaf with his roars. Truly, laughter is not what it is cracked up to be.'
"'Ah, my dear Rupert,' Wilhelmina, his wife, had said, 'you do not really know what you are talking about! If you could enjoy the sensation of laughing once you would never wish to be without it.'
"'Nonsense!' replied the Baron. 'My father never laughed, so why should I wish to?'
"Now, then," continued Hans, "according to Fritz von Pepperpotz's statement, there was where Rupert was wrong. Siegfried von Pepperpotz had known what it was to laugh, but he had not known when to laugh, which was why the family of Von Pepperpotz was afflicted with a curse, which only the final dying out of the family could remove, and there lay the solution of the mystery. It seems that Siegfried von Pepperpotz, grandfather of Fritz and father of Rupert, had been a wild sort of a youth, who smiled when he wished and frowned when he wished, no matter what the occasion may have been, and he smiled once too often. A miserable-looking figure of a man once passed through the village of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, selling sugar dolls and other sweets. To Siegfried and his comrades it seemed good to play a prank on the old fellow. They sent him two miles off into the country, where, they said, was a rich countess, who would buy his whole stock, when in reality there wasno rich countess there at all, so that the old man had his trouble for his pains.
"That he was a magician they did not know, but so he was, and in those days magicians could do everything. Of course he was angry at the deception, and on his return to Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz he sent for the young men, and got all of them to apologize and buy his wares except Siegfried. Siegfried not only refused to apologize and buy the old man's candies, but had the audacity to laugh in his face, and tell him about a wealthy old duke who lived two miles out on the other side of the village, which the magician immediately recognized as another attempt to play a practical joke upon him.
"'Enough, Siegfried von Pepperpotz!' he cried, in his rage. 'Laugh away while you can. After to-day may you never smile, and may your son never smile, and may your son's son, willing or unwilling, smile smiles that you two would have smiled, and so may it ever go! May every third generation get the laughter that the preceding two shall lose, according to my curse!'