“The nightmare? Goodness!” said the boy.
“I’ve had the nightmare,” said the little girl.
“Oh yes, a mere human nightmare,” said the papa. “But a locomotive nightmare is a very different thing.”
“Why, what’s it like?” asked the boy. The little girl was almost afraid to ask.
“Well, it has only one leg, to begin with.”
“Pshaw!”
“Wheel, I mean. And it has four cow-catchers, and four head-lights, and two boilers, and eight whistles, and it just goes whirling and screeching along. Of course it wobbles awfully; and as it’s only got one wheel, it has to keep skipping from one track to the other.”
“I should think it would run on the cross-ties,” said the boy.
“Oh, very well, then!” said the papa. “If you know so much more about it than I do! Who’s telling this story, anyway? Now I shall have to go back to the beginning. Once there was a little Pony En—”
They both put their hands over his mouth, and just fairly begged him to go on, and at last he did. “Well, it got away from the nightmare about morning, but not till the nightmare had bitten a large piece out of its tender, and then it braced up for the home-stretch. It thought that if it could once beat the Express to the Sierras, it could keep the start the rest of the way, for it could get over the mountains quicker than the Express could, and it might be in San Francisco before the Express got to Sacramento. The Express kept gaining on it. But it just zipped along the upper edge of Kansas and the lower edge of Nebraska, and on through Colorado and Utah and Nevada, and when it got to the Sierras it just stooped a little, and went over them like a goat; it did, truly; just doubled up its fore wheels under it, and jumped. And the Express kept gaining on it. By this time it couldn’t say ‘Pacific Express’ any more, and it didn’t try. It just said ‘Express! Express!’ and then ‘‘Press! ‘Press!’ and then ‘‘Ess! ‘Ess!’ and pretty soon only ‘‘Ss! ‘Ss!’ And the Express kept gaining on it. Before they reached San Francisco, the Express locomotive’s cow-catcher was almost touching the Pony Engine’s tender; it gave one howl of anguish as it felt the Express locomotive’s hot breath on the place where the nightmare had bitten the piece out, and tore through the end of the San Francisco depot, and plunged into the Pacific Ocean, and was never seen again. There, now,” said the papa, trying to make the children get down, “that’s all. Go to bed.” The little girl was crying, and so he tried to comfort her by keeping her in his lap.
The boy cleared his throat. “What is the moral, papa?” he asked, huskily.
“Children, obey your parents,” said the papa.
“And what became of the mother locomotive?” pursued the boy.
“She had a brain-fever, and never quite recovered the use of her mind again.”
The boy thought awhile. “Well, I don’t see what it had to do with Christmas, anyway.”
“Why, it was Christmas Eve when the Pony Engine started from Boston, and Christmas afternoon when it reached San Francisco.”
“Ho!” said the boy. “No locomotive could get across the continent in a day and a night, let alone a little Pony Engine.”
“But this Pony Engine had to. Did you never hear of the beaver that clomb the tree?”
“No! Tell—”
“Yes, some other time.”
“But how could it get across so quick? Just one day!”
“Well, perhaps it was a year. Maybe it was the next Christmas after that when it got to San Francisco.”
The papa set the little girl down, and started to run out of the room, and both of the children ran after him, to pound him.
When they were in bed the boy called down-stairs to the papa, “Well, anyway, I didn’t put up my lip.”
THE PUMPKIN-GLORY
The papa had told the story so often that the children knew just exactly what to expect the moment he began. They all knew it as well as he knew it himself, and they could keep him from making mistakes, or forgetting. Sometimes he would go wrong on purpose, or would pretend to forget, and then they had a perfect right to pound him till he quit it. He usually quit pretty soon.
The children liked it because it was very exciting, and at the same time it had no moral, so that when it was all over, they could feel that they had not been excited just for the moral. The first time the little girl heard it she began to cry, when it came to the worst part; but the boy had heard it so much by that time that he did not mind it in the least, and just laughed.
The story was in season any time between Thanksgiving and New Years; but the papa usually began to tell it in the early part of October, when the farmers were getting in their pumpkins, and the children were asking when they were going to have any squash pies, and the boy had made his first jack-o’-lantern.
“Well,” the papa said, “once there were two little pumpkin seeds, and one was a good little pumpkin seed, and the other was bad — very proud, and vain, and ambitious.”
The papa had told them what ambitious was, and so the children did not stop him when he came to that word; but sometimes he would stop of his own accord, and then if they could not tell what it meant, he would pretend that he was not going on; but he always did go on.
“Well, the farmer took both the seeds out to plant them in the home-patch, because they were a very extra kind of seeds, and he was not going to risk them in the cornfield, among the corn. So before he put them in the ground, he asked each one of them what he wanted to be when he came up, and the good little pumpkin seed said he wanted to come up a pumpkin, and be made into a pie, and be eaten at Thanksgiving dinner; and the bad little pumpkin seed said he wanted to come up a morning-glory.
“‘Morning-glory!’ says the farmer. ‘I guess you’ll come up a pumpkin-glory, first thing you know,’ and then he haw-hawed, and told his son, who was helping him to plant the garden, to keep watch of that particular hill of pumpkins, and see whether that little seed came up a morning-glory or not; and the boy stuck a stick into the hill so he could tell it. But one night the cow got in, and the farmer was so mad, having to get up about one o’clock in the morning to drive the cow out, that he pulled up the stick, without noticing, to whack her over the back with it, and so they lost the place.
“But the two little pumpkin seeds, they knew where they were well enough, and they lay low, and let the rain and the sun soak in and swell them up; and then they both began to push, and by-and-by they got their heads out of the ground, with their shells down over their eyes like caps, and as soon as they could shake them off and look round, the bad little pumpkin vine said to his brother:
“‘Well, what are you going to do now?’
“The good little pumpkin vine said, ‘Oh, I’m just going to stay here, and grow and grow, and put out all the blossoms I can, and let them all drop off but one, and then grow that into the biggest and fattest and sweetest pumpkin that ever was for Thanksgiving pies.’
TWO LITTLE PUMPKIN SEEDS.
“‘Well, that’s what I am going to do, too,’ said the bad little pumpkin vine, ‘all but the pies; but I’m not going to stay here to do it. I’m going to that fence over there, where the morning-glories were last summer, and I’m going to show them what a pumpkin-glory is like. I’m just going to cover myself with blossoms; and blossoms that won’t shut up, either, when the sun comes out, but ‘ll stay open, as if they hadn’t anything to be ashamed of, and that won’t drop off the first day, either. I noticed those morning-glories all last summer, when I was nothing but one of the blossoms myself, and I just made up my mind that as soon as ever I got to be a vine, I would show them a thing or two. Maybe I can’t be a morning-glory, but I can be a pumpkin-glory, and I guess that’s glory enough.’
“It made the cold chills run over the good little vine to hear its brother talk like that, and it begged him not to do it; and it began to cry —
“What’s that?” The papa stopped short, and the boy stopped whispering in his sister’s ear, and she answered:
&nb
sp; “He said he bet it was a girl!” The tears stood in her eyes, and the boy said:
“Well, anyway, it was like a girl.”
“Very well, sir!” said the papa. “And supposing it was? Which is better: to stay quietly at home, and do your duty, and grow up, and be eaten in a pie at Thanksgiving, or go gadding all over the garden, and climbing fences, and everything? The good little pumpkin vine was perfectly right, and the bad little pumpkin would have been saved a good deal if it had minded its little sister.
“The farmer was pretty busy that summer, and after the first two or three hoeings he had to leave the two pumpkin vines to the boy that had helped him to plant the seed, and the boy had to go fishing so much, and then in swimming, that he perfectly neglected them, and let them run wild, if they wanted to; and if the good little pumpkin vine had not been the best little pumpkin vine that ever was, it would have run wild. But it just stayed where it was, and thickened up, and covered itself with blossoms, till it was like one mass of gold. It was very fond of all its blossoms, and it couldn’t bear hardly to think of losing any of them; but it knew they couldn’t every one grow up to be a very large pumpkin, and so it let them gradually drop off till it only had one left, and then it just gave all its attention to that one, and did everything it could to make it grow into the kind of pumpkin it said it would.
“All this time the bad little pumpkin vine was carrying out its plan of being a pumpkin-glory. In the first place it found out that if it expected to get through by fall it couldn’t fool much putting out a lot of blossoms and waiting for them to drop off, before it began to devote itself to business. The fence was a good piece off, and it had to reach the fence in the first place, for there wouldn’t be any fun in being a pumpkin-glory down where nobody could see you, or anything. So the bad little pumpkin vine began to pull and stretch towards the fence, and sometimes it thought it would surely snap in two, it pulled and stretched so hard. But besides the pulling and stretching, it had to hide, and go round, because if it had been seen it wouldn’t have been allowed to go to the fence. It was a good thing there were so many weeds, that the boy was too lazy to pull up, and the bad little pumpkin vine could hide among. But then they were a good deal of a hinderance, too, because they were so thick it could hardly get through them. It had to pass some rows of pease that were perfectly awful; they tied themselves to it and tried to keep it back; and there was one hill of cucumbers that acted ridiculously; they said it was a cucumber vine running away from home, and they would have kept it from going any farther, if it hadn’t tugged with all its might and main, and got away one night when the cucumbers were sleeping; it was pretty strong, anyway. When it got to the fence at last, it thought it was going to die. It was all pulled out so thin that it wasn’t any thicker than a piece of twine in some places, and its leaves just hung in tatters. It hadn’t had time to put out more than one blossom, and that was such a poor little sickly thing that it could hardly hang on. The question was, How can a pumpkin vine climb a fence, anyway?
“Its knees and elbows were all worn to strings getting there, or that’s what the pumpkin thought, till it wound one of those tendrils round a splinter of the fence, without thinking, and happened to pull, and then it was perfectly surprised to find that it seemed to lift itself off the ground a little. It said to itself, ‘Let’s try a few more,’ and it twisted some more of the tendrils round some more splinters, and this time it fairly lifted itself off the ground. It said, ‘Ah, I see!’ as if it had somehow expected to do something of the kind all along; but it had to be pretty careful getting up the fence not to knock its blossom off, for that would have been the end of it; and when it did get up among the morning-glories it almost killed the poor thing, keeping it open night and day, and showing it off in the hottest sun, and not giving it a bit of shade, but just holding it out where it could be seen the whole time. It wasn’t very much of a blossom compared with the blossoms on the good little pumpkin vine, but it was bigger than any of the morning-glories, and that was some satisfaction, and the bad little pumpkin vine was as proud as if it was the largest blossom in the world.
“When the blossom’s leaves dropped off, and a little pumpkin began to grow on in its place, the vine did everything it could for it; just gave itself up to it, and put all its strength into it. After all, it was a pretty queer-looking pumpkin, though. It had to grow hanging down, and not resting on anything, and after it started with a round head, like other pumpkins, its neck began to pull out, and pull out, till it looked like a gourd or a big pear. That’s the way it looked in the fall, hanging from the vine on the fence, when the first light frost came and killed the vine. It was the day when the farmer was gathering his pumpkins in the cornfield, and he just happened to remember the seeds he had planted in the home-patch, and he got out of his wagon to see what had become of them. He was perfectly astonished to see the size of the good little pumpkin; you could hardly get it into a bushel basket, and he gathered it, and sent it to the county fair, and took the first premium with it.”
“How much was the premium?” asked the boy. He yawned; he had heard all these facts so often before.
TOOK THE FIRST PREMIUM AT THE COUNTY FAIR.
“It was fifty cents; but you see the farmer had to pay two dollars to get a chance to try for the premium at the fair; and so it was some satisfaction. Anyway, he took the premium, and he tried to sell the pumpkin, and when he couldn’t, he brought it home and told his wife they must have it for Thanksgiving. The boy had gathered the bad little pumpkin, and kept it from being fed to the cow, it was so funny-looking; and the day before Thanksgiving the farmer found it in the barn, and he said,
“‘Hollo! Here’s that little fool pumpkin. Wonder if it thinks it’s a morning-glory yet?’
“And the boy said, ‘Oh, father, mayn’t I have it?’
“And the father said, ‘Guess so. What are you going to do with it?’
“But the boy didn’t tell, because he was going to keep it for a surprise; but as soon as his father went out of the barn, he picked up the bad little pumpkin by its long neck, and he kind of balanced it before him, and he said, ‘Well, now, I’m going to make a pumpkin-glory out of you!’
“‘HERE’S THAT LITTLE FOOL PUMPKIN,’ SAID THE FARMER.”
“And when the bad little pumpkin heard that, all its seeds fairly rattled in it for joy. The boy took out his knife, and the first thing the pumpkin knew he was cutting a kind of lid off the top of it; it was like getting scalped, but the pumpkin didn’t mind it, because it was just the same as war. And when the boy got the top off he poured the seeds out, and began to scrape the inside as thin as he could without breaking through. It hurt awfully, and nothing but the hope of being a pumpkin-glory could have kept the little pumpkin quiet; but it didn’t say a word, even after the boy had made a mouth for it, with two rows of splendid teeth, and it didn’t cry with either of the eyes he made for it; just winked at him with one of them, and twisted its mouth to one side, so as to let him know it was in the joke; and the first thing it did when it got one was to turn up its nose at the good little pumpkin, which the boy’s mother came into the barn to get.”
“Show how it looked,” said the boy.
And the papa twisted his mouth, and winked with one eye, and wrinkled his nose till the little girl begged him to stop. Then he went on:
“The boy hid the bad pumpkin behind him till his mother was gone, because he didn’t want her in the secret; and then he slipped into the house, and put it under his bed. It was pretty lonesome up there in the boy’s room — he slept in the garret, and there was nothing but broken furniture besides his bed; but all day long it could smell the good little pumpkin, boiling and boiling for pies; and late at night, after the boy had gone to sleep, it could smell the hot pies when they came out of the oven. They smelt splendid, but the bad little pumpkin didn’t envy them a bit; it just said, ‘Pooh! What’s twenty pumpkin pies to one pumpkin-glory?’”
“It ought to have said ‘what are
,’ oughtn’t it, papa?” asked the little girl.
“It certainly ought,” said the papa. “But if nothing but it’s grammar had been bad, there wouldn’t have been much to complain of about it.”
“I don’t suppose it had ever heard much good grammar from the farmer’s family,” suggested the boy. “Farmers always say cowcumbers instead of cucumbers.”
“Oh, do tell us about the Cowcumber, and the Bullcumber, and the little Calfcumbers, papa!” the little girl entreated, and she clasped her hands, to show how anxious she was.
“What! And leave off at the most exciting part of the pumpkin-glory?”
The little girl saw what a mistake she had made; the boy just gave her one look, and she cowered down into the papa’s lap, and the papa went on.
“Well, they had an extra big Thanksgiving at the farmer’s that day. Lots of the relations came from out West; the grandmother, who was living with the farmer, was getting pretty old, and every year or two she thought she wasn’t going to live very much longer, and she wrote to the relations in Wisconsin, and everywhere, that if they expected to see her alive again, they had better come this time, and bring all their families. She kept doing it till she was about ninety, and then she just concluded to live along and not mind how old she was. But this was just before her eighty-ninth birthday, and she had drummed up so many sons and sons-in-law, and daughters and daughters-in-law, and grandsons and great-grandsons, and granddaughters and great-granddaughters, that the house was perfectly packed with them. They had to sleep on the floor, a good many of them, and you could hardly step for them; the boys slept in the barn, and they laughed and cut up so the whole night that the roosters thought it was morning, and kept crowing till they made their throats sore, and had to wear wet compresses round them every night for a week afterwards.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 967
