Bangs John Kendrick - Half-Hours with Jimmieboy стр 5.

"Hurry up and tell it," said Jimmieboy, jumping up and down with anxiety to hear what happened next.

"Then," said his papa, "when the Dude Giant saw his beloved hats flying in every direction he howled aloud with every one of his four voices, and craned each of his necks in the direction in which it's hat had flown.

"Then the head with the auburn hair demanded that the Giant should immediately run up Fifth avenue to recover its lost beaver, and the giant started, but hardly had he gone a step when the head with the black hair cried out:

"'No! Down Fifth avenue after my hat.'

"'Not at all!' shrieked the head without any hair. 'Go east after mine.'

"'Well, I guess not!' roared the head that had curly hair. 'He's going west after mine.'

"Meanwhile the Giant had come to a stand-still.

He couldn't run in any direction until his heads had agreed as to which way he should go, and all this time the beautiful hats were getting farther and farther away, and the heads more frantic than ever. For five full minutes they quarreled thus among themselves, turning now and then to peer weepingly after their beloved silk hats, and finally, with a supreme effort, each endeavored to force the Giant in the direction it wished him to go, with the result that poor Forepate was torn to pieces, and fell dead in the middle of the street."

Here papa paused and closed his eyes for a minute.

"Is that all?" queried Jimmieboy.

"Yes I believe that's all. The Dude Giant was dead and the Dwarf was avenged."

"And what became of Tiny?" asked Jimmieboy.

"Oh, Tiny," said his father, "Tiny he he laughed so heartily at the Dude Giant's mishap that he loosened the impediment to his growth, "

"The what?" asked Jimmieboy, to whom words like impediment were rather strange.

"Why, the bone that kept him from growing," explained the story teller. "He loosened that and began to grow again, and inside of two weeks he was as handsome a six-footer as you ever saw, and as he had made a million and a half of dollars he resigned from the Exhibition and settled down in Europe for a number of years, had himself made a Grand Duke, and then came back to New York and got married, and lived happy ever after."

And then, as the getting-up bell rang down stairs, Jimmieboy thanked his father for the story and went into the nursery to dress for breakfast.

III. JIMMIEBOY'S DREAM POETRY

It was just this way the other night. He was as sleepy as he possibly could be. The sandman had left enough sand in his eyes, or so it seemed to Jimmieboy, to start a respectable sea-beach, and he really felt as if all he needed to make a summer resort of himself was a big hotel, a band of music, and an ocean. But in spite of all this he didn't want to go to bed, and he had apparently made up his mind that he wasn't going to want to go to bed for some time to come; and as his papa was in an unusually indulgent mood, the little fellow was permitted to nestle up close under his left arm and sit there on his lap in the library after dinner, while his mamma read aloud an article in one of the magazines on the subject of dream poetry.

It was a very interesting article, Jimmieboy thought. The idea of anybody's writing poetry while asleep struck him as being very comical, and he laughed several times in a sleepy sort of way, and then all of a sudden he thought, "Why, if other people can do it, why can't I?"

"Why?" he answered he was quite fond of asking himself questions and then answering them "why? Because you can't write at all. You don't know an H from a D, unless there's a Horse in the picture with the H, and a Donkey with the D. That's why."

"True; but that's only when I'm awake."

"Try it and see," whispered the Pencil in his papa's vest pocket. "I'll help, and maybe our old friend the Scratch Pad will help too."

"That's a good idea," said Jimmieboy, taking the Pencil out of his papa's pocket, and assisting it to climb down to the floor, so that it could run over to the desk and tell the Scratch Pad it was wanted.

"Don't you lose my pencil," said papa.

"No, I won't," replied Jimmieboy, his eyes following the Pencil in its rather winding course about the room to where the desk stood.

"I have to keep out of sight, you know, Jimmieboy," the Pencil said, in a low tone of voice. "Because if I didn't, and your papa saw me walking off, he'd grab hold of me and put me back in his pocket again."

Suddenly the Pencil disappeared over by the waste-basket, and then Jimmieboy heard him calling, in a loud whisper: "Hi! Pad! Paddy! Pad-dee!"

"What's wanted?" answered the Pad, crawling over the edge of the desk and peering down at the Pencil, who was by this time hallooing himself hoarse.

"Jimmieboy and I are going to write some dream poetry, and we want you to help," said the Pencil.

"Oh, I'm not sleepy," said the Pad.

"Neither am I," returned the Pencil. "But that needn't make any difference. Jimmieboy, does the sleeping and dreaming, and you and I do the rest."

"Oh, that's it, eh? Well, then, I don't mind; but er how am I ever going to get down there?" asked the Pad. "It's a pretty big jump."