In Camp With A Tin Soldier

by John Kendrick Bangs

  CHAPTER IV.

  JIMMIEBOY MEETS THE ENEMY.

  As the noise made by the clattering hoofs of Major Blueface's horse grewfainter and fainter, and finally died away entirely in the distance,Jimmieboy was a little startled to hear something that sounded very likea hiss in the trees behind him. At first he thought it was the lightbreeze blowing through the branches, making the leaves rustle, but whenit was repeated he stopped short in the road and glanced backward,grasping his sword as he did so.

  "Hello there!" he cried. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

  "Sh-sh-sh!" answered the mysterious something. "Don't talk so loud,general, the major may come back."

  "What if he does?" said Jimmieboy. "I rather think I wish he would. Idon't know whether or not I'm big enough not to be afraid of you. Can'tyou come out of the bushes and let me see you?"

  "Not unless the major is out of sight," was the answer. "I can't standthe major; but you needn't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt you for allthe world. I'm the enemy."

  "The what?" cried Jimmieboy, aghast.

  "I'm the enemy," replied the invisible object. "That's what I callmyself when I'm with sensible people. Other people have a long name forme that I never could pronounce or spell. I'm the animal that got away."

  "Not the Parallelopipedon?" said Jimmieboy.

  "That's it! That's the name I can't pronounce," said the invisibleanimal. "I'm the Parallelandsoforth, and I've been trying to have aninterview with you ever since I heard they'd made you general. The factis, Jimmieboy, I am very anxious that you should succeed in capturingme, because I don't like it out here very much. The fences are thetoughest eating I ever had, and I actually sprained my wisdom-tooth atbreakfast this morning trying to bite a brown stone ball off the top ofa gate post."

  "But if you feel that way," said Jimmieboy, somewhat surprised at thisunusual occurrence, "why don't you surrender?"

  "Me?" cried the Parallelopipedon. "A Parallelandsoforth of my standingsurrender right on the eve of a battle that means all the sweetmeats Ican eat, and more too? I guess not."

  "I wish I could see you," said Jimmieboy, earnestly. "I don't likestanding here talking to a wee little voice with nothing to him. Whydon't you come out here where I can see you?"

  "It's for your good, Jimmieboy; that's why I stay in here. I am an awfulspectacle. Why, it puts me all in a tremble just to look at myself; andif it affects me that way, just think how it would be with you."

  "I wouldn't be afraid," said Jimmieboy, bravely.

  "Yes, you would too," answered the Parallelopipedon. "You'd be so scaredyou couldn't run, I am so ugly. Didn't the major tell you that storyabout my reflection in the looking-glass?"

  "No," answered Jimmieboy. "He didn't say anything about it."

  "That's queer. The story is in rhyme, and the major always tellseverybody all the poetry he knows," said the invisible enemy. "That'swhy I never go near him. He has only enough to last one year, and thesecond year he tells it all over again. I'm surprised he never told youabout my reflection in the mirror, because it is one of his worst, andhe always likes them better than the others."

  "I'll ask him to tell it to me next time I see him," said Jimmieboy,"unless you'll tell it to me now."

  "I'd just as lief tell you," said the Parallelopipedon. "Only youmustn't laugh or cry, because you haven't time to laugh, and generalsnever cry. This is the way it goes:

  "THE PARALLELOPIPEDON AND THE MIRROR.

  The Parallelopipedon so very ugly is, His own heart fills with terror when he looks upon his phiz. That's why he wears blue goggles--twenty pairs upon his nose, And never dares to show himself, no matter where he goes.

  One day when he was walking down a crowded village street, He looked into a little shop where stood a mirror neat. He saw his own reflection there as plain as plain could be; And said, 'I'd give four dollars if that really wasn't me.'

  And, strange to say, the figure in the mirror's silver face Was also filled with terror at the other's lack of grace; And this reflection trembled till it strangely came to pass The handsome mirror shivered to ten thousand bits of glass.

  To this tale there's a moral, and that moral briefly is: If you perchance are burdened with a terrifying phiz, Don't look into your mirror--'tis a fearful risk to take-- 'Tis certain sure to happen that the mirror it will break."

  "Well, if that's so, I guess I don't want to see you," said Jimmieboy."I only like pretty things. But tell me; if all this is true, how didthe major come to say it? I thought he couldn't tell the truth."

  "That's only as a rule. Rules have exceptions. For instance," explainedthe Parallelopipedon, "as a rule I can't pronounce my name, but inreciting that poem to you I did speak my name in the very firstline--but if you only knew how it hurt me to do it! Oh dear me, how ithurt! Did you ever have a tooth pulled?"

  "Once," said Jimmieboy, wincing at the remembrance of his painfulexperience.

  "Well, pronouncing my name is to me worse than having all my teethpulled and then put back again, and except when I get hold of a finegeneral like you I never make the sacrifice," said the Parallelopipedon."But tell me, Jimmieboy, you are out after preserved cherries andpickled peaches, I understand?"

  "Yes," said Jimmieboy. "And powdered sugar, almonds, jam, and severalother things that are large and elegant."

  "Well, just let me tell you one thing," said the Parallelopipedon,confidentially. "I'm so sick of cherries and peaches that I run everytime I see them, and when I run there is no tin soldier or general ofyour size in the world that can catch me. Now what are we here for? I amhere to be captured; you are here to capture me. To accomplish ourvarious purposes we've got to begin right, and you might as wellunderstand now as at any other time that you are beginning wrong."

  "I don't know what else to do," said Jimmieboy. "I'm obeying orders. Thecolonel told me to get those things, and I supposed I ought to get 'em."

  "It doesn't pay to suppose," said the Parallelopipedon. "Many a victoryhas been lost by a supposition. As that old idiot Major Blueface saidonce, when he tried to tell an untruth, and so hit the truth by mistake:

  'Success always comes to The mortal who knows, And never to him who Does naught but suppose.

  For knowledge is certain, While hypothesees Oft drop defeat's curtain On great victories.'"

  "What are hypothesees?" asked Jimmieboy.

  "They are ifs in words of four syllables," said the Parallelopipedon,"and you want to steer clear of them as much as you can."

  "I'll try to," said Jimmieboy. "But how am I to get knowledge instead ofhypotheseeses? I have to take what people tell me. I don't knoweverything."

  "Well, that's only natural," said the Parallelopipedon, kindly. "Thereare only two creatures about here that do know everything. They--betweenyou and me--are me and myself. The others you meet here don't even beginto know everything, though they'll try to make you believe they do. NowI dare say that tin colonel of yours would try to make you believe thatwater is wet, and that fire is hot, and other things like that. Well,they are, but he doesn't know it. He only thinks it. He has put his handinto a pail of water and found out that it was wet, but he doesn't knowwhy it is wet any more than he knows why fire is hot."

  "Do you?" queried Jimmieboy.

  "Certainly," returned the Parallelopipedon. "Water is wet because it iswater, 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 thingold Colonel Zinc hasn't got, it's brains. If you don't believe it, cuthis head off some day and see for yourself. You won't find a whole brainin his head."

  "It must be nice to know everything," said Jimmieboy.

  "It's pretty nice," said the Parallelopipedon, cautiously. "But it's notalways the nicest thing in the world. If you are off on a long journey,for instance, it's awfully hard work to carry all you know along withyou. It has given me a headache m
any a time, I can tell you. Sometimes Iwish I did like your papa, and kept all I know in books instead of in myhead. It's a great deal better to do things that way; then, when you gotravelling, and have to take what you know along with you, you can justpack it up in a trunk and make the railroad people carry it."

  "Do you know what's going to happen to-morrow and the next day?" askedJimmieboy, gazing in rapt admiration at the spot whence the voiceproceeded.

  "Yes, indeed. That's just where the great trouble comes in," answeredthe Parallelopipedon. "It isn't so much bother to know what hasbeen--what everybody knows--but when you have to store up in your mindthousands and millions of things that aren't so now, but have got to beso some day, it's positively awful. Why, Jimmieboy," he said,impressively, "you'd be terrified if I told you what is going to beknown by the time you go to school; it's awful to think of all thethings you will have to learn then that aren't things yet, but are goingto be within a year or two. I'm real sorry for the little boys who willlive a hundred years from now, when I think of all the history they willhave to learn when they go to school--history that isn't made yet. Justtake the Presidents of the United States, for instance. In GeorgeWashington's time it didn't take a boy five seconds to learn the list ofPresidents; but think of that list to-day! Why, there are twenty-fivenames on it now, and more to come. It gets harder every year. Now I--Iknow the names of all the Presidents there's ever going to be, and itwould take me just eighteen million nine hundred and sixty-seven years,eleven months and twenty-six days, four hours and twenty-eight minutesto tell you all of them, and even then I wouldn't be half through."

  "Why, it's terrible," said Jimmieboy.

  "Yes, indeed it is," returned the Parallelopipedon. "You ought to beglad you are a little boy now instead of having to wait until then. Theboys of the year 19,605,726,422 are going to have the hardest time inthe world learning things, and I don't believe they'll get throughgoing to school much before they're ninety years old."

  "I guess the colonel is glad he doesn't know all that," said Jimmieboy,"if it's so hard to carry it around with you."

  "Indeed he ought to be, if he isn't," ejaculated the Parallelopipedon."There's no two ways about it; if he had the weight of one half of whatI know on his shoulders, it would bend him in two and squash him into apiece of tin-foil."

  "Say," said Jimmieboy, after a moment's pause. "I heard my papa say hethought I might be President of the United States some day. If you knowall the names of the Presidents that are to come, tell me, will I be?"

  "I don't remember any name like Jimmieboy on the list," said theParallelopipedon; "but that doesn't prove anything. You might getelected on your last name. But don't let's talk about that--that'spolitics, and I don't like politics. What I want to know is, do youreally want to capture me?"

  "Yes, I do," said Jimmieboy.

  "Then you'd better give up trying to get the peaches and cherries," saidthe Parallelopipedon, firmly. "I won't have 'em. You can shoot 'em at meat the rate of a can a minute for ninety-seven years, and I'll neversurrender. I hate 'em."

  "But what am I to do, then?" queried the little general. "What must I doto 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 lunchwith you."

  "No--and you never will," answered the Parallelopipedon. "And for a verygood reason. I never eat lunch, breakfast, tea, or supper. I never eatanything but dinner, and I eat that four times a day."

  Jimmieboy laughed, half with mirth at the oddity of theParallelopipedon's habit of eating, and half with the pleasure it gavehim to think of what a delectable habit it was. Four dinners a dayseemed to him to be the height of bliss, and he almost wished he toowere a Parallelopipedon, that he might enjoy the same privilege.

  "Don't you ever eat between meals?" he asked, after a minute of silence.

  "Never," said the Parallelopipedon. "Never. There isn't time for it inthe first place, and in the second there's never anything left betweenmeals for me to eat. But if you had ever dined with me you'd knowmighty well what I like, for I always have the same thing at everysingle dinner--two platefuls of each thing. It's a fine plan, that ofhaving the same dishes at every dinner, day after day. Your stomachalways knows what to expect, and is ready for it, so you don't getcholera morbus. If you want me to, I'll tell you what I always have, andwhat you must get me before you can coax me back."

  "Thank you," said Jimmieboy. "I'll be very much obliged."

  And then the Parallelopipedon recited the following delicious bill offare for the young general.

  "THE PARALLELOPIPEDON'S DINNER.

  First bring on a spring mock-turtle Stuffed with chestnuts roasted through, Served in gravy; then a fertile Steaming bowl of oyster stew.

  Then about six dozen tartlets Full of huckleberry jam, Edges trimmed with juicy Bartletts-- Pears, these latter--then some ham.

  Follow these with cauliflower, Soaked in maple syrup sweet; Then an apple large and sour, And a rich red rosy beet.

  Then eight quarts of cream--vanilla Is the flavor I like best-- Acts sublimely as a chiller, Gives your fevered system rest.

  After this a pint of coffee, Forty jars of marmalade, And a pound of peanut toffee, Then a pumpkin pie--home-made.

  Top this off with pickled salmon, Cold roast beef, and eat it four Times each day, and ghastly famine Ne'er will enter at your door."

  "H'm! h'm! h'm!" cried Jimmieboy, dancing up and down, and clapping hishands with delight at the very thought of such a meal. "Do you mean tosay that you eat that four times a day?"

  "Yes," said the Parallelopipedon, "I do. In fact, general, it is thatthat has made me what I am. I was originally a Parallelogram, and I atethat four times a day, and it kept doubling me up until I became sixParallelograms as I am to-day. Get me those things--enough of them toenable me to have 'em five times a day, and I surrender. Without them, Igo on and stay escaped forever, and the longer I stay escaped, the worseit will be for these people who live about here, for I shall devastatethe country. I shall chew up all the mowing-machines in Pictureland.I'll bite the smoke-stack off every railway engine I encounter, andthrow it into the smoking car, where it really belongs. I'll drink allthe water in the wells. I'll pull up all the cellars by the roots; I mayeven go so far as to run down into your nursery, and gnaw into the wirethat holds this picture country upon the wall, and let it drop into thewater pitcher. But, oh dear, there's the major coming down the road!" headded, in a tone of alarm. "I must go, or he'll insist on telling me apoem. But remember what I say, my boy, and beware! I'll do all Ithreaten to do if you don't do what I tell you. Good-by!"

  There was a slight rustling among the leaves, and the Parallelopipedon'svoice died away as Major Blueface came galloping up astride of hispanting, lather-covered steed.