Read Ebook: The Wonder Clock; or four & twenty marvellous Tales being one for each hour of the day by Pyle Howard Pyle Katharine

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Ebook has 211 lines and 19714 words, and 5 pages

BOOKS BY

HOWARD PYLE

MEN OF IRON. Illustrated. Post 8vo A MODERN ALADDIN. Illustrated. Post 8vo PEPPER AND SALT. Illustrated. Post 8vo REJECTED OF MEN. Post 8vo THE ROSE OF PARADISE. Illustrated. 12mo THE RUBY OF KISHMOOR. Illustrated. 8vo STOLEN TREASURE. Illustrated. 12mo TWILIGHT LAND. Illustrated. Post 8vo THE WONDER CLOCK. Illustrated. Square 8vo

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE.

I put on my dream-cap one day and stepped into Wonderland.

Along the road I jogged and never dusted my shoes, and all the time the pleasant sun shone and never burned my back, and the little white clouds floated across the blue sky and never let fall a drop of rain to wet my jacket. And by and by I came to a steep hill.

I climbed the hill, though I had more than one tumble in doing it, and there, on the tip top, I found a house as old as the world itself.

That was where Father Time lived; and who should sit in the sun at the door, spinning away for dear life, but Time's Grandmother herself; and if you would like to know how old she is you will have to climb to the top of the church steeple and ask the wind as he sits upon the weather-cock, humming the tune of Over-yonder song to himself.

"Good-morning," says Time's Grandmother to me.

"Good-morning," says I to her.

"And what do you seek here?" says she to me.

"I come to look for odds and ends," says I to her.

"Very well," says she; "just climb the stairs to the garret, and there you will find more than ten men can think about."

"Thank you," says I, and up the stairs I went. There I found all manner of queer forgotten things which had been laid away, nobody but Time and his Grandmother could tell where.

Over in the corner was a great, tall clock, that had stood there silently with never a tick or a ting since men began to grow too wise for toys and trinkets.

But I knew very well that the old clock was the

so down I took the key and wound it--gurr! gurr! gurr!

Click! buzz! went the wheels, and then--tick-tock! tick-tock! for the Wonder Clock is of that kind that it will never wear out, no matter how long it may stand in Time's garret.

Down I sat and watched it, for every time it struck it played a pretty song, and when the song was ended--click! click!--out stepped the drollest little puppet-figures and went through with a dance, and I saw it all .

But the Wonder Clock had grown rusty from long standing, and though now and then the puppet-figures danced a dance that I knew as well as I know my bread-and-butter, at other times they jigged a step I had never seen before, and it came into my head that maybe a dozen or more puppet-plays had become jumbled together among the wheels back of the clock-face.

So there I sat in the dust watching the Wonder Clock, and when it had run down and the tunes and the puppet-show had come to an end, I took off my dream-cap, and--whisk!--there I was back home again among my books, with nothing brought away with me from that country but a little dust which I found sticking to my coat, and which I have never brushed away to this day.

Now if you also would like to go into Wonderland, you have only to hunt up your dream-cap , and to come to me, and I will show you the way to Time's garret.

That is right! Pull the cap well down about your ears.

Here we are! And now I will wind the clock. Gurr! gurr! gurr!

Table of Contents.

PAGE

One O'clock?

K.P.

There was a king travelling through the country, and he and those with him were so far away from home that darkness caught them by the heels, and they had to stop at a stone mill for the night, because there was no other place handy.

While they sat at supper, they heard a sound in the next room, and it was a baby crying.

The miller stood in the corner, back of the stove, with his hat in his hand. "What is that noise?" said the king to him.

"Oh! it is nothing but another baby that the good storks have brought into the house to-day," said the miller.

Now there was a wise man travelling along with the king, who could read the stars and everything that they told as easily as one can read one's A B C's in a book after one knows them, and the king, for a bit of a jest, would have him find out what the stars had to foretell of the miller's baby. So the wise man went out and took a peep up in the sky, and by and by he came in again.

"Well," said the king, "and what did the stars tell you?"

"The stars tell me," said the wise man, "that you shall have a daughter, and that the miller's baby, in the room yonder, shall marry her when they are old enough to think of such things."

"What!" said the king, "and is a miller's baby to marry the princess that is to come! We will see about that." So the next day he took the miller aside and talked and bargained, and bargained and talked, until the upshot of the matter was that the miller was paid two hundred dollars, and the king rode off with the baby.

As soon as he came home to the castle he called his chief forester to him. "Here," says he, "take this baby and do thus and so with it, and when you have killed it bring its heart to me, that I may know that you have really done as you have been told."

So off marched the forester with the baby; but on his way he stopped at home, and there was his good wife working about the house.

"Well, Henry," said she, "what do you do with the baby?"

"Oh!" said he, "I am just taking it off to the forest to do thus and so with it."

"Come," said she, "it would be a pity to harm the little innocent, and to have its blood on your hands. Yonder hangs the rabbit that you shot this morning, and its heart will please the king just as well as the other."

Thus the wife talked, and the end of the business was that she and the man smeared a basket all over with pitch and set the baby adrift in it on the river, and the king was just as well satisfied with the rabbit's heart as he would have been with the baby's.

Now the huntsmen in the forest had robbed the she-bear of her cubs, so that her heart yearned over the little baby, and she carried it home with her to fill the place of her own young ones. There the baby throve until he grew to a great strong lad, and as he had fed upon nothing but bear's milk for all that time, he was ten times stronger than the strongest man in the land.

One day, as he was walking through the forest, he came across a woodman chopping the trees into billets of wood, and that was the first time he had ever seen a body like himself. Back he went to the bear as fast as he could travel, and told her what he had seen. "That," said the bear, "is the most wicked and most cruel of all the beasts."

Dear, dear, how the lad's heart jumped inside of him at that. He was willing enough to promise whatever was asked, for he would do anything to marry the princess, now that he had seen how pretty she was.

"Very well, then," said the princess, "just bring me the key of wish-house and I will marry you."

"There," said the king, "that is a bargain; go and bring the key of wish-house and you shall marry the princess; and you may just leave the fish here until you come back again. And don't show your face about here without the key, if you wish to keep your head upon your shoulders."

So off went the lad from the king's castle, with nothing at all in his pocket and ill-luck astride of his back. Down he went to the river as straight as he could walk, and there stood Father Stork gazing down into the water and looking as wise as our minister on Sunday. See now, thus and so and thus and so had happened, and the stork had gotten him into a pretty scrape over at the castle by putting him up to asking such a price for his herring; that was what the lad said.

"Prut!" says the stork, "break no bones over that furrow; ill-luck always comes before good-luck, and rain before the little flowers; what is worth having is worth working for. Just get upon my back and I will carry you to where the queen of the birds lives; if anybody can put you in the way of finding the key of wish-house she will be the one." So the stork bent his red legs and up the lad got upon his back. Then Father Longlegs spread his wings and away he flew, and on and on, over field and fallow, over valley and mountain, over forest and over stream.

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