Mr. Munchausen <br />Being a True Account of Some of the Recent Adventures beyond the Styx of the L by John Kendrick Bangs (best novels in english TXT) 📗

and never lies down for fear of injuring his spine,” said Mr. Munchausen. “He has no feathers, because, as he says, if he had, people would pull them out to trim hats with, which would be painful, and he never goes into debt because, as he observes himself, he has no hope of paying the  bill with which nature has endowed him, so why run up others?”

“I shouldn’t think he’d live long if he doesn’t eat?” suggested Angelica.

“That’s the great trouble,” said Mr. Munchausen. “He doesn’t live long. Nothing so ineffably wise as the Gillyhooly bird ever does live long. I don’t believe a Gillyhooly bird ever lived more than a day, and that, connected with the fact that he is very ugly and keeps himself out of sight, is possibly why no one has ever seen one. He is known only by hearsay, and as a matter of fact, besides ourselves, I doubt if any one has ever heard of him.”

Diavolo eyed Mr. Munchausen narrowly.

“Speaking of Gillyhooly birds, however, and to be serious for a moment,” Mr. Munchausen continued flinching nervously under Diavolo’s unyielding gaze; “I never told you about the poetic June-bug that worked the typewriter, did I?”

“Never heard of such a thing,” cried Diavolo. “The idea of a June-bug working a typewriter.”

 “I don’t believe it,” said Angelica, “he hasn’t got any fingers.”

“That shows all you know about it,” retorted Mr. Munchausen. “You think because you are half-way right you are all right. However, if you don’t want to hear the story of the June-bug that worked the type-writer, I won’t tell it. My tongue is tired, anyhow.”

“Please go on,” said Diavolo. “I want to hear it.”

“So do I,” said Angelica. “There are lots of stories I don’t believe that I like to hear—‘Jack the Giant-killer’ and ‘Cinderella,’ for instance.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Munchausen. “I’ll tell it, and you can believe it or not, as you please. It was only two summers ago that the thing happened, and I think it was very curious. As you may know, I often have a great lot of writing to do and sometimes I get very tired holding a pen in my hand. When you get old enough to write real long letters you’ll know what I mean. Your writing hand will get so tired that sometimes you’ll  wish some wizard would come along smart enough to invent a machine by means of which everything you think can be transferred to paper as you think it, without the necessity of writing. But as yet the only relief to the man whose hand is worn out by the amount of writing he has to do is the use of the type-writer, which is hard only on the fingers. So to help me in my work two summers ago I bought a type-writing machine, and put it in the great bay-window of my room at the hotel where I was stopping. It was a magnificent hotel, but it had one drawback—it was infested with June-bugs. Most summer hotels are afflicted with mosquitoes, but this one had June-bugs instead, and all night long they’d buzz and butt their heads against the walls until the guests went almost crazy with the noise.

“At first I did not mind it very much. It was amusing to watch them, and my friends and I used to play a sort of game of chance with them that entertained us hugely. We marked the walls off in squares which we numbered and then made little wagers as to which of the squares a specially  selected June-bug would whack next. To simplify the game we caught the chosen June-bug and put some powdered charcoal on his head, so that when he butted up against the white wall he would leave a black mark in the space he hit. It was really one of the most exciting games of that particular kind that I ever played, and many a rainy day was made pleasant by this diversion.

“But after awhile like everything else June-bug Roulette as we called it began to pall and I grew tired of it and wished there never had been such a thing as a June-bug in the world. I did my best to forget them, but it was impossible. Their buzzing and butting continued uninterrupted, and toward the end of the month they developed a particularly bad habit of butting the electric call button at the side of my bed. The consequence was that at all hours of the night, hall-boys with iced-water, and house-maids with bath towels, and porters with kindling-wood would come knocking at my door and routing me out of bed—summoned of course by none other than those horrible butting insects. This particular nuisance became so unendurable  that I had to change my room for one which had no electric bell in it.

“So things went, until June passed and July appeared. The majority of the nuisances promptly got out but one especially vigorous and athletic member of the tribe remained. He became unbearable and finally one night I jumped out of bed either to kill him or to drive him out of my apartment forever, but he wouldn’t go, and try as I might I couldn’t hit him hard enough to kill him. In sheer desperation I took the cover of my typewriting machine and tried to catch him in that. Finally I succeeded, and, as I thought, shook the heedless creature out of the window promptly slamming the window shut so that he might not return; and then putting the type-writer cover back over the machine, I went to bed again, but not to sleep as I had hoped. All night long every second or two I’d hear the type-writer click. This I attributed to nervousness on my part. As far as I knew there wasn’t anything to make the type-writer click, and the fact that I heard it do so  served only to convince me that I was tired and imagined that I heard noises.