Grimm Tales Made Gay by Guy Wetmore Carryl (e textbook reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Guy Wetmore Carryl
Book online «Grimm Tales Made Gay by Guy Wetmore Carryl (e textbook reader TXT) 📗». Author Guy Wetmore Carryl
a swallow cannot make a summer
It can bring on a summary fall!
Peasant Came True
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[29]How the Fatuous Wish of aPeasant Came True
An excellent peasant,
Of character pleasant,
Once lived in a hut with his wife.
He was cheerful and docile,
But such an old fossil
You wouldn’t meet twice in your life.
His notions were all without reason or rhyme,
Such dullness in any one else were a crime,
But the folly pig-headed
To which he was wedded
Was so deep imbedded,
it touched the sublime!
He frequently stated
Such quite antiquated
And singular doctrines as these:
“Do good unto others!
All men are your brothers!”
(Of course he forgot the Chinese!)
He said that all men were made equal and free,
(That’s true if they’re born on our side of the sea!)
That truth should be spoken,
And pledges unbroken:
(Now where, by that token,
would most of us be?)
[30]
One day, as his pottage
He ate in his cottage,
A fairy stepped up to the door;
Upon it she hammered,
And meekly she stammered:
“A morsel of food I implore.”
He gave her sardines, and a biscuit or two,
And she said in reply, when her luncheon was through,
“In return for these dishes
Of bread and of fishes
The first of your wishes
I’ll make to come true!”
[31] That nincompoop peasant
Accepted the present,
(As most of us probably would,)
And, thinking her bounty
To turn to account, he
Said: “Now I’ll do somebody good!
I won’t ask a thing for myself or my wife,
But I’ll make all my neighbors with happiness rife.
Whate’er their conditions,
Henceforward, physicians
And indispositions
they’re rid of for life!”
[32]These words energetic
The fairy’s prophetic
Announcement brought instantly true:
With singular quickness
Each victim of sickness
Was made over, better than new,
And people who formerly thought they were doomed
With almost obstreperous healthiness bloomed,
And each had some platitude,
Teeming with gratitude,
For the new attitude
life had assumed.
[33]
Our friend’s satisfaction
Concerning his action
Was keen, but exceedingly brief.
The wrathful condition
Of every physician
In town was surpassing belief!
Professional nurses were plunged in despair,
And chemists shook passionate fists in the air:
They called at his dwelling,
With violence swelling,
His greeting repelling
with arrogant stare.
[34] They beat and they battered,
They slammed and they shattered,
And did him such serious harm,
That, after their labors,
His wife told the neighbors
They’d caused her excessive alarm!
They then set to work on his various ills,
And plied him with liniments, powders, and pills,
And charged him so dearly
That all of them nearly
Made double the yearly
amount of their bills.
This Moral by the tale is taught:—
The wish is father to the thought.
(We’d oftentimes escape the worst
If but the thinking part came first!)
Rid of an Onus
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[35]How Hop O’ My Thumb GotRid of an Onus
A worthy couple, man and wife,
Dragged on a discontented life:
The reason, I should state,
That it was destitute of joys,
Was that they had a dozen boys
To feed and educate,
And nothing such patience demands
As having twelve boys on your hands!
[36] For twenty years they tried their best
To keep those urchins neatly dressed
And teach them to be good,
But so much labor it involved
That, in the end, they both resolved
To lose them in a wood,
Though nothing a parent annoys
Like heartlessly losing his boys!
So when their sons had gone to bed,
Though bitter tears the couple shed,
They laid their little plan.
“Faut b’en que ça s’fasse. Quand même,”
The woman said, “J’en suis tout’ blème.”
“Ça colle!” observed the man,
“Mais ça coute, que ces gosses fichus!
B’en, quoi! Faut qu’i’s soient perdus!”
(I’ve quite omitted to explain
That they were natives of Touraine;
I see I must translate.)
“Of course it must be done, and still,”
The wife remarked, “it makes me ill.”
“You bet!” replied her mate:
“But we’ve both of us counted the cost,
And the kids simply have to be lost!”
[37] But, while they plotted, every word
The youngest of the urchins heard,
And winked the other eye;
His height was only two feet three.
(I might remark, in passing, he
Was little, but O My!)
He added: “I’d better keep mum.”
(He was foxy, was Hop O’ My Thumb!)
[38] They took the boys into the wood,
And lost them, as they said they should,
And came in silence back.
Alas for them! Hop O’ My Thumb
At every step had dropped a crumb,
And so retraced the track.
While the parents sat mourning their fate
He led the boys in at the gate!
He placed his hand upon his heart,
And said: “You think you’re awful smart,
But I have foiled you thus!”
His parents humbly bent the knee,
And meekly said: “H. O. M. T.,
You’re one too much for us!”
And both of them solemnly swore
“We won’t never do so no more!”
The Moral is: While I do not
Endeavor to condone the plot,
I still maintain that one
Should have no chance of being foiled,
And having one’s arrangements spoiled
By one’s ingenious son.
If you turn down your children, with pain,
Take care they don’t turn up again!
Made Free with a Door
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[39]How the Helpmate of Blue-BeardMade Free with a Door
A maiden from the Bosphorus,
With eyes as bright as phosphorus,
Once wed the wealthy bailiff
Of the caliph
Of Kelat.
Though diligent and zealous, he
Became a slave to jealousy.
(Considering her beauty,
’Twas his duty
To be that!)
[40] When business would necessitate
A journey, he would hesitate,
But, fearing to disgust her,
He would trust her
With his keys,
Remarking to her prayerfully:
“I beg you’ll use them carefully.
Don’t look what I deposit
In that closet,
If you please.”
It may be mentioned, casually,
That blue as lapis lazuli
He dyed his hair, his lashes,
His mustaches,
And his beard.
And, just because he did it, he
Aroused his wife’s timidity:
Her terror she dissembled,
But she trembled
When he neared.[41]
[42]
This shows how grim Blue-Beard, when bound on a bat,
Instructed his wife on the key of a flat!
[43] This feeling insalubrious
Soon made her most lugubrious,
And bitterly she missed her
Elder sister
Marie Anne:
She asked if she might write her to
Come down and spend a night or two,
Her husband answered rightly
And politely:
“Yes, you can!”
Blue-Beard, the Monday following,
His jealous feeling swallowing,
Packed all his clothes together
In a leather-
Bound valise,
And, feigning reprehensibly,
He started out, ostensibly
By traveling to learn a
Bit of Smyrna
And of Greece.
His wife made but a cursory
Inspection of the nursery;
The kitchen and the airy
Little dairy
Were a bore,
As well as big or scanty rooms,
And billiard, bath, and ante-rooms,
But not that interdicted
And restricted
Little door!
[44]For, all her curiosity
Awakened by the closet he
So carefully had hidden,
And forbidden
Her to see,
This damsel disobedient
Did something inexpedient,
And in the keyhole tiny
Turned the shiny
Little key:
[45]Then started back impulsively,
And shrieked aloud convulsively—
Three heads of girls he’d wedded
And beheaded
Met her eye!
And turning round, much terrified,
Her darkest fears were verified,
For Blue-Beard stood behind her,
Come to find her
On the sly!
[46]Perceiving she was fated to
Be soon decapitated, too,
She telegraphed her brothers
And some others
What she feared.
And Sister Anne looked out for them,
In readiness to shout for them
Whenever in the distance
With assistance
They appeared.
But only from her battlement
She saw some dust that cattle meant.
The ordinary story
Isn’t gory,
But a jest.
But here’s the truth unqualified.
The husband wasn’t mollified
Her head is in his bloody
Little study
With the rest!
The Moral: Wives, we must allow,
Who to their husbands will not bow,
A stern and dreadful lesson learn
When, as you’ve read, they’re cut in turn.
in Vain for a Bonus
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[47]How Rumplestilz Held Outin Vain for a Bonus
In Germany there lived an earl
Who had a charming niece:
And never gave the timid girl
A single moment’s peace!
Whatever low and menial task
His fancy flitted through,
He did not hesitate to ask
That shrinking child to do.
(I see with truly honest shame you
Are blushing, and I do not blame you.
A tale like this the feelings softens,
And brings the tears, as does “Two Orphans.”)
[48] She had to wash the windows, and
She had to scrub the floors,
She had to lend a willing hand
To fifty other chores:
She gave the dog his exercise,
She read the earl the news,
She ironed all his evening ties,
And polished all his shoes,
She cleaned the tins that filled the dairy,
She cut the claws of the canary,
And then, at night, with manner winsome,
When coal was wanted, carried in some!
But though these tasks were quite enough,
He thought them all too few,
And so her uncle, rude and rough,
Invented something new.
He took her to a little room,
Her willingness to tax,
And pointed out a broken loom
And half a ton of flax,
Observing: “Spin six pairs of trousers!”
His haughty manner seemed to rouse hers.
She met his scornful glances proudly—
And for an answer whistled loudly!
[49]
[50] But when the earl went down the stair
She yielded to her fears.
Gave way at last to grim despair,
And melted into tears:
When suddenly, from out the wall,
As if he felt at home,
There pounced a singularly small
And much distorted gnome.
He smiled a smile extremely vapid,
And set to work in fashion rapid;
No time for resting he deducted,
And soon the trousers were constructed.
The girl observed: “How very nice
To help me out this way!”
The gnome replied: “A certain price
Of course you’ll have to pay.
I’ll call to-morrow afternoon,
My due reward to claim,
And then you’ll sing another tune
Unless you guess my name!”
He indicated with a gesture
The pile of newly fashioned vesture:
His eyes on hers a moment centered,
And then he went, as he had entered.
[51] As by this tale you have been grieved
And heartily distressed,
Kind sir, you will be much relieved
To know his name she guessed:
But if I do not tell the same,
Pray count it not a
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