Let such, I pray, be never spied Inside of my front door."
"But Nate, alas! did not obey His father"s orders wise.
He hied him forth without delay, Ignoring tarts and pies, And bought a rocket huge, size A, "The Monarch of the Skies."
"He clasped it tightly to his breast, And smiled a smile of glee; And as the sun sank in the west, He sat beneath a tree, And then the rocket he invest- I-g-a-t-e-d.
"Alas for Nate! The night was warm; June-bugs and great fire-flies Around about his head did swarm; The mercury did rise; And then a fine electric storm Played havoc in the skies.
"Now if, perchance, it was a fly, I"m not prepared to say; Or if "twas lightning from the sky, That came along that way; Or if "twas only brought on by The heat of that warm day,
"I am not certain, but "tis clear There came a sudden boom, And high up in the atmosphere, Enlightening the gloom, The rocket flew, a fiery spear, And Nate, too, I presume.
"For never since that July day Has any man seen Nate.
But far off in the Milky Way, Astronomers do state, A comet brilliant, so they say, Doth round about gyrate.
"It"s head"s so like small Natty"s face, They think it"s surely he, Aboard that rocket-stick in s.p.a.ce, Still mounting constantly; And still must mount until no trace Of it at all we see."
[Ill.u.s.tration: NATE AS A COMET.]
"Isn"t that the most fearfully awfully terribly horribly horribly terribly fearful bit of awfulness you ever heard?" queried the Rocket, when he had finished.
"It is indeed," said Jimmieboy. "It really makes me feel unhappy, and I wish you hadn"t told it to me."
"I would not bother about it," said the Rocket; "because really the best thing about it is that it never happened."
"Suppose it did happen," said Jimmieboy, after thinking it over for a minute or two. "Would Nate ever get back home again?"
"Oh, he might," returned the Rocket. "But not before six or seven million years, and that would make him late for tea, you know.
By-the-way," the Rocket added, "do you know the best kind of tea to have on Fourth of July?"
"No," said Jimmieboy. "What?"
"R-o-c-k-e-tea," said the Rocket.
The Pin Wheels laughed so heartily at this that one of them fell over on a box of Blue Lights and set them off, and the Rocket endeavoring to put them out was set going himself, and the first thing Jimmieboy knew, his friend gave a fearful siss, and disappeared up the chimney. The sparks from the Rocket falling on the Roman Candles started them along, and three or four b.a.l.l.s from them landed on a flower piece which was soon putting forth the most beautiful fiery roses imaginable, one of which, as it gave its dying sputter, flew up and landed on the fuse of a great set piece that was supposed to have a motto on it. Jimmieboy was almost too frightened to move, so he just sat where he was, and stared at the set piece until he could read the motto, which was, strange to say, no motto at all, but simply these words in red, white, and blue fire, "Wake up, and go to bed right." Whereupon Jimmieboy rubbed his eyes, and opened them wider than ever to find his papa bending over him, and saying the very words he had seen on the set piece.
Probably the reason why his papa was saying this was that Jimmieboy had been found by him on his return home lying fast asleep, snuggled up in the corner of the library lounge.
As for the fire-works, in some way or other they all managed to get back into the box again in good condition, except the broken torpedo, which was found in the middle of the floor just where it had fallen.
Which Jimmieboy thinks was very singular.
X.
JIMMIEBOY"S PHOTOGRAPH.
Jimmieboy had been taken to the photographer"s and had posed several times for the man who made pictures of little boys. One picture showed how he looked leaning against a picket fence with a tiger skin rug under his feet. Another showed him in the act of putting his hands into his pockets, while a third was a miserable attempt to show how he looked when he couldn"t stand still. The last pleased Jimmieboy very much. It made him laugh and Jimmieboy liked laughing better than anything, perhaps, excepting custard, which was his idea of real solid bliss. Why it made him laugh, I do not know, unless it was because in the picture he was very much blurred and looked something like a mixture of a cloud and a pin-wheel.
"I like that one," Jimmieboy said to his mother, when the proof came home. "Won"t you let me have it?"
"Yes," said his mother. "You can have it. I don"t think any one else wants it."
So the proof became Jimmieboy"s property, and he put it away in his collection of treasures, which already contained many valuable things, such as the whistle of a rubber ball, a piece of elastic, and a worn-out tennis racket. These treasures the boy used to have out two or three times a day, and the last time he had them out something queer happened.
The blurred little figure in the picture spoke to him and told him something he didn"t forget in a hurry.
"You think I"m a funny-looking thing don"t you?" said the blurred picture of himself.
"Yes, I do," said Jimmieboy, "that"s why I laugh at you whenever I see you."
"Well, I laugh when I see you, too," retorted the picture. "You are just as funny to look at sometimes as I am."
"I"m not either," said Jimmieboy. "I don"t look like a cloud or a pin-wheel, and you do."
"I"m a picture of you, just the same," returned the proof, "and if you had stood still when the man was taking you, I"d have been all right.
It"s awful mean the way little boys have of not standing still when they are having their pictures taken, and then laughing at the thing they"re responsible for afterward."
"I didn"t mean to be mean," said Jimmieboy.
"Perhaps not," retorted the picture, "but if it hadn"t been for you I"d have been a lovely picture, and your mamma would have had a nice little silver frame put around me, and maybe I"d have been standing on your papa"s desk with the inkstand and the mucilage instead of having to live all my life with a broken whistle and a tennis bat that n.o.body but you has any use for."
Here the picture sighed, and Jimmieboy felt very sorry for it.
"Boys don"t know what a terrible lot of horrid things happen because they don"t stand still sometimes," continued the picture. "I know of lots of cases where untold misery has come from movey boys."
"From what?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Movey boys," replied the picture. "By that I mean boys that don"t stand still when they ought to. Why, I knew of a boy once who wouldn"t stand still and he shook a whole town to pieces."
"Ho!" jeered Jimmieboy. "I don"t believe it."
"Well, it"s so, whether you believe it or not," said the picture. "The boy"s name was Bob, and he lived somewhere, I don"t remember where. His mother told him to stand still and he wouldn"t; he just jumped up and down, and up and down all the time."
"That may be, but I don"t see how he could shake a whole town to pieces," said Jimmieboy, "unless he was a very heavy boy."
"He didn"t weigh a bit more than you do," answered the picture. "He was heavy enough when he jumped to shake his nursery though, and the nursery was heavy enough to shake the house, and the house was heavy enough to shake the lot, and the lot was heavy enough to shake the street, and the street shook the whole town, and when the town shook, everybody thought there was an earthquake, and they all moved away, and took the name of the town with them, which is why I don"t know where it was."
Jimmieboy was silent. He never knew before that not standing still could result in such an awful happening.
"I know another boy, too, who lived in--well, I won"t say where, but he lived there. He broke a fine big mirror in his father"s parlor by not standing still when he was told to."
"Did he shake it down?" asked Jimmieboy.
"No, indeed, he didn"t," returned the picture. "He just stood in front of it and got so movey that the mirror couldn"t keep up with him, but it tried to do it so hard that it shook itself to pieces. But that wasn"t anything like as bad as what happened to Jumping Sam. He was the worst I ever knew. He never would keep still, and it all happened and he never could unhappen it, so that it"s still so to this very day."
"But you haven"t told me what happened yet," said Jimmieboy, very much interested in Jumping Sam.