The Magician\'s Show Box and Other Stories by Lydia Maria Child

L >> Lydia Maria Child >> The Magician\'s Show Box and Other Stories

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Produced by Dave Maddock
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE MAGICIAN'S SHOW BOX,

AND

OTHER STORIES.

BY

LYDIA MARIA CHILD

The Author of "Rainbows for Children."

CONTENTS

THE MAGICIAN'S SHOW BOX

THE VIOLET FLAME

FLORIBEL

THE LADY INTELLETTA

VENUS'S DOVE

THE GALA-DAY

EARNING ONE'S OWN LIVING

THE MAGICIAN'S SHOW BOX.

There was once a boy, named Gaspar, whose uncle made voyages to China,
and brought him home chessmen, queer toys, porcelain vases,
embroidered skullcaps, and all kinds of fine things. He gave him such
grand descriptions of foreign countries and costumes, that Gaspar was
not at all satisfied to live in a small village, where the people
dressed in the most commonplace way. At school he was always covering
his slate with pictures of Turks wearing turbans as large as small
mosques, or Chinese with queues several yards long, and shoes that
turned up to their knees. Then he read every story he could find of
all possible and impossible adventures, and longed for nothing so much
as to go forth, like Napoleon or Alexander, and make mincemeat of the
whole world.

One day he could bear it no longer; so, taking with him an oaken
dagger which he had carved with great care, off he started on his
conquering expedition. He walked along the sunny road, kicking up a
great dust, and coming to a milestone, threw a stone at a huge
bullfrog croaking at him from a spring, and made it dive under with a
loud splash. Pleased with his prowess, he took a good drink at the
spring, and filled his flask with the sparkling water. At the second
milestone he threw a pebble at a bird, singing in a tree. Off flew the
bird, and down fell a great red apple. "Ah, how fine!" he exclaimed,
picking it up; "and how the bird flies! I wish I had such wings." On
the third milestone sat a quiet-looking little man, cracking nuts; so
Gaspar stopped to crack nuts, and have a chat with him.

The man was very entertaining, and Gaspar listened and listened to his
wonderful stories until he saw the milestone shadow stretching far
along the bank. Then he jumped up and was going to walk on, but hop
went the little man quite across the road. Gaspar went the other side;
hop came the little man back again; and so they dodged about, hither
and thither, until Gaspar's patience was quite exhausted.

"He is only a small fellow, after all," he thought; "I can take a good
run and jump over him." He took the run and gave the jump, but the
little man shot up high into the air, and he might as well have tried
to jump over the moon.

"It is a most singular thing!" said Gaspar to himself; "a little gray
man, not much larger than I am, and yet he seems to be every where at
once, like sheet lightning. There is no getting by him, and all the
time he looks at me with those bright eyes and that quiet smile, as if
he were really very much amused. Well, he must go to sleep by and by,
and then I can step over him and walk off."

So he lay down, pretending to sleep, and the little man lay down also,
with his face turned to the sky. When Gaspar thought him fast asleep,
he arose very softly, believing he could now surely escape; but at his
very first step up came a sly hand, catching him by the foot, so that
down he fell at the old man's side, and there saw the bright eyes
gazing up at the stars, without a wink of sleep in them. But Gaspar
soon forgot his travels, with all his bold intentions, and fell asleep
himself, to dream of skewers and cimeters.

In the morning the little man said, "Come now, it is foolish for you
to go trudging about over the world. You will never see any thing more
than polywogs and sandflies, and those you can find in your native
village. Give me a drink from your flask, and a bite of your apple,
and I can show you more wonders in a day in my show box here, than you
would find wandering about for a lifetime."

Then he drew from the pocket of his gray coat a neat box, carved of
ivory, and having taken a bit of the apple and a sip of the water,
which Gaspar never thought of refusing, he touched a spring, up flew
the lid, and Gaspar peeped in. Ah, but it was a wondrous sight; for on
and on moved a procession of all imaginable things. Lions and
elephants seemed mere puppies, for here were mastodons and
ichthyosauri, and animals that lived before the flood was ever dreamed
of; and as for Turks and turbans, why, there were people with
headdresses that towered up into the skies, and ladies who made
rainbows pale. There were queens whose thrones were all one driven
pearl, and warriors whose swords were a flash of sunbeams.

"Ah, yes!" exclaimed Gaspar; "this is better than travelling. But how
shall I remember all these enchanting sights? I must make a note of
them." And seizing his wooden sword, he began to draw in the sandy
road each figure as it appeared.

Hour after hour the procession passed on in the little ivory box. Hour
after hour he drew it in the sand, and that little man stood by, with
his quiet smile and great politeness. At length a loud hallooing was
heard, and they saw all the boys from the village running towards
them.

"What is going on here?" they called out. "Never were such clouds seen
as have been sailing over the village to-day. Whales and astronomers,
kings and crocodiles, and nobody knows what. They all sail from this
direction, and we have come to see what is going off here. Can it be
you, Gaspar, who are raising such a wind? Did you draw all these
lively things in the sand, and blow them up into clouds?"

Gaspar said he knew nothing about the clouds, but he thought it was
getting rather dark, and was as much surprised as any of the boys, to
see what grand figures he had thrown up into the sky. He begged his
new friend to show the boys his box; but he said, "No, it was not for
them," and put it into his pocket.

They all laughed at it, and said such great creatures never came out
of that little paint box.

Gaspar went back to the village with the boys, and for a while was
quite contented with the remembrance of what he had seen; but at last
his old love of travelling awoke in him. He did not feel satisfied to
have seen wonderful nations and animals merely passing through a show
box, but wanted to see them in living reality; but how was he to get
by the little magician? On foot he knew it was impossible, but thought
he might succeed on a fleet horse. So he went to his friend Conrad,
and offered him the apple which could never be eaten, for his good
cantering horse. Most boys are fond of red apples, but Conrad cared
for nothing else but apples and apple dumplings, not even for his
cantering horse, and readily exchanged him for Gaspar's apple, which
he could be constantly eating. Off rode Gaspar with whip and spur,
sure now that the little gray man could not stop him.

As he cantered along the road very grandly, there were those bright
eyes fixed upon him.

"Whither so fast to-day?" said the gray man, with his queer smile.

"That's nothing to you," answered Gaspar; and on he tried to go; but
hop went the little man, to and fro, just as he did before, and Gaspar
did not like to run his horse directly over him; indeed he might as
well have tried to ride over the winds of heaven; so he jumped off,
exclaiming, "It's no use dodging about in this way; come, now, let's
fight it out;" and he drew his oaken dagger with a great flourish.

"Ah, ha! that is it, is it?" said the magician; and out flashed a
steel dagger. At it they went, striking their weapons against each
other with might and main. At every stroke Gaspar's wooden dagger
became sharper and sharper, and when he left off fighting he found it
was changed into good steel; but it was useless to hope for victory
from such a combatant, who might have pierced him through and through
at any moment, as Gaspar very soon saw; so he put up his dagger, and
they sat down on the stone, cracking their nuts and jokes together in
the old way.

"Now," said Gaspar, "if I had a few bags of nuts like these, I could
make my fortune. They do not grow in our village, and I have told the
boys about them until they are all wild to have some. But I suppose
you cannot give me any, for although you never get out of them, you
seem only to have a handful at a time."

"Gaspar," answered the gray man, "there is no end to my nuts; we might
crack here until doomsday, and I should still have thousands and
thousands of uncracked ones left. I do not think much of them myself,
but you are young and easily amused, and if you would like a bag or
two, why, here they are;" and he held up his hands with a great sack
full of nuts in each. Gaspar jumped on his horse, dragged the bags up
after him, while the little man looked smiling on, and rode home to
the village.

What a shouting there was when the boys saw him riding through the
streets with his great bags of nuts! They offered him bat and ball,
hoop and kite; but Gaspar said he did not care for such childish
things; he wanted something to be of use on his travels round the
world. "You had better go to Lawyer Clang's," called out a newsboy;
"he has a horse such as never was seen afore."

Gaspar rode straight to Lawyer Clang's office, and walked in, horse,
sacks, and all.

"Sir," said he, "what will you give me for this cantering horse and
these very hard nuts?"

"My horse Wayfare; and a more serviceable animal was never known. I am
getting a little tired of him myself, but he is just the thing for
you, if you wish to see the world."

The horse was brought round, a great gaunt creature, but handsomely
bridled and saddled, and Gaspar thought he looked tough and sound, and
would be far more useful than his cantering horse, which was only
suitable for pleasure riding, so he changed horses, threw in the nuts,
and rode off, bidding the boys good by, for many long years, he told
them.

When he came to the first milestone he found the mossy spring was
frozen over. At the second he saw the leafless apple tree, with a
deserted bird's nest upon it; and at the third he discerned something
that looked like the little magician; but he believed it was only a
snow wreath: at any rate, it did not stop the way, and on he rode,
exulting, though a little cold.

It was all very pleasant until night came; and then he was glad to see
an inn, with a bright fire shining through the windows. He pulled in
the reins, but the horse would not stop. He pulled harder and harder,
and called "Whoa!" until he was breathless. It was all of no use. On
went the horse, and the inn, with its bright windows, was soon left
far behind. And over the wide plain he rode all night, through the
wind and the snow, which was not at all agreeable. In the morning he
was quite faint, and wanted to stop at a cottage for some breakfast,
and a good warming for himself, and some oats for his horse. But no;
Wayfare had nothing to do with such trifles. He went calmly on, always
at the same jog-trot pace, and that not a very easy one. Gaspar had to
catch at some berries as he rode through the woods, but found them
poor fare, and was glad to find himself, the next day, getting into a
warmer climate, where even oranges grew; but not many could he gather
as he rode by the trees, and it was very provoking to see the horse,
instead of stopping at a running brook, trot straight through it, and
across a green pasture, as if it were all a parched desert.

"What an old fogy of a horse he is! I am sure he must be made of
wood," exclaimed Gaspar; and he gave a great pound on the horse's
neck. "Hollow, I declare! Nothing but a wooden horse, after all, and
goes by machinery. I wonder how long he is wound up to go, and whether
I shall ever get off the dreadful nightmare's back. What a fool I was
to change my good cantering horse for such a machine as this! But I
must endure it now I am in for it."

Day after day they trotted on, through strange countries, among
unknown people and animals; but the horse never noticed them, nor they
the horse. Gaspar wished to jump off and let the great creature go;
but it was so high, and went on so steadily, that he could not get a
chance. At last they passed through a gate in a high wall, which he
thought must be the Chinese Wall, and a pagoda in the distance soon
convinced him that he was right.

"I shall at least see peaked shoes and mandarins, and that is some
satisfaction," he thought, and rode on, looking about him with great
curiosity, until he came to a palace all gilding and porcelain. Here
the horse came to a stand, as if he had been wound up to go so far and
no farther.

"This I know must be the emperor's palace, and that must be the very
gentleman himself, looking out of the window," said Gaspar. "How
fortunate that uncle Gammon taught me Chinese!" He bowed and
addressed the emperor, who was quite surprised to see such a very
small foreign boy on such a very large horse, speaking his language so
correctly. He came down to examine the horse, and when he found it
went by machinery instead of being alive, expressed the greatest
delight, saying it was just the kind of horse he had always desired,
and if Gaspar would give it to him, he should be made one of his chief
mandarins. Gaspar replied that his greatest desire was to be a
mandarin; so he alighted in the most dignified manner, and entering
the palace, was presented with layers of richly embroidered robes,
which reached to his feet, and just allowed the peaks of his shoes to
peep out. Then he was introduced to a large circle of mandarins who
stood round, incessantly bowing to one another. He began to bow too,
as if he had done nothing else all his life, and when dinner was
served, managed his chop-sticks most dexterously, and smoked as if
smoking had been his only vocation. In short, he ate and bobbed, and
slept and woke, in the most approved manner.

Now he had attained the summit of his wishes. Every thing was entirely
Chinese,--jars, mats, sweetmeats, dresses, bobbing, and stupidity.
Rank, luxury, grandeur he called it, and for a while flattered himself
that he was immersed in perfect happiness; but, somehow,--he could not
tell what it was; perhaps he was not quite old enough,--but somehow he
did become a little weary of being a mandarin. The palace was
deliciously perfumed, but he longed for a puff of fresh wind. Nothing
could be richer than their dresses, but the embroidery was rather
heavy. Nothing could be profounder than their politeness, but it would
have been a relief to have given some boy a good snowballing. Nothing
could be serener than their silence, but he would gladly have given
any body three cheers for nothing.

He began to make plans for escape from this palace of his desires,
when one morning, just as one venerable mandarin was saying to
another, in their usual edifying style of conversation, "Pelican of
the Morning, before the magic charm of thy lofty countenance I am
spell-bound, like an albatross bewildered amid the flapping sails of a
mighty--" down burst the door with a crash, and a lion rushed roaring
in among them. What a scrambling there was of the long-flowered
dresses! What a tumbling, a flying, a groaning, a screaming! Never
before were such confusion and fear in an assembly of bobbing
mandarins. But Gaspar felt his breast swell with courage. Throwing
off his long robes, he sprang upon the lion, and struggled fiercely
with him; but the powerful creature would soon have laid him low if he
had not suddenly remembered the dagger, sharpened in his conflict with
the little gray man. Drawing it from the belt in which he always wore
it, beneath his embroidered robe, he plunged it into the lion's
throat, and victory was won. He did not wait for the dispersed
mandarins to return; but throwing one of the richest dresses over his
shoulder, as Hercules wore the lion's skin, he walked off, taking his
way straight to the gate in the wall, for he had had quite enough of
China and the Chinese empire.

Now began glad days for him--roaming, like a wild hunter, from land to
land, coping single handed with crocodiles and cameleopards, riding
upon elephants, mastering tigers and young hyenas, visiting mosques
and mausoleums. In every land he made collections of its greatest
curiosities in art, literature, science, natural history, and
politics. A sphinx, an obelisk, a winged bull from Nineveh, stuffed
porcupines, live monkeys, fossil remains, a pinchbeck president of the
United States, and many rare specimens even more curious, did he
collect, and after years of wandering, by land and by sea, carry with
him to his native village. There he converted an old barn into a
museum, and gave out to the villagers that he was prepared to instruct
them in all that the world contains. They flocked to the museum, and
he was occupied every hour of the day going from one object to
another, making a little set speech about each to entertain his
bewildered visitors. Great admiration was expressed, and perhaps great
knowledge was acquired. Gaspar felt that he was the benefactor of his
race, and bought a pair of very tight boots to walk around in, and a
neat little silver-tipped stick with which to point out the
curiosities.

But, alas! even now, when the cup of happiness seemed full, was he not
to be satisfied. Had he not attained all that the most eager hopes of
his boyhood had promised? Had not the highest honors and the most
yellow of garments been lavished upon him in that long-desired Chinese
empire? Had he not conquered innumerable wild animals--African,
Asiatic, and above all, American? Was he not the focus of life and
intelligence in his native village? And yet, how weary had he become
of describing to his gaping audience, for the three hundred and
sixtieth time, the daily habits of the laughing hyena, and the exact
manner in which kangaroos jump! What sad indifference to the nature of
whigs and walruses, to the tendencies of sea otters and free
institutions, was creeping over him!

"Ah, if a lion would but walk in again, and if I could but have
another good fight!" he exclaimed one day. At that moment the door
suddenly opened. Hope whispered, "The lion!" and a fair young girl
entered. She glanced around the room, cast her eyes on the president,
the bones of a mastodon, a parrot in the corner, and a mummy or two.

"Old bones and stuffed animals!" she whispered to her companions, and
they all began to laugh.

"I suppose she will call me a stuffed animal too," thought Gaspar;
"but I must show them the specimens." So he stepped forward, and began
to point out the various objects, and go over his usual descriptions.
He did it in his neatest manner; but the girl kept smiling, as if it
were all a great joke, and yet she looked at him with some
interest. Gaspar went into another room to put on his mandarin's dress
and peaked shoes, which he thought would produce a great effect; but
if she had only smiled before, now she fairly laughed. Then he caught
down his dagger which hung on the wall as one of the curiosities, and
felt for a moment as if she were the lion, and he would plunge it into
her; but the next moment he saw her beautiful face bending over
it. "Ah, this dagger I like! How sharp the point is! It looks as if
you might have done something with it. Tell me all about it, will you
not?" said the girl.

"If you will come here a week from to-day, I will tell you its
history," answered Gaspar; and she promised that she would surely
come.

At the appointed time she appeared--alone, now, Gaspar was glad to
see, for he did not like to have her whispering and laughing with the
other girls. However, he hoped she would not laugh now. He led her
through the museum into another room, where he had been painting a
picture of his fight with the lion.

"That is excellent!" said the girl; "that is just the thing. There
goes the dagger into the throat of the lion. How much better than a
petrified peacock, or a labelled dromedary! And you killed the lion
and painted the picture too?"

"Yes," answered Gaspar, quite gently.

"And the dagger--where did you find that?"

Gaspar told her how he had carved it of heart of oak when he was a
boy, and had changed it to steel in fighting with the magician.

"I must see that magician; let us go and find him," said the girl. So
away they went. As they walked along Gaspar told her about the ivory
show box, and regretted that he had lost his flask of water, and
exchanged his apple for the cantering horse, because they had now
nothing to give the little gray man for a peep into it.

"Wait a moment," said the girl; and running into her house, which they
were passing, she brought out a golden cup full of red wine. "I think
he will like this better than the water--do not you?"

When they came to the milestone, there sat the gray man, cracking away
as inveterately as ever. "I should think he would be tired to death,"
said Gaspar. "Think how much I have seen of the world while he has
been cracking those old nuts."

The little man overheard him, and smiled to himself, as much as to
say, "I know;" but when he saw the young girl, he rose up and made
quite a profound bow. "He never bowed to me," thought Gaspar.

"Will you let me look into your ivory show box, and I will give you a
drink of red wine," said the girl.

"It is a poor thing," answered the magician, "not worthy of your
attention; but if you will vouchsafe me a sip of the wine, I have been
cracking these dry nuts so long. Ah, I do begin to be weary!" The
girl peeped into the show box. "All very pretty, but rather stiff and
monotonous," she said. "Not so good as you can paint, Gaspar. Come,
let us go home."

She made the gray man a pleasant little courtesy, took her vase of
wine, and she and Gaspar went back to the village to paint their own
pictures, leaving the little magician to crack his nuts and look into
his show box as long as he pleased.

THE VIOLET FLAME

Rosamond was the child of a village blacksmith, and of a lady said by
the villagers to be a princess from a far land. She herself claimed to
be descended from an Ocean Queen; but no one believed that, except her
little girl, who thought her mother must know best. Rosamond would sit
by her for hours, gazing into the river that flowed through their
garden, and listening to her mothers stories of golden palaces beneath
the water. But she also liked to pry about her father's forge, and
wonder at the quick sparks and great roaring fires. Her cousin Alfred
would stay there with her, but while she was watching the red glow of
the fire and the heavy fall of her father's hammer, he was gazing upon
the violet flame that flickered above her forehead.

One day, when she was playing with him in the picture gallery of the
old castle, in which his mother was housekeeper, she called him to
look at the portrait of a child daintily holding a bird on the tip of
her finger, and arrayed in the quaint richness of the old-fashioned
costume. "She looks like you," her cousin said, "only she has not a
little trembling flame upon her forehead."

"Have I a flame upon my forehead?" asked Rosamond, wondering.

"Come and look," answered Alfred, and he led her to a great mirror,
where she for the first time saw the violet flame. "How beautiful it
is!" she exclaimed.

"O, but it is growing dim; you must not look at it," said
Alfred. "Come and let us run up and down the garden, between the great
hedges."

But Rosamond, having once seen the violet flame, could not be
satisfied until she had been to the castle to take another look, and
found so much pleasure in gazing at herself in the great mirror, that
she went every day to pay herself a stolen visit, while Alfred was at
school. But one day he found her there, and said, "I see how it is
that the pretty flame has gone; you have been admiring it too much by
yourself. I shall not love you now."

Then Rosamond felt very sorry, and wondered how she could win back
Alfred's love. At length she took all her money, with which she had
intended to buy her old nurse a warm cloak for the winter, and bought
a golden _feroniere_ with a purple stone in it, to wear around
her head in the place of the vanished flame. Then she walked into the
picture gallery with a proud step. "O Rosamond!" exclaimed her cousin,
"can you believe that bit of purple glass can replace the dancing
flame that shone with, such a lovely violet light over your golden
hair? Pray take it off, for it seems mere tinsel to me."

But neither he nor Rosamond could unclasp the _feronere;_ and she
had to go back to the jeweller, of whom she bought it, to ask him to
file it off, which he tried in vain to do; and at last he said, "The
pedler who sold it to me must be right. He said that, once clasped, it
could only be loosened by dipping it into a hidden fountain. What
fountain it is I do not know; but some old priest, who lives in a town
on the mouth of a river, knows."

This was discouraging for Rosamond, there are so many towns and
rivers, and so many old priests, in the world. She looked on the map,
and thought it must be Paris, for that is not so very far from the
sea, and there they know every thing. So, with her mother's leave, and
some jewels she gave her, she went off to Paris, taking a bit of the
mirror set in a gilt frame. When she arrived there, what was her
surprise to find the city entirely inhabited by birds and animals!
Parrots and peacocks prevailed, but ospreys and jackdaws, vultures and
cormorants, crows and cockerels, and many, many other kinds of birds
were also fluttering about, making a perpetual whizzing. Then there
were hundreds of monkeys, all jauntily dressed, with little canes in
their hands, and a great many camels and spaniels, and other animals,
wild and tame, in neat linen blouses. What bewildered her still more,
was to see that they were all skating about on the thinnest possible
ice. Why it did not crack, to let them all through, she could not
imagine. At first she was afraid even to set her foot upon it, but
soon found herself skating merrily about, enjoying it as much as any
of them. Another queer thing was, that, reflected in the ice, all
these birds and animals appeared to be men and women; and she saw that
in her own reflection she was a nice little girl. She wondered how she
looked in her mirror, and took it out to see. "What kind of an animal
am I?" she exclaimed. "O, I see--an ibex. What neat little horns, and
how bright my eyes are! What would Alfred say if he knew I was an
ibex?"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10