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XV
HOME, SWEET HOME

"Hurry up and finish your breakfast, Whistlebinkie," said Mollie the next morning after their return from abroad. "I want to run around to the Unwiseman's House and see if everything is all right. I'm just crazy to know how the burglar left the house."

"I-mall-ready," whistled Whistlebinkie. "I-yain't-very-ungry."

"Lost your appetite?" asked Mollie eyeing him anxiously, for she was a motherly little girl and took excellent care of all her playthings.

"Yep," said Whistlebinkie. "I always do lose my appetite after eating three plates of oat-meal, four chops, five rolls, six buckwheat cakes and a couple of bananas."

"Mercy! How do you hold it all, Whistlebinkie?" said Mollie.

"Oh – I'm made o'rubber and my stummick is very 'lastic," explained Whistlebinkie.

So hand in hand the little couple made off down the road to the pleasant spot where the Unwiseman's house stood, and there in the front yard was the old gentleman himself talking to his beloved boulder, and patting it gently as he did so.

"I'm never going to leave you again, Boldy," he was saying to the rock as Mollie and Whistlebinkie came up. "It is true that the Rock of Gibraltar is bigger and broader and more terrible to look at than you are but when it comes right down to business it isn't any harder or to my eyes any prettier. You are still my favorite rock, Boldy dear, so you needn't be jealous." And the old gentleman bent over and kissed the boulder softly.

"Good morning," said Mollie, leaning over the fence. "Whistlebinkie and I have come down to see if everything is all right. I hope the kitchen-stove is well?"

"Well the house is here, and all the bric-a-brac, and the leak has grown a bit upon the ceiling, and the kitchen-stove is all right thank you, but I'm afraid that old burgular has run off with my umbrella," said the Unwiseman. "I can't find a trace of it anywhere."

"You don't really think he has stolen it do you?" asked Mollie.

"I don't know what to think," said the Unwiseman, shaking his head gravely. "He had first class references, that burgular had, and claimed to have done all the burguling for the very nicest people in the country for the last two years, but these are the facts. He's gone and the umbrella's gone too. I suppose in the burgular's trade like in everything else you some times run across one who isn't as honest as he ought to be. Occasionally you'll find a burgular who'll take things that don't belong to him and it may be that this fellow that took my house was one of that kind – but you never can tell. It isn't fair to judge a man by disappearances, and it is just possible that the umbrella got away from him in a heavy storm. It was a skittish sort of a creature anyhow and sometimes I've had all I could do in windy weather to keep it from running away myself. What do you think of my sign?"

"I don't see any sign," said Mollie, looking all around in search of the object. "Where is it?"

"O I forgot," laughed the old gentleman gaily. "It's around on the other side of the house – come on around and see it."

The callers walked quickly around to the rear of the Unwiseman's house, and there, hanging over the kitchen door, was a long piece of board upon which the Unwiseman had painted in very crooked black letters the following words:

THE BRITISH MUSEUM JUNIOR

Admishun ten cents. Exit fifteen cents

Burgulars one umbrella

THE FINEST COLECTION OF ALPS AND SOFORTHS

ON EARTH

CHILDREN AND RUBER DOLLS FREE ON SATIDYS

"Dear me – how interesting," said Mollie, as she read this remarkable legend, "but – what does it mean?"

"It means that I've started a British Museum over here," said the Unwiseman, "only mine is going to be useful, instead of merely ornamental like that one over in London. For twenty-five cents a man can get a whole European trip in my Museum without getting on board of a steamer. I only charge ten cents to come in so as to get people to come, and I charge fifteen cents to get out so as to make 'em stay until they have seen all there is to be seen. People get awfully tired travelling abroad, I find, and if you make it too easy for them to run back home they'll go without finishing their trip. I charge burgulars one umbrella to get in so that if my burgular comes back he'll have to make good my loss, or stay out."

"Why do you let children and rubber dolls in free?" asked Mollie, reading the sign over a second time.

"I wrote that rule to cover you and old Squizzledinkie here," said the old gentleman, with a kindly smile at his little guests. "Although it really wasn't necessary because I don't charge any admission to people who come in the front door and you could always come in that way. That's the entrance to my home. The back-door I charge for because it's the entrance to my museum, don't you see?"

"Clear as a blue china alley," said Whistlebinkie.

"Come in and see the exhibit," said the Unwiseman proudly.

And then as Mollie and Whistlebinkie entered the house their eyes fell upon what was indeed the most marvellous collection of interesting objects they had ever seen. All about the parlor were ranged row upon row of bottles, large and small, each bearing a label describing its contents, with here and there mysterious boxes, and broken tumblers and all sorts of other odd things that the Unwiseman had brought home in his carpet-bag.

"Bottle number one," said he, pointing to the object with a cane, "is filled with Atlantic Ocean – real genuine briny deep – bottled it myself and so I know there's nothing bogus about it. Number two which looks empty, but really ain't, is full of air from the coast of Ireland, caught three miles out from Queenstown by yours trooly, Mr. Me. Number three, full of dust and small pebbles, is genuine British soil gathered in London the day they put me out of the Museum. 'Tain't much to look at, is it?" he added.

"Nothin' extra," said Whistlebinkie, inspecting it with a critical air after the manner of one who was an expert in soils.

"Not compared to American soil anyhow," said the Unwiseman. "This hard cake in the tin box is a 'Muffin by Special Appointment to the King,'" he went on with a broad grin. "I went in and bought one after we had our rumpus in the bake-shop, just for the purpose of bringing it over here and showing the American people how vain and empty roilty has become. It is not a noble looking object to my eyes."

"Mine neither," whistled Whistlebinkie. "It looks rather stale."

"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "And that's the only roil thing about it. Passing along rapidly we come soon to a bottleful of the British Channel," he resumed. "In order to get the full effect of that very conceited body of water you want to shake it violently. That gives you some idea of how the water works. It's tame enough now that I've got it bottled but in its native lair it is fierce. You will see the instructions on the bottle."

Sure enough the bottle was labeled as the Unwiseman said with full instructions as to how it must be used.

"Shake for fifteen minutes until it is all roiled up and swells around inside the bottle like a tidal wave," the instructions read. "You will then get a small idea of how this disagreeable body of water behaves itself in the presence of trusting strangers."

"Here is my bottle of French soil," said the Unwiseman, passing on to the next object. "It doesn't look very different from English soil but it's French all right, as you would see for yourself if it tried to talk. I scooped it up myself in Paris. There's the book – French in Five Lessons – too. That I call 'The French Language,' which shows people who visit this museum what a funny tongue it is. That pill box full of sand is a part of the Swiss frontier and the small piece of gravel next to it is a piece of an Alp chipped off Mount Blanc by myself, so that I know it is genuine. It will give the man who has never visited Swaz – well – that country, a small idea of what an Alp looks like and will correct the notion in some people's minds that an Alp is a wild animal with a long hairy tail and the manners of a lion. The next two bottles contain all that is left of a snow-ball I gathered in at Chamouny, and a chip of the Mer de Glace glazier. They've both melted since I bottled them, but I'll have them frozen up again all right when winter comes, so there's no harm done."

"What's this piece of broken china on the table?" asked Mollie.

"That is a fragment of a Parisian butter saucer," said the Unwiseman. "One of the waiters fell down stairs with somebody's breakfast at our hotel in Paris one morning while we were there," he explained, "and I rescued that from the debris. It is a perfect specimen of a broken French butter dish."

"I don't think it's very interesting," said Mollie.

"Well to tell you the truth, I don't either, but you've got to remember, my dear, that this is a British Museum and the one over in London is chuck full of broken china, old butter plates and coffee cups from all over everywhere, and I don't want people who care for that sort of thing to be disappointed with my museum when they come here. Take that plaster statue of Cupid that I bought in Venice – I only got that to please people who care for statuary."

"Where is it?" asked Mollie, searching the room with her eye for the Cupid.

"I've spread it out through the Museum so as to make it look more like a collection," said the Unwiseman. "I got a tack-hammer as soon as I got home last night and fixed it up. There's an arm over on the mantel-piece. His chest and left leg are there on top of the piano, while his other arm with his left ear and right leg are in the kitchen. I haven't found places for his stummick and what's left of his head yet, but I will before the crowd begins to arrive."

"Why Mr. Me!" protested Mollie, as she gazed mournfully upon the scraps of the broken Cupid. "You didn't really smash up that pretty little statue?"

"I'm afraid I did, Mollie," said the Unwiseman sadly. "I hated to do it, but this is a Museum my dear, and when you go into the museum business you've to do it according to the rules. One of the rules seems to be 'No admission to Unbusted Statuary,' and I've acted accordingly. I don't want to deceive anybody and if I gave even to my kitchen-stove the idea that these first class museums over in Europe have anything but fractures in them – "

"Fragments, isn't it?" suggested Mollie.

"It's all the same," said the Unwiseman, "Fractures or fragments, there isn't a complete statue anywhere in any museum that I ever saw, and in educating my kitchen-stove in Art I'm going to follow the lead of the experts."

"Well I don't see the use of it," sighed Mollie, for she had admired the pretty little plaster Cupid very much indeed.

"No more do I, Mollie dear," said the Unwiseman, "but rules are rules and we've got to obey them. This is the Grand Canal at Venice," he added holding up a bottle full of dark green water in order to change the subject. "And here is what I call a Hoople-fish from the Adriatic."

"What on earth is a Hoople-fish?" cried Mollie with a roar of laughter as she gazed upon the object to which the Unwiseman referred, an old water soaked strip of shingley wood.

"It is the barrel hoop I caught that day I went fishing from the hotel balcony," explained the Unwiseman. "I wish I'd kept the artist's straw hat I landed at the same time for a Hat-fish to complete my collection of Strange Shad From Venice, but of course that was impossible. The artist seemed to want it himself and as he had first claim to it I didn't press the matter. The barrel-hoop will serve however to warn Americans who want to go salmon fishing on the Grand Canal just what kind of queer things they'll catch if they have any luck at all."

"What's this?" asked Whistlebinkie, peering into a little tin pepper pot that appeared to contain nothing but sand.

"You must handle that very carefully," said the Unwiseman, taking it in one hand, and shaking some of the sand out of it into the palm of the other. "That is the birth-place of Christopher Columbus, otherwise the soil of Genoa. I brought home about a pail-ful of it, and I'm going to have it put up in forty-seven little bottles to send around to people that would appreciate having it. One of 'em is to go to the President to be kept on the White House mantel-piece in memory of Columbus, and the rest of them I shall distribute to the biggest Museums in each one of the United States. I don't think any State in the Union should be without a bottle of Columbus birth-place, in view of all that he did for this country by discovering it. There wouldn't have been any States at all of it hadn't been for him, and it strikes me that is a very simple and touching way of showing our gratitude."

"Perfectly fine!" cried Mollie enthusiastically. "I don't believe there's another collection like this anywhere in all the world, do you?" she added, sweeping the room with an eye full of wondering admiration for the genius that had gathered all these marvellous things together.

"No – I really don't," said the Unwiseman. "And just think what a fine thing it will be for people who can't afford to travel," he went on. "For twenty-five cents they can come here and see everything we saw – except a few bogus kings and things like that that ain't really worth seeing – from the French language down to the Venetian Hoople-fish, from an Alp and a Glazier to a Specially Appointed Muffin to the King and Columbus's birth-place. I really think I shall have to advertise it in the newspapers. A Trip Abroad Without Leaving Home, All for a Quarter, at the Unwiseman's Museum. Alps a Specialty."

"Here's a couple of empty bottles," said Whistlebinkie, who had been snooping curiously about the room.

"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "I've more than that. I'm sorry to say that some of my exhibits have faded away. The first one was filled with London fog, and as you remember I lost that when the cork flew out the day they dejected me from the British Museum. That other bottle when I put the cork in it contained a view of Gibraltar and the African Coast through the port-hole of the steamer, but it's all faded out, just as the bird's-eye view of the horizon out in the middle of the ocean that I had in a little pill bottle did. There are certain things you can't keep even in bottles – but I shall show the Gibraltar bottle just the same. A bottle of that size that once contained that big piece of rock and the African Coast to boot, is a wonderful thing in itself."

In which belief Mollie and Whistlebinkie unanimously agreed.

"Was the kitchen-stove glad to see you back?" asked Whistlebinkie.

"Well – it didn't say very much," said the Unwiseman, with an affectionate glance out into the kitchen, "but when I filled it up with coal, and started the fire going, it was more than cordial. Indeed before the evening was over it got so very warm that I had to open the parlor windows to cool it off."

"It's pretty nice to be home again, isn't it," said Mollie.

"Nice?" echoed the old gentleman. "I can just tell you, Miss Mollie Whistlebinkie, that the finest thing I've seen since I left home, finer than all the oceans in the world, more beautiful than all the Englands in creation, sweeter than all the Frances on the map, lovelier than any Alp that ever poked its nose against the sky, dearer than all the Venices afloat – the greatest, most welcome sight that ever greeted my eyes was my own brass front door knob holding itself out there in the twilight of yesterday to welcome me home and twinkling in the fading light of day like a house afire as if to show it was glad to see me back. That's why the minute I came into the yard I took off my hat and knelt down before that old brass knob and kissed it."

The old man's voice shook just a little as he spoke, and a small teardrop gathered and glistened in a corner of his eye – but it was a tear of joy and content, not of sorrow.

"And then when I turned the knob and opened the door," he went on, "well – talk about your Palaces with all their magnificent shiny floors and gorgeous gold framed mirrors and hall-bedrooms as big as the Madison Square Garden – they couldn't compare to this old parlor of mine with the piano over on one side of the room, the refrigerator in the other, the leak beaming down from the ceiling, and my kitchen-stove peeking in through the door and sort of keeping an eye on things generally. And not a picture in all that 9643 miles of paint at the Loover can hold a candle to my beloved old Washington Crossing the Delaware over my mantel-piece, with the British bombarding him with snow-balls and the river filled to the brim with ice-bergs – no sirree! And best of all, nobody around to leave their aitches all over the place for somebody else to pick up, or any French language to take a pretty little bird and turn it into a wazzoh, or to turn a good honest hard boiled egg into an oof, but everybody from Me myself down to the kitchen-stove using the good old American language whenever we have something to say and holding our tongues in the same when we haven't."

"Hooray for us!" cried Whistlebinkie, dancing with glee.

"That's what I say," said the Unwiseman. "America's good enough for me and I'm glad I'm back."

"Well I feel the same way," said Mollie. "I liked Europe very much indeed but somehow or other I like America best."

"And for a very good reason," said the Unwiseman.

"What?" asked Mollie.

"Because it's Home," said the Unwiseman.

"I guess-thassit," said Whistlebinkie.

"Well don't guess again, Fizzledinkie," said the Unwiseman, "because that's the answer, and if you guessed again you might get it wrong."

And so it was that Mollie and the Unwiseman and Whistlebinkie finished their trip abroad, and returned better pleased with Home than they had ever been before, which indeed is one of the greatest benefits any of us get out of a trip to Europe, for after all that fine old poet was right when he said: