Kitabı oku: «Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad», sayfa 6

"O I may be invited off to a country house to spend a week, somewhere outside of Paris," said the Unwiseman, "and if I am, and the chance comes up for me to hold that nice little chat with my host, why it will make me very popular with everybody. People like to have you take an interest in their children, especially when they are musical. Then I have learned this to get off at the breakfast-table to my hostess:

"I have slept well. I have two mattresses and a spring mattress.

Will you have another pillow?

No thank you I have a comfortable bolster.

Is one blanket sufficient for you?

Yes, but I would like some wax candles and a box of matches."

"That will show her that I appreciate all the comforts of her beautiful household, and at the same time feel so much at home that I am not afraid to ask for something else that I happen to want. The thing that worries me a little about the last is that there might be an electric light in the room, so that asking for a wax candle and a box of matches would sound foolish. I gather from the lesson, however, that it is customary in France to ask for wax candles and a box of matches, so I'm going to do it anyhow. There's nothing like following the customs of the natives when you can."

"I'd like to hear you say some of that in French," said Whistlebinkie.

"Oh you wouldn't understand it, Whistlebinkie," said the Unwiseman. "Still I don't mind."

And the old man rattled off the following:

"Avvy-voo kelker chose ah me dire? Avvy-voo bien dormy la nooit dernyere? Savvy-voo kieskersayker cetum la avec le nez rouge? Kervooly-voo-too-der-sweet-silver-plate-o-see-le-mem. Donny-moi des boogies et des alloomettes avec burr et sooker en tasse. La Voila. Kerpensy-voo de cette comedie mon cher mounseer de Whistlebinkie?"

"Mercy!" cried Whistlebinkie. "What a language! I don't believe I ever could learn to speak it."

"You learn to speak it, Whistlebinkie?" laughed the old gentleman. "You? Well I guess not. I don't believe you could even learn to squeak it."

With which observation the Unwiseman hopped back into his carpet-bag, for the conductor of the train was seen coming up the platform of the railway station, and the old gentleman as usual was travelling without a ticket.

"I'd rather be caught by an English conductor if I'm going to be caught at all," he remarked after the train had started and he was safe. "For I find in looking it over that all my talk in French is polite conversation, and I don't think there'd be much chance for that in a row with a conductor over a missing railway ticket."

IX
IN PARIS

The Unwiseman was up bright and early the next morning. Mollie and Whistlebinkie had barely got their eyes open when he came knocking at the door.

"Better get up, Mollie," he called in. "It's fine weather and I'm going to call on the Umpire. The chances are that on a beautiful day like this he'll have a parade and I wouldn't miss it for a farm."

"What Umpire are you talking about?" Mollie replied, opening the door on a crack.

"Why Napoleon Bonaparte," said the Unwiseman. "Didn't you ever hear of him? He's the man that came up here from Corsica and picked the crown up on the street where the king had dropped it by mistake, and put it on his own head and made people think he was the whole roil family. He was smart enough for an American and I want to tell him so."

"Why he's dead," said Mollie.

"What?" cried the Unwiseman. "Umpire Napoleon dead? Why – when did that happen? I didn't see anything about it in the newspapers."

"He died a long time ago," answered Mollie. "Before I was born, I guess."

"Well I never!" ejaculated the Unwiseman, his face clouding over. "That book I read on the History of France didn't say anything about his being dead – that is, not as far as I got in it. Last time I heard of him he was starting out for Russia to give the Czar a licking. I supposed he thought it was a good time to do it after the Japs had started the ball a-rolling. Are you sure about that?"

"Pretty sure," said Mollie. "I don't know very much about French history, but I'm almost certain he's dead."

"I'm going down stairs to ask at the office," said the Unwiseman. "They'll probably know all about it."

So the little old gentleman pattered down the hall to the elevator and went to the office to inquire as to the fate of the Emperor Napoleon. In five minutes he was back again.

"Say, Mollie," he whispered through the key-hole. "I wish you'd ask your father about the Umpire. I can't seem to find out anything about him."

"Don't they know at the office?" asked Mollie.

"Oh I guess they know all right," said the Unwiseman, "but there's a hitch somewhere in my getting the information. Far as I can find out these people over here don't understand their own language. I asked 'em in French, like this: 'Mounseer le Umpire, est il mort?' And they told me he was no more. Now whether no more means that he is not mort, or is mort, depends on what language the man who told me was speaking. If he was speaking French he's not dead. If he was speaking English he is dead, and there you are. It's awfully mixed up."

"I-guess-seez-ded-orright," whistled Whistlebinkie. "He was dead last time I heard of him, and I guess when they're dead once there dead for good."

"Well you never can tell," said the Unwiseman. "He was a very great man, the Umpire Napoleon was, and they might have only thought he was dead while he was playing foxy to see what the newspapers would say about him."

So Mollie asked her father and to the intense regret of everybody it turned out that the great Emperor had been dead for a long time.

"It's a very great disappointment to me," sighed the Unwiseman, when Mollie conveyed the sad news to him. "The minute I knew we were coming to France I began to read up about the country, and Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the things I came all the way over to see. Are the Boys de Bologna dead too?"

"I never heard of them," said Mollie.

"I feel particularly upset about the Umpire," continued the Unwiseman, "because I sat up almost all last night getting up some polite conversation to be held with him this morning. I found just the thing for it in my book."

"Howdit-go?" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"Like this," said the Unwiseman. "I was going to begin with:

"'Shall you buy a horse?'

"And the Umpire was to say:

"'I should like to buy a horse from you.'

"And then we were to continue with:

"'I have no horse but I will sell you my dog.'

'You are wrong; dogs are such faithful creatures.'

'But my wife prefers cats – '"

"Pooh!" cried Whistlebinkie. "You haven't got any wife."

"Well, what of it?" retorted the Unwiseman. "The Umpire wouldn't know that, and besides she would prefer cats if I had one. You should not interrupt conversation when other people are talking, Whistlebinkie, especially when it's polite conversation."

"Orright-I-pol-gize," whistled Whistlebinkie. "Go on with the rest of it."

"I was then going to say: " continued the Unwiseman,

"'Will you go out this afternoon?'

'I should like to go out this afternoon.'

'Should you remain here if your mother were here?'

'Yes I should remain here even if my aunt were here.'

'Had you remained here I should not have gone out.'

'I shall have finished when you come.'

'As soon as you have received your money come to see me.'

'I do not know yet whether we shall leave tomorrow.'

'I should have been afraid had you not been with me.'

'So long.'

'To the river.'"

"To the river?" asked Whistlebinkie. "What does that mean?"

"It is French for, 'I hope we shall meet again.' Au river is the polite way of saying, 'good-bye for a little while.' And to think that after having sat up until five o'clock this morning learning all that by heart I should find that the man I was going to say it to has been dead for – how many years, Mollie?"

"Oh nearly a hundred years," said the little girl.

"No wonder it wasn't in the papers before I left home," said the Unwiseman. "Oh well, never mind – ."

"Perhaps you can swing that talk around so as to fit some French Robert," suggested Whistlebinkie.

"The Police are not Roberts over here," said the Unwiseman. "In France they are Johns – John Darms is what they call the pleece in this country, and I never should think of addressing a conversation designed for an Umpire to the plebean ear of a mere John."

"Well I think it was pretty poor conversation," said Whistlebinkie. "And I guess it's lucky for you the Umpire is dead. All that stuff didn't mean anything."

"It doesn't seem to mean much in English," said the Unwiseman, "but it must mean something in French, because if it didn't the man who wrote French in Five Lessons wouldn't have considered it important enough to print. Just because you don't like a thing, or don't happen to understand it, isn't any reason for believing that the Umpire would not find it extremely interesting. I shan't waste it on a John anyhow."

An hour or two later when Mollie had breakfasted the Unwiseman presented himself again.

"I'm very much afraid I'm not going to like this place any better than I did London," he said. "The English people, even if they do drop their aitches all over everywhere, understand their own language, which is more than these Frenchmen do. I have tried my French on half a dozen of them and there wasn't one of 'em that looked as if he knew what I was talking about."

"What did you say to them?" asked Mollie.

"Well I went up to a cabman and remarked, just as the book put it, 'how is the sister of your mother's uncle,' and he acted as if I'd hit him with a brick," said the Unwiseman. "Then I stopped a bright looking boy out on the rue and said to him, 'have you seen the ormolu clock of your sister's music teacher,' to which he should have replied, 'no I have not seen the ormolu clock of my sister's music teacher, but the candle-stick of the wife of the butcher of my cousin's niece is on the mantel-piece,' but all he did was to stick out his tongue at me and laugh."

"You ought to have spoken to one of the John Darms," laughed Whistlebinkie.

"I did," said the Unwiseman. "I stopped one outside the door and asked him, 'is your grandfather still alive?' The book says the answer to that is 'yes, and my grandmother also,' whereupon I should ask, 'how many grandchildren has your grandfather?' But I didn't get beyond the first question. Instead of telling me that his grandfather was living, and his grandmother also, he said something about Ally Voozon, a person of whom I never heard and who is not mentioned in the book at all. I wish I was back somewhere where they speak a language somebody can understand."

"Have you had your breakfast?" asked Mollie.

A deep frown came upon the face of the Unwiseman.

"No – " he answered shortly. "I – er – I went to get some but they tried to cheat me," he added. "There was a sign in a window announcing French Tabble d'hotes. I thought it was some new kind of a breakfast food like cracked wheat, or oat-meal flakes, so I stopped in and asked for a small box of it, and they tried to make me believe it was a meal of four or five courses, with soup and fish and a lot of other things thrown in, that had to be eaten on the premises. I wished for once that I knew some French conversation that wasn't polite to tell 'em what I thought of 'em. I can imagine a lot of queer things, but when everybody tells me that oats are soup and fish and olives and ice-cream and several other things to boot, even in French, why I just don't believe it, that's all. What's more I can prove that oats are oats over here because I saw a cab-horse eating some. I

may not know beans but I know oats, and I told 'em so. Then the garkon – I know why some people call these French waiters gason now, they talk so much – the garkon said I could order a la carte, and I told him I guessed I could if I wanted to, but until I was reduced to a point where I had to eat out of a wagon I wouldn't ask his permission."

"Good-for-you!" whistled Whistlebinkie, clapping the Unwiseman on the back.

"When a man wants five cents worth of oats it's a regular swindle to try to ram forty cents worth of dinner down his throat, especially at breakfast time, and I for one just won't have it," said the Unwiseman. "By the way, I wouldn't eat any fish over here if I were you, Mollie," he went on.

"Why not?" asked the little girl. "Isn't it fresh?"

"It isn't that," said the Unwiseman. "It's because over here it's poison."

"No!" cried Mollie.

"Yep," said the Unwiseman. "They admit it themselves. Just look here."

The old gentleman opened his book on French in Five Lessons, and turned to the back pages where English words found their French equivalents.

"See that?" he observed, pointing to the words. "Fish – poison. P-O-I-double S-O-N. 'Taint spelled right, but that's what it says."

"It certainly does," said Mollie, very much surprised.

"Smity good thing you had that book or you might have been poisoned," said Whistlebinkie.

"I don't believe your father knows about that, does he, Mollie?" asked the old man anxiously.

"I'm afraid not," said Mollie. "Leastways, he hasn't said anything to me about it, and I'm pretty sure if he'd known it he would have told me not to eat any."

"Well you tell him with my compliments," said the Unwiseman. "I like your father and I'd hate to have anything happen to him that I could prevent. I'm going up the rue now to the Loover to see the pictures."

"Up the what?" asked Whistlebinkie.

"Up the rue," said the Unwiseman. "That's what these foolish people over here call a street. I'm going up the street. There's a guide down stairs who says he'll take me all over Paris in one day for three dollars, and we're going to start in ten minutes, after I've had a spoonful of my bottled chicken broth and a ginger-snap. Humph! Tabble d'hotes – when I've got a bag full of first class food from New York! I tell you, Mollie, this travelling around in furry countries makes a man depreciate American things more than ever."

"I guess you mean appreciate," suggested Mollie.

"May be I do," returned the Unwiseman. "I mean I like 'em better. American oats are better than tabble d'hotes. American beef is better than French buff. American butter is better than foreign burr, and while their oofs are pretty good, when I eat eggs I want eggs, and not something else with a hard-boiled accent on it that twists my tongue out of shape. And when people speak a language I like 'em to have one they can understand when it's spoken to them like good old Yankamerican."

"Hoorray for-Ramerrica!" cried Whistlebinkie.

"Ditto hic, as Julius Cæsar used to say," roared the Unwiseman.

And the Unwiseman took what was left of his bottleful of their native land out of his pocket and the three little travellers cheered it until the room fairly echoed with the noise. That night when they had gathered together again, the Unwiseman looked very tired.

"Well, Mollie," he said, "I've seen it all. That guide down stairs showed me everything in the place and I'm going to retire to my carpet-bag again until you're ready to start for Kayzoozalum – "

"Swizz-izzer-land," whistled Whistlebinkie.

"Switzerland," said Mollie.

"Well wherever it is we're going Alp hunting," said the Unwiseman. "I'm too tired to say a word like that to-night. My tongue is all out of shape anyhow trying to talk French and I'm not going to speak it any more. It's not the sort of language I admire – just full o' nonsense. When people call pudding 'poo-dang' and a bird a 'wazzoh' I'm through with it. I've seen 8374 miles of pictures; some more busted statuary; one cathedral – I thought a cathedral was some kind of an animal with a hairy head and a hump on its back, but it's nothing but a big overgrown church – ; Napoleon's tomb – he is dead after all and France is a Republic, as if we didn't have a big enough Republic home without coming over here to see another – ; one River Seine, which ain't much bigger than the Erie Canal, and not a trout or a snapping turtle in it from beginning to end; the Boys de Bologna, which is only a Park, with no boys or sausages anywhere about it; the Champs Eliza; an obelisk; and about sixteen palaces without a King or an Umpire in the whole lot; and I've paid three dollars for it, and I'm satisfied. I'd be better satisfied if I'd paid a dollar and a half, but you can't travel for nothing, and I regard the extra dollar and fifty cents as well spent since I've learned what to do next time."

"Wass-that?" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"Stay home," said the Unwiseman. "Home's good enough for me and when I get there I'm going to stay there. Good night."

And with that the Unwiseman jumped into his carpet-bag and for a week nothing more was heard of him.

"I hope he isn't sick," said Whistlebinkie, at the end of that period. "I think we ought to go and find out, don't you, Mollie."

"I certainly do," said Mollie. "I know I should be just stufficated to death if I'd spent a week in a carpet-bag."

So they tip-toed up to the side of the carpet-bag and listened. At first there was no sound to be heard, and then all of a sudden their fears were set completely at rest by the cracked voice of their strange old friend singing the following patriotic ballad of his own composition:

 
"Next time I start out for to travel abroad
I'll go where pure English is spoken.
I'll put on my shoes and go sailing toward
The beautiful land of Hoboken.
 
 
"No more on that movey old channel I'll sail,
The sickening waves to be tossed on,
But do all my travelling later by rail
And visit that frigid old Boston.
 
 
"Nay never again will I step on a ship
And go as a part of the cargo,
But when I would travel I'll make my next trip
Out west to the town of Chicago.
 
 
"My sweet carpet-bag, you will never again
Be called on to cross the Atlantic.
We'll just buy a ticket and take the first train
To marvellous old Williamantic.
 
 
"No French in the future will I ever speak
With strange and impossible, answers.
I'd rather go in for that curious Greek
The natives all speak in Arkansas.
 
 
"To London and Paris let other folks go
I'm utterly cured of the mania.
Hereafter it's me for the glad Ohi-o,
Or down in dear sweet Pennsylvania.
 
 
"If any one asks me to cross o'er the sea
I'll answer them promptly, "No thanky —
There's beauty enough all around here for me
In this glorious land of the Yankee."
 

Mollie laughed as the Unwiseman's voice died away.

"I guess he's all right, Whistlebinkie," she said. "Anybody who can sing like that can't be very sick."

"No I guess not," said Whistlebinkie. "He seems to have got his tongue out of tangle again. I was awfully worried about that."

"Why, dear?" asked Mollie.

"Because," said Whistlebinkie, "I was afraid if he didn't he'd begin to talk like me and that would be perf'ly awful."

X
THE ALPS AT LAST

When the Unwiseman came out of the carpet-bag again the travellers had reached Switzerland. Every effort that Mollie and Whistlebinkie made to induce him to come forth and go about Paris with them had wholly failed.

"It's more comfortable in here," he had answered them, "and I've got my hands full forgetting all that useless French I learned last week. It's very curious how much harder it is to forget French than it is to learn it. I've been four days forgetting that wazzoh means bird and that oofs is eggs."

"And you haven't forgotten it yet, have you," said Whistlebinkie.

"O yes," said the Unwiseman. "I've forgotten it entirely. It occasionally occurs to me that it is so when people mention the fact, but in the main I am now able to overlook it. I'll be glad when we are on our way again, Mollie, because between you and me I think they're a lot of frauds here too, just like over in England. They've got a statue here of a lady named Miss Jones of Ark and I know there wasn't any such person on it. Shem and Ham and Japhet and their wives, and Noah, and Mrs. Noah were there but no Miss Jones."

"Maybe Mrs. Noah or Mrs. Shem or one of the others was Miss Jones before she married Mr. Noah or Shem, Ham or Japhet," suggested Whistlebinkie.

"Then they should ought to have said so," said the Unwiseman, "and put up the statue to Mrs. Noah or Mrs. Shem or Mrs. Ham or Mrs. Japhet – but they weren't the same person because this Miss Jones got burnt cooking a steak and Mrs. Noah and Mrs. Ham and Mrs. Shem and Mrs. Japhet didn't. Miss Jones was a great general according to these people and there wasn't any military at all in the time of Noah for a lady to be general of, so the thing just can't help being a put up job just to deceive us Americans into coming over here to see their curiosities and paying guides three dollars for leading us to them."

"Then you won't come with us out to Versailles?" asked Mollie very much disappointed.

"Versailles?" asked the Unwiseman. "What kind of sails are Versailles? Some kind of a French cat-boat? If so, none of that for me. I'm not fond of sailing."

"It's a town with a beautiful palace in it," explained Mollie.

"That settles it," said the Unwiseman. "I'll stay here. I've seen all the palaces without any kings in 'em that I need in my business, so you can just count me out. I may go out shopping this afternoon and buy an air-gun to shoot alps with when we get to – ha – hum – "

"Switzerland," prompted Mollie hurriedly, largely with the desire to keep Whistlebinkie from speaking of Swiz-izzer-land.

"Precisely," said the Unwiseman. "If you'd given me time I'd have said it myself. I've been practising on that name ever since yesterday and I've got so I can say it right five times out of 'leven. And I'm learning to yodel too. I have discovered that down in – ha – hum – Swztoozalum, when people don't feel like speaking French, they yodel, and I think I can get along better in yodeling than I can in French. I'm going to try it anyhow. So run along and have a good time and don't worry about me. I'm having a fine time. Yodeling is really lots of fun. Trala-la-lio!"

So Mollie and Whistlebinkie went to Versailles, which by the way is not pronounced Ver-sails, but Ver-sai-ee, and left the Unwiseman to his own devices. A week later the party arrived at Chamounix, a beautiful little Swiss village lying in the valley at the base of Mont Blanc, the most famous of all the Alps.

"Looks-slike-a-gray-big-snow-ball," whistled Whistlebinkie, gazing admiringly at the wonderful mountain glistening like a huge mass of silver in the sunlight.

"It is beautiful," said Mollie. "We must get the Unwiseman out to see it."

"I'll call him," said Whistlebinkie eagerly; and the little rubber-doll bounded off to the carpet-bag as fast as his legs would carry him.

"Hi there, Mister Me," he called breathlessly through the key-hole. "Come out. There's a nalp out in front of the hotel."

"Tra-la-lulio-tra-la-lali-ee," yodeled the cracked little voice from within. "Tra-la-la-la-lalio."

"Hullo there," cried Whistlebinkie again. "Stop that tra-la-lody-ing and hurry out, there's a-nalp in front of the hotel."

"A nalp?" said the Unwiseman popping his head up from the middle of the bag for all the world like a Jack-in-the-box. "What's a nalp?"

"A-alp," explained Whistlebinkie, as clearly as he could – he was so out of breath he could hardly squeak, much less speak.

"Really?" cried the Unwiseman, all excitement. "Dear me – glad you called me. Is he loose?"

"Well," hesitated Whistlebinkie, hardly knowing how to answer, "it-ain't-exactly-tied up, I guess."

"Ain't any danger of its coming into the house and biting people, is there?" asked the Unwiseman, rummaging through the carpet-bag for his air-gun, which he had purchased in Paris while the others were visiting Versailles.

"No," laughed Whistlebinkie. "Tstoo-big."

"Mercy – it must be a fearful big one," said the Unwiseman. "I hope it's muzzled."

Armed with his air-gun, and carrying a long rope with a noose in one end over his arm, the Unwiseman started out.

"Watcher-gone-'tdo-with-the-lassoo?" panted Whistlebinkie, struggling manfully to keep up with his companion.

"That's to tie him up with in case I catch him alive," said the Unwiseman, as they emerged from the door of the hotel and stood upon the little hotel piazza from which all the new arrivals were gazing at the wonderful peak before them, rising over sixteen thousand feet into the heavens, and capped forever with a crown of snow and ice.

"Out the way there!" cried the Unwiseman, rushing valiantly through the group. "Out the way, and don't talk or even yodel. I must have a steady aim, and conversation disturbs my nerves."

The hotel guests all stepped hastily to one side and made room for the hero, who on reaching the edge of the piazza stopped short and gazed about him with a puzzled look on his face.

"Well," he cried impatiently, "where is he?"

"Where is what?" asked Mollie, stepping up to the Unwiseman's side and putting her hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"That Alp?" said the Unwiseman. "Whistlebinkie said there was an alp running around the yard and I've come down either to catch him alive or shoot him. He hasn't hid under this piazza, has he?"

"No, Mr. Me," she said. "They couldn't get an Alp under this piazza. That's it over there," she added, pointing out Mont Blanc.

"What's it? I don't see anything but a big snow drift," said the Unwiseman. "Queer sort of people here – must be awful lazy not to have their snow shoveled off as late as July."

"That's the Alp," explained Mollie.

"Tra-la-lolly-O!" yodeled the Unwiseman. "Which is yodelese for nonsense. That an Alp? Why I thought an Alp was a sort of animal with a shaggy fur coat like a bear or a chauffeur, and about the size of a rhinoceros."

"No," said Mollie. "An Alp is a mountain. All that big range of mountains with snow and ice on top of them are the Alps. Didn't you know that?"

The Unwiseman didn't answer, but with a yodel of disgust turned on his heel and went back to his carpet-bag.

"You aren't mad at me, are you, Mr. Me?" asked Mollie, following meekly after.

"No indeed," said the Unwiseman, sadly. "Of course not. It isn't your fault if an Alp is a toboggan slide or a skating rink instead of a wild animal. It's all my own fault. I was very careless to come over here and waste my time to see a lot of snow that ain't any colder or wetter than the stuff we have delivered at our front doors at home in winter. I should ought to have found out what it was before I came."

"It's very beautiful though as it is," suggested Mollie.

"I suppose so," said the Unwiseman. "But I don't have to travel four thousand miles to see beautiful things while I have my kitchen-stove right there in my own kitchen. Besides I've spent a dollar and twenty cents on an air-gun, and sixty cents for a lassoo to hunt Alps with, when I might better have bought a snow shovel. That's really what I'm mad at. If I'd bought a snow shovel and a pair of ear-tabs I could have made some money here offering to shovel the snow off that hill there so's somebody could get some pleasure out of it. It would be a lovely place to go and sit on a warm summer evening if it wasn't for that snow and very likely they'd have paid me two or three dollars for fixing it up for them."

"I guess it would take you several hours to do it," said Whistlebinkie.

"What if it took a week?" retorted the Unwiseman. "As long as they were willing to pay for it. But what's the use of talking about it? I haven't got a shovel, and I can't shovel the snow off an Alp with an air-gun, so that's the end of it."

And for the time being that was the end of it. The Unwiseman very properly confined himself to the quiet of the carpet-bag until his wrath had entirely disappeared, and after luncheon he turned up cheerily in the office of the hotel.

"Let's hire a couple of sleds and go coasting," he suggested to Mollie. "That Mount Blank looks like a pretty good hill. Whistlebinkie and I can pull you up to the top and it will be a fine slide coming back."

But inquiry at the office brought out the extraordinary fact that there were no sleds in the place and never had been.

"My goodness!" ejaculated the Unwiseman. "I never knew such people. I don't wonder these Switzers ain't a great nation like us Americans. I don't believe any American hotel-keeper would have as much snow as that in his back-yard all summer long and not have a regular sled company to accommodate guests who wanted to go coasting on it. If they had an Alp like that over at Atlantic City they'd build a fence around it, and charge ten cents to get inside, where you could hire a colored gentleman to haul you up to the top of the hill and guide you down again on the return slide."

"I guess they would," said Whistlebinkie.

"Then they'd turn part of it into an ice quarry," the Unwiseman went on, "and sell great huge chunks of ice to people all the year round and put the regular ice men out of business. I've half a mind to write home to my burgular and tell him here's a chance to earn an honest living as an iceman. He could get up a company to come here and buy up that hill and just regularly go in for ice-mining. There never was such a chance. If people can make money out of coal mines and gold mines and copper mines, I don't see why they can't do the same thing with ice mines. Why don't you speak to your Papa about it, Mollie? He'd make his everlasting fortune."

"I will," said Mollie, very much interested in the idea.

"And all that snow up there going to waste too," continued the Unwiseman growing enthusiastic over the prospect. "Just think of the millions of people who can't get cool in summer over home. Your father could sell snow to people in midsummer for six-fifty a ton, and they could shovel it into their furnaces and cool off their homes ten or twenty degrees all summer long. My goodness – talk about your billionaires – here's a chance for squillions."

The Unwiseman paced the floor excitedly. The vision of wealth that loomed up before his mind's eye was so vast that he could hardly contain himself in the face of it.

"Wouldn't it all melt before he could get it over to America?" asked Mollie.

"Why should it?" demanded the Unwiseman. "If it don't melt here in summer time why should it melt anywhere else? I don't believe snow was ever disagreeable just for the pleasure of being so."