The Clerk of the Weather.
The Clerk of the Weather went out to walk
All down Victoria Street;
Of late his ways had caused much talk,
And chatter indiscreet.
So he donned a suit of mingled sleet,
With a dash of falling snow,
A rainy tie, and a streaky skye
Which barked where'er he'd go.
Then, to the surprise of Willie and Maude, the Jackarandajam began to dance wildly, while the Weather Cock sang as follows:—
O cock-a-doodle-doo!
The weather will be fine—
If it does not sleet or hail or snow,
And if it does not big guns blow,
And the sun looks out to shine.
The Jackarandajam stood on his head again and sang the second verse:—
Wrapt up in his thoughts he went along,
His manner sad and crossed;
With a windy strain he hummed a song,
Of thunderbolts and frost.
He strode with a Barometrical stride,
With forecasts on his brow;
Till he tripped up Short upon a slide,
Which made him vow a vow.
The Weather Cock at once sang the chorus and the Jackarandajam danced as before.
O Cock-a-doodle-doo!
The weather will be fine—
If there is no fog, or drenching rain,
And thunder does not boom again,
And the sun looks out to shine.
Now came the third and last verse:—
His prophesies got all mixed and mulled,
The Moon began to blink;
And all his faculties were dulled
When he saw the Dog Star wink!
And up on the steeple tall and black
The Weather Cock he crew!
He crew and he crowed till he fell in the road,
O cock-a-doodle-doo!
And sure enough the Weather Cock did tumble into the road, and the Clerk of the Weather and the Zankiwank tumbled helter skelter after him. Immediately they got up again and rushed through the window, and catching hold of the children, they whirled them round and round, singing the final chorus all together:—
O cock-a-doodle-doo!
The weather will be fine—
If lightning does not flash on high,
Nor gloomy be the azure sky,
And the sun peeps out to shine.
After which they all disappeared except the Zankiwank, and once again they found themselves in the street.
"They were both wrong," muttered the Zankiwank to himself, "and yet one was right."
"How could they both be wrong then? One was right? Very well. Then only one was wrong," corrected Maude.
"No, they were both wrong—because I was the right one after all. Besides, you can't always prove a negative, can you?"
"How tiresome of you! You only mentioned two and now say three. I do not believe you know what you do mean."
"Not often, sometimes, by accident, you know—only do not tell anybody else."
"You are certainly very extraordinary persons—that is all I can say," said Willie. "You do not do anything quite rationally or naturally."
"Naturally. Why should we? We are the great Middle Classes—neither alive nor dead. Betwixt and between. Half and half, you know, for now we are in the Spirit World only known to poets and children. But do come along, or the bicycles will start without us, and we have an appointment to keep."
Now, how could one even try to tell such an eccentric creature as the Zankiwank that he was all wrong and talking fables and fibs and tarra-diddles? Neither of them attempted to correct these erroneous ideas, but wondering where they were going next, Maude and Willie mounted the bicycles that came as if by magic, and rode off at a terrific rate, though they had never ridden a machine before.
They were almost out of breath when the Zankiwank called out "stop," and away went the bicycles, and they found themselves standing in front of an immense edifice with a sign-board swinging from the gambrel roof, on which was painted in large golden letters—
Time was meant for Slaves.
There was no opportunity to ascertain what the sign meant, for all at once there darted out of the shop Mr Swinglebinks with whom they had travelled from Charing Cross.
"Don't waste your time like that! Make haste, let me have five minutes. I am in a hurry."
"Have you got five minutes to spare?" asked the Zankiwank of Maude.
"Oh yes," she replied. "Why?"
"Let me have them at once then. A gentleman left twenty-five minutes behind him yesterday and I want to make up half-an-hour for a regular customer!" screamed Mr Swinglebinks to the bewildered children.
"But—but—O what do you mean? I have got five minutes to spare and I'll devote them to you if you like, but I can't give them to you as though they were a piece of toffee," answered Maude with much perplexity, while Willie stood awe-struck, not comprehending Mr Swinglebinks in the least.
"Time is a tough customer, you know. He is here, he is there, he is gone! He is, he was, he will be. Yet you cannot trap Time, for he is like a sunbeam," muttered the Zankiwank as though he never was short of Time.
"There, that five minutes is gone—wasted, passed into the vast vacuum of eternity! With my friend Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon I can tell you all about time! 'Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal!' Oh, I know Father Time and all his tricks. I have counted the Sands of Time. I supply him with his Hour Glass. Don't you apprehend me?"
They certainly did not. Mr Swinglebinks was more mystifying than all the other persons they had encountered put together. So they made no reply.
"I am collecting Time. Time, so my copy books told me, was meant for Slaves. I always felt sorry for the Slaves. They have no Time, you know, because it is meant for them. Lots of things are meant for you, only you won't get them. Britons never will be Slaves, so they'll never want for Time. However, as Time was meant for Slaves, I mean to let them have as much as I can. So every spare minute or two I can get, I of course send them over to them."
"It is ridiculous. You cannot measure time and cut off a bit like that," ventured Willie.
"Oh yes, you can. A client of mine was laid up the other day—in fact he was in bed for a fortnight, so, as he had no use for the time he had on hand before him, he just went to sleep and sent ten days round to me!"
"Oh, Mr Zankiwank, what is this gentleman saying?" said Maude.
"It's all perfectly true," answered the Zankiwank. "You often hear of somebody who has half an hour to spare, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Very good. Sometimes you will hear, too, of somebody who has lost ten minutes."
"I see," said Willie.
"And somebody else will tell you they do not know what to do with their Time?"
"Go on," cried both children, more puzzled than ever.
"Well, instead of letting all the Time be wasted, Mr Swinglebinks has opened his exchange to receive all the spare time he can, and this he distributes amongst those who want an hour or a day or a week. But they have to pay for it——"
"Pay for it?"
"Time is money," called out Mr Swinglebinks.
"There you are. If Time is money you can exchange Time for money and money for Time. Is not that feasible?"
Did anybody ever hear of such queer notions? Maude and Willie were quite tired through trying to think the matter out.
Time was meant for slaves.—Time is money.—Time and Tide wait for no man.—Take Time when Time is.—Take Time by the forelock.—Procrastination is the thief of Time.—Killing Time is no murder.—Saving Time is no crime. As quick as thought Mr Swinglebinks exhibited these statements on his swinging sign, one after the other, and then he came to them once again.
"Are you convinced now? Let me have a quarter of an hour to send to the poor slaves. Time was meant for them, you know, and you are using their property without acknowledgment!"
The Zankiwank looked on as wise as an owl, but said nothing.
"Dear me, how you are wasting your time sitting there doing nothing!" said Mr Swinglebinks distractedly. "Time is money—Time is money. Give me some of the Time you are losing."
"Let us go, Willie," said Maude. "Do not waste any more Time. We have no Time to lose, let alone time to spare! Shall we kill Time?"
She had barely finished speaking when Mr Swinglebinks and his Time Exchange disappeared, and they were alone with the Zankiwank. But not for long, for almost immediately a troop of school children came bounding home from school, but children with the oddest heads and faces ever seen. They were all carrying miniature bellows in their hands, which they were working up and down with great energy.
"Oh, Mr Zankiwank, what is the matter with those children in short frocks and knickerbockers? Look at their heads!"
The Zankiwank gazed, but expressed no surprise, and yet the children, if they were children, certainly looked very queer, for the boys had got aged, care-worn faces with moustaches and whiskers, while the little girls, in frocks just reaching to their knees, had women's faces, with their hair done up in plaits and chignons and Grecian knot fashion, with elderly bonnets perched on the top.
"That," said the Zankiwank, "is the force of habit."
"What habit, please? It does not suit them," said Maude.
"You are mistaken. Good habits become second nature."
"And what do bad habits become?" queried Willie.
"Bad habits," answered the Zankiwank severely, "become no one."
"And these must be bad habits," exclaimed Willie, pointing to the children, "for they do not become them."
"I thought their clothes fitted them very well."
"We don't mean their clothes," cried Maude. "We mean their general appearance."
"Ah! you are referring to the unnatural history aspect of the case. You mean their heads, of course. They do not fit properly. I have noticed it myself. It comes of expecting too much, and overdoing it; it is all the result of what so many people are fond of doing—putting old heads on young shoulders."
So the mystery was out. The old heads were unmistakably on young shoulders. And how very absurd the children looked! Not a bit like happy girls and boys, as they would have been had they possessed their own heads instead of over-grown and over-developed minds and brains. Old heads never do look well on young shoulders, and it is very foolish of people to think they do. It makes them children of a larger growth before their time, and is just as bad as having young heads on old shoulders. The moral of which is, that you should never be older than you are nor younger than you are not.
"But what are they doing with those bellows?" enquired Willie and Maude together.
"Raising the wind," promptly responded the Zankiwank, "or trying to. When folk grow old before their time you will generally find that it is owing to the bother they had in raising the wind to keep the pot boiling."
"But you don't keep the pot boiling with wind," they protested.
"Oh yes you do, in Topsy-Turvey Land, though personally I believe it to be most unright!"
"Un—what?" exclaimed Maude.
"Unright. When a thing is wrong it must be unright. Just the same as when a thing is right it is unwrong."
While the Zankiwank was giving this very lucid explanation the "Old heads on young shoulders" children went sedately and mournfully away, just as a complete train of newspaper carts dashed up to a large establishment with these words printed outside—
Atnagagdlintit Ralinginginarmik
Lusaruminassumik.
"Good gracious, what awful looking words! It surely must be Welsh?" The two children put the question to the Zankiwank.
"No, that is not Welsh. That is the way the Esquimaux of Greenland speak. It is the name of their paper, and means something to read, interesting news of all sorts. But in this newspaper they never print any news of any sort. They supply the paper to the Topsy-Turveyites every morning quite blank, so that you can provide yourself with your own news. Being perfectly blank, the editors succeed in pleasing all their subscribers."
"Well, I do not see any advantage in that."
"There you go again!" cried the Zankiwank. "You always want something with an advantage. What's the use of an advantage, I should like to know? You can only lose it. You cannot give it away. Do try to be original. But listen, Nobody's coming."
They both looked round wondering what the Zankiwank meant by his strange perversities, but could not see anyone.
"We can see Nobody," they said.
"Of course. Here he is!"
Well! Was it a shadow? Something was there without a doubt, and certainly without a body. It was a sort of skeleton, or a ghost, or perhaps a Mahatma! But it was not a Mahatma—it was in fact Nobody, of whom you have of course heard.
"At last, at last!" screamed the delighted Zankiwank, "with your eyes wide open and your faculties unimpaired you see Nobody! And what a memory Nobody has!"
"How can Nobody have a memory? Besides, we can see Nobody!" said Maude, more perplexed than she had ever been.
"Exactly, Nobody has a charming memory. Memory, as you know, is the sense you forget with it!"
"Memory," corrected Willie, "is the sense, if it is a sense, or impression you remember with."
"Oh, what dreadful Grammar! Remember with! How can you finish a sentence with a preposition? What do you remember with it?" demanded the Zankiwank reprovingly.
"Anything—everything you want to," replied Willie.
"Another preposition! Ah, if we could only remember as easily as we forget!"
"You are wandering from the subject," suggested Maude. "The subject is Nobody, and you have told us nothing about it."
"H'm," said the Zankiwank. "You have confessed that you can see Nobody, therefore I will request him to sing you a topical song. Now keep your attention earnestly directed towards Nobody and listen."
Knowing from past experience that the Zankiwank would have his own way, Maude and Willie, having no one else to think about, thought of Nobody, and to their amazement they heard these words sung as from a long way off, in a very hollow tone of voice:—