[to be continued.]
[THE LITTLE GOOSE'S DREAM.]
A little goose eight months old—just old enough to be a very lively goose, and not of a sufficiently mature age to be a Christmas goose—stood upon the bank of the old mill-pond, lost in as pensive a reverie as it is possible for a little goose of ordinary intelligence to indulge in. She felt very sad and sore in spirit—sad, because the pond was frozen as stiff as the dignity of a prime minister, and sore, because she had but a short time before flopped down off the bank for a swim, only to experience, upon coming in contact with the ice, a shock that almost snapped her little wish-bone in twain. So the poor little goose stood upon one foot while she buried the other in her plumage that she might rub the sore spot. And while she stood in this position she became drowsy in the Christmas-flavored air, and thrusting her head beneath her wing fell asleep.
And while she was lost in slumber, she dreamed that she was a little toy goose in a shop window on a busy thoroughfare. The window was dressed for the Christmas season, and the poor young goose felt very humble and out of place in the society of so many toy animals of a superior order. Instead of being able to waddle about, she was fixed in a stationary position upon an inclined platform, which worked up and down, after the manner of an accordion, and created a sound which the maker believed children would accept as a faithful imitation of the anserine voice. Now this little toy goose was quite indignant to think that her notes were so unnatural, for they were really no more like those of a goose than a locomotive whistle is like a cornet solo. Still, the little goose determined to make the best of the situation, and it is only fair to say that her vanity was greatly tickled when she saw the children coming from school pause at the window and look at her eagerly. A few days before Christmas the little toy goose felt very sad and lonely when a fat man with great white whiskers came in and purchased her for some little boy, for she had become very fond of a toy ostrich, an old companion in the window, and had always cherished the fond hope that they might be purchased by the same person. And it almost made her cry when she was wrapped in a piece of brown paper and thrust into the darkness of the valise of her purchaser. Out of the store she went, she knew not where until she was removed from her paper wrapper in a small country house and set on a nursery mantel-piece, beside the clock, whose ticking made her so nervous that she couldn't find the rest she so greatly needed. A cotton lamb and a woollen doll, however, reminded her of the shop window, and she would probably have felt perfectly happy if she could only have forgotten her old friend the toy ostrich. Fortunately, while thinking of the ostrich and the bitter pangs of enforced separation, the clock stopped, and she fell asleep. In the morning she was taken with the other Christmas toys (which the fat man with the white whiskers had left) right into bed by Reginald, who made her squeak with great delight.
And when he took her into the bath-room she fairly yearned to be in the tub with him and his tin steamboat.
"Oh, how I want to swim!" thought the little goose, as she looked at the dimpled water, and envied the happy steamboat. "But then I must remember that I am made of pasteboard, and that if I should go into the water it would surely result in my having my paint washed off, even if I should not turn into pulp and sink. But some day I shall be a great big goose— No, I shall not, because I don't grow. I shall always be the same size and age—"
Here she was interrupted by Reginald's little terrier, who came into the room and commenced to paw her about playfully on the white pine floor. He accidentally scratched out one of her eyes, and this made her sadder than ever, because she could only see what was going on on one side of her. And what made it worse, her eye could not be restored with glue, because it had fallen through a knot-hole. A day or two later the little toy goose was placed upon the dining-room window-sill in such a position that she could look out on the barn-yard. There she saw geese wandering around at will as their fancies directed them. And it made her feel that it was indeed a sorry lot to be a pasteboard, stationary toy goose, instead of being a real live specimen hatched under fortune's star. She saw them talking in a most sociable manner, just as little Reginald's mother and the other members of the church sewing society talked when that body met in the library down-stairs.
Then the little goose tried to close its eye upon a tragedy without, but couldn't, because it was not, and never had been, in the enjoyment of eyelids. So she had to look on while the coachman chased the flock. He finally caught a large lordly gander, and chopping his head off, started with him towards the kitchen. The others set up such a cackling as has never been heard since the geese were instrumental in saving Rome from the invading Gaul.
And the cackling was so intense that it woke the little goose from her dream, and she heard all her sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts flapping their wings and cackling at a great rate. And when she saw Michael carrying an axe in one hand and a gander in the other towards the house, her tender soul heaved with emotion, and two tears coursed down her cheeks like twin pearls as she observed,
"Alas! they have gone and killed poor Uncle William to play the star part at the Christmas feast!"
R. K. Munkittrick.
