THE SCIENTIFIC GOBLIN.
By one of those freaks of fortune rare even in fairyland, the small people known as the Odomites had, in order to escape being devoured by a strolling giant named Googloom, made him their king. This ogre was of so wonderful an ugliness that babes died at the sight of him, and men and maids had gone into convulsions of merriment; but the majority of the Odomites, blessed with a wholesome fear, dared no more than laugh in their sleeves at bare memory of his face, avoiding as much as they could to see him. However, to make sure that all his people were as sober as himself, King Googloom issued an edict defining laughter as treason, under any pretext to be punished with death by slow torture. In cases of young and pretty maids this sentence was varied by the fact that the giant himself ate them up. Yet, spite of the terrors of his decree, hundreds of his subjects perished for want of self-control; and one man, whose fate became renowned as that of a voluntary martyr to free expression, died laughing involuntarily, notwithstanding his tortures, the giant Googloom being a witness of his execution.
When the realm of Odom was thus rid of all rebellion in the shape of quips, jokes, pranks, tricks, antics, capers, smiles, laughs, caricatures, chuckles, grimaces, Googloom yawned and rolled his eyes in a manner fearful to see, and, leaving his throne, made a tour through his dominions. Not a soul dared so much as smile in obeisance to him. Though he made his ugliest faces, to such a degree that the passing ravens were scared, not a single Odomite lifted up his head to grin for a moment. Over all the land reigned the shadow of funlessness. Googloom had become a dreadful chimera, a nightmare. Hardly knowing it, his people grew lean and pined away.
Googloom himself began to be weary of the prevailing dulness, even while he boasted that the land was never so sober and its population so orderly. “When will the old times return,” asked his sages of themselves, “when the land laughed and grew fat?” Googloom eyed with contempt the bones of the children that were served up at his banquets; and one day, seeing that the leanness of his people had extended to their crops, and yet unwilling to alter his decrees, mockingly proclaimed that anybody who could make him laugh at his own expense, or make anybody else laugh on the same terms, should have the privilege of laughing whenever he pleased.
There was at this time living in one of the mountains of Odom a famous goblin named Gigag. His exceeding knowledge and invention, assisted by good-nature, had made him famous in the country round about; and notwithstanding the prejudices of some of the Od people, he was permitted to benefit them in various ways. For instance, he made them a stove which gave them both heat and light; an instrument that produced exquisite melodies whether you could play it or not; an accordeon that invented tunes of its own accord, for the help of composers; a portable bridge to be flung over chasms at pleasure; a drink that gave men’s eyes the power of microscopes, and another that inspired them with the capacity of telescopes; a fertilizer that brought up crops in seven days with care; a flying-machine to save all who laughed; and a pill to cure headache, heartache, rheumatism, dropsy, palsy, dyspepsia, epilepsy, consumption—everything short of death itself—and to cause lost hair, eyes, teeth, legs, and arms to grow again. There was also rumor that the goblin Gigag had tunnelled the whole kingdom through, and that goblin steeds and people could now travel at will an underground thoroughfare. But, for all these things, the Odomites were no better than before. Their taste in music was bad; they were blind as bats to their interests; they tumbled over precipices; they neglected their crops, and were too stupid to fly, if not too dull to laugh; and headaches, heartaches, and palsies were much the same as ever, because they disliked to take a pill that was not sugar-coated. In the end the scientific Gigag was thought to be a goblin of genius—one of those fine spirits who are always doing magnificent things to no purpose. Had he relied upon the effect of his mechanical or chemical exploits to make his way in the world, the well-meaning goblin would certainly have made a mistake. What, then, was the secret of that extraordinary power which the goblin Gigag exercised over the minds of those who came in contact with him? It was his expression.
All the variety of which the goblin countenance is susceptible seemed to be concentrated in that of Gigag. But its peculiarity was this: that his eyes grew piercing and dazzling at will, while his teeth enlarged, his mouth curved, and his nose elongated and turned at pleasure. It may well be supposed that no Odomite could resist a smile or survive the scorn of a countenance so effective; and we can only ascribe it to Gigag’s known forbearance that the so-called anticachination laws of Googloom were not a thousand times violated. But patience has its bounds. The national dulness which made Googloom yawn and sneer made Gigag almost swear. The reigning condition must be put an end to, or science itself would be powerless at length to amuse or to cure. Accordingly, he sped through his underground road, and came up at court by a secret path. Wearing a long, conical hat and a fanciful jacket, with doublet and hose, and elongating his features while he stretched himself to his full height, he stepped into the presence of the king, knocking down by the way a few insolent attendants who had excited his gaze. Bristling the few hairs of his upper lip, which resembled the mustache of Grimalkin, and bowing with the most obsequious of smiles, the goblin Gigag stood before the giant Googloom.
Never had that ogre seen a figure at once so lean and long, and a face so bright and cunning. He would have ordered it at once to his darkest dungeons, were it not for an unaccountable fascination which forced him to listen to Gigag while he proposed not only to make Googloom laugh at his own expense, but to make everybody else laugh at him on the same terms, and to solve the problem of perpetual motion by making the land of Odom merry ever afterwards. “I presume,” said he, “you have heard the story of the pig’s fiddle”; and he proceeded to tell a tale which for wit and fun would have made a thousand unicorns die laughing. But on the giant it had either no effect at all or had only raised his spirits to the point of being serious. Gigag clearly saw that he had failed by trusting to the merits of his story instead of using his great weapon of expression. “This is no ordinary case,” said the goblin to himself. “The problem is to make an immense creature laugh who has nothing of the sort in him. Perhaps the best thing to do is to torture him till he laughs in despair.” Spite of the giant’s disposition to put his visitor at once to the torture, he agreed that the accomplished goblin should call next day, and make him laugh, or else die by slow boiling. This the goblin heard with a mixture of scorn and amusement, curling his nose and showing his teeth in an aristocratic manner.
As the cunning Gigag left the king’s chamber to go to his quarters in a corner of the great palace, he took good care to scatter about two scientifically-prepared powders, one of which dissolved in the air, producing sleep, and the other by a similar change entered the nostrils, producing throughout the body tickling sensations and a disposition to low chuckling. When Gigag again came before Googloom, it was seen that none of the royal guards were fit for duty, and that throughout the palace and its grounds the disposition among courtiers, retainers, servants, pages, to laugh in their sleeves at the smallest incitement, was unmistakable. Even the kitchen cats had caught the infection, and mewed dispersedly.
“Now, O great Googloom!” said Gigag when all the court had assembled, “let me in three acts essay to complete that transformation by which thy people’s despair shall be turned to joy, and thy laughing face shall behold its own merriment.” At this moment the giant shook like one who is tickled all over, but cannot laugh, experiencing the greatest tortures without knowing what to make of them. To divert him the goblin related his favorite story of the merry owl, with such catcalls, crowing, mincing, and mewing, and withal such unearthly jest, that a thousand dogs would have died if they did not laugh. What wonder, then, that long before the witty Gigag had concluded a favorite page was so wrought upon by chuckling that, bursting his buttons, at length he laughed right out, which had such an effect upon all assembled that they chuckled, and then roared. “Ho, guards!” cried Googloom; but Gigag easily drew his attention to the second part of the programme—for the goblin had actually brought the giant to the point of complacency. “I propose now,” he said, “to show you the most ridiculous countenance that was ever seen, except one.” Hereupon he diminished and heightened his figure at intervals, while he curved his nose by degrees, lengthened his teeth as he pleased, and put upon his mouth such an expression of maddening humor that his spectators gasped with laughing, to the vast confusion of the helpless giant, who vowed with a feeble smile that the gifted Gigag was certainly the most ingenious man he ever knew.
“Nothing will serve you, I perceive, O beautiful Googloom! except the light of science; and now I will show you the face of the most ridiculous man that ever was born.” Accordingly, by means of an instrument which he had invented, Gigag reflected upon a large canvas the features of Googloom! Unwittingly the giant smiled, for he had never seen so preposterous a face before; and the more he smiled, the more ridiculous it grew, till at last, after the giant himself had given way to laughter, it was so horribly funny that the whole court shrieked and shrieked again, and Googloom, losing all control, roared with such a volume and power of merriment that he toppled off his throne, and was crushed under its ruins. The people, seeing the faces of the courtiers and of each other, caught an infectious laughter, which prevailed throughout all Odom, and did not by any means cease when the goblin Gigag was called to the throne, and the reign of science began.