Tales from silver lands

by Charles Joseph Finger

Volantes, as servants.

So things seemed to be going very well, and before a month had passed in all that place there was not a thing out of order, soiled, broken, bent, lost, misplaced, undone, unclean, or disorderly. Neither man nor woman nor child had to worry; dinners were always prepared, fruits gathered, beds made, houses in perfect order, and all was spick and span. All that the grown-up people had to do was to look on, and no one was proud of the order in his house because every other house in the place was as orderly. As for the children, they had nothing at all to do but to eat, drink, rest, and sleep. Then, presently, more figures were called for as this one or that wanted a larger house, a finer garden, or grander clothes.

But as the wooden figures became more numerous and as no figure could do more than one task, the ragged man had to make figures for the figures and servants for the servants, for as things went on, there had to be more fruit gatherers, more water carriers, more scavengers, more cooks, because the figures had to eat and drink. Thus it came to pass that before long, instead of their being twenty figures for each man, there were sixty or seventy, with new ones coming from the old man’s knife every day. Soon the lively manikins were everywhere, inside houses as well as outside, thick as flies in summer and certainly a great deal more persistent, for there could be no closing of doors against the manikins. Indeed, had anything like that been attempted there would have been a great cry for special door-openers. So, many houses were quite cluttered with wooden men, those who were on duty rushing about until it made the head swim to look at them, and those who were resting or sleeping, for soon they learned to rest and to sleep, lying about the floors, piled up in corners, or hanging to rafters by their tails. All that increase in help had made for the production of a thousand or more guardas, whose task it was to keep order, and they were everywhere, alert and watchful and officious, and the real people had to step about very gingerly sometimes, to avoid treading on them and annoying them.

At last there came a day when the people began to grow a little tired of doing nothing, and they told one another that a little help was a very good thing, but help in excess, too much of a good thing altogether. So there was a meeting and much talk and the manikin narradors, whose duty it was to carry gossip and the news, were very busy, rushing from here to there with their scraps of information.

“It is very clear that something must be done,” said Tera, the head man.

“But everything is being done,” answered the little old man. “If everything is done, something must be done.”

“I did not mean that,” said Tera, who seemed a little testy. “I meant to say that these wooden men must be kept in their places.”

“But they are in their places,” replied the old man. “Their place is everywhere because they do everything, so they are in their places.”

“You see, the days are so very long, so very dull,” said the man who wished to have time that he might become a poet. “At the shut of day we are not weary.”

“We do not want to be petted,” said another.