Hints to Pilgrims

by Charles S. Brooks

Now this old man had been a jester in his youth. For these were the children of a king and so, of course, they had a jester, just as you and I, if we are rich, have a cook. He had been paid wages—I don't know how many kywatskies—merely to stand in the dining-room and say funny things, and nobody asked him to jump around for the salt or to hurry up the waffles. And he didn't even brush up the crumbs afterward.

I do not happen to know the children of any king—there is not a single king living on our street—yet, except for their clothes, they are much like other children. Of course they wear shinier clothes. It is not the shininess that comes from sliding down the stair rail, but a royal shininess, as though it were always eleven o'clock on Sunday morning and the second bell of the Methodist church were ringing, with several deacons on the steps. For if one's father is a king, ambassadors and generals keep dropping in all the time, and queens, dressed up in brocade so stiff you can hear them breathe.

One day the children had been sliding down hill in the snow—on Flexible Flyers, painted red—and their mittens and stockings were wet. So the old man felt their feet—tickling their toes—and set them, bare-legged, in a row, in front of the nursery fire. And he told them a story.

"O children of the king!" he began, and with that he wiped their noses all round, for it had been a cold day, when even the best-mannered persons snuffle now and then. "O children of the king!" he began again, and then he stopped to light a taper at the fire. For he was a wise old man and he knew that when there is excitement in a tale, a light will keep the bogies off. This old man could tell a story so that your eyes opened wider and wider, as they do when Annie brings in ice-cream with raspberry sauce. And once in a while he said Odd Zooks, and God-a-Mercy when he forgot himself.

"Once upon a time," he began, "there lived a king in a far-off country. To get to that country, O children of a king, you would have to turn and turn, and spell out every signpost. And then you climb up the sides of seventeen mountains, and swim twenty-three streams precisely. Here you wait till dusk. But just before the lamps are lighted, you get down on all-fours—if you are a boy (girls, I believe, don't have all-fours)—and crawl under the sofa. Keep straight on for an hour or so with the coal-scuttle three points starboard, but be careful not to let your knees touch the carpet, for that wears holes in them and spoils the magic. Then get nurse to pull you out by the hind legs—and—there you are.

"Once upon a time, then, there lived a king with a ferocious moustache and a great sword which rattled when he walked around the house. He made scratches all over the piano legs, but no one felt like giving him a paddy-whack. This king had a pretty daughter.

"Now it is a sad fact that there was a war going on. It was between this king who had the pretty daughter and another king who lived near by, on an adjoining farm, so to speak. And the first king had sworn by his halidome—and at this his court turned pale—that he would take his enemy by his blasted nose.

"Both of these kings lived in castles whose walls were thick and whose towers were high. And around their tops were curious indentings that looked as your teeth would look if every other one were pulled. These castles had moats with lily pads and green water in them, which was not at all healthful, except that persons in those days did not know about it and were consequently just as well off. And there were jousting fields and soup caldrons (with a barrel of animal crackers) and a tun of lemonade (six glasses to a lemon)—everything to make life comfortable.

"Here's a secret. The other king who lived near by was in love with the first king's daughter. Here are two kings fighting each other, and one of them in love with the other's daughter, but not saying a word about it.

"Now the second king—the one in love—was not very fierce, and his name was King Muffin—which suggests pleasant thoughts—whereas the first king with the beautiful daughter was called King Odd Zooks, Zooks the Sixth, for he was the sixth of his powerful line. And my story is to show how King Muffin got the better of King Zooks and married his daughter. It was a clever piece of business, for the walls of the castle were high, and the window of the Princess was way above the trees. King Muffin didn't even know which her window was, for it did not have any lace curtains and it looked no better than the cook's, except that the cook sometimes on Monday tied her stockings to the curtain cord to dry. And of course if King Muffin had come openly to the castle, the guards would have cut him all to bits.