Tales out of school

by Frank R. Stockton

In his perplexity he summoned a wise woman, who lived on the highest peak of the highest mountain on the river, and who always gave wise counsel; but would never leave her rocky home except when some one was in great need of good advice. She came to the king at his bidding and this is what she said:

“Good dwarfs can conquer bad giants.”

Not another word would she utter. She made this same answer to every question the king put to her, until, finally, he flew into a rage, and shook his reedy sceptre at her. Whereupon this wise woman disappeared.

The king spent several days thinking about this matter. He could not fight the giants himself, for that would be beneath the dignity of a king. As for what the wise woman had said about the dwarfs, that was ridiculous. A little creature, scarcely a foot high, to conquer a mighty giant! But, after considering the matter a good while, it did not seem quite so absurd. He recalled to mind something the gnomes had done some years before.

Now a gnome is as small a being as a dwarf, and his home is under the ground, so that he seldom sees the light of day. Consequently he is not as bright and quick-witted as a dwarf. And yet a few of these creatures had first astonished all the civilized nations on the globe, and then set them all to quarreling. In order to make you understand how this was I must go back for a minute to the world before the Flood.

THE GNOMES AT WORK.

A long time before the Flood, before man was created, the world was inhabited by beasts, fishes, and reptiles of enormous size; very much larger than any at present upon the earth. We know this because parts of the skeletons of these animals have been found in various places; and the learned men of different countries have written a great deal about them.

Now it happened that some years before this trouble had arisen between King Rhine and the giants, and before his talk with the wise woman, some gnomes while digging in a cave for gold, found buried in the earth the skeleton of an immense head. Astonished at this sight they determined to let gold hunting alone for a while, and to see if they could not find the rest of the animal to which the head belonged. They worked carefully and industriously for many months with their little picks and spades, and, finally they laid bare the whole skeleton of a monstrous creature of the very queerest shape the gnomes had ever seen. I say the whole of it, but there were a few bones wanting here and there, for which the gnomes searched in vain in the earth around the spot where the creature lay.

This animal measured thirty-three feet in length. It was shaped somewhat like a great lizard, but it had the back-bone of a fish, and the fins of a dolphin, with the head and teeth of a crocodile. But what eyes it must have had while living! The gnomes amused themselves by crawling in and out of the sockets! The ball of the eye must have been as large as a man’s head!