Tales out of school

by Frank R. Stockton

When the gnomes had finished this great piece of work they did not know what to do with the huge creature they had found. It was of no use to them, and, after they had taken a few of the smallest bones for drum-sticks, they would have nothing more to do with it. After a time, the sight of this terrible, fleshless monster was hateful to them, and they could not move it away.

In this dilemma they went to King Rhine to know what it was best to do with this fruit of their long labors. He told them they had been very foolish gnomes to spend so much time on a thing that was of no use to anybody, and that ought to be covered up from the sight of men. He advised them to put all the earth and stones back again, and bury the horrid creature.

The gnomes could not make up their minds to do this, and they moved out of the cave into another part of the same mountain, and left the lizard in possession of their old home.

Soon after a wood-cutter, being caught in a storm, took refuge in this cave; and the sight of this gigantic skeleton frightened him more than the storm. He ran to his village with the wonderful news. A very learned man who lived there, hearing the story, went to look at the skeleton, and was filled with astonishment, for he had never even imagined such an animal.

He immediately wrote a book about it.

And then old Rhine found that, in this case, the gnomes were wiser than their king. For, so far from this creature they had dug out of the ground being of no account, it caused a greater stir than anything that had happened in his kingdom since the last army had been driven across the river a good many years ago. People flocked from all quarters to the cave, and business was lively the whole length of the river.

Learned men came from every country in the civilized world. And each one wrote a book about the lizard-fish. But the worst of it was that no two of them agreed as to what it was. They disputed so long, and so earnestly over this skeleton that, at last, the unlearned took up the quarrel, each country feeling bound to support its own learned men. And in this way the governments were drawn into the dispute, and there had liked to have been a war over the old bones. Letters of instruction to Consuls were flying about, and there was a great examination into treaties; when, all at once, it became known that the learned men all agreed that the animal was the Ichthyosaurus, and that the last one had died thousands of years ago. So the war was happily averted.

Then the dispute was as to who had first found out this fact, but this was amicably settled by the discovery that all the learned men had found it out at precisely the same time.

During all this the gnomes had worked away in their new home at their own affairs, and knew nothing of the great commotion they had caused. But king Rhine nodded his old head, and said to himself; “The gnomes are a very little people, but they have managed to set the whole world by the ears.”

He recalled all this now, and thought perhaps the wise woman meant what she said about the dwarfs and giants.