"What's this?" asked Whistlebinkie, peering into a little tin pepper pot that appeared to contain nothing but sand.
"You must handle that very carefully," said the Unwiseman, taking it in one hand, and shaking some of the sand out of it into the palm of the other. "That is the birth-place of Christopher Columbus, otherwise the soil of Genoa. I brought home about a pail-ful of it, and I'm going to have it put up in forty-seven little bottles to send around to people that would appreciate having it. One of 'em is to go to the President to be kept on the White House mantel-piece in memory of Columbus, and the rest of them I shall distribute to the biggest Museums in each one of the United States. I don't think any State in the Union should be without a bottle of Columbus birth-place, in view of all that he did for this country by discovering it. There wouldn't have been any States at all of it hadn't been for him, and it strikes me that is a very simple and touching way of showing our gratitude."
"Perfectly fine!" cried Mollie enthusiastically. "I don't believe there's another collection like this anywhere in all the world, do you?" she added, sweeping the room with an eye full of wondering admiration for the genius that had gathered all these marvellous things together.
"No—I really don't," said the Unwiseman. "And just think what a fine thing it will be for people who can't afford to travel," he went on. "For twenty-five cents they can come here and see everything we saw—except a few bogus kings and things like that that ain't really worth seeing—from the French language down to the Venetian Hoople-fish, from an Alp and a Glazier to a Specially Appointed Muffin to the King and Columbus's birth-place. I really think I shall have to advertise it in the newspapers. A Trip Abroad Without Leaving Home, All for a Quarter, at the Unwiseman's Museum. Alps a Specialty."
"Here's a couple of empty bottles," said Whistlebinkie, who had been snooping curiously about the room.
"Yes," said the Unwiseman. "I've more than that. I'm sorry to say that some of my exhibits have faded away. The first one was filled with London fog, and as you remember I lost that when the cork flew out the day they dejected me from the British Museum. That other bottle when I put the cork in it contained a view of Gibraltar and the African Coast through the port-hole of the steamer, but it's all faded out, just as the bird's-eye view of the horizon out in the middle of the ocean that I had in a little pill bottle did. There are certain things you can't keep even in bottles—but I shall show the Gibraltar bottle just the same. A bottle of that size that once contained that big piece of rock and the African Coast to boot, is a wonderful thing in itself."
In which belief Mollie and Whistlebinkie unanimously agreed.
"Was the kitchen-stove glad to see you back?" asked Whistlebinkie.
"Well—it didn't say very much," said the Unwiseman, with an affectionate glance out into the kitchen, "but when I filled it up with coal, and started the fire going, it was more than cordial. Indeed before the evening was over it got so very warm that I had to open the parlor windows to cool it off."