By way of prelude then.
In those old days when the world was peopled with giants there became classes and clans, or tribes, as they were then known, each of which was composed of the descendants of one man, and they were all such a merry lot life was considered a most excellent thing indeed.
One day my grandfather, to whom I have alluded in my salutation, went up to the North Pole. There he learned the cause of the change of seasons, and finding it exceedingly cold conceived a joke he would play upon his tribe. Thereupon he filled his horn full of the northern air and carried it back.
Now it happened the day on which he returned was bath day and the whole tribe was bathing in the lake. When he was within such distance he could put the mouth of the horn to the edge of the lake he did so and blew softly upon it.
The lake was immediately covered by a coat of ice upon which the people at once stood, for the water was becoming so cold they could not stay in it. He continued to blow on the horn and the people got so cold they began to shrivel up, and had he not at last blown all the cold out of this horn they would have shrunken into mere nothing. As it was they were so small he had to look several times to discover where they were, and he put the whole tribe in the pocket of his overcoat and carried them to his tent. He tried hard to warm them up and bring them back to their normal size, but it was impossible.
Thus it came about that this tribe became the forefathers of what are now called Pigmies and Dwarfs, and their mixture with the giants produced the present stature of the people of the earth.
By way of interlude then.
There was a time when the complexion of the people of the earth was red and they had bright red hair and beards; and it would have been so unto this day had not the following occurred:
There was a very warm spring in which certain of the family or tribe loved to sport. How it came about, except that some subterranean stream had broken out immediately beneath the lake, it was never known; but so it was while they were all in bathing and another tribe was looking on, the water became fiercely black and very hot. They hastened to the shore, and when they got up out of the water they were all black as midnight and the tribe on the shore became so transfixed with fear their countenances, hair, and beard changed to an absolute white. All the efforts of the medical force failed to change the first tribe from black or the second tribe from white back to their usual color.