Chapter 2

Then Miss Muffet went to the north window, and such a sight as she saw there! There was frost on all the roads, and snow on the far mountains, and the great pine forest on that side came almost to the palace doors. And such pine-trees as they were! Each one looked like a great Christmas tree. The woods were full of merry little people, with such frosty twinkles in their eyes that it did one good to look at them. They talked Swedish and German and Icelandic and all sorts of queer languages, but somehow they laughed so naturally, and were so simple and hearty, that Miss Muffet understood every word. There were hosts of brownies and elves and fairies, and intelligent white bears, and one or two reformed wolves, and an old witch who was not nearly so bad as she looked, and the Marsh King and his daughters, and an old gentleman who looked so much like Santa Claus that Miss Muffet was sure that he must be his brother. Indeed, she could not help noticing that a great many of these North Country folks bore a strong family resemblance to Santa Claus,--but perhaps it was only the way they wore their beards. When she saw them all, she was sorry that she had not invited Santa Claus himself. She hadn't asked him, because, as she told Mr. Spider, it was Christmas Eve, and it might seem suggestive. But the truth of the matter was, as I suspect, that she thought he would probably drop in of his own accord, some time in the course of the evening.

As the brisk little people from the North came up the palace steps, Miss Muffet was sure that Hans Christian Andersen must have had a party once, or how could he have described them so well? "Indeed," she said, "if I didn't know what day of the month and what year it is, I should almost think that this is 'Once upon a Time.'"

When the guests began to come in, Miss Muffet was all in a flurry for fear she should not do her duty as a hostess; but she needn't have worried a bit, for they were so much interested in themselves that they paid very little attention to her. Then she had the assistance of two widely traveled storks, who, having their summer residences in Norway and spending their winters in Bagdad, had a great number of acquaintances, and introduced the Orientals to the North Country people. It was delightful to see how quickly they all became acquainted. Little Dutch Gretchen in her wooden shoes was not at all like the Persian Princess whom she now met for the first time, but they were soon warm friends though they had moved in such different society. At first Miss Muffet was afraid that the wooden shoes might spoil the spider's-web floor; but there was no real danger of this, for the spider, knowing that there would be a very great crowd, had made everything very strong.

There was a little man in a huge bearskin coat who came from Back of the North Wind. At first he was shy and awkward, but it was beautiful to see how soon he was put at ease when Aladdin came up and explained to him the virtues of his wonderful lamp. The little man said that such a lamp must be very useful, but when it came to illuminating power it was nothing to what he had at home, for he had an Aurora Borealis in every room. Then the little man chuckled to himself, for he wanted every one to know that the Back of the North Wind Country was not so uncivilized as people supposed.

In a corner she found a delightful group of seafaring folks. Dr. Lemuel Gulliver was telling the story of one of his voyages. He was such a matter-of-fact person, and so accurate about the latitude and longitude, that Miss Muffet had the greatest confidence in him, and felt that, though he might be mistaken in regard to the main points, all the details happened exactly as he said. His story reminded Sindbad the Sailor of something that had happened to him. He told his story in a charming oriental way, but without a touch of exaggeration.

"That would have spoiled it," said Miss Muffet to Baron Munchausen, who was standing by. "Don't you like simplicity, Baron?"

The Baron bowed in a courtly, old-fashioned way, and said that he was inordinately fond of it. Miss Muffet heard a rippling, liquid sound which she at first mistook for laughter, but the Baron assured her that it was only the frozen truth beginning to thaw. This reminded him of a little incident which was wonderful to hear. Everybody was astonished except the Three Wise Men of Gotham. They remarked that if they were at liberty to tell their adventures, as seafaring men, the stories that had been told would seem quite tame; but they didn't feel at liberty, and only looked at each other so wisely that Miss Muffet wondered whether any persons could really be as wise as they looked.

A sturdy, round-faced man stood just behind the group, but took no part in the conversation. Whenever Sindbad was talking he became so excited that his eyes seemed almost to pop out of his head, but he quieted down as soon as any one else began. After a time Sindbad came over to him, and taking out his purse, gave him a handful of gold pieces.

"A hundred sequins?" asked Miss Muffet.

"Yes," said the round-faced man, "that's my regular wages."

"It must be a very large amount."

He said he had no complaint to make, though a sequin didn't go so far in Bagdad as it once did, and he had to spend a great deal in clothes.

"I knew the minute I saw you that you must be Hindbad the Porter."

"I used to be a porter before I became a professional listener. Listening isn't so hard on the back as portering, but it requires more attention and the hours are longer; that is, they seem longer. Besides, it's hard on the eyes."

"You mean on the ears," suggested Miss Muffet.

"No! on the eyes; you have to look interested."

"Oh! I understand," said Miss Muffet. "When first I heard about your being invited to dinner at Sindbad's and listening to his first tale, it seemed the very nicest thing in the world. And how unexpected it was, after you had enjoyed it, for him to hand you a hundred sequins and say, 'Take this, Hindbad, and return to your home, and come back to-morrow and hear more of my adventures.' Weren't you surprised to hear a story and get a hundred sequins besides?"

Hindbad said that he was surprised at first, but after a day or two he began to look at it more in a business way. He had always made it a rule to be thorough, for whatever was worth doing was worth doing well, and he determined to be the very best listener in Bagdad.

"You see, in my country, we have a great many gentlemen who gain wealth by having adventures. When they come back from their shipwrecks, they naturally want to tell about them; but there's so much competition that it's hard to get a hearing. When they meet with people, like those horrid Wise Men of Gotham, who prefer their own shipwrecks, they go into a decline."

His eyes filled with tears, and Miss Muffet was sure that he was one of the most sympathetic men in the world.

"Now I had a great advantage," he went on; "I never had a shipwreck of my own, so that I could not be reminded of something that would make me interrupt. And then it is easy for me to have a story seem strange. I seem to have a natural gift for it. Any one can be surprised the first time he hears an adventure, but if one is to become a professional listener he must cultivate the habit of being surprised. Now that story about the roc's egg grows upon me; indeed it does! I don't think I appreciated it at first. That's the way with all big things; it's some time before you take them in. Even Mr. Sindbad says that it didn't seem as big when he saw it as it does now when he remembers it. And whenever I hear about those huge serpents it makes me shudder, and I ask Mr. Sindbad to hurry on and tell me that he really did get away from them. I can't stand the suspense. The cannibals are frightful creatures, Miss Muffet; they say they eat people. Mr. Sindbad has a perfect genius for having accidents. They come in the most unexpected places. And then he escapes. I sometimes think that is the most wonderful part of it."

"Do you think a little girl who studied hard could learn your profession and practice in Bagdad?" asked Miss Muffet timidly. "You know I wouldn't ask for wages; I would do it just for the love of it."

Hindbad frowned darkly. "It would never do, Miss Muffet! I can't have little girls coming over on the banks of the Tigris and taking the bread out of the mouths of my family."

But when he saw that Miss Muffet was beginning to cry, he changed his tone and said, "I am sure you meant no harm, only you didn't understand about the wages. You could easily earn a hundred sequins at listening, and it isn't so hard to learn when you are young. I would give that much myself to have you listen to a queer thing that happened to me once in Bagdad. I've never told it before, for I never found any one who looked interested. It was in one of the narrowest streets down by the water-side, and it was on the darkest night of the year, when"--

Just then the spider came to take Miss Muffet away to meet some children who came from The Golden Age. Their names were Harold and Edward and Charlotte, and they said they had an Aunt Maria, who had stayed at home because she had not been invited to the party. They had walked all the way along the Roman Road, which made the spider think that they must be tired. In this he was mistaken; though they said that they were ready for the refreshments.

The Golden Age children said that they didn't like to play with grown folks; after people got to be thirty or ninety they thought they became very uninteresting, and didn't have the right kind of feelings; unless they were Princes and went on adventures.

Miss Muffet didn't agree with this because some of her best friends were elderly peasants whose faces were all puckered up because they had been smiling for so many years. She wished, though, that they were not so shy.

"I suppose it's because they are not used to going to parties; neither am I, for that matter, but then I'm not so much used as they are to _not_ going."

Perhaps the shyest persons in the room were an old German shoemaker and his wife, whom Miss Muffet had for a long time loved and admired, though they had not known it. Indeed, they didn't know that any one was ever admired unless he had found a pot of gold or done something equally praiseworthy. The shoemaker had never done anything but make shoes, and his wife did the cooking and made the clothes for the family. When they received the invitation to the party, they were greatly astonished and thought it must be a mistake, but the village priest, who read the letter, told them that it was certainly intended for them, though why they were invited was a mystery. When the priest told them that it was a mystery, they knew that it was so, and came along bowing and curtsying as if all the persons they met were their betters, though really only one or two were half so good. Miss Muffet ran to them and put her hands in theirs.

"I have just loved you since the time I heard what you did for the little elves who used to come at night after you had gone to bed and finish your work for you. Some people take what's done for them and think no more about it except that they're lucky; but you sat up till midnight and peeped into the room where the elves were working, and saw that they didn't have enough clothes to keep them warm. Then you made each one a shirt and a coat and waistcoat and a pair of trousers and a little pair of shoes. What fun it must have been, next night, to watch them putting on their things and scampering off into the dark. I never heard of elves being dressed up like that."

The shoemaker and his wife laughed heartily as they remembered how funny the elves were. The wife confessed that the garments didn't fit closely, though she made them like her husband's, only smaller.

"Elves are not so square, are they?" asked Miss Muffet.

"No," said the shoemaker's wife; "but their clothes are. That's the only pattern I have."

"I suppose they are coming to the party? I sent a general invitation to Elf-land. There is to be elfin music and a frolic for them. I thought they might like it better to have their own games. Your elves can't say they have nothing to wear, because that wouldn't be true."

But though she looked everywhere for them, nowhere could she see the little elves in square coats and trousers. When the refreshments were served, Mr. Spider noticed that everything went remarkably smoothly, and there was more of all kinds of provisions than he had ordered. He said he had no doubt but that the little elves were helping in the kitchen.

"It would be just like them; the little dears!" said Miss Muffet.

The shoemaker felt very much more at home when he met a young fellow named Hans who had come from the same village. He was not the Hans who married Grettel, but the one whom Miss Muffet had often heard of because he traded a horse for a cow, the cow for a pig, the pig for a goose, and so on, all the way home. This caused a good deal of talk in the neighborhood, and some of the villagers thought he wasn't much of a business man.

Hans, however, was perfectly satisfied with himself, and was quite ready to talk.

"The secret of being a trader," he said, "is to be quick about it. You must not stop to think: that's where you lose time. If I had stopped to think, I should have brought the horse home with me, and I might have had it on my hands yet. There are ever so many people grumbling about the care of their property; they say it is a burden to them. I tell them that it's all their own fault. If they kept their eyes open, they would find plenty of ways of getting rid of it."

Hans had such a shrewd twinkle in his eyes that Miss Muffet felt sure that he would always get the best of a bargain, no matter how it turned out.

While Hans was talking, she noticed a little man who looked like a tailor.

"Didn't you start on a journey once," she asked, "with only a piece of cheese and an old hen in your wallet?"

"Yes," he answered; "but that was a good while ago."

"I thought you must be the one. And you fooled the giant, and when he squeezed a stone till water came out of it, you squeezed your cheese till the whey ran out, and he thought your cheese was a stone, and that you squeezed harder than he did. And he never saw through any of your tricks, though I should have thought that even a giant would have suspected. Are all giants so stupid?"

The tailor said that not all of them were so stupid, though fortunately a great many were, and generally when they grew beyond a certain size, something happened to their heads.

"If it weren't for that, Miss Muffet, there would be no room for us common people on the earth. The giants would eat up everything. Now and then there is a young giant like Thumbling who is active and keeps his wits about him. But Thumbling was very little to begin with. Most giants get foolish when they grow up, and then we can put an end to them."

When the talk got upon giants, it was astonishing to see what an eager crowd gathered around the tailor. There were some knights in armor who listened unconcernedly, for they knew that giants could do them no harm; but it was different with the tailors and fishermen and ploughmen. They had suffered so much that they could not speak of a giant without bitterness.

"But aren't there good giants?" asked Miss Muffet.

"I never heard of one," said the tailor, "except Christopher, and he is a saint and learned how to fast. It isn't a question of their being good: the trouble with them is that they are too big. It takes too much to support them. They eat us out of house and home. We can't get along peaceably till we are all more of a size."

They were all of that opinion, and the stories which they applauded were of the kind where a little man gets the better of a big one. Miss Muffet could not object to this, because it was the kind she liked best herself.

"I never have been so much afraid of giants," she said, "since I learned about their diseases. They are not nearly so strong as they look. There was Giant Despair,--'in sunshiny weather he fell into fits.' It was while he was having a fit, you know, that Christian and Hopeful got away. If I were going where there were bad giants, I should go in sunshiny weather."

"I don't think you would have any trouble, my dear," said the shoemaker, "for you would take the sunshine with you."

And then he laughed to think of Giant Despair tumbling over in a fit when he caught sight of Miss Muffet. For though the shoemaker was a very kind man, he had no sympathy for giants.

There were so many interesting things going on at the party that Miss Muffet almost forgot the Serious Symposium. When she did remember it, she was very much troubled.

"What will Rollo think about me for being so negligent! I invited him particularly to come to a symposium, and now I don't even know how it is done."

The spider, however, told her that he had secured a hall up two flights, and had arranged the chairs and a table, which were all the arrangements necessary for a meeting. He had seen a number of serious persons going upstairs, and he had no doubt that it was a success.

When she reached the hall, the papers had all been read and discussed, and the Little Old Woman, who was in the chair, was just announcing that the next business before the house was to adjourn.

"I am sorry to be so late," said Miss Muffet, "and to miss hearing the papers."

"If that's the case," said the Little Old Woman, "we will have them all over again. The speakers will read slowly, so that the papers will go further."

"Oh, please don't on my account!" cried Miss Muffet, all in a tremble. "Don't let me interfere with your adjourning. I know that must be important business."

The Little Old Woman said that it was the most important business of the meeting.

"Does it take long?" asked Miss Muffet.

"Not if you know how to do it," said the Little Old Woman.

"Then I will just sit down and watch it."

The Little Old Woman rapped upon the table with a huge button-hook, and went about the business so briskly that before Miss Muffet knew what had happened, the meeting had adjourned.

"Were the papers so quick?" she asked.

"No, they weren't; papers are never that way."

"What were they about?"

"The white ones were about 'Child Study,' and the yellow ones were about 'Obedience to Parents' and 'Not Losing Your Thimble.' The yellow ones were the ones I knew best; I used to have them when I was a little girl."

"Then the white ones must be harder. Is Child Study harder than Arithmetic?"

"There are two kinds. One kind is where you take the children you are acquainted with and tell what you know about them. That kind isn't so good to make papers out of. It's too short. The other kind is where you get at 'the Contents of the Child's Mind.' I can't say that it's harder than Arithmetic, for it is Arithmetic, only it's further on than you've got. It's percentage. You take eleven hundred little girls in blue dresses and make them fill out blanks. You ask them which they like best, chocolate caramels or peppermint drops."

"Which _do_ they like best?" asked Miss Muffet, who had often thought about that question herself.

"You can't tell," answered the Little Old Woman; "all you know is the answers: they depend on which words the little girls can spell easiest. The chief thing is to get the percentage. Then you write a paper. If it doesn't come out right, you ask eleven hundred little girls in pink dresses and they answer differently. Then you have a Problem."

"What is a Problem?" asked Miss Muffet.

"It's something to discuss," said the Little Old Woman.

"Why don't they ask their mothers?"

"The mothers are too busy. Besides, their children are all exceptions. You can't make anything out of exceptions,--there are too many of them. If you let them in, it just musses up the Science. The best way is to keep them out."

"But their mothers like them," said Miss Muffet.

"Yes; they think that they are the nicest kind."

When she had time to look around her, Miss Muffet was surprised to see how different the company was from that in the other parts of the palace.

"They look as if something had been done to them," said Miss Muffet. "Oh! now I know who they are! They must be Youths. I've always read about Youths in the books mamma makes me read on Sunday afternoon, but I didn't know that they were real. Some of them look almost like boys and girls, only less so."

Sure enough, the room was full of Youths. They came out of the Sunday-school books and the Fifth Readers and the Moral Tales and the Libraries of Instructive Juvenile Literature. Some had never been out of a book before, and found it impossible to talk in anything but the book language. Some were evidently very good, and some were painful examples of youthful wickedness, while others were chiefly interested in Natural History.

"Youths," said the Little Old Woman, "are easier to understand than boys and girls and other young folks. Youths have habits, and each one practices only one at a time. When they do a naughty thing, they keep on doing it regularly; that's the way you come to know which is which. It doesn't matter what it is, whether Vanity or Procrastination or Not Bringing in the Wood, they keep it up till they have been made to see the folly of it, or are given over to their evil ways. Now children are more changeable. When I lived in a Shoe, I was driven half out of my wits, for I never could be thorough when I reproved them, they were always naughty in a different way. I don't believe that any one could have got any of my children into a book; they wouldn't keep still long enough to have their characters taken."

Almost all the Youths were accompanied by their parents or guardians, though some had private tutors. Two youthful persons from the eighteenth century attracted a great deal of attention. They were Harry Sandford and Tommy Merton. Harry was a great philosopher, and understood so perfectly the principles of the Wedge and the Inclined Plane and the Moral Law that it was hard to believe his friend, Mr. Barlow, who stated that he was only six years old. Tommy, on the other hand, until his sixth year had been quite worldly, and had held a number of erroneous opinions. Under Harry's instruction, however, he had been much improved and was now quite sedate and observing.

Somehow the painful examples appealed to Miss Muffet most, for she was very tender-hearted. There was the little criminal who once stole a pin. Miss Muffet had always understood that a pin was the very worst thing to steal; it had such fearful consequences. The last consequence generally is that one is transported. And there was an example of youthful obstinacy who wouldn't pronounce the letter G. His mother was almost broken-hearted for fear he might take a prejudice against other letters of the alphabet. She sat up three nights with him and spent days trying to make him say G.

"It shows that she was a good mother, doesn't it?" said Miss Muffet.

"It shows that she didn't have to do her own work," replied the Little Old Woman.

A group of very old-fashioned children were talking together in whispers. They were evidently anxious that no older persons should hear them.