Part 6

"They had to stay in Patagonia until they could," said James. "It is known as the School of Instruction of the States. It is also our penal colony. Instead of prisons, we have a section of Patagonia set apart for the criminal element."

"And the negro?" asked Dawson. "How about him?"

"The negro, Mr. Dawson, if the histories say rightly, was an awful problem for a great many years. He had so many good points and so many bad that no one knew exactly what to do about him. Finally the sixty-third amendment was passed, ordering his deportation to Africa. It seemed like a hardship at first, but in 2863 he pulled himself together, and to-day has a continent of his own. Africa is his, and when nations are at war together they hire their troops from Africa. They make splendid soldiers, you know."

"What's become of Krueger and--er--Rhodes?" Dawson asked. "Turned black?"

James laughed. "Oh, Rhodes and Krueger! Why, as I remember it, they smashed each other. But that is ancient history, Mr. Dawson."

"Jove!" cried Dawson. "What changes!" And then an idea crossed his mind. "James," said he, "pack up my luggage. We'll go to London."

"Where?" asked James.

"To the British capital," returned Dawson.

"Very well, sir," said James. "I will buy return tickets for Calcutta at once, sir. Shall we go on the 1.10 or the 3.40? The 1.10 is an express, but the 3.40 has a buffet."

"Which is the quicker?" Dawson asked.

"The 3.40 goes through in thirty-five minutes, sir. The 1.10 does it in half an hour."

"Great Scott!" said Dawson. "I think, on the whole, James, I won't try it until to-morrow. Calcutta, eh!" he added to himself. "James," he continued, "when did Calcutta become the British capital?"

"In 2964, sir," said James.

"And London?" queried Dawson.

"I don't know much about those island towns, sir," said James. "It's said that London was once the British capital, but sensible people don't believe it much. Why, it hasn't more than twenty million inhabitants, mostly tailors."

"And how many citizens does a modern city have to have, to amount to anything, James?" asked Dawson, faintly.

"Well," said James scratching his head reflectively, "one hundred and sixty or two hundred millions, according to the last census."

"And New York reaches to where?" Dawson asked, in a tentative manner.

"Oh, not very far. It's only third, you know, in population. The last town annexed was Buffalo. The trouble with New York is that it has reached the limits of the State on every side. We'd make it bigger if we could, but Pennsylvania and Ohio and New Jersey won't give up an inch; and Canada is very jealous of her old boundaries."

"Wisely," said Dawson. And then he chose to be sarcastic. "Why don't they fill in the ocean with ashes and extend the city over the Atlantic, James? In an age of such marvellous growth so much waste space should be utilized," he said.

"Oh, it is," returned the valet. "You, of course, know that all the West Indies are now connected by means of a cinder-track with the mainland?"

"And is the bicycle-path to the Azores built yet?" demanded Dawson, dryly.

"No, Mr. Dawson," replied James. "That was given up in 2947, when the patent balloon tires were invented, by means of which wheelmen can scorch wherever they choose to through space, irrespective of roads."

Dawson gasped. "For Heaven's sake, James," he cried, "I need air! Bring up the bodies, and let me get aboard one of 'em and take a sleigh-ride in Central Park. I can't stand this much longer."

The valet laughed heartily.

"Sleigh-rides have gone out in the Central Park, sir. When Mr. Bunkerton started his earth-heating-and-cooling plant snow was practically abolished hereabouts, Mr. Dawson," said he. "It's never cold enough for snow--always about seventy degrees."

"Ah! The earth is heated from a central station, eh?" asked Dawson.

"Heated and cooled, sir. What with the hot and cold air running through flues from Vesuvius and the north pole into a central reservoir, an absolute mean temperature that never varies from one year's end to another has been obtained. If you wish to take a sleigh-ride you'll have to go to Mars, sir, and just at present the ships running both ways are crowded. They always are during the holiday season. I doubt if you could secure passage for a week."

"Bring up the bodies!" roared Dawson. "I can't express myself in this disembodied state. Mean temperature everywhere; income provided by government; no taxes; no poor; gold dumped into the cellar; houses built of silver; sleigh-riding at Mars. _Bring up the bodies!_ Do you hear? The mere idea is wrecking my mind. Give me something physical, and give it to me quick."

Dawson's emotion was so overpowering that the valet was really frightened, and he fled below, whence he shortly reappeared, pushing before him a small wheeling vehicle in which sat three villanous-looking bodies, and a fourth, which Dawson, with a gasp of relief, recognized as his own.

"I thought you said I had five of these things?" he demanded, inspecting the bodies.

"So you have, sir. The one you wear for evening, sir, is being pressed. You fell asleep in it the other night, sir, and got it all wrinkled."

"That golf fellow's a gay-looking prig!" laughed Dawson. "Let me try him on."

The valet stood the body up, and, opening a small door at the top of the skull, ingeniously concealed by the hair, invited Dawson to enter. Without even knowing how it came about, Dawson soon found himself in full possession. Then he walked over to the glass and peered in at himself.

"Humph!" he said. "Not much to look at, am I? Bring me a driver."

James obeyed, and Dawson tried the swing.

"Why, the darned thing's left-handed!" he said, after some awkward work. "I don't like that."

"You picked it out for yourself, sir," replied the valet. "You said a left-handed player always rattled the other man, and, besides, it was the only one you ever had that could keep its eye on the ball."

"Let me out! Let me out!" screamed Dawson. "I don't like it, and I won't have it. I'm suffocating. Open my head and let me out."

The valet unfastened the little door, and Dawson emerged. "What's that tough-looking one for?" he asked, after a pause, during which his brain throbbed with the excitement of his novel experience.

"Prize-fights," said James.

"And the strange-looking thing that appears to have been designed for a fancy-dress ball?"

"Nobody knows what you intended that for, Mr. Dawson. You had it sent up yourself from the bodydasher's last week, sir."

"Well, take it away," roared Dawson. "This may be 3568, but I haven't lost my self-respect entirely. Give it to--ah--give it to the children to play with."

"Really, Mr. Dawson," said the valet, anxiously, "wouldn't I better ring up the President and have him send a doctor here from the Department of Physic? You seem all astray this morning. There aren't any children any more, sir."

"Wha--what? No _children_?" cried Dawson.

"They were abolished three centuries ago, sir," explained the valet.

"Then how the deuce is the world populated?" demanded Dawson.

"It was sufficiently populated at the time the law abolishing children was passed, sir."

"But people die, don't they?"

"Never," replied the valet. "When Dr. Perkinbloom discovered how to separate man's mental from his physical side, by means of this little door in the cranium, all the perishable portions of man were done away with, which is how it is, sir, that, for convenience' sake, after the world was as full of consciousness as it could be comfortably, it was decided not to have any more of it."

"But these bodies, James--these bodies?"

"Oh, they are manufactured--"

"But how?"

"That, sir, is the secret of the inventor," replied the valet, "a secret which he is permitted by our government to retain, although the factories are maintained under the supervision of the Tailor-General."

Dawson was silent. He was absolutely overpowered by the revelation.

"James," he said, after a pause of nearly five minutes, "let me--let me back into my old self just for a moment, please. I--I feel faint, and sort of uncomfortable. I feel lost, don't you know. I can grasp some of your ideas, but--Christmas without children! It does not seem possible."

The valet respectfully raised up the original Dawson, opened the little door in the top of its head, and Dawson slipped in.

"Now lock that door," said Dawson, quickly, once he was safe inside. The valet obeyed nervously.

"Give me the key," said Dawson. "Quick!"

"Yes, sir," said James, handing it over, eying his master anxiously meanwhile.

Dawson looked at it. It was a fragile bit of gold, but gold did not appeal to him at the moment, and before the valet could interfere to stop him he had hurled it far out of the window into the busy street below, where it was lost in the maze of traffic.

"There," said Dawson; "I guess you'll have a hard time getting me out of this again. You needn't try. And meanwhile, James, you can kick those other bodies out into the street and dump the gold into the river; after which you may present my compliments to your darned old government, and tell it that it can go where the woodbine twineth. A government that abolishes children can go hang, so far as I am concerned."

James sprang towards Dawson as if he had been stung. His face grew white with wrath.

"Sir," he hissed, passionately, "the words that you have spoken are treason, and merit punishment."

"What's that?" cried Dawson, wrathfully.

"Treason is what I said," retorted the valet, aroused. "If I thought you were in your right mind and knew what you were saying, I should conduct you forthwith to the police-station and inform against you to the Secretary of Justice."

"Get out of here, you--you--you impertinent ass!" cried Dawson. "Leave the room! I--I--I discharge you! You forget your position!"

"It is you who forget your position," returned the valet. "Discharge me! I like that. You might just as well try to discharge the President of the United States as me."

Here the valet gave a scornful laugh, and leered maddeningly at Dawson. The latter gazed at him coldly.

"You are my servant?" he demanded.

"By government appointment, at your service," replied James, with a satirical bow. "You have overlooked the fact that the government since 1900 has gradually absorbed all business--every function of labor is now governmental--and a man who arbitrarily bounces a cook, as the ancients used to put it, strikes at the administration. Charges may be preferred against a servant, but he cannot be deprived of his office except upon the report of a committee to the Department of Intelligence. As the President is your servant, so am I."

Dawson sat down aghast, and clutched his forehead with his hands.

"But," he cried, jumping to his feet, "that is intolerable. The logic of the thing makes you, while your party is in power--"

"Your governor," interrupted the valet. "Come," he added, firmly. "You called me an impertinent ass a moment ago, and my patience is exhausted. I shall inform against you. If you aren't sent to Patagonia before night, my name is not James Wilkins."

He laid his hand on Dawson's shoulder roughly. A shock, as of electricity, went through Dawson's person. His old-time strength returned to him, and, turning viciously upon the impudent fellow, he grasped him about his middle with both arms, and, after a struggle that lasted several minutes, dragged him to the window and hurled him, even as he had the key, down into the street below.

This done, he fell unconscious to the floor.

* * * * *

A year has passed since the episode, and Dawson has become the happiest man in the world, for on his return to consciousness, instead of finding himself in the hands of a revengeful valet, backed by a socialistic government, the past had been restored to him and the future relegated to its proper place. It was only the other night that he spoke of the value of his experience, however.

"It has made me happier, in spite of my many troubles," he said. "If there's anything that can make the present endurable it is the thought of what the future may have in store for us. A guaranteed income, and a detachable spirit, and no taxes, and a variety of imperishable bodies are all very nice, but servants with the manners of custom-house officials, and children abolished! No, thank you. Curious dream, though," he added, "don't you think?"

"No," said I, "not very. It strikes me as a reasonable forecast of what is likely to be if things keep on as they are going. Especially in that matter of our servants."

"Maybe it wasn't a dream," said Dawson. "Maybe, time having neither beginning nor ending, the future is, and I stumbled into it."

"Maybe so," said I. "I think, however, you'll have some difficulty in finding that $15,000 again."

"I don't want to," observed Dawson. "For don't you see I'd find James Wilkins's dead body beside it, and, in spite of its drawbacks, I prefer life in New York to the possibility of Patagonia."

Hans Pumpernickel's Vigil

Hans Pumpernickel's Vigil

ans Pumpernickel was for many years regarded by his friends and neighbors in the little town of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz as the most industrious boy they had ever known. Where Hans came from no one knew. He had appeared in Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz when he was not more than six years old. His name was all that he would confide to the curious.

"I'm Hans Pumpernickel," he had answered, in response to the inquiries of the inquisitive. "But where I came from is neither here nor there."

Some said that this statement was only half true, though many others believed it wholly. Certain it is, however, that if one has a hailing-place, a native town, it must be either here or there. If it is not here, it must be there, said some; but Hans never took the trouble to say anything further on the subject.

"And what are you going to do to live?" asked the Mayor's wife, who took a great interest in the pretty little stranger when first she saw him.

"Breathe," said Hans, simply. "For you see, ma'am, I cannot live without breathing, and so I have decided to do that."

The Mayor said that this was impudence; but the good lady, who had made that somewhat crabbed old person's life more happy than he deserved, only laughed, and said that she thought it was droll, and only wished her little boy, who was stupid like his father, could have said something as bright.

"But you cannot breathe unless you eat," the Mayor's wife had said, when Hans had spoken. "What are you going to eat?"

"I do not know," said Hans. "What have you got?"

Again the Mayor growled "Impudence!" and again did the good lady laugh.

"We have sausages and cake and apples," she said.

"Then," said Hans, "I will have some sausages and cake and apples."

"But we don't give away things of that kind," said the lady. "Those who would eat must work."

"I cannot work unless I breathe," said Hans; "and you yourself have said that I cannot breathe unless I eat. Therefore, if you would have me work, you must let me eat."

"Logic!" cried the Mayor, beginning to take an interest in Hans. "Give the boy an apple."

So Hans was given the apple, and he ate it so thoroughly that the Mayor decided that he was just the boy to do little errands for him, for thoroughness was a quality he greatly admired, and from that time on Hans lived in the Mayor's family; and when the stupid little son of that exalted personage ran away from home and became a cabin-boy on a man-of-war, the Mayor adopted Hans, and he took the place of the boy who had gone away, refusing, however, much to the Mayor's sorrow, to change his name from Pumpernickel to Ehrenbreitstein, which happened to be the last name of the Mayor.

"Pumpernickel was I born," said Hans, "and Pumpernickel will I remain. Why should I, a Pumpernickel who am bound to make a name for myself sooner or later, take the name of some one else, and shed the lustre of my fame upon _his_ family?"

All of which was very sensible, though Mayor Ehrenbreitstein did not appreciate that fact.

So Hans went on making himself very useful to the Mayor and his wife. He would shell pease in the morning for the Lady Mayor, and in the afternoon he would write speeches for the Mayor to deliver on public occasions; and people said that as a public speaker the Mayor was improving, while all who had the pleasure of dining with the head of the city frequently complimented the Lady Mayor upon the excellence of the pease served at her banquets. In every way was Hans satisfactory to all for whom he worked. After a while such confidence did he inspire in his employers that Frau Ehrenbreitstein let him do all her shopping for her, and most of the Mayor's duties were intrusted to the boy. He could match ribbons and veto or approve the doings of the aldermen of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz with equal perfection. The ribbons he matched and the worsteds he chose for his kind mistress always looked well, and the lady soon became in the popular estimation a person of unusually good taste, while the vetoes and other public papers were so well phrased that even his opponents were forced to admit that the magistrate was right.

Hans bore all his prosperity with modesty, and for the fifteen years during which he faithfully served his employers he developed no conceit whatsoever, as many a weaker boy might reasonably have done, and, barring one peculiarity, none of the eccentricities of the truly great ever manifested themselves. This one peculiarity excited much curiosity among those who had heard of it, but despite all questionings Hans declined to say why he had it. It was a peculiarity that was indeed peculiar. It was noticed that from the time he first ate with the family of the Mayor he would set apart one full third of every dainty that was placed upon his plate, and when the meal was over he would take it away from the table rolled up in a napkin. For instance, if at breakfast three sausages fell to the lot of Hans, he would eat two of them, and the third he would wrap up in a napkin, and take it to his room. So it was with everything else that came his way. Out of every three apples one would go untouched into the napkin; and later, when he began to earn a little money, one-third of it also would be saved. It was noticed, too, that on every Friday afternoon Hans would send away a big box by the express carrier, but to whom the box was sent no one could learn. The express carrier would not tell, and Hans himself, when asked about it, would say to the one who asked him:

"Let me see. You are in what business?"

"I am a baker," or, perhaps, "I am a butcher," the inquisitive one would say.

"Then," said Hans, "if I were you, I would stick to baking or to butching, and not embark on enterprises which are not allied to the making of bread or the slaughter of roast beef."

The people so addressed would turn away chagrined, but with proper apologies; and when they apologized Hans would say, with a smile, "Pray don't mention it," so kindly that the meddlers would be pacified, and no ill feeling ever resulted from the young boy's request that they mind their own business.

At the end of the fifteen years of faithful work, however, a great change seemed to come over Hans. He began to show a great distaste for the labors that he had hitherto spent his time in performing. When Frau Ehrenbreitstein gave him a skein of pink zephyr to take to town to match, he would try to beg off, and when he could not beg off he did worse. He went to town and brought back, not the new skein of pink zephyr that his mistress wanted, but a roll of green and yellow wall-paper, and, when she expressed surprise, he said that that was the best he could do.

"But I didn't want wall-paper," cried the Lady Mayor.

"Well, you never told me that," said Hans. "You said, I admit, that you wanted pink zephyr; but then one might wish for that and still want a roll of green and yellow wall-paper."

"Are you crazy?" returned the good lady, much mystified.

"I think not; and the mere fact that I _think_ not shows that I am not," Hans replied, "for the very good reason that if I had lost my mind I could not think at all."

"Very well," said Frau Ehrenbreitstein, reassured by this perfectly logical answer. "You may go and shell the pease."

Whereupon Hans went down into the kitchen and shelled the pease, only he retained the pods this time, and threw the pease to the pigs.

"It is very evident to me," observed his good mistress to her husband that night, when the pods were served at dinner, "that Hans Pumpernickel has something on his mind."

"Yes, my dear," answered the Mayor. "I know he has, and I know what it is."

"He is not in love, I hope?" said Frau Ehrenbreitstein.

"Not he!" cried the Mayor. "He is thinking about what I shall say to the Emperor next week when his Imperial Majesty and the Chancellor pass through Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz on their way to the Schutzenfest at Wuertemburger-Darmstadt. I have told Hans that the imperial train stops at our station to water the engine, and during the five minutes or so in which the Emperor honors our burg with his presence it is only fitting that I, as Lord Mayor, should greet him with an address of welcome. It will be the opportunity of my life, and the boy is trying to enable me to be equal to it. Heaven forbid that he should fail!"

This explanation eased the mind of the Mayor's wife, and she refrained from asking Hans to shell pease and match zephyrs until after the Emperor had come and gone. Unfortunately, however, this was not the real cause of the trouble with Hans, as the speech he wrote for the Mayor to deliver to his imperial master showed; for, to the dismay of Mayor Ehrenbreitstein, when the Emperor's train stopped at Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, and he had unrolled the address Hans had written, he discovered that Hans had not written a speech at all, but a comic poem, in which his Imperial Majesty was referred to as a royal turkey-cock, with a crow like the squeak of a penny flute. The poor Mayor nearly expired when his eyes rested on the lines Hans had written; but he went bravely ahead and made up a speech of his own, which his Majesty fortunately did not hear, owing to the noise made by the steam escaping from the engine whistle.

When the Emperor had departed, the Mayor returned home in a rage, and you may be sure that Hans could not get in a word edgewise even until his employer had told him what he thought of him.

"Excuse me," said Hans, when the Mayor had finished, after an hour's angry tirade--"excuse me, but would you mind saying that over again? I was thinking of something else."

"Say it over again?" shrieked the Mayor. "Never. I shall never speak to you again."

"But what have I done?" asked Hans, so innocently that the Mayor relented and repeated his tirade, and then Hans broke down.

"Did I do that?" he said. "Then it is very plain that I need a vacation."

"I think so," retorted the Mayor. "You may take the next thousand years without pay."

"One year will be sufficient," said Hans. "Though I thank you just as kindly for the others." Then he wept, and the Mayor's wife took pity on him, and asked him to tell her what it was that had so occupied his mind of late that he had committed so many grievous errors, and Hans told her all.

"It's my great-great-great-great-great-granduncle's fault," he sobbed.

"Your what?" cried his mistress.