Читать книгу Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad - Bangs John Kendrick - Страница 5

The Unwiseman's face wore a very troubled look as the little party of travellers landed at Liverpool. He had doffed his sailor's costume and now appeared in his regular frock coat and old fashioned beaver hat, and carried an ancient carpet-bag in his hand, presenting to Mollie and Whistlebinkie a more familiar appearance than while in his sea-faring clothes, but he was evidently very much worried about something.

"Cheer up," whistled Whistlebinkie noting his careworn expression. "You look as if you were down to your last cream-cake. Wass-er-matter?"

"I think they've fooled us," replied the Unwiseman with a doubtful shake of his gray head. "This don't look like England to me, and I've been wondering if that ship mightn't be a pirate ship after all that's carried us all off to some strange place with the idea of thus getting rid of us, so that the Captain might go home and steal our kitchen-stoves and other voluble things."

"Pooh!" ejaculated Whistlebinkie. "What makes you thinkit-taint England?"

"It's too big in the first place," replied the Unwiseman, "and in the second it ain't the right color. Just look at this map and you'll see."

Here Mr. Me took a map of the world out of his pocket and spread it out before Whistlebinkie.

"See that?" he said pointing to England in one corner. "I've measured it off with a tape measure and it's only four inches long and about an inch and a half wide. This place we're in now is more'n five miles long and, as far as I can see two or three miles across. And look at the color on the map."

"Tspink," said Whistlebinkie.

"I don't know what you mean by tspink," said the Unwiseman, "but – "

"It's-pink," explained Whistlebinkie.

"Exactly," said the Unwiseman. "That's just what it is, but that ain't the color of this place. Seems to me this place is a sort of dull yellow dusty brown. And besides I don't see any houses on the map and this place is just chock-full of them."

"O well, I guess it's all right," said Whistlebinkie. "Maybe when we get further in we'll find it grows pinker. Cities ain't never the same color as the country you know."

"Possibly," said the Unwiseman, "but even then that wouldn't account for the difference in size. Why should the map say it's four inches by an inch and a half, when anybody can see that this place is five miles by three just by looking at it?"

"I guess-smaybe it's grown some since that map was made," suggested Whistlebinkie. "Being surrounded by water you'd think it would grow."

Just then a British policeman walked along the landing stage and Whistlebinkie added, "There's a p'liceman. You might speak to him about it."

"Good idea," said the Unwiseman. "I'll do it." And he walked up to the officer.

"Good morning, Robert," said he. "You'll pardon my curiosity, but is this England?"

"Yessir," replied the officer politely. "You are on British soil, sir."

"H'm! British, eh?" observed the Unwiseman. "Just what is that? French for English, I suppose."

"This is Great Britain, sir," explained the officer with a smile. "Hingland is a part of Great Britain."

"Hingland?" asked the Unwiseman with a frown.

"Yessir – this is Hingland, sir," replied the policeman, as he turned on his heel and wandered on down the stage leaving the Unwiseman more perplexed than when he had asked the question.

"It looks queerer than ever," said the Unwiseman when he had returned to Whistlebinkie. "These people don't seem to have agreed on the name of this place, which I consider to be a very suspicious circumstance. That policeman said first it was England, then he said it was Great Britain, and then he changed it to Hingland, while Mollie's father says it's Liverpool. It's mighty strange, and I wish I was well out of it."

"Why did you call the p'liceman Robert, Mr. Me?" asked Whistlebinkie, who somehow or other did not seem to share the old gentleman's fears.

"O I read somewhere that the English policemen were all Bobbies," the Unwiseman replied. "But I didn't feel that I'd ought to be so familiar as to call him that until I'd got to know him better, so I just called him Robert."

Later on Mollie explained the situation to the old fellow.

"Liverpool," she said, "is a part of England and England is a part of Great Britain, just as Binghamton is a part of New York and New York is a part of the United States of America."

"Ah – that's it, eh?" he answered. "And how about Hingland?"

"That is the way some of the English people talk," explained Mollie. "A great many of them drop their H's," she added.

"Aha!" said the Unwiseman, nodding his head. "I see. And the police go around after them picking them up, eh?"

"I guess that's it," said Mollie.

"Because if they didn't," continued the Unwiseman, "the streets and gutters would be just over-run with 'em. If 20,000,000 people dropped twenty-five H's apiece every day that would be 500,000,000 H's lyin' around. I don't believe you could drive a locomotive through that many – Mussy Me! It must keep the police busy pickin' 'em up."

"Perfly-awful!" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"I'm going to write a letter to the King about it," said the Unwiseman, "and send him a lot of rules like I have around my house to keep people from being so careless."

"That's a splendid idea," cried Mollie, overjoyed at the notion. "What will you say?"

"H'm!" said the Unwiseman. "Let me see – I guess I'd write like this: " and the strange old man sat down on a trunk and dashed off the following letter to King Edward.

Dear Mister King:

Liverpool, June 10, 19 – .

I understand that the people of your Island is very careless about their aitches and that the pleece are worked to a frazzil pickin' 'em up from the public highways. Why don't you by virtue of your exhausted rank propagate the following rules to unbait the nuisance?

I. My subjex must be more careful of their aitches.

II. Any one caught dropping an aitch on the public sidewalks will be fined two dollars.

III. Aitches dropped by accident must be picked up to once immediately and without delay.

IV. All aitches found roaming about the city streets unaccompanied by their owners will be promptly arrested by the pleece and kept in the public pound until called for after which they will be burnt, and the person calling for them fined two dollars.

V. All persons whether they be a pleeceman or a Dook or other nobil personidges seeing a strange aitch lying on the sidewalk, or otherwise roaming at random without any visible owner whether it is his or not must pick it up to once immediately and without delay under penalty of the law.

VI. Capital H's must be muzzled before took out in public and must be securely fastened by glue or otherwise to the words they are the beginning of.

VII. Anybody tripping up on the aitch of another person thus carelessly left lying about can sue for damages and get two dollars for a broken leg, five dollars for a broken nose, seven dollars and a half for a black eye, and so on up, from the person leaving the aitch thus carelessly about, or a year's imprisonment, or both.

VIII. A second offense will be punished by being sent to South Africa for five years when if the habit is continued more severe means will be taken like being made to live in Boston or some other icebound spot.

IX. School teachers catching children using aitches in this manner will keep them in after school and notify their parents who will spank them and send them to bed without their supper.

X. Pleecemen will report all aitches found on public streets to the public persecutor and will be paid at the rate of six cents a million for all they pick up.

I think if your madjesty will have these rules and regulations printed on a blue pasteboard card in big red letters and hung up all over everywhere you will be able, your h. r. h., to unbait this terrible nuisance.

Yoors trooly,

The Unwiseman.

P.S. It may happen, your h. r. h., that some of your subjex can't help themselves in this aitch dropping habit, and it would therefore be mercyful of you to provide letter boxes on all the street cornders where they could drop their aitches into without breaking the rules of your high and mighty highness.

Give my love to the roil family.

Yoors trooly,

The Unwiseman.

"There," he said when he had scribbled the letter off with his lead pencil. "If the King can only read that it ought to make him much obliged to me for helping him out of a very bad box. This Island ain't so big, map or no map, that they can afford to have it smothered in aitches as it surely will be if the habit ain't put a stop to. I wonder what the King's address is."

"I don't know," said Whistlebinkie with a grin. "He and I ain't never called on each other yet."

"Is King his last name or his first, I wonder," said the Unwiseman, scratching his head wonderingly.

"His first name is Edward," said Mollie. "It used to be Albert Edward, but he dropped the Albert."

"Edward what?" demanded the Unwiseman. "Don't they call him Edward Seventh?"

"Yes they do," said Mollie.

"Then I guess I'll address it to Edward S. King, Esquire, Number Seven, London – that's where all the kings live when they're home," said the Unwiseman.

And so the letter went addressed to Edward S. King, Esquire, Number Seven, London, England, but whether His Majesty ever received it or not I do not know. Certainly if he did he never answered it, and that makes me feel that he never received it, for the King of England is known as the First Gentleman of Europe, and I am quite sure that one who deserves so fine a title as that would not leave a polite letter like the Unwiseman's unanswered. Mollie's father was very much impressed when he heard of the Unwiseman's communication.