"i'm going to sit in this comfor'ble arm-chair by the fire," said jimmieboy, climbing up into the capacious easy-chair in his father's library, and settling down upon its soft cushioned seat. "i've had my supper, and it was all of cold things, and i think i ought to get 'em warmed up before i go to bed."
"very well," said his papa. "only be careful, and keep your feet awake. it wouldn't be comfortable if your feet should go to sleep just about the time your mamma wanted you to go to bed. i'd have to carry you up stairs, if that should happen, and the doctor says if i carry you much longer i'll have a back like a dromedary."
"oh, that would be lovely!" said jimmieboy. "i'd just like to see you with two humps on your[pg 61] back—one for me, and one for my little brother."
"dear me!" said a gruff voice at jimmieboy's side—"dear me! the idea of a boy of your age, with two sets of alphabet picture blocks and a dictionary right in the house, not knowing that a dromedary has only one hump! ridiculous! next thing you'll be trying to say that the one-eyed catteraugus has two eyes."
jimmieboy leaned over the arm of the chair to see who it could be that spoke. it wasn't his father, that much was certain, because his father had often said that it wasn't possible to do more than three things at once, and he was now doing that many—smoking a cigar, reading a book, and playing with the locket on the end of his watch-chain.
"who are you, anyhow?" said jimmieboy, as he peered over the arm, and saw nothing but the dictionary.
"i'm myself—that's who," was the answer, and then jimmieboy was interested to see that it was nothing less than the dictionary itself that had addressed him. "you ought to be more careful about the way you talk," added the dictionary. "your diction is airy without being dictionary, if you know what that means, which[pg 62] you don't, as the rose remarked to the cauliflower, when the cauliflower said he'd be a finer rose than the rose if he smelled as sweet."
"i'm very sorry," jimmieboy replied, meekly, "i forgot that the dromedary only had one hump."
"i don't believe you'd know a dromedary from a milk dairy if they both stood before you," retorted the dictionary. "now would you?"
"yes, i think i would," said jimmieboy. "the milk dairy would have cream in bottles in its windows, and the dromedary wouldn't."
"ah, but you don't know why!" sang the dictionary. "you don't even begin to know why the dromedary wouldn't have cream in bottles in its windows."
"no," said jimmieboy, "i don't. why wouldn't he?"
"because he has no windows," laughed the dictionary; "and between you and me, that's one of the respects in which the dromedary is like a base-drum—there isn't a solitary window in either of 'em."
"you know a terrible lot, don't you?" said jimmieboy, patronizingly.
"terrible isn't the word. i'm simply hideously learned," said the dictionary. "why, i've been called a vocabulary, i know so many words."
[pg 63]
"i wish you'd tell me all you know," said jimmieboy, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair, and putting his chin on the palms of his two hands. "i'd like to know more than papa does—just for once. do you know enough to tell me anything he doesn't know?"
"do i?" laughed the dictionary. "well, don't i? rather. why, i'm telling him things all the time. he came and asked me the other night what raucous meant, and how to spell macrobiotic."
"and did you really know?" asked jimmieboy, full of admiration for this wonderful creature.
"yes; and a good deal more besides. why, if he had asked me, i could have told him what a zygomatic zoophagan is; but he never asked me. queer, wasn't it?"
"yes," said jimmieboy. "what is one of those things?"
"a zygomatic zoophagan? why that's a—er—let me see," said the dictionary, turning over his leaves. "i like to search myself pretty thoroughly before i commit myself to a definition. a zygomatic zoophagan is a sort of cheeky animal that eats other animals. you are one, though i wouldn't brag about it if i were you. you are an animal, and at times a very cheeky[pg 64] animal, and i've seen you eat beef. that's what makes you a zygomatic zoophagan."
"do i bite?" asked jimmieboy, a little afraid of himself since he had learned what a fearful creature he was.
"only at dinner-time, and unless you are very careless about it and eat too hastily you need not be afraid. very few zygomatic zoophagans ever bite themselves. in fact, it never happened really but once that i know of. that was the time the zoophagan got the best of the eight-winged tallahassee. ever hear about that?"
"no, i never did," said jimmieboy. "how did it happen?"
"this way," said the dictionary, as he stood up and made a bow to jimmieboy. and then he recited these lines:
"the calipee and the zoophagan."
"the yellow-faced zoophagan
was strolling near the sea,
when from the depths of ocean
sprang forth that dread amp-hib-ian,
the mawkish calipee.
"the tallahassee bird sometimes
the calipee is called.
his eyes are round and big as dimes,
he has eight wings, composes rhymes,
[pg 65]his head is very bald.
"now if there are two creatures in
this world who disagree—
two creatures full of woe and sin—
they are the zo-oph, pale and thin,
and that bad calipee.
"whene'er they meet they're sure to fight,
no matter where they are;
nor do they stop by day or night,
till one is beaten out of sight,
or safety seeks afar.
"and, sad to say, the calipee
is stronger of the two;
and so he'd won the victory
at all times from his enemy,
the slight and slender zoo.
"but this time it went otherwise,
for, so the story goes,
as yonder sun set in the skies,
the calipee, to his surprise,
was whacked square on the nose.
"which is the fatal, mortal part
of all the calipees;
much more important than the heart,
for life is certain to depart
when cali cannot sneeze.
"the world, surprised, asked 'how was it?
how did he do it so?
where did the zoo get so much wit?
how did he learn so well to hit
[pg 66]so fatally his foe?'
"''twas but his strategy,' then cried
the friends of little zoo;
'as cali plunged, our hero shied,
ran twenty feet off to one side,
and bit himself in two.
"'and then, you see, the calipee
was certainly undone;
the zo-oph beat him easily,
as it must nearly always be
when there are two to one.'
"rather a wonderful tale that," continued the dictionary. "i don't know that i really believe it, though. it's too great a tale for any dog to wag, eh?"
"yes," said jimmieboy. "i don't think i believe it either. if the zoophagan bit himself in two, i should think he'd have died. i know i would."
"no, you wouldn't," said the dictionary; "because you couldn't. it isn't a question of would and could, but of wouldn't and couldn't. by-the-way, here's a chance for you to learn something. what's the longest letter in the alphabet?"
"they're all about the same, aren't they?" asked jimmieboy.
"they look so, but they aren't. l is the longest. an english ell is forty-five inches long.[pg 67]
[pg 68] here's another. what letter does a chinaman wear on his head?"
"double eye!" cried jimmieboy.
"that's pretty good," said the dictionary, with an approving nod; "but you're wrong. he wears a q. and i'll tell you why a q is like a chinaman. chinamen don't amount to a row of beans, and a q is nothing but a zero with a pig-tail. do you know why they put a at the head of the alphabet?"
"no."
"because alphabet begins with an a."
"then why don't they put t at the end of it?" asked jimmieboy.
"they do," said the dictionary. "i-t—it."
jimmieboy laughed to himself. he had no idea there was so much fun in the dictionary. "tell me something more," he said.
"let me see. oh, yes," said the dictionary, complacently. "how's this?
"'oh, what is a yak, sir?' the young man said;
'i really much wish to hear.'
'a queer-looking cad with a bushy head,
a buffalo-robe all over him spread,
and whiskers upon his ear.'
"and tell me, i pray,' said the boy in drab,
just what's a thelphusi-an?'
[pg 69]'a great big crab with nippers that nab
whatever the owner desires to grab—
a crusty crustace-an."
"'i'm obliged,' said the boy, with a wide, wide smirk,
as he slowly moved away.
'will you tell me, sir, ere i go to work—
to toil till the night brings along its murk—
how high peanuts are to-day?'
"and i had to give in,
for i couldn't say;
and the boy, with a grin,
moved off on his way."
"that was my own personal experience," said the dictionary. "the boy was a very mean boy, too. he went about telling people that there were a great many things i didn't know, which was very true, only he never said what they were, and his friends thought they were important things, like the meaning of sagaciousness, and how many jays are there in geranium, and others. if he'd told 'em that it was things like the price of peanuts, and how are the fish biting to-day, and is your mother's seal-skin sack plush or velvet, that i didn't know, they'd not have thought it disgraceful. oh, it was awfully mean!"
"particularly after you had told him what those other things were," said jimmieboy.
[pg 70]
"yes; but i got even with him. he came to me one day to find out what an episode was, and i told him it was a poem in hysterical hexameters, with a refrain repeated every eighteenth line, to be sung to slow music."
"and what happened?" asked jimmieboy.
"he told his teacher that, and he was kept in for two months, and made to subtract two apples from one lunch every recess."
"oh, my, how awful!" cried jimmieboy.
"but it served him right. don't you think so?" said the dictionary.
"yes, i do," said jimmieboy. "but tell me. what'll i tell papa that he doesn't know?"
"tell him that a sasspipedon is a barrel with four sides, and is open at both ends, and is a much better place for cigar ashes than his lap, because they pass through it to the floor, and so do not soil his clothes."
"good!" said jimmieboy, peering across the room to where his father still sat smoking. "i think i'll tell him now. say, papa," he cried sitting up, "what is a sasspipedon?"
"i don't know. what?" answered jimmieboy's father, laying his paper down, and coming over to where the little boy sat.
"it's a—it's a—it's an ash-barrel," said the[pg 71] little fellow, trying to remember what the dictionary had said.
"who said so?" asked papa.
"the dictionary," answered jimmieboy.
and when jimmieboy's father came to examine the dictionary on the subject, the disagreeable old book hadn't a thing to say about the sasspipedon, and jimmieboy went up to bed wondering what on earth it all meant, anyhow.
