Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad

And then when he wanted to go fishing in one of the big fissures of the glacier, and was told he could drop a million lines down there without getting a bite of any kind he announced his intention of getting out of the country as soon as he possibly could. But after all the Unwiseman had a naturally sun-shiny disposition and this added to the wonderful air of Switzerland, which in itself is one of the most beautiful things in a beautiful world, soon brought him out of his sulky fit and set him to yodeling once more as gaily as a Swiss Mountain boy. He began to see some of the beauties of the country and his active little mind was not slow at discovering advantages not always clear to people with less inquisitiveness.

"I should think," he observed to Mollie one morning as he gazed up at Mount Blanc's pure white summit, "that this would be a great ice-cream country. I'd like to try the experiment of pasturing a lot of fine Jersey cows up on those ice-fields. Just let 'em browze around one of those glaciers every day for a week and give 'em a cupful of vanilla, or chocolate extract or a strawberry once in a while and see if they wouldn't give ice-cream instead o' milk. It would be worth trying, anyhow."

Mollie thought it would and Whistlebinkie gave voice to a long low whistle of delight at the idea.

"It-ud-be-bettern-soder-watter-rany-way!" he whistled.

"Anything would be better than soda water," said the Unwiseman, who had only tried it once and got nothing but the bubbles. "Soda water's too foamy for me. It's like drinking whipped air."

But the thing that pleased the Unwiseman more than anything else was a pet chamois that he encountered at a little Swiss Chalet on one of his tours of investigation. It was a cunning little animal, very timid of course, like a fawn, but tame, and for some reason or other it took quite a fancy to the Unwiseman – possibly because he looked so like a Swiss Mountain Boy with a peaked cap he had purchased, and ribbons wound criss-cross around his calves and his magnificent Alpen-stock upon which had been burned the names of all the Alps he had not climbed. And then the Unwiseman's yodel had become something unusually fine and original in the line of yodeling, which may have attracted the chamois and made him feel that the Unwiseman was a person to be trusted. At any rate the little animal instead of running away and jumping from crag to crag at the Unwiseman's approach, as most chamois would do, came inquiringly up to him and stuck out its soft velvety nose to be scratched, and permitted the Unwiseman to inspect its horns and silky chestnut-brown coat as if it recognized in the little old man a true and tried friend of long standing.

"Why you little beauty you!" cried the Unwiseman, as he sat on the fence and stroked the beautiful creature's neck. "So you're what they call a shammy, eh?"

The chamois turned its lovely eyes upon his new found friend, and then lowered his head to have it scratched again.

"Mary had a little shamWhose hide was soft as cotton,And everywhere that Mary wentThe shammy too went trottin'."

sang the Unwiseman, dropping into poetry as was one of his habits when he was deeply moved.

The chamois evidently liked this verse for its eyes twinkled and it laid its head gently on the Unwiseman's knee and looked at him appealingly as if to say, "More of that poetry please. You are a bard after my own heart." So the Unwiseman went on, keeping time to his verse by slight taps on the chamois' nose.

"It followed her to town one dayUnto the Country Fair,And earned five hundred dollars justIn shining silver-ware."

Whistlebinkie indulged in a loud whistle of mirth at this, which so startled the little creature that it leapt backward fifteen feet in the air and landed on top of a small pump at the rear of the yard, and stood there poised on its four feet just like the chamois we see in pictures standing on a sharp peak miles up in the air, trembling just a little for fear that Whistlebinkie's squeak would be repeated. A moment of silence seemed to cure this, however, for in less than two minutes it was back again at the Unwiseman's side gazing soulfully at him as if demanding yet another verse. Of course the Unwiseman could not resist – he never could when people demanded poetry from him, it came so very easy – and so he continued:

"The children at the Country FairIndulged in merry squawksTo see the shammy polishingThe family knives and forks."The tablespoons, and coffee pots,The platters and tureens,The top of the mahogany,And crystal fire-screens."

"More!" pleaded the chamois with his soft eyes, snuggling its head close into the Unwiseman's lap, and the old gentleman went on:

"'O isn't he a wondrous kid!'The wondering children cried.We didn't know a shammy couldDo such things if he tried."And Mary answered with a smileThat dimpled up her chin'There's much that shammy's cannot do,But much that shammy-skin.'"

Whistlebinkie's behavior at this point became so utterly and inexcusably boisterous with mirth that the confiding little chamois was again frightened away and this time it gave three rapid leaps into the air which landed it ultimately upon the ridge-pole of the chalet, from which it wholly refused to descend, in spite of all the persuasion in the world, for the rest of the afternoon.

"Very intelligent little animal that," said the Unwiseman, as he trudged his way home. "A very high appreciation of true poetry, inclined to make friendship with the worthy, and properly mistrustful of people full of strange noises and squeaks."

"He was awfully pretty, wasn't he," said Mollie.

"Yes, but he was better than pretty," observed the Unwiseman. "He could be made useful. Things that are only pretty are all very well in their way, but give me the useful things – like my kitchen-stove for instance. If that kitchen-stove was only pretty do you suppose I'd love it the way I do? Not at all. I'd just put it on the mantel-piece, or on the piano in my parlor and never think of it a second time, but because it is useful I pay attention to it every day, polish it with stove polish, feed it with coal and see that the ashes are removed from it when its day's work is done. Nobody ever thinks of doing such things with a plain piece of bric-a-brac that can't be used for anything at all. You don't put any coal or stove polish on that big Chinese vase you have in your parlor, do you?"

"No," said Mollie, "of course not."

"And I'll warrant that in all the time you've had that opal glass jug on the mantel-piece of your library you never shook the ashes down in it once," said the Unwiseman.

"Mity-goo-dreeson-wy!" whistled Whistlebinkie. "They-ain't never no ashes in it."

"Correct though ungrammatically expressed," observed the Unwiseman. "There never are any ashes in it to be shaken down, which is a pretty good reason to believe that it is never used to fry potatoes on or to cook a chop with, or to roast a turkey in – which proves exactly what I say that it is only pretty and isn't half as useful as my kitchen-stove."

"It would be pretty hard to find anything useful for the bric-a-brac to do though," suggested Mollie, who loved pretty things whether they had any other use or not.

"It all depends on your bric-a-brac," said the Unwiseman. "I can find plenty of useful things for mine to do. There's my coal scuttle for instance – it works all the time."

"Coal-scuttles ain't bric-a-brac," said Whistlebinkie.

"My coal scuttle is," said the Unwiseman. "It's got a picture of a daisy painted on one side of it, and I gilded the handle myself. Then there's my watering pot. That's just as bric-a-bracky as any Chinese china pot that ever lived, but it's useful. I use it to water the flowers in summer, and to sift my lump sugar through in winter. Every pound of lump sugar you buy has some fine sugar with it and if you shake the lump sugar up in a watering pot and let the fine sugar sift through the nozzle you get two kinds of sugar for the price of one. So it goes all through my house from my piano to my old beaver hat – every bit of my bric-a-brac is useful."

"Wattonearth do-you-do with a-nold beevor-at?" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"I use it as a post-office box to mail cross letters in," said the Unwiseman gravely. "It's saved me lots of trouble."

"Cross letters?" asked Mollie. "You never write cross letters to anybody do you?"

"I'm doing it all the time," said the Unwiseman. "Whenever anything happens that I don't like I sit down and write a terrible letter to the people that do it. That eases off my feelings, and then I mail the letters in the hat."

"And does the Post-man come and get them?" asked Mollie.

"No indeed," said the Unwiseman. "That's where the beauty of the scheme comes in. If I mailed 'em in the post-office box on the lamp-post, the post-man would take 'em and deliver them to the man they're addressed to and I'd be in all sorts of trouble. But when I mail them in my hat nobody comes for them and nobody gets them, and so there's no trouble for anybody anywhere."

"But what becomes of them?" asked Mollie.

"I empty the hat on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of every month and use them for kindling in my kitchen-stove," said the Unwiseman. "It's a fine scheme. I keep out of trouble, don't have to buy so much kindling wood, and save postage."

"That sounds like a pretty good idea," said Mollie.

"It's a first class idea," returned Mr. Me, "and I'm proud of it. It's all my own and if I had time I'd patent it. Why I was invited to a party once by a small boy who'd thrown a snow-ball at my house and wet one of the shingles up where I keep my leak, and I was so angry that I sat down and wrote back that I regretted very much to be delighted to say that I'd never go to a party at his house if it was the only party in the world besides the Republican; that I didn't like him, and thought his mother's new spring bonnet was most unbecoming and that I'd heard his father had been mentioned for Alderman in our town and all sorts of disgraceful things like that. I mailed this right in my hat and used it to boil an egg with a month later, while if I'd mailed it in the post-office box that boy'd have got it and I couldn't have gone to his party at all."

"Oh – you went, did you?" laughed Mollie.

"I did and I had a fine time, six eclairs, three plates of ice cream, a pound of chicken salad, and a pocketful of nuts and raisins," said the Unwiseman. "He turned out to be a very nice boy, and his mother's spring bonnet wasn't hers at all but another lady's altogether, and his father had not even been mentioned for Water Commissioner. You see, my dear, what a lot of trouble mailing that letter in the old beaver hat saved me, not to mention what I earned in the way of food by going to the party which I couldn't have done had it been mailed in the regular way."

Here the old gentleman began to yodel happily, and to tell passersby in song that he was a "Gay Swiss Laddy with a carpet-bag, That never knew fear of the Alpine crag, For his eye was bright and his conscience clear, As he leapt his way through the atmosphere, Tra-la-la, tra-la-la, Trala-lolly-O."

"I do-see-how-yood-make-that-shammy-useful," said Whistlebinkie. "Except to try your poems on and I don't b'lieve he's a good judge o' potery."

"He's a splendid judge of queer noises," said the Unwiseman, severely. "He knew enough to jump a mile whenever you squeaked."

"Watt-else-coodie-doo?" asked Whistlebinkie through his hat. "You haven't any silver to keep polished and there aren't enough queer noises about your place to keep him busy."

"What else coodie-do?" retorted the Unwiseman, giving an imitation of Whistlebinkie that set both Mollie and the rubber doll to giggling. "Why he could polish up the handle of my big front door for one thing. He could lie down on his back and wiggle around the floor and make it shine like a lookin' glass for another. He could rub up against my kitchen stove and keep it bright and shining for a third – that's some of the things he couldie-doo, but I wouldn't confine him to work around my house. I'd lead him around among the neighbors and hire him out for fifty cents a day for general shammy-skin house-work. I dare say Mollie's mother would be glad to have a real live shammy around that she could rub her tea-kettles and coffee pots on when it comes to cleaning the silver."

"They can buy all the shammys they need at the grocer's," said Whistlebinkie scornfully.

"Dead ones," said the Unwiseman, "but nary a live shammy have you seen at the grocer's or the butcher's or the milliner's or the piano-tuner's. That's where Wigglethorpe – "

"Wigglethorpe?" cried Whistlebinkie.

"Yes Wigglethorpe," repeated the Unwiseman. "That's what I have decided to call my shammy when I get him because he will wiggle."

"He don't thorpe, does he?" laughed Whistlebinkie.

"He thorpes just as much as you bink," retorted the Unwiseman. "But as I was saying, Wigglethorpe, being alive, will be better than any ten dead ones because he won't wear out, maids won't leave him around on the parlor floor, and just because he wiggles, the silver and the hardwood floors and front door handles will be polished up in half the time it takes to do it with a dead one. At fifty cents a day I could earn three dollars a week on Wigglethorpe – "

"Which would be all profit if you fed him on potery," said Whistlebinkie with a grin.

"And if I imported a hundred of them after I found that Wigglethorpe was successful," the Unwiseman continued, very wisely ignoring Whistlebinkie's sarcasm, "that would be – hum – ha – "

"Three hundred dollars a week," prompted Mollie.

"Exactly," said the Unwiseman, "which in a year would amount to – ahem – three times three hundred and sixty-five is nine, twice nine is – "

"It comes to $15,600 a year," said Mollie.

"Right to a penny," said the Unwiseman. "I was figuring it out by the day. Fifteen thousand six hundred dollars a year is a big sum of money and reckoned in eclairs at fifty eclairs for a dollar is – er – is – well you couldn't eat 'em if you tried, there'd be so many."

"Seven hundred and eighty thousand eclairs," said Mollie.

"That's what I said," said the Unwiseman. "You just couldn't eat 'em, but you could sell 'em, so really you'd have two businesses right away, shammys and eclaires."

"Mitey-big-biziness," hissed Whistlebinkie.

"Yes," said the Unwiseman, "I think I'll suggest it to my burgular when I get home. It seems to me to be more honorable then burguling and it's just possible that after a summer spent in the uplifting company of my kitchen stove and having got used to the pleasant conversation of my leak, and seen how peaceful it is to just spend your days exercising a sweet gentle umbrella like mine, he'll want to reform and go into something else that he can do in the day-time."

By this time the little party had reached the hotel, and Mollie's father was delighted to hear of the Unwiseman's proposition. It was an entirely new idea, he said, although he was doubtful if it was a good business for a burgular.

"People might not be willing to trust him with their silver," he said.

"Very well then," said the Unwiseman. "Let him begin on front door knobs and parlor floors. He's not likely to run away with those."

The next day the travellers left Switzerland and when I next caught sight of them they had arrived at Venice.

XII

VENICE

It was late at night when Mollie and her friends arrived at Venice and the Unwiseman, sleeping peacefully as he was in the cavernous depths of his carpet-bag, did not get his first glimpse of the lovely city of the waters until he waked up the next morning. Unfortunately – or possibly it was a fortunate circumstance – the old gentleman had heard of Venice only in a very vague way before, and had no more idea of its peculiarities than he had of those of Waycross Junction, Georgia, or any other place he had never seen. Consequently his first sight of Venice filled him with a tremendous deal of excitement. Emerging from his carpet-bag in the cloak-room of the hotel he walked out upon the front steps of the building which descended into the Grand Canal, the broad waterway that runs its serpentine length through this historic city of the Adriatic.

"'Gee Whittaker!'" he cried, as the great avenue of water met his gaze. "There's been a flood! Hi there – inside – the water main has busted, and the whole town's afloat. Wake up everybody and save yourselves!"

He turned and rushed madly up the hotel stairs to the floor upon which his friends' rooms were located, calling lustily all the way:

"Get up everybody – the reservoy's busted; the dam's loose. To the boats! Mollie – Whistlebinkie – Mister and Mrs. Mollie – get up or you'll be washed away – the whole place is flooded. You haven't a minute to spare."

"What's the matter, Mr. Me?" asked Mollie, opening her door as she recognized the Unwiseman's voice out in the hallway. "What are you scaring everybody to death for?"

"Get out your life preservers – quick before it is too late," gasped the Unwiseman. "There's a tidal wave galloping up and down the street, and we'll be drowned. To the roof! All hands to starboard and man the boats."

"What are you talking about?" said Mollie.

"Look out your front window if you don't believe me," panted the Unwiseman. "The whole place is chuck full of water – couldn't bail it out in a week – "

"Oh," laughed Mollie, as she realized what it was that had so excited her friend. "Is that all?"

"All!" ejaculated the Unwiseman, his eyebrows lifting higher with astonishment. "Isn't it enough? What do you want, the whole Atlantic Ocean sitting on your front stoop?"

"Why – " began Mollie, "this is Venice – "

"Looks like Watertown," interrupted the Unwiseman.

"Thass-swattit-izz," whistled Whistlebinkie. "Venice is a water town. It's built on it."

"Built on it?" queried the Unwiseman looking scornfully at Whistlebinkie as much as to say you can't fool me quite so easily as that. "Built on water?" he repeated.

"Exactly," said Mollie. "Didn't you know that, Mr. Me? Venice is built right out on the sea."

"Well of all queer things!" ejaculated the Unwiseman, so surprised that he plumped down on the floor and sat there gazing wonderingly up at Mollie. "A whole city built on the sea! What's the matter, wasn't there land enough?"

"Oh yes, I guess there was plenty of land," said Mollie, "but maybe somebody else owned it. Anyhow the Venetians came out here where there were a lot of little islands to begin with and drove piles into the water and built their city on them."

"Well that beats me," said the Unwiseman, shaking his head in bewilderment. "I've heard of fellows building up big copperations on water, but never a city. How do they keep the water out of their cellars?"

"They don't," said Mollie.

"Maybe they build their cellars on the roof," suggested Whistlebinkie.

"Well," said the Unwiseman, rising from the floor and walking to the front window and gazing out at the Grand Canal, "I hope this hotel is anchored good and fast. I don't mind going to sea on a big boat that's built for it, but I draw the line at sailin' all around creation in a hotel."

The droll little old gentleman poised himself on one toe and stretched out his arms. "There don't seem to be much motion, does there," he remarked.

"There isn't any at all," said Mollie. "It's perfectly still."

"I guess it's because it's a clam day," observed the Unwiseman uneasily. "I hope it'll stay clam while we're here. I'd hate to be caught out in movey weather like they had on that sassy little British Channel. This hotel would flop about fearfully and I believe it would sink if somebody carelessly left a window open, to say nothing of its falling over backward and letting the water in the back door."

"Papa says it's perfectly safe," said Mollie. "The place has been here more'n a thousand years and it hasn't sunk yet."

"All right," said the Unwiseman. "If your father says that I'm satisfied because he most generally knows what he's talking about, but all the same I think we should ought to have brought a couple o' row boats and a lot of life preservers along. I don't believe in taking any chances. What do the cab-horses do here, swim?"

"No," said Mollie. "There aren't any horses in Venice. They have gondolas."

"Gondolas?" repeated the Unwiseman. "What are gondolas, trained ducks? Don't think much o' ducks as a substitute for horses."

"Perfly-bsoyd!" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"I should think they'd drive whales," said the Unwiseman, "or porpoises. By Jiminy, that would be fun, wouldn't it? Let's see if we can't hire a four whale coach, Mollie, and go driving about the city, or better yet, if they've got them well broken, get a school of porpoises. We might put on our bathing suits and go horseback riding on 'em. I don't take much to the trained duck idea, ducks are so flighty and if they shied at anything they might go flying up in the air and dump us backwards out of our cab into the water."

"We're going to take a gondola ride this morning," said Mollie. "Just you wait and see, Mr. Me."

So the Unwiseman waited and an hour later he and Mollie and Whistlebinkie boarded a gondola in charge of a very handsome and smiling gondolier who said his name was Giuseppe Zocco.

"Soako is a good name for a cab-driver in this town," said the Unwiseman, after he had inspected the gondola and ascertained that it was seaworthy. "I guess I'll talk to him."

"You-do-know-Eye-talian," laughed Whistlebinkie.

"It's one of the languages I do know," returned the Unwiseman. "I buy all my bananas and my peanuts from an Eye-talian at home and for two or three years I have been able to talk to him very easily."

He turned to the gondolier.

"Gooda da morn, Soako," he observed very politely. "You havea da prett-da-boat."

"Si, Signor," returned the smiling gondolier, who was not wholly unfamiliar with English.

"See what?" asked the Unwiseman puzzled, but looking about carefully to see what there was to be seen.

"He says we're at sea," laughed Whistlebinkie.

"Oh – well – that's it, eh?" said the Unwiseman. "I thought he only spoke Eye-talian." And then he addressed the gondolier again. "Da weather's mighta da fine, huh? Not a da rain or da heava da wind, eh? Hopa da babe is vera da well da morn."

"Si, Signor," said Giuseppe.

"Da Venn greata da place. Too mucha da watt for me. Lika da dry land moocha da bett, Giuseppe. Ever sella da banann?" continued the Unwiseman.

"Non, Signor," replied Giuseppe. "No sella da banann."

"Bully da bizz," said the Unwiseman. "Maka da munn hand over da fist. You grinda da org?"

"Huh?" grinned Giuseppe.

"He doesn't understand," said Mollie giggling.

"I asked him if he ever ground a hand-organ," said the Unwiseman. "Perfectly simple question. I aska da questch, Giuseppe, if you ever grinda da org. You know what I mean. Da musica-box, wid da monk for climba da house for catcha da nick."

"What's 'catcha da nick'?" whispered Whistlebinkie.

"To catch the nickels, stoopid," said the Unwiseman; "don't interrupt. No hava da monk, Giuseppe?" he asked.

"Non, Signor," said the gondolier. "No hava da monk."

"Too bad," observed the Unwiseman. "Hand-org not moocha da good without da monk. Da monk maka da laugh and catcha da mun by da cupful. If you ever come to America, Giuseppe, no forgetta da monk with a redda da cap."

With which admonition the Unwiseman turned his attention to other things.

"Is that really Eye-talian?" asked Whistlebinkie.

"Of course it is," said the Unwiseman. "It's the easiest language in the world to pick up and only requires a little practice to make you speak it as if it were your own tongue. I was never conscious that I was learning it in my morning talks with old Gorgorini, the banana man at home. This would be a great place for automobiles, wouldn't it, Mollie?" he laughed in conclusion.

"I don't guesso," said Whistlebinkie.

The gondolier now guided the graceful craft to a flight of marble steps up which Mollie and her friends mounted to the Piazza San Marco.

"This is great," said the Unwiseman as he gazed about him and took in its splendors. "It's a wonder to me that they don't have a lot of places like this on the way over from New York to Liverpool. Crossing the ocean would be some fun if you could step off every hour or two and stretch your legs on something solid, and buy a few tons of tumblers, and feed pigeons. Fact is I think that's the best cure in the world for sea-sickness. If you could run up to a little piazza like this three times a day where there's a nice restaurant waiting for you and no motion to spoil your appetite I wouldn't mind being a sailor for the rest of my life."