Twilight Land Read online

  Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)

  Twilight Land

  BY

  HOWARD PYLE

  AUTHOR OF

  “THE WONDER CLOCK” “PEPPER AND SALT” “MEN OF IRON” ETC.

  ILLUSTRATED

 

  NEW YORK AND LONDON

  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

  TWILIGHT LAND

  Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers Copyright, 1922, by Mrs. Anne Poole Pyle Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents.

  PAGE

  INTRODUCTION 1

  THE STOOL OF FORTUNE 5

  THE TALISMAN OF SOLOMON 29

  ILL-LUCK AND THE FIDDLER 77

  EMPTY BOTTLES 95

  GOOD GIFTS AND A FOOL’S FOLLY 113

  THE GOOD OF A FEW WORDS 135

  WOMAN’S WIT 169

  A PIECE OF GOOD LUCK 195

  THE FRUIT OF HAPPINESS 235

  NOT A PIN TO CHOOSE 259

  MUCH SHALL HAVE MORE AND LITTLE SHALL HAVE LESS 299

  WISDOM’S WAGES AND FOLLY’S PAY 313

  THE ENCHANTED ISLAND 337

  ALL THINGS ARE AS FATE WILLS 365

  WHERE TO LAY THE BLAME 387

  THE SALT OF LIFE 405

  _Introduction_

  _I found myself in Twilight Land._

  _How I ever got there I cannot tell, but there I was in TwilightLand._

  _What is Twilight Land? It is a wonderful, wonderful place where nosun shines to scorch your back as you jog along the way, where norain falls to make the road muddy and hard to travel, where no windblows the dust into your eyes or the chill into your marrow. Whereall is sweet and quiet and ready to go to bed._

  _Where is Twilight Land? Ah! that I cannot tell you. You willeither have to ask your mother or find it for yourself._

  _There I was in Twilight Land. The birds were singing theirgood-night song, and the little frogs were piping “peet, peet.” Thesky overhead was full of still brightness, and the moon in the easthung in the purple gray like a great bubble as yellow as gold. Allthe air was full of the smell of growing things. The high-road wasgray, and the trees were dark._

  _I drifted along the road as a soap-bubble floats before the wind,or as a body floats in a dream. I floated along and I floated alongpast the trees, past the bushes, past the mill-pond, past the millwhere the old miller stood at the door looking at me._

  _I floated on, and there was the Inn, and it was the Sign of MotherGoose._

  _The sign hung on a pole, and on it was painted a picture of MotherGoose with her gray gander._

  _It was to the Inn I wished to come._

  _I floated on, and I would have floated past the Inn, and perhapshave gotten into the Land of Never-Come-Back-Again, only I caughtat the branch of an apple-tree, and so I stopped myself, though theapple-blossoms came falling down like pink and white snowflakes._

  _The earth and the air and the sky were all still, just as it isat twilight, and I heard them laughing and talking in the tap-roomof the Inn of the Sign of Mother Goose--the clinking of glasses,and the rattling and clatter of knives and forks and plates anddishes. That was where I wished to go._

  _So in I went. Mother Goose herself opened the door, and there Iwas._

  _The room was all full of twilight; but there they sat, everyone of them. I did not count them, but there were ever so many:Aladdin, and Ali Baba, and Fortunatis, and Jack-the-Giant-Killer,and Doctor Faustus, and Bidpai, and Cinderella, and PatientGrizzle, and the Soldier who cheated the Devil, and St. George,and Hans in Luck, who traded and traded his lump of gold until hehad only an empty churn to show for it; and there was Sindbad theSailor, and the Tailor who killed seven flies at a blow, and theFisherman who fished up the Genie, and the Lad who fiddled for theJew in the bramble-bush, and the Blacksmith who made Death sit inhis apple-tree, and Boots, who always marries the Princess, whetherhe wants to or not--a rag-tag lot as ever you saw in your life,gathered from every place, and brought together in Twilight Land._

  _Each one of them was telling a story, and now it was the turn ofthe Soldier who cheated the Devil._

  * * * * *

  _“I WILL tell you,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil, “astory of a friend of mine.”_

  _“Take a fresh pipe of tobacco,” said St. George._

  _“Thank you, I will,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil._

  _He filled his long pipe full of tobacco, and then he tilted itupside down and sucked in the light of the candle._

  _Puff! puff! puff! and a cloud of smoke went up about his head, sothat you could just see his red nose shining through it, and hisbright eyes twinkling in the midst of the smoke-wreath, like twostars through a thin cloud on a summer night._

  _“I’ll tell you,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil, “thestory of a friend of mine. ’Tis every word of it just as true asthat I myself cheated the Devil.”_

  _He took a drink from his mug of beer, and then he began._

  _“’Tis called,” said he_--