"I may have been a calendar, To tell some man the date; I may have been a railway car, A rocket or a shooting star, Or e'en a roller skate.

"I may have been a jar of jam, Perhaps a watch and chain; I may have been a boy named Sam, An oyster or a toothsome clam, Perhaps a weather vane.

"I may have been a pot of ink, A sloop or schooner yacht; I may have been the missing link, But _what_ I was I cannot think-- For I have quite forgot.

"All I know is that I was something once; that Jack Frost came along and caught me and added me to his collection of curiosities, where I have been ever since. They call me the invisible chatter-box, and tell visitors that I escaped from the National Vocabulary at Washington."

"I am very sorry for you," said Jimmieboy, sympathetically.

"You needn't be," said the voice. "I'm happy! I'm the only curiosity here that can be impudent to King Jack. I can say what I please, you know, and there's no way of punishing me; I'm like a newspaper in that respect. I can go into any home, high or low, say what I please, and there you are. n.o.body can hurt me at all. Oh, it's just immense. I play all sorts of tricks on Jack, too. I get right up in front of his mouth and talk ridiculous nonsense, and people think he says it. Why, only the other night a Snow Man I don't like went in to see Jack, and Jack liked him tremendously, too, and was really glad to see him; but before the King had a chance to say a word I hallooed out: 'Get out of here, you donkey. Go make snow-b.a.l.l.s of your head and throw them at yourself;' and the Snow Man thought Jack said it, and, do you know, he went outside and did it. He's been laid up ever since."

"I think that was a very mean thing to do," said Jimmieboy.

"I'd agree with you if I had any conscience, but alas! they've deprived me of that too," sighed the voice. "But look out," it added, hastily.

"Throw yourself into that snow-bank or you'll fall into the river."

Without waiting to think why, Jimmieboy obeyed the voice and threw himself headlong into a huge snow bank at his side, and glanced anxiously about him.

He was indeed, as the voice had said, on the very edge of the ice, and another yard's advance would have landed him head over heels in the rushing water.

"That would have been awful, wouldn't it?" he said to the Stove, as his little friend came up.

"Yes, it would," returned the Stove. "It would have put out the lights in your clothes, and that would have been very awful, for I find we have come away without any matches. Jump into the boat, now, and row as straight for the other side as you can."

Jimmieboy looked about him for a boat, but couldn't see one.

"There is no boat," he said.

"Yes, there is--jump!" cried the Stove.

And Jimmieboy jumped, and, strange to relate, found himself in an instant seated amidships in an exquisitely light row-boat made entirely of ice.

"Row fast, now," said the Stove. "If you don't the boat will melt before we can get across."

XV.

IN THE HEART OF FROSTLAND.

"We're afloat!

We're afloat!

In our trim ice-boat; And we row-- Yeave ho!

"I guess I won't sing any more," said the Gas Stove. "It's a hard song to sing, that is, particularly when you've never heard it before, and can't think of another rhyme for boat."

"That's easy enough to find," returned Jimmieboy, pulling at the oars.

"Coat rhymes with boat, and so do note and moat and goat and----"

"Very true," a.s.sented the Stove, "but it wouldn't do to use coat because we take our coats off when we row. Note is good enough but you don't have time to write one when you are singing a sea-song. Moat isn't any good, because n.o.body'd know whether you meant the moat of a castle, a sun-moat, or the one in your eye. As for goats, goats don't go well in poetry. So I guess it's just as well to stop singing right here."

"How fast we go!" said Jimmieboy.

"What did you expect?" asked the Stove. "The bottom of this boat is as slippery as can be, and, of course, going up the river against the current we get over the water faster than if we were going the other way because we--er--because we--well because we do."

"Seems to me," said Jimmieboy, "I'd better turn out some of the gas in my coat. I'm melting right through the seat here."

"So am I," returned the Stove, with an anxious glance at the icy craft.

"It won't be more than a minute before I melt my end of the boat all to pieces. I'm afraid we'll have to take to our arctics after all. I brought a pair of your father's along, and it's a good thing for us that he has big feet, for you'll have to get in one and I in the other."

Just then the stern of the boat melted away, and the Stove, springing up from his seat and throwing himself into one of the arctics, with his ammunition and rubber hose, floated off. Jimmieboy had barely time to get into the other arctic when his end of the ice-boat also gave way, and a cross-current in the stream catching the arctic whirled it about and carried it and its little pa.s.senger far away from the Stove who shortly disappeared around a turn in the river, so that Jimmieboy was left entirely alone in utter ignorance as to where he really was or what he should do next. Generally Jimmieboy was a very brave little boy, but he found his present circ.u.mstances rather trying. To be floating down a strange river in a large overshoe, with absolutely no knowledge of the way home, and a very dim notion only as to how he had managed to get where he was, was terrifying, and when he realized his position, great tears fell from Jimmieboy's eyes, freezing into little pearls of ice before they landed in the bottom of the golosh, where they piled up so rapidly that the strange craft sank further and further into the water and would certainty have sunk with their weight had not the voice Jimmieboy had encountered a little while before come to his rescue.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "GOLOSH, AHOY!"]

"Golosh, ahoy!" cried the voice. "Captain! Captain! Lean over the side and cry in the river or you'll sink your boat."

The sound of the voice was a great relief to the little sailor who at once tried to obey the order he had received but found it unnecessary since his tears immediately dried up.

"Come out here in the boat with me!" cried Jimmieboy. "I'm awful lonesome and I don't know what to do."

"Then there is only one thing you can do," said the voice from a point directly over the buckle of the arctic. "And that is to sit still and let time show you. It's a great thing, Jimmieboy, when you don't know what to do and can't find any one to tell you, to sit down and do nothing, because if you did something you'd be likely to find out afterwards that it was the wrong thing. When I was young, in the days when I was what I used to be, I once read a poem that has lingered with me ever since. It was called 'Wait and See' and this is the way it went:

"When you are puzzled what to do, And no one's nigh to help you out; You'll find it for the best that you Should wait until Time gives the clew.

And then your business go about-- Of this there is no doubt.

"Just see the cow! She never knows What's going to happen next, so she Contented 'mongst the daises goes, In clover from her head to toes, From care and trouble ever free-- She simply waits, you see!

"The horse, unlike the cow, in fear Jumps to and fro at maddest rate, Tears down the street, doth snort and rear, And knocks the wagon out of gear-- And just because he does not wait, His woes acc.u.mulate.

"D. Crockett, famous in the past, The same sage thought hath briefly wed To words that must forever last, Wherever haply they be cast: 'Be sure you're right, then go ahead,'

"That's what D. Crockett said.

"Lots in that. If you don't know what to do," continued the voice, "don't do it."

"I won't," said Jimmieboy. "But do you know where we are?"

"Yes," said the voice. "I am here and you are there, and I think if we stay just as we are forever there is not likely to be any change, so why repine? We are happy."

Just then the golosh pa.s.sed into a huge cavern, whose sides glistened like silver, and from the roof of which hung millions of beautiful and at times fantastically shaped icicles.

"This," said the voice, "is the gateway to the Kingdom of Frostland. At the far end you will see a troop of ice soldiers standing guard. I doubt very much if you can get by them, unless you have retained a great deal of that heat you had. How is it? Are you still lit?"

"I am," said Jimmieboy. "Just put your hand on my chest and see how hot it is."

"Can't do it," returned the voice, "for two reasons. First, I haven't a hand to do it with, and secondly, if I had, I couldn't see with it.

People don't see with their hands any more than they sing with their toes; but say, Jimmieboy, wouldn't it be funny if we could do all those things--eh? What a fine poem this would be if it were only sensible: