VII.
THE UNWISEMAN VISITS THE BRITISH MUSEUM
"What's the matter, Mr. Me?" asked Mollie one morning after they hadbeen in London for a week. "You look very gloomy this morning. Aren'tyou feeling well?"
"O I'm feeling all right physically," said the Unwiseman. "But I'm justchock full of gloom just the same and I want to get away from here assoon as I can. Everything in the whole place is bogus."
"Oh Mr. Me! you mustn't say that!" protested Mollie.
"Well if it ain't there's something mighty queer about it anyhow, and Ijust don't like it," said the Unwiseman. "I know they've fooled me rightand left, and I'm just glad George Washington licked 'em at Bunco Hilland pushed 'em off our continent on the double quick."
"What is the particular trouble?" asked Mollie.
"Well, in the first place," began the old gentleman, "that King we sawthe other day wasn't a real king at all--just a sort of decoy king theykeep outside the Palace to shoo people off and keep them from botheringthe real one; and in the second place the Prince of Whales aint' a whaleat all. He ain't even a shiner. He's just a man. I don't see what rightthey have to fool people the way they do. They wouldn't dare run acircus that way at home."
Mollie laughed, and Whistlebinkie squeaked with joy.
"You didn't really expect him to be a whale, did you?" Mollie asked.
"Why of course I did," said the Unwiseman. "Why not? They claim overhere that Britannia rules the waves, don't they?"
"They certainly do," said Mollie gravely.
"Then it's natural to suppose they have a big fish somewhere torepresent 'em," said the Unwiseman. "The King can't go sloshing aroundunder the ocean saying howdido to porpoises and shad and fellers likethat. It's too wet and he'd catch his death of cold, so I naturallythought the Prince of Whales looked after that end of the business, andnow I find he's not even a sardine. It's perfectly disgusting."
"I knew-he-wasn't-a-fish," said Whistlebinkie.
"Well you always were smarter than anybody else," growled the Unwiseman."You know a Roc's egg isn't a pebble without anybody telling you Iguess. You were born with the multiplication table in your hat, but asfor me I'm glad I've got something to learn. I guess carrying so muchreal live information around in your hat is what makes you squeak so."
The old gentleman paused a moment and then he went on again.
"What I'm worrying most about is that mock king," he said. "Here I'vegone and invited him over to America, and offered to present him withthe freedom of my kitchen stove and introduce him to my burgular.Suppose he comes? What on earth am I going to do? I can't introduce himas the real king, and if I pass him off for a bogus king everybody'lllaugh at me, and accuse me of bringing my burgular into bad company."
"How did you find it out?" asked Mollie sadly, for she had alreadywritten home to her friends giving them a full account of theirreception by his majesty.
"Why I went up to the Palace this morning to see why he hadn't answeredmy letter and this time there was another man there, wearing the samesuit of clothes, bear-skin hat, red jacket and all," explained theUnwiseman. "I was just flabbergasted and then it flashed over me all ofa sudden that there might be a big conspiracy on hand to kidnap the realking and put his enemies on the throne. It was all so plain. Certainlyno king would let anybody else wear his clothes, so this chap must havestolen them and was trying to pass himself off for Edward S. Kinghimself."
"Mercy!" cried Mollie. "What did you do? Call for help?"
"No sirree--I mean no ma'am!" returned the Unwiseman. "That wouldn'thelp matters any. I ran down the street to a telephone office and rangup the palace. I told 'em the king had been kidnapped and that a bogusking was paradin' up and down in front of the Palace with the royalrobes on. I liked that first king so much I couldn't bear to think ofhis lyin' off somewhere in a dungeon-cell waiting to have his headchopped off. And what do you suppose happened? Instead of arresting themock king they wanted to arrest me, and I think they would have if anice old gentleman in a high hat and a frock coat like mine, only newer,hadn't driven up at that minute, bowing to everybody, and entered thePalace yard with the whole crowd giving him three cheers. Then what doyou suppose? They tried to pass _him_ off on me as the _real_ king--whyhe was plainer than those muffins and looked for all the world like agood natured life insurance agent over home."
"And they didn't arrest you?" asked Mollie, anxiously.
"No indeed," laughed the Unwiseman. "I had my carpet-bag along and whenthe pleeceman wasn't looking I jumped into it and waited till they'd allgone. Of course they couldn't find me. I don't believe they've got anyking over here at all."
"Then you'll never be a Duke?" said Whistlebinkie.
"No sirree!" ejaculated the Unwiseman. "Not while I know how to say no.If they offer it to me I'll buy a megaphone to say no through so'sthey'll be sure to hear it. Then there's that other wicked story aboutLondon Bridge falling down. I heard some youngsters down there by theRiver announcing the fact and I nearly ran my legs off trying to getthere in time to see it fall and when I arrived it not only wasn'tfalling down but was just ram-jam full of omnibuses and cabs and trucks.Really I never knew anybody anywhere who could tell as many fibs in aminute as these people over here can."
"Well never mind, Mr. Me," said Mollie, soothingly. "Perhaps things havegone a little wrong with you, and I don't blame you for feeling badlyabout the King, but there are other things here that are veryinteresting. Come with Whistlebinkie and me to the British Museum andsee the Mummies."
"Pooh!" retorted the Unwiseman. "I'd rather see a basket of figs."
"You never can tell," persisted Mollie. "They may turn out to be themost interesting things in all the world."
"I can tell," said the Unwiseman. "I've already seen 'em and theyhaven't as much conversation as a fried oyster. I went down thereyesterday and spent two hours with 'em, and a more unapproachable lotyou never saw in your life. I was just as polite to 'em as I knew how tobe. Asked 'em how they liked the British climate. Told 'em long storiesof my house at home. Invited a lot of 'em to come over and meet myburgular just as I did the King and not a one of 'em even so much asthanked me. They just stood off there in their glass cases and acted asif they never saw me, and if they did, hadn't the slightest desire tosee me again. You don't catch me calling on them a second time."
"But there are other things in the Museum, aren't there?" asked Mollie.
The Unwiseman's gloom disappeared for a moment in a loud burst oflaughter.
"Such a collection of odds and ends," he cried, with a sarcastic shakeof his head. "I never saw so much broken crockery in all my life. Itlooks to me as if they'd bought up all the old broken china in theworld. There are tea-pots without nozzles by the thousand. Old tincans, all rusted up and with dents in 'em from everywhere. Crackedplates by the million, and no end of water-pitchers with the handlesbroken off, and chipped vases and goodness knows what all. And they callthat a museum! Just you give me a half a dozen bricks and a crockeryshop over in America and in five minutes I'll make that British Museumstuff look like a sixpence. When I saw it first, I was pretty mad tothink I'd taken the trouble to go and look at it, and then as I went onand couldn't find a whole tea-cup in the entire outfit, and saw peoplewith catalogues in their hands saying how wonderful everything was, Ijust had to sit down on the floor and roar with laughter."
"But the statuary, Mr. Me," said Mollie. "That was pretty fine I guess,wasn't it? I've heard it's a splendid collection."
"Worse than the crockery," laughed the Unwiseman. "There's hardly astatue in the whole place that isn't broken. Seems to me they're themost careless lot of people over here with their museums. Half thestatues didn't have any heads on 'em. A good quarter of them had bustedarms and legs, and on one of 'em there wasn't anything left but a pairof shoulder blades and half a wing sticking out at the back. It lookedmore like a quarry than a museum to me, and in a mighty bad state ofrepair even for a quarry. That was where they put me out," the oldgentleman added
.
"Put you out?" cried Mollie. "Oh Mr. Me--you don't mean to say theyactually put you out of The British Museum?"
"I do indeed," said the Unwiseman with a broad grin on his face. "Theyjust grabbed me by my collar and hustled me along the floor to the greatdoor and dejected me just as if I didn't have any more feeling thantheir old statues. It's a wonder the way I landed I wasn't as badlybusted up as they are."
"But what for? You were not misbehaving yourself, were you?" askedMollie, very much disturbed over this latest news.
"Of course not," returned the Unwiseman. "Quite the contrary opposite. Iwas trying to help them. I came across the great big statue of someGreek chap--I've forgotten his name--something like Hippopotomes, orsomething of the sort--standing up on a high pedestal, with a sign,
"HANDS OFF
"hanging down underneath it. When I looked at it I saw at once that itnot only had its hands off, but was minus a nose, two ears, oneunder-lip and a right leg, so I took out my pencil and wrote underneaththe words Hands Off:
"LIKEWISE ONE NOZE ONE PARE OF EARS A LEG AND ONE LIPP
"It seemed to me the sign should ought to be made complete, but I guessthey thought different, because I'd hardly finished the second P on lipwhen whizz bang, a lot of attendants came rushing up to me and the firstthing I knew I was out on the street rubbing the back of my head andwondering what hit me."
"Poor old chap!" said Mollie sympathetically.
"Guess-you-wisht-you-was-mader-ubber-like-me!" whistled Whistlebinkietrying hard to repress his glee.
"What's that?" demanded the Unwiseman.
"I-guess-you-wished-you-were-made-of-rubber-like-me!" explainedWhistlebinkie.
"Never in this world," retorted the Unwiseman scornfully. "If I'd beenmade of rubber like you I'd have bounced up and down two or three timesinstead of once, and I'm not so fond of hitting the sidewalk with myselfas all that. But I didn't mind. I was glad to get out. I was so afraidall the time somebody'd come along and accuse me of breaking their oldthings that it was a real relief to find myself out of doors and nothingbroken that didn't belong to me."
"They didn't break any of your poor old bones, did they?" asked Mollie,taking the Unwiseman's hand affectionately in her own.
"No--worse luck--they did worse than that," said the old gentlemangrowing very solemn again. "They broke that bottle of my native landthat I always carry in my coat-tail pocket and loosened the cork in myfog bottle in the other, so that now I haven't more than a pinch of mynative land with me to keep me from being homesick, and all of the fog Iwas saving up for my collection has escaped. But I don't care. I don'tbelieve it was real fog, but just a mixture of soot and steam they'retrying to pass off for the real thing. Bogus like everything else, andas for my native land, I've got enough to last me until I get home ifI'm careful of it. The only thing I'm afraid of is that in scooping whatI could of it up off the sidewalk I may have mixed a little British soilin with it. I'd hate to have that happen because just at present Britishsoil isn't very popular with me."
"Maybe it's bogus too," snickered Whistlebinkie.
"So much the better," said the Unwiseman. "If it ain't real I can manageto stand it."
"Then you don't think much of the British Museum?" said Mollie.
"Well it ain't my style," said the Unwiseman, shaking his headvigorously. "But there was one thing that pleased me very much aboutit," the old man went on, his eye lighting with real pleasure and hisvoice trembling with patriotic pride, "and that's some of the thingsthey didn't have in it. It was full of things the British have capturedin Greece and Italy and Africa and pretty nearly everywhereelse--mummies from Egypt, pieces of public libraries from Athens,second-story windows from Rome, and little dabs of architecture fromall over the map except the United States. That made me laugh. They mayhave had Cleopatra's mummy there, but I didn't notice any dried upspecimens of the Decalculation of Independence lying around in any oftheir old glass cases. They had a whole side wall out of some Romancapitol building perched up on a big wooden platform, but I didn'tnotice any domes from the Capitol at Washington or back piazzas from theWhite House on exhibition. There was a lot of busted old statuary fromGreece all over the place, but nary a statue of Liberty from New Yorkharbor, or figger of Andrew Jackson from Philadelphia, or bust of RalphWaldo Longfellow from Boston Common, sitting up there among theirtrophies--only things hooked from the little fellers, and dug up fromplaces like Pompey-two-eyes where people have been dead so long theyreally couldn't watch out for their property. It don't take a veryglorious conqueror to run off with things belonging to people they canlick with one hand, and it pleased me so when I couldn't find even afinger-post, or a drug-store placard, or a three dollar shoe store signfrom America in the whole collection that my chest stuck out like apouter pigeon's and bursted my shirt-studs right in two. They'd have hada lump chipped off Independence Hall at Philadelphia, or a couple ofchunks of Bunco Hill, or a sliver off the Washington Monument there allright if they could have got away with it, but they couldn't, and I tellyou I wanted to climb right up top of the roof and sing Yankee Doodleand crow like a rooster the minute I noticed it, I felt so good."
"Three cheers for us," roared Whistlebinkie.
"That's the way to talk, Fizzledinkie," cried the old gentlemangleefully, and grasping Whistlebinkie by the hand he marched up and downMollie's room singing the Star Spangled Banner--the Unwiseman in hisexcitement called it the Star Spangled Banana--and Columbia the Gem ofthe Ocean at the top of his lungs, and Mollie was soon so thrilled thatshe too joined in.
"Well," said Mollie, when the patriotic ardor of her two companions haddied down a little. "What are you going to do, Mr. Me? We've got to stayhere two days more. We don't start for Paris until Saturday."
"O don't bother about me," said the old man pleasantly. "I've got plentyto do. I've bought a book called 'French in Five Lessons' and I'm goingto retire to my carpet-bag until you people are ready to start forFrance. I've figured it out that I can read that book through in twodays if I don't waste too much of my time eating and sleeping andcalling on kings and queens and trying to buy duke's clothes for $8.50,and snooping around British Museums and pricing specially appointedroyal muffins, so that by the time you are ready to start for Paris I'llbe in shape to go along. I don't think it's wise to go into a countrywhere they speak another language without knowing just a little aboutit, and if 'French in Five Lessons' is what it ought to be you'll thinkI'm another Joan of Ark when I come out of that carpet-bag."
And so the queer old gentleman climbed into his carpet-bag, which Mollieplaced for him over near the window where the light was better andsettled down comfortably to read his new book, "French in Five Lessons."
"I'm glad he's going to stay in there," said Whistlebinkie, as he andMollie started out for a walk in Hyde Park. "Because I wouldn't be abit surprised after all he's told us if the pleese were looking forhim."
"Neither should I," said Mollie. "If what he says about the BritishMuseum is true and they really haven't any things from the United Statesin there, there's nothing they'd like better than to capture an Americanand put him up in a glass case along with those mummies."
All of which seemed to prove that for once the Unwiseman was a very wiseold person.