and sniffer and jump out of the cracks between my fingers. Once there was a little gold and silver dust on my left hand thumb, dust they snizzled out while slipping away from me. 

62

“Once I heard a White Gold Boy and a Blue Silver Girl whispering. They were standing on the tip of my right hand little finger, whispering. One said, ‘I got pumpkins—what did you get?’ The other said, ‘I got hazel nuts.’ I listened more and I found out there are millions of pumpkins and millions of hazel nuts so small you and I can not see them. These children from the moon, however, they can see them and whenever they slide down on the moon toboggan they take back their pockets full of things so little we have never seen them.” 

“They are wonderful children,” said Any Ice Today. “And will you tell me how they get back to the moon after they slide down the toboggan?” 

“Oh, that is easy,” said Potato Face. “It is just as easy for them to slide up to the moon 63 as to slide down. Sliding up and sliding down is the same for them. The big white spiders fixed it that way when they snizzled and sniffered and made the toboggan.” 

63

65

  

How Gimme the Ax Found Out Aboutthe Zigzag Railroad and Who MadeIt Zigzag

One day Gimme the Ax said to himself, “Today I go to the postoffice and around, looking around. Maybe I will hear about something happening last night when I was sleeping. Maybe a policeman began laughing and fell in a cistern and came out with a wheelbarrow full of goldfish wearing new jewelry. How do I know? Maybe the man in the moon going down a cellar stairs to get a pitcher of butter-milk for the woman in the moon to drink and stop crying, maybe he fell down the stairs and 66 broke the pitcher and laughed and picked up the broken pieces and said to himself, ‘One, two, three, four, accidents happen in the best regulated families.’ How do I know?” 

66

So with his mind full of simple and refreshing thoughts, Gimme the Ax went out into the backyard garden and looked at the different necktie poppies growing early in the summer. Then he picked one of the necktie poppies to wear for a necktie scarf going downtown to the postoffice and around looking around. 

“It is a good speculation to look nice around looking 

 Prev. P 23/79 next