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Title: Hans Pumpernickel's Vigil
Author: John Kendrick Bangs [
More Titles by Bangs]
Hans Pumpernickel was for many years regarded by his friends and neighbors in the little town of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz as the most industrious boy they had ever known. Where Hans came from no one knew. He had appeared in Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz when he was not more than six years old. His name was all that he would confide to the curious.
"I'm Hans Pumpernickel," he had answered, in response to the inquiries of the inquisitive. "But where I came from is neither here nor there."
Some said that this statement was only half true, though many others believed it wholly. Certain it is, however, that if one has a hailing-place, a native town, it must be either here or there. If it is not here, it must be there, said some; but Hans never took the trouble to say anything further on the subject.
"And what are you going to do to live?" asked the Mayor's wife, who took a great interest in the pretty little stranger when first she saw him.
"Breathe," said Hans, simply. "For you see, ma'am, I cannot live without breathing, and so I have decided to do that."
The Mayor said that this was impudence; but the good lady, who had made that somewhat crabbed old person's life more happy than he deserved, only laughed, and said that she thought it was droll, and only wished her little boy, who was stupid like his father, could have said something as bright.
"But you cannot breathe unless you eat," the Mayor's wife had said, when Hans had spoken. "What are you going to eat?"
"I do not know," said Hans. "What have you got?"
Again the Mayor growled "Impudence!" and again did the good lady laugh.
"We have sausages and cake and apples," she said.
"Then," said Hans, "I will have some sausages and cake and apples."
"But we don't give away things of that kind," said the lady. "Those who would eat must work."
"I cannot work unless I breathe," said Hans; "and you yourself have said that I cannot breathe unless I eat. Therefore, if you would have me work, you must let me eat."
"Logic!" cried the Mayor, beginning to take an interest in Hans. "Give the boy an apple."
So Hans was given the apple, and he ate it so thoroughly that the Mayor decided that he was just the boy to do little errands for him, for thoroughness was a quality he greatly admired, and from that time on Hans lived in the Mayor's family; and when the stupid little son of that exalted personage ran away from home and became a cabin-boy on a man-of-war, the Mayor adopted Hans, and he took the place of the boy who had gone away, refusing, however, much to the Mayor's sorrow, to change his name from Pumpernickel to Ehrenbreitstein, which happened to be the last name of the Mayor.
"Pumpernickel was I born," said Hans, "and Pumpernickel will I remain. Why should I, a Pumpernickel who am bound to make a name for myself sooner or later, take the name of some one else, and shed the lustre of my fame upon his family?"
All of which was very sensible, though Mayor Ehrenbreitstein did not appreciate that fact.
So Hans went on making himself very useful to the Mayor and his wife. He would shell pease in the morning for the Lady Mayor, and in the afternoon he would write speeches for the Mayor to deliver on public occasions; and people said that as a public speaker the Mayor was improving, while all who had the pleasure of dining with the head of the city frequently complimented the Lady Mayor upon the excellence of the pease served at her banquets. In every way was Hans satisfactory to all for whom he worked. After a while such confidence did he inspire in his employers that Frau Ehrenbreitstein let him do all her shopping for her, and most of the Mayor's duties were intrusted to the boy. He could match ribbons and veto or approve the doings of the aldermen of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz with equal perfection. The ribbons he matched and the worsteds he chose for his kind mistress always looked well, and the lady soon became in the popular estimation a person of unusually good taste, while the vetoes and other public papers were so well phrased that even his opponents were forced to admit that the magistrate was right.
Hans bore all his prosperity with modesty, and for the fifteen years during which he faithfully served his employers he developed no conceit whatsoever, as many a weaker boy might reasonably have done, and, barring one peculiarity, none of the eccentricities of the truly great ever manifested themselves. This one peculiarity excited much curiosity among those who had heard of it, but despite all questionings Hans declined to say why he had it. It was a peculiarity that was indeed peculiar. It was noticed that from the time he first ate with the family of the Mayor he would set apart one full third of every dainty that was placed upon his plate, and when the meal was over he would take it away from the table rolled up in a napkin. For instance, if at breakfast three sausages fell to the lot of Hans, he would eat two of them, and the third he would wrap up in a napkin, and take it to his room. So it was with everything else that came his way. Out of every three apples one would go untouched into the napkin; and later, when he began to earn a little money, one-third of it also would be saved. It was noticed, too, that on every Friday afternoon Hans would send away a big box by the express carrier, but to whom the box was sent no one could learn. The express carrier would not tell, and Hans himself, when asked about it, would say to the one who asked him:
"Let me see. You are in what business?"
"I am a baker," or, perhaps, "I am a butcher," the inquisitive one would say.
"Then," said Hans, "if I were you, I would stick to baking or to butching, and not embark on enterprises which are not allied to the making of bread or the slaughter of roast beef."
The people so addressed would turn away chagrined, but with proper apologies; and when they apologized Hans would say, with a smile, "Pray don't mention it," so kindly that the meddlers would be pacified, and no ill feeling ever resulted from the young boy's request that they mind their own business.
At the end of the fifteen years of faithful work, however, a great change seemed to come over Hans. He began to show a great distaste for the labors that he had hitherto spent his time in performing. When Frau Ehrenbreitstein gave him a skein of pink zephyr to take to town to match, he would try to beg off, and when he could not beg off he did worse. He went to town and brought back, not the new skein of pink zephyr that his mistress wanted, but a roll of green and yellow wall-paper, and, when she expressed surprise, he said that that was the best he could do.
"But I didn't want wall-paper," cried the Lady Mayor.
"Well, you never told me that," said Hans. "You said, I admit, that you wanted pink zephyr; but then one might wish for that and still want a roll of green and yellow wall-paper."
"Are you crazy?" returned the good lady, much mystified.
"I think not; and the mere fact that I think not shows that I am not," Hans replied, "for the very good reason that if I had lost my mind I could not think at all."
"Very well," said Frau Ehrenbreitstein, reassured by this perfectly logical answer. "You may go and shell the pease."
Whereupon Hans went down into the kitchen and shelled the pease, only he retained the pods this time, and threw the pease to the pigs.
"It is very evident to me," observed his good mistress to her husband that night, when the pods were served at dinner, "that Hans Pumpernickel has something on his mind."
"Yes, my dear," answered the Mayor. "I know he has, and I know what it is."
"He is not in love, I hope?" said Frau Ehrenbreitstein.
"Not he!" cried the Mayor. "He is thinking about what I shall say to the Emperor next week when his Imperial Majesty and the Chancellor pass through Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz on their way to the Schutzenfest at Würtemburger-Darmstadt. I have told Hans that the imperial train stops at our station to water the engine, and during the five minutes or so in which the Emperor honors our burg with his presence it is only fitting that I, as Lord Mayor, should greet him with an address of welcome. It will be the opportunity of my life, and the boy is trying to enable me to be equal to it. Heaven forbid that he should fail!"
This explanation eased the mind of the Mayor's wife, and she refrained from asking Hans to shell pease and match zephyrs until after the Emperor had come and gone. Unfortunately, however, this was not the real cause of the trouble with Hans, as the speech he wrote for the Mayor to deliver to his imperial master showed; for, to the dismay of Mayor Ehrenbreitstein, when the Emperor's train stopped at Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, and he had unrolled the address Hans had written, he discovered that Hans had not written a speech at all, but a comic poem, in which his Imperial Majesty was referred to as a royal turkey-cock, with a crow like the squeak of a penny flute. The poor Mayor nearly expired when his eyes rested on the lines Hans had written; but he went bravely ahead and made up a speech of his own, which his Majesty fortunately did not hear, owing to the noise made by the steam escaping from the engine whistle.
When the Emperor had departed, the Mayor returned home in a rage, and you may be sure that Hans could not get in a word edgewise even until his employer had told him what he thought of him.
"Excuse me," said Hans, when the Mayor had finished, after an hour's angry tirade--"excuse me, but would you mind saying that over again? I was thinking of something else."
"Say it over again?" shrieked the Mayor. "Never. I shall never speak to you again."
"But what have I done?" asked Hans, so innocently that the Mayor relented and repeated his tirade, and then Hans broke down.
"Did I do that?" he said. "Then it is very plain that I need a vacation."
"I think so," retorted the Mayor. "You may take the next thousand years without pay."
"One year will be sufficient," said Hans. "Though I thank you just as kindly for the others." Then he wept, and the Mayor's wife took pity on him, and asked him to tell her what it was that had so occupied his mind of late that he had committed so many grievous errors, and Hans told her all.
"It's my great-great-great-great-great-granduncle's fault," he sobbed.
"Your what?" cried his mistress.
"My great-great-great-great-great-granduncle, the perpetual baby," said Hans, wiping his eyes. "He's the worst baby you ever saw. He yells and howls and howls and yells all the time, and if he is left alone or put down for a moment he has a convulsion of rage that is terrible to witness. He breaks his toys the minute he gets them, and for fifteen years he has made a slave of my poor father, who has not let the child out of his lap in all that time."
"Fifteen years?" cried Frau Ehrenbreitstein. "What do you mean? How old is this baby?"
"Three hundred and forty-seven years, six months, and eight days," said Hans, ruefully, consulting a pocket calendar he had with him. "During my time with you," he added, "I have supported them. Father is alone in the house with the infant; we could not afford a servant, and the child yells so all the time that my father cannot get employment anywhere. It was this that drove me out into the world to earn a living for them. When I got only my food and bed, I shared my food with them, sending off a third of it every week. Then when money came along, I gave them a third of that; but the baby is as bad as ever, and father has written to say that he can stand it no more, and I must return home or he will send the baby to me here."
"But, mercy me!" roared the Mayor, who had come in and heard the story, "why doesn't the child grow?"
"He can't," sobbed Hans. "His mother once made a wish that he might always remain a baby, and it happened that she made the wish at the one instant of the year when all wishes are granted by the fairies."
"Nonsense," said the Mayor. "There are no fairies."
"Indeed, there are," said Hans. "There is my great-great-great-great-great-granduncle, the baby, to prove it. He's a little tyrant, and he has worn out every generation of the family since, making them look after him. It's terrible, and in trying to think what to do to relieve my poor father and still support myself I have neglected everything else, and that is why I--boo-hoo!--I wrote the wall-paper and matched a pink Emperor with a green and yellow comic poem."
"Poor lad!" said the Mayor's wife. "Poor lad! It is a cruel story."
"It is that," agreed the Mayor. "But cheer up, Hans. If there is an instant in every year when wishes are always granted by the fairies, why don't you wish the baby as he ought to be at the right moment?"
"That's the trouble," said Hans, sadly. "There are many instants in a year, and the lucky moment changes every twelve months. It is never the same. I wish, and wish, but never at the right moment. Sometimes I forget it; the instant comes and is gone, though I don't know it."
"Well," said the Mayor's wife, "there is but one thing you can do. That is, to devote a whole year to nothing else but that wish. I shall fix you up a chair in the kitchen, give you a pipe, and on New-Year's morning you may begin. You shall have no other duties but to wish for a restoration of things as they should be. You will be sure to hit the right moment if you are faithful to your work."
"As I always am," said Hans, drying his tears.
And so it was that Hans Pumpernickel began his long vigil. He sat in the kitchen, silent, smoking, gazing at the ceiling, wishing. It was weary work indeed, but he was true, and last year, on the sixteenth day of July, at half-past one o'clock in the morning, his fidelity was rewarded, though he did not know it until the next morning, when the expressman brought him a message from his father to the following effect:
"July 16, 1893.
"MY DEAR HANS,--Don't worry; everything is serene again. At half-past one o'clock this morning, just as the clock struck, your great-great-great-great-great-granduncle began to grow at a most rapid pace. I had hardly time to drop him when he was taller than I, and twice as stout as I am told you are. A beard sprouted on his face with equal rapidity, and, just as I thought to ask him what he was going to do next, he gave a deafening shout of laughter and disappeared entirely. The whole affair didn't last more than five seconds. The spell has been removed, and the perpetual baby is no more. Come over and see me, and we'll celebrate our emancipation.
"Affectionately your daddy,
"RUPERT PUMPERNICKEL."
Hans read this letter with a joyful face, and rushed up-stairs to tell the Mayor and his faithful helpmate of his good fortune, and there was great rejoicing for several days. Then Hans visited his father, and the two happy creatures spent weeks and weeks rambling contentedly about the country together, at the end of which time Hans returned to Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, where, the Emperor having retired the Mayor on a liberal pension for his attentions and kind expressions of regard in the speech Hans did not write for him, he was chosen to succeed his former master.
[The end]
John Kendrick Bangs's short story: Hans Pumpernickel's Vigil
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