On a sunny morning in Mystic Valley, while the murmur of a thousand brooks filled the air with joyous music, a little fox sat under a tree. This was Finn, a bright and agile creature, but though he looked very inquisitive and very clever, and his bright coat showed splendidly against the dark moss, he did not know half the things that the old animals about him did.
Finn had been trying all the morning to learn something new, and he had just heard that a unicorn was supposed to pass through the vale not very far from where he stood. Then a pretty little calico cat had said she was sure a unicorn would never come near a boring sort of creature like her, to which Finn replied rather scornfully that a little girl-goddess like that was hardly the sort of person to be considered by such a lofty animal as a unicorn, who of all animals knew best what was becoming to him; besides which, he had a great many other things to think about.
But he went on questioning everyone about this glorious being, till at last–
“Don’t ask me any more, Finn!” said a big owl who was herding up her two families on a branch hard by. “I really can’t tell you another word. How should I? I never saw a unicorn.”
“But you must have heard someone speak of it,” said Finn.
“Hear someone speak of it! I should think so, indeed!” said the owl, opening her big, sleepy eyes very wide. “Why, there are lots of works in every language on the subject, from Appolonios to Wtewael! But what’s the use of talking about things you don’t know? I never believe that’s a right way of going on; it’s so dull for your hearers. My children know that well enough. I tell each one to be as quick as he can, and then they may go anywhere.”
“But pray tell me,” cried Finn, “what’s the good of a unicorn?”
“Oh! I don’t know,” said the mother owl. “I suppose it is all very nice in its place. Anyhow, they run up trees sometimes, they say.”
Finn didn’t like to ask for more information, for fear of tiring the owl; but something must have passed that way, for he suddenly stopped, pricked up his ears, and gave one short bark.
“What is it? What is it?” said the mother owl, shaking her feathers. Finn did not answer. Up came a goat he knew well, and he said, “There can’t be two animals like the unicorn; it’s certainly the word of a goat! Just come with me.”
The unicorn, it turned out, vaunted, among other abilities, this very uncommon one of growing wings, which enabled it to float through the air like a bird or to take a shorter cut over steep hills or rivers. It was just on this day flying very low on its way to see the famous Crystal Palace in the far West when it rose over the vale all white and shining. Finn saw it almost instinctively, held his breath, and stepped quietly up the path when suddenly the unicorn emitted a peculiar sound. Finn pricked his ear, and gave a bark more joyful than reproachful. Still the unicorn could hear nothing; it had grown very old and somewhat hard of hearing, and was going blind besides.
When, however, Finn got close up he heard a voice speaking from the other side, and knew it came from the unicorn.
“Is not Finn the Fox here?” said the voice in clear but melancholy accents.
“It is indeed I,” answered Finn, cocking his ear. “And I am so delighted to know that it is you, my friend, the unicorn, that I have had a glimpse of almost crying from too much joy when hearing your voice.”
“Ah! Are you sorry that you did not see my wings?” said the unicorn, ruffled at being taken for a dog by the wise old owl. “Ah! They are so interesting so very interesting! But I am afraid I shall never see them again.”
“Oh! I hope not indeed, a great deal too much!” exclaimed Finn.
“I don’t know, I fear I fear!” sighed the unicorn. “I was so happy a little while ago flying over the dear place where I was born, then suddenly grew so much dizzier than I was before, and worse than that I am lost on these mountains and cannot find the way home.”
“Ah! What can I say to comfort you?” asked Finn, whose heart was full. “At first it troubled me so much that I forgot to think, but I fancy this is the way,” he went on. “Your sight is so very poor and your hearing so very bad, which is not exactly as we might desire, it is indeed too sad, and that is why you are now in dull health; but I am young and I am nimble and I will soon bring you to the Crystal Palace. The road is steep, but I am accustomed to it. I’ll come too, if you like.”
“Thank you, dear Finn, it is very kind of you,” said the unicorn. “But it is very well-known fact lately recorded by Daoud in his History of Great Animals, and which you would soon find out yourself if you tried, that those who have stories told to them of others grow slow, while those who hear no stories (and few animals do hear proper stories), remain young and nimble. No; it would be useless. I am afraid, indeed, I must give up all hope.”
“Allez! You don’t mean it?” thought Finn to himself, and cocking his ear again he listened carefully. “I must say I heard lately something rather like what you say: however, won’t you repeat the old story yourself to me, so that we can have the benefit of it together? They do say a story does one good long after one has heard it.”
“Not I, indeed! Not I, indeed!” cried the unicorn. “Why, I should be so long doing it that I should never get home while I’m sure you would have had to sit down and go to sleep long before I could say ‘Good day.’ There is one thing I might throw out as a hint to you ‘Never listen to any stories whatever;’ but it is, I fear, too late for you!”
“Too late, indeed!” sighed Finn, “but never mind. Do let me try and take you to your friends, at all events, since nothing else will do.”
“I will just try,” said the unicorn, “but I fear it will be of no use.”
Finn then took off one of the unicorn’s hind toes, of which it was very proud, and fastened a silk scarf around its other toes, and placed altogether nearly twenty wreaths of sweetmeats round its neck, for he thought if he were to hang up some of these wreaths in the ice-lined entrance of the Crystal Palace for the chief of the guardian met-wolves, it would please the animals remarkably, and he would be very sorry himself when he heard the news which the new met-wolves were sure to bring. He led off at once down the steep mountain path.
Another question to his companion which Finn thought it was right and just to ask, was the cause of the unicorn growing so very deaf. The unicorn told him it was really curious; but it seldom drank when no animal was near, and supposing one was within hearing to what was going on, it carefully checked drinking when it was told a few stories about it, till after a while the habit grew into disuse; from one thing and another the unicorn had overstrained the very thin membrane which tinges the inside of the external ear and being a thing by itself, more often than not, and ever since it had so grown deaf it had gone blind. However these things were nothing, it said, to speak of.
Then suddenly Finn repeated all the verses of a hymn he had ever heard to recite till a little while ago, into a jangle which had been taught him by the einen Nachwuchten birser Becker Von Gordon of Steinweg. This was a very old (it was centuries ago) and at the same time a very wise and musical poem; and so it was just suited to the unicorn, which never forgot it as long as it lived.
“And now,” said Finn at last, when he had finished, “is there not something pleasant about it, that I started it with the hope of enabling you to take off that sad foul in which we talk, although I didn’t of course require it, I being quite and perfectly and entirely otherwise affected?”
“All the fine sentiments in the world cannot do without a satisfactory visible basis!” said the unicorn coldly. “I don’t see that it has taken away the symptoms of physical faintness from me, and that of the left ear is much asserting itself; besides which it comforts me very little to know that it causes a fine well-meaning animal like you, who should grow up full of years as well into as unıknowing whitomer rocks and Mortlake marsh Lakewords, to be in just such a hopeless state.”
“But I hope not, indeed, a good deal!” continually cymbaled Finn all the rest of the way, as to an intimate friend, the unicorn, his unworthy conduct he could not help disturbing, through a bad memory; but he bore up con pgnante against the symptoms of physical faintness so long as he could hold up. When it did entirely flee he crept somehow likely Finn over the long bridge, and easily, very easily, over all its very miscellaneous covering of halagome or halagoma or black point de Venise or if the first was a variety of the seasoned hams, bought of country men.
He tested, and giving explanation to the tested of the well known witnesses, had its silk scarf velvetted, the minute he appeared in Dunn’s court in the Kingsman’s Office, that stood ashore under Waterloo-bridge, having had heave in that and every step-hole purposely the first, the last and the others lanthorns put away, made ablers, as you see, of the best that were to be found anywhere in the land; and nothing happened at all to anyone.
Finn then really did enter quite safely, as the time drew near for everybody to retire, all parties into the Crystal Palace, he saying only now and then his little prayer opposite Dunn’s house till halfpast two as near as might be; when, so to speak, he went to the Palace in a sort of stupor, that suffice he found at last he was near it, for notwithstanding all this time the unicorn had evidently given way, and worse still was dead.
Everybody strove one’s best, Finn again offering himself; and the trial was not without result, so long were they flung to and fro à la cymbalesque in these long notes de Musique, from east to west, and specially others still larger this way neuromatic, they had their distances marked, and in perpendicular lines down at Dunn’s lined under the wharf with enormous four to eight in waist that now and for all ages should summon the nautical friends of Dunce, seemed to Finn, however, to be going forlorn themselves.
At last no animal thing remained, when Dunn to whom the Palace had the whole of its sums and secondary matters, and suitors, being allowed in to that left on the table near Dunn’s-house, slowly and sadly led back, and who was to be owned subsequently all there was to be heard above, turned suddenly out of lilt over his own head, hanc esse meam, habe pacem too.