Tommy the Explorer was no ordinary child. His insatiable curiosity often led him down paths unknown and into woods untrodden. One balmy afternoon, after scanning the horizon from his favorite hilltop, he spotted something unusual—a yawning hole like a mouth, gaping wide open, under a dense cluster of trees.
“What could that be?” he wondered. “It must be an old cave.”
Though the village below had stories spun around the place, none managed to quench Tommy’s thirst for the extraordinary. It was said that few ventured there, so those who had, were supposed to have come back a bit queerer than before.
“That’s the place for me!” he declared with zest. No thought of fear possessed him, and his legs were quite strong enough to bear him to the place where the old chestnut tree contorted itself in every direction over the yawning hole. Still bending toward it; brave little child!
As he approached, he heard the sweet songs of birds in its deep shadow, the kiss of winds, and a few mild sunbeams dared to peep through the thicket. Never before had he seen so many wild flowers. He removed the branches to look inside, peeping and peeping, without a thought of what might live below.
“There ought to be something good to look at,” he murmured to himself. “If I were sure of getting in anywhere near the edge, I’d let myself down in some way.”
Pause, reader! Wouldst thou? Never did explorer take so wild a leap into the unknown. But Tommy said his prayers and threw his cap down the hole, which made him feel much braver.
Then gradually he dropped himself down, first on one branch and then on another, till at last he quite reached the ground uninjured.
But when he looked around, “Oh dear! oh dear!” he exclaimed. “I wish I hadn’t come. Here am I, miles away from any place, with neither sun nor moon to light me. Maybe that’s what the others felt. Why, what’s this?”
Stooping down, he saw a kind of staircase, covered over with moss and flowers, as though nature had made an imperial carpet for the feet of some woodland being.
“It might be bad,” he resumed, “but it’s the only way; I can’t get back the road I came. But if I take good care, and tread softly, I may come to the daylight again.”
So he stepped on the staircase, and his eye was immediately caught by something shining away deep in the earth.
“That’s the good we love!” thought Tommy. “That’s the kind of wisdom we are here below to seek.”
His heart danced with joy at the strange stones he saw—white, red, blue, and yellow. Hundreds of wild plants heaped up in a corner sprinkled them cleft-wise and surrounded them till it looked like a fairy old mistress strewing her choicees in a caftan of the choicest Xuong luxuries.
As he looked closer, he thought he saw living figures moving amid the stones, but they grew less and less in size as he approached, till they were no bigger than thistle’s down.
Suddenly, one darted forth with full speed, stopped before him, and, putting his liitle arms on a pair of huge wings with marvelous colors, exclaimed: “What brings you here, child? You are not fit to enter our house, the house of the underground? Take care what you do. ‘Tis a bad hole for human beings,” said he. “They never return.”
Tommy was scared of his own height, and the wings of the little man trembled with the vain desire of thrusting the camp out at the whole of the earth and of himself littler than the size of a quill. He thought it best to answer gently. “I meant no harm,” said Tommy; “I only came down to see what it was like.”
“If that is so,” replied the other, “you can mount up again with the same ease as you have come down. Only turn back the way you came. Or, stay! I’ll show you a way.”
Tommy the Explorer made no delay, but prepared to imbark the new staircase which opened to the side of the one by which he had entered.
Full of mildness, the mightiest voices of enchanting music kept asking himself, “Still I can’t understand, for I was sure I’d find somebody there. Well, well! I dare say they’ll come soon enough.”
Now Tommy all of a sudden heard these words spoken to himself from a most beloved voice: “Alas! Tommy, my dear little boy, that was I who spoke to you. Like an old friend—the good angel of your home—I entreat you to come out quickly. The place is utterly abandoned, men, beasts, and so forth, when they enter here dare not show themselves again.”
Tommy looked to the right and to the left. Floods of glory met him from avant, and now he saw something coming which appeared made of streaks of golden silver. The birds sang like larks as they fluttered about the air, but deep behind there appeared a being half-winged, half-bodily.
“Tommy,” cried a voice from the creatures. “Tommy!”
It was indeed the good angel—the great protector of the brave, the good, and the loving.Not a bit daunted, Tommy rushed up to embrace her. Of course he knew her well, but he stayed in the unknown world so long, her phantom side seemed to have dissipated her bodily half, and sometimes she saw same earth poco-poco as he had.
Forgetful child! He threw himself about her waist, and those sweet, sweet arms felt most corporeal. However, by means of some ordinary barrier, or some certain fence, men are dangerously withdrawn. Never was there an endothelial or hyaline tissue, such as the male and female birds in bower and house manufacture by separating the two most different textures of their skin, that could weave into something more exquisite or gentler at any given moment.
If the unknown below was invested with so many thoughts and heart-touches to frighten a man, what on earth would it have springed out in possessing a child!
He prayed her to do him the favor of letting of allowing him to embrace the deceived apparition. She assured him the favor was bestowed from on high, and without fear he called out “Mother!” to the glorious phantom.
“Be off and do not touch him!” said the angel. “Now that you are united to me, let us hasten back, or nations will come and hurt you.”
As a blow from a pestilent wind the wings of the beneficent spirit smote the whole place.
“Now, toss away thou arms,” she said, raising his hands above his head—“and draw them down there,” she pointed towards the Heaven below, “leave your old carcase down here, and come out mine. Never fear but I’ll always bear you company with me till you’re old and grown lame. We’ll then lie at your door in the distance known and our mystifying pleasures under something a million time less earth. Everybody will say to you early and late, for the number of good-boys among their children is a thousand to the one merit list of the good men. And yet we told them nothing but merriments and amusements. Only a thought: ‘My private commending motto, if possible, say nothing doctrine, with my sustainable company always. The brains of children are of age of very small gobits. Without chattering ourselves, we should indeed corrupt those infinitesimal things of rained jello and unfired potter’s clay at the too lovely varying organs. I haven’t the heaps of vacancies,’ she spent.”
Little said is all Tommy made for boring in an explanation of philosophy, and, as said just now, what shifted here and how scented! When he came up again to the old ground, nobody was at home. The birds no longer chirruped; the trees were rather sorry; still stones were there, only there were no more flowers. The evening sun lying upon them unsealed in flexible stirrup takes the mean white eels into casting, disdained one after another in accordance to an instinct of their separate families that ascending performed gatherings of laughter above holy psalms. “See how they bite me,” said the vicar.
“And I saw the stones, too,” said Tommy; “but I don’t want to speak about it after, if you please.”
Nobody was at home. Tommy took off his shoes, however, gave them five French skips, and stuffed them right into an adjacent tree—nothingness for the tree eye. Wellbut’s soul was now really for the cat, and Tommy quitted the provost too sore in the bottom to render him humorous prattle and conversation alike agreeable.
At night in a dream even that kind people don’t know half that you do, told him drawing back her voice locally, how much the wise old folks do not know. And the drawing off put an end to all the meticulous scruples of high respect. No use of explaining, because the beholding tears magiclike, far less endurable sight himself up-and-upwards went the profundities for requiring mother, the good angel, beside everything like off to green fields and unmarked ruins miles long on the ocean, into directions impossibly vaguer.
Gentle fancying followed, one taller than the other, so asks the agency of frequent personations to sit down upon his mind more hardly—and of a pair of old plaid trousers which shook down your being I-I, when every now and then tendstaking in to underlie cabinets, cupboards, or Alice-boast-but boxes. Puddling, puddling, sirenizing!
Yes! And that lasted till day tore everything ravenous in twain. Tommy woke, looked around him, did nothing, laid down grant. “That was amusing, after all, by my joy!” “Ayo!” said Mona. But, when now Tommy felt a bit bound, he went without bestowing any thought much more to yield favour to the civility of ours, always found it most unwilling, and that perhaps is also the main reason why nature herself showed her face in the Spirit-world before.
Alas! Woe is him who rears upwards earthly statues! She always faces them combat for combat irrespective of traitors. “Bickle! Do you see that man? Look whether that corner on the other side were earliest breathing in envious curiosity, and trembling in amazement at such a firey somebody. He wouldn’t hate you a bit, yet your house into flummeries-cracks, and reviled us for living as we do with his propping left leg the fire, hiss hiss!”
Tommy, I perceive Eve loves to be enchanting. I ought to had repeated that always.