Gil found his fortune in the city and married a lovely girl named Belle with whom it never occurred to him to argue. And Flora married a lovely man named Carl with whom she lived in peace without a single quarrel. And down in Hell, the Devil, who’d long since forgotten the signpost, heard of these two happy couples and said to himself, “Disgusting. How do such things happen?”
LESSONS
THERE WAS a sharp-eyed parrot once who lived with a doting old woman and was her pride and joy. His name was Columbine, and instead of growing up with pirates, and learning all kinds of nasty language, he had spent his youth with a clergyman and acquired, in his earliest lessons, another kind of language altogether. Then, having outlived the clergyman—for parrots survive to amazing great ages—he moved to the old woman’s cottage, where he learned to say things like “Sweetheart, kiss me quick,” and was just as well content. Still, Columbine was no sissy. He was big and shrewd and liked things on the up-and-up. And to keep them that way, he sat all day on his perch in the old woman’s window, with his eye peeled, and he watched for trouble.
The old woman’s cottage was on the main road, and all day long the carts went by, and the wagons, and people on horseback or muleback or clumping along on foot, going from here to there and Heaven knows where else. And Columbine looked hard at everyone. When someone went by who looked suspicious, he’d say “Oh-oh,” or “Look out,” or sometimes even “Lock the doors!” But there wasn’t any need for locks with Columbine around. He was better than any lock or bolt, or even any watchdog, just by the way he sat in the window with his eye peeled.
Now, one day it happened that the Devil came down the road disguised as a strolling musician with a fiddle under his arm. Columbine saw through the costume in a minute—that’s how sharp his eye was—and he squawked, “It’s the Devil! The Devil! Fire! Flood! Pestilence! Run for your lives!” And while he was squawking, he flapped his wings something awful, and hopped up and down, and made such a racket that the old woman hid under the bed.
The Devil stopped in the middle of the road, right in front of the cottage. “Shh!” he hissed to Columbine. “Hush up, you wretched bird—you’ll give the game away!” But Columbine wouldn’t hush up; he went on flapping, with his feathers every which way, squawking out his warnings at the top of his lungs. And of course the people in the road went running off in great alarm and confusion. Horses reared, carts were overturned, and even the mules were in a hurry. And soon there was no one left except the Devil, alone and feeling foolish, with the fiddle under his arm.
“Drat,” said the Devil. “That ties it. There’s not a soul in sight.”
Columbine calmed down. He closed one eye and said, “Pretty bird.”
“You there,” said the Devil. “Suppose I were to trample your beak in the dust?”
“Bibles,” said Columbine, very cool and clear.
The Devil backed off a step. “What?” he said, surprised.
“Church,” said Columbine. “Church and chapel. And cathedral.”
The Devil backed off even farther.
“Parson,” said Columbine. “And priest. Parson, pastor, priest, and preacher. And Pope.”
“Whoo!” said the Devil with a shiver. And he took himself off in a cloud of smoke and went back down to Hell.
The road soon filled up again with traffic, and the old woman came out from under the bed and went on baking bread. And Columbine sat on his perch and preened his feathers, but he kept his eye peeled just the same, for he was not so pleased with himself that he thought of neglecting his duty.
Down in Hell, the Devil trampled the fiddle in the dust and said to himself, “Someone ought to teach that bird a lesson.” But, of course, someone already had, thank goodness.
THE FALL AND RISE OF BATHBONE
THERE WAS a little, sweet no one of a man once, named Bathbone, who was not quite right in the head, for he thought he was someone else—a famous opera singer of the time called Doremi Faso. No one was sure how Bathbone had got this notion. He had never sung a note in his life, though he hummed sometimes, and on top of that, there was the fact that he was little and sweet, whereas the real Doremi Faso was quite the opposite, with the shape and weight of a walrus and the ego of several roosters. Still, here was Bathbone, sure they were one and the same.
Faso, though famous, was not a very good singer. His voice was big and deep, but big and deep like a moose at the bottom of a well. He was only famous because someone important had once said he was a good singer, right out in the newspapers, printed in type and everything, and after that nobody had the nerve to say he wasn’t. But Bathbone didn’t know this. He was only sure that he was Faso and that Faso was he, and no amount of talk could change his mind.
Things went along this way for quite a while, and then one night Faso met his end at the opera when he gave himself a stroke on a high note he had no business trying for, and he turned up in Hell at once, ego and all, to begin a long series of concerts. Meanwhile, his death was reported in the newspapers. Bathbone, reading of it, was very much astonished. “What can this mean?” he said. “Here I am, the great Doremi Faso, as hale and hearty as ever. How can they say I am dead?” He took to puzzling back and forth on a bridge across a river, waving his arms and mumbling, while he tried to figure it out. And it wasn’t long before he waved and mumbled himself right off the edge and into the water, where he drowned. But the newspapers ignored this second loss and ran, instead, a story about someone who’d grown a four-foot-long mustache.
Now, when Bathbone fell off the bridge, there was a hasty conference in Heaven. And it was decided that Bathbone had better go to Hell and get himself straight as to who he really was. For in Heaven they like you to know that kind of thing and be content with it. So Bathbone arrived at the gates of Hell, still mumbling and wet from head to foot, and was sent to see the Devil.
“What’s this?” said the Devil.
“It is I,” said Bathbone, “the great Doremi Faso.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” said the Devil. “We’ve got one of those already. I know about you. You’re Bathbone, that’s who, and you’re dripping all over my c