FullReads

“Three boys went a-skating
All on a summer’s day,
They all fell in,
And the rest ran away.”

And here is the skin of the wolf that Little Red Ridinghood met in the woods.”

I was just going to inquire of him which was the true version of that story, whether the wolf really ate Little Red Ridinghood up, or whether she ate the wolf; but before I got a chance, a Joblily came in to say that the Great Panjandrum himself was coming, and soon the queerest little, old, round, fat man came in, puffing like a porpoise, and rolling from side to side as he walked. His hair looked like sea grass, and was partly covered by a queer concern, nothing less than the celebrated “little round button-at-the-top.”

“And so you want to see whether there is really a bag of gold at the end of the rainbow, do you? Well, I’ll show you, though I haven’t much time, for he died last week, and she very imprudently intends to marry the barber.”

This is what the Panjandrum said, and we never could tell who “she” was, nor, indeed, whom he meant by the barber.

“Pickaninnies, open the wonderful Pantoscopticon, and let them see.”

The wonderful Pantoscopticon was brought out, and we were allowed to look in it.

There were holes enough for us all to see, and we beheld several rainbows in one sky. On one of them was marked “Get and keep,” on another “Eat, drink, and be merry,” besides some that were too far away for me to read. There was one that had an inscription in unknown letters that shone with their own light. Though I could not read the words, they reminded me somehow of the Latin sentence which I once read over the gate of a park belonging to the richest duke in England, which says, that goodness is the only true nobility, or something of the sort.

All the time we were looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he turned he kept puffing out:

“If you want to find out whether there is any gold at the end of the rainbow, please walk up the ladder, get into the hopper, and be ground down to a proper size.” He hissed out the word size, drawing it as long as his breath would hold.

I didn’t know what his words meant until a lady with a red parasol went round behind the Pantoscopticon and climbed to the top. After looking down at the rattling wheels of the machinery a moment, she jumped into the hopper, just as the Panjandrum came round again to the word “s–i–z–e.” I looked into the machine and had the satisfaction to see this lady come out, not in pieces as I expected, but looking just as she did when she went in, except that she was reduced to rather less than an inch in height. Her parasol was a mere rose-leaf for size–about as big as a silver three-cent piece. A gentleman with a white hat, whom I had seen walking through the museum with this lady, and who seemed to be her husband, stood looking into the peep-holes when she came out. He cried:

“Hold on, Amanda, and I’ll go with you to see about the rainbows and the pot of gold.”

But the little lady with the red parasol didn’t seem to hear him, she only walked ahead eagerly toward the rainbows. The gentleman with the white hat rushed up the stairs and leaped into the hopper without a moment’s pause, and the Great Panjandrum Himself, seeing that the man was in a hurry, turned the crank twice as fast as before. The gentleman was caught in the wheels and sent a-whirling. When he came to the bottom, properly reduced, the speed of the machinery was such that he was thrown out with a shock and his white hat, about the size of a doll’s thimble, fell off, so that he had to pick it up, crying out as he did so: