[Illustration: Rag Bag Mammy brings out candy with red and white stripes wrapped around it] ROOTABAGA PIGEONS BY CARL SANDBURG Author of “Rootabaga Stories,” “Slabs of the Sunburnt West,” “Smoke and Steel,” “Chicago Poems,” “Cornhuskers” ILLUSTRATIONS AND DECORATIONS BY MAUD AND MISKA PETERSHAM [Illustration] NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J. In compliance with current copyright law, LBS Archival Products produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48–1984 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1992 ♾™ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TO THREE ILLINOIS PIGEONS CONTENTS 1. Two Stories Told by the Potato Face Blind Man The Skyscraper to the Moon and How the Green Rat with the Rheumatism Ran a Thousand Miles Twice _3_ Slipfoot and How He Nearly Always Never Gets What He Goes After _9_ 2. Two Stories About Bugs and Eggs Many, Many Weddings in One Corner House _19_ Shush Shush, the Big Buff Banty Hen Who Laid an Egg in the Postmaster’s Hat _27_ 3. Five Stories About Hatrack the Horse, Six Pigeons, Three Wild Babylonian Baboons, Six Umbrellas, Bozo the Button Buster How Ragbag Mammy Kept Her Secret While the Wind Blew Away the Village of Hat Pins _33_ How Six Pigeons Came Back to Hatrack the Horse After Many Accidents and Six Telegrams _41_ How the Three Wild Babylonian Baboons Went Away in the Rain Eating Bread and Butter _49_ How Six Umbrellas Took Off Their Straw Hats to Show Respect to the One Big Umbrella _55_ How Bozo the Button Buster Busted All His Buttons When a Mouse Came _63_ 4. Two Stories About Four Boys Who Had Different Dreams How Googler and Gaggler, the Two Christmas Babies, Came Home with Monkey Wrenches _75_