Now, when the Pretty Lady with the Blue-Blue Eyes had reached the very
outer edge of Spangleland, she brought her White-White Horse to a pause.
And Diggeldy Dan paused, too. There they stood, forming a picture for
all the world like one you must have seen in a story book; only it was
much more wonderful than that could ever be. For no artist could ever
have quite caught the blue in the Lady’s eyes, or the gold that lay in
her hair. For, oddly enough, her yellow curls gleamed, though by this
time the twilight had come and the lights of the night begun to blink
and to wink, away off in the streets of the town. Then the Pretty Lady
began to speak:
“Dan; for now I know you are Diggeldy Dan; what is in this great, white
tent that stands so near where we stand?”
“Why,” answered Dan, “there’s monkeys, and lions, and tigers and things,
and—”
“Quite so,” the Lady broke in. “It, then, is the tent that we want. Now
listen to me with both your funny white ears and with all your two
twinkling eyes. For this is the message from Too-Bo-Tan, to all the
animals of Spangleland: Beginning on the morrow and on every day ever
after, there is to come a wee little hour in the twilight when all the
monkeys, and lions, and tigers, and things are to be let out of their
cages, allowed to dance and to play and do as they will.”
“But, oh, Pretty Lady, that will not do at all,” burst in Diggeldy Dan.
“Their cages are locked, there’s no hour to spare, and—and maybe they’d
eat folks up!”
But for answer the Lady only laughed—the laugh that was so like the
tinkle bells.
“Have no fear, Diggeldy Dan. All that has been thought out by far wiser
heads than yours. You see, it was this way: Ever so long ago,
Too-Bo-Tan—who is the very biggest monkey in all the world—called a
meeting of all the animals in far-away Jungleland. And, when they had
gathered on the highest peak of the mountains, where Too-Bo holds his
wonderful court, Too-Bo rose and made this very solemn speech:
“‘It was, as many of you know, the very dearest wish of my honored
father, Vargu, that the day might come when something could be done to
make easier the lot of our fellow animals who have so nobly sacrificed
their freedom and consented to spend their lives in red and golden
cages, that the children may have their circus days. Of late, I have had
my learned counselors go into this matter very thoroughly, and they have
found, but yesterday, written on the face of a great stone in the depths
of a certain cave in a certain mountain, this remarkable decree:
“‘“On the day when Diggeldy Dan has been a clown for a hundred years and
a day, as a reward for the great joy that he has given little children
through all his merry life, he will be granted the privilege of
releasing all animals from their cages at every setting of the sun.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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