When you or I would have cooed, Rupert von Pepperpotz would wrinkle up his forehead until the furrows, if his nurse tells the truth, were deep enough to hide letters in.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "RUPERT WAS ALWAYS MERRY"]

"And yet he was rarely cross, and never disobedient. It was the strangest thing in the world. Here was a being who always frowned and never laughed, and yet who was as obliging in his actions as could be.

As he grew older his active amiability increased, but his frown grew more terrible than ever. He became a great wit. As he walked through the streets of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz he was always merry, though none would have guessed it to look at him. He had a pleasant voice, and his neighbors all said it was a most startling thing to hear in the distance a jolly, roistering song, and then to walk along a little way and see that it was this forbidding-looking person who was doing the singing.

"How Rupert got Wilhelmina de Grootzenburg to become his wife, considering his seeming solemnity, which made him appear to be positively ugly, n.o.body ever knew. It is probable, however, that it was sympathy which moved her to like him, unless it was that his ugliness fascinated her. Rupert himself said that it was not sympathy for his inability to laugh or smile, because he did not want sympathy for that.

He didn't feel badly about it himself. He never had smiled, and so did not know the pleasure of it. Consequently he didn't miss it. Smiling was an idiotic way of expressing pleasure anyhow, he said. Why just because a man thought of a funny idea he should stretch his mouth he couldn't see. No more could he understand why it was necessary to show one's appreciation of a funny story by shaking one's stomach and saying Ha-ha!

On the whole, he said that he was satisfied. He could talk and could tell people he enjoyed their stories without having to shake himself or disturb the corners of his mouth. When little Fritz was born, and did nothing but laugh even when he had the colic, the solemn-looking Rupert observed that the baby simply proved the truth of what he said.

"'What a donkey the child is,' he cried, 'to spoil his pretty face by stretching his mouth so that you almost fear his ears will drop into it!

And those wild whoops, which you call laughter, what earthly use are they? I can't see why, if he is glad about something, he can't just say, "I'm glad about so and so," mildly, instead of making me deaf with his roars. Truly, laughter is not what it is cracked up to be.'

"'Ah, my dear Rupert,' Wilhelmina, his wife, had said, 'you do not really know what you are talking about! If you could enjoy the sensation of laughing once you would never wish to be without it.'

"'Nonsense!' replied the Baron. 'My father never laughed, so why should I wish to?'

"Now, then," continued Hans, "according to Fritz von Pepperpotz's statement, there was where Rupert was wrong. Siegfried von Pepperpotz had known what it was to laugh, but he had not known when to laugh, which was why the family of Von Pepperpotz was afflicted with a curse, which only the final dying out of the family could remove, and there lay the solution of the mystery. It seems that Siegfried von Pepperpotz, grandfather of Fritz and father of Rupert, had been a wild sort of a youth, who smiled when he wished and frowned when he wished, no matter what the occasion may have been, and he smiled once too often. A miserable-looking figure of a man once pa.s.sed through the village of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz, selling sugar dolls and other sweets. To Siegfried and his comrades it seemed good to play a prank on the old fellow. They sent him two miles off into the country, where, they said, was a rich countess, who would buy his whole stock, when in reality there was no rich countess there at all, so that the old man had his trouble for his pains.

"That he was a magician they did not know, but so he was, and in those days magicians could do everything. Of course he was angry at the deception, and on his return to Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz he sent for the young men, and got all of them to apologize and buy his wares except Siegfried. Siegfried not only refused to apologize and buy the old man's candies, but had the audacity to laugh in his face, and tell him about a wealthy old duke who lived two miles out on the other side of the village, which the magician immediately recognized as another attempt to play a practical joke upon him.

"'Enough, Siegfried von Pepperpotz!' he cried, in his rage. 'Laugh away while you can. After to-day may you never smile, and may your son never smile, and may your son's son, willing or unwilling, smile smiles that you two would have smiled, and so may it ever go! May every third generation get the laughter that the preceding two shall lose, according to my curse!'

"This made Siegfried laugh all the harder, for, not knowing, as I have said, that the old man was a magician, he had no fear of him. Next day, however, he changed his mind. He found that he could not laugh. He could not even smile. Try as he would, his lips refused to do his bidding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SIEGFRIED VON PEPPERPOTZ GREW ILL OF IT"]

"It ruined his disposition. Siegfried von Pepperpotz grew ill over it.

The greatest doctors in the world were summoned to his aid, but to no avail. If the curse had ended with him he might not have minded it so much, but after the discovery that from the day of his birth his son Rupert was no more able to laugh than himself he began to brood over the affliction, and shortly died of it; and when Fritz found out from a paper he discovered in a secret drawer in the old chest in the chateau what the curse was--for Siegfried never told his son, and alone knew from what it was he suffered, and that it was perpetual--he resolved that there should be no further posterity to whom it should be handed down.

"That," said Hans, "is the story of Baron Humpfelhimmel's affliction."

"And a strange story it is," said I. "Though I don't know that it has any particular moral."

"Oh yes, it has!" said Hans. "It has a good moral."

"And what is that?" I asked.

"Don't laugh at your own jokes," he replied. "If Siegfried von Pepperpotz had not laughed when the magician came back, he never would have been cursed, and this story never would have been told."

A Great Composer

A Great Composer

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative A]

mong the best-known residents of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz when Hans Pumpernickel first appeared in that beautiful city were three musicians--Herr von Karlingtongs, who was the only, and consequently the best, violinist in town, Dr. Otto Teutonstring, and Heinrich Flatz, who had played the 'cello once before the King of Prussia with such effect that the king said he'd never heard anything like it before. The town was naturally very proud of the trio, and particularly of Dr.

Teutonstring, who, though far from being a muscular man, had once played the ba.s.s-viol for sixteen consecutive hours in the musical contest at the Schnitzelhammerstein carnival, beating by one hour and twenty-two minutes the strongest and most enduring ba.s.s-viol player in Germany.

They were the most amiable old gentlemen in the world. It very seldom happened that they failed to agree, which was rather wonderful, because it often happens, unhappily, that musicians grow jealous of one another, and say and do things that make it impossible for them to live together peaceably. You may not all of you remember that famous and very sad instance of the lengths to which this jealousy is sometimes allowed to run wherein Luigi Sparragini, the well-known Italian violinist, in his rage at the applause received at a concert by his rival, Siegfried von Heimstetter, broke a Stradivarius violin valued at a thousand pounds over Von Heimstetter's head, to be rebuked in return by Von Heimstetter, who induced Sparragini to look at the mechanism of a grand piano he had, letting the cover fall on the other's head as soon as he had poked it in, thereby utterly ruining the piano and severely injuring Sparragini's nose.

Nothing of this kind, as I have intimated, ever marred the serenity of the three amiable musicians of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz.

"We have no cause each other to be jealous of," Herr von Karlingtongs had said. "I the fiddle play; they the fiddle do not play."

"True," observed Heinrich Flatz. "The potato just as well the watermelon might be jealous of. If I the fiddle played, then might I Von Karlingtongs be jealous of. Therefore also already can the same be said regarding Teutonstring. In no manner are we each other the rivals of."

In all of which, as Hans Pumpernickel said to me, there was much common-sense. "Discord is not music," said he, "and if these men were discordant they would not be musicians. If they were not musicians they would have to make a living in some other kind of business. They are not fit for any other kind of business, wherefore they are wise as well as amiable."

The consequence of all this harmony between the three dear old gentlemen was that they were always together. They practised together, and on public occasions they played together, and their fellow-townsmen were delighted with them. At weddings they played the wedding-marches, each as earnestly as though he were playing a solo. At the Mayor's banquets they were always present, adding much to the pleasure of these sumptuous repasts by the soft and beautiful strains which they discoursed. "I am not a king," said Mayor Ehrenbreitstein upon one of these occasions; "but if I were, I could not hear better music. We have an orchestra without a court. What more can we desire?"

"Nothing," said Hans Pumpernickel, "unless it be another tune."

"A good idea," cried one of the aldermen. "Let us have another tune."

And so the cry would go about the board, and the three happy old gentlemen would good-naturedly go to work again and play another tune.

It came about very naturally, then, that whenever a rival band of musicians, desirous of wresting the laurels from the respective brows of Herren Von Karlingtongs, Teutonstring, and Flatz, came to Schnitzelhammerstein, they found them so strongly intrenched in the affections of the people that, while they lived and played in harmony together, no others could hope to make a living from music in that community. They rapidly grew rich; for it came to pa.s.s that, with the exception of house rent, and new strings for their instruments, and other mere incidentals of a musician's work, they had no expenses to pay. Their food cost them nothing, they attended so many banquets; and when, occasionally, a day would come upon which no breakfast, luncheon, or dinner required their services, it was always found that they had carried away enough fruit and cake and other dainties from the affairs that had been given to last them through such rare intervals as found them without an engagement.

In other respects, too, did these worthies show themselves ent.i.tled to be called wise. Some five years after they began to grow famous in Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz some of their admirers suggested that they ought not to confine themselves to the small town in which they had waxed so great, but should go out into the world and dazzle all mankind by the brilliance of their playing.

"The great orchestras of Austria," said one of these, "do not content themselves with laurels won at home. They travel into far countries, and win fame and fortune all the world over. Why do not you go?"

"We will talk it over," Herr Teutonstring replied. "I for one am opposed to making such a trip, because I am an old man, and my ba.s.s-viol is heavy."

"Can you not send it about by freight?" said the man who proposed the scheme.

"Would you send your child by freight?" asked Herr Teutonstring.

"I would not," returned the other.

"No more can I send my ba.s.s-viol by freight," said Herr Teutonstring, fondly tw.a.n.ging the strings of his huge instrument. "This is my whole family. I love it as I would a child for whom I must care; as a father who has helped me to become what I am. Nevertheless, we will talk it over."

And they did talk it over, and as a result decided that the world, if it desired to hear them play, must come to Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz.

"If we go," said Herr Von Karlingtongs, "who will provide music for Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz?"

"Who, indeed?" said Heinrich Flatz, gazing at the floor after the manner of the truly wise man.

"Since you have both asked that question," said Herr Teutonstring, "out of mere politeness I must answer it. My answer is, briefly, I haven't the slightest idea."

"But some one must," persisted Von Karlingtongs.

"Yes," said the others.