Part 1 (1/2)

Twilight Land

by Howard Pyle

Introduction

I found ot there I cannot tell, but there I was in Twilight Land

What is Twilight Land? It is a wonderful, wonderful place where no sun shi+nes to scorch your back as you jog along the here no rain falls to make the road muddy and hard to travel, where no wind blows the dust into your eyes or the chill into your o to bed

Where is Twilight Land? Ah! that I cannot tell you You will either have to ask your ht Land The birds were singing their good-night song, and the little frogs were piping ”peet, peet” The sky overhead was full of still brightness, and the reat bubble as yellow as gold All the air was full of the sray, and the trees were dark

I drifted along the road as a soap-bubble floats before the wind, or as a body floats in a drea past the trees, past the bushes, past the mill-pond, past theat me

I floated on, and there was the Inn, and it was the Sign of Mother Goose

The sign hung on a pole, and on it was painted a picture of Mother Goose with her gray gander

It was to the Inn I wished to come

I floated on, and I would have floated past the Inn, and perhaps have gotten into the Land of Never-Coht at the branch of an apple-tree, and so I stoppeddown like pink and white snowflakes

The earth and the air and the sky were all still, just as it is at twilight, and I heard then of Mother Goose--the clinking of glasses, and the rattling and clatter of knives and forks and plates and dishes That here I wished to go

So in I went Mother Goose herself opened the door, and there I was

The rooht; but there they sat, every one of them I did not count them, but there were ever so many: Aladdin, and Ali Baba, and Fortunatis, and Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and Doctor Faustus, and Bidpai, and Cinderella, and Patient Grizzle, and the Soldier who cheated the Devil, and St George, and Hans in Luck, who traded and traded his luold until he had only an empty churn to show for it; and there was Sindbad the Sailor, and the Tailor who killed seven flies at a blow, and the Fisherman who fished up the Genie, and the Lad who fiddled for the Jew in the bramble-bush, and the Blacksmith who made Death sit in his apple-tree, and Boots, who alwayslot as ever you saw in your life, gathered froht Land

Each one of the a story, and noas the turn of the Soldier who cheated the Devil

”I will tell you,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil, ”a story of a friend of e

”Thank you, I will,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil

He filled his long pipe full of tobacco, and then he tilted it upside down and sucked in the light of the candle

Puff! puff! puff! and a cloud of smoke went up about his head, so that you could just see his red nose shi+ning through it, and his bright eyes twinkling in the h a thin cloud on a suht

”I'll tell you,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil, ”the story of a friend of mine Tis every word of it just as true as that Iof beer, and then he began

”Tis called,” said he--