Snythergen

Snythergen’s mother was poor—so poor that she did not feel able to support her baby boy. So she put him in a basket—it had to be a large one—and left it on the doorstep of a little old couple who had long wished for a child.

The pair were very much surprised, not only at finding Snythergen, but at his unusual appearance. He was thin as bones and very long—so long that he appeared to be wearing stilts. His body was very ungainly and the couple’s first feeling was one of disappointment—until they looked into his eyes. These were bright and roguish and something else not easy to name—something that made them know he was their child, and they loved him.

The new papa and mamma were very proud. First of all they wanted their boy to fill out into a healthy well-fed child, so they stoked his neglected stomach with the richest of farm foods. The effect was prompt. It was amazing how Snythergen changed from day to day. His cheeks rounded, his shoulders broadened, and the layers of flesh spread over his lean trunk until he was as bulging as a rubber ball. He was getting enormous and his parents were beginning to sense a new danger.

“He will burst if he keeps on getting fatter,” said his mother anxiously.

“I must study the question,” said his father, who was a philosopher.

One day the father came in much excited. “I know what it is that makes baby so fat! He eats the wrong kind of food. His diet is too round. It is all pumpkins, potatoes, tomatoes, eggs, oranges. Now to get thin he should eat thin foods, like celery, asparagus, pie-plant, and macaroni.”

So they fed him long slender foods, and he began changing at once. He shot up almost as fast as Jack’s beanstalk, until they were alarmed for fear he would never stop shooting up. He had grown until he could look into the second story windows standing on the ground, and could place his hand on the top of the chimney without getting on tiptoes. Again it was time something was done, and they sat down to think the matter over.

“I have it,” said the papa at last. “Son must not eat all round nor all slender foods! The two must be mixed!”

So they mixed them just in time to save Snythergen from shooting up like a skyrocket. But by the time his growth was arrested he was altogether too big for a boy.

There was no room in the house large enough for him to sleep in and he could not go upstairs; the passage was too small and the ceiling too low. But they found a place by letting his legs and body curl around through the hallways and connecting rooms of the ground floor. His head rested on a pillow in the living room and his feet projected out of the window in the butler’s pantry. Every night before he went to bed his mother tucked him in carefully, unfurling a roll of sheets and quilts that had been sewed together and were long enough to stretch from his feet to his neck.

Before he left for school in the morning his parents always kissed him good-by affectionately. The parting took place outdoors in front of the house. Snythergen would bend over and place his broad hands on the ground, palms up. His father would stand on one hand and his mother on the other, holding tightly to their son’s coat sleeves. Then Snythergen would raise his arms, lifting his parents until they were on a level with his face.

“Now be a good boy, Snythergen,” said the little father, “or I shall spank you severely!”

“Of course he will be a good boy,” said the mother, as she leaned over and kissed him.

Then the papa would climb up his ear and place his hands on his son’s head and give him his blessing. Snythergen would then lower both parents gently to the ground and start for school.

Snythergen was nearly always late in starting for school. He seldom slept well, for his bed was uncomfortable and he could not turn over or even change his position, without injuring the house. Every night before going to sleep he would resolve to be up early on the morrow, but regularly failed. And one morning he arose so very late that it was necessary to find a short cut if he were to arrive at school in time.

What could he do? He tried to think of a scheme while collecting his books. Bending over to pick up his slate pencil, he placed his head between his heels, just for the fun of it. And this gave him an idea! With his head still in this position, he bent his body into a circle making a hoop of himself. Then he began to roll down hill across the fields, slowly at first, then faster and faster, then so fast he could not stop. He bounded over fences and ditches, until, all out of breath and very much flushed, he found himself at the school house door! This short cut saved him at least a mile, and it was such fun rolling down hill, he went that way every morning thereafter, rolling up to the door just as the school-bell was ringing—to crawl into the passage on his hands and knees.

There was not room enough for Snythergen to stand up in school, so the janitor cut a trap door beside his desk so that his feet extended into the basement. Even then he stood taller in the school room than the other pupils. But he would have managed very well had the janitor not been absent-minded and near-sighted. He seemed never able to remember that those long shanks were legs—not pillars. Again and again he would tie the clothes-line to them, and on wash days when Snythergen went out at recess, usually he trailed a piece of clothes-line behind each leg, with the washing hanging on. And the janitor got such a scolding from his wife for this that he grew to dislike Snythergen almost as much as Snythergen disliked him.

One morning the janitor painted the basement. And when Snythergen went out at recess his legs were a brilliant yellow and pinned to each was a sign: “Fresh Paint.” That day he had an easy time playing tag, for no one wanted to get smeared with paint badly enough to touch him.

One day the janitor was so forgetful as to start to drive a nail into one of Snythergen’s legs. This was too much! The poor boy jumped out of the cellar, and in rising thrust his head through the roof. So angry was he, he hardly knew what he was doing. He stepped over the walls carrying the roof with him, then tossed it on the ground and hurried away. “I won’t, won’t go back to school,” he kept saying to himself. Rather than go back and face the ridicule of his schoolmates he decided to run away.