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Rights Holder
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Charles Eden
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University of Exeter
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Transcript
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Little Freddie was the only child of the village shoemaker, a very ignorant man, who strongly objected to all the amount of “lashing that poor folks gets now-a-days.”
His little son, however, was fond of his lessons, especially of astronomy, and hearing that there were mountains in the moon, and having a great desire to see a mountain, as he had never been away from his native village, which was in the very flattest part of Lincolnshire, he used often to beg his father to take him for an expedition to the moon.
“It can’t be so very far off, father,” he said, when his father objected on account of the distance, “why Mrs Clark took Tommy to London the other day, and she said it was not a very long journey, but it must be much further than the moon, because you can see the moon, and you cant nearly see London.”
His father, however, would give no decided answer about the journey, he said he didn’t know the way.
“But father,” said his imperturbable son, “the way is very easy to find, because there is the moon straight before us, we could quite easily get up to it.”
“Well, my boy, we’ll go there some day, as soon as you are a little older, may be.”
Freddie, however, was not content to wait till he was older, he thought he must go at once, so one night when he went to bed, he did up a small bundle of clothes in a red pocket handkerchief, intending to steal out of the house the next morning before his mother was up. Then he lay down to sleep, and closed his eyes, wondering whether he should have to go by land or sea to the moon; he had of course never seen the sea, but he thought a voyage on it would be very delightful.
When he awoke the next morning the sun was shining brightly in at his window, for it was the month of June, so he dressed himself as quietly and as quickly as he could, without his mothers assistance, and taking his little bundle under his arm, he went downstairs. When he got outside the door, he saw the moon high up in the sky, for, though the sun had risen, it was still very early morning, but he did not know which way to turn to get to it.
However he turned to the right, and walked on a very long way without getting a bit nearer to it! And he was just going to turn round and go the other way, when he saw, straight in front of him, a ladder, which reached to the moon. He had never been up a ladder in his life, but he bravely tried to mount, and he succeeded very well with his short little legs. When he had walked up a long way, a very long way it seemed to him, at last he reached the top, and landed on the moon. The soil was all shining and slippery, except where it was covered with beautiful soft green grass, and on the grass sat down to rest, and to look about on the new scene. There were little tiny fir-trees all round, smaller than he had ever seen before, in fact he never had seen any before, they did not grow in the part of Lincolnshire where he lived.
But for the firtrees being there, he would not have been sure that he had got to the moon, he could not yet realize the fact.
When he had got pretty well rested he got up and walked about, and his delight was extreme when on suddenly turning a corner of the narrow path where he was walking, he came face to face with a huge mountain; the ground was very slippery and the sides steep, but he managed to crawl up for about twenty feet, when he came to a ledge, on which some more of the soft lunar grass was growing, so he again sat down to regain his breath. Then he remembered that he had had nothing to eat since his scant supper the night before, and the thought of that made him feel quite faint with hunger, in-so much that when he rose and tried to climb higher up the mountain, he failed in the attempt, and came rolling down again to where he was before. He wished he had not remembered that he had had no breakfast, then he should not feel the want of it. He began to wonder what time it was, of course he could not tell, as little boys of that age, (at least in Lincolnshire) do not generally have watches. I knew his father could tell the time by the sun, though he never could find out how, for though he could read the time very well on the big clock in his mother’s kitchen, whenever he looked at the sun it was always too dazzling for him ever to see either the hands or the figures, and when he asked his father the reason, he answered that it was because he was not old enough or wise enough to see the time by the sun.
Freddie had not enquired when he should be old enough and wise enough, but he thought that now he must surely be very wise to have found the way to the moon all by himself, and he knew he was at least a day older than he was yesterday, so he peeped round to see where the sun had got to, but to his great disappointment it was nowhere to be seen. This did not, however, surprise him very much, for he knew the sun often went to bed in the day time, and his father said it was because it had a head-ache.
“Poor Mr Sun,” said the child, “I hope your head is not very bad, you were shining so brightly this morning, and I am sorry I shant be able to tell the time by you, but perhaps I shall meet the man in the moon presently, and he will tell me the time, and perhaps give me some breakfast too.”
But, as he finished speaking, he suddenly tumbled backwards, for in looking about for the sun he had gradually got nearer and nearer to the edge of the narrow ledge on which he was standing, so he rolled right down to the bottom of the mountain; it was well that he had taken his little bundle of clothes with him, for as he fell, he left his hold of it, and, rolling down first, it broke his fall at the bottom. Of course he imagined himself dreadfully hurt, and he began to roar vigorously, stuffing his fists into his eyes. His sobs soon, however, ceased, as he suddenly beheld an old man standing near him, with a bundle of sticks on his back and a little dog running by his side.
“The man in the moon!” exclaimed Freddie, opening his eyes wide in astonishment, and gazing at the figure before him. He looked a very, very old man, his hair was white and long, and his tattered clothes barely hung together; the dog looked old too, he was nearly bald, and what hair he had was quite white. Both he and his master were very shaky, and the old man could scarcely hold the bundle of sticks on his back. He looked just as much surprised to see Freddie, as Freddie was to see him, but he soon recovered his composure, and took the little boy up in his feeble arms to comfort him. But Freddie was not much the worse for his fall, for he soon began chattering to the stranger as if he had known him all his life.
“Why are you here, please, Mr Man-in-the-moon? And why do you pick up sticks?”
“Alas!” said the old man “I may never leave the moon, for once when I was a comparatively young man, many centuries ago, I was wicked enough to pick up sticks on a Sunday, so, for a punishment I was banished here, and now I have always to pick up sticks to keep the furnace alive that makes the moon so bright, I pick them up every day now, for there is no Sunday here, and glad enough would I be to have the rest of a Sunday; but now little boy I must knowingly you came here, you are the first human being I have seen since my banishment, and I am glad enough, indeed, to see you; only tell me how you came.”
So Freddie told his story, adding at the end, in a piteous tone of voice, that he was very hungry.
“I am afraid,” said the old man, that you must be a very naughty little boy to have come away without telling your Mother, but I will give you some breakfast, and after that you must go home, and descend the precipitous ladder alone, as I am too heavy to go to earth on it, and if I did the furnace would go out, the moon explode, and all the inhabitants of the earth be killed, no, I may never leave my place of banishment, so tantalize me no more by telling one of the joys of earth.”
So saying he led the little boy to where there was a breakfast all prepared, of pease soup off a golden plate, for gold was plentiful in the lunar regions, and he ate heartily, for he was half famished, and then he lay down to erst once more on the beautiful grass, and slept so soundly that he never woke till he found himself in his own little bed at home, and his mother was calling to him that he must make haste and get up, or he would be late for school. So he hastily rose, and amused his mother very much all the time she was dressing him, by telling her all the funny things he had seen in the moon.
Diana.
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A charming little story. I should have expected silver than gold to be the common metal in the moon. Wren
Very interesting, one almost belief it to be true, till one finds it was all a dream. I never heard of the little dog that accompanied the man in the moon. Fiddledum
A very pretty little tale, very nicely told. Were the sticks dead branches from the trees? If so what trees were they? I should not expect the moon to explode if the furnace went out? Is it not true that there is the crater of an extinct volcano in the moon? I wish I knew what the breakfast consisted of beside the soup. Is the man in the moon his own cook? Was it a full moon? If so what was it full of? Ignotus
Very well told indeed but was the dog really bald? He must certainly have been old if he was. Julius Caesar.
The man in the moon has been to earth once, has he not? Didn’t he come before he ought to have done to enquire the road to Norwich? How did the furnace go on then I wonder? Dumbledore
Very pretty and original. Surely Diana never can have been in “the flattest part of Lincolnshire” is she imagines fir tree are not to be found there. A.M.S.
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