by
L. Frank Baum
(excerpts
from Chapters Four & Five, pp. 55-60)
"a live phonograph is
enough to drive every sane person in the Land of Oz stark crazy."
As soon as breakfast
was over they all went into the Magician's big workshop, where the
Glass Cat was lying before the mirror and the Patchwork Girl lay limp
and lifeless upon the bench.
"Now, then," said Dr. Pipt, in a brisk tone, "we shall perform one
of the greatest feats of magic possible to man, even in this marvelous
Land of Oz. In no other country could it be done at all. I think we
ought to have a little music while the Patchwork Girl comes to life.
It is pleasant to reflect that the first sounds her golden ears will
hear will be delicious music."
As he spoke he went to a phonograph, which was screwed fast to a small
table, and wound up the spring of the instrument and adjusted the
big gold horn.
"The music my servant will usually hear," remarked Margolotte, "will
be my orders to do her work. But I see no harm in allowing her to
listen to this unseen band while she wakens to her first realization
of life. My orders will beat the band, afterward."
The phonograph was now playing a stirring march tune and the Magician
unlocked his cabinet and took out the gold bottle containing the Powder
of Life.
They all bent over the bench on which the Patchwork Girl reclined.
Unc Nunkie and Margolotte stood behind, near the windows, Ojo at one
side and the Magician in front, where he would have freedom to sprinkle
the powder. The Glass Cat came near, too, curious to watch the important
scene.
"All ready?" asked Dr. Pipt.
"All is ready," answered his wife.
So the Magician leaned over and shook from the bottle some grains
of the wonderful Powder, and they fell directly on the Patchwork Girl's
head and arms.
CHAPTER FIVE
- A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT
"IT will take a few minutes
for this powder to do its work," remarked the Magician, sprinkling
the body up and down with much care.
But suddenly the Patchwork
Girl threw up one arm, which knocked the bottle of powder from the
crooked man's hand and sent it flying across the room. Unc Nunkie
and Margolotte were so startled that they both leaped backward and
bumped together, and Unc's head joggled the shelf above them and upset
the bottle containing the Liquid of Petrifaction.
The Magician uttered such a wild cry that Ojo jumped
away and the Patchwork Girl sprang after him and clasped her stuffed
arms around him in terror. The Glass Cat snarled and hid under the
table, and so it was that when the powerful Liquid of Petrifaction
was spilled it fell only upon the wife of the Magician and the uncle
of Ojo. With these two the charm worked promptly. They stood motionless
and stiff as marble statues, in exactly the positions they were in
when the Liquid struck them.
Ojo pushed the Patchwork Girl away and ran to Unc Nunkie, filled with
a terrible fear for the only friend and protector he had ever known.
When he grasped Unc's hand it was cold and hard. Even the long gray
beard was solid marble. The Crooked Magician was dancing around the
room in a frenzy of despair, calling upon his wife to forgive him,
to speak to him, to come to life again!
The Patchwork Girl, quickly recovering from her fright, now came nearer
and looked from one to another of the people with deep interest. Then
she looked at herself and laughed. Noticing the mirror, she stood
before it and examined her extraordinary features with amazement—her
button eyes, pearl bead teeth and puffy nose. Then, addressing her
reflection in the glass, she exclaimed:
"Whee, but there's
a gaudy dame!
Makes a paint-box blush with shame.
Razzle-dazzle, fizzle-fazzle!
Howdy-do, Miss What's-your-name?"
She bowed, and the reflection
bowed. Then she laughed again, long and merrily, and the Glass Cat
crept out from under the table and said:
"I don't blame you for laughing at yourself. Aren't you horrid?"
"Horrid?" she replied. "Why, I'm thoroughly delightful. I'm an Original,
if you please, and therefore incomparable. Of all the comic, absurd,
rare and amusing creatures the world contains, I must be the supreme
freak. Who but poor Margolotte could have managed to invent such an
unreasonable being as I? But I'm glad—I'm awfully glad!—that I'm just
what I am, and nothing else."
"Be quiet, will you?" cried the frantic Magician; "be quiet and let
me think! If I don't think I shall go mad."
"Think ahead," said the Patchwork Girl, seating herself in a chair.
"Think all you want to. I don't mind."
"Gee! but I'm tired playing that tune," called the phonograph, speaking
through its horn in a brazen, scratchy voice. "If you don't mind,
Pipt, old boy, I'll cut it out and take a rest."
The Magician looked gloomily at the music-machine.
"What dreadful luck!" he wailed, despondently. "The Powder of Life
must have fallen on the phonograph."
He went up to it and found that the gold bottle that contained the
precious powder had dropped upon the stand and scattered its life-giving
grains over the machine. The phonograph was very much alive, and began
dancing a jig with the legs of the table to which it was attached,
and this dance so annoyed Dr. Pipt that he kicked the thing into a
corner and pushed a bench against it, to hold it quiet.
"You were bad enough before," said the Magician, resentfully; "but
a live phonograph is enough to drive every sane person in the Land
of Oz stark crazy."
"No insults, please,"
answered the phonograph in a surly tone. "You did it, my boy; don't
blame me."
"You've bungled everything, Dr. Pipt," added the Glass Cat, contemptuously.
"Except me," said the Patchwork Girl, jumping up to whirl merrily
around the room.
"I think," said Ojo, almost ready to cry through grief over Unc Nunkie's
sad fate, "it must all be my fault, in some way. I'm called Ojo the
Unlucky, you know."
"That's nonsense, kiddie," retorted the Patchwork Girl cheerfully.
"No one can be unlucky who has the intelligence to direct his own
actions. The unlucky ones are those who beg for a chance to think,
like poor Dr. Pipt here. What's the row about, anyway, Mr. Magic-maker?"
"The Liquid of Petrifaction has accidentally fallen upon my dear wife
and Unc Nunkie and turned them into marble," he sadly replied.
"Well, why don't you sprinkle some of that powder on them and bring
them to life again?" asked the Patchwork Girl.
The Magician gave a jump.
"Why, I hadn't thought of that!" he joyfully cried, and grabbed up
the golden bottle, with which he ran to Margolotte.
Said the Patchwork Girl:
"Higgledy, piggledy,
dee—
What fools magicians
be!
His head's so thick
He can't think quick,
So he takes advice
from me."
Standing upon the bench, for he was
so crooked he could not reach the top of his wife's head in any other
way, Dr. Pipt began shaking the bottle. But not a grain of powder
came out.60 He pulled off the cover, glanced within, and then threw
the bottle from him with a wail of despair.
"Gone—gone! Every bit gone," he cried. "Wasted on that miserable phonograph
when it might have saved my dear wife!"
Then the Magician bowed his head on his crooked arms and began to
cry. Ojo was sorry for him. He went up to the sorrowful man and said
softly:
"You can make more Powder of Life, Dr. Pipt."
"Yes; but it will take me six years—six long, weary years of stirring
four kettles with both feet and both hands," was the agonized reply.
"Six years! while poor Margolotte stands watching me as a marble image."
"Can't anything else be done?" asked the Patchwork Girl. The Magician
shook his head. Then he seemed to remember something and looked up.
"There is one other compound that would destroy the magic spell of
the Liquid of Petrifaction and restore my wife and Unc Nunkie to life,"
said he. "It may be hard to find the things I need to make this magic
compound, but if they were found I could do in an instant what will
otherwise take six long, weary years of stirring kettles with both
hands and both feet."
"All right; let's find the things, then," suggested the Patchwork
Girl. "That seems a lot more sensible than those stirring times with
the kettles."