From: Kobboltozo: A Sequel to the Last of the Huggermuggers (1869)
Author: Christopher Pearse Cranch
Published: Lee and Shepard 1869 Boston
KOBBOLTOZO fell asleep with his brain full of witches, mermen, shell-fish, giants, and gnomes. So it was very natural he should dream. And he did dream a wonderful dream, as he afterwards told the carpenter, and which the carpenter (said the tailor) told me. Kobboltozo dreamed that he was walking in the palace of the king of the gnomes. His majesty was bigger than the other gnomes, his subjects, and not at all silent like them; on the contrary, he was very talkative and merry. Kobboltozo asked him, of course, the question which was always uppermost in his mind—where he should find the wonderful shell-fish of the giants.
“That’s a secret,” said the king, “which no one here knows but myself. It is well you asked me. Come with me.”
So they passed through room after room, more splendid than any thing he had yet seen—all was gold, silver, and precious stones—and knocked at a door, which opened, and disclosed a long avenue leading to the sea.
“Take this path,” said the king, “and it will conduct you to what you desire—but first fill your pockets with as much gold and as many precious stones as you want.” Kobboltozo did so, and bidding the king adieu, the door closed behind him.
Immediately he seemed to have wings to his feet, for he flew in an instant to the sea. When he reached the shore, he found it covered with a strange kind of shell-fish he had never seen. He took one of these, and it opened its shell of itself, as if asking to be eaten. It had a singular but not an unpleasant flavor. So he ate another and another. Presently he began to grow, and grow, and grow. He seemed to be inflating like a balloon, till he found himself larger than Huggermugger, and a good deal handsomer. With huge strides he walked across the island, his pockets full of the gold and jewels the gnome had given him. He reached the village of the dwarfs—and saw his own little workshop, and all the other houses, and all the dwarfs running about pursuing their business, and felt the most supreme contempt for them all, and the most unbounded admiration of himself. It delighted him to see how they ran away from him, or fell on their knees before him, or did whatever he bid them do. “Poor little beings,” he said, “I shan’t make shoes for you any longer—a greater than Huggermugger is among you—you shall all be my slaves—I will do with you whatever I please—am I not the greatest of the giants?”
(I don’t mean to say, said the tailor, that Kobboltozo told all this to Hammawhaxo—it is only what we dwarfs thought he said in his dream.)
Having thrown a few gold pieces to the dwarfs, he strode to the giant’s house, and was immensely delighted to find how the great mansion fitted him. Only he would have had it bigger still. No sooner had he expressed this wish, than the king of the gnomes again stood before him.
“Ah,” thought Kobboltozo, “he has come up through those subterranean passages I discovered. He also shall do my bidding.” So he told the king to bring him a thousand gnomes, and pull down Huggermugger’s house, and build one twice as large. The gnome king nodded, and disappeared. Presently he appeared again, followed by an immense swarm of little brown elfs, who set to work and pulled down the house. Pretty soon they built one twice as large. “Now,” said Kobboltozo, “cover it all over with gold and diamonds and rubies.” And they brought up gold and diamonds and rubies, and covered the house all over with them. But as they were finishing, they heard thunder, and the witch of the ravine appeared in the midst of the gnomes, with a countenance full of anger, and stamped her foot—when suddenly the gnomes all disappeared and left him alone with the witch.
Kobboltozo rose up to annihilate the old woman with one blow of his mighty arm, when it was suddenly seized by something sharp, which held him fast. Turning around, he found his arm actually caught in the thorns of a great blackberry bush, which in his sleep he had rolled against—and there was an end to his magnificent dream.
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