"
Now, I was seized with a great desire to see the illustrious Panjandrum
for myself, and to know what he had to say of that wonderful bag of gold
that was to be found at the place where the rainbow touched the ground.
And so I fell to work with the happy boys and girls, looking for a
one-eyed beetle and a four-leaved clover. The clover was soon found, but
it was a long time before we got the beetle. At last we came to a log on
which two of that sort of beetles that children call "pinch-bugs" were
fighting. Whether they were prize-fighters, engaged in a combat for one
thousand dollars a side, or whether they were fighting a duel about some
affair of honor, I do not know; but I did notice that they fought most
brutally, scratching away savagely on each other's hard shells, without
doing a great deal of damage, however. But one of them had lost one eye
in the fight, and so we seized him and made off, leaving the other to
snap his tongs together in anger because he had nobody to pinch. It must
be a dreadful thing to want to hurt somebody and have nobody to hurt.
When we had gone some distance, we came to a gate that had a very curious
sign over it. It read, "The Great Panjandrum Himself." There was a Garuly
with a club standing by the gate, and a Pickaninny, in a blue coat with
a long tail, hopping around on top of it.
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