Jack Tales - Jack and the Beanstalk


	Jack and the Beanstalk The New Version
		t the bottom of a high hill lived Jack and his mother. Their house was near a small stream which came tumbling over the high rocks down to the side of their cottage, and then ran quietly along in the valley. Jack had never been out of this quiet little spot, though he sometimes thought he should very much like to see what sort of things were going on above; for up at the top of the hill he could see some parts of a house that looked much larger than his mother's little cottage, and he wanted very much to see whether there were any people in it, and whether they had a garden like his mother's and how things went on above there. Now by the side of the cottage Jack had planted a very large bean. He had got some of those famous beans which you have read about in the old Jack story, which grow so large that one may climb them; and when Jack saw his had grown up, up, up very high, he thought he would try to see if he could not make a pleasant journey upon his bean- stalk. So he eat his breakfast one morning, and kissed his mother, and took his hatchet in his hand and began to climb up, and while he was climbing he sang,-- Hitch my hatchet and up I go, The sky is above me, the earth below. And the little birds peeped out of their nests, and the squirrels stopped while they were cracking their nuts,and the grass- hoppers chirped,-- What is the fellow about? Climbing the bean-stalk tall and stout. Now Jack climbed up and up and up, till he began to be quite tired, and at last he got up so high that he could look down into his mother's chimney; and he sat down on one of the strong branches of his bean and took out of his pocket a large piece of bread and butter pinned up in a napkin, and ate it very heartily. Then he wiped his mouth and put up his napkin, took his hatchet in his hand, and began again to climb, and while he was climbing he sang,-- Hitch my hatchet and up I go, The sky is above, and the earth below.
		Now when Jack stopped singing he heard a strange sort of sound, as if some- body was pouring out a great pitcher full of water, and then, mixed with it a clap- ping noise, and little Jack did not know what it was, but he climbed on, and kept still singing,-- Hitch my hatchet and up I go, What is above me I soon shall know. At last Jack reached the top of the bank, and there he saw a great smooth pond of water, very still, not running along like the little river in the valley, but still and clear as his mother's looking-glass, and at the sides of this water he saw great, tall houses, and Jack wanted very much to see what was in them. He looked all round to see a door, but there was none on the side next him, and he walked along by the edge of the pond till he came close to one of the windows, by the side of which grew another of those large beans such as he had climbed the hill upon; so he began to climb and sing,-- Hitch my hatchet and up I go, The sky is above, and the water below; and all the time there was such a clapping and humming inside the house that he could hardly hear the sound of his own voice. At last he came to the top of the window, and finding it pushed down, he gave a jump, and found himself in a room where there were a great many boys and girls sitting round, and picking among huge piles of cloth of every size, shape, and color, and as they picked they sang,-- Pick, pick the black from the white, Assort the whole bundle before it is night. Then Jack laid his hatchet down by his side and began to pick and sort as fast as the best of them, singing all the while,-- Pick, pick the black from the white, We'll finish our work before 'tis night. Jack worked and watched, and saw men, as fast as the rags were thrown down, pick them up, and put them into baskets; so he thought he should like to see what was done with them; so he followed the men with his hatchet in his hand, and saw them throw the cloth in a large, round place, which looked like his mother's coffee-mill, only much larger, and as they pored in the baskets full the men sang,-- Into the hopper the rags we throw, Grind, grind goes the wheel below. Now Jack wondered very much at all this, and thought he would run along a lit- tle further; and keeping his hatchet in his hand, he went into another room, where he saw a long, large thing like his mother's pig trough, only much larger, and in and about this were wheels and rollers, which Jacky did not know the use of, and the trough seemed full of a white kind of paste and all the time a great roller was turning round in the paste the men were watching it and kept singing,-- The mill has ground the rags to paste, Roller roller, turn round without haste. Then Jack came to another place and saw some of this paste going into a thing that looked like a sieve, and many other strange things which he could not very well understand, till at last there came out a great sheet of white paper; and then he came where a number of girls were folding the paper and kept singing,-- The mill and the water and man with care Have turned dirty rags to paper fair. Then Jacky clapped his hands at the sight and began to sing, Hitch my hatchet and up I go, The higher I get the more I know. Now after Jack had seen all the wonders of making paper, he looked up and saw it was almost sunset, and he thought it was time for him to go home and see his good mother. So he took his hatchet in his hand, and ran down the stairs of the paper-mill, and soon reached the borders of the pond on which it was placed, and looking round he was very glad to see the top of his great beanstalk, up which he had climbed in the morning, and which he knew would lead him directly home. So he jumped upon it very quickly, and it bore him without bending, being a great deal stouter than the beans which grow now-a- days. These, instead of being strong enough to hold a little boy, are so weak that they cannot keep themselves from falling to the ground, without the help of a string or a stick to run upon. But this bean of Jacky's was very different from all this; it bore him up firmly as he clung about it with one hand and two legs, holding his hatchet in the other hand, and while he went down it smoothly he kept singing,-- Down I go on my wonderful bean, To tell my dear mother the things I have seen And as he was sliding down he saw the little birds who had been singing so merrily in the morning, sitting in their nests with their heads under their wings and their young ones safely sheltered under them. The squirrels were also tired and had left off running about in search of nuts, the cricket was rubbing her still wings toge- ther and making a sharp shrill noise, which she thought very pretty to make her little crickets be still and go to sleep--and every now and then he heard the great bull-frogs in the pond above give a hoarse sound by way of making their pollywogs lie still. All these evening noises made little Jack feel quite sleepy, and he felt very happy when at last his feet hit the ground, and he saw his dear mother sitting at their cottage door with her knitting in her hand; and while she was knitting she would sing-- Quick, quick, let my fingers fly, For home comes my Jacky by-and-bye. As soon as Jack's feet touched the ground he ran to his mother and kissed her, and told her what a pleasant day he had passed, and how he had seen people very busy in making dirty rags into clean paper. "And now, dear mother," said he, "I should like to know what they are going to do with all this white paper?" "I will tell you all I know about it," said his mother, "while you are eating your supper, for I think you must be hungry, and here is a nice bowl of huckleberries and milk which I have got all ready for you." Jack clapped his hands at the sight of this nice supper, and sat down. While Jack was eating his upper, his mother said, "As I have always lived at the bottom of this deep valley, and have been very busy always about our own little house, I never knew much that was going on out of it; but your dear father, Jack, who died, you know, when you were a very little boy, was much wiser than I am, and he used to tell me a great deal that people did who lived up above here. Among other things, he told me much of books, which he said were made out of this very paper you have been tell- ing me about. He said it was folded up very neatly, and then had marks made all over it in a very curious manner. He said it was very troublesome to make these books, and very difficult to learn to read them; but that there were people who made a business of teaching children to read, and that if little boys begin early, and were quite attentive, they would soon learn. He said there were a great many of these books in the world, and that when people knew how to make use of them they took the greatest pleasure in reading. He used to say, that when you got big enough, he meant to take you up among the people who knew more than we did, and that you could learn, and could read to us when we got old, and amuse us very much. I have always been thinking of this, and when you asked me this morn- ing to allow you to climb the bean-stalk, I thought to you might perhaps hear something about these matters, and so, as the weather was fine, and you have grown a stout lad, I thought best to let you try." "I thank you, dear mother; and what you tell me makes me want very much to go up again, and perhaps I shall be so lucky as to find out something more about these things; but now I have eaten my supper, and my day_s work makes me pretty sleepy, and I think I will bid you good night, and creep into my little cot bed." The next morning he awoke quite early, and put his head out of the window; he felt in a hurry to begin his travels again, but every thing was quite still and quiet. Jack thought he would try to wake people up, so he opened his mouth and made just such a noise as the cock does in crowing. This waked his mother's cock, who imme- diately answered to Jack, thinking he was one of his own race, with a shrill cock-a- doodle-doo. This sounded in the still morning far up to the village above the bean-stalk; cock after cock aroused himself, and uttered his shrill note, and thus it happened that little Jacky was the means of waking up the whole village an hour earlier than usual; last it was no matter, if they all went gaily to work, for I dare say they had slept long enough. After Jack's mother had given him his breakfast, and a piece of bread and butter in a napkin, he kissed her, and taking his hatchet in his hand, scampered off to his bean, and began to climb, singing-- Hitch my hatchet, and up I go, There is much above I want to know. And the little birds and the squirrels looked out of their nests and began to chirp-- What is the little fellow about? Climbing again to the beanstalk stout. But they all had enough to do in clearing up their own nests and teaching their young ones how to behave, to spend much time in thinking of other folks' business, and they soon forgot little Jacky, and he climbed away bravely till he got to the top of his bean, then he jumped off and got safely to the ground above. He saw the paper mill which he had visited the day before, so he did not care to go into that again; he walked along till he reached another building which was very tall, and he thought he should like very much to know what was doing inside of it. He saw a little boy about as large as himself coming out of the door and he asked him what was the name of this building. "It is called a Type Foundry," said the little boy, "and it is where they make the letters with which they print our books." Jack was very glad that he had come to this house, and he ran up the stairs with his hatchet in his hand, and pounded with it as hard as he could at the door at the top. It was opened by a man, who said, "What do you want, little boy?" "I want to come in," said Jack, "and see how you make the things with which the letters in books are made." "But do not you see what is over the door?" Now on this door was printed, in large letters, NO ADMITTANCE "I see some strange-looking things of black on a white board," said Jack, "but I do not know what they mean." The man then asked Jack if he could not read. Jack told him that nobody had ever taught him, but that he wished very much to read, and to know how books were made, and that was the reason he had climbed his bean- stalk and come to that house. The man, seeing him such a nice, well-behaved little boy, told him he might come in, though the letters on the door were placed there to keep out idle little boys, who only came in be- cause they did not know what to do with themselves. Jacky said he was not one of those, for he could cut wood with his hatchet, and do many other things, and all he wanted was to learn as much as he could. He followed the man into the room, and there he saw a very large sort of a kettle over the fire, filled with something very bright and shining, different from any thing he had ever seen in his mother_s ket- tles; this the man told him was what they called the type metal. He said, "It is made of lead, and some other things, which have such long names that I am afraid you would not remember if I were to tell them to you." Then Jack looked and saw a man take a dipper and dip out some of this melted stuff and pour it into a mould, which he held in one of his hands. After having poured in the metal, he gave it a hard jerk, and then he saw the mould open, and out dropped a very smooth looking little thing, which Jack wanted to see so much that he was just going to take it in his fingers; but he remembered that his mother, though she had not been able to teach him to read, had taught him never to meddle with what did not belong to him. It was lucky he did recollect this; if he had touched it he would have burned his fingers sadly, for the type was quite hot. At a little distance stood a boy, who took the types from the end of the pile, after they had had time to cool, and clipped off the rough pieces of metal which had run over the crevices in the mould. Jacky thought he could soon learn to do this; but while he was thinking about it, he followed some men who were carrying some of the types, after they were trimmed, into the next room, where there were a great many girls sitting round stone tables, and rubbing the types; and as they rubbed they sung Fast we make our fingers go, And smooth falls the type in the case below. Jacky was just stepping up to offer to help them, when he saw a man busy at the other end of the room; and he went up to him, and saw a great many of these bright little things, after they had been run in the mould by the man, clipped by the boy, and rubbed by the girls, now placed side by side in a long case, and the man passed over them with his strong arm a sharp tool, which smoothed the two sides which had not been rubbed even; he then cut a little notch on one end, the reason of which he told Jack he would learn when he was older. They were then placed in a singu- lar little case, and Jack heard them say they were to be taken to the printing-office. Jack asked if he might follow them, and as he had been so quiet the men gave him leave; but what he saw there I will tell you in the next volume. When I last told you about Jack, he had been seeing how types are made, and hav- ing heard that they were to be taken to the printing-office, he took his hatchet in his hand and trotted along after the man who was carrying them. When he saw this man go into a house, he went in after him, and when he went up stairs Jack fol- lowed him. He found it somewhat easier to go up these stairs than to climb the bean-stalk, though he could do that pretty briskly. He did not dare to hitch his hatchet into the stairs; for though they did not look very neat, but quite black and dirty, yet Jacky had been taught by his mother not to stick his hatchet or his pen- knife into any thing which he could hurt. He had got so used to singing to his hatchet, however, that he could not help singing as he ran,-- One foot over the other I go, How to print books I want to know. When he got to the head of the first flight of stairs, he saw the man with the types going up another just like them, but there was a room just before him, and the door stood open. Jack thought before he went up the second flight he would look in and see what was going on in this room. There he saw a gentleman sitting before a table, with a piece of the white paper, such as he had seen made of the rags, lying in front of him. In his hand the man had something which looked to Jack much like one of the feathers out of his goose_s tail. With this feather, which was made sharp at one end, the gentleman was making black marks on the paper. To make the marks black he dipped his feather into a little thing which stood by his side, which was filled with a black sort of stuff. Jacky did not know the name of this stuff, and he stood looking at it very steadily. The gentleman at last looked up, and seeing lit- tle Jacky with his bright eyes and his round cap and his hatchet over his shoul- der, he wondered what he wanted, and said, "Who are you, my little fellow, and what do you want?" Jacky told him his story, and how he wanted to see them make books. So the man told him he had come to the right place for that, and he might take the paper on which he had just been making the marks, and run up the stairs with it, and tell the man he would see there that he had brought him some copy, and ask him to be so kind as to let him see them print. Jacky was very glad, and he took the paper carefully and ran up the stairs; and as he ran he sang softly,- Up I go, to hear and to look, And try to find out how they make a book. When he got up to the head of the stairs he went into a long room, where he saw a number of men and boys quite busy. Some of them stood up before large high tables, the tops of which were made slanting and divided into little square boxes. Out of these Jack observed the men took, very fast, one after another, little types like the ones he had seen at the foundry, except that they looked black, instead of being bright and shining, like the ones he had seen there. Each man had a piece of pa- per, like what Jack had brought up from the gentleman below, at which he looked every moment, and seemed to place the types in the same order the letters were on the paper, in a stick which he held in his hand. Jack went up to one of these men, gave them the paper he had brought up, told them the gentleman below had sent it, and said he should like to see them print. The man told him to open his eyes, shut his mouth, keep his hands still, and his ears open, and he did not doubt he would soon learn; but that they did not like noisy meddling boys in the office. Jack promised to do no harm, and began to look about him. He saw one of the men, after getting his stick full of the types, go and place them in a case, where there were some others fixed in the same way. Jack turned away for a moment to look at something else, and he heard a little noise, and pre- sently some one said, in a voice as if he were sorry, "Dear me, it_s all pi!" Now Jack, who began to be hungry, did not feel very sorry at the thought of there being plenty of pie near at hand, for, like most little boys, he was quite fond of pie. He loved apple pie, and cranberry pie, and mince pie, and indeed almost any kind of pie. But on looking a little more sharply he found that it was none of these kinds of pie that the printers were talking about, but that they had a funny fashion, when by any chance these types fell into a heap, to call it tumbling into pi. This made Jack laugh, but he stooped down and tried to help them pick up their types. Finding he could not place them where they belonged, because he did not know how, he walked along a little farther, and saw on a flat sort of table a great many of the types arranged in nice order. By the side stood a young woman, who laid over these types a large sheet of white paper, and on the other side a girl took it off, after a large sort of door had shut down over the paper and the whole had rolled away to a little distance, had been pressed hard and had come back to its old place; here the cover was lifted up and the girl took the paper off, as I told you, and laid it on a pile by her side. This Jack saw was covered all over with nice regular-looking marks. The girls, as they were at work, sometimes were singing, and Jack thought he could hear them say, Press the ink on the paper with speed, Out comes a book for a boy to read. He watched this pile, and saw the large sheets taken into another room and hung up, with others like them, on bars or ropes, something as he had seen his mother hang her clothes out to dry after she had washed them. He then trotted along, though he began to be a little tired, into another room, where he saw a great many girls. Some were folding up the papers, and some stitching them together, and some covering them; till in a corner he saw a large pile of things, and heard a man told to take them to a bookstore. Jack thought they must be books. He trotted along after the man, and saw him carry them in- to a very nice large room, where there were many more books of different sizes, large piles of paper, the things he had seen the gentleman marking with, and much else, which he did not know any thing about. Jack was so pleased that he grew bold, and stepped up to the gentleman who was there and told him a little about him- self, and asked him if he would please to give him a book. The gentleman asked Jack if he had any money, as he could not give him the book without money, because he had been forced to give money to the people who had worked so hard to make the paper, and the types, and print the book. Jack said this was right, but he was very sorry, for he wanted a book very much, and wanted to learn to read, but that he had nothing except his hatchet, and he could not give that, because he should want to chop his mother_s wood. Then the man asked him if he could chop wood, and Jack told him he could; so the gentleman told him if he could cut a little of his wood up small, that was as good as money, as he should have to give somebody money to do it for him. He himself was very busy selling books, and he could not stop to cut his own wood small. This pleased Jack very much, and he stepped back into the wood-house and began to cut so smartly that the man soon saw, if he could not read, he was not an idle boy. After he had chopped a little while, the man told him that was enough to pay for a book; he then handed him out a fine spelling and reading-book, nicely bound, and told him he might have that for his own. The sight of it pleased Jacky so much that he laughed very loud, and so heartily that he came very near dropping his hatchet on his toes. After he had done laughing, however, he began to look a little sad, and he said to the gentleman, "If you could be so kind as to tell me what all these marks in my new book mean, I would chop a very large pile of wood for you." "That I should like to do," said the bookseller, "if I had time, but as I have not I will let my lad lead you to a good lady, who sits all day long in a room, teaching little boys and girls who do not know how to read." "Oh, what a nice lady," said Jack; "let us make haste." The lad took Jack by the hand and led him into a school close by. Here he saw a number of children sitting in their desks and on benches, some reading to them- selves, and others aloud to the mistress. As soon as Jacky entered the room, he made a bow, and stepped up to the lady, and told her all about his bean-stalk, and what he had seen since he had climbed it, and how he wished very much to know how to read. The lady saw that he was a nice bright-looking boy, and said, "Very well, master Jack, sit down on that bench, and as soon as I have done hearing little Billy read his letters I will tell you the names of yours." Jacky sat very still, and listened to what she told the other boy, so that when his turn came he was able to tell what they called two or three of the letters, The school-mistress told him he was a very attentive little boy, and she thought he would soon learn to read. After a little while she told the children that school was done, and Jacky took his cap and hatchet, and his book, and went out with the rest. He ran along to the brink of the pond, then trotted till he found his bean, and quickly slid down it. He managed to keep his book by putting it inside his cap, He found his mother sitting by her door, knitting, as usual; and as she knit she sung,-- Fast, fast let my needles fly, For home comes Jacky by-and-bye. Jacky ran up to her and showed her his new book, and told her all he had seen, and how, if she would let him, he should like to go to school every day. "But, dear mother," said he, "I have been up and down my bean so often, that the stalk is almost worn out, and I am afraid it will break down under me some day." "Well, Jacky," said his mother, "run now and hang up your hatchet, and eat your supper and go to bed, and I will think what we shall do about the matter; for it would certainly be a pity you should not learn to read this nice book now you have got it." Jack minded his mother, and ate his supper and went to bed; and as he was very tired he slept soundly. He awoke in the morn- ing, and when he had eaten his breakfast his mother told him she had been thinking all night about what he had told her, and she had at last concluded to move up into the village herself, and live there; and that he would be near to school, and not have the trouble of climbing the bean- stalk every day. "But, mother," said Jack, "I never saw you climb; how will you get up the bean-stalk?" "I shall not go up the bean-stalk, my child, said she; "but I remember the path which your father and I walked when we first came to this valley, and I shall know the way out again."

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