l drop down to his stilts again."

The train was running on and on. The engineer hooted and tooted the
whistle when he felt like it. The fireman rang the bell when he felt
that way. And sometimes the open-and-shut of the steam hog had to go
pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost.

"Next is the country where the circus clowns come from," said Gimme
the Ax to his son and daughter. "Keep your eyes open."

They did keep their eyes open. They saw cities with ovens, long and
short ovens, fat stubby ovens, lean lank ovens, all for baking either
long or short clowns, or fat and stubby or lean and lank clowns.

After each clown was baked in the oven it was taken out into the
sunshine and put up to stand like a big white doll with a red mouth
leaning against the fence.

Two men came along to each baked clown standing still like a doll. One
man threw a bucket of white fire over it. The second man pumped a wind
pump with a living red wind through the red mouth.

The clown rubbed his eyes, opened his mouth, twisted his neck, wiggled
his ears, wriggled his toes, jumped away from the fence and began
turning handsprings, cartwheels, somersaults and flipflops in the
sawdust ring near the fence.

"The next we come to is the Rootabaga Country where the big city is
the Village of Liver-and-Onions," said Gimme the Ax, looking again in
his pocket to be sure he had the long slick yellow leather slab ticket
with a blue spanch across it.

The train ran on and on till it stopped running straight and began
running in zigzags like one letter Z put next to another Z and the
next and the next.

The tracks and the rails and the ties and the spikes under the train
all stopped being straight and changed to zigzags like one letter Z
and another letter Z put next after the other.

"It seems like we go half way and then back up," said Ax Me No
Questions.

"Look out of the window and see if the pigs have bibs on," said Gimme
the Ax. "If the pigs are wearing bibs then this is the Rootabaga
country."

And they looked out of the zigzagging windows of the zigzagging cars
and the first pigs they saw had bibs on. And the next pigs and the
next pigs they saw all had bibs on.

The checker pigs had checker bibs on, the striped pigs had striped
bibs on. And the polka dot pigs had polka dot bibs on.

"Who fixes it for the pigs to have bibs on?" Please Gimme asked his
father.

"The fathers and mothers fix it," answered Gimme the Ax. "The checker
pigs have c