h it is my
duty to relate to you in the next chapter.

"Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play;
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.

"Ye open the Eastern windows,
That look towards the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows,
And the brooks of morning run.

* * * * *

"For what are all our contrivings
And the wisdom of our books,
When compared with your caresses,
And the gladness of your looks?

"Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead."--LONGFELLOW.

CHAPTER VIII AND LAST

HERE begins the never-to-be-too-much-studied account of the
nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of the wonderful things which Tom saw
on his journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere; which all good little
children are requested to read; that, if ever they get to the
Other-end-of-Nowhere, as they may very probably do, they may not burst
out laughing, or try to run away, or do any other silly vulgar thing
which may offend Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.

Now, as soon as Tom had left Peacepool, he came to the white lap of the
great sea-mother, ten thousand fathoms deep; where she makes world-pap
all day long, for the steam-giants to knead, and the fire-giants to
bake, till it has risen and hardened into mountain-loaves and
island-cakes.

And there Tom was very near being kneaded up in the world-pap, and
turned into a fossil water-baby; which would have astonished the
Geological Society of New Zealand some hundreds of thousands of years
hence.

For, as he walked along in the silence of the sea-twilight, on the soft
white ocean floor, he was aware of a hissing, and a roaring, and a
thumping, and a pumping, as of all the steam-engines in the world at
once. And, when he came near, the water grew boiling-hot; not that that
hurt him in the least: but it also grew as foul as gruel; and every
moment he stumbled over dead shells, and fish, and sharks, and seals,
and whales, which had been killed by the hot water.

And at last he came to the great sea-serpent himself, lying dead at the
bottom; and as he was too thick to scramble over, Tom had to walk round
him three-quarters of a mile and more, which put him out of his p