ran on and on chick
chick-a-chick chick-a-chick chick-a-chick.

Sometimes the engineer hooted and tooted the whistle. Sometimes the
fireman rang the bell. Sometimes the open-and-shut of the steam hog's
nose choked and spit pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost. But
no matter what happened to the whistle and the bell and the steam hog,
the train ran on and on to where the railroad tracks run off into the
blue sky. And then it ran on and on more and more.

Sometimes Gimme the Ax looked in his pocket, put his fingers in and
took out the long slick yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch
across it.

"Not even the Kings of Egypt with all their climbing camels, and all
their speedy, spotted, lucky lizards, ever had a ride like this," he
said to his children.

Then something happened. They met another train running on the same
track. One train was going one way. The other was going the other way.
They met. They passed each other.

"What was it--what happened?" the children asked their father.

"One train went over, the other train went under," he answered. "This
is the Over and Under country. Nobody gets out of the way of anybody
else. They either go over or under."

Next they came to the country of the balloon pickers. Hanging down
from the sky strung on strings so fine the eye could not see them at
first, was the balloon crop of that summer. The sky was thick with
balloons. Red, blue, yellow balloons, white, purple and orange
balloons--peach, watermelon and potato balloons--rye loaf and wheat
loaf balloons--link sausage and pork chop balloons--they floated and
filled the sky.

The balloon pickers were walking on high stilts picking balloons. Each
picker had his own stilts, long or short. For picking balloons near
the ground he had short stilts. If he wanted to pick far and high he
walked on a far and high pair of stilts.

Baby pickers on baby stilts were picking baby balloons. When they fell
off the stilts the handful of balloons they were holding kept them in
the air till they got their feet into the stilts again.

"Who is that away up there in the sky climbing like a bird in the
morning?" Ax Me No Questions asked her father.

"He was singing too happy," replied the father. "The songs came out of
his neck and made him so light the balloons pulled him off his
stilts."

"Will he ever come down again back to his own people?"

"Yes, his heart will get heavy when his songs are all gone. Then he
wil