t any other way than wide open.

The Pumpkin Giant lived in a castle, as a matter of course; it is not
fashionable for a giant to live in any other kind of a dwelling--why,
nothing would be more tame and uninteresting than a giant in a
two-story white house with green blinds and a picket fence, or even a
brown-stone front, if he could get into either of them, which he could
not.

The Giant's castle was situated on a mountain, as it ought to have
been, and there was also the usual courtyard before it, and the
customary moat, which was full of--_bones_! All I have got to say
about these bones is, they were not mutton bones. A great many details
of this story must be left to the imagination of the reader; they are
too harrowing to relate. A much tenderer regard for the feelings of
the audience will be shown in this than in most giant stories; we will
even go so far as to state in advance, that the story has a good end,
thereby enabling readers to peruse it comfortably without unpleasant
suspense.

The Pumpkin Giant was fonder of little boys and girls than anything
else in the world; but he was somewhat fonder of little boys, and more
particularly of _fat_ little boys.

The fear and horror of this Giant extended over the whole country.
Even the King on his throne was so severely afflicted with the Giant's
Shakes that he had been obliged to have the throne propped, for fear
it should topple over in some unusually violent fit. There was good
reason why the King shook: his only daughter, the Princess Ariadne
Diana, was probably the fattest princess in the whole world at that
date. So fat was she that she had never walked a step in the dozen
years of her life, being totally unable to progress over the earth by
any method except rolling. And a really beautiful sight it was, too,
to see the Princess Ariadne Diana, in her cloth-of-gold rolling-suit,
faced with green velvet and edged with ermine, with her glittering
crown on her head, trundling along the avenues of the royal gardens,
which had been furnished with strips of rich carpeting for her express
accommodation.

But gratifying as it would have been to the King, her sire, under
other circumstances, to have had such an unusually interesting
daughter, it now only served to fill his heart with the greatest
anxiety on her account. The Princess was never allowed to leave the
palace without a body-guard of fifty knights, the very flower of
the King's troops, with lances in r