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                         THE CANDY COUNTRY

                                BY

                         LOUISA M. ALCOTT


 AUTHOR OF "LITTLE WOMEN," "LITTLE MEN," "AN OLD-FASHIONED GIRL,"
          "AUNT JO'S SCRAP-BAG," "LULU'S LIBRARY," ETC.


                           Illustrated


                             BOSTON
                   LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY




                      _Copyright, 1885,_
                      BY LOUISA M. ALCOTT

                      _Copyright, 1900,_
                     BY JOHN S. P. ALCOTT


                       University Press
            JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.


              *       *       *       *       *




[Illustration: "Hollo, what do you want?" he asked, staring at her.
                PAGE 10.]


THE CANDY COUNTRY


"I shall take mamma's red sun umbrella, it is so warm, and none of the
children at school will have one like it," said Lily, one day, as she
went through the hall.

"The wind is very high; I'm afraid you'll be blown away if you carry
that big thing," called Nurse from the window, as the red umbrella went
bobbing down the garden walk with a small girl under it.

"I wish it would; I always wanted to go up in a balloon," answered Lily,
as she struggled out of the gate.

She got on very well till she came to the bridge and stopped to look
over the railing at the water running by so fast, and the turtles
sunning themselves on the rocks. Lily was fond of throwing stones at
them; it was so funny to watch them tumble, heels over head, splash into
the water. Now, when she saw three big fellows close by, she stooped for
a stone, and just at that minute a gale of wind nearly took the umbrella
out of her hand. She clutched it fast; and away she went like a
thistle-down, right up in the air, over river and hill, houses and
trees, faster and faster, till her head spun round, her breath was all
gone, and she had to let go. The dear red umbrella flew away like a
leaf; and Lily fell down, down, till she went crash into a tree which
grew in such a curious place that she forgot her fright as she sat
looking about her, wondering what part of the world it could be.

The tree looked as if made of glass or  sugar; for she could see
through the red cherries, the green leaves, and the brown branches. An
agreeable smell met her nose; and she said at once, as any child would,
"I smell candy!" She picked a cherry and ate it. Oh, how good it
was!--all sugar and no stone. The next discovery was such a delightful
one that she nearly fell off her perch; for by touching her tongue here
and there, she found that the whole tree was made of candy. Think what
fun to sit and break off twigs of barley sugar, candied cherries, and
leaves that tasted like peppermint and sassafras!

Lily rocked and ate till she finished the top of the little tree;
then she climbed down and strolled along, making more surprising and
agreeable discoveries as she went.

What looked like snow under her feet was white sugar; the rocks were
lumps of chocolate, the flowers of all colors and tastes; and every sort
of fruit grew on these delightful trees. Little white houses soon
appeared; and here lived the dainty candy-people, all made of the best
sugar, and painted to look like real people. Dear little men and women,
looking as if they had stepped off of wedding cakes and bonbons, went
about in their gay sugar clothes, laughing and talking in the sweetest
voices. Bits of babies rocked in open-work cradles, and sugar boys and
girls played with sugar toys in the most natural way. Carriages rolled
along the jujube streets, drawn by the red and yellow barley horses we
all love so well; cows fed in the green fields, and sugar birds sang in
the trees.

Lily listened, and in a moment she understood what the song said,--

    "Sweet! Sweet!
     Come, come and eat,
     Dear little girls
     With yellow curls;
     For here you'll find
     Sweets to your mind.
     On every tree
     Sugar-plums you'll see;
     In every dell
     Grows the caramel.
     Over every wall
     Gum-drops fall;
     Molasses flows
     Where our river goes.
     Under your feet
     Lies sugar sweet;
     Over your head
     Grow almonds red.
     Our lily and rose
     Are not for the nose;
     Our flowers we pluck
     To eat or suck.
     And, oh! what bliss
     When two friends kiss,
     For they honey sip
     From lip to lip!
     And all you meet,
     In house or street,
     At work or play,
     Sweethearts are they.
     So, little dear,
     Pray feel no fear;
     Go where you will;
     Eat, eat your fill.
     Here is a feast
     From west to east;
     And you can say,
     Ere you go away,
     'At last I stand
     In dear Candy-land,
     And no more can stuff;
     For once I've enough.'
     Sweet! Sweet!
     Tweet! Tweet!
     Tweedle-dee!
     Tweedle-dee!"

"That is the most interesting song I ever heard," said Lily, clapping
her sticky hands and dancing along toward a fine palace of white cream
candy, with pillars of striped peppermint stick, and a roof of frosting
that made it look like the Milan Cathedral.

"I'll live here, and eat candy all day long, with no tiresome school or
patchwork to spoil my fun," said Lily.

So she ran up the chocolate steps into the pretty rooms, where all the
chairs and tables were of different  candies, and the beds of
spun sugar. A fountain of lemonade supplied drink; and floors of
ice-cream that never melted kept people and things from sticking
together, as they would have done had it been warm.

For a long while Lily was quite happy, going about tasting so many
different kinds of sweeties, talking to the little people, who were very
amiable, and finding out curious things about them and their country.

The babies were made of plain sugar, but the grown people had different
flavors. The young ladies were flavored with violet, rose, and orange;
the gentlemen were apt to have cordials of some sort inside of them, as
she found when she ate one now and then slyly, and got her tongue bitten
by the hot, strong taste as a punishment. The old people tasted of
peppermint, clove, and such comfortable things, good for pain; but the
old maids had lemon, hoar-hound, flag-root, and all sorts of sour,
bitter things in them, and did not get eaten much. Lily soon learned to
know the characters of her new friends by a single taste, and some she
never touched but once. The dear babies melted in her mouth, and the
delicately flavored young ladies she was very fond of. Dr. Ginger was
called to her more than once when so much candy made her teeth ache, and
she found him a very hot-tempered little man; but he stopped the pain,
so she was glad to see him.

A lime-drop boy and a little pink checkerberry girl were her favorite
playmates; and they had fine times making mud-pies by scraping the
chocolate rocks and mixing this dust with honey from the wells near by.
These they could eat; and Lily thought this much better than throwing
away the pies, as she had to do at home. They had candy-pulls very
often, and made swings of long loops of molasses candy, and bird's-nests
with almond eggs, out of which came birds who sang sweetly. They played
foot-ball with big bull's-eyes, sailed in sugar boats on lakes of syrup,
fished in rivers of molasses, and rode the barley horses all over the
country.

Lily discovered that it never rained, but snowed white sugar. There was
no sun, as it would have been too hot; but a large yellow lozenge made
a nice moon, and red and white comfits were the stars.

The people all lived on sugar, and never quarrelled. No one was ill; and
if any got broken, as sometimes happened with such brittle creatures,
they just stuck the parts together and were all right again. The way
they grew old was to get thinner and thinner till there was danger of
their vanishing. Then the friends of the old person put him in a neat
coffin, and carried him to the great golden urn which stood in their
largest temple, always full of a certain fine syrup; and here he was
dipped and dipped till he was stout and strong again, and went home to
enjoy himself for a long time as good as new.

This was very interesting to Lily, and she went to many funerals. But
the weddings were better still; for the lovely white brides were so
sweet Lily longed to eat them. The feasts were delicious; and everybody
went in their best clothes, and danced at the ball till they got so warm
half-a-dozen would stick together and have to be taken to the ice-cream
room to cool off. Then the little pair would drive away in a fine
carriage with white horses to a new palace in some other part of the
country, and Lily would have another pleasant place to visit.

But by and by, when she had seen everything, and eaten so much sweet
stuff that at last she longed for plain bread and butter, she began to
get cross, as children always do when they live on candy; and the little
people wished she would go away, for they were afraid of her. No wonder,
when she would catch up a dear sugar baby and eat him, or break some
respectable old grandmamma all into bits because she reproved her for
naughty ways. Lily calmly sat down on the biggest church, crushing it
flat, and even tried to poke the moon out of the sky in a pet one day.
The king ordered her to go home; but she said, "I won't!" and bit his
head off, crown and all.

Such a wail went up at this awful deed that she ran away out of the
city, fearing some one would put poison in her candy, since she had no
other food.

"I suppose I shall get somewhere if I keep walking; and I can't starve,
though I hate the sight of this horrid stuff," she said to herself, as
she hurried over the mountains of Gibraltar Rock that divided the city
of Saccharissa from the great desert of brown sugar that lay beyond.

Lily marched bravely on for a long time, and saw at last a great smoke
in the sky, smelt a spicy smell, and felt a hot wind blowing toward her.

"I wonder if there are sugar savages here, roasting and eating some poor
traveller like me," she said, thinking of Robinson Crusoe and other
wanderers in strange lands.

She crept carefully along till she saw a settlement of little huts very
like mushrooms, for they were made of cookies set on lumps of the brown
sugar; and queer people, looking as if made of gingerbread, were working
very busily round several stoves which seemed to bake at a great rate.

"I'll creep nearer and see what sort of people they are before I show
myself," said Lily, going into a grove of spice-trees, and sitting down
on a stone which proved to be the plummy sort of cake we used to call
Brighton Rock.

Presently one of the tallest men came striding toward the trees with a
pan, evidently after spice; and before she could run, he saw Lily.

"Hollo, what do you want?" he asked, staring at her with his black
currant eyes, while he briskly picked the bark off a cinnamon-tree.

"I'm travelling, and would like to know what place this is, if you
please," answered Lily, very politely, being a little frightened.

"Cake-land. Where do you come from?" asked the gingerbread man, in a
crisp tone of voice.

"I was blown into the Candy country, and have been there a long time;
but I got tired of it, and ran away to find something better."

"Sensible child!" and the man smiled till Lily thought his cheeks would
crumble. "You'll get on better here with us Brownies than with the lazy
Bonbons, who never work and are all for show. They won't own us, though
we are all related through our grandparents Sugar and Molasses. We are
busy folks; so they turn up their noses and don't speak when we meet at
parties. Poor creatures, silly and sweet and unsubstantial! I pity 'em."

"Could I make you a visit? I'd like to see how you live, and what you
do. I'm sure it must be interesting," said Lily, picking herself up
after a tumble, having eaten nearly all the stone, she was so hungry.

"I know you will. Come on! I can talk while I work." And the funny
gingerbread man trotted off toward his kitchen, full of pans,
rolling-pins, and molasses jugs.

"Sit down. I shall be at leisure as soon as this batch is baked. There
are still some wise people down below who like gingerbread, and I have
my hands full," he said, dashing about, stirring, rolling out, and
slapping the brown dough into pans, which he whisked into the oven and
out again so fast that Lily knew there must be magic about it somewhere.

Every now and then he threw her a delicious cooky warm from the oven.
She liked the queer fellow, and presently began to talk, being very
curious about this country.

"What is your name, sir?"

"Ginger Snap."

Lily thought it a good one; for he was very quick, and she fancied he
could be short and sharp if he liked.

"Where does all this cake go to?" she asked, after watching the other
kitchens full of workers, who were all of different kinds of cake, and
each set of cooks made its own sort.

"I'll show you by and by," answered Snap, beginning to pile up the heaps
of gingerbread on a little car that ran along a track leading to some
unknown storeroom, Lily thought.

"Don't you get tired of doing this all the time?"

"Yes; but I want to be promoted, and I never shall be till I've done my
best, and won the prize here."

"Oh, tell me about it! What is the prize, and how are you promoted? Is
this a cooking-school?"

"Yes; the prize for best gingerbread is a cake of condensed yeast. That
puts a soul into me, and I begin to rise till I am able to go over the
hills yonder into the blessed land of bread, and be one of the happy
creatures who are always wholesome, always needed, and without which the
world below would be in a bad way."

"Bless me! that is the queerest thing I've heard yet. But I don't wonder
you want to go; I'm tired of sweets myself, and long for a good piece of
bread, though I used to want cake and candy at home."

"Ah, my dear, you'll learn a good deal here; and you are lucky not to
have got into the clutches of Giant Dyspepsia, who always gets people if
they eat too much of such rubbish and scorn wholesome bread. I leave my
ginger behind when I go, and get white and round and beautiful, as you
will see. The Gingerbread family have never been as foolish as some of
the other cakes. Wedding is the worst; such extravagance in the way of
wine and spice and fruit I never saw, and such a mess to eat when it's
done! I don't wonder people get sick; serves 'em right." And Snap flung
down a pan with such a bang that it made Lily jump.

"Sponge cake isn't bad, is it? Mamma lets me eat it, but I like frosted
pound better," she said, looking over to the next kitchen, where piles
of that sort of cake were being iced.

"Poor stuff. No substance. Ladies' fingers will do for babies, but pound
has too much butter ever to be healthy. Let it alone, and eat cookies or
seed-cakes, my dear. Now, come along; I'm ready." And Snap trundled away
his car-load at a great pace.

Lily ran behind to pick up whatever fell, and looked about her as she
went, for this was certainly a very queer country. Lakes of eggs all
beaten up, and hot springs of saleratus foamed here and there ready for
use. The earth was brown sugar or ground spice; and the only fruits were
raisins, dried currants, citron, and lemon peel. It was a very busy
place; for every one cooked all the time, and never failed and never
seemed tired, though they got so hot that they only wore sheets of paper
for clothes. There were piles of it to put over the cake, so that it
shouldn't burn; and they made cook's white caps and aprons of it, and
looked very nice. A large clock made of a flat pancake, with cloves to
mark the hours and two toothpicks for hands, showed them how long to
bake things; and in one place an ice wall was built round a lake of
butter, which they cut in lumps as they wanted it.

"Here we are. Now, stand away while I pitch 'em down," said Snap,
stopping at last before a hole in the ground where a dumb-waiter hung
ready, with a name over it.

There were many holes all round, and many waiters, each with its name;
and Lily was amazed when she read "Weber," "Copeland," "Dooling," and
others, which she knew very well.

Over Snap's place was the name "Newmarch;" and Lily said, "Why, that's
where mamma gets her hard gingerbread, and Weber's is where we go for
ice-cream. Do _you_ make cake for them?"

"Yes, but no one knows it. It's one of the secrets of the trade. We
cook for all the confectioners, and people think the good things come
out of the cellars under their saloons. Good joke, isn't it?" And Snap
laughed till a crack came in his neck and made him cough.

Lily was so surprised she sat down on a warm queen's cake that happened
to be near, and watched Snap send down load after load of gingerbread to
be eaten by children, who would have liked it much better if they had
only known where it came from, as she did.

As she sat, the clatter of many spoons, the smell of many dinners, and
the sound of many voices calling, "One vanilla, two strawberries, and a
Charlotte Russe," "Three stews, cup coffee, dry toast," "Roast chicken
and apple without," came up the next hole, which was marked "Copeland."

"Dear me! it seems as if I was there," said Lily, longing to hop down,
but afraid of the bump at the other end.

"I'm done. Come along, I'll ride you back," called Snap, tossing the
last cooky after the dumb-waiter as it went slowly out of sight with its
spicy load.

"I wish you'd teach me to cook. It looks great fun, and mamma wants me
to learn; only our cook hates to have me mess round, and is so cross
that I don't like to try at home," said Lily, as she went trundling
back.

"Better wait till you get to Bread-land, and learn to make that. It's a
great art, and worth knowing. Don't waste your time on cake, though
plain gingerbread isn't bad to have in the house. I'll teach you that in
a jiffy, if the clock doesn't strike my hour too soon," answered Snap,
helping her down.

"What hour?"

"Why, of my freedom. I never know when I've done my task till I'm called
by the chimes and go to get my soul," said Snap, turning his currant
eyes anxiously to the clock.

"I hope you _will_ have time." And Lily fell to work with all her
might, after Snap had put on her a paper apron and a cap like his.

It was not hard; for when she was going to make a mistake a spark flew
out of the fire and burnt her in time to remind her to look at the
receipt, which was a sheet of gingerbread in a frame of pie-crust hung
up before her, with the directions written while it was soft and baked
in. The third sheet she made came out of the oven spicy, light, and
brown; and Snap, giving it one poke, said, "That's all right. Now you
know. Here's your reward."

He handed her a receipt-book made of thin sheets of sugar-gingerbread
held together by a gelatine binding, with her name stamped on the back,
and each leaf crimped with a cake-cutter in the most elegant manner.

Lily was charmed with it, but had no time to read all it contained; for