Page:Rootabaga Pigeons by Carl Sandburg.pdf/117

, safety pins, or diamonds, bottles, and big front doors with bells on, Joe the Wimp sees them in the brass.

"I rub on the brass doors, and things begin to jump into my hands out of the shine of the brass. Faces, chimneys, elephants, yellow humming birds, and blue cornflowers, where I have seen grasshoppers sleeping two by two and two by two, they all come to the shine of the brass on the doors when I ask them to. If you shine brass hard, and wish as hard as the brass wishes, and keep on shining and wishing, then always things come jumping into your hands out of the shine of the brass."

"So you see," said the Potato Face Blind Man to Ax Me No Questions, "sometimes the promises boys make when they go away come true afterward."

"They got what they asked for—now will they keep it or leave it?" said Ax Me.

"Only the grasshoppers can answer that,"