UPON my word, I sometimes think I would rather go to the moon-house than almost anywhere else I know of. I have read all about it in the Moon-Angel's book, and know pretty well just what it is like--that is why I would like so well to see it. Some people are dreadfully afraid of the moon-house; it seems to them to be white and cold and awful. That is because they only see the outside of it, and do not know what is within. It is not what such people fancy it to be; it is a calm, beautiful, lovely place, from the backdoor of which you step into the other side of nowhere. I used to be just as much afraid of the moon-house as the most foolish of them. Sometimes I would dream about it at night, and it seemed to me to be a great white emptiness, from which you could see nothing at all, and in which you could not hear anything, or feel anything, or know anything. Then one day the Moon-Angel came to me with his book under his arm. "Would you like to know about the moon-house?" said he.
"Yes; I would," said I.
"Very well," said he, "then look!"
He opened his book, and I looked over his shoulder and read it. It was all about the moon-house, and I read, and read, and read. Since then I have never been afraid of the moon-house, for now I know pretty well what it is, and that it is a most wonderful, strange, curious, odd, fanciful, beautiful place, that one can get into for the sake of getting out again.
For, of course, no one wants to live in the moon-house forever--that is, no one except the Man-in-the-moon, and he does not mind it any more than a cat minds living in the kitchen.
The Man-in-the-moon led David up the front stairs into the moon, and everything shone as white as bright light. Up the stairs they went, and up the stairs, a long, long way. By and by they came out into a great round room, and it was the first floor of the moon-house. It was the moon-kitchen, and there the Man-in-the-moon does all his cooking and brewing and patching and mending, for it is full of all sorts of odds and ends of things that men have seen and heard about and forgotten--and they are ten thousand times more numerous than the things that men have seen and heard about and remembered.
There the Man-in-the-moon sat down and looked at David, and David stared at the Man-in-the-moon. There was something about him that looked--looked--David did not know whether it was like Hans Krout or the Moon-Angel--and yet he looked like neither. He was just the Man-in-the-moon, and he looked no more like Hans Krout or the Moon-Angel than I do.
Then the Man-in-the-moon began laughing. "Well," said he, "here you are, David."
"Yes," said David, "here I am."
"And how do you like it?" said the Man-in-the-moon.
David looked all around him. "I like it very well," said he--"if only I were sure of somebody to look after the baby down below there."
"Have no fear of that," said the Man-in-the-moon. "You have left a part of yourself down there behind you, and that will look after the baby as well as you ever were able to do yourself."
"What do you mean?" said David. "What part of me have I left down there?"
"You have left your hat and clothes and shoes," said the old man, "and nobody down there knows otherwise than that you are in them."
"And will they look after the baby as well as I would do " asked David.
"They will," said the Man-in-the-moon.
"Then I shall like it here very well," said David, "at least for a while."
"Would you like to go up-stairs and look out of the windows?" said the old man. "That is the first thing that all the folk who come here ask to do."
"And what do they see " said David.
"They see the inside-of-nothing-at-all," said the Man-in the-moon.
"I would like to see that," said David.
"Come along, then," said the Man-in-the-moon.
He led the way up another flight of stairs to the second story. There was a great room with a floor as level and as smooth as glass, and there were twelve great windows of crystal that looked out of it. From the windows you could see all that you ever heard tell of and more beside, for from those windows you can, as the Man-in-the-moon said, see the inside-of-nothing-at-all.
"Come here," said the Man-in-the-moon, "and you may look out of this window."
He raised the curtain as he spoke, and David came and looked out.
Now, when you look out of a window of a common house, you see things far away. That is because you are not in the moon-house looking out of a moon-window. When David looked out of the window, he saw things very close at hand. That was because he was in the moon-house looking out of the moon-window, and not in a common house looking out of a common window.