At last they came to a hilltop from which the tin castle of Nick Chopper could plainly be seen, its towers glistening magnificently under the rays of the declining sun.
“How pretty!” exclaimed Dorothy. “I’ve never seen the Emp’ror’s new house before.”
“He built it because the old castle was damp, and likely to rust his tin body,” said Billina. “All those towers and steeples and domes and gables took a lot of tin, as you can see.”
“Is it a toy?” asked Button-Bright softly.
“No, dear,” answered Dorothy; “it’s better than that. It’s the fairy dwelling of a fairy prince.”
XV
The Emperor’s Tin Castle
The grounds around Nick Chopper’s new house were laid out in pretty flowerbeds, with fountains of crystal water and statues of tin representing the Emperor’s personal friends. Dorothy was astonished and delighted to find a tin statue of herself standing on a tin pedestal at a bend in the avenue leading up to the entrance. It was life-size and showed her in her sunbonnet with her basket on her arm, just as she had first appeared in the Land of Oz.
“Oh, Toto—you’re there too!” she exclaimed; and sure enough there was the tin figure of Toto lying at the tin Dorothy’s feet.
Also, Dorothy saw figures of the Scarecrow, and the Wizard, and Ozma, and of many others, including Tik-tok. They reached the grand tin entrance to the tin castle, and the Tin Woodman himself came running out of the door to embrace little Dorothy and give her a glad welcome. He welcomed her friends as well, and the Rainbow’s Daughter he declared to be the loveliest vision his tin eyes had ever beheld. He patted Button-Bright’s curly head tenderly, for he was fond of children, and turned to the shaggy man and shook both his hands at the same time.
Nick Chopper, the Emperor of the Winkies, who was also known throughout the Land of Oz as the Tin Woodman, was certainly a remarkable person. He was neatly made, all of tin, nicely soldered at the joints, and his various limbs were cleverly hinged to his body so that he could use them nearly as well as if they had been common flesh. Once, he told the shaggy man, he had been made all of flesh and bones, as other people are, and then he chopped wood in the forests to earn his living. But the axe slipped so often and cut off parts of him—which he had replaced with tin—that finally there was no flesh left, nothing but tin; so he became a real tin woodman. The wonderful Wizard of Oz had given him an excellent heart to replace his old one, and he didn’t at all mind being tin. Everyone loved him, he loved everyone; and he was therefore as happy as the day was long.
The Emperor was proud of his new tin castle, and showed his visitors through all the rooms. Every bit of the furniture was made of brightly polished tin—the tables, chairs, beds, and all—even the floors and walls were of tin.
“I suppose,” said he, “that there are no cleverer tinsmiths in all the world than the Winkies. It would be hard to match this castle in Kansas; wouldn’t it, little Dorothy?”
“Very hard,” replied the child, gravely.
“It must have cost a lot of money,” remarked the shaggy man.
“Money! Money in Oz!” cried the Tin Woodman. “What a queer idea! Did you suppose we are so vulgar as to use money here?”
“Why not?” asked the shaggy man.
“If we used money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another, then we should be no better than the rest of the world,” declared the Tin Woodman. “Fortunately money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use.”
“Good!” cried the shaggy man, greatly pleased to hear this. “I also despise money—a man in Butterfield owes me fifteen cents, and I will not take it from him. The Land of Oz is surely the most favored land in all the world, and its people the happiest. I should like to live here always.”
The Tin Woodman listened with respectful attention. Already he loved the shaggy man, although he did not yet know of the Love Magnet. So he said:
“If you can prove to the Princess Ozma that you are honest and true and worthy of our friendship, you may indeed live here all your days, and be as happy as we are.”
“I’ll try to prove that,” said the shaggy man, earnestly.
“And now,” continued the Emperor, “you must all go to your rooms and prepare for dinner, which will presently be served in the grand tin dining-hall. I am sorry, Shaggy Man, that I can not offer you a change of clothing; but I dress only in tin, myself, and I suppose that would not suit you.”
“I care little about
