“Poor fool! you would follow your own way, but you will repent it!”

Pinocchio, feeling almost frightened, looked from side to side to try and discover where these words could come from, but he saw nobody.  The donkeys galloped, the coach rattled, the boys inside slept, Candlewick snored like a dormouse, and the little man seated on the box sang between his teeth: 

    “During the night all sleep,
        But I sleep never.”

After they had gone another mile, Pinocchio heard the same little low voice saying to him: 

“Bear it in mind, simpleton!  Boys who refuse to study and turn their backs upon books, schools and masters, to pass their time in play and amusement, sooner or later come to a bad end.  I know it by experience, and I can tell you.  A day will come when you will weep as I am weeping now, but then it will be too late!”

On hearing these words whispered very softly, the puppet, more frightened than ever, sprang down from the back of his donkey and went and took hold of his mouth.

Imagine his surprise when he found that the donkey was crying—­crying like a boy!

“Eh!  Sir Coachman,” cried Pinocchio to the little man, “here is an extraordinary thing!  This donkey is crying.”

“Let him cry; he will laugh when he is a bridegroom.”

“But have you by chance taught him to talk?”

“No; but he spent three years in a company of learned dogs, and he learned to mutter a few words.”

“Poor beast!”

“Come, come,” said the little man, “don’t let us waste time in seeing a donkey cry.  Mount him and let us go on:  the night is cold and the road is long.”

Pinocchio obeyed without another word.  In the morning about daybreak they arrived safely in the “Land of Boobies.”

It was a country unlike any other country in the world.  The population was composed entirely of boys.  The oldest were fourteen, and the youngest scarcely eight years old.  In the streets there was such merriment, noise and shouting that it was enough to turn anybody’s head.  There were troops of boys everywhere.  Some were playing with nuts, some with battledores, some with balls.  Some rode velocipedes, others wooden horses.  A party were playing at hide and seek, a few were chasing each other.  Some were reciting, some singing, some leaping.  Some were amusing themselves with walking on their hands with their feet in the air; others were trundling hoops or strutting about dressed as generals, wearing leaf helmets and commanding a squadron of cardboard soldiers.  Some were laughing, some shouting, some were calling out; others clapped their hands, or whistled, or clucked like a hen who has just laid an egg.

In every square, canvas theaters had been erected and they were crowded with boys from morning till evening.  On the walls of the houses there were inscriptions written in charcoal:  “Long live playthings, we will have no more schools; down with arithmetic,” and similar other fine sentiments, all in bad spelling.