Ring Lardner Tonight: Bed-Time Stories -- "How to Tell a True Princess"

"[F]inely [the princess] give up and went to bed and hadn't been asleep more than 3 hrs. when she woke up and says I am very uncomfortable, they must be a pea under all these quilts. So they looked it up and sure enough they was a green pea under the quilts and mattresses. It made her miserable. She was practally helpless."

-- Ring Lardner, in "How to Tell a True Princess"

Tonight we have the first of three (or maybe four) "bed-time stories." Coming tomorrow night is "Cinderella," and Thursday "Red Riding Hood" -- with "Bluebeard" just possibly thrown in somewhere. -- Ken

BED-TIME STORIES

How to Tell a True Princess

Well my little boys and gals this is the case of a prince who his father had told him he must get married but the gal he married must be a true princess. So he says to the old man how do you tell if a princess is a true princess or a phony princess. So the old man says why if she is a true princess she must be delicate.

Yes said the prince but what is the true test of delicate.

Why said the old man who was probably the king if she is delicate why she probably can't sleep over 49 eiderdown quilts and 28 mattresses provided they's a pea parked under same which might disturb her. So they made her bed this day in these regards. They put a single green pea annext the spring and then piled 28 mattresses and 49 eider quilts on top of same and says if she can sleep on this quantity of bed clothing and not feel disturbed, why she can't possibly be delicate and is therefore not a princess.

Well the princess went to bed at 10 o'clock on acct. of having called up everybody and nobody would come over and play double Canfield with her and finely she give up and went to bed and hadn't been asleep more than 3 hrs. when she woke up and says I am very uncomfortable, they must be a pea under all these quilts. So they looked it up and sure enough they was a green pea under the quilts and mattresses. It made her miserable. She was practally helpless.

But the next day when she woke up they didn't know if she was a princess or the reverse. Because lots of people had slept under those conditions and maybe it was the mattress or the springs that had made them miserable. So finely the king suggested why not give her a modern trial.

So the next evening but one they sent her to bed under these conditions:

The counterpane was concrete and right under it was 30 layers of tin plate and then come 4 bales of cotton and beneath that 50 ft. of solid rock and under the entire layout a canary's feather.

"Now Princess," they said to her in a friendly way, "if you can tell us the name of the bird which you are sleeping on under all these condiments, why then we will know you are a true princess and worthy to marry the prince."

"Prince!" she said. "Is that the name of a dog?"

They all laughed at her in a friendly way.

"Why yes," she said, "I can tell you the name of that bird. His name is Dickie."

This turned the laugh on them and at the same time proved she was a true princess.

To-morrow night I will try to tell you the story of how 6 men travelled through the wide world and the story will begin at 6:30 and I hope it won't keep nobody up.

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TOMORROW in RING LARDNER TONIGHT: Bed-Time Stories -- "Cinderella"


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, and JEAN SHEPHERD TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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