Wishing for and desiring an adventure is different from experiencing it. Yet, very frequently, it’s easier to wish for an adventure than to seek one out and find it.
Lydia Maria Child contemplates this difficulty in her short story “The Magician’s Show Box” as she follows a boy who wants to travel the world. Through his struggles, she demonstrates the roadblocks that inhibit the desired adventure.
Boxed In
Gaspar dreams of traveling the world and seeing new places and people. One day, as he sets out on his adventure, he meets an old man, sitting alongside the road cracking nuts. Gaspar decides to spend some time with the man, cracking nuts and talking with him.
Gaspar finds the man and his many wonderful tales very entertaining, but, when he tries to leave, the old man gets up and blocks his path. Undeterred, Gaspar tries skirting around him, but the old man quickly jumps in front of him. He then tries jumping over the old man, but the old man leaps so high that Gaspar can’t. Finally, Gaspar pretends to fall asleep and sneak away, but the old man still foils his plans. In the morning, the old man says to Gaspar:
“Come now, it is foolish for you to go trudging about over the world. You will never see any thing … I can show you more wonders in a day in my show box here, than you would find wandering about for a lifetime.”
The old man then produces a small show box filled with wonders. In it, Gaspar sees exotic animals, foreign men, dinosaurs, royalty, warriors, and many other wonders.
For a while afterward, Gaspar feels satiated by the sights in the little show box, but this feeling doesn’t last long. He soon sets out again to find adventure and, just as before, the old man prevents him. Finally, on his third attempt, Gaspar makes it past the old man and into the adventurous wild.
Bursting From the Boxes
Gaspar quickly finds himself in China, where he befriends the Emperor and becomes one of his chief mandarins, that is, a bureaucrat. Gaspar is overjoyed at this honor and fits right into the royal courts, speaking Chinese and wearing wonderful robes.
The little gray-clad man waits by the roadside, confusing and delaying Gaspar. (Fæ/CC BY-SA 4.0)Yet, after a while, Gaspar wishes to stride out into the wild, where more adventures, more sights, sounds, people, and places lay waiting. He soon slips away from the Emperor’s court and makes his way towards a new adventure.
He travels all over the world and “in every land he [makes] collections of its greatest curiosities in art, literature, science, natural history, and politics.” He returns home with all of these wonderful curiosities and creates a museum, where he keeps busy with daily customers.
Nevertheless, Gaspar finds himself desiring something more. He feels that he needs another adventure. And, just as he finds himself desiring a new adventure, someone special walks through the door.
Through this story, Child shows that dreams are beautiful, but, if we wish them to come true, we must be willing to step out into the wildest, but most worthwhile adventure. We must burst from the boxes that hinder us to attain the adventure we desire.
Child seems to encourage the adventurous spirit which says, as Herman Melville wrote in “Moby-Dick”: “I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” With this spirit, new adventures will be attained, not just merely looked at and wished for. Such an adventurous spirit spurs us on to attain our wonderful destinies and beautiful dreams.
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