How There Came to Be a Katy-Did

Long, long, long ago—so long that this story has had time to grow into a garden legend—two green grasshoppers went out, one fine day, to play with a cricket. They played tag, and I'm on gypsyland. At last they decided to have a game of hide-and-seek.

The goal was a blade of grass, and they counted out to see who should be goal man. It fell to the little cricket, Katy-did. She was to hide her eyes behind the grassblade, and count up to one hundred by tens, while the two grasshoppers went off to hide.

So the cricket hid her face so that she could not see, and began: "Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred! Coming!"

Though there were plenty of good places in which to hide in the garden, one green grasshopper had been slow to suit himself. He had not yet hidden when the little cricket turned about and caught him.

And he began, "You didn't count up to a hundred! I didn't have time to hide! You should have hollered, 'Coming!' It's no fair! I'm not going to play any more—you didn't count up to a hundred!"

At this, the other grasshopper came out of hiding. "She did count up to a hundred," he said, "Katy did!"

"She didnt'!"

"She did!"

"She didn't!"

"Katy did, did, did!"

"Katy didn't, didn't, didn't!"

"Did, did, did!"

"Didn't, didn't, didn't!"

"Katy did!"

"Katy didn't!"

"She did!"

"She didn't!"

"Katy did!"

"Katy didn't!"

To this very, very day, you can hear the dispute still going on in the garden, and the game of tag has never yet been finished. Ever since that time the grasshoppers who started the discussion have been called katydids, and the whole garden is full of the controversy. You can hear hundreds of little voices keeping it up, though nothing is ever decided. So it goes on eternally, Katy did—Katy didn't, did, did, did, didn't, didn't, she did, she didn't—for nobody has ever yet settled a dispute by contradiction. By this time, too, everyone has forgotten what the quarrel was about.