shut up, than when allowed to go free in the air. Stoom loved to do all
sorts of tricks. In the kitchen, it would make the iron kettle lid flop
up and down with a lively noise. If it were confined in a vessel,
whether of iron or earthenware, when set over the fire, it would blow
the pot or kettle all to pieces, in order to get out. Thinking itself a
great singer, it would make rather a pleasant sound, when its mother let
it come out of a spout. Yet it never obeyed either of its parents. When
they tried to shut up Stoom inside of anything, it always escaped with a
terrible sound. In fact, nothing could long hold it in, without an
explosion.

Sometimes Stoom would go down into the bowels of the earth and turn on a
stream of water so as to meet the deep fires which are ever burning far
down below us. Then there would come an awful earthquake, because Stoom
wanted to get out, and the earth crust would not let him, but tried to
hold him down. Sometimes Stoom slipped down into a volcano's mouth. Then
the mountain, in order to save itself from being choked, had to spit
Stoom out, and this always made a terrible mess on the ground, and men
called it lava. Or, Stoom might stay down in the crater as a guest, and
quietly come out, occasionally, in jets and puffs.

Even when Jack Frost was around and froze the pipes in the house, or
turned the water of the pots, pans, kettles and bottles into solid ice,
Stoom behaved very badly. If the frozen kettles, or any other closed
vessel were put over the stove, or near the fire, and the ice melted at
the bottom too fast, Stoom would blow the whole thing up. In this way,
he often put men's lives in danger and made them lose their property.

No one seemed to know how to handle this mischievous fairy. Not one man
on earth could do anything with him. So they let him have his own way.