Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 23, September 25, 1858

Transcriber Notes
Volume I.—No. 23.SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1858.Price 2 Cents.
I remember the woman’s school at four years old, and the merited chastisement of the school marm; my desperate descent on the sugar bowl; the military company of which I was commander; my annual cries in the trundle bed at 12 o’clock and one second, A. M.: “I wish you merry Christmas, Ma,—I wish you happy New Year, Pa,—now gim me cent;” with my father’s: “Go to sleep, you young rascal, or I’ll come and spank you;” the two cents I always got on the 4th of July, if I had been a good boy, and the solitary penny if I hadn’t; the death of my mother of twins; the copious tears of my father and Aunt Lucy; my grief at her sudden demise; the country boarding school, and the blast of lightning that felled me to the earth, while whittling on the summer green; my eyes soon open on the glories of the lurid universe, and I scamper into the pretty cottage, and bound into the arms of my aunt, who nearly smothers me with affectionate embraces; the storm passes; a bow appears, with crimson arrows, and lingers on the concave’s rosy verge, till Venus gleams through the twilight leaves, when its gorgeous hues are vailed by the revolving spheres, and it descends the dazzling west.
Whose Archer follows the resplendent sun,
Before whose darts the stormy Furies run;
the moon ascends the east in matchless splendor, and roams in tranquil beauty through infinitude, spreading its snowy light on vale and mead, that vie with lakes of liquid silver; my aunt lingers at my bed, while I say my evening prayer, and invests my heart with sacred feelings; myself and brother William, on our way to school, through a dreary wood, espy a boy in a wagon, when I exclaim: “Why, Bill, there’s our brother Albert;” Bill stares and says: “Steve, your perceptions are very foggy, and I begin to think you aint got good sense;” I closely scan the boy, and smile, but elicit no response, the little rogue riveting his bright blue eyes on the vacant air; Bill passes on to school, with: “Steve, you are raving mad, and I’m going to tell Aunt Freeman so;” when I address the stranger thus: “Little boy, you look like my brother Albert, and this horse and wagon resemble ours, and won’t you please to tell me if you aint my brother Al, who lives far away from here, in a place called Providence? I always dearly loved him, and I havn’t seen him for a long time now, and I would like to see him very much; come, now, little boy, aint you Ally Branch, and if you are, won’t you please to tell me so?” Tears roll down his pale cheeks, followed by the sweetest smiles, (like simultaneous rain and sunshine,) extending his arms, with: “How do you do, dear brother Stevy;” I scream; dart into the wagon, and, placing my arms around his neck, fondly kiss him. And then I made the woods ring with my cries for Bill to return, and behold our dear brother, found so mysteriously alone in the forest wild. Bill slowly returns; and I hear the echo of a laugh, and see a man emerge from the monarch oaks, whom I discern as father, whose playful stratagem blares brightly before my enraptured vision. And with the velocity of light, I spring from the wagon, and at a bound, am in the embraces of my adored father. The vail slowly passes from the eyes of Bill, who stands like a statue in the dim perspective, crying lustily over my triumphant conquest. We all shout and wave our hands, and Willie bounds into Albert’s and father’s arms, whose fervent kisses soon dispel his tears; when his crescent and revolving eyes gently threaten to eclipse the sun and moon with hilarious splendor; three happy brothers then rock the forest solitude with merry vociferations, and run like deer, and sing like infant Jubals, with sweet responses from congenial birds, prancing on the oaks’ majestic branches. And with hearts of gladness, we spring like hounds into the wagon, and return to Aunt Freeman’s, and that I regard as one of the happiest days of my early boyhood. On the following morn, we leave for Providence, which I scarcely reach, ere our yard is a camp of boys, eager to embrace their favorite commander, after his long captivity in the desert wilds of Woodstock; myself and Albert soon go to another country school; we board with a minister who has a large family, and a small salary, which was tardily and scantily paid with very poor provisions; myself and Al don’t like the fare; has fried pork too often for breakfast, and pork and beans for dinner, with a cold cut of pork and beans at nightfall; and we enter our solemn protest against so much fried hog, and so many baked beans; we protest, too, against his not fastening the doors and windows nights, as father does at home; we hear strange noises nights, while abed; and respectfully implore him to put locks on the doors, and nails in the windows, who refuses, and says, that good boys are never afraid of robbers or assassins; we still hear dreadful sounds at midnight; and bury ourselves, head and all, in the bed clothes; sweat terribly, and nearly smother; grow pale; lose flesh; get very weak; have cold night sweats; finally despair, and threaten to leave for home; write long letters to father, full of bad writing and spelling, who doesn’t answer them, because he can’t read them; we start for Providence; our sacred host pursues us on a cadaverous horse, whose ribs rattle, and captures us in the haunted woods, where, in old times, a man was murdered, and two lovers hung themselves, because their parents wouldn’t let them marry; I and Al were hurrying through this dreadful wood, when old cadaverous and the parson pounce upon us, who threatens to whip us if we don’t return, and cuts a switch for the purpose; his eyes roll terribly, and, as I once heard he was slightly insane at times, and, fearing he might murder me, I gave the wink to Al, and we concluded to return, very gently shaking our heads and fists, with threats of telling our father all about it some day, who was a Justice of the Peace, and could lock up any body, and have them hung beside; to silence our unceasing clamors, the parson gets some cheap second-hand locks, and rusty nails, fastens the doors and windows nights, and gives us fried liver twice a week for breakfast, and lets pork and beans slide awhile, with very tender veal instead; don’t hear strange sounds at night any more; sleep very soundly; don’t hear the cheerless midnight winds as of yore; get fat as butter; are very contented; Fourth of July close at hand; father comes after us; shed tears of joy, and run and jump like wild cats, and get home alive once more from a country boarding school; go to a party on the night of our arrival; Oscar Rivulet and Clara Violet are there; at the party’s close, I can’t find my hat, and while in its vigorous pursuit, Oscar takes the arm of Clara, when I step up and whisper in his ear, that I will chastise him the very next day for cutting me out; Oscar and Clara depart; I find my hat in the oven, where Oscar doubtless put it, and begin to cry with rage; to console me, my aunt places the arm of Flora Rosebud in mine, who was a dashing little belle, with whom I slowly ramble towards her home beneath a brilliant sky; soon after I bid Flora good night, at her father’s door, a dark cloud rapidly arose and obscured the moon, and I became afraid, and ran fleetly home, expecting to meet an assassin at every corner’s turn, but when I heard the cheerful watchman’s cry of “half-past eight o’clock, and all’s well,” and beheld his noble form in the distance, my fears are tranquilized, and I walk as erect and firm as the hero of many battles, and loudly boast of my courage, after I get snugly in the trundle bed with Albert, the shield of my father’s voice above me, to fortify my pretended valor. On the following day, my step-mother struck me on the head with a jacket with brass buttons, for my impudence at dinner in my father’s absence, because she wouldn’t give me more boiled onions, of which I was very fond; the blood flowed freely, and she was terrified lest I would bleed to death, and she be hung; she dressed the wounds most tenderly, and gave me plenty of onions and sugar, and warmly coaxed me not to tell father when he came to tea, lest he would gently chide her for her laceration of the skull of the prolific brain of the darling son who bore his own father’s promising name of Stephen; and for many days she gave me candy and peanuts, and gave me so many onions that I have loathed them since; she even poulticed my lacerated head with boiled onions, which I smell to this day; I had the ear-ache, and she even put a small roast onion in my ear to check the pain; I once passed through Weathersfield, (where onions are as thick as leaves in the Vale of Vallambrosa,) whose atmosphere caused me to fertilize its streets with bile; my step-mother finally stops my supplies of sweetmeats, and I threaten to tell my father of her violent blow, and show him my scars, when she surrendered, and gave me sweet things for a long period; and she saved me many a whipping from my father, when I was mischievous, lest I would tell and show the relics of her trouncing, which gave me a boundless latitude for pranks until the scars all passed away; at this time, my dog Watch was drowned, but he rose the ninth day, and I buried him at the foot of my father’s garden, with funeral honors, a neighboring dog, in traces, bearing his precious body to the grave, over which I placed turf and stones in memory of a dog I dearly loved; after the funeral, Cornelius Snow, nicknamed Flop, called me names, and I told my father that “Flop Snow had called me names, and I meant to lick him for it,” when my father effected a reconciliation, by allowing Cornelius to call me Steve as long as I called him Flop. He had long been at the head of my class, at school, and I had never been at the head, which mortified my father, who told me if I would get above Flop through good spelling, he would give me a sixpence; I tried long and hard, but I couldn’t do it; so, on a very stormy day, while myself and Flop were the only boys of our spelling class at school, I told him that if he would make a mistake in spelling, and let me keep at the head until school was over, I would give him three cents; Flop consented, and broke down on beef, which he spelled b-e-a-p-h-f-e , for which the teacher boxed his ears, and made him see ten thousand sparkling stars; I got sixpence from my father, and gave Flop half of it; there was a full class the next day, and down I went to the foot, my usual place; my father learned of my collusion with Flop, and gave me a tremendous whipping; the next day I went several miles down Providence river, in a canoe with Elias Smith and Joseph Fuller, and was gone four days, and all the town was terribly excited lest we were lost; but Mr. Proud, a neighbor, of whose peaches and melons I was very fond, stuck to it like beeswax, that I would never be drowned, while hemp grew in Kentucky; the day after my return, my step-mother whips Albert for stealing a small lump of sugar, at about 11, A. M.; father usually came to dinner at 12, M.; Ally cried for a long time; but he began to lull, and I was afraid he wouldn’t hold out until father got home; so, I got Ally down cellar, and pinched him, and pulled his hair, to make him keep it up, until father got home; it being near twelve o’clock, and my step-mother knowing my influence over Ally, told me if I would pacify him before father came to dinner, she would give me as much sugar as I wanted for a whole week; I accepted the bribe,—but Al overheard us, and declared that he would cry like thunder, until father came, if I didn’t give him half the sugar; we finally compromised, by allowing Ally a quarter of all the lumps I got; a few days after, while returning from a Saturday excursion down the river, my brother Bill cut up so, that the boat capsized, in very deep water, a short distance from the shore; Jim Baker and myself got on the bottom of the boat, while Bill’s feet and head were entangled in the ropes and sail; Sam Thurber and others swam to the shore; Jim Baker and myself couldn’t swim, and we expected to be lost; and we bellowed murder like fury; amid this awful scene, the owner of the boat came down the shore, and cried: “Pay for that boat, you rascals, pay for that boat;” he had scarcely breathed these brutal words, when down went Jim Baker and myself to the river’s bed; I rose to the surface first, and went down again, when Jim grabbed my leg, and we came up together, and a noble sailor seized and bore us to the shore, where we were put in barrels, and pints of water squeezed out of us; Jim and myself open our dewy eyes, shake hands, and walk home arm in arm, with the sailor behind, thrashing the boat proprietor for demanding pay, instead of coming to our rescue, whose unparalleled inhumanity the gallant tar couldn’t tolerate. I went to bed, and had a horrid night-mare, and dreamed of sharks and whales. On the day after the boat calamity of Jim Baker and myself on Providence river, I arose with the glorious sun, ate a spare repast, and went to school. My stomach yet complained of salt water, and my head and books were at rapiers’ points. The teacher, Shaw, vainly chides me for my indolence, and summons me before him, and demands my spelling-book, and gives me genuine , which I spell “ gen-ner-wine .” The school is convulsed in the wildest screams. Shaw seizes his lignumvitae ruler, darts through the aisles, rolls his big gray eyes, and bangs the desks until the dust rises into clouds, when the mirthful tumult is hushed into the silence of a tomb, and he bids me take my seat, with furious cuffs of both ears. My brother Bill had been snickering in his hat, and sleeve, and handkerchief, until he had saturated them all with his hilarious tears, and, as I passed him on my way to my seat, he burst into a genuine Branch laugh, and all again was chaos. The scholars were more uproarious than before, and Shaw rages furiously, and calls up Bill, when all is silent terror, and every eye is riveted on its book. Shaw demands Bill to extend his right hand, which he declines to do, because he has a felon, and tender warts all over his knuckles. Shaw then commands him to hold up his left hand, and Bill obeys, when Shaw’s eyes flash sparks of fire, his cheeks are deathly pale, and his ferule descends with tremendous violence