UNCLE BEN’S ATTACK OF SPRING FEVER, AND HOW HE GOT CURED.
“It is not possible that you have been insane enough to go to housekeeping in the country, for the summer? Oh, you ought to hear my experience,” and Uncle Ben wiped the perspiration from his forehead, at the very thought.
Yes, I tried it once, with city habits and a city wife: got rabid with the dog days, and nothing could cure me but a nibble of green grass. There was Susan, you know, who never was off a brick pavement in her life, and didn’t know the difference between a cheese and a grindstone.
Well, we ripped up our carpets, and tore down our curtains, and packed up our crockery, and nailed down our pictures, and eat dust for a week, and then we emigrated to Daisy Ville.
Could I throw up a window, or fasten back a blind in that house, without sacrificing my suspenders and waistband button? No, sir! Were not the walls full of Red Rovers? Didn’t the doors fly open at every wind gust? Didn’t the roof leak like the mischief? Was not the chimney leased to a pack of swallows? Was not the well half a mile from the house?
Oh, you needn’t laugh. Instead of the comfortable naps to which I had been accustomed, I had to sleep with one eye open all night, lest I shouldn’t get into the city in time. I had to be shaving in the morning before a rooster in the barn-yard had stirred a feather; swallowed my coffee and toast by steam, and then, still masticating, made for the front door. There stood Peter with my horse and gig, for I detest your cars and omnibuses. On the floor of the chaise was a huge basket, in which to bring home material for the next day’s dinner. On the seat was a dress of my wife’s to be left “without fail” at Miss Sewing Silk’s, to have the forty-seventh hook moved one-sixth of a degree higher up on the back. Then there was a package of shawls from Tom Fools & Co., to be returned, and a pair of shoes to carry to Lapstone, who was to select another pair for me to bring out at night; and a demijohn to be filled with sherry. Well, I whipped up Bucephalus, left my sleeping wife and babies, and started for town; cogitating over an intricate business snarl, which bade defiance to any straightening process. I hadn’t gone half a mile before an old maid (I hate old maids) stopped me to know if I was going into town, and if I was, if I wouldn’t take her in, as the omnibuses made her sick. She said she was niece to Squire Dandelion, and “had a few chores to do a shopping.” So I took her in, or rather, she took me in (but she didn’t do it but once—for I bought a sulkey next day!) Well, it came night, and I was hungry as a Hottentot, for I never could dine, as your married widowers pro tem do, at eating-houses, where one gravy answers for flesh, fish, and fowl, and the pudding-sauce is as black as the cook’s complexion. So I went round on an empty stomach, hunting up my expressman parcels, and wending my way to the stable with arms and pockets running over. When I got home, found my wife in despair, no tacks in the house to nail down carpets, and not one to be had at the store in the village; the cook had deserted, because she couldn’t do without “her city privileges” (meaning Jonathan Jones, the “dry dirt” man); and the chambermaid, a buxom country girl, with fire-red hair, was spinning round the crockery (à la Blitz) because she “couldn’t eat with the family.”
Then Charley was taken with the croup in the night, and in my fright I put my feet into my coat sleeves, and my arms into my pants, and put on one of my wife’s ruffles instead of a dicky, and rode three miles in a pelting rain, for some “goose grease” for his throat.
Then we never found out till cherries, and strawberries, and peaches were ripe, how many friends (?) we had. There was a horse hitched at every rail in the fence, so long as there was anything left to eat on a tree in the farm; but if my wife went in town shopping, and called on any of them, they were “out, or engaged;”—or, if at home, had “just done dinner, and were going to ride.”
Then there was no school in the neighbourhood for the children, and they were out in the barn-yard feeding the pigs with lump sugar, and chasing the hens off the nest to see what was the prospect for eggs, and making little boats of their shoes, and sailing them in the pond, and milking the cow in the middle of the day, &c.
Then if I dressed in the morning in linen coat, thin pants, and straw hat, I’d be sure to find the wind “dead east” when I got into the city; or if I put on broadcloth and fixins to match, it would be hotter than Shadrach’s furnace, all day—while the dense morning fog would extract the starch from my dicky and shirt-bosom, till they looked very like a collapsed flapjack.
Then our meeting-house was a good two miles distant, and we had to walk, or stay at home; because my factotum (Peter) wouldn’t stay on the farm without he could have the horse on Sundays to go to Mill Village to see his affianced Nancy. Then the old farmers leaned on my stone wall, and laughed till the tears came into their eyes, to see “the city gentleman’s” experiments in horticulture, as they passed by “to meetin’.”
Well, sir, before summer was over, my wife and I looked as jaded as omnibus horses—she with chance “help” and floods of city company, and I with my arduous duties as express man for my own family in particular, and the neighbours in general.
And now here we are—“No. 9 Kossuth Square.” Can reach anything we want, by putting our hands out the front windows. If, as the poet says, “man made the town,” all I’ve got to say is—he understood his business!