HE DOES HIS DUTY AS A CITIZEN.
Babbletown began to be very lively as soon as the weather got cool, the fall after I came home. We had a singing-school once a week, a debating society that met every Wednesday evening, and then we had sociables, and just before Christmas a fair. All the other young men had a good time. Every day, when some of them dropped in the store for a chat and a handful of raisins, they would aggravate me by asking:
"Aren't we having a jolly winter of it, John?"
I never had a good time. I never enjoyed myself like other folks. I spent enough money and made enough good resolutions, but something always occurred to destroy my anticipated pleasure. I can't hear a lyceum or debating society mentioned to this day, without feeling "cold-chills" run down my spine.
I took part in the exercises the evening ours was opened. I had been requested by the committee to furnish the poem for the occasion. As I was just from a first-class academy, where I had read the valedictory, it was taken for granted that I was the most likely one to "fill the bill."
I accepted the proposition. To be bashful is a far different thing from being modest. I wrote the poem. I sat up nights to do it. The way candles were consumed caused father to wonder where his best box of spermacetis had gone to. I knew I could do the poetry, and I firmly resolved that I would read it through, from beginning to end, in a clear, well-modulated voice, that could be heard by all, including the minister and Belle Marigold. I would not blush, or stammer, or get a frog in my throat. I swore solemnly to myself that I would not. Some folks should see that my bashfulness was wearing off faster than the gold from an oroide watch. Oh, I would show 'em! Some things could be done as well as others. I would no longer be the laughing-stock of Babbletown. My past record should be wiped out! I would write my poem, and I would read it—read it calmly and impressively, so as to do full justice to it.
I got the poem ready. I committed it to memory, so that if the lights were dim, or I lost my place, I should not be at the mercy of the manuscript. The night came. I entered the hall with Belle on my arm, early, so as to secure her a front seat.
"Keep cool, John," were her whispered words, as I left her to take my place on the platform.
"Oh, I shall be cool enough. I know every line by heart; have said it to myself one hundred and nineteen times without missing a word."
I'm not going to bore you with the poem here; but will give the first four lines as they were written and as I spoke them:
"Hail! Babbletown, fair village of the plain!
Hail! friends and fellow-citizens. In vain
I strive to sing the glories of this place,
Whose history back to early times I trace."
The room was crowded, the president of the society made a few opening remarks, which closed by presenting Mr. Flutter, the poet of the occasion. I was quite easy and at home until I arose and bowed as he spoke my name. Then something happened to my senses, I don't know what; I only knew I lost every one of them for about two minutes. I was blind, deaf, dumb, tasteless, senseless, and feelingless. Then I came to a little, rallied, and perceived that some of the boy were beginning to pound the floor with their heels. I made a feint of holding my roll of verses nearer the lamp at my right hand, summoned traitor memory to return, and began:
"Hail!"
Was that my voice? I did not recognize it. It was more as if a mouse in the gallery had squeaked. It would never do. I cleared any throat—which was to have been free from frogs—and a strange, hoarse voice, no more like mine than a crow is like a nightingale, came out with a jerk, about six feet away, and remarked, as if surprised:
"Hail!"
With a desperate effort, I resolved that this night or never I was to achieve greatness. I cleared the way again and recommenced:
"Hail!"
A boy's voice at the back of the room was heard to insinuate that perhaps it would be easier for me to let it snow or rain. That made me angry. I was as cool as ice all in a moment; I felt that I had the mastery of the situation, and, making a sweeping gesture with my left hand, I looked over my hearers' heads, and continued:
"Hail! Fabbletown, bare village of the plain—Babbletown, fair pillage of the vain—. Hail! friends and fellow-citizens—!"
It was evident that I had borrowed somebody else's voice—my own mother wouldn't have recognized it—and a mighty poor show of a voice, too. It was like a race-horse that suddenly balks, and loses the race. I had put up heavy stakes on that voice, but I couldn't budge it. Not an inch faster would it go. In vain I whipped and spurred in silent desperation—it balked at "fellow-citizens," and there it stuck. The audience, good-naturedly, waited five minutes. At the end of that time, I sat down, amid general applause, conscious that I had made the sensation of the evening.
Belle gave me the mitten that evening, and went home in Fred Hencoop's sleigh.
We didn't speak, after that, until about a week before the fair. She, with some other girls, then came in the store to beg for "scraps" of silk, muslin, and so-forth, to dress dolls for the fair. They were very sweet, for they knew they could make a fool of me. Father was not in, and I guess they timed their visit so that he wouldn't be. They got half a yard of pink silk, as much of blue, ditto of lilac and black, a yard of every kind of narrow ribbon in the store, a remnant of book-muslin, three yards—in all, about six dollars' worth of "scraps," and then asked me if I wasn't going to give a box of raisins and the coffee for the table. I said I would.
"And you'll come, Mr. Flutter, won't you? It'll be a failure unless you are there. You must promise to come. We won't go out of this store till you do. And, oh, don't forget to bring your purse along. We expect all the young gentlemen to come prepared, you know."
There is no doubt that I went to the fair. It made my heart ache to do it—for I'd already been pretty extravagant, one way and another—but I put a ten-dollar bill in my wallet, resolved to spend every cent of it rather than appear mean.
I don't know whether I appeared mean or not; I do know that I spent every penny of that ten dollars, and considerable more besides. If there was anything at that fair that no one else wanted, and that was not calculated to supply any known want of the human race, it was palmed off on me. I became the unhappy possessor of five dressed dolls, a lady's "nubia," a baby-jumper, fourteen "tidies," a set of parlor croquet with wickets that wouldn't stand on their legs, a patent churn warranted to make a pound of fresh butter in three minutes out of a quart of chalk-and-water, a set of ladies' nightcaps, two child's aprons, a castle-in-the-air, a fairy-palace, a doll's play-house, a toy-balloon, a box of marbles, a pair of spectacles, a pair of pillow-shams, a young lady's work-basket, seven needle-books, a cradle-quilt, a good many bookmarks, a sofa-cushion, and an infant's rattle, warranted to cut one's eye teeth; besides which I had tickets in a fruit cake, a locket, a dressing-bureau, a baby-carriage, a lady's watch-chain, and an infant's wardrobe complete.
When I feebly remonstrated that I'd spent all the money I brought, I was smilingly assured by innumerable female Tootses that "it was of no consequence"; but I found there were consequences when I came to settle afterward for half the things at the fair, because I was too bashful to say No, boldly.
Fred Hencoop auctioned off the remaining articles after eleven o'clock. Every time he put up something utterly unsalable, he would look over at me, nod, and say: "Thank you, John; did you say fifty cents?" or "Did I hear you say a dollar? A dollar—dollar—going, gone to our friend and patron, John Flutter, Jr.," and some of the lady managers would "make a note of it," and I was too everlastingly embarrassed to deny it.
"John," said father, about four o'clock in the afternoon the day after the fair—"John, did you buy all these things?"—the front part of the store was piled and crammed with my unwilling purchases.
"Father, I don't know whether I did or not."
"How much is the bill?"
"$98.17."
"How are you going to pay it?"
"I've got the hundred dollars in bank grandmother gave me when she died."
"Draw the money, pay your debts, and either get married at once and make these things useful, or we'll have a bonfire in the back yard."
"I guess we'd better have the bonfire, father. I don't care for any girl but Belle, and she won't have me."
"Won't have you! I'm worth as much as Squire Marigold any day."
"I know it, father; but I took her down to supper last night, and I was so confused, with all the married ladies looking on, I made a mess of it. I put two teaspoonfuls of sugar in her oyster stew, salted her coffee, and insisted on her taking pickles with her ice-cream. She didn't mind that so much, but when I stuffed my saucer into my pocket, and conducted her into the coal-cellar instead of the hall, she got out of patience. Father, I think I'd better go to Arizona in the spring. I'm—"
"Go to grass! if you want to," was the unfeeling reply; "but don't you ever go to another fair, unless I go along to take care of you."
But I think the bonfire made him feel better.