SIGNS AND WONDERS.
ODE bustled into the house half an hour earlier than usual. Before him he carried a great sheet of pasteboard.
"Where's Winny?" he asked, sitting down on the nearest chair, out of breath with his haste. "I've got an idea, and she must help me put it on here."
"Winny's gone to the store, deary, for some tea. Whatever brought you home so early? Isn't business brisk to-day?"
"It was until it came on to rain, and I had to put things under cover, and then I had my idea, and I thought I'd run right home and tend to it."
The door opened and Winny came in, tugging her big umbrella. Instinct, it could not have been education, prompted Tode to take the dripping thing from her and put it away.
"What on earth is that?" Winny said, pausing in the act of taking off her things to examine the pasteboard.
"That's my sign—leastways it will be when your wits and my wits are put together to make it. I got some colored chalk round the corner at the painters, and he showed me how to use 'em."
"Tode, you said you would remember not to use ''em' and 'leastways' any more."
"So I will one of these days. I keep remembering all the time. Say, won't that make a elegant sign? I never thought of a sign in my life till Pliny Hastings he came along to-day. Did you ever see Pliny Hastings?"
"No. Tode, I do wish you would begin to study grammar this very evening. You're enough to kill any body the way you talk."
"Oh bother the grammar, I'm telling you about Pliny Hastings. He came along, and says he, 'Halloo, Tode, here you are as large as life in business for yourself. You ought to have a sign,' says he. 'What's your establishment called?' And you may think I felt cheap as long as I lived at the Euclid house, to have no kind of a name for my place. I thought then I'd have a name and a sign before this time to-morrow. So when I went for my dinner I bought this pasteboard, and I been studying the thing out all this afternoon between the spells of arithmetic, and I've got it all fixed now, and I've got another idea come of that I never see how one thing starts another. There's going to come a piece of pasteboard off this end, 'cause you see it's too long, and I'm going to have a circle out of that."
"A circle. What for?"
"Oh you'll see when we get to it. But now don't you want to know what my sign is?"
"I suppose I'll have to know if I'm to help you, whether I want to or not."
"Well, I had to study on that for quite a spell. You see I want a name for my house, and then my own name right under it, 'cause I like to see a man stand by his business, name and all; and then I want every body to know I stand up for temperance. I thought of 'Cold Water House,' but then you see it ain't a cold water house, cause coffee is my principal dish. Then I thought of 'Coffee House,' but there's a coffee house not more than two blocks away from my place, and they keep plenty of whisky there, and that wouldn't do. And I thought and thought, and by and by it came to me. I wouldn't have no 'House' at all about it, 'cause after all is said and done it's just a box; and I concluded to have a out-and-out temperance sign. I'll print a great big NO, so big you can see it across the street, and then we'll make two great big black bottles, like they keep rum in, standing by the 'No.' And then, says I, everybody will know where to find me on that question."
Even grave Winny laughed over this queer idea.
"I can't make bottles any more than I can fly away," she said at last "And neither can you."
"I shan't say that till I've tried it about a month, anyhow," Tode answered, positively. "I never did like to give up a thing before I began it."
The white cap frill nodded violently over this sentiment
"That's the way to talk," said the little mother. "There's more giving up of good things before they're begun than there ever is afterward, I do believe."
Such an evening as they had! Winny, in spite of her discouraging words, entered into the work with considerable heartiness; and the slate first, and afterward pieces of brown paper covered over with grotesque images of black bottles, looking most of them, it must be confessed, like anything else in the world. Finally the sympathetic mother came to the rescue. She mounted a high chair to reach the topmost shelf in her little den of a pantry, where were congregated the few bottles that had ensued from a quarter of a century of housekeeping. One after another was taken down and anxiously examined, until at last, oh joyful discovery! the label of one showed the picture of an unmistakable bottle, over which a picture of the inventor of the bitters which it was supposed to contain was fondly leaning, as if it were his staff of life. The young artists greeted it with delight, and with it for a model produced such delightful results that by half-past eight the sign shone out in blue and black and red chalks.
"Now for my circle," said Tode, seizing upon the piece of pasteboard which had been cut off. A large plate from the pantry did duty in the absence of sufficient geometrical knowledge, and the circle was quickly produced. Then did Tode's skill at making figures shine forth. In the bright red chalks did he quickly produce a circle of the nine figures around his pasteboard circle.
"Now what is all that for, I should like to know?" Winny asked, looking on half interestedly, half contemptuously.
"I'm just going to show you. You see, the lesson you gave me to-day is the addition table, and that addition table is a tough, ugly job, I can tell you. Well, I pelted away at it till dinner time, and I guess by that time I knew almost as much as I did before I begun it; and I went to Jones' after my dinner, and Mr. Jones he wanted me to take a note for him to a man at the bank, just around the corner from there, you know. Well I went, and the man I took the note to was busy counting money. He wouldn't look at me, but just counted away like lightning. I never see anything like it in my life, the way he did fly off them bills. It wasn't a quarter of a minute when he said to a man who stood waiting, 'Nine hundred and seventy-eight dollars, sir. All right.' Now just think of counting such a pile of money as that in about the time it would take me to count seventy-eight cents? Well, I come back, and I pitched into the addition table harder than ever, because, I thinks to myself, there's no telling but that I may have some money to count one of these days, and I guess I'll get ready to count it. But it was tough work. All at once, while I was looking at my pasteboard, and wondering what I should do with this end, it came to me. Now I'll explain. You see them nine figures around there? Well, thinks I, now there ain't but nine figures in this world, 'cause Pliny Hastings he told me that once, and I've noticed it lots of times since, that you may talk about just as many things as you're a mind to, and you'll just be using them same nine figures over and over again, with a nothing thrown in now and then, you know. Now, then, s'pose I begin at this one, and I say, 'one and two is three, and three is six, and four is ten.'"
"For pity's sake say 'are ten,'" interposed Winny.
"Why?"
"Because it's right. Go on."
"Well, now, I could remember just as quick again if you'd give a fellow a reason for it. Well, and four are ten, and so all around to the nine. Well, I say that, and say it, and say it, till it goes itself, and then I begin at two, and say two and three is—no, are five, and on round to the nine, only this time I take in the one at the other end. Understand? Well, after I've learned that I begin with the three, and go around to the two, and so on with them all; and then I mix them up and say them every which way, and after I've put them a few different ways, let's see you give me a line of figures that I can't add!"
"That is so," said Winny, at last, speaking slowly and admiringly. "It is a very good way indeed. Tode, I shouldn't wonder if you would know a great deal after awhile."
"Well now," answered Tode, gleefully, "I call this a pretty good evening's work, painted a sign and made a new arithmetic, enough sight easier than the other, so far as it goes; and you've helped me, so now I'll help you, turn about is fair play. Bring out your grammar, and let's see what it looks like, and to-morrow I'll go into the second-hand bookstore and hunt one up. Then I'll pitch in and learn everything I come to."
He was true to his word, and thereafter grammar was added to the numerous studies to which he gave all his leisure time. Perhaps no motto could have been given Tode that would have helped him so much in this matter of study as did the one which he had overheard and adopted for his own: "Learn everything I possibly can about everything that can be learned." He was obeying its instructions to the very letter.
Sunday morning dawned brightly upon him. The first Sunday in his new business. The air was balmy with the breath of spring.
"Oh, oh," said Tode, drawing long breaths and inhaling the perfume of swelling buds and springing blades, "I just wish I could go to church to-day, I do. Wouldn't it be nice now to put on my clean shirt, and make myself look nice and spry, and step around there to Mr. Birge's church and hear another preach? I'd like that first-rate; but now there's no use in talking. 'Do everything exactly in its time,' that's one of my rules, and I'm bound to live up to them; and it's time now for me to go to my business. I'll go to church this evening, I will. I ought to be glad that folks don't want coffee and cakes much of evening, instead of grumbling about having to give 'em some this morning."
Now it so happened, in the multiplicity of things which the new acquaintances had to talk over, that Sunday and church-going had not been discussed; and owing to the fact that Tode did not breakfast with the family, no knowledge of his intentions came to them, and no knowledge of that old command, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," came to him. True, he knew that stores and shops were closed quite generally on the Sabbath, but hotels were not, the Euclid House had never been, and Tode, without reasoning about it at all, had imbibed the idea that it was because they kept things to eat and drink. Now these were the very things which he kept, and people must eat and drink on Sundays as well as on any other days, so of course it was his duty to supply them.
So he put a clean white cloth on the dry-goods box in honor of this new bright day, arranged everything in the most tempting manner possible, and waited for customers. They came thick and fast. The Sabbath proved fair to be as busy a day at the dry-goods box as it used to be at the Euclid House. One disappointment Tode had. When he trudged down to the little house to have his great empty coffee-pot replenished, it was closed and locked.
"Course," he said, nodding approvingly, "they've gone to church. I might a known they wouldn't wash and iron and go to school Sunday. I ought to remembered and took away my coffee. Well, never mind, I'll just run around to the Coffee House and get my dish filled, and that will make it all right."
So many customers came just at tea time that he found it impossible to go home to tea, but took a cup of his own coffee and a few of his cakes, and chuckled meantime over the fact that he was the only individual who could take his supper from that dry-goods box without paying for it.
It was just as the bells were ringing for evening service that he joyfully packed his nearly emptied dishes into the basket, shook the crumbs from his little table-cloth, folded it carefully, and rejoiced over the thought that he had done an excellent day's work, and could afford to go to church. The brown house was closed again, so he left his basket under a woodpile in the alley-way, and made all possible speed for Mr. Birge's church. Even then the opening services were nearly concluded, but he was in time for the Bible text, and that text Tode never forgot in his life. The words were, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."
I can not describe to you the poor boy's bewildered astonishment as he listened and thought, and gradually began to take in something of the true meaning of those earnest words. Mr. Birge was very decided in his opinions, very plain in his utterances. Milk wagons, ice wagons, meat wagons, and the whole long catalogue of Sabbath-breaking wagons, to say nothing of row-boats and steamboats, and trains of cars, were dwelt upon with unsparing tongue—nay, he went farther than that, and expressed his unmistakable opinion of Sabbath-breaking ice-cream saloons and coffee saloons; then down to the little apple children, and candy children, and shoestring children, who haunt the Sabbath streets. Tode listened, and ran his fingers through his hair in perplexity.
"It must come in somewhere," he said to himself in some bewilderment. "I don't quite keep a coffee house, and I don't—why, yes I do, sell apples every now and then; and as to that, I suppose I keep a coffee box. What if it ain't a house? I wonder now if it ain't right? I wonder if there's lots of things that look right before you think about them, that ain't right after you've turned 'em over a spell? And I wonder how a fellow is going to know?"
Then he gave his undivided attention to the sermon again; and went home after the service was concluded, with a very thoughtful face. Jim was there making a visit, but Tode only nodded to him, and went abruptly to the little shelf behind the stove in the corner, and took down the old Bible.
"Grandma, where are the commandments put?" he asked eagerly, addressing the old lady by the title which he had bestowed on her very early in their acquaintance.
"Why they're in Exodus, in the twentieth chapter."
"And where's Exodus?"
"Ho!" said Jim. "You know a heap, Tode, don't you?"
Tode turned on him a grave anxious face.
"Do you know about them? Well, just you come and find them for me, that's a good fellow. I'm in a powerful hurry."
Thus appealed to, Jim, nothing loth to display his wisdom, sauntered toward the table, and speedily found and patronizingly pointed out the commandments. Tode read eagerly until he came to those words, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Then he read slowly and carefully, "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates."
Three times did Tode's astonished eyes go over this commandment in all its length and breadth; then he looked up and spoke with deliberate emphasis,
"This beats all creation! And the strangest part of it is that you didn't tell me anything about it, grandma."
"Whatever is the boy talking about?" said grandma, wheeling her rocker around to get a full view of his excited face; and then Tode gave a synopsis of the evening sermon, and the history of his amazement, culminating with this first reading of the fourth commandment.
"And so you've been at your business all day!" exclaimed the astonished old lady. "Why, for the land's sake, I thought you had gone off to some meeting away at the other end of the city."
"I never once knew the first thing about this in the Bible. How was I going to know it was a mean thing to do?" questioned Tode, with increasing excitement. "And it was the best day I've had, too, and that makes it all the meaner."
And his voice choked a little, and his head went suddenly down on his arm.
"Well, now, I wouldn't mind, deary," spoke the old lady in soothing tones, after a few moments of silence. "If you didn't know anything about it, of course you wasn't to blame. 'Tisn't as if you had learned it in Sunday-school, and all that, and I wouldn't mind about the business. Like enough you'll have more days just as brisk as Sunday."
"It isn't that," Tode answered, disconsolately, lifting his head. "It's all them Sundays that I've been and wasted, when I might have gone to meeting. Been righter to go than to stay away, it seems; and it's thinking about lots of other things that's wrong maybe, just like this, and a fellow not knowing it."
And as he spoke he listlessly turned over the leaves of the old Bible, until his eye was arrested by the words, "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel."
"That's exactly it," he told himself. "I've got to have a Bible. I'll get one little enough to go into my jacket pocket, and then, says I, we'll see if I can't find out about things. And after this I'm to shut up box and go to church, am I? Well, that's one good thing, anyhow."
Presently he and Jim climbed up to the little room over the kitchen. No sooner were they alone than Tode commenced on a subject that had puzzled him.
"I say, Jim, how comes it that you knew all about those things and never told me? That's treating a fellow pretty mean, I think. I always shared the peanuts and things I got with you."
"See here," answered Jim, in open-eyed wonder; "what are you driving at?"
"Why, things that you know and never told me. Here your mother has got a Bible, and you know verses in it, and know about heaven, and all, and you never told me a word."
Jim sat down on the foot of the bed and laughed, long and loud and merrily.
"I don't know, Tode, whether you're cracked, or what is the matter with you," he said at last, when he could speak, "but I never heard a fellow mixing up peanuts and heaven before."
Tode was someway not in a mood to be laughed at, so he gave vent somewhat loftily to a solemn truth.
"Oh well, if you're a mind to think that the peanuts is of the most consequence after all, why I don't know as I object."
And then the boy deliberately knelt down and began his evening prayer. He was too ignorant to know that there were boys who thought it unmanly to pray. It never occurred to him to omit his kneeling. As for Jim he felt himself in a very strange position. He kicked his heels against the bedpost for awhile, but presently he grew ashamed of that, and contented himself with very noisily making ready for bed. Tode, when he rose, was in a softened mood, and as he blew out the light said:
"I wish you knew how to pray, Jim. I do, honestly, it's so nice."
"Praying and brandy bottles don't go together," answered his companion, shortly.
"No more they don't," said Tode, emphatically. "I had to quit that business myself."
If some of our respectable brandy-drinking, brandy-selling deacons could have heard those two ignorant boys talk!
