NOTE.
WHEN the unfortunate man standing on the scaffold was asked by a spectator to make a speech, he said that, considering the interesting programme which had been prepared by their good friend the Sheriff, he could not hope to say anything likely to amuse them. The compiler of a book of humour may recognise a like anxiety on the part of the public to push on to the principal attraction. There arises on his mental vision the eager face of the book-buyer, as he hurriedly skims over the leaves at the commencement of the volume, to find the end of the introduction and the beginning of the humour.
Once upon a time when I was young—in fact, more than eighteen months ago—I wrote an introduction to a volume of American humorous verse. It didn’t say much, but it covered a great deal of space, and looked imposing. The few statements made, however, have risen up and smitten me night and day, and I have never to this moment been able to get away from them. After the volume had been before the public for a few months, I made an everlasting resolve to abstain from all theories, deductions, speculations, prophecies, warnings, and prognostications in regard to any and every humour, whether American or British, new or old, known or unknown. It occurred to me that a new and delightful feature might be added to a book of humour if the reader were permitted the privilege of forming his own conclusions and choosing for himself his favourite among the authors. No doubt many a man has been forced, sorely against his will, to acknowledge, theoretically, the irresistibility of certain writers’ humour, and to spend the best part of his life in trying to see something funny in the writers’ work. No such hopeless task will be imposed by this volume. The different authors included between the covers of this book will speak for themselves. They need no bush.
But instead of writing an introduction for no one to read I have thought it better to arrange a biographical index of American and Canadian humorous writers, giving such pertinent particulars of each author’s life and work as may be of value to the student of American literature. This index will be found at the end of the volume. It comes, it is hoped, within reasonable distance of completeness, and although in the majority of cases the data given is of a broad and general kind, still it is sufficiently explicit to set the student in the way of finding for himself the chief characteristics and work of the different authors. This index, to the best of my knowledge, is the first of its kind that has been arranged, and should at least prove of benefit to any unfortunate compiler who in future ages is asked to prepare a volume of humorous extracts from American authors. The job is a big one now. What it will be if America continues to produce “funny” men at the rate she has done for the past hundred years it is impossible to imagine.
In conclusion, I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness for particulars of the works of many writers to Mr. Oscar Fay Adams’ valuable little work, Handbook of American Authors. The dates which appear in this book are chiefly taken from Appleton’s Dictionary of American Biography.
J. B.
THE HUMOUR OF AMERICA.
MY DOG.
“KOSCIUSKO AND I FROLICKED AROUND.”
I HAVE owned quite a number of dogs in my life, but they are all dead now. Last evening I visited my dog cemetery—just between the gloaming and the shank of the evening. On the biscuit-box cover that stands at the head of a little mound fringed with golden rod and pickle bottles, the idler may still read these lines, etched in red chalk by a trembling hand—
LITTLE KOSCIUSKO,
.........NOT DEAD.........
BUT JERKED HENCE
BY REQUEST.
S. Y. L.
(SEE YOU LATER.)
I do not know why he was called Kosciusko. I do not care. I only know that his little grave stands out there while the gloaming gloams and the soughing winds are soughing.
Do you ask why I am alone here and dogless in this weary world?
I will tell you, anyhow. It will not take long, and it may do me good: Kosciusko came to me one night in winter, with no baggage, and unidentified.
When I opened the door he came in as though he had left something in there by mistake and had returned for it.
He stayed with us two years as a watch-dog. In a desultory way, he was a good watch-dog. If he had watched other people with the same unrelenting scrutiny with which he watched me, I might have felt his death more keenly than I do now.
The second year that little Kosciusko was with us, I shaved off a full beard one day while down town, put on a clean collar and otherwise disguised myself, intending to surprise my wife.
Kosciusko sat on the front porch when I returned. He looked at me as a cashier of a bank does when a newspaper man goes in to get a suspiciously large cheque cashed. He did not know me. I said, “Kosciusko, have you forgotten your master’s voice?”
He smiled sarcastically, showing his glorious wealth of mouth, but still sat there as though he had stuck his tail into the door-steps and couldn’t get it out.
So I waived the formality of going in at the front door, and went around to the portcullis, on the off side of the house, but Kosciusko was there when I arrived. The cook, seeing a stranger lurking around the manor-house, encouraged Kosciusko to come and gorge himself with a part of my leg, which he did. Acting on this hint I went to the barn.
I do not know why I went to the barn, but somehow there was nothing in the house that I wanted. When a man wants to be by himself there is no place like a good, quiet barn for thought. So I went into the barn, about three feet prior to Kosciusko.
Noticing the stairway, I ascended it in an aimless kind of way, about four steps at a time. What happened when we got into the haymow I do not now recall, only that Kosciusko and I frolicked around there in the hay for some time. Occasionally I would be on the top, and then he would have all the delegates, until finally I got hold of a pitchfork, and freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell. I wrapped myself up in an old horse-net and went into the house. Some of my clothes were afterwards found in the hay, and the doctor pried a part of my person out of Kosciusko’s jaws, but not enough to do me any good.
I have owned, in all, eleven dogs, and they all died violent deaths, and went out of the world totally unprepared to die.
Bill Nye.
KNEE-DEEP IN JUNE.
“LAY OUT THERE AND TRY TO SEE
JES’ HOW LAZY YOU KIN BE!”
I.
TELL you what I like the best—
’Long about knee-deep in June,
’Bout the time strawberries melts
On the vines—some afternoon
Like to jes’ git out and rest,
And not work at nothin’ else!
II.
Orchard’s where I’d ruther be—
Needn’t fence it in fer me!
Jes’ the whole sky overhead,
And the whole airth underneath—
Sorto’ so’s a man kin breathe
Like he ort, and kindo’ has
Elbow-room to keerlessly
Sprawl out len’thways on the grass,
Where the shadders thick and soft
As the kivvers on the bed
Mother fixes in the loft
Allus, when they’s company!
III.
Jes’ a sorto’ lazein’ there—
S’ lazy, ’at you peek and peer
Through the wavin’ leaves above,
Like a feller ’ats in love
And don’t know it, ner don’t keer.
Ever’thing you hear and see
Got some sort o’ interest—
Maybe find a bluebird’s nest
Tucked up there conveenently
Fer the boys ’ats apt to be
Up some other apple tree!
Watch the swallers skootin’ past
’bout as peert as you could ast;
Er the Bobwhite raise and whiz
Where some other’s whistle is.
IV.
Ketch a shadder down below,
And look up to find the crow;
Er a hawk away up there,
’Pearantly froze in the air!—
Hear the old hen squawk, and squat
Over every chick she’s got,
Suddent-like!—And she knows where
That air hawk is, well as you!—
You jes’ bet yer life she do!—
Eyes a-glittering like glass
Waitin’ till he makes a pass!
V.
Pee-wees’ singin’, to express
My opinion, ’s second class,
Yit you’ll hear ’em more er less;
Sapsucks gettin’ down to biz,
Weedin’ out the lonesomeness;
Mr. Bluejay, full o’ sass,
In those base-ball clothes o’ his,
Sportin’ ’round the orchard jes’
Like he owned the premises!
Sun out in the field kin sizz,
But flat on yer back, I guess,
In the shade’s where glory is!
That’s jes’ what I’d like to do
Stiddy fer a year er two!
VI.
Plague! ef they aint sompin’ in
Work ’at kindo’ goes agin
My convictions!—’long about
Here in June especially!—
Under some old apple tree
Jes’ a-restin’ through and through,
I could git along without
Nothin’ else at all to do
Only jes’ a-wishin’ you
Was a-gettin’ there like me,
And June was eternity!
VII.
Lay out there and try to see
Jes’ how lazy you kin be!—
Tumble round and souse yer head
In the clover-bloom, er pull
Yer straw hat acrost yer eyes,
And peek through it at the skies,
Thinkin’ of old chums ’ats dead,
Maybe, smilin’ back at you
In betwixt the beautiful
Clouds o’ gold and white and blue!—
Month a man kin railly love—
June, you know, I’m talkin’ of!
VIII.
March ain’t never nothin’ new!—
Aprile’s altogether too
Brash fer me! and May—I jes’
’Bominate its promises,—
Little hints o’ sunshine and
Green around the timber-land—
A few blossoms, and a few
Chip-birds, and a sprout er two—
Drap asleep, and it turns in
’Fore daylight and snows agin!—
But when June comes—Clear my throat
With wild honey! Rench my hair
In the dew! and hold my coat!
Whoop out loud! and throw my hat!—
June wants me and I’m to spare!
Spread them shadders anywhere,
I’ll git down and waller there,
And obleeged to you at that!
James Whitcomb Riley.
BAKED BEANS AND CULTURE.
THE members of the Boston Commercial Club are charming gentlemen. They are now the guests of the Chicago Commercial Club, and are being shown every attention that our market affords. They are a fine-looking lot, well-dressed and well-mannered, with just enough whiskers to be impressive without being imposing.
“This is a darned likely village,” said Seth Adams last evening. “Everybody is rushin’ ’round an’ doin’ business as if his life depended on it. Should think they’d git all tuckered out ’fore night, but I’ll be darned if there ain’t just as many folks on the street after nightfall as afore. We’re stoppin’ at the Palmer tavern; an’ my chamber is up so all-fired high, that I can count all your meetin’-house steeples from the winder.”
Last night five or six of these Boston merchants sat around the office of the hotel, and discussed matters and things. Pretty soon they got to talking about beans: this was the subject which they dwelt on with evident pleasure.
“Waal, sir,” said Ephraim Taft, a wholesale dealer in maple-sugar and flavoured lozenges, “you kin talk ’bout your new-fashioned dishes an’ high-falutin’ vittles; but, when you come right down to it, there ain’t no better eatin’ than a dish o’ baked pork ’n’ beans.”
“That’s so, b’ gosh!” chorussed the others.
“The truth o’ the matter is,” continued Mr. Taft, “that beans is good for everybody,—’t don’t make no difference whether he’s well or sick. Why, I’ve known a thousand folks—waal, mebbe not quite a thousand; but,—waal, now, jest to show, take the case of Bill Holbrook: you remember Bill, don’t ye?”
“Bill Holbrook?” said Mr. Ezra Eastman; “why, of course I do! Used to live down to Brimfield, next to the Moses Howard farm.”
“That’s the man,” resumed Mr. Taft. “Waal, Bill fell sick,—kinder moped round, tired like, for a week or two, an’ then tuck to his bed. His folks sent for Dock Smith,—ol’ Dock Smith that used to carry round a pair o’ leather saddlebags,—gosh, they don’t have no sech doctors nowadays! Waal, the dock, he come; an’ he looked at Bill’s tongue, an’ felt uv his pulse, an’ said that Bill had typhus fever. Ol’ Dock Smith was a very careful, conserv’tive man, an’ he never said nothin’ unless he knowed he was right.
“Bill began to git wuss, an’ he kep’ a-gittin’ wuss every day. One mornin’ ol’ Dock Smith sez, ‘Look a-here, Bill, I guess you’re a goner: as I figger it, you can’t hol’ out till nightfall.’
“Bill’s mother insisted on a con-sul-tation bein’ held; so ol’ Dock Smith sent over for young Dock Brainerd. I calc’late that, next to ol’ Dock Smith, young Dock Brainerd was the smartest doctor that ever lived.
“Waal, pretty soon along come Dock Brainerd; an’ he an’ Dock Smith went all over Bill, an’ looked at his tongue, an’ felt uv his pulse, an’ told him it was a gone case, an’ that he had got to die. Then they went off into the spare chamber to hold their con-sul-tation.
“SARY SAT DOWN BY THE BED, AN’ FED THEM BEANS INTO BILL.”
“Wall, Bill he lay there in the front room a-pantin’ an’ a-gaspin’, an’ a wond’rin’ whether it wuz true. As he wuz thinkin’, up comes the girl to git a clean tablecloth out of the clothes-press, an’ she left the door ajar as she come in. Bill he gave a sniff, an’ his eyes grew more natural like: he gathered together all the strength he had, and he raised himself up on one elbow, and sniffed again.
“‘Sary,’ says he, ‘wot’s that a-cookin’?’
“‘Beans,’ says she; ‘beans for dinner.’
“‘Sary,’ says the dyin’ man, ‘I must hev a plate uv them beans!’
“‘Sakes alive, Mr. Holbrook!’ says she; ‘if you wuz to eat any o’ them beans, it’d kill ye!’
“‘If I’ve got to die,’ says he, ‘I’m goin’ to die happy: fetch me a plate uv them beans.’
“Wall, Sary she pikes off to the doctors.
“‘Look a-here,’ says she; ‘Mr. Holbrook smelt the beans cookin’, an’ he says he’s got to have a plate uv ’em. Now, what shall I do about it?’
“‘Waal, doctor,’ says Dock Smith, ‘what do you think ’bout it?’
“‘He’s got to die anyhow,’ says Dock Brainerd; ‘an’ I don’t suppose the beans’ll make any diff’rence.’
“‘That’s the way I figger it,’ says Dock Smith; ‘in all my practice I never knew of beans hurtin’ anybody.’
“So Sary went down to the kitchen, an’ brought up a plateful of hot baked beans. Dock Smith raised Bill up in bed, an’ Dock Brainerd put a piller under the small of Bill’s back. Then Sary sat down by the bed, an’ fed them beans into Bill until Bill couldn’t hold any more.
“‘How air you feelin’ now?’ asked Dock Smith.
“Bill didn’t say nuthin’: he jest smiled sort uv peaceful like, an’ closed his eyes.
“‘The end hez come,’ said Dock Brainerd sof’ly; ‘Bill is dyin’.’
“Then Bill murmured kind o’ far-away like (as if he was dreamin’), ‘I ain’t dyin’: I’m dead an’ in heaven.’
“Next mornin’ Bill got out uv bed, an’ done a big day’s work on the farm, an’ he hain’t hed a sick spell since. Them beans cured him! I tell you, sir, that beans is,” etc.
Eugene Field.
THE NICE PEOPLE.
“THEY certainly are nice people,” I assented to my wife’s observation, using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was anything but “nice” English, “and I’ll bet that their three children are better brought up than most of——”
“Two children,” corrected my wife.
“Three, he told me.”
“My dear, she said there were two.”
“He said three.”
“You’ve simply forgotten. I’m sure she told me they had only two—a boy and a girl.”
“Well, I didn’t enter into particulars.”
“No dear, and you couldn’t have understood him. Two children.”
“All right,” I said; but I did not think it was all right. As a near-sighted man learns by enforced observation to recognise persons at a distance when the face is not visible to the normal eye, so the man with a bad memory learns, almost unconsciously, to listen carefully and report accurately. My memory is bad; but I had not had time to forget that Mr. Brewster Brede had told me that afternoon that he had three children, at present left in the care of his mother-in-law, while he and Mrs. Brede took their summer vacation.
“Two children,” repeated my wife; “and they are staying with his aunt Jenny.”
“He told me with his mother-in-law,” I put in. My wife looked at me with a serious expression. Men may not remember much of what they are told about children; but any man knows the difference between an aunt and a mother-in-law.
“But don’t you think they’re nice people?” asked my wife.
“Oh, certainly,” I replied; “only they seem to be a little mixed up about their children.”
“SEATED THEMSELVES OPPOSITE US AT TABLE.”
“That isn’t a nice thing to say,” returned my wife.
I could not deny it.
And yet the next morning, when the Bredes came down and seated themselves opposite us at table, beaming and smiling in their natural, pleasant, well-bred fashion, I knew, to a social certainty, that they were “nice” people. He was a fine-looking fellow in his neat tennis-flannels, slim, graceful, twenty-eight or thirty years old, with a Frenchy-pointed beard. She was “nice” in all her pretty clothes, and she herself was pretty with that type of prettiness which out-wears most other types—the prettiness that lies in a rounded figure, a dusky skin, plump, rosy cheeks, white teeth, and black eyes. She might have been twenty-five; you guessed that she was prettier than she was at twenty, and that she would be prettier still at forty.
And nice people were all we wanted to make us happy in Mr. Jacobus’s summer boarding-house on the top of Orange Mountain. For a week we had come down to breakfast each morning, wondering why we wasted the precious days of idleness with the company gathered around the Jacobus board. What joy of human companionship was to be had out of Mrs. Tabb and Miss Hoogencamp, the two middle-aged gossips from Scranton, Pa.,—out of Mr. and Mrs. Biggle, an indurated head-bookkeeper and his prim and censorious wife,—out of old Major Halkit, a retired business man, who, having once sold a few shares on commission, wrote for circulars of every stock company that was started, and tried to induce every one to invest who would listen to him? We looked around at those dull faces, the truthful indices of mean and barren minds, and decided that we would leave that morning. Then we ate Mrs. Jacobus’s biscuits, light as Aurora’s cloudlets, drank her honest coffee, inhaled the perfume of the late azaleas with which she decked her table, and decided to postpone our departure one more day. And then we wandered out to take our morning glance at what we called “our view”; and it seemed to us as if Tabb and Hoogencamp, and Halkit and the Biggles could not drive us away in a year.
I was not surprised when, after breakfast, my wife invited the Bredes to walk with us to “our view.” The Hoogencamp-Biggle-Tabb-Halkit contingent never stirred off Jacobus’s verandah; but we both felt that the Bredes would not profane that sacred scene. We strolled slowly across the fields, passed through the little belt of wood, and as I heard Mrs. Brede’s little cry of startled rapture, I motioned to Brede to look up.
“By Jove!” he cried; “heavenly!”
We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue, lay a dim purple line that we knew was Staten Island. Towns and villages lay before us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and lowlands, woods and plains, all massed and mingled in that great silent sea of sunlit green. For silent it was to us, standing in the silence of a high place—silent with a Sunday stillness that made us listen, without taking thought, for the sound of bells coming up from the spires that rose above the tree-tops—the tree-tops that lay as far beneath us as the light clouds were above us that dropped great shadows upon our heads and faint specks of shade upon the broad sweep of land at the mountain’s foot.
“And so that is your view?” asked Mrs. Brede, after a moment; “you are very generous to make it ours too.”
Then we lay down on the grass, and Brede began to talk in a gentle voice, as if he felt the influence of the place. He had paddled a canoe, in his earlier days, he said, and he knew every river and creek in that vast stretch of landscape. He found his landmarks, and pointed out to us where the Passaic and the Hackensack flowed, invisible to us, hidden behind great ridges that in our sight were but combings of the green waves upon which we looked down, and yet on the further side of those broad ridges and rises were scores of villages—a little world of country life, lying unseen under our eyes.
“A good deal like looking at humanity,” he said; “there is such a thing as getting so far above our fellow-men that we see only one side of them.”
Ah, how much better was this sort of talk than the chatter and gossip of the Tabb and the Hoogencamp—than the Major’s dissertations upon his everlasting circulars! My wife and I exchanged glances.
“Now, when I went up the Matterhorn,” Mr. Brede began.
“Why, dear,” interrupted his wife; “I didn’t know you ever went up the Matterhorn.”
“It—it was five years ago,” said Mr. Brede hurriedly; “I—I didn’t tell you—when I was on the other side, you know—it was rather dangerous—well, as I was saying—it looked—oh, it didn’t look at all like this.”
A cloud floated overhead, throwing its great shadow over the field where we lay. The shadow passed over the mountain’s brow, and reappeared far below, a rapidly decreasing blot; flying eastward over the golden green. My wife and I exchanged glances once more.
Somehow the shadow lingered over us all. As we went home, the Bredes went side by side along the narrow path, and my wife and I walked together.
“Should you think,” she asked me, “that a man would climb the Matterhorn the very first year he was married?”
“I don’t know, my dear,” I answered evasively; “this isn’t the first year I have been married, not by a good many, and I wouldn’t climb it—for a farm.”
“You know what I mean?” she said.
I did.
When we reached the boarding-house, Mr. Jacobus took me aside.
“You know,” he began his discourse, “my wife, she used to live in N’ York!”
I didn’t know; but I said, “Yes.”
“She says the numbers on the streets runs criss-cross like. Thirty-four’s on one side o’ the street, an’ thirty-five’s on t’other. How’s that?”
“That is the invariable rule, I believe.”
“Then—I say—these here new folk that you ’n’ your wife seems so mighty taken up with—d’ye know anything about ’em?”
“I know nothing about the character of your boarders, Mr. Jacobus,” I replied, conscious of some irritability. “If I choose to associate with any of them——”
“Jess so—jess so!” broke in Jacobus. “I hain’t nothin’ to say ag’inst yer sosherbil’ty. But do ye know them?”
“Why, certainly not,” I replied.
“Well—that was all I wuz askin’ ye. Ye see, when he come here to take the rooms—you wasn’t here then—he told my wife that he lived at number thirty-four in his street. An’ yistiddy she told her that they lived at number thirty-five. He said he lived in an apartment-house. Now, there can’t be no apartment-house on two sides of the same street, kin they?”
“What street was it?” I inquired wearily.
“Hunderd’n’ twenty-first street.”
“Maybe,” I replied, still more wearily. “That’s Harlem. Nobody knows what people will do in Harlem.”
I went up to my wife’s room.
“Don’t you think it queer?” she asked me.
“I think I’ll have a talk with that young man to-night,” I said, “and see if he can give some account of himself.”
“But, my dear,” my wife said gravely, “she doesn’t know whether they’ve had the measles or not.”
“Why, Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “they must have had them when they were children.”
“Please don’t be stupid,” said my wife. “I meant their children.”
After dinner that night—or rather after supper, for we had dinner in the middle of the day at Jacobus’s—I walked down the long verandah to ask Brede, who was placidly smoking at the other end, to accompany me on a twilight stroll. Half-way down I met Major Halkit.
“That friend of yours,” he said, indicating the unconscious figure at the further end of the house, “seems to be a queer sort of a Dick. He told me that he was out of business, and just looking round for a chance to invest his capital. And I’ve been telling him what an everlasting big show he had to take stock in the Capitoline Trust Company—starts next month—four million capital; I told you all about it. ‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘let’s wait and think about it.’ ‘Wait!’ says I; ‘the Capitoline Trust Company won’t wait for you, my boy. This is letting you in on the ground floor,’ says I; ‘and it’s now or never.’ ‘Oh, let it wait,’ says he. I don’t know what’s in-to the man.”
“I don’t know how well he knows his own business, Major,” I said as I started again for Brede’s end of the verandah. But I was troubled none the less. The Major could not have influenced the sale of one share of stock in the Capitoline Company. But that stock was a great investment; a rare chance for a purchaser with a few thousand dollars. Perhaps it was no more remarkable that Brede should not invest than that I should not; and yet it seemed to add one circumstance more to the other suspicious circumstances.
When I went upstairs that evening, I found my wife putting her hair to bed—I don’t know how I can better describe an operation familiar to every married man. I waited until the last tress was coiled up, and then I spoke.
“I’ve talked with Brede,” I said, “and I didn’t have to catechise him. He seemed to feel that some sort of explanation was looked for, and he was very outspoken. You were right about the children—that is, I must have misunderstood him. There are only two; but the Matterhorn episode was simple enough. He didn’t realise how dangerous it was until he had got so far into it that he couldn’t back out; and he didn’t tell her, because he’d left her here, you see; and under the circumstances——”
“Left her here!” cried my wife. “I’ve been sitting with her the whole afternoon, sewing, and she told me that he left her at Geneva, and came back and took her to Basle, and the baby was born there. Now I’m sure, dear, because I asked her.”
“Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought he said she was on this side of the water,” I suggested with bitter, biting irony.
“You poor dear, did I abuse you?” said my wife. “But do you know Mrs. Tabb said that she didn’t know how many lumps of sugar he took in his coffee. Now that seems queer, doesn’t it?”
It did. It was a small thing; but it looked queer, very queer.
The next morning it was clear that war was declared against the Bredes. They came down to breakfast somewhat late, and as soon as they arrived the Biggles swooped up the last fragments that remained on their plates, and made a stately march out of the dining-room. Then Miss Hoogencamp arose and departed, leaving a whole fish-ball on her plate. Even as Atalanta might have dropped an apple behind her to tempt her pursuer to check his speed, so Miss Hoogencamp left that fish-ball behind her, and between her maiden self and Contamination.
We had finished our breakfast, my wife and I, before the Bredes appeared. We talked it over, and agreed that we were glad that we had not been obliged to take sides upon such insufficient testimony.
After breakfast it was the custom of the male half of the Jacobus household to go around the corner of the building and smoke their pipes and cigars, where they would not annoy the ladies. We sat under a trellis covered with a grape vine that had borne no grapes in the memory of man. This vine, however, bore leaves, and these, on that pleasant summer morning, shielded from us two persons who were in earnest conversation in the straggling, half-dead flower-garden at the side of the house.
“I don’t want,” we heard Mr. Jacobus say, “to enter in no man’s pry-vacy; but I do want to know who it may be, like, that I hev in my house. Now what I ask of you—and I don’t want you to take it as in no ways personal—is, hev you your merridge-licence with you?”
“No,” we heard the voice of Mr. Brede reply. “Have you yours?”
I think it was a chance shot, but it told all the same. The Major (he was a widower), and Mr. Biggle and I looked at each other; and Mr. Jacobus, on the other side of the grape-trellis, looked at—I don’t know what—and was as silent as we were.
Where is your marriage-licence, married reader? Do you know? Four men, not including Mr. Brede, stood or sat on one side or the other of that grape-trellis, and not one of them knew where his marriage-licence was. Each of us had had one—the Major had had three. But where were they? Where is yours? Tucked in your best-man’s pocket; deposited in his desk, or washed to a pulp in his white waistcoat (if white waistcoats be the fashion of the hour), washed out of existence—can you tell where it is? Can you—unless you are one of those people who frame that interesting document and hang it upon their drawing-room walls?
Mr. Brede’s voice arose, after an awful stillness of what seemed like five minutes, and was, probably, thirty seconds—
“Mr. Jacobus, will you make out your bill at once, and let me pay it? I shall leave by the six o’clock train. And will you also send the waggon for my trunks?”
“I hain’t said I wanted to hev ye leave——” began Mr. Jacobus; but Brede cut him short.
“Bring me your bill.”
“But,” remonstrated Jacobus, “ef ye ain’t——”
“Bring me your bill!” said Mr. Brede.
My wife and I went out for our morning’s walk. But it seemed to us, when we looked at “our view,” as if we could only see those invisible villages of which Brede had told us—that other side of the ridges and rises of which we catch no glimpse from lofty hills or from the heights of human self-esteem. We meant to stay out until the Bredes had taken their departure; but we returned just in time to see Pete, the Jacobus darkey, the blacker of boots, the brusher of coats, the general handy-man of the house, loading the Bredes’ trunks on the Jacobus waggon.
And, as we stepped upon the verandah, down came Mrs. Brede, leaning on Mr. Brede’s arm as though she were ill; and it was clear that she had been crying—there were heavy rings about her pretty black eyes.
My wife took a step towards her.
“Look at that dress, dear,” she whispered; “she never thought anything like this was going to happen when she put that on.”
It was a pretty, delicate, dainty dress, a graceful, narrow-striped affair. Her hat was trimmed with a narrow-striped silk of the same colour—maroon and white; and in her hand she held a parasol that matched her dress.
“She’s had a new dress on twice a day,” said my wife; “but that’s the prettiest yet. Oh, somehow—I’m awfully sorry they’re going!”
But going they were. They moved towards the steps. Mrs. Brede looked towards my wife, and my wife moved towards Mrs. Brede. But the ostracised woman, as though she felt the deep humiliation of her position, turned sharply away, and opened her parasol to shield her eyes from the sun. A shower of rice—a half-pound shower of rice—fell down over her pretty hat and her pretty dress, and fell in a splattering circle on the floor, outlining her skirts, and there it lay in a broad, uneven band, and bright in the morning sun.
“MRS. BREDE WAS IN MY WIFE’S ARMS.”
Mrs. Brede was in my wife’s arms, sobbing as if her young heart would break.
“Oh, you poor, dear, silly children!” my wife cried, as Mrs. Brede sobbed on her shoulder; “why didn’t you tell us?”
“W-w-we didn’t want to be t-t-taken for a b-b-b-b-bridal couple,” sobbed Mrs. Brede; “and we d-d-didn’t dream what awful lies we’d have to tell, and all the aw-aw-ful mixed-up mess of it. Oh, dear, dear, dear!”
“Pete!” commanded Mr. Jacobus, “put back them trunks. These folks stays here’s long’s they wants ter. Mr. Brede”—he held out a large, hard hand—“I’d orter ’ve known better,” he said; and my last doubt of Mr. Brede vanished as he shook that grimy hand in manly fashion.
The two women were walking off toward “our view,” each with an arm about the other’s waist—touched by a sudden sisterhood of sympathy.
“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Brede, addressing Jacobus, Biggle, the Major, and me, “there is a hostelry down the street where they sell honest New Jersey beer. I recognise the obligations of the situation.”
We five men filed down the street, and the two women went toward the pleasant slope where the sunlight gilded the forehead of the great hill. On Mr. Jacobus’s verandah lay a spattered circle of shining grains of rice. Two of Mr. Jacobus’s pigeons flew down and picked up the shining grains, making grateful noises far down in their throats.
H. C. Bunner.
THE EUREKY RAT-TRAP.
“I TAKE GREAT PLEASURE IN PRESENTING TO YOUR ATTENTION THE EUREKY RAT-TRAP.”
HE boarded the boat at a landing about a hundred miles above Vicksburg, having two dilapidated but bulky-looking satchels as luggage. He said he was bound to “Orleans,” and when the clerk told him what the fare would be he uttered a long whistle of amazement, and inquired—
“Isn’t that pooty steep?”
“Regular figure, sir,” replied the clerk.
“Seems like a big price for just riding on a boat,” continued the stranger.
“Come, I’m in a hurry,” said the clerk.
“That’s the lowest figure, eh?” inquired the stranger.
“Yes—that’s the regular fare.”
“No discount to a regular traveller?”
“We make no discount from that figure.”
“Ye wouldn’t take half of it in trade?”
“I want your fare at once, or we will have to land you!”
“Don’t want a nice rat-trap, do ye, stranger?” inquired the passenger. “One which sets herself, works on scientific principles, allus ready, painted a nice green, wanted by every family, warranted to knock the socks off’n any other trap ever invented by mortal man?”
“No, sir; I want the money!” replied the clerk in emphatic tones.
“Oh, wall, I’ll pay; of course I will,” said the rat-trap man; “but that’s an awful figger for a ride to Orleans, and cash is cash these days.”
He counted out the fare in ragged shin-plasters, wound a shoe-string around his wallet and replaced it, and then unlocked one of the satchels and took out a wire rat-trap. Proceeding to the cabin, he looked the ground over, and then waltzing up to a young lady who sat on a sofa reading, he began—
“I take great pleasure in presenting to your attention the Eureky rat-trap, the best trap ever invented. It sets——”
“Sir!” she exclaimed, rising to her feet.
“Name’s Harrington Baker,” he went on, turning the trap around on his outstretched hand, “and I guarantee this trap to do more square killing among rats than——”
She gave him a look of scorn and contempt, and swept grandly away; and without being the least put out he walked over to a bald-headed man who had tilted his chair back and fallen asleep.
“Fellow-mortal, awakest and gaze upon the Eureky rat-trap,” said the stranger, as he laid his hand on the shiny pate of the sleeper.
“Wh—who—what!” exclaimed the Bald-head, opening his eyes and flinging his arms around.
“I take this opportunity to call your attention to my Eureky rat-trap,” continued the new passenger; “the noblest Roman of them all. Try one, and you will use no other. It is constructed on——”
“Who in thunder do you take me for?” exclaimed the bald-headed man at this point. “What in blazes do I want of your rat-trap?”
“To ketch rats!” humbly replied the stranger; “to clear yer premises of one of the most obnoxious pests known to man. I believe I am safe in saying that this ’ere——”
“Go away, sir—go away; or I’ll knock your blamed head off!” roared the Bald-head. “When I want a rat-trap I shan’t patronise travelling vagabonds! Your audacity in daring to put your hand on my head and wake me up deserves a caning!”
“Then you don’t want a rat-trap?”
“No, SIR!” yelled Bald-head.
“I’ll make you one mighty cheap.”
“I’ll knock you down, sir!” roared Bald-head, looking around for his cane.
“Oh, wall, I ain’t a starvin’, and it won’t make much difference if I don’t sell to you!” remarked the stranger, and he backed off and left the cabin for the promenade deck.
An old maid sat in the shadow of the Texas, embroidering a slipper, and the rat-trap man drew a stool up beside her and remarked—
“Madam, my name is Baker, and I am the inventor of the Eureky rat-trap, a sample copy of which I hold here on my left hand, and I think I can safely say that——”
“Sir, this is unpardonable!” she exclaimed, pushing back.
“I didn’t have an introduction to ye, of course,” he replied, holding the trap up higher: “but business is business, you know. Let me sell you a Eureky trap, and make ye happy for life; I warrant this trap to——”
“Sir, I shall call the captain!” she interrupted, turning pale with rage.
“Does he want a trap?” eagerly inquired the man.
“Such impudence deserves the horsewhip!” screamed the old maid, backing away.
The rat-trap man went forward and found a northern invalid, who was so far gone that he could hardly speak above a whisper.
“Ailing, eh?” queried the trapper.
The invalid nodded.
“Wall, I won’t say that my Eureky rat-trap will cure ye,” continued the man; “but this much I do say, and will swear to on a million Bibles, that it climbs the ridge-pole over any immortal vermin-booster ever yet set before——”
The captain came up at this juncture, and informed the inventor that he must quit annoying passengers.
“But some of ’em may want one o’ my Eureky traps,” protested the man.
“Can’t help it; this is no place to sell traps.”
“But this is no scrub trap—none o’ your humbugs, got up to swindle the hair right off of an innocent and confiding public.”
“You hear me—put that trap up!”
“I’ll put it up, of course; but then I’ll leave it to yerself if it isn’t rather Shylocky in a steamboat to charge me the reg’lar figger to Orleans, and then stop me from passing my Eureky rat-trap out to the hankerin’ public?”
C. B. Lewis (“M. Quad.”)
THE SCHOOL EXAMINATION.
THE bell tapped, and they came forth to battle. There was the line, there was the leader. The great juncture of the day was on him. Was not here the State’s official eye? Did not victory hover overhead? His reserve, the darling regiment, the flower of his army, was dressing for the final charge. There was Claude. Next him, Sidonie!—and Étienne, and Madelaine, Henri and Marcelline,—all waiting for the word—the words—of eight syllables! Supreme moment! Would any betray? Banish the thought! Would any fail?
He waited an instant while two or three mothers bore out great armfuls of slumbering or fretting infancy, and a number of young men sank down into the vacated chairs. Then he stepped down from the platform, drew back four or five yards from the class, opened the spelling-book, scanned the first word, closed the book with his finger at the place, lifted it high above his head, and cried—
“Claude! Claude, my brave scholar, always perfect, ah you ready?” He gave the little book a half whirl round, and dashed forward towards the chosen scholar, crying as he came—
“In-e-rad-i-ca-bility!”
Claude’s face suddenly set in a stony vacancy, and with his eyes staring straight before him he responded—
“I-n, in-, e, inerad-, r-a-d, rad-, inerad-, ineraddy-, ineradica-, c-a, ca, ineradica-, ineradicabili-, b-i-elly- billy, ineradicabili-, ineradicabili-, t-y, ty, ineradicability.”
“Right! Claude, my boy! my always good scholar, right!” The master drew back to his starting-place as he spoke, re-opened the book, shut it again, lifted it high in the air, cried, “Madelaine, my dear chile, prepare!” whirled the book and rushed upon her with—
“In-de-fat-i-ga-bil-ly-ty!”
Madelaine turned to stone, and began—
“I-n, een, d-e, de-, inde-, indefat-, indefat—fat—f-a-t, fat, indefat, indefatty, i, ty, indefati-, indefatiga-, g-a, ga, indefatiga-, indefatigabilly, b-i-elly, billy, indefatigabili-, t-y, ty, indefatigability.”
“O, Madelaine, my chile, you make yo’ teacher proud! prah-ood, my chile!” Bonaventure’s hand rested a moment tenderly on her head as he looked first towards the audience and then towards the stranger. Then he drew off for the third word. He looked at it twice before he called it. Then—
“Sidonie! ah! Sidonie, be ready! be prepared! fail not yo’ humble school-teacher! In-com——” He looked at the word a third time, and then swept down upon her; “In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-bility!”
Sidonie flinched not nor looked upon him, as he hung over her with the spelling-book at arm’s reach above them; yet the pause that followed seemed to speak dismay, and throughout the class there was a silent recoil from something undiscovered by the master. But an instant later Sidonie had chosen between the two horns of her agonising dilemma, and began—
“I-n, een, c-o-m, cawm, eencawm, eencawmpre, p-r-e, pre, eencawmpre, eencawmprehen, prehen, haich-e-n, hen, hen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, eencawmprehensi-, bil——”
“Ah! Sidonie! stop! Arretez! Si-do-nie-e-e-e! Oh! listen—écoutez—Sidonie, my dear!” The master threw his arms up and down in distraction, then suddenly faced the visitor. “Sir, it was my blame! I spoke the word without adequate distinction! Sidonie—maintenant—now!” But a voice in the audience interrupted with—
“Assoiez-vous la, Chat-oué! seet down yondeh!” And at the potent voice of Maximian Roussel the offender was pushed silently into the seat he had risen from, and Bonaventure gave the word again.
“In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-bil-i-ty!” And Sidonie, blushing like fire, returned to the task.
“I-n, een——” She bit her lips and trembled.
“Right! Right! Tremble not, my Sidonie! fear naught! yo’ loving school-teacher is at thy side!” But she trembled like a red leaf as she spelled on—“Haich-e-n, hen, eencawmprehen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, eencawmprehensi-, eencawmprehensi-billy-t-y, ty, incomprehensibility!”
The master dropped his hands and lifted his eyes in speechless despair. As they fell again upon Sidonie her own met them. She moaned, covered her face with her hands, burst into tears, ran to her desk, and threw her hands and face upon it, shaking with noiseless sobs and burning red to the nape of her perfect neck. All Grande Pointe rose to its feet.
“Lost!” cried Bonaventure in a heart-broken voice. “Every thing lost! Farewell, chil’run!” He opened his arms towards them, and with one dash all the lesser ones filled them. They wept. Tears welled from Bonaventure’s eyes; and the mothers of Grande Pointe dropped again into their seats and silently added theirs.
The next moment all eyes were on Maximian. His strong figure was mounted on a chair, and he was making a gentle, commanding gesture with one hand as he called: “Seet down! Seet down, all han’!” and all sank down, Bonaventure in a mass of weeping and clinging children. ’Mian too resumed his seat, at the same time waving to the stranger to speak.
“My friends,” said the visitor, rising with alacrity, “I say when a man makes a bargain, he ought to stick to it!” He paused for them—as many as could—to take in the meaning of his English speech, and, it may be, expecting some demonstration of approval; but dead silence reigned, all eyes on him save Bonaventure’s and Sidonie’s. He began again: “A bargain’s a bargain!” And Chat-oué nodded approvingly and began to say audibly, “Yass;” but ’Mian thundered out—
“Taise toi, Chat-oué! Shot op!” And the silence was again complete, while the stranger resumed—
“HE OPENED HIS ARMS, AND WITH ONE DASH ALL THE LESSER ONES FILLED THEM.”
“There was a plain bargain made.” He moved a step forward and laid the matter off on the palm of his hand. “There was to be an examination! The school was not to know; but if one scholar should make one mistake the schoolhouse was to be closed and the schoolmaster sent away. Well, there’s been a mistake made, and I say a bargain’s a bargain.” Dead silence still. The speaker looked at ’Mian. “Do you think they understand me?”
“Dey meck out,” said ’Mian, and shut his firm jaws.
“My friends,” said the stranger once more, “some people think education’s a big thing, and some think it ain’t. Well, sometimes it is, and sometimes it ain’t. Now, here’s this man”—he pointed down to where Bonaventure’s dishevelled crown was drooping to his knees—“claims to have taught over thirty of your children to read. Well, what of it? A man can know how to read, and be just as no account as he was before. He brags that he’s taught them to talk English. Well, what does that prove? A man might speak English and starve to death. He claims, I am told, to have taught some of them to write. But I know a man in the penitentiary that can write; he wrote too much.”
Bonaventure had lifted his head, and was sitting with his eyes upon the speaker in close attention. At this last word he said—
“Ah! sir! too true, too true ah yo’ words; nevertheless, their cooelty! ’Tis not what is print’ in the books, but what you learn through the books!”
“Yes; and so you hadn’t never ought to have made the bargain you made; but, my friends, a bargain’s a bargain, and the teacher’s——” He paused invitingly, and an answer came from the audience. It was Catou who rose and said—
“Naw, sah. Naw; he don’t got to go!” But again ’Mian thundered—
“Taise toi, Catou. Shot op!”
“I say,” continued the stranger, “the mistake’s been made. Three mistakes have been made!”
“Yass!” roared Chat-oué, leaping to his feet and turning upon the assemblage a face fierce with triumph. Suspense and suspicions were past now; he was to see his desire on his enemy. But instantly a dozen men were on their feet—St. Pierre, Catou, Bonaventure himself, with a countenance full of pleading deprecation, and even Claude, flushed with anger.
“Naw, sah! Naw, sah! Waun meesteck?”
“Seet down, all han’!” yelled ’Mian; “all han’ seet dahoon!” Only Chat-oué took his seat, glancing upon the rest with the exultant look of one who can afford to yield ground.
“The first mistake,” resumed the stranger, addressing himself especially to the risen men still standing, and pointing to Catou, “the first mistake was in the kind of bargain you made.” He ceased, and passed his eyes around from one to another until they rested for an instant on the bewildered countenance of Chat-oué. Then he turned again upon the people, who had sat down, and began to speak with the exultation of a man that feels his subject lifting him above himself.
“I came out here to show up that man as a fraud. But what do I find?—A poor, unpaid, half-starved man that loves his thankless work better than his life, teaching what not one school-master in a thousand can teach: teaching his whole school four better things than were ever printed in any school-book—how to study, how to think, how to value knowledge, and to love one another and mankind. What you’d ought to have done was to agree that such a school should keep open, and such a teacher should stay, if jest one, one lone child should answer one single book-question right! But, as I said before, a bargain’s a bargain——Hold on, there! Sit down! You shan’t interrupt me again!” Men were standing up on every side; there was a confusion and a loud buzz of voices. “The second mistake,” the stranger made haste to cry, “was thinking the teacher gave out that last word right. He gave it wrong! And the third mistake,” he shouted against the rising commotion, “was thinking it was spelt wrong. She spelt it right! And a bargain’s a bargain!—the school-master stays!”
“SEIZING HER HANDS IN HIS AS SHE TURNED TO FLY.”
He could say no more; the rumble of voices suddenly burst into a cheer. The women and children laughed and clapped their hands,—Toutou his feet also,—and Bonaventure, flirting the leaves of a spelling-book till he found the place, looked, cried “In-com-pre-hen-sibility!” wheeled and dashed upon Sidonie, seizing her hands in his as she turned to fly, and gazed speechlessly upon her, with the tears running down his face. Feeling a large hand upon his shoulder, he glanced around and saw ’Mian pointing him to his platform and desk. Thither he went. The stranger had partly restored order. Every one was in his place. But what a change! What a gay flutter throughout the old shed! Bonaventure seemed to have bathed in the fountain of youth. Sidonie, once more the school’s queen-flower, sat calm, with just a trace of tears adding a subtle something to her beauty.
“Chil’run, beloved chil’run,” said Bonaventure, standing once more by his desk, “yo’ school-teacher has the blame of the sole mistake; and, sir, gladly, oh, gladly, sir, would he always have the blame rather than any of his beloved school-chil’run!”
George Washington Cable.
“WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW?”
A MADRIGAL.
I KNOW a girl with teeth of pearl,
And shoulders white as snow;
She lives,—ah! well,
I must not tell,—
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Her sunny hair is wondrous fair,
And wavy in its flow;
Who made it less
One little tress,—
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Her eyes are blue (celestial hue!)
And dazzling in their glow;
On whom they beam
With melting gleam,—
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Her lips are red and finely wed,
Like roses ere they blow;
What lover sips
Those dewy lips,—
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Her fingers are like lilies fair,
When lilies fairest grow;
Whose hand they press
With fond caress,—
Wouldn’t you like to know?
Her foot is small, and has a fall
Like snowflakes on the snow;
And where it goes
Beneath the rose,—
Wouldn’t you like to know?
She has a name, the sweetest name
That language can bestow.
’Twould break the spell
If I should tell,—
Wouldn’t you like to know?
John G. Saxe.
THE ARTLESS PRATTLE OF CHILDHOOD.
WE always did pity a man who does not love childhood. There is something morally wrong with such a man. If his tenderest sympathies are not awakened by their innocent prattle, if his heart does not echo their merry laughter, if his whole nature does not reach out in ardent longing after their pure thoughts and unselfish impulses, he is a sour, crusty, crabbed old stick, and the world full of children has no use for him. In every age and clime the best and noblest men loved children. Even wicked men have a tender spot left in their hardened hearts for little children. The great men of the earth love them. Dogs love them. Kamehame Kemokimodahroah, the King of the Cannibal Islands, loves them. Rare and no gravy. Ah, yes, we all love children.
And what a pleasure it is to talk with them! Who can chatter with a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, quick-witted little darling, anywhere from three to five years, and not appreciate the pride which swells a mother’s breast when she sees her little ones admired? Ah, yes, to be sure.
One day—ah, can we ever cease to remember that dreamy, idle, summer afternoon—a lady friend, who was down in the city on a shopping excursion, came into the sanctum with her little son, a dear little tid-toddler of five bright summers, and begged us to amuse him while she pursued the duties which called her down town. Such a bright boy; so delightful it was to talk to him. We can never forget the blissful half-hour we spent booking that prodigy up in his centennial history.
“Now, listen, Clary,” we said—his name was Clarence Fitzherbert Alencon de Marchemont Caruthers—“and learn about George Washington.”
“Who’s he?” inquired Clarence, etc.
“Listen,” we said; “he was the father of his country.”
“Whose country?”
“Ours—yours and mine; the confederated union of the American people, cemented with the life-blood of the men of ’76 poured out upon the altars of our country as the dearest libation to liberty that her votaries can offer.”
“Who did?” asked Clarence.
There is a peculiar tact in talking to children that very few people possess. Now most people would have grown impatient, and lost their temper, when little Clarence asked so many irrelevant questions, but we did not. We knew that, however careless he might appear at first, we could soon interest him in the story, and he would be all eyes and ears. So we smiled sweetly—that same sweet smile which you may have noticed on our photographs. Just the faintest ripple of a smile breaking across the face like a ray of sunlight, and checked by lines of tender sadness, just before the two ends of it pass each other at the back of the neck. And so, smiling, we went on.
“Well, one day George’s father——”
“George who?” asked Clarence.
“George Washington. He was a little boy then, just like you. One day his father——”
“Whose father?” demanded Clarence, with an encouraging expression of interest.
“George Washington’s—this great man we were telling you of. One day George Washington’s father gave him a little hatchet for a——”
“Gave who a little hatchet?” the dear child interrupted with a gleam of bewitching intelligence. Most men would have betrayed signs of impatience, but we didn’t. We know how to talk to children, so we went on.
“George Washington. His——”
“Who gave him the little hatchet?”
“His father. And his father——”
“Whose father?”
“George Washington’s.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, George Washington. And his father told him——”
“Told who?”
“Told George.”
“Oh, yes, George.”
And we went on, just as patient and as pleasant as you could imagine. We took up the story right where the boy interrupted; for we could see that he was just crazy to hear the end of it. We said—
“And he told him that——”
“Who told him what?” Clarence broke in.
“Why, George’s father told George.”
“What did he tell him?”
“Why, that’s just what I’m going to tell you. He told him——”
“Who told him?”
“George’s father. He——”
“What for?”
“Why, so he wouldn’t do what he told him not to do. He told him——”
“George told him?” queried Clarence.
“No, his father told George——”
“Oh!”
“Yes; told him that he must be careful with the hatchet——”
“Who must be careful?”
“George must.”
“Oh!”
“Yes; must be careful with the hatchet——”
“What hatchet?”
“Why, George’s.”
“Oh!”
“Yes; with the hatchet, and not cut himself with it, or drop it in the cistern, or leave it out in the grass all night. So George went round cutting everything he could reach with his hatchet. At last he came to a splendid apple tree, his father’s favourite, and cut it down and——”
“Who cut it down?”
“George did.”
“Oh!”
“——but his father came home and saw it the first thing, and——”
“Saw the hatchet?”
“No; saw the apple tree. And he said, ‘Who has cut down my favourite apple tree?’”
“What apple tree?”
“George’s father’s. And everybody said they didn’t know anything about it, and——”
“Anything about what?”
“The apple tree.”
“Oh!”
“——and George came up and heard them talking about it——”
“Heard who talking about it?”
“Heard his father and the men.”
“What was they talking about?”
“About this apple tree.”
“What apple tree?”
“The favourite apple tree that George cut down.”
“George who?”
“George Washington.”
“Oh!”
“So George came up and heard them talking about it, and he——”
“What did he cut it down for?”
“Just to try his little hatchet.”
“Whose little hatchet?”
“Why, his own; the one his father gave him.”
“Gave who?”
“Why, George Washington.”
“Who gave it to him?”
“His father did.”
“Oh!”
“So George came up and he said, ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie. I——’”
“Who couldn’t tell a lie?”
“Why, George Washington. He said, ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie. It was——’”
“His father couldn’t?”
“Why, no; George couldn’t.”
“Oh, George? Oh yes.”
“‘—it was I cut down your apple tree. I did——’”
“His father did?”
“No, no. It was George said this.”
“Said he cut his father?”
“No, no, no; said he cut down his apple tree.”
“George’s apple tree?”
“No, no; his father’s.”
“Oh!”
“He said——”
“His father said?”
“No, no, no; George said, ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet.’ And his father said, ‘Noble boy, I would rather lose a thousand trees than have you tell a lie.’”
“George did?”
“No; his father said that.”
“Said he’d rather have a thousand apple trees?”
“No, no, no; said he’d rather lose a thousand apple trees than——”
“Said he’d rather George would?”
“No; said he’d rather he would than have him lie.”
“Oh, George would rather have his father lie?”
We are patient, and we love children, but if Mrs. Caruthers, of Arch Street, hadn’t come and got her prodigy at this critical juncture, we don’t believe all Burlington could have pulled us out of that snarl. And as Clarence Fitzherbert Alencon de Marchemont Caruthers pattered down the stairs, we heard him telling his ma about a boy who had a father named George, and he told him to cut down an apple tree, and he said he’d rather tell a thousand lies than cut down one apple tree.
Robert Jones Burdette.
SPEECH ON THE BABIES.
[At the banquet, in Chicago, given by the army of the Tennessee to their first commander, General U. S. Grant, November 1879. The fifteenth regular toast was “The Babies—as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities.”]
I LIKE that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world’s banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn’t amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute—if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life, and recontemplate your first baby—you will remember that he amounted to a good deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around too. He was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. You had to execute his orders whether it was possible or not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn’t dare say a word. You could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears, you set your faces toward the batteries and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop, you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the chance too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his pap-bottle, and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right—three parts water to one of milk, and a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs. I can taste the stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying, that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin—simply wind on the stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two o’clock in the morning, didn’t you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself?
“ROCK-A-BY BABY IN THE TREE-TOP.”
Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!—“Rock-a-by baby in the tree-top,” for instance. What a spectacle for an army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbours, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? (“Go on!”) You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn’t amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you can’t make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don’t you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot, and there ain’t any real difference between triplets and an insurrection.
Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognise the importance of the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our increase. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political leviathan—a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be on deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands.
Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are. In one of these cradles the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething—think of it!—and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the future renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a languid interest—poor little chap!—and wondering what has become of that other one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future great historian is lying—and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. In another the future president is busying himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouth—an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.
Samuel L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”).
ON CYCLONES.
I DESIRE to state that my position as United States cyclonist for this judicial district is now vacant. I resigned on the 9th day of September, A.D. 1884.
I have not the necessary personal magnetism to look a cyclone in the eye and make it quail. I am stern and even haughty in my intercourse with men, but when a Manitoba simoon takes me by the brow of my pantaloons and throws me across township 28, range 18, west of the 5th principal meridian, I lose my mental reserve and become anxious and even taciturn. For thirty years I had yearned to see a grown-up cyclone, of the ring-tail-puller variety, mop up the green earth with huge forest trees and make the landscape look tired. On the 9th day of September, A.D. 1884, my morbid curiosity was gratified.
As the people came out into the forest with lanterns and pulled me out of the crotch of a basswood tree with a “tackle and fall,” I remember I told them I didn’t yearn for any more atmospheric phenomena.
The old desire for a hurricane that could blow a cow through a penitentiary was satiated. I remember when the doctor pried the bones of my leg together, in order to kind of draw my attention away from the limb, he asked me how I liked the fall style of zephyr in that locality.
I said it was all right, what there was of it. I said this in a tone of bitter irony.
Cyclones are of two kinds—viz., the dark maroon cyclone, and the iron grey cyclone with pale green mane and tail. It was the latter kind I frolicked with on the above-named date.
My brother and I were riding along in the grand old forest, and I had just been singing a few bars from the opera of “Whoop ’em up, Lizzie Jane,” when I noticed that the wind was beginning to sough through the trees. Soon after that I noticed that I was soughing through the trees also, and I am really no slouch of a sougher either when I get started.
The horse was hanging by the breeching from the bough of a large butternut tree, waiting for some one to come and pick him.
I did not see my brother at first, but after a while he disengaged himself from a rail fence, and came where I was hanging, wrong end up, with my personal effects spilling out of my pockets. I told him that as soon as the wind kind of softened down, I wished he would go and pick the horse. He did so, and at midnight a party of friends carried me into town on a stretcher. It was quite an ovation. To think of a torchlight procession coming out way out there into the woods at midnight, and carrying me into town on their shoulders in triumph! And yet I was once a poor boy!
It shows what may be accomplished by any one if he will persevere and insist on living a different life.
The cyclone is a natural phenomenon, enjoying the most robust health. It may be a pleasure for a man with great will power and an iron constitution to study more carefully into the habits of the cyclone, but as far as I am concerned, individually, I could worry along some way if we didn’t have a phenomenon in the house from one year’s end to another.
As I sit here, with my leg in a silicate of soda corset, and watch the merry throng promenading down the street, or mingling in the giddy torchlight procession, I cannot repress a feeling toward a cyclone that almost amounts to disgust.
Bill Nye.
OUR CORRESPONDENT HAS THE HONOUR TO BE.
Washington, D.C., March 20, 1861.
JUDGE not by appearances, for appearances are very deceptive,—as the old lady cholerically remarked when one, who was really a virgin unto forty, blushingly informed her that she was “just twenty-five this month.”
Though you find me in Washington now, I was born of respectable parents, and gave every indication, in my satchel and apron days, of coming to something better than this.
Slightly northward of the Connecticut river, where a pleasant little conservative village mediates between two opposition hills, you may behold the landscape on which my infantile New England eyes first traced the courses of future railroads.
Near the centre of this village in the valley, and a little back from its principal road, stood the residence of my worthy sire, and a very pretty residence it was. From the frequent addition of a new upper room here, a new dormer window there, and an innovating skylight elsewhere, the roof of the mansion had gradually assumed an alpine variety of juts and peaks somewhat confusing to behold. Local tradition related that, on a certain showery occasion, a streak of lightning was seen to descend upon that roof, skip vaguely about from one peak to another, and finally slink ignominiously down the water-pipe, as though utterly disgusted with its own inability to determine, where there were so many, which peak it should particularly perforate.
Such was the house in which I came to life a certain number of years ago, entering the world like a human exclamation point between two of the angriest sentences of a September storm, and adding materially to the uproar prevailing at the time.
Next to my parents, the person I can best remember, as I look back, was our family physician. A very obese man was he, with certain sweet-oiliness of manner, and never put out of patience. I think I can see him still, as he arose from his chair after a profound study of the case before him, and wrote a prescription so circumlocutory in its effect that it sent a servant half-a-mile to his friend the druggist for articles she might have found in her own kitchen, aqua pumpaginis and sugar being the sole ingredients required.
The doctor had started business in our village as a veterinary surgeon, but as the entire extent of his practice for six months in that line was a call to mend one of Colt’s revolvers, he finally turned his attention to the ailings of his fellows, and wrought many cures with sugar and water latinised.
At first, my father did not patronise the new doctor, having very little faith in the efficacy of sugar and water, without the addition of certain other composites often seen in bottles; but the doctor’s neat speech at a Sunday-school festival won his heart at last. The festival was held near a series of small water-falls just out of the village, and the doctor, who was an invited guest, was called upon for a few appropriate remarks. In compliance with the demand, he made a speech of some compass, ending with a peroration that is still quoted in my native place. He pointed impressively to the water-falls, and says he—
“All the works of nature is somewhat beautiful, with a good moral. Even them cataracts,” says he sagely, “have a moral, and seems eternally whispering to the young, that ‘those what err falls.’”
The effect of this happy illustration was very pleasing, my boy; especially with those who prefer morality to grammar; and after that the physician had the run of all the pious families—our own included.
It was a handsome compliment this worthy man paid me when I was about six months old. Having just received from my father the amount of his last bill, he was complacent to the last degree, and felt inclined to do the handsome thing. He patted my head as I sat upon my mother’s lap, and says he—
“How beautiful is babes! So small and yet so much like human beings, only not so large. This boy,” says he fatly, looking down at me, “will make a noise in the world yet. He has a long head, a very long head.”
“Do you think so?” says my father.
“Indeed I do,” says the doctor. “The little fellow,” says he in a sudden fit of abstraction, “has a long head, a very long head—and it’s as thick as it is long.”
“AND IT’S AS THICK AS IT IS LONG.”
There was some coolness between the doctor and my father after that, and on the following Sunday my mother refused to look at his wife’s new bonnet in church.
So far as I can trace back, we never had a literary character in our family, save a venerable aunt of mine, on my mother’s side, who commenced her writing career by refusing to contribute to the Sunday papers, and subsequently won much fame as the authoress of a set of copy-books. When this gifted relative found herself acquiring a reputation she came in state to visit us, and so disgusted my very practical father, by wearing slipshod gaiters, inking her right-hand thumb-nail every morning, calling all things by European names, and insisting upon giving our oldest plough-horse the romantic and literary title of “Lord Byron,” that my exasperated parent incurred a most tremendous prejudice against authorship, and vowed, when she went away, that he never would invite her presence again.
I was only twenty years old at that time, and the novelty of my aunt’s conduct had a rather infatuating effect upon me. With the perversity often observable in youngsters before they have seen much of the world, I became deeply interested in my literary relative as soon as my father began speaking contemptuously of her pursuits, and it took very little time to invest me with a longing and determination to be a writer.
Thenceforth I wore negligent linen; frequently rested my head upon the forefinger of my right hand, with a lofty and abstracted air; assumed an expression of settled and mysterious gloom when at church, and suffered my hair to grow long and uncombed.
My bearing during this period of infatuation could hardly fail to attract considerable attention in our village, and there were two opinions about me. One was that I had been jilted; the other that I was likely to become a vagabond and an actor. My father inclined to the former, and left me, as he thought, to get over my disappointment in the natural way.
My peripatetic spell had lasted about six weeks, when I formed the acquaintance of the editor of the Lily of the Valley, who permitted me to mope in his office now and then, and soothed my literary inflammation by allowing me to write “puffs” for the village milliner.
While looking over some old magazines in the Lily office one day, I found in an ancient British periodical a raking article upon American literature, wherein the critic affirmed that all our writers were but weak imitators of English authors, and that such a thing as a Distinctly American Poem, sui generis, had not yet been produced.
“IN THE SOLITUDE OF MY ROOM, THAT NIGHT, I WOOED THE ABORIGINAL MUSE.”
This radical sneer at the United States of America fired my Yankee blood, and I vowed within myself to write a poem, not only distinctively American, but of such a character that only America could have produced it. In the solitude of my room, that night, I wooed the aboriginal muse, and two days thereafter the Lily of the Valley contained my distinctive American poem of
“THE AMERICAN TRAVELLER.”
To Lake Aghmoogenegamook,
All in the State of Maine,
A man from Wittequergaugaum came
One evening in the rain.
“I am a traveller,” said he,
“Just started on a tour,
And go to Nomjamskillicook
To-morrow morn at four.”
He took a tavern bed that night,
And with the morrow’s sun,
By way of Sekledobskus went,
With carpet-bag and gun.
A week passed on; and next we find
Our native tourist come,
To that sequestered village called
Genasagarnagum.
From thence he went to Absequoit,
And there—quite tired of Maine—
He sought the mountains of Vermont,
Upon a railroad train.
Dog Hollow, in the Green Mount State,
Was his first stopping-place,
And then Skunk’s Misery displayed
Its sweetness and its grace.
By easy stages then he went
To visit Devil’s Den;
And Scrabble Hollow, by the way
Did come within his ken.
Then, viâ Nine Holes and Goose Green,
He travelled through the State,
And to Virginia, finally,
Was guided by his fate.
Within the Old Dominion’s bounds,
He wandered up and down,
To-day, at Buzzard Roost ensconced,
To-morrow at Hell Town.
At Pole Cat, too, he spent a week,
Till friends from Bull Ring came,
And made him spend the day with them,
In hunting forest game.
Then with his carpet-bag in hand,
To Dog Town next he went;
Though stopping at Free Negro Town,
Where half a day he spent.
From thence into Negationburg
His route of travel lay,
Which having gained, he left the State
And took a southward way.
North Carolina’s friendly soil
He trod at fall of night,
And, on a bed of softest down,
He slept at Hell’s Delight.
Morn found him on the road again,
To Slouchy Level bound;
At Bull’s Tail, and Lick Lizzard, too,
Good provender he found.
But the plantations near Burnt Coat
Were even finer still,
And made the wondering tourist feel
A soft, delicious thrill.
At Tear Shirt, too, the scenery
Most charming did appear,
With Snatch It in the distance far
And Purgatory near.
But spite of all these pleasant scenes
The tourist stoutly swore
That home is brightest after all,
And travel is a bore.
So back he went to Maine straightway.
A little wife he took;
And now is making nutmegs at
Moosehicmagunticook.
In his note introductory of this poem the editor of the Lily affirmed that I had named none but veritable localities (which was strictly true), and ventured the belief that the composition would remind his readers of Goldsmith. Upon which his scorpion contemporary in the next village observed that there was rather more smith than gold about the poem.
Up to the time when this poem appeared in print, I had succeeded in concealing from my father the nature of my incidental occupation; but now he must know all.
He did know all; and the result was that he gave me ten dollars, and sent me to New York to look out for myself.
“It’s the only thing that will save him,” says he to my mother; “and I must either send him off or expect to see him sink by degrees to editorship and begin wearing disgraceful clothes.”
I went to New York; I became private secretary and speech-scribe to an unscrupulous and, therefore, rising politician, and now I am in Washington.
I had a certain postmastership in my eye when I first came hither; but war’s alarms indicate that I may do better as an amateur hero.
R. H. Newell (“Orpheus C. Kerr”).
YAWCOB STRAUSS.
“BUT VEN HE VASH ASLEEP IN PED, SO QUIET AS A MOUSE.”
I HAF von funny leedle poy,
Vot gomes schust to mine knee;
Der queerest schap, der createst rogue,
As efer you dit see.
He runs, und schumps, und schmashes dings,
In all barts of der house;
But vot off dot? he vas mine son,
Mine leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He gets der measles und der mumbs,
Und eferyding dot’s oudt;
He sbills mine glass of lager bier,
Poots schnuff indo mine kraut.
He fills mine pipe mit Limburg cheese,—
Dot vas der roughest chouse;
I’d dake dot vrom no oder poy
But leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He dakes der milk-ban for a dhrum,
Und cuts mine cane in dwo,
To make der schticks to beat it mit,——
Mine gracious, dot vos drue!
I dinks mine hed vas schplit abart,
He kicks oup sooch a touse:
But never mind; der poys vas few
Like dot young Yawcob Strauss.
He asks me questions, sooch as dese:
Who baints mine nose so red?
Who vas it cuts dot schmoodth blace oudt
Vrom der hair ubon mine hed?
Und where der plaze goes vrom der lamp
Vene’er der glim I douse.
How gan I all dose dings eggsblain
To dot schmall Yawcob Strauss?
I somedimes dink I schall go vild
Mit sooch a grazy poy,
Und vish vonce more I gould haf rest,
Und beaceful dimes enshoy;
But ven he vash asleep in ped,
So quiet as a mouse,
I prays der Lord, “Dake anyding,
But leaf dot Yawcob Strauss.”
Charles Follen Adams.
THE MINISTER’S WOOING.
“WAL, the upshot on’t was, they fussed and fuzzled and wuzzled till they’d drinked up all the tea in the tea-pot; and then they went down and called on the parson, and wuzzled him all up talkin’ about this, that, and t’other that wanted lookin’ to, and that it was no way to leave everything to a young chit like Huldy, and that he ought to be lookin’ about for an experienced woman.
“The parson, he thanked ’em kindly, and said he believed their motives was good, but he didn’t go no further.
“He didn’t ask Mis’ Pipperidge to come and stay there and help him, nor nothin’ o’ that kind; but he said he’d attend to matters himself. The fact was, the parson had got such a likin’ for havin’ Huldy ’round, that he couldn’t think o’ such a thing as swappin’ her off for the Widder Pipperidge.
“‘But,’ he thought to himself, ‘Huldy is a good girl; but I oughtn’t to be a leavin’ everything to her—it’s too hard on her. I ought to be instructin’ and guidin’ and helpin’ of her; ’cause ’tain’t everybody could be expected to know and do what Mis’ Carryl did;’ and so at it he went; and Lordy massy! didn’t Huldy hev a time on’t when the minister began to come out of his study, and wanted to ten ’round and see to things? Huldy, you see, thought all the world of the minister, and she was ’most afraid to laugh; but she told me she couldn’t, for the life of her, help it when his back was turned, for he wuzzled things up in the most singular way. But Huldy, she’d jest say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and get him off into his study, and go on her own way.
“‘Huldy,’ says the minister one day, ‘you ain’t experienced out doors; and when you want to know anything, you must come to me.’
“‘Yes, sir,’ said Huldy.
“‘Now, Huldy,’ says the parson, ‘you must be sure to save the turkey eggs, so that we can have a lot of turkeys for Thanksgiving.’
“‘Yes, sir,’ says Huldy; and she opened the pantry-door, and showed him a nice dishful she’d been a savin’ up. Wal, the very next day the parson’s hen-turkey was found killed up to old Jim Scroggs’s barn. Folks say Scroggs killed it; though Scroggs, he stood to it he didn’t; at any rate, the Scroggses, they made a meal on’t, and Huldy, she felt bad about it ’cause she’d set her heart on raisin’ the turkeys; and says she, ‘Oh, dear! I don’t know what I shall do, I was just ready to set her.’
“‘Do, Huldy?’ says the parson: ‘why, there’s the other turkey, out there by the door; and a fine bird, too, he is.’
“Sure enough, there was the old tom-turkey a-struttin’ and a-sidlin’, and a-quitterin’, and a-floutin’ his tail feathers in the sun, like a lively young widower, all ready to begin life over again.
“‘But,’ says Huldy, ‘you know he can’t set on eggs.’
“‘He can’t? I’d like to know why,’ says the parson. ‘He shall set on eggs, and hatch ’em too.’
“‘Oh, doctor!’ says Huldy, all in a tremble; ’cause, you know, she didn’t want to contradict the minister, and she was afraid she should laugh—‘I never heard that a tom-turkey would set on eggs.’
“SHE FOUND OLD TOM A-SKIRMISHIN’ WITH THE PARSON.”
“‘Why, they ought to,’ said the parson, getting quite ’arnest. ‘What else be they good for? You just bring out the eggs, now, and put ’em in the nest, and I’ll make him set on ’em.’
“So, Huldy, she thought there weren’t no way to convince him but to let him try: so she took the eggs out, and fixed ’em all nice in the nest; and then she come back and found old Tom a-skirmishin’ with the parson pretty lively, I tell ye. Ye see, old Tom, he didn’t take the idee at all; and he flopped and gobbled, and fit the parson: and the parson’s wig got ’round so that his cue stuck straight out over his ear, but he’d got his blood up. Ye see, the old doctor was used to carryin’ his p’ints o’ doctrine; and he hadn’t fit the Arminians and Socinians to be beat by a tom-turkey; and finally he made a dive and ketched him by the neck in spite o’ his floppin’, and stroked him down, and put Huldy’s apron ’round him.
“‘There, Huldy,’ he says, quite red in the face, ‘we’ve got him now;’ and he travelled off to the barn with him as lively as a cricket.
“Huldy came behind, just chokin’ with laugh, and afraid the minister would look ’round and see her.
“‘Now, Huldy, we’ll crook his legs, and set him down,’ says the parson, when they got him to the nest; ‘you see he is getting quiet, and he’ll set there all right.’
“And the parson, he sot him down; and old Tom, he sot there solemn enough and held his head down all droopin’, lookin’ like a rail pious old cock, as long as the parson sot by him.
“‘There: you see how still he sets,’ says the parson to Huldy.
“Huldy was ’most dyin’ for fear she should laugh. ‘I’m afraid he’ll get up,’ says she, ‘when you do.’
“‘Oh no, he won’t!’ says the parson, quite confident. ‘There, there,’ says he, layin’ his hands on him as if pronouncin’ a blessin’.
“But when the parson riz up, old Tom, he riz up too, and began to march over the eggs.
“‘Stop, now!’ says the parson. ‘I’ll make him get down agin; hand me that corn-basket; we’ll put that over him.’
“So he crooked old Tom’s legs, and got him down agin; and they put the corn-basket over him, and then they both stood and waited.
“‘That’ll do the thing, Huldy,’ said the parson.
“‘I don’t know about it,’ says Huldy.
“‘Oh yes, it will, child; I understand,’ says he.
“Just as he spoke, the basket riz right up and stood, and they could see old Tom’s long legs.
“‘I’ll make him stay down, confound him,’ says the parson, for you see, parsons is men, like the rest on us, and the doctor had got his spunk up.
“‘You jist hold him a minute, and I’ll get something that’ll make him stay, I guess;’ and out he went to the fence, and brought in a long, thin, flat stone, and laid it on old Tom’s back.
“‘Oh, my eggs!’ says Huldy. ‘I’m afraid he’s smashed ’em!’
“And sure enough, there they was, smashed flat enough under the stone.
“‘I’ll have him killed,’ said the parson. ‘We won’t have such a critter ’round.’
“Wal, next week, Huldy, she jist borrowed the minister’s horse and side-saddle, and rode over to South Parish to her Aunt Bascome’s,—Widder Bascome’s, you know, that lives there by the trout-brook,—and got a lot o’ turkey eggs o’ her, and come back and set a hen on ’em, and said nothin’; and in good time there was as nice a lot o’ turkey-chicks as ever ye see.
“Huldy never said a word to the minister about his experiment, and he never said a word to her; but he sort o’ kep’ more to his books, and didn’t take it on him to advise so much.
“But not long arter he took it into his head that Huldy ought to have a pig to be a fattin’ with the buttermilk.
“Mis’ Pipperidge set him up to it; and jist then old Tom Bigelow, out to Juniper Hill, told him if he’d call over he’d give him a little pig.
“So he sent for a man, and told him to build a pig-pen right out by the well, and have it all ready when he came home with his pig.
“Huldy said she wished he might put a curb round the well out there, because, in the dark sometimes, a body might stumble into it; and the parson said he might do that.
“Wal, old Aikin, the carpenter, he didn’t come till ’most the middle of the arternoon; and then he sort o’ idled, so that he didn’t get up the well-curb till sundown; and then he went off, and said he’d come and do the pig-pen next day.
“Wal, arter dark, Parson Carryl, he driv into the yard, full chizel, with his pig.
“‘There, Huldy, I’ve got you a nice little pig.’
“‘Dear me!’ says Huldy; ‘where have you put him?’
“‘Why, out there in the pig-pen, to be sure.’
“‘Oh, dear me!’ says Huldy, ‘that’s the well-curb—there ain’t no pig-pen built,’ says she.
“‘Lordy massy!’ says the parson; ‘then I’ve thrown the pig in the well!’
“Wal, Huldy, she worked and worked, and finally she fished piggy out in the bucket, but he was as dead as a door-nail; and she got him out o’ the way quietly, and didn’t say much; and the parson he took to a great Hebrew book in his study.
“Arter that the parson set sich store by Huldy that he come to her and asked her about everything, and it was amazin’ how everything she put her hand to prospered. Huldy planted marigolds and larkspurs, pinks and carnations, all up and down the path to the front door; and trained up mornin’ glories and scarlet runners round the windows. And she was always gettin’ a root here, and a sprig there, and a seed from somebody else; for Huldy was one o’ them that has the gift, so that ef you jist give ’em the leastest of anything they make a great bush out of it right away; so that in six months Huldy had roses and geraniums and lilies, sich as it would take a gardener to raise.
“Huldy was so sort o’ chipper and fair spoken, that she got the hired men all under her thumb: they come to her and took her orders jist as meek as so many calves; and she traded at the store, and kep’ the accounts, and she had her eyes everywhere, and tied up all the ends so tight that there wa’n’t no gettin’ ’round her. She wouldn’t let nobody put nothin’ off on Parson Carryl ’cause he was a minister. Huldy was allers up to anybody that wanted to make a hard bargain, and, afore he knew jist what he was about, she’d got the best end of it, and everybody said that Huldy was the most capable girl they ever traded with.
“Wal, come to the meetin’ of the Association, Mis’ Deakin Blodgett, and Mis’ Pipperidge come callin’ up to the parson’s all in a stew, and offerin’ their services to get the house ready, but the doctor, he jist thanked ’em quite quiet, and turned ’em over to Huldy; and Huldy she told ’em that she’d got everything ready, and showed ’em her pantries, and her cakes, and her pies, and her puddin’s, and took ’em all over the house; and they went peekin’ and pokin’, openin’ cupboard doors, and lookin’ into drawers; and they couldn’t find so much as a thread out o’ the way, from garret to cellar, and so they went off quite discontented. Arter that the women set a new trouble a-brewin’. They begun to talk that it was a year now since Mis’ Carryl died; and it r’ally wasn’t proper such a young gal to be stayin’ there, who everybody could see was a-settin’ her cap for the minister.
“Mis’ Pipperidge said, that so long as she looked on Huldy as the hired gal, she hadn’t thought much about it; but Huldy was railly takin’ on airs as an equal, and appearin’ as mistress o’ the house in a way that would make talk if it went on. And Mis’ Pipperidge she driv’ ’round up to Deakin Abner Snow’s, and down to Mis’ ’Lijah Perry’s, and asked them if they wasn’t afraid that the way the parson and Huldy was a-goin’ on might make talk. And they said they hadn’t thought on’t before, but now, come to think on’t, they was sure it would; and they all went and talked with somebody else, and asked them if they didn’t think it would make talk. So come Sunday, between meetin’s there warn’t nothin’ else talked about; and Huldy saw folks a-noddin’ and a-winkin’, and a-lookin’ arter her, and she begun to feel drefful sort o’ disagreeable. Finally Mis’ Sawin, she says to her, ‘My dear, didn’t you never think folk would talk about you and the minister?’
“‘NO; WHY SHOULD THEY?’ SAYS HULDY.”
“‘No; why should they?’ says Huldy, quite innocent.
“‘Wal, dear,’ says she, ‘I think it’s a shame; but they say you’re tryin’ to catch him, and that it’s so bold and improper for you to be courtin’ of him right in his own house,—you know folks will talk,—I thought I’d tell you, ’cause I think so much of you,’ says she.
“Huldy was a gal of spirit, and she despised the talk, but it made her drefful uncomfortable; and when she got home at night she sat down in the mornin’-glory porch, quite quiet, and didn’t sing a word.
“The minister he had heard the same thing from one of his deakins that day; and when he saw Huldy so kind o’ silent, he says to her, ‘Why don’t you sing, my child?’
“He hed a pleasant sort o’ way with him, the minister had, and Huldy had got to likin’ to be with him; and it all come over her that perhaps she ought to go away; and her throat kind o’ filled up so she couldn’t hardly speak; and, says she, ‘I can’t sing to-night.’
“Says he, ‘You don’t know how much good your singin’ has done me, nor how much good you have done me in all ways, Huldy. I wish I knew how to show my gratitude.’
“‘Oh, sir!’ says Huldy, ‘is it improper for me to be here?’
“‘No, dear,’ says the minister, ‘but ill-natured folks will talk; but there is one way we can stop it, Huldy—if you’ll marry me. You’ll make me very happy, and I’ll do all I can to make you happy. Will you?’
“Wal, Huldy never told me just what she said to the minister; gals never does give you the particulars of them ’are things jist as you’d like ’em—only I know the upshot, and the hull on’t was, that Huldy she did a consid’able lot o’ clear starchin’ and ironin’ the next two days; and the Friday o’ next week the minister and she rode over together to Dr. Lothrop’s, in Oldtown; and the doctor, he jist made ’em man and wife.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe.
ALBINA McLUSH.
“I PRESSED THE COOL, SOFT FINGERS TO MY LIPS.”
I HAVE a passion for fat women. If there is anything I hate in life, it is what dainty people call a spirituelle. Motion—rapid motion—a smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone—in short, a lively girl—is my exquisite horror. I would as lief have a diable petit dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum as to be in a room with one. I have tried before now to school myself into liking these parched peas of humanity. I have followed them with my eyes, and attended to their rattle till I was as crazy as a fly in a drum. I have danced with them, and romped with them in the country, and perilled the salvation of my “white tights,” by sitting near them at supper. I swear off from this moment. I do. I won’t—no—hang me if ever I show another small, lively, spry woman a civility.
Albina McLush is divine. She is like the description of the Persian beauty by Hafiz: “Her heart is full of passion, and her eyes are full of sleep.” She is the sister of Lurly McLush, my old college chum, who, as early as his sophomore year, was chosen president of the Dolcefarniente Society, no member of which was ever known to be surprised at anything—(the college law of rising before breakfast excepted). Lurly introduced me to his sister one day, as he was lying upon a heap of turnips, leaning on his elbow with his head in his hand, in a green lane in the suburbs. He had driven over a stump, and been tossed out of his gig, and I came up just as he was wondering how in the d—l’s name he got there. Albina sat quietly in the gig, and when I was presented, requested me, with a delicious drawl, to say nothing about the adventure—“it would be so troublesome to relate it to everybody!” I loved her from that moment. Miss McLush was tall, and her shape, of its kind, was perfect. It was not a fleshy one exactly, but she was large and full. Her skin was clear, fine-grained and transparent; her temples and forehead perfectly rounded and polished, and her lips and chin swelling into a ripe and tempting pout, like the cleft of a burst apricot. And then her eyes—large, languid, and sleepy—they languished beneath their long, black fringes as if they had no business with daylight—like two magnificent dreams, surprised in their jet embryos by some bird-nesting cherub. Oh! it was lovely to look into them!
She sat usually upon a fauteuil, with her large, full arm embedded in the cushion, sometimes for hours without stirring. I have seen the wind lift the masses of dark hair from her shoulders, when it seemed like the coming to life of a marble Hebe—she had been motionless so long. She was a model for a goddess of sleep; as she sat with her eyes half-closed, lifting up their superb lips slowly as you spoke to her, and dropping them again with the deliberate motion of a cloud, when she had murmured out her syllable of assent. Her figure, in a sitting posture, presented a gentle declivity from the curve of her neck to the instep of the small round foot lying on its side upon the ottoman. I remember a fellow bringing her a plate of fruit one evening. He was one of your lively men—a horrid monster, all right angles and activity. Having never been accustomed to hold her own plate, she had not well extracted her whole fingers from her handkerchief before he set it down in her lap. As it began slowly to slide towards her feet, her hand relapsed into the muslin folds, and she fixed her eyes upon it with a kind of indolent surprise, drooping her lids gradually, till, as the fruit scattered over the ottoman, they closed entirely, and a liquid jet line was alone visible through the heavy lashes. There was an imperial indifference in it worthy of Juno.
Miss McLush rarely walks. When she does it is with the deliberate majesty of a Dido. Her small, plump feet melt to the ground like snow-flakes, and her figure sways to the indolent motion of her limbs with a glorious grace and yieldingness quite indescribable. She was idling slowly up the Mall one evening, just at twilight, with a servant at a short distance behind her, who, to while away the time between her steps, was employing himself in throwing stones at the cows feeding upon the common. A gentleman, with a natural admiration for her splendid person, addressed her. He might have done a more eccentric thing. Without troubling herself to look at him, she turned to her servant and requested him, with a yawn of desperate ennui, to knock that fellow down! John obeyed his orders; and, as his mistress resumed her lounge, picked up a new handful of pebbles, and tossing one at the nearest cow, loitered lazily after.
Such supreme indolence was irresistible. I gave in—I who never before could summon energy to sigh—I to whom a declaration was but a synonym for perspiration—I—who had only thought of love as a nervous complaint, and of women but to pray for a good deliverance—I—yes—I knocked under. Albina McLush! thou wert too exquisitely lazy. Human sensibilities cannot hold out for ever.
I found her one morning sipping her coffee at twelve, with her eyes wide open. She was just from the bath, and her complexion had a soft, dewy transparency, like the cheek of Venus rising from the sea. It was the hour, Lurly had told me, when she would be at the trouble of thinking. She put away with her dimpled forefinger, as I entered, a cluster of rich curls that had fallen over her face, and nodded to me like a water-lily swaying to the wind when its cup is full of rain. “Lady Albina,” said I, in my softest tone, “how are you to-day?”
“Beltina,” said she, addressing her maid in a voice as clouded and rich as a south wind on an Æolian, “how am I to-day?”
The conversation fell into short sentences, and the dialogue became monologue. I entered upon my declaration with the assistance of Beltina, who supplied her mistress with cologne. I kept her attention alive through the incipient circumstances. Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay reposing on the arm of the sofa, half buried in a muslin foulard. I took it up. I pressed the cool, soft fingers to my lips—unforbidden. I rose and looked into her eyes for confirmation. Delicious creature! she was asleep.
I never have had courage to renew the subject. Miss McLush seems to have forgotten it altogether. Upon reflection, too, I am convinced she would not survive the excitement of the ceremony, unless, indeed, she should sleep between the responses and the prayer. I am still devoted, however, and if there should come a war or an earthquake, or if the millennium should commence, as it is expected, in 1833, or if anything happens that can keep her waking so long, I shall deliver a declaration abbreviated for me by a scholar friend of mine, which he warrants may be articulated in fifteen minutes—without fatigue.
Nathaniel Parker Willis.
A LONG TIME AGO.
(FROM ACT I. OF “THE WHITE FEATHER.” A RED INDIAN COMEDY.)
Owosco. Here, here, enough of this nonsense! Why should you sing about that which you think peculiar to yourselves, when, as a matter of fact, all tribes, nations, and classes are alike?
Wanda. But are you sure all are alike?
Owosco. Certainly. We are all tarred with the same stick.
Sings:
The same black tar,
By the same black stick,
No matter who we are,
Is laid on thick.
If poor, we’re marred,
If rich, we kick,
But we’re all of us tarred
With the same black stick.
If successful in our enterprise, our ways are never scanned,
We’re applauded by the populace, and praised by every tongue.
But if a fell disaster crown the efforts we have planned,
Our methods are at once condemned by old as well as young.
All.
The same black tar,
By the same black stick,
No matter who we are,
Is laid on thick.
If poor, we’re marred,
If rich, we kick,
But we’re all of us tarred
With the same black stick.
Owosco (derisively). Ah! here comes our worthy apology for a chief.
Otsiketa. And our equally worthy medicine man.
Owosco. They make a gay old couple. The one is about as useful as the other.
“OLD CHIEF (TO MEDICINE MAN): ‘WHAT SHALL I SAY TO THESE YOUNG MEN?’”
(Enter Old Chief, closely followed by Medicine Man, both old and ugly.)
Old Chief sings:
I’m chief of the tribe of the Wa-wa-ta-see,
As savage a savage as savage can be;
I’ve scalped and I’ve murdered full many a foe—
Owosco.
Yes, yes; but that happened a long time ago.
All.
Long, long ago, we had wars in the land,
And pillage and bloodshed on every hand;
With knife and with arrow, with war-club and bow,
We defended our country a long time ago.
Old Chief.
In love-making nonsense I never took part;
Neither war-club nor squaw ever conquered my heart;
I forcibly reaped, but I never would sow—
Owosco.
Yes, yes; but that happened a long time ago.
All.
Long, long ago, we had wonderful chiefs,
Who gathered in scalp-locks as farmers do sheaves.
Much rather they’d fight than a-courting they’d go—
But that happened, thank goodness, a long time ago.
Old Chief.
Young men, in my day, courted war’s cutting claws,
Nor wasted their time making love to the squaws;
Such fooling as that in those days did not go—
Owosco.
Yes, yes; but that happened a long time ago.
All.
What wonders the men were a long time ago,
How thankful we are that it now isn’t so!
Every day for amusement a-killing they’d go,
In the fearful, the awful, the long time ago.
Otsiketa. Say, old fellow, you must have been a great chap beyond all our memories!
Owosco. I say, old chap, where did you ever manage to store all your scalps?
Old Chief (to Medicine Man). What shall I say to these young men? They’re getting very inquisitive!
Medicine Man. I should not answer them. The proper thing to do is to assume a dignified silence.
Both sing.
When we’re attacked at any point,
Our knavery to hide,
We get ourselves behind a wall
Of silence dignified,
A wall without a hole or chink,
Behind it all is black as ink,
Where we’re obscure from those who think
Into our past to pry.
When at our deeds they wish to peek,
And interviewers mild and meek,
Attempt to make this couple speak,
They might as well not try.
Medicine Man.
I never eased a human ill,
Old Chief.
I never struck a blow;
Both.
The potency of club or pill
We neither of us know.
But when our youth would question us,
We assume a lofty pride,
And wrap us up in a solemn cloak
Of silence dignified.
John Barr.
THE PROFESSOR UNDER CHLOROFORM.
“‘PROFESSOR,’ I SAID, ‘YOU ARE INEBRIATED.’”
YOU haven’t heard about my friend the Professor’s first experiment in the use of anæsthetics, have you?
He was mightily pleased with the reception of that poem of his about the chaise. He spoke to me once or twice about another poem of similar character he wanted to read me, which I told him I would listen to and criticise.
One day, after dinner, he came in with his face tied up, looking very red in the cheeks, and heavy about the eyes. “Hy ’r’ ye?” he said, and made for an arm-chair, in which he placed first his hat and then his person, going smack through the crown of the former, as neatly as they do the trick at the circus.
The Professor jumped at the explosion as if he had sat down on one of those small calthrops our grandfathers used to sow round in the grass when there were Indians about,—iron stars, each ray a rusty thorn an inch and a half long,—stick through moccasins into feet,—cripple ’em on the spot, and give ’em lock-jaw in a day or two.
At the same time he let off one of those big words which lie at the bottom of the best man’s vocabulary, but perhaps never turn up in his life,—just as every man’s hair may stand on end, but in most men it never does. After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet or two of manuscript, together with a smaller scrap, on which, as he said, he had just been writing an introduction or prelude to the main performance. A certain suspicion had come into my mind that the Professor was not quite right, which was confirmed by the way he talked; but I let him begin.
This is the way he read it:
“Prelude.
“I’m the fellah that tole one day
The tale of the won’erful one-hoss shay.
Wan’ to hear another? Say,—
Funny, wasn’t it? Made me laugh,—
I’m too modest, I am, by half,—
Made me laugh ’s though I sh’d split,—
Cahn’ a fellah like fellah’s own wit?—
Fellah’s keep sayin’, ‘Well, now, that’s nice,
Did it once, but cahn’ do it twice,’—
Dön’ you believe thee ’z no more fat;
Lots in the kitch’n ’z good ’z that.
Fus’-rate throw, ’n’ no mistake,—
Han’ us the props for another shake;
Know I’ll try, ’n’ guess I’ll win;
Here sh’ goes for hit ’m ag’in!”
Here I thought it necessary to interpose. “Professor,” I said, “you are inebriated. The style of what you call your ‘Prelude’ shows that it was written under cerebral excitement. Your articulation is confused. You have told me three times in succession, in exactly the same words, that I was the only true friend you had in the world that you would unbutton your heart to. You smell distinctly and decidedly of spirits.” I spoke and paused; tender but firm.
Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the Professor’s lids,—in obedience to the principles of gravitation celebrated in that delicious bit of bladdery bathos, “The very law that moulds a tear,” with which the Edinburgh Review attempted to put down Master George Gordon when that young man was foolishly trying to make himself conspicuous. One of these tears peeped over the edge of the lid until it lost its balance,—slid an inch and waited for reinforcements,—swelled again,—rolled down a little further,—stopped,—moved on,—and at last fell on the back of the Professor’s hand. He held it up for me to look at, and lifted his eyes, brimful, till they met mine.
I couldn’t stand it,—I always break down when folks cry in my face,—so I hugged him, and said he was a dear old boy, and asked him kindly what was the matter with him, and what made him smell so dreadfully strong of spirits. Upset his alcohol lamp,—he said,—and spilt the alcohol on his legs. That was it. But what had he been doing to get his head into such a state—had he really committed an excess? What was the matter? Then it came out that he had been taking chloroform to have a tooth out, which had left him in a very queer state, in which he had written the “Prelude” given above, and under the influence of which he evidently was still.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
OUR TRAVELLED PARSON.
“I HANDED HIM THE TICKET, WITH A LITTLE BOW OF DEFERENCE.”
FOR twenty years and over, our good parson had been toiling,
To chip the bad meat from our hearts, and keep the good from spoiling;
But suddenly he wilted down, and went to looking sickly,
And the doctor said that something must be put up for him quickly.
So we kind o’ clubbed together, each according to his notion,
And bought a circular ticket, in the lands across the ocean;
Wrapped some pocket-money in it—what we thought would easy do him—
And appointed me committee-man, to go and take it to him.
I found him in his study, looking rather worse than ever;
And told him ’twas decided that his flock and he should sever.
Then his eyes grew big with wonder, and it seemed almost to blind ’em,
And some tears looked out o’ window, with some others close behind ’em!
But I handed him the ticket, with a little bow of deference,
And he studied quite a little ere he got the proper reference,
And then the tears that waited—great unmanageable creatures—
Let themselves quite out o’ window, and came climbing down his features.
I wish you could ha’ seen him when he came back, fresh and glowing,
His clothes all worn and seedy, and his face all fat and knowing;
I wish you could ha’ heard him, when he prayed for us who sent him,
Paying back with compound int’rest every dollar that we’d lent him!
’Twas a feast to true believers—’twas a blight on contradiction—
To hear one just from Calvary talk about the crucifixion;
’Twas a damper on those fellows who pretended they could doubt it,
To have a man who’d been there stand and tell ’em all about it!
Why every foot of Scripture, whose location used to stump us,
Was now regularly laid out with the different points o’ compass;
When he undertook a subject, in what nat’ral lines he’d draw it!
He would paint it out so honest that it seemed as if you saw it.
And the way he went for Europe! oh, the way he scampered through it!
Not a mountain but he clim’ it—not a city but he knew it;
There wasn’t any subject to explain, in all creation,
But he could go to Europe, and bring back an illustration!
So we crowded out to hear him, quite instructed and delighted;
’Twas a picture-show, a lecture, and a sermon—all united;
And my wife would rub her glasses, and serenely pet her Test’ment,
And whisper, “That ere ticket was a splendid good investment.”
Now, after six months’ travel, we was most of us all ready
To settle down a little, so’s to live more staid and steady;
To develop home resources, with no foreign cares to fret us,
Using house-made faith more frequent; but our parson wouldn’t let us!
To view the same old scenery, time and time again he’d call us—
Over rivers, plains, and mountains he would any minute haul us;
He slighted our soul-sorrows, and our spirits’ aches and ailings,
To get the cargo ready for his regular Sunday sailings!
Why, he’d take us off a-touring, in all spiritual weather,
Till we at last got home-sick and sea-sick all together!
And “I wish to all that’s peaceful,” said one free-expressioned brother,
“That the Lord had made one cont’nent, an’ then never made another!”
Sometimes, indeed, he’d take us into old, familiar places,
And pull along quite nat’ral, in the good old Gospel traces:
But soon my wife would shudder, just as if a chill had got her,
Whispering, “Oh, my goodness gracious! he’s a-takin’ to the water!”
And it wasn’t the same old comfort, when he called around to see us;
On some branch of foreign travel he was sure at last to tree us;
All unconscious of his error, he would sweetly patronise us,
And with oft-repeated stories still endeavours to surprise us.
And the sinners got to laughing; and that finally galled and stung us,
To ask him, wouldn’t he kindly once more settle down among us?
Didn’t he think that more home produce would improve our soul’s digestions?
They appointed me committee-man to go and ask the questions.
I found him in his garden, trim an’ buoyant as a feather;
He shook my hand, exclaiming, “This is quite Italian weather!
How it ’minds me of the evenings when, your distant-hearts caressing,
Upon my dear good brothers, I invoked God’s choicest blessing!”
I went and told the brothers, “No; I cannot bear to grieve him;
He’s so happy in his exile, it’s the proper place to leave him.
I took that journey to him, and right bitterly I rue it;
But I cannot take it from him; if you want to, go and do it.”
Now a new restraint entirely seemed next Sunday to enfold him,
And he looked so hurt and humbled, that I knew that they had told him.
Subdued-like was his manner, and some tones were hardly vocal;
But every word and sentence was pre-eminently local!
Still, the sermon sounded awkward, and we awkward felt who heard it;
’Twas a grief to see him steer it—’twas a pain to hear him word it.
“When I was abroad”—was maybe half-a-dozen times repeated;
But that sentence seemed to choke him, and was always uncompleted.
As weeks went on, his old smile would occasionally brighten,
But the voice was growing feeble, and the face began to whiten;
He would look off to the eastward, with a wistful, weary sighing,
And ’twas whispered that our pastor in a foreign land was dying.
The coffin lay ’mid garlands, smiling sad as if they knew us;
The patient face within it preached a final sermon to us;
Our parson had gone touring—on a trip he’d long been earning—
In that wonderland, whence tickets are not issued for returning!
O tender, good heart-shepherd! your sweet smiling lips, half-parted,
Told of scenery that burst on you, just the minute that you started!
Could you preach once more among us, you might wander, without fearing;
You could give us tales of glory that we’d never tire of hearing!
Will Carleton.
A RAILROAD “RECUSSANT.”
A FRIEND of ours, sojourning during the past summer in one of the far-off “shore-towns” of Massachusett’s Bay, was not a little amused one day at the querulous complainings of “one” of the “oldest inhabitants” against railroads; his experience in which consisted in having seen the end of one laid out, and at length the cars running upon it. Taking out his old pipe, on a pleasant summer afternoon, and looking off upon the ocean, and the ships far off and out at sea with the sun upon their sails, he said: “I don’t think much o’ railroads: they aint no kind o’ justice into ’em. Neöw what kind o’ justice is it, when railroads takes one man’s upland and carts it over in wheel-barrers onto another man’s ma’sh? What kind o’ ’commodation be they? You can’t go when you want to go; you got to go when the bell rings, or the noisy whistle blows. I tell yeöw it’s payin’ tew much for the whistle. Ef you live a leetle ways off the dee-pot, you got to pay to git to the railroad; and ef you want to go any wheres else ’cept just to the eend on it, you got to pay to go a’ter you git there. What kind o’ ’commodation is that? Goin’ round the country tew, murderin’ folks, runnin’ over cattle, sheep, and hogs, and settin’ fire to bridges, and every now and then burnin’ up the woods. Mrs. Robbins, down to Cod-p’int, says—and she ought to know, for she’s a pious woman, and belongs to the lower church—she says to me, no longer ago than day-’fore yesterday, that she’d be cuss’d if she didn’t know that they sometimes run over critters a-purpose. They did a likely shoat o’ her’n, and never paid for’t, ’cause they was a ‘corporation,’ they said. What kind o’ ’commodation is that? Besides, now I’ve lived here, clus to the dee-pot, ever sence the road started to run, and seen ’em go out and come in; but I never could see that they went so d—d fast, nuther!”
“I DON’T THINK MUCH O’ RAILROADS.”
L. Gaylord Clark.
AN UNMARRIED FEMALE.
“BETSEY HAIN’T HANDSOME.”
I SUPPOSE we are about as happy as the most of folks, but as I was sayin’ a few days ago to Betsey Bobbet, a neighbourin’ female of ours—“Every station-house in life has its various skeletons. But we ort to try to be contented with that spear of life we are called on to handle.” Betsey hain’t married, and she don’t seem to be contented. She is awful opposed to wimmin’s rights—she thinks it is wimmin’s only spear to marry, but as yet she can’t find any man willin’ to lay holt of that spear with her. But you can read in her daily life, and on her eager, willin’ countenance, that she fully realises the sweet words of the poet, “While there is life there is hope.”
Betsey hain’t handsome. Her cheek-bones are high, and she bein’ not much more than skin and bone they show plainer than they would if she was in good order. Her complexion (not that I blame her for it) hain’t good, and her eyes are little and sot way back in her head. Time has seen fit to deprive her of her hair and teeth, but her large nose he has kindly suffered her to keep, but she has got the best white ivory teeth money will buy; and two long curls fastened behind each ear, besides frizzles on the top of her head; and if she wasn’t naturally bald, and if the curls was the colour of her hair, they would look well. She is awful sentimental; I have seen a good many that had it bad, but of all the sentimental creeters I ever did see, Betsey Bobbet is the sentimentalest; you couldn’t squeeze a laugh out of her with a cheeze press.
As I said, she is awful opposed to wimmin’s havin’ any right, only the right to get married. She holds on to that right as tight as any single woman I ever see, which makes it hard and wearyin’ on the single men round here.
For take the men that are the most opposed to wimmin’s havin’ a right, and talk the most about its bein’ her duty to cling to man like a vine to a tree, they don’t want Betsey to cling to them, they won’t let her cling to ’em. For when they would be a-goin’ on about how wicked it was for wimmin to vote—and it was her only spear to marry, says I to ’em, “Which had you ruther do, let Betsey Bobbet cling to you or let her vote?” and they would every one of ’em quail before that question. They would drop their heads before my keen grey eyes—and move off the subject.
But Betsey don’t get discourajed. Every time I see her she says in a hopeful, wishful tone, “That the deepest men of minds in the country agree with her in thinkin’ that it is wimmin’s duty to marry and not to vote.” And then she talks a sight about the retirin’ modesty and dignity of the fair sect, and how shameful and revoltin’ it would be to see wimmin throwin’ ’em away, and boldly and unblushin’ly talkin’ about law and justice.
Why, to hear Betsey Bobbet talk about wimmin’s throwin’ their modesty away, you would think if they ever went to the political pole, they would have to take their dignity and modesty and throw ’em against the pole, and go without any all the rest of their lives.
Now I don’t believe in no such stuff as that. I think a woman can be bold and unwomanly in other things besides goin’ with a thick veil over her face, and a brass-mounted parasol, once a year, and gently and quietly dropping a vote for a Christian President, or a religious and noble-minded pathmaster.
She thinks she talks dreadful polite and proper. She says, “I was cameing,” instead of “I was coming;” and “I have saw,” instead of “I have seen;” and “papah” for paper, and “deah” for dear. I don’t know much about grammer, but common sense goes a good ways. She writes the poetry for the Jonesville Augur, or “Augah,” as she calls it. She used to write for the opposition paper, the Jonesville Gimlet, but the editer of the Augur, a long-haired chap, who moved into Jonesville a few months ago, lost his wife soon after he come there, and sence that she has turned Dimocrat, and writes for his paper stiddy. They say that he is a dreadful big feelin’ man, and I have heard—it came right straight to me—his cousin’s wife’s sister told it to the mother-in-law of one of my neighbour’s brother’s wife, that he didn’t like Betsey’s poetry at all, and all he printed it for was to plague the editer of the Gimlet, because she used to write for him. I myself wouldn’t give a cent a bushel for all the poetry she can write. And it seems to me, that if I was Betsey, I wouldn’t try to write so much. Howsumever, I don’t know what turn I should take if I was Betsey Bobbet; that is a solemn subject, and one I don’t love to think on.
I never shall forget the first piece of her poetry I ever see. Josiah Allen and I had both on us been married goin’ on a year, and I had occasion to go to his trunk one day, where he kept a lot of old papers, and the first thing I laid my hand on was these verses. Josiah went with her a few times after his wife died, on 4th of July or so, and two or three camp meetin’s, and the poetry seemed to be wrote about the time we was married. It was directed over the top of it, “Owed to Josiah,” just as if she were in debt to him. This was the way it read—
“OWED TO JOSIAH.
“Josiah, I the tale have hurn,
With rigid ear, and streaming eye,
I saw from me that you did turn,
I never knew the reason why.
Oh, Josiah,
It seemed as if I must expiah.
Why did you,—oh, why did you blow
Upon my life of snowy sleet,
The fiah of love to fiercest glow,
Then turn a damphar on the heat?
Oh, Josiah,
It seemed as if I must expiah.
I saw thee coming down the street,
She by your side in bonnet bloo;
The stuns that grated ’neath thy feet,
Seemed crunching on my vitals too.
Oh, Josiah,
It seemed as if I must expiah.
I saw thee washing sheep last night,
On the bridge I stood with marble brow,
The waters raged, thou clasped it tight,
I sighed, ‘should both be drownded now’—
I thought, Josiah,
Oh happy sheep to thus expiah.”
I showed the poetry to Josiah that night after he came home, and told him I had read it. He looked awful ashamed to think I had seen it, and, says he, with a dreadful sheepish look, “The persecution I underwent from that female can never be told; she fairly hunted me down. I hadn’t no rest for the soles of my feet. I thought one spell she would marry me in spite of all I could do, without givin’ me the benefit of law or gospel.” He see I looked stern, and he added, with a sick lookin’ smile, “I thought one spell,” to use Betsey’s language, “I was a gonah.”
I didn’t smile. Oh no, for the deep principle of my sect was reared up. I says to him, in a tone cold enough to almost freeze his ears, “Josiah Allen, shet up; of all the cowardly things a man ever done, it is goin’ round braggin’ about wimmin likin’ ’em, and follerin’ ’em up. Enny man that’ll do that is little enough to crawl through a knot hole without rubbing his clothes.” Says I, “I suppose you made her think the moon rose in your head and set in your heels. I daresay you acted foolish enough round her to sicken a snipe, and if you makes fun of her now to please me, I let you know you have got holt of the wrong individual.
“I SHOWED THE POETRY TO JOSIAH THAT NIGHT.”
“Now,” says I, “go to bed;” and I added, in still more freezing accents, “for I want to mend your pantaloons.” We gathered up his shoes and stockin’s and started off to bed, and we hain’t never passed a word on the subject sence. I believe when you disagree with your pardner, in freein’ your mind in the first on’t, and then not to be a-twittin’ about it afterwards. And as for bein’ jealous, I should jest as soon think of bein’ jealous of a meetin’-house as I should of Josiah. He is a well principled man. And I guess he wasn’t fur out o’ the way about Betsey Bobbet, though I wouldn’t encourage him by lettin’ him say a word on the subject, for I always make it a rule to stand up for my own sect; but when I hear her go on about the editer of the Augur, I can believe anything about Betsey Bobbet.
She came in here one day last week. It was about ten o’clock in the mornin’. I had got my house slick as a pin, and my dinner under way (I was goin’ to have a biled dinner, and a cherry puddin’ biled, with sweet sass to eat on it), and I sot down to finish sewin’ up the breadth of my new rag carpet. I thought I would get it done while I hadn’t so much to do, for it bein’ the 1st of March I knew sugarin’ would be comin’ on, and then cleanin’-house time, and I wanted it to put down jest as soon as the stove was carried out in the summer kitchin. The fire was sparklin’ away, and the painted floor a-shinin’ and the dinner a-bilin’, and I sot there sewin’ jest as calm as a clock, not dreamin’ of no trouble, when in came Betsey Bobbet.
I met her with outward calm, and asked her set down and lay off her things. She sot down, but she said she couldn’t lay off her things. Says she, “I was comin’ down past, and I thought I would call and let you see the last numbah of the Augah. There is a piece in it concernin’ the tariff that stirs men’s souls. I like it evah so much.”
She handed me the paper, folded so I couldn’t see nothin’ but a piece of poetry by Betsey Bobbet. I see what she wanted of me, and so I dropped my breadths of carpetin’ and took hold of it, and began to read it.
“Read it audible, if you please,” says she. “Especially the precious remahks ovah it; it is such a feast for me to be a sittin’ and heah it reheahsed by a musical vorce.”
Says I, “I spose I can rehearse it if it will do you any good,” so I began as follows:—
“It is seldom that we present to the readers of the Augur (the best paper for the fireside in Jonesville or the world) with a poem like the following. It may be, by the assistance of the Augur (only twelve shillings a year in advance, wood and potatoes taken in exchange), the name of Betsey Bobbet will yet be carved on the lofty pinnacle of fame’s towering pillow. We think, however, that she could study such writers as Sylvanus Cobb, and Tupper, with profit both to herself and to them.
“Editor of the Augur.”
Here Betsey interrupted me. “The deah editah of the Augah has no need to advise me to read Tuppah, for he is indeed my most favourite authar. You have devorhed him, haven’t you, Josiah Allen’s wife?”
“Devoured who?” says I, in a tone pretty near as cold as a cold icicle.
“Mahten, Fahqueah, Tuppah, that sweet authar,” says she.
“No, mom,” says I shortly; “I hain’t devoured Martin Farquhar Tupper, nor no other man. I hain’t a cannibal.”
“Oh! you understand me not; I meant, devorhed his sweet, tender lines.”
“I hain’t devoured his tenderlines, nor nothin’ relatin’ to him,” and I made a motion to lay the paper down, but Betsey urged me to go on, and so I read—
“GUSHINGS OF A TENDAH SOUL.
“Oh let who will,
Oh let who can,
Be tied onto
A horrid male man.
Thus said I ’ere
My tendah heart was touched,
Thus said I ’ere
My tendah feelings gushed.
But oh a change
Hath swept ore me,
As billows sweep
The ‘deep blue sea.’
A voice, a noble form,
One day I saw;
An arrow flew,
My heart is nearly raw.
His first pardner lies
Beneath the turf,
He is wandering now,
In sorrow’s briny surf.
Two twins, the little
Deah cherub creechahs,
Now wipe the teahs
From off his classic feachahs.
Oh sweet lot, worthy
Angel arisen,
To wipe teahs
From eyes like hisen.”
“What think you of it?” says she, as I finished readin’.
I looked right at her most a minute with a majestic look. In spite of her false curls, and her new white ivory teeth, she is a humbly critter. I looked at her silently while she sot and twisted her long yellow bunnet-strings, and then I spoke out. “Hain’t the editer of the Augur a widower with a pair of twins?”
“Yes,” says she with a happy look.
Then says I, “If the man hain’t a fool, he’ll think you are one.”
“Oh!” says she, and she dropped her bunnet-strings, and clasped her long bony hands together in her brown cotton gloves, “Oh, we ahdent soles of genious have feelin’s, you cold, practical natures know nuthing of, and if they did not gush out in poetry we should expiah. You may as well try to tie up the gushing catarack of Niagara with a piece of welting cord, as to tie up the feelin’s of an ahdent sole.”
“Ardent sole!” says I coldly. “Which makes the most noise, Betsey Bobbet, a three-inch brook, or a ten-footer? which is the tearer? which is the roarer? deep waters run stillest. I have no faith in feelin’s that stalk round in public in mournin’ weeds. I have no faith in such mourners,” says I.
“Oh, Josiah’s wife, cold, practical female being, you know me not; we, are sundered as fah apart as if you was sitting on the North Pole, and I was sitting on the South Pole. Uncongenial being, you know me not.”
“I may not know you, Betsey Bobbet, but I do know decency, and I know that no munny would tempt me to write such stuff as that poetry and send it to a widower with twins.”
“Oh!” says she, “what appeals to the tendah feelin’ heart of a single female woman more than to see a lonely man who has lost his relict? And pity never seems so much like pity as when it is given to the deah little children of widowehs. And,” says she, “I think moah than as likely as not, this soaring sole of genious did not wed his affinity, but was united to a mere woman of clay.”
“Mere woman of clay!” says I, fixin’ my spektacles upon her in a most searchin’ manner. “Where will you find a woman, Betsey Bobbet, that hain’t more or less clay? And affinity, that is the meanest word I ever heard; no married woman has any right to hear it. I’ll excuse you, bein’ a female; but if a man had said it to me, I’d holler to Josiah. There is a time for everything, and the time to hunt affinity is before you are married; married folks hain’t no right to hunt it,” says I sternly.
“We kindred soles soah above such petty feelings, we soah far above them.”
“I hain’t much of a soarer,” says I, “and I don’t pretend to be; and to tell you the truth,” says I, “I am glad I hain’t.”
“The Editah of the Augah,” says she, and she grasped the paper offen the stand, and folded it up, and presented it at me like a spear, “the Editah of this paper is a kindred sole, he appreciates me, he undahstands me, and will not our names in the pages of this very papah go down to posterety togathah?”
Then says I, drove out of all patience with her, “I wish you was there now, both of you. I wish,” says I, lookin’ fixedly on her, “I wish you was both of you in posterity now.”
Marietta Holley.
THE COURTIN’.
“AN’ ON HER APPLES KEP’ TO WORK, PARIN’ AWAY LIKE MURDER.”
GOD makes sech nights, all white an’ still
Fur’z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an’ snow on field an’ hill,
All silence an’ all glisten.
Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown
An’ peeked in thru’ the winder;
An’ there sot Huldy all alone,
’Ith no one nigh to hender.
A fireplace filled the room’s one side
With half a cord o’ wood in—
There warn’t no stoves (tell comfort died)
To bake ye to a puddin’.
The wa’nut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her,
An’ leetle flames danced all about
The chiny on the dresser.
Again the chimbley crook-necks hung,
An’ in amongst ’em rusted
The ole queen’s-arm thet gran’ther Young
Fetched back from Concord busted.
The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin’,
An’ she looked full ez rosy again
Ez the apples she was peelin’.
’Twas kin’ o’ kingdom come to look
On sech a blessed cretur;
A dogrose blushin’ to a brook
Ain’t modester nor sweeter.
He was six foot o’ man, A1,
Clean grit an’ human natur’;
None couldn’t quiker pitch a ton,
Nor dror a furrer straighter.
He’d sparked it with full twenty gals,
He’d squired ’em, danced ’em, druv ’em,
Fust this one, an’ then thet, by spells—
All is, he couldn’t love ’em.
But long o’ her his veins ’ould run
All crinkly like curled maple;
The side she breshed felt full o’ sun
Ez a south slope in Ap’il.
She thought no v’ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir:
My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring
She knowed the Lord was nigher.
An’ she’d blush scarlet, right in prayer,
When her new meetin’-bunnet
Felt somehow thru’ its crown a pair
O’ blue eyes sot upon it.
Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!
She seemed to’ve gut a new soul,
For she felt sartain-sure he’d come,
Down to her very shoe-sole.
She heered a foot, and knowed it tu,
A-rasping on the scraper,—
All ways to once her feelin’s flew,
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.
He kin’ o’ l’itered on the mat
Some doubtfle o’ the sekle;
His heart kep’ goin’ pity-pat,
But hern went pity Zekle.
An’ yit she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder
An’ on her apples kep’ to work,
Parin’ away like murder.
“You want to see my Pa, I s’pose?”
“Wall ... no ... I come dasignin’”—
“To see my Ma? she is sprinklin’ clo’es
Agin to-morrer’s i’nin’.”
To say why gals act so or so,
Or don’t, ’ould be presumin’;
Mebbe to mean yes an’ say no
Comes nateral to women.
He stood a spell on one foot first,
Then stood a spell on t’other,
An’ on which one he felt the wust
He couldn’t ha’ told ye nuther.
Says he, “I’d better call agin;”
Says she, “Think likely, Mister;”
Thet last word pricked him like a pin,
An’.... Wal, he up an’ kist her.
When Ma bimeby upon ’em slips,
Huldy sot pale ez ashes,
All kin’ o’ smily roun’ the lips,
An’ teary roun’ the lashes.
For she was jes’ the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary,
Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snow-hid in Jenooary.
The blood clost roun’ her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin’,
Tell mother see how metters stood,
And gin ’em both her blessin’.
Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o’ Fundy;
An’ all I know is they was cried
In meetin’ come nex’ Sunday.
James Russell Lowell.
THE WONDERFUL TAR-BABY STORY.
“‘MAWNIN’!’ SEZ BRER RABBIT, SEZEE.”
“DIDN’T the fox never catch the rabbit, uncle Remus?” asked the little boy the next evening.
“He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho’s you bawn—brer fox did. One day after brer rabbit fool him wid dat calamus root, brer fox went ter wuk en got ’im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun what he call a tar-baby, en he tuck dish yere tar-baby en he sot ’er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer ter see wat de news wuz gwineter be. En he didn’t hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come brer rabbit pacin’ down de road—lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity—dez ez sassy ez a jay-bird. Brer fox, he lay low. Brer rabbit come prancin’ ’long twel he spy de tar-baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz ’stonished. De tar-baby, she sot dar, she did, en brer fox, he lay low.
“‘Mawnin’!’ sez brer rabbit, sezee; ‘nice wedder dis mawnin’,’ sezee.
“Tar-baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’, en brer fox, he lay low.
“‘How duz zo’ sym’tums seem ter segashuate?’ sez brer rabbit, sezee.
“Brer fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de tar-baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.
‘How you come on, den? Is you deaf?’ sez brer rabbit, sezee; ’kaze if you is, I kin holler louder,’ sezee.
“Tar-baby stay still, en brer fox, he lay low.
“‘Youer stuck up, dat’s w’at you is,’ says brer rabbit, sezee, ’en I’m gwineter kyore you, dat’s w’at I’m a gwineter do,’ sezee.
“Brer fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummuck, he did, but tar-baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.
“‘I’m gwineter larn you howter talk ter ’specttubble fokes ef hit’s de las’ ack,’ sez brer rabbit, sezee. ‘Ef you don’t take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I’m gwineter bus’ you wide open,’ sezee.
“Tar-baby stay still, en brer fox, he lay low.
“Brer rabbit keep on axin’ ’im, en de tar-baby, she keep on sayin’ nuthin’ twel presently brer rabbit draw back wid his fis’, he did, en blip he tuck ’er side er de head. Right dar’s whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis’ struck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt ’im.
“But tar-baby, she stay still, en brer fox, he lay low.
“‘Ef you don’t lemme loose, I’ll knock you agin,’ sez brer rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch ’er a wipe wid de udder han’, en dat stuck. Tar-baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’, en brer fox, he lay low.
‘Tu’n me loose, fo’ I kick de natal stuffin’ outen you,’ sez brer rabbit, sezee, but de tar-baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’. She des hilt on, en den brer rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way.
“Brer fox, he lay low. Den brer rabbit squall out dat ef de tar-baby don’t tu’n ’im loose he butt ’er cranksided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den brer fox, he santered fort’, lookin’ des ez innercent ez wunner yo’ mammy’s mockin’-birds.
“‘Howdy, brer rabbit,’ sez brer fox, sezee. ‘You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin’,’ sezee, en den he rolled on de groun’, en laft twel he couldn’t laff no mo’. ‘I ’speck you’ll take dinner wid me dis time, brer rabbit. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain’t gwineter take no skuse,’ sez brer fox, sezee.”
Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two-pound yam out of the ashes.
“Did the fox eat the rabbit?” asked the little boy to whom the story had been told.
“Dat’s all de fur de tale goes,” replied the old man. “He mout, en den agin he moutent. Some say Jedge B’ar come along en loosed ’im—some say he didn’t. I hear Miss Sally callin’. You better run ’long.”
Joel Chandler Harris.
POMONA’S NOVEL.
IT was in the latter part of August of that year that it became necessary for some one in the office in which I was engaged to go to St. Louis to attend to important business. Everything seemed to point to me as the fit person, for I understood the particular business better than any one else. I felt that I ought to go, but I did not altogether like to do it. I went home, and Euphemia and I talked over the matter far into the regulation sleeping hours.
There were very good reasons why we should go (for of course I would not think of taking such a journey without Euphemia). In the first place it would be of advantage to me, in my business connection, to take the trip, and then it would be such a charming journey for us. We had never been west of the Alleghanies, and nearly all the country we would see would be new to us. We would come home by the great lakes and Niagara, and the prospect was delightful to both of us. But then we would have to leave Rudder Grange for at least three weeks, and how could we do that?
This was indeed a difficult question to answer. Who could take care of our garden, our poultry, our horse and cow, and all their complicated belongings? The garden was in admirable condition. Our vegetables were coming in every day in just that fresh and satisfactory condition—altogether unknown to people who buy vegetables—for which I had laboured so faithfully, and about which I had had so many cheerful anticipations. As to Euphemia’s chicken-yard,—with Euphemia away,—the subject was too great for us. We did not even discuss it. But we would give up all the pleasures of our home for the chance of this most desirable excursion, if we could but think of some one who would come and take care of the place while we were gone. Rudder Grange could not run itself for three weeks.
We thought of every available person. Old John would not do. We did not feel that we could trust him. We thought of several of our friends; but there was, in both our minds, a certain shrinking from the idea of handing over the place to any of them for such a length of time. For my part, I said, I would rather leave Pomona in charge than any one else; but then, Pomona was young and a girl. Euphemia agreed with me that she would rather trust her than any one else, but she also agreed in regard to the disqualifications. So when I went to the office the next morning, we had fully determined to go on the trip, if we could find some one to take charge of our place while we were gone. When I returned from the office in the afternoon I had agreed to go to St. Louis. By this time I had no choice in the matter, unless I wished to interfere very much with my own interests. We were to start in two days. If in that time we could get any one to stay at the place, very well; if not, Pomona must assume the charge. We were not able to get any one, and Pomona did assume the charge. It is surprising how greatly relieved we felt when we were obliged to come to this conclusion. The arrangement was exactly what we wanted, and now that there was no help for it, our consciences were easy.
We felt sure that there would be no danger to Pomona. Lord Edward would be with her, and she was a young person who was extraordinarily well able to take care of herself. Old John would be within call in case she needed him, and I borrowed a bull-dog to be kept in the house at night. Pomona herself was more than satisfied with the plan.
We made out, the night before we left, a long and minute series of directions for her guidance in household, garden, and farm matters, and directed her to keep a careful record of everything noteworthy that might occur. She was fully supplied with all the necessaries of life, and it has seldom happened that a young girl has been left in such a responsible and independent position as that in which we left Pomona. She was very proud of it. Our journey was ten times more delightful than we had expected it would be, and successful in every way; and yet although we enjoyed every hour of the trip, we were no sooner fairly on our way home than we became so wildly anxious to get there that we reached Rudder Grange on Wednesday, whereas we had written that we would be home on Thursday. We arrived early in the afternoon and walked up from the station, leaving our baggage to be sent in the express-waggon. As we approached our dear home we wanted to run, we were so eager to see it.
There it was, the same as ever. I lifted the gate-latch; the gate was locked. We ran to the carriage-gate; that was locked too. Just then I noticed a placard on the fence; it was not printed, but the lettering was large, apparently made with ink and a brush. It read—
To Be Sold
For Taxes.
We stood and looked at each other. Euphemia turned pale.
“What does this mean?” said I. “Has our landlord——?”
I could say no more. The dreadful thought arose that the place might pass away from us. We were not yet ready to buy it. But I did not put the thought in words. There was a field next to our lot, and I got over the fence and helped Euphemia over. Then we climbed our side-fence. This was more difficult, but we accomplished it without thinking much about its difficulties; our hearts were too full of painful apprehensions. I hurried to the front door; it was locked. All the lower windows were shut. We went around to the kitchen. What surprised us more than anything else was the absence of Lord Edward. Had he been sold?
Before we reached the back part of the house Euphemia said she felt faint and must sit down. I led her to a tree near by, under which I had made a rustic chair. The chair was gone. She sat on the grass, and I ran to the pump for some water. I looked for the bright tin dipper which always hung by the pump. It was not there. But I had a travelling-cup in my pocket, and as I was taking it out I looked around me. There was an air of bareness over everything. I did not know what it all meant, but I know that my hand trembled as I took hold of the pump-handle and began to pump.
At the first sound of the pump-handle I heard a deep bark in the direction of the barn, and then furiously around the corner came Lord Edward.
Before I had filled the cup he was bounding about me. I believe the glad welcome of the dog did more to revive Euphemia than the water. He was delighted to see us, and in a moment up came Pomona, running from the barn. Her face was radiant too. We felt relieved. Here were two friends who looked as if they were neither sold nor ruined.
Pomona quickly saw that we were ill at ease, and before I could put a question to her she divined the cause. Her countenance fell.
“You know,” said she, “you said you wasn’t comin’ till to-morrow. If you only had come then—I was goin’ to have everything just exactly right—an’ now you had to climb in——”
And the poor girl looked as if she might cry, which would have been a wonderful thing for Pomona to do.
“Tell me one thing,” said I. “What about—those taxes?”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she cried. “Don’t think another minute about that. I’ll tell you all about it soon. But come in first, and I’ll get you some lunch in a minute.”
We were somewhat relieved by Pomona’s statement that it was “all right” in regard to the tax-poster, but we were very anxious to know all about the matter. Pomona, however, gave us little chance to ask her any questions.
As soon as she had made ready our lunch she asked us, as a particular favour, to give her three-quarters of an hour to herself, and then, said she, “I’ll have everything looking just as if it was to-morrow.”
We respected her feelings, for, of course, it was a great disappointment to her to be taken thus unawares, and we remained in the dining-room until she appeared, and announced that she was ready for us to go about. We availed ourselves quickly of the privilege, and Euphemia hurried to the chicken-yard, while I bent my steps toward the garden and barn. As I went out I noticed that the rustic chair was in its place, and passing the pump I looked for the dipper. It was there. I asked Pomona about the chair, but she did not answer as quickly as was her habit.
“Would you rather,” said she, “hear it altogether, when you come in, or have it in little bits, head and tail, all of a jumble?”
I called to Euphemia and asked her what she thought, and she was so anxious to get to her chickens that she said she would much rather wait and hear it altogether. We found everything in perfect order,—the garden was even free from weeds, a thing I had not expected. If it had not been for that cloud on the front fence, I should have been happy enough. Pomona had said it was all right, but she could not have paid the taxes—however, I would wait; and I went to the barn.
When Euphemia came in from the poultry-yard, she called me and said she was in a hurry to hear Pomona’s account of things. So I went in, and we sat on the side porch, where it was shady, while Pomona, producing some sheets of foolscap paper, took her seat on the upper step.
“I wrote down the things of any account what happened,” said she, “as you told me to, and while I was about it, I thought I’d make it like a novel. It would be jus’ as true, and p’r’aps more amusin’. I suppose you don’t mind?”
No, we didn’t mind. So she went on.
“I haven’t got no name for my novel. I intended to think one out to-night. I wrote this all of nights. And I don’t read the first chapters, for they tell about my birth and my parent-age, and my early adventures. I’ll just come down to what happened to me while you was away, because you’ll be more anxious to hear about that. All that’s written here is true, jus’ the same as if I told it to you, but I’ve put it into novel language because it seems to come easier to me.”
And then, in a voice somewhat different from her ordinary tones, as if the “novel language” demanded it, she began to read—
“‘Chapter Five. The Lonely house and the Faithful friend. Thus was I left alone. None but two dogs to keep me com-pa-ny. I milk-ed the lowing kine and water-ed and fed the steed, and then, after my fru-gal repast, I clos-ed the man-si-on, shutting out all re-collections of the past and also foresights into the future. That night was a me-mor-able one. I slept soundly until the break of morn, but had the events transpired which afterward occur-red, what would have hap-pen-ed to me no tongue can tell. Early the next day nothing hap-pened. Soon after breakfast the vener-able John came to bor-row some ker-o-sene oil and a half a pound of sugar, but his attempt was foil-ed. I knew too well the in-sid-i-ous foe. In the very out-set of his vil-li-an-y I sent him home with a empty can. For two long days I wan-der-ed amid the ver-dant pathways of the garden and to the barn, whenever and anon my du-ty call-ed me, nor did I ere neg-lect the fowlery. No cloud o’er-spread this happy peri-od of my life. But the cloud was ri-sing in the horizon, although I saw it not.
“‘It was about twenty-five minutes after eleven, on the morning of a Thursday, that I sat pondering in my mind the ques-ti-on what to do with the butter and the veg-et-ables. Here was butter, and here was green corn and limabeans and trophy tomats, far more than I ere could use. And here was a horse, idly cropping the fol-i-age in the field, for as my employer had advis-ed and order-ed, I had put the steed to grass. And here was a waggon, none too new, which had it the top taken off, or even the curtains roll-ed up, would do for a li-cen-sed vendor. With the truck and butter, and mayhap some milk, I could load the waggon——’”
“Oh, Pomona,” interrupted Euphemia, “you don’t mean to say that you were thinking of doing anything like that?”
“Well, I was just beginning to think of it,” said Pomona. “But, of course, I couldn’t have gone away and left the house. And you’ll see I didn’t do it.” And then she continued her novel. “‘But while my thoughts were thus employ-ed, I heard Lord Edward burst into bark-ter——’”
At this Euphemia and I could not help bursting into laughter. Pomona did not seem at all confused, but went on with her reading.
“‘I hurried to the door, and, look-ing out, I saw a waggon at the gate. Re-pair-ing there, I saw a man. Said he, “Wilt open the gate?” I had fasten-ed up the gates and remov-ed every stealable ar-ticle from the yard.’”
Euphemia and I looked at each other. This explained the absence of the rustic seat and the dipper.
“‘Thus, with my mind at ease, I could let my faith-ful fri-end, the dog, for he it was, roam with me through the grounds, while the fi-erce bull-dog guard-ed the man-si-on within. Then said I, quite bold unto him, “No. I let in no man here. My em-ploy-er and employ-er-ess are now from home. What do you want?” Then says he, as bold as brass, “I’ve come to put the light-en-ing rods upon the house. Open the gate.” “What rods?” says I. “The rods as was order-ed,” says he. “Open the gate.” I stood and gaz-ed at him. Full well I saw through his pinch-beck mask. I knew his tricks. In the ab-sence of my em-ployer, he would put up rods, and ever so many more than was wanted, and likely, too, some miser-able trash that would attract the light-en-ing, instead of keep-ing it off. Then, as it would spoil the house to take them down, they would be kept, and pay demand-ed. “No, sir,” says I. “No light-en-ing rods upon this house whilst I stand here,” and with that I walk-ed away, and let Lord Edward loose. The man he storm-ed with pas-si-on. His eyes flash-ed fire. He would e’en have scal-ed the gate, but when he saw the dog he did forbear. As it was then near noon, I strode away to feed the fowls; but when I did return, I saw a sight which froze the blood with-in my veins——’”
“The dog didn’t kill him?” cried Euphemia.
“Oh, no, ma’am!” said Pomona. “You’ll see that that wasn’t it. At one cor-ner of the lot, in front, a base boy, who had accompa-ni-ed this man was bang-ing on the fence with a long stick, and thus attrack-ing to hisself the rage of Lord Edward, while the vile intrig-er of a light-en-ing rodder had brought a lad-der to the other side of the house, up which he had now as-cend-ed, and was on the roof. What horrors fill-ed my soul! How my form trembl-ed! This,” continued Pomona, “is the end of the novel,” and she laid her foolscap pages on the porch.
Euphemia and I exclaimed, with one voice, against this. We had just reached the most exciting part, and, I added, we had heard nothing yet about that affair of the taxes.
“You see, sir,” said Pomona, “it took me so long to write out the chapters about my birth, my parentage, and my early adventures, that I hadn’t time to finish up the rest. But I can tell you what happened after that jus’ as well as if I had writ it out.” And so she went on, much more glibly than before, with the account of the doings of the lightning-rod man.
“AND HE COMES DOWN AS LOW AS HE COULD.”
“There was that wretch on top of the house, a-fixin’ his old rods and hammerin’ away for dear life. He’d brought his ladder over the side fence, where the dog, a-barkin’ and plungin’ at the boy outside, couldn’t see him. I stood dumb for a minute, and then I know’d I had him. I rushed into the house, got a piece of well-rope, tied it to the bull-dog’s collar, an’ dragged him out and fastened him to the bottom rung of the ladder. Then I walks over to the front fence with Lord Edward’s chain, for I knew that if he got at that bull-dog there’d be times, for they’d never been allowed to see each other yet. So says I to the boy, ‘I’m goin’ to tie up the dog, so you needn’t be afraid of his jumpin’ over the fence,’—which he couldn’t do, or the boy would have been a corpse for twenty minutes, or maybe half-an-hour. The boy kinder laughed, and said I needn’t mind, which I didn’t. Then I went to the gate and I clicked to the horse which was standin’ there, an’ off he starts, as good as gold, an’ trots down the road. The boy, he said somethin’ or other pretty bad an’ away he goes after him; but the horse was a-trottin’ real fast, an’ had a good start.”
“How on earth could you ever think of doing such things?” said Euphemia. “That horse might have upset the waggon and broken all the lightning-rods, besides running over I don’t know how many people.”
“But you see, ma’am, that wasn’t my look-out,” said Pomona. “I was a-defendin’ the house, and the enemy must expect to have things happen to him. So then I hears an awful row on the roof, and there was the man just coming down the ladder. He’d heard the horse go off, and when he got about half-way down an’ caught a sight of the bull-dog, he was madder than ever you seed a lightnin’-rodder in all your born days. ‘Take that dog off of there!’ he yelled at me. ‘No, I won’t,’ says I. ‘I never see a girl like you since I was born,’ he screams at me. ‘I guess it would ’a’ been better fur you if you had,’ says I; an’ then he was so mad he couldn’t stand it any longer, and he comes down as low as he could, and when he saw just how long the rope was—which was pretty short—he made a jump, and landed clear of the dog. Then he went on dreadful because he couldn’t get at his ladder to take it away; and I wouldn’t untie the dog, because if I had he’d ’a’ torn the tendons out of that fellow’s legs in no time. I never see a dog in such a boiling passion, and yet never making no sound at all but blood-curdlin’ grunts. An’ I don’t see how the rodder would ’a’ got his ladder at all if the dog hadn’t made an awful jump at him, and jerked the ladder down. It just missed your geranium-bed, and the rodder, he ran to the other end of it, and began pulling it away, dog and all. ‘Look-a-here,’ says I, ‘we can fix him now;’ and so he cooled down enough to help me, and I unlocked the front door, and we pushed the bottom end of the ladder in, dog and all; an’ then I shut the door as tight as it would go an’ untied the end of the rope, an’ the rodder pulled the ladder out while I held the door to keep the dog from follerin’, which he came pretty near doin’, anyway. But I locked him in, and then the man began stormin’ again about his waggon; but when he looked out an’ see the boy comin’ back with it—for somebody must ’a’ stopped the horse—he stopped stormin’ and went to put up his ladder ag’in. ‘No, you don’t,’ says I; ‘I’ll let the big dog loose next time, and if I put him at the foot of your ladder, you’ll never come down.’ ‘But I want to go and take down what I put up,’ he says; ‘I ain’t a-goin’ on with this job.’ ‘No,’ says I, ‘you ain’t; and you can’t go up there to wrench off them rods and make rain-holes in the roof, neither.’ He couldn’t get no madder than he was then, an’ fur a minute or two he couldn’t speak, an’ then he says, ‘I’ll have satisfaction for this.’ An’ says I, ‘How?’ An’ says he, ‘You’ll see what it is to interfere with a ordered job.’ An’ says I, ‘There wasn’t no order about it;’ an’ says he, ‘I’ll show you better than that;’ an’ he goes to his waggon an’ gits a book, ‘There,’ says he, ‘read that.’ ‘What of it?’ says I; ‘there’s nobody of the name of Ball lives here.’ That took the man kinder back, and he said he was told it was the only house on the lane, which I said was right, only it was the next lane he oughter ’a’ gone to. He said no more after that, but just put his ladder in his waggon and went off. But I was not altogether rid of him. He left a trail of his baleful presence behind him.
“That horrid bull-dog wouldn’t let me come into the house! No matter what door I tried, there he was, just foamin’ mad. I let him stay till nearly night, and then went and spoke kind to him; but it was no good. He’d got an awful spite ag’in me. I found something to eat down cellar, an’ I made a fire outside an’ roasted some corn and potatoes. That night I slep’ in the barn. I wasn’t afraid to be away from the house, for I knew it was safe enough, with that dog in it, and Lord Edward outside. For three days, Sunday an’ all, I was kep’ out of this here house. I got along pretty well with the sleepin’ and the eatin’, but the drinkin’ was the worst. I couldn’t get no coffee or tea; but there was plenty of milk.”
“Why didn’t you get some man to come and attend to the dog?” I asked. “It was dreadful to live in that way.”
“Well, I didn’t know no man that could do it,” said Pomona. “The dog would ’a’ been too much for old John, and besides, he was mad about the kerosene. Sunday afternoon, Captain Atkinson and Mrs. Atkinson and their little girl in a push-waggon, come here, and I told ’em you was gone away; but they says they would stop a minute, and could I give them a drink; an’ I had nothin’ to give it them but an old chicken-bowl that I had washed out, for even the dipper was in the house, an’ I told ’em everything was locked up, which was true enough, though they must ’a’ thought you was a queer kind of people; but I wasn’t a-goin’ to say nothin’ about the dog, fur, to tell the truth, I was ashamed to do it. So as soon as they’d gone, I went down into the cellar,—and it’s lucky that I had the key for the outside cellar door,—and I got a piece of fat corn-beef and the meat axe. I unlocked the kitchen door and went in, with the axe in one hand and the meat in the other. The dog might take his choice. I know’d he must be pretty nigh famished, for there was nothin’ that he could get at to eat. As soon as I went in, he came runnin’ to me; but I could see he was shaky on his legs. He looked a sort of wicked at me, and then he grabbed the meat. He was all right then.”
“Oh, my!” said Euphemia, “I am so glad to hear that. I was afraid you never got in. But we saw the dog—is he as savage yet?”
“Oh, no!” said Pomona; “nothin’ like it.”
“Look here, Pomona,” said I, “I want to know about those taxes. When do they come into your story?”
“Pretty soon, sir,” said she, and she went on—
“After that, I know’d it wouldn’t do to have them two dogs so that they’d have to be tied up if they see each other. Just as like as not I’d want them both at once, and then they’d go to fightin’, and leave me to settle with some blood-thirsty lightnin’-rodder. So, as I know’d if they once had a fair fight and found out which was master, they’d be good friends afterwards, I thought the best thing to do would be to let ’em fight it out, when there was nothin’ else for ’em to do. So I fixed up things for the combat.”
“Why, Pomona!” cried Euphemia, “I didn’t think you were capable of such a cruel thing.”
“It looks that way, ma’am, but really it ain’t,” replied the girl. “It seemed to me as if it would be a mercy to both of ’em to have the thing settled. So I cleared away a place in front of the wood-shed and unchained Lord Edward, and then I opened the kitchen door and called the bull. Out he came, with his teeth a-showin’, and his blood-shot eyes, and his crooked front legs. Like lightnin’ from the mount’in blast, he made one bounce for the big dog, and oh! what a fight there was! They rolled, they gnashed, they knocked over the wood-horse and sent chips a-flyin’ all ways at wonst. I thought Lord Edward would whip in a minute or two; but he didn’t, for the bull stuck to him like a burr, and they was havin’ it, ground and lofty, when I hears some one run up behind me, and turnin’ quick, there was the ’piscopalian minister. ‘My! my! my!’ he hollers, ‘what an awful spectacle! Ain’t there no way of stoppin’ it?’ ‘No, sir,’ says I, and I told him how I didn’t want to stop it and the reason why. ‘Then,’ says he, ‘where’s your master?’ and I told him how you was away. ‘Isn’t there any man at all about?’ says he. ‘No,’ says I. ‘Then,’ says he, ‘if there’s nobody else to stop it, I must do it myself.’ An’ he took off his coat. ‘No,’ says I, ‘you keep back, sir. If there’s anybody to plunge into that erena, the blood be mine;’ an’ I put my hand, without thinkin’, ag’in his black shirt-bosom, to hold him back; but he didn’t notice, bein’ so excited. ‘Now,’ says I, ‘jist wait one minute, and you’ll see that bull’s tail go between his legs. He’s weakenin’.’ An’ sure enough, Lord Edward got a good grab at him, and was a-shakin’ the very life out of him, when I run up and took Lord Edward by the collar. ‘Drop it!’ says I; an’ he dropped it, for he know’d he’d whipped, and he was pretty tired hisself. Then the bull-dog, he trotted off with his tail a-hangin’ down. ‘Now then,’ says I, ‘them dogs will be bosom friends for ever after this.’ ‘Ah me!’ says he, ‘I’m sorry indeed that your employer, for who I’ve always had a great respect, should allow you to get into such bad habits.’
“That made me feel real bad, and I told him, mighty quick, that you was the last man in the world to let me do anything like that, and that if you’d ’a’ been here, you’d ’a’ separated them dogs, if they’d a-chawed your arms off; that you was very particular about such things, and that it would be a pity if he was to think you was a dog-fightin’ gentleman, when I’d often heard you say that, now you was fixed and settled, the one thing you would like most would be to be made a vestryman.”
I sat up straight in my chair.
“Pomona!” I exclaimed. “You didn’t tell him that?”
“That’s what I said, sir, for I wanted him to know what you really was; an’ he says, ‘Well, well, I never knew that. It might be a very good thing. I’ll speak to some of the members about it. There’s two vacancies now in our vestry.’”
I was crushed; but Euphemia tried to put the matter into the brightest light.
“Perhaps it may all turn out for the best,” she said, “and you may be elected, and that would be splendid. But it would be an awfully funny thing for a dog-fight to make you a vestryman.”
I could not talk on this subject. “Go on, Pomona,” I said, trying to feel resigned to my shame, “and tell us about that poster on the fence.”
“I’ll be to that almost right away,” she said.
“It was two or three days after the dog-fight that I was down at the barn, and happenin’ to look over to old John’s, I saw that tree-man there. He was a-showin’ his book to John, and him and his wife and all the young ones was a-standin’ there, drinkin’ down them big peaches and pears as if they was all real. I know’d he’d come here ag’in, for them fellers never gives you up; and I didn’t know how to keep him away, for I didn’t want to let the dogs loose on a man what, after all, didn’t want to do no more harm than to talk the life out of you. So I just happened to notice, as I came to the house, how kind of desolate everything looked, and I thought perhaps I might make it look worse, and he wouldn’t care to deal here. So I thought of putting up a poster like that, for nobody whose place was a-goin’ to be sold for taxes would be likely to want trees. So I run in the house, and wrote it quick and put it up. And sure enough, the man he come along soon, and when he looked at that paper and tried the gate, an’ looked over the fence an’ saw the house all shut up an’ not a livin’ soul about,—for I had both the dogs in the house with me,—he shook his head an’ walked off, as much as to say, ‘If that man had fixed his place up proper with my trees, he wouldn’t ’a’ come to this!’ An’ then, as I found the poster worked so good, I thought it might keep other people from comin’ a-botherin’ around, and so I left it up; but I was a-goin’ to be sure and take it down before you came.”
As it was now pretty late in the afternoon, I proposed that Pomona should postpone the rest of her narrative until evening. She said that there was nothing else to tell that was very particular; and I did not feel as if I could stand anything more just now, even if it was very particular.
When we were alone, I said to Euphemia—
“If we ever have to go away from this place again——”
“But we won’t go away,” she interrupted, looking up to me with as bright a face as she ever had; “at least not for a long, long, long time to come. And I’m so glad you’re to be a vestryman.”
Frank R. Stockton.
TEMPEST IN A TUB.
“MINUS A HOOP.”
IT was all about a wash-tub. Mrs. Villiers had loaned Mrs. Ransom her wash-tub. This was two weeks ago last Monday. When Mrs. Villiers saw it again, which was the next morning, it stood on her backstoop, minus a hoop. Mrs. Villiers sent over to Mrs. Ransom’s a request for the hoop, couched in language calculated to impugn Mrs. Ransom’s reputation for carefulness. Mrs. Ransom lost no time in sending back word that the tub was all right when it was sent back; and delicately intimated that Mrs. Villiers had better sweep before her own door first, whatever that might mean. Each having discharged a Christian duty to each other, further communication was immediately cut off; and the affair was briskly discussed by the neighbours, who entered into the merits and demerits of the affair with unselfish zeal. Heaven bless them! Mrs. Ransom clearly explained her connection with the tub by charging Mr. Villiers with coming home drunk as a fiddler the night before Christmas. This bold statement threatened to carry the neighbours over in a body to Mrs. Ransom’s view, until Mrs. Villiers remembered, and promptly chronicled the fact, that the Ransoms were obliged to move away from their last place because of non-payment of rent. Here the matter rested among the neighbours, leaving them as undecided as before. But between the two families immediately concerned the fire burned as luridly as when first kindled. It was a constant skirmish between the two women, from early morning until late at night. Mrs. Ransom would glare through her blinds when Mrs. Villiers was in the yard, and murmur between her clenched teeth—
“Oh, you hussy!”
And, with that wonderful instinct which characterises the human above the brute animal, Mrs. Villiers understood that Mrs. Ransom was thus engaged, and, lifting her nose at the highest angle compatible with the safety of her spinal cord, would sail around the yard as triumphantly as if escorted by a brigade of genuine princes.
And then would come Mrs. Villiers’s turn at the window with Mrs. Ransom in the yard, with a like satisfactory and edifying result.
When company called on Mrs. Villiers, Mrs. Ransom would peer from behind her curtains and audibly exclaim—
“Who’s that fright, I wonder?”
And when Mrs. Ransom was favoured with a call, it was Mrs. Villiers’s blessed privilege to be at the window and audibly observe—
“Where was that clod dug up from?”
Mrs. Ransom has a little boy named Tommy, and Mrs. Villiers has a similar sized son, who struggles under the cognomen of Wickliffe Morgan; and it will happen, because these two children are too young to grasp fully the grave responsibilities of life—it will happen, I repeat, that they will come together in various respects. If Mrs. Ransom is so fortunate as to first observe one of these cohesions, she promptly steps to the door, and, covertly waiting until Mrs. Villiers’s door opens, she shrilly observes—“Thomas Jefferson, come right into this house this minute! How many times have I told you to keep away from that Villiers brat?”
“Villiers brat!” What a stab that is! What subtle poison it is saturated with! Poor Mrs. Villiers’s breath comes thick and hard; her face burns like fire, and her eyes almost snap out of her head. She has to press her hand to her heart as if to keep that organ from bursting; there is no relief from the dreadful throbbing and the dreadful pain. The slamming of Mrs. Ransom’s door shuts out all hope of succour. But it quickens Mrs. Villiers’s faculties, and makes her so alert, that when the two children come together again, which they very soon do, she is first at the door. Now is the opportunity to heap burning coals on the head of Mrs. Ransom. She heaps them.
“Wickliffe Morgan! what are you doing out there with that Ransom imp? Do you want to catch some disease? Come in here before I skin you.” And the door slams shut, and poor Mrs. Ransom, with trembling form and bated breath and flashing eyes, clinches her fingers, and glares with tremendous wrath over the landscape.
And in the absence of any real, tangible information as to the loss of that hoop, this is perhaps the very best that can be done on either side.
J. M. Bailey.
THE STOUT GENTLEMAN.
A TALE OF MYSTERY.
“IT WAS A RAINY SUNDAY.”
“I’ll cross it, though it blast me!”—Hamlet.
IT was a rainy Sunday, in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering, but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn! whoever has had the luck to experience one can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the window in quest of something to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of reach of all amusement. The windows of my bedroom looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys; while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys; in one corner was a stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable, crestfallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit; his drooping tail matted as it were into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back. Near the cart was a half-dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by uttering something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.
I was lonely and listless, and wanted amusement. My room soon became insupportable. I abandoned it and sought what is technically called the traveller’s room. This is a public room set apart at most inns for the accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travellers or riders; a kind of commercial knights-errant who are incessantly scouring the kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or by coach. They are the only successors, that I know of at the present day, to the knights-errant of yore. They lead the same kind of roving, adventurous life, only changing the lance for a whip, the buckler for a pattern-card, and the coat of mail for an upper Benjamin. Instead of vindicating the charms of peerless beauty, they rove about spreading the fame and standing of some substantial tradesman or manufacturer, and are ready at any time to bargain in his name; it being the fashion nowadays to trade instead of fight with one another. As the room of the Hostel, in the good old fighting times, would be hung round at night with the armour of wayworn warriors, such as coats of mail, falchions, and yawning helmets; so the traveller’s room is garnished with the harnessing of their successors; with box-coats, whips of all kinds, spurs, gaiters, and oilcloth-covered hats.
I was in hopes of finding some of these worthies to talk with, but was disappointed, there were, indeed, two or three in the room, but I could make nothing of them. One was just finishing his breakfast, quarrelling with his bread and butter, and huffing the waiter; another buttoned on a pair of gaiters, with many execrations at “Boots” for not having cleaned his shoes well; a third sat drumming on the table with his fingers, and looking at the rain as it streamed down the window-glass; they all appeared infected by the weather, and disappeared, one after the other, without exchanging a word.
I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bell ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite; who, being confined to the house, for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at the front windows to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further from without to amuse me.
What was I to do to pass away the long-lived day? I was sadly nervous and lonely; and everything about an inn seemed calculated to make a dull day ten times duller. Old newspapers smelling of beer and tobacco smoke, and which I had already read half-a-dozen times. Good-for-nothing books, that were worse than the rainy weather. I bored myself to death with an old volume of the Lady’s Magazine. I read all the commonplace names of ambitious travellers scrawled on the panes of glass; the eternal families of the Smiths, and the Browns, and the Jacksons, and the Johnsons, and all the other sons; and I deciphered several scraps of fatiguing inn-window poetry that I have met with in all parts of the world.
The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along in the air; there was no variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter, patter, patter; excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattlings of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day) when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street, with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas; and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper Benjamins.
The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, with the carroty-headed hostler and the nondescript animal ycleped Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient; the coach again whirled on its way; the boy, and dog, and hostler, and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; and the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on. In fact there was no hope of its clearing up; the barometer pointed to rainy weather; mine hostess’s tortoise-shell cat sat by the fire washing her face and rubbing her paws over her ears; and on referring to the almanac, I found a direful prediction from the top of the page to the bottom through the whole month, “expect—much—rain—about—this—time.”
I was dreadfully hipped. The hours seemed as if they would never creep by. The very ticking of the clock became irksome. At length the stillness of the house was interrupted by the ringing of a bell. Shortly after I heard the voice of a waiter at the bar, “The Stout Gentleman in No. 13 wants his breakfast. Tea and bread and butter, with ham and eggs; the eggs not to be too much done.”
In such a situation as mine every incident is of importance. Here was a subject of speculation presented to my mind, and ample exercise for my imagination. I am prone to paint pictures to myself, and on this occasion I had some material to work upon. Had the guest upstairs been mentioned as Mr. Smith, or Mr. Brown, or Jackson, or Mr. Johnson, or merely as the gentleman in No. 13, it would have been a perfect blank to me. I should have thought nothing of it. But “the Stout Gentleman!”—the very name had something in it of the picturesque. It at once gave the size, it embodied the personage to my mind’s eye, and my fancy did the rest. “He was stout, or, as some term it, lusty; in all probability therefore he was advanced in life; some people expanding as they grow old. By his breakfasting rather late, and in his own room, he must be a man accustomed to live at his ease, and above the necessity of early rising; no doubt a round, rosy, lusty old gentleman.”
“THE STOUT GENTLEMAN HAD BEEN RUDE TO HER.”
There was another violent ringing; the Stout Gentleman was impatient for his breakfast. He was evidently a man of importance, “well-to-do in the world,” accustomed to be promptly waited upon, of a keen appetite, and a little cross when hungry. “Perhaps,” thought I, “he may be some London alderman; or who knows but he may be a member of Parliament?”
The breakfast was sent up, and there was a short interval of silence; he was doubtless making the tea. Presently there was a violent ringing, and before it could be answered, another ringing, still more violent. “Bless me! what a choleric old gentleman!” The waiter came down in a huff. The butter was rancid, the eggs were overdone, the ham was too salt. The Stout Gentleman was evidently nice in his eating. One of those who eat and growl and keep the waiter on the trot, and live in a state militant with the household.
The hostess got into a fume. I should observe that she was a brisk, coquettish woman; a little of a shrew, and something of a slammerkin, but very pretty withal; with a nincompoop for a husband, as shrews are apt to have. She rated the servants roundly for their negligence in sending up so bad a breakfast; but said not a word against the Stout Gentleman; by which I clearly perceived he must be a man of consequence; entitled to make a noise and to give trouble at a country inn. Other eggs and ham and bread and butter were sent. They appeared to be more graciously received; at last there was no further complaint, and I had not made many turns about the traveller’s room when there was another ringing. Shortly afterwards there was a stir, and an inquest about the house. “The Stout Gentleman wanted the Times or the Chronicle newspaper.” I set him down, therefore, for a whig; or rather, from his being so absolute and lordly where he had a chance, I suspected him of being a radical. Hunt, I had heard, was a large man. “Who knows,” thought I, “but it is Hunt himself?”
My curiosity began to be awakened. I inquired of the waiter who was this Stout Gentleman that was making all this stir, but I could get no information. Nobody seemed to know his name. The landlords of bustling inns seldom trouble their heads about the names of their transient guests. The colour of a coat, the shape or size of the person, is enough to suggest a travelling name. It is either the tall gentleman, or the short gentleman; or the gentleman in black, or the gentleman in snuff colour; or, as in the present instance, the Stout Gentleman; a designation of the kind once hit on answers every purpose, and saves all further inquiry.
Rain—rain—rain! pitiless, ceaseless rain! no such thing as putting a foot out of doors, and no occupation or amusement within. By-and-by I heard some one walking overhead. It was in the Stout Gentleman’s room. He evidently was a large man by the heaviness of his tread; and an old man from his wearing such creaking soles. “He is doubtless,” thought I, “some rich old square-toes, of regular habits, and is now taking exercise after breakfast.”
I now read all the advertisements of coaches and hotels that were stuck about the mantelpiece. The Lady’s Magazine had become an abomination to me; it was as tedious as the day itself. I wandered out, not knowing what to do, and ascended again to my room. I had not been there long when there was a squall from a neighbouring bedroom. A door opened and slammed violently; a chambermaid that I had remarked for a ruddy, good-humoured face, went downstairs in a violent flurry. The Stout Gentleman had been rude to her.
This sent a whole host of my deductions to the deuce in a moment. This unknown personage could not be an old gentleman; for old gentlemen are not apt to be so obstreperous to chambermaids. He could not be a young gentleman; for young gentlemen are not apt to inspire such indignation. He must be a middle-aged man, and confoundedly ugly into the bargain, or the girl would not have taken the matter in such terrible dudgeon. I confess I was sorely puzzled. In a few minutes I heard the voice of my landlady. I caught a glance of her as she came tramping upstairs, her face glowing, her cap flaring, her tongue wagging the whole way.
“She’d have no such doings in her house, she’d warrant. If gentlemen did spend their money freely, it was no rule. She’d have no servant-maids of hers treated in that way, when they were about their work, that’s what she wouldn’t.”
As I hate squabbles, particularly with women, and above all with pretty women, I slunk back into my room, and partly closed the door; but my curiosity was too much excited not to listen. The landlady marched intrepidly to the enemy’s citadel and entered it with a storm. The door closed after her. I heard her voice in high windy clamour for a moment or two. Then it gradually subsided, like a gust of wind in a garret. Then there was a laugh; then I heard nothing more. After a little while my landlady came out with an odd smile on her face, adjusting her cap, which was a little on one side. As she went downstairs I heard the landlord ask her what was the matter; she said, “Nothing at all—only the girl’s a fool!” I was more than ever perplexed what to make of this unaccountable personage, who could put a good-natured chambermaid in a passion, and send away a termagant landlady in smiles. He could not be so old, nor cross, nor ugly either.
I had to go to work at his picture again, and to paint him entirely different. I now set him down for one of those Stout Gentlemen that are frequently met with swaggering about the doors of country inns. Moist, merry fellows, in Belcher handkerchiefs, whose bulk is a little assisted by malt liquors. Men who have seen the world, and been sworn at Highgate. Who are used to tavern life; up to all the tricks of tapsters, and knowing in the ways of sinful publicans. Free livers on a small scale, who call all the waiters by name, tousle the maids, gossip with the landlady at the bar, and prose over a pint of port or a glass of negus after dinner.
The morning wore away in forming these and similar surmises. As fast as I wove one system of belief, some movement of the unknown would completely overturn it, and throw all my thoughts again into confusion. Such are the solitary operations of a feverish mind. I was, as I have said, extremely nervous, and the continual meditation on the concerns of this invisible personage began to have its effects—I was getting a fit of fidgets.
Dinner-time came. I hoped the Stout Gentleman might dine in the traveller’s room, and that I might at length get a view of his person; but no—he had dinner served in his own room. What could be the meaning of this solitude and mystery? He could not be a radical; there was something too aristocratical in thus keeping himself apart from the rest of the world, and condemning himself to his own dull company throughout a rainy day. And then too he lived too well for a discontented politician. He seemed to expatiate on a variety of dishes, and to sit over his wine like a jolly friend of good living.
Indeed, my doubts on this head were soon at an end, for he could not have finished his first bottle before I could faintly hear him humming a tune, and on listening I found it to be “God Save the King.” ’Twas plain then he was no radical, but a faithful subject; one that grew loyal over his bottle, and was ready to stand by his king and constitution when he could stand by nothing else. But who could he be? My conjectures began to run wild. Was he not some personage of distinction travelling incog.? “God knows!” said I, at my wit’s end; “it maybe one of the royal family for aught I know, for they are all Stout Gentlemen!”
The weather continued rainy. The mysterious person kept his room, and, as far as I could judge, his chair; for I did not hear him move. In the meantime, as the day advanced, the traveller’s room began to be frequented. Some who had just arrived came in buttoned up in box coats; others came home who had been dispersed about the town. Some took their dinners, and some their tea. Had I been in a different mood, I should have found entertainment in studying this peculiar class of men. There were two, especially, who were regular wags of the road, and up to all the standing jokes of travellers. They had a thousand sly things to say to the waiting-maid, whom they called Louisa, and Ethelinda, and a dozen other fine names, changing the name every time, and chuckling amazingly at their own waggery. My mind, however, had become completely engrossed by the Stout Gentleman. He had kept my fancy in chase during a long day, and it was not now to be diverted from the scent.
The evening gradually wore away. The travellers read the papers two or three times over. Some drew around the fire, and told long stories about their horses, about their adventures, their over-turns, and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different merchants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty chambermaids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their “nightcaps,”—that is to say, strong glasses of brandy and water with sugar, or some other mixture of the kind; after which they one after another rang for “boots” and the chambermaids, and walked up to bed in old shoes, cut down into marvellously uncomfortable slippers.
There was only one man left; a short-legged, long-bodied, plethoric fellow, with a very large sandy head. He sat by himself, with a glass of port wine negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring until nothing was left but the spoon. He gradually fell asleep, bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber.
The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box-coats of departed travellers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathing of the sleeping toper, and the dripping of the rain, drop—drop—drop, from the eaves of the house.
The church bells chimed midnight. All at once the Stout Gentleman began to walk overhead, pacing slowly backwards and forwards. There was something extremely awful in all this—especially to me in my state of nerves. These ghastly great-coats, these guttural breathings, and the creaking footsteps of the mysterious being. His steps grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away. I could bear it no longer; I was wound up to the desperation of a hero of romance. “Be he who or what he may,” said I to myself, “I’ll have a sight of him!” I seized a chamber candle and hurried up to No. 13. The door stood ajar. I hesitated—I entered—the room was deserted. There stood a large, broad-bottomed elbow-chair at a table, on which was an empty tumbler and a Times newspaper, and the room smelt powerfully of Stilton cheese.
The mysterious stranger had evidently but just retired. I turned off to my room sorely disappointed. As I went along the corridor I saw a large pair of boots, with dirty, waxed tops, standing at the door of a bed-chamber. They doubtless belonged to the unknown; but it would not do to disturb so redoubtable a personage in his den; he might discharge a pistol or something worse at my head. I went to bed therefore, and lay awake half the night in a terribly nervous state; and even when I fell asleep I was still haunted in my dreams by the idea of the Stout Gentleman and his wax-topped boots.
I slept rather late the next morning, and was awakened by some stir and bustle in the house, which I could not at first comprehend; until getting more awake, I found there was a mail coach starting from the door. Suddenly there was a cry from below: “The gentleman has forgot his umbrella; look for the gentleman’s umbrella in No. 13.”
I heard an immediate scamper of a chambermaid along the passage, and a shrill reply, as she ran, “Here it is! here’s the gentleman’s umbrella!”
“THAT WAS ALL I EVER SAW OF THE STOUT GENTLEMAN.”
The mysterious stranger then was on the point of setting off. This was the only chance I should ever have of knowing him. I sprang out of bed, scrambled to the window, snatched aside the curtains, and just caught a glimpse of the rear of a person getting in at the coach-door. The skirts of a brown coat parted behind, and gave me a full view of the broad disc of a pair of drab breeches. The door closed. “All right,” was the word; the coach whirled off—and that was all I ever saw of the Stout Gentleman.
Washington Irving.
MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.
SECOND WEEK.
NEXT to deciding when to start your garden, the most important matter is, what to put in it. It is difficult to decide what to order for dinner on a given day: how much more oppressive is it to order in a lump an endless vista of dinners, so to speak! For, unless your garden is a boundless prairie (and mine seems to me to be that when I hoe it on hot days), you must make a selection, from the great variety of vegetables, of those you will raise in it; and you feel rather bound to supply your own table from your own garden, and to eat only as you have sown.
I hold that no man has a right (whatever his sex, of course) to have a garden to his own selfish uses. He ought not to please himself, but every man to please his neighbour. I tried to have a garden that would give general moral satisfaction. It seemed to me that nobody could object to potatoes (a most useful vegetable); and I began to plant them freely. But there was a chorus of protest against them. “You don’t want to take up your ground with potatoes,” the neighbours said: “you can buy potatoes” (the very thing I wanted to avoid doing is buying things). “What you want is the perishable things that you cannot get fresh in the market.”—“But what kind of perishable things?” A horticulturist of eminence wanted me to sow lines of strawberries and raspberries right over where I had put my potatoes in drills. I had about five hundred strawberry-plants in another part of my garden; but this fruit-fanatic wanted me to turn my whole patch into vines and runners. I suppose I could raise strawberries enough for all my neighbours; and perhaps I ought to do it. I had a little space prepared for melons,—musk-melons,—which I showed to an experienced friend. “You are not going to waste your ground on musk-melons?” he asked. “They rarely ripen in this climate thoroughly, before frost.” He had tried for years without luck. I resolved not to go into such a foolish experiment. But, the next day, another neighbour happened in. “Ah! I see you are going to have melons. My family would rather give up anything else in the garden than musk-melons,—of the nutmeg variety. They are the most grateful things we have on the table.” So there it was. There was no compromise: it was melons or no melons, and somebody offended in any case. I half resolved to plant them a little late, so that they would, and they wouldn’t. But I had the same difficulty about string-beans (which I detest), and squash (which I tolerate), and parsnips, and the whole round of green things.
I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to put your foot down in gardening. If I had actually taken counsel of my friends, I should not have had a thing growing in the garden to-day but weeds. And besides, while you are waiting, Nature does not wait. Her mind is made up. She knows just what she will raise; and she has an infinite variety of early and late. The most humiliating thing to me about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man. Nature is prompt, decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plants with a vigour and freedom that I admire; and the more worthless the plant, the more rapid and splendid its growth. She is at it early and late, and all night; never tiring, nor showing the least sign of exhaustion.
“Eternal gardening is the price of liberty,” is a motto that I should put over the gateway of my garden, if I had a gate. And yet it is not wholly true; for there is no liberty in gardening. The man who undertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued. He felicitates himself that, when he gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest and of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of his seeds. It is a green anticipation. He has planted a seed that will keep him awake nights, drive rest from his bones, and sleep from his pillow. Hardly is the garden planted, when he must begin to hoe it. The weeds have sprung up all over it in a night. They shine and wave in redundant life. The docks have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeper than conscience. Talk about the London Docks!—the roots of these are like the sources of the Aryan race. And the weeds are not all. I awake in the morning (and a thriving garden will wake a person up two hours before he ought to be out of bed), and think of the tomato-plants,—the leaves like fine lace-work, owing to black bugs that skip around, and can’t be caught. Somebody ought to get up before the dew is off (why don’t the dew stay on till after a reasonable breakfast?) and sprinkle soot on the leaves. I wonder if it is I. Soot is so much blacker than the bugs, that they are disgusted, and go away. You can’t get up too early if you have a garden. You must be early due yourself, if you get ahead of the bugs. I think that, on the whole, it would be best to sit up all night, and sleep day-times. Things appear to go on in the night in the garden uncommonly. It would be less trouble to stay up than it is to get up so early.
“WHEN THEY BREAK INTO THE GARDEN.”
I have been setting out some new raspberries, two sorts,—a silver and a gold colour. How fine they will look on the table next year in a cut-glass dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher! I set them four and five feet apart. I set my strawberries pretty well apart also. The reason is, to give room for the cows to run through when they break into the garden,—as they do sometimes. A cow needs a broader track than a locomotive; and she generally makes one. I am sometimes astonished to see how big a space in a flower-bed her foot will cover. The raspberries are called Doolittle and Golden Cap. I don’t like the name of the first variety, and, if they do much, shall change it to Silver Top. You never can tell what a thing named Doolittle will do. The one in the Senate changed colour, and got sour. They ripen badly,—either mildew, or rot on the bush. They are apt to Johnsonise,—rot on the stem. I shall watch the Doolittles.
FOURTH WEEK.
“THESE TWO SAT AND WATCHED MY VIGOROUS COMBATS WITH THE WEEDS.”
ORTHODOXY is at a low ebb. Only two clergymen accepted my offer to come and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetable total-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass, as some call it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lack of disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to say that these two, however, sat and watched my vigorous combats with the weeds, and talked most beautifully about the application of the snake-grass figure. As, for instance, when a fault or sin showed on the surface of a man, whether if you dug down, you would find that it ran back and into the original organic bunch of original sin within the man. The only other clergyman who came was from out of town,—a half Universalist, who said he wouldn’t give twenty cents for my figure. He said that the snake-grass was not in my garden originally, that it sneaked in under the sod, and that it could be entirely rooted out with industry and patience. I asked the Universalist-inclined man to take my hoe and try it; but he said he hadn’t time, and went away.
But, jubilate, I have got my garden all hoed the first time! I feel as if I had put down the rebellion. Only there are guerillas left here and there, about the borders and in corners, unsubdued,—Forrest docks, and Quantrell grass, and Beauregard pig-weeds. This first hoeing is a gigantic task: it is your first trial of strength with the never-sleeping forces of Nature. Several times, in its progress, I was tempted to do as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on account of the weeds. (How much my mind seems to run upon Adam, as if there had been only two really moral gardens,—Adam’s and mine!) The only drawback to my rejoicing over the finishing of the first hoeing is, that the garden now wants hoeing the second time. I suppose, if my garden were planted in a perfect circle, and I started round it with a hoe, I should never see an opportunity to rest. The fact is, that gardening is the old fable of perpetual labour: and I, for one, can never forgive Adam Sisyphus, or whoever it was, who let in the roots of discord. I had pictured myself sitting at eve, with my family, in the shade of twilight, contemplating a garden hoed. Alas! it is a dream not to be realised in this world.
My mind has been turned to the subject of fruit and shade trees in a garden. There are those who say that trees shade the garden too much, and interfere with the growth of the vegetables. There may be something in this: but when I go down the potato rows, the rays of the sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring from my face, I should be grateful for shade. What is a garden for? The pleasure of man. I should take much more pleasure in a shady garden. Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, roasted, for the sake of the increased vigour of a few vegetables? The thing is perfectly absurd. If I were rich, I think I would have my garden covered with an awning, so that it would be comfortable to work in it. It might roll up and be removable, as the great awning of the Roman Coliseum was,—not like the Boston one, which went off in a high wind. Another very good way to do, and probably not so expensive as the awning, would be to have four persons of foreign birth carry a sort of canopy over you as you hoed. And there might be a person at each end of the row with some cool and refreshing drink. Agriculture is still in a very barbarous stage. I hope to live yet to see the day when I can do my gardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and soothing music, and attended by some of the comforts I have named. These things come so forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when a wandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a near currant-bush and shakes out a full-throated summer-song, I almost expect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment at the end of the row. But I never do. There is nothing to be done but to turn round, and hoe back to the other end.
Speaking of those yellow squash-bugs, I think I disheartened them by covering the plants so deep with soot and wood-ashes that they could not find them; and I am in doubt if I shall ever see the plants again. But I have heard of another defence against the bugs. Put a fine wire-screen over each hill, which will keep out the bugs, and admit the rain. I should say that these screens would not cost much more than the melons you would be likely to get from the vines if you bought them; but then think of the moral satisfaction of watching the bugs hovering over the screen, seeing, but unable to reach the tender plants within. That is worth paying for.
I left my own garden yesterday, and went over to where Polly was getting the weeds out of one of her flower-beds. She was working away at the bed with a little hoe. Whether women ought to have the ballot or not (and I have a decided opinion on that point, which I should here plainly give, did I not fear that it would injure my agricultural influence), I am compelled to say that this was rather helpless hoeing. It was patient, conscientious, even pathetic hoeing; but it was neither effective nor finished. When completed, the bed looked somewhat as if a hen had scratched it: there was that touching unevenness about it. I think no one could look at it and not be affected. To be sure, Polly smoothed it off with a rake, and asked me if it wasn’t nice; and I said it was. It was not a favourable time for me to explain the difference between puttering hoeing, and the broad, free sweep of the instrument, which kills the weeds, spares the plants, and loosens the soil without leaving it in holes and hills. But, after all, as life is constituted, I think more of Polly’s honest and anxious care of her plants than of the most finished gardening in the world.
SIXTH WEEK.
Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I should speak favourably of it, if I can consistently. I willingly do so, but with the understanding that I am to be at liberty to speak just as courteously of any other hoe which I may receive. If I understand religious morals, this is the position of the religious press with regard to bitters and wringing-machines. In some cases, the responsibility of such a recommendation is shifted upon the wife of the editor or clergyman. Polly says she is entirely willing to make a certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to this hoe; but her habit of sitting about the garden-walk, on an inverted flower-pot, while I hoe, somewhat destroys the practical value of her testimony.
As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of the desirableness and value of human life. It has, in fact, made life a holiday to me. It is made on the principle that man is an upright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a grovelling wretch. It does away with the necessity of the hinge in the back. The handle is seven and a half feet long. There are two narrow blades, sharp on both edges, which come together at an obtuse angle in front; and as you walk along with this hoe before you, pushing and pulling with a gentle motion, the weeds fall at every thrust and withdrawal, and the slaughter is immediate and widespread. When I got this hoe, I was troubled with sleepless mornings, pains in the back, kleptomania with regard to new weeders; when I went into my garden, I was always sure to see something. In this disordered state of mind and body I got this hoe. The morning after a day of using it I slept perfectly and late. I regained my respect for the eighth commandment. After two doses of the hoe in the garden the weeds entirely disappeared. Trying it a third morning, I was obliged to throw it over the fence, in order to save from destruction the green things that ought to grow in the garden. Of course this is figurative language. What I mean is, that the fascination of using this hoe is such that you are sorely tempted to employ it upon your vegetables after the weeds are laid low and must hastily withdraw it to avoid unpleasant results. I make this explanation because I intend to put nothing into these agricultural papers that will not bear the strictest scientific investigation; nothing that the youngest child cannot understand and cry for; nothing that the oldest and wisest men will not need to study with care.
I need not add, that the care of a garden with this hoe becomes the merest pastime. I would not be without one for a single night. The only danger is, that you may rather make an idol of the hoe, and somewhat neglect your garden in explaining it, and fooling about with it. I almost think that, with one of these in the hands of an ordinary day-labourer, you might see at night where he had been working.
Let us have peas. I have been a zealous advocate of the birds. I have rejoiced in their multiplication. I have endured their concerts at four o’clock in the morning without a murmur. Let them come, I said, and eat the worms, in order that we, later, may enjoy the foliage and the fruits of the earth. We have a cat, a magnificent animal, of the sex which votes (but not a pole-cat),—so large and powerful that, if he were in the army, he would be called Long Tom. He is a cat of fine disposition, the most irreproachable morals I ever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid hunter. He spends his nights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering in rats, mice, flying-squirrels, and also birds. When he first brought me a bird, I told him that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, while he was eating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, and understands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem and the time down the cycloidal arc. But with no effect. The killing of birds went on to my great regret and shame.
The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas. I had seen, the day before, that they were just ready to pick. How I had lined the ground, planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine—seven feet high, and of good wood. How I had delighted in the growing, the blowing, the podding! What a touching thought it was that they had all podded for me! When I went to pick them, I found the pods all split open, and the peas gone. The dear little birds, who are so fond of the strawberries, had eaten them all. Perhaps there were left as many as I planted: I did not count them. I made a rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground, the price of labour, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of watchfulness. I looked about me on the face of Nature. The wind blew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in the woods so deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair. But who was to give me back my peas? The fowls of the air have peas; but what has man?
I went into the house. I called Calvin (that is the name of our cat, given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness. We never familiarly call him John). I petted Calvin. I lavished upon him an enthusiastic fondness. I told him that he had no fault; that the one action that I had called a vice was an heroic exhibition of regard for my interests. I bade him go and do likewise continually. I now saw how much better instinct is than mere unguided reason. Calvin knew. If he had put his opinion into English (instead of his native catalogue), it would have been: “You need not teach your grandmother to suck eggs.” It was only the round of Nature. The worms eat a noxious something in the ground. The birds eat the worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat—no, we do not eat Calvin. There the chain stops. When you ascend the scale of being, and come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, you have arrived at a result where you can rest. Let us respect the cat, he completes an edible chain.
I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas. It occurs to me that I can have an iron pea-bush, a sort of trellis, through which I could discharge electricity at frequent intervals, and electrify the birds to death when they alight; for they stand upon my beautiful bush, in order to pick out the peas. An apparatus of this kind, with an operator, would cost, however, about as much as the peas. A neighbour suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines, which would keep the birds away. I am doubtful about it: the birds are too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the garden to care much for that. Another neighbour suggests that the birds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come after rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas. It may be so. There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast and the birds. But good neighbours, kind friends, I desire that you will not increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.
Charles Dudley Warner.
THE QUAKER COQUETTE.
“DEAR COY COQUETTE, BUT ONCE WE MET.”
DEAR coy coquette, but once we met—
But once, and yet ’twas once too often,
Plunged unawares in silvery snares,
All vain my prayers her heart to soften;
Yet seems so true her eyes of blue,
Veined lids and longest lashes under,
Good angels dwelt therein, I felt,
And could have knelt in reverent wonder.
Poor heart, alas! what eye could pass
The auburn mass of curls caressing
Her pure white brow, made regal now
By this simplicity of dressing.
Lips dewy, red as Cupid’s bed
Of rose-leaves shed on Mount Hymettus,
With balm imbued they might be wooed,
But ah! coy prude, she will not let us.
No jewels deck her radiant neck—
What pearl could reck its hue to rival?
A pin of gold—the fashion old—
A ribbon-fold, or some such trifle;
And—beauty chief! the lily’s leaf
In dark relief sets off the whiteness
Of all the breast not veiled and pressed
Beneath her collar’s Quaker tightness.
And milk-white robes o’er snowier globes
As Roman maids are drawn by Gibbon,
With classic taste are gently braced
Around her waist beneath a ribbon;
And thence unrolled in billowy fold
Profuse and bold—a silken torrent—
Not hide, but dim each rounded limb,
Well-turned, and trim, and plump, I warrant.
Oh, Quaker maid, were I more staid,
Or you a shade less archly pious;
If soberest suit from crown to boot
Could chance uproot your Quaker bias,
How gladly so, in weeds of woe,
From head to toe my frame I’d cover,
That in the end the convert “friend”
Might thus ascend—a convert lover.
Charles Graham Halpin.
CAT-FISHING.
MANY and ingenious are the remedies that have been proposed for nocturnal cats, but none of them seem to have proved thoroughly successful. It was pointed out not very long ago that the extirpation of all fences which run in a direction parallel, or nearly parallel, with the Equator, would exempt cats from electrical difficulties in their internal organs, and would thus hush the cries that now render night hideous; but there is a practical difficulty in dispensing with these fences. Another remedy, which is a certain cure for nocturnal cats, is suggested by the fact that cats cannot live at a greater elevation than 13,000 feet above the sea. If we build our back fences 13,500 feet high, not a cat will scale their lofty summits; but the labour and expense of constructing fences of this height would be so great as to forbid their erections by persons with small incomes. Mere palliatives, such as bootjacks and lumps of coal, never accomplished any lasting benefits; they may discourage an occasional cat, but his place will instantly be filled. With all their habitual caution, cats are bold, and will often rush in where an average angel would fear to tread. To deal effectually with them is a task which calls for the highest form of inventive genius, combined with patience and a reckless indifference to Mr. Bergh’s opinions.
“THE YOUNG MAN BECAME GREATLY FASCINATED WITH HIS NEW OCCUPATION.”
The young man in West Thirty-fifth Street who lately introduced cat-fishing as a manly and beneficent sport, can scarcely be said to have devised an absolute specific for cats, but he has unquestionably contributed to lessen the number of cats in his immediate vicinity. Early last fall a vast area of cats, accompanied with marked depression of the spirits of the inhabitants of West Thirty-fifth Street, overspread that unfortunate region. After a thorough trial of most of the popular remedies, a young man residing on the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and who may be called—not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith—by the name of Thompson, hit upon the idea of angling for cats. To the end of a strong blue-fish line he affixed a salmon hook, baited with delicate morsels of meat. At first this hook, deftly dropped from the back window, was permitted to lie on top of the back fence. The first cat that passed over the fence would investigate the bait, and finding it apparently free from fraud, would begin to eat it. A slight pull at the line would usually fix the hook in the cat’s mouth, and the angler would haul in his prey and knock it on the head. It frequently happened, however, that the cat would not be successfully “struck,” and would escape and warn his associates to beware of concealed hooks. Moreover, the angler had his bait gorged, upon one occasion, by a tramp, who had climbed the fence with a view to gaining access to the kitchen; and though the game was successfully landed in the second-storey back room, and, after being goffed with a sword-bayonet, he had so much difficulty in subsequently disposing of the body that he dreaded a repetition of the incident. He therefore altered his methods of angling, and adopted a modified style of fly-fishing.
This latter sport was carried on with the aid of a long bamboo fishing-pole. The hook was baited as before, but instead of being permitted to lie on the top of the fence, was suffered to dangle in the air, about two feet above it. As soon as a cat perceived the bait, he assumed with the intense self-conceit characteristic of his race, that it was a supernatural recognition of his extraordinary merits, and could be fearlessly appropriated. In order to seize it he was, of course, compelled to leap upwards, and it was very seldom that he failed to hook himself. By this plan, not only was the necessity of “striking” the cat obviated, but the danger that the bait would be seized by tramps was greatly lessened, while the excitement and interest of the sport were increased.
The young man became greatly fascinated with his new occupation, and having effected an arrangement with a popular French restaurant, was enabled to dispose of his game easily and profitably. On moonlight nights, when the late fall cats were in season, he often caught a string of from three to four dozen during a single night,—many of these weighing ten or fifteen pounds each. So few cats escaped after having once leaped at the bait, that no general suspicion of the deadly nature of apparently aerial meat was disseminated among the feline population of the neighbourhood. Before the winter was over cats had become so scarce that the sportsman was seriously contemplating the necessity of artificially stocking the back fences of Thirty-fifth Street, when an unfortunate accident brought his beneficent occupation to a sudden end. An old gentleman, residing in a house in Thirty-sixth Street, the backyard of which adjoined the fence where the young man practised his sport, noticed one evening that something attached to a string was dangling over his back fence. As he had a pretty daughter, he immediately suspected that it was a surreptitious note, and stole softly out to seize and confiscate it. Mounting on a barrel he clutched the supposed note, and was instantly hooked. The tackle was strong, and he would perhaps have been landed had not the hook torn out when he was about forty feet from the ground. After he had recovered from his injuries caused by the fall, and the weakness consequent upon the amputation of his legs, he showed so much annoyance at the so-called outrage which had been inflicted upon him, that the young man, who was a person of most delicate feelings, promised to give up cat-fishing. Of course, had the old gentleman been thoroughly gaffed, he would not have fallen, and perhaps the young man felt that his failure to properly gaff him was an inexcusable error, which really called for his graceful retirement from cat-fishing.
This example ought to bear fruit. At a very small expense for tackle, any resident of this city who occupies a back room can secure excellent sport, and at the same time can render a great service to humanity by reducing the number of cats. The sport ought speedily to become a very popular one, and there can be but little doubt that in time cat-fishing will rival trout-fishing in the estimation of American sportsmen.
W. L. Alden.
CAPTAIN STICK AND TONY.
OLD Captain Stick was a remarkably precise old gentleman and conscientiously just man. He was, too, very methodical in his habits, one of which was to keep an account in writing of the conduct of his servants, from day to day. It was a sort of account-current, and he settled by it every Saturday afternoon. No one dreaded these hebdomadal balancings more than Tony, the boy of all-work, for the captain was generally obliged to write a receipt, for a considerable amount, across his shoulders.
One settling afternoon, the captain, accompanied by Tony, was seen “toddling” down to the old stable, with his little account book in one hand and a small rope in the other. After they had reached the “Bar of Justice,” and Tony had been properly “strung up,” the captain proceeded to state his accounts as follows:—
“Tony, Dr.
“Sabbath, to not half blacking my boots, etc., five stripes.
“Tuesday, to staying four hours at mill longer than necessary, ten stripes.
“Wednesday, to not locking the hall door at night, five stripes.
“Friday, to letting the horse go without water, five stripes.
“Total, twenty-five stripes.
“Tony, Cr.
“Monday, by first-rate day’s work in the garden, ten stripes.
“Balance due, fifteen stripes.”
The balance being thus struck, the captain drew his cowhide and remarked——“Now, Tony, you black scamp, what say you, you lazy villain, why I shouldn’t give you fifteen lashes across your back, as hard as I can draw?”
“Stop, ole mass,” said Tony; “dar’s de work in de garden, sir—dat ought to tek some off.”
“You black dog,” said the captain, “haven’t I given you the proper credit of ten stripes for that? Come, come!”
“Please, ole massa,” said Tony, rolling his eyes about in agony of fright—“dar’s—you forgot—dar’s de scourin ob de floor—ole missus say nebber been scour as good before.”
“Soho, you saucy rascal,” quoth Captain Stick, “you’re bringing in more offsets, are you? Well, now, there!” Here the captain made an entry upon his book. “You have a credit of five stripes, and the balance must be paid.”
“Gor a mity, massa, don’t hit yet—dar’s sumpen else—oh, Lord! please don’t—yes, sir—got um now—ketchin de white boy and fetchin’ um to ole missus, what trow rock at de young duck.”
“That’s a fact,” said the captain; “the outrageous young vagabond—that’s a fact, and I’ll give you credit of ten stripes for it. I wish you had brought him to me. Now, we’ll settle the balance.”
“‘STOP, OLE MASS,’ SAID TONY; ‘DAR’S DE WORK IN DE GARDEN, SIR.’”
“Bress de Lord, ole massa,” said Tony, “dat’s all.” Tony grinned extravagantly. The captain adjusted his tortoise-shell spectacles with great exactness, held the book close to his eyes, and ascertained that the fact was as stated by Tony. He was not a little irritated.
“You swear off the account, you infernal rascal—you swear off the account, do you?”
“All de credit is fair, ole massa,” answered Tony.
“Yes, but”—said the disappointed captain—“but—but,”—still the captain was sorely puzzled how to give Tony a few licks anyhow; “but——” An idea popped into his head.
“Where’s my costs, you incorrigible, abominable scoundrel? You want to swindle me, do you, out of my costs, you black deceitful rascal? And,” added Captain Stick, chuckling as well at his own ingenuity as the perfect justice of the sentence, “I enter judgment against you for costs—ten stripes,” and forthwith administered the stripes and satisfied the judgment. “Ki’ nigger!” said Tony, “ki’ nigger! What dis judgmen’ for coss ole massa talk ’bout. Done git off ’bout not blackin’ de boot, git off ’bout stayin’ long time at de mill, and ebery ting else, but dis judgmen’ for coss gim me de debbil. Bress God, nigger must keep out ob de ole stable, or, I’ll tell you what, dat judgmen’ for coss make e back feel mighty warm, for true!”
Johnson T. Hooper.
“ITEMS” FROM THE PRESS OF INTERIOR CALIFORNIA.
A LITTLE bit of romance has just transpired to relieve the monotony of our metropolitan life. Old Sam Choggins, whom the editor of this paper has so often publicly thrashed, has returned from Mud Springs with a young wife. He is said to be very fond of her, and the way he came to get her was this:
Some time ago we courted her, but finding she was “on the make” threw her off, after shooting her brother and two cousins. She vowed revenge, and promised to marry any man who would horsewhip us. This Sam agreed to undertake, and she married him on that promise.
We shall call on Sam to-morrow with our new shot-gun, and present our congratulations in the usual form.—Hangtown Gibbet.
There was considerable excitement in the street yesterday, owing to the arrival of Bust-Head Dave, formerly of this place, who came over on the stage from Pudding Springs. He was met at the hotel by Sheriff Knogg, who leaves a large family, and whose loss will be universally deplored.
Dave walked down the street to the bridge, and it reminded one of old times to see the people go away as he heaved in view. It was not through any fear of the man, but from knowledge that he had made a threat (first published in this paper) to clean out the town. Before leaving the place Dave called at our office to settle for a year’s subscription (invariably in advance), and was informed, through a chink in the logs, that he might leave his dust in the tin cup at the well.
Dave is looking very much larger than at his last visit just previous to the funeral of Judge Dawson. He left for Injun Hill at five o’clock amidst a good deal of shooting at rather long range, and there will be an election for sheriff as soon as a stranger can be found who will accept the honour.—Yankee Flat Advertiser.
The superintendent of the May Davis Mine requests us to state that the custom of pitching Chinamen and Injuns down the shaft will have to be stopped, as he has resumed work in the mine. The old well-huck of Jo. Bowman’s is just as good, and is more centrally located.—New Jerusalem Courier.
A stranger wearing a stove-pipe hat arrived in town yesterday, putting up at the Nugget House. The boys are having a good time with that hat this morning, and the funeral will take place at two o’clock.—Spanish Camp Flag.
There is some dispute about land titles at Little Bilk Bar. About half-a-dozen cases were temporarily decided Wednesday, but it is supposed the widows will renew the litigation. The only proper way to prevent these vexatious law-suits is to hang the Judge of the County Court.—Cow County Outcropper.
Ambrose Bierce (“Dod Grile”).
AN AVALANCHE OF DRUGS.
“THE JUDGE WAS GRATIFIED TO FIND THAT HIS HAIR HAD RETURNED.”
I HAVE been the victim of a somewhat singular persecution for several weeks past. When we came here to live, Judge Pitman was partially bald. Somebody induced him to apply to his head a hair restorative made by a Chicago man named Pulsifer. After using this liquid for a few months the judge was gratified to find that his hair had returned; and as he naturally regarded the remedy with admiration, he concluded that it would be simply fair to give expression to his feelings in some form. As I happened to be familiar with all the facts of the case, the judge induced me to draw up a certificate affirming them over my signature. This he mailed to Pulsifer. I have not yet ceased to regret the weakness which permitted me to stand sponsor for Judge Pitman’s hair. Of course, Pulsifer immediately inserted the certificate, with my name and residence attached to it, in half the papers in the country, as a displayed advertisement, beginning with the words, “Hope for the bald-headed; the most remarkable cure on record,” in the largest capital letters.
I have had faith in advertising since that time; and Pulsifer had confidence in it too, for he wrote to me to know what I would take to get him up a series of similar certificates of cures performed by his other patent medicines. He had a Corn Salve which dragged a little in its sales, and he was prepared to offer me a commission if I would write him a strong letter to the effect that six or eight frightful corns had been eradicated from my feet with his admirable preparation. He was in a position also to do something handsome if I could describe a few miraculous cures that had been effected by his Rheumatic Lotion, or if I would name certain ruined stomachs which had, as it were, been born again through the influence of Pulsifer’s Herb Bitters; and from the manner in which he wrote, I think he would have taken me into partnership if I had consented to write an assurance that his Ready Relief had healed a bad leg of eighteen years standing, and that I could never feel that my duty was honourably performed until he sent me a dozen bottles more for distribution among my friends whose legs were in that defective and tiresome condition. I was obliged to decline Pulsifer’s generous offer.
I heard with singular promptness from other medical men. Fillemup & Killem forwarded some of their Hair Tonic, with a request for me to try it on any bald heads I happened to encounter, and report. Doser & Co. sent on two packages of their Capillary Pills, with a suggestion to the effect that if Pitman lost his hair again he would get it back finally by following the enclosed directions. I also heard from Brown & Bromley, the agents for Johnson’s Scalp Awakener. They sent me twelve bottles for distribution among my bald friends. Then Smith & Smithson wrote to say that a cask of their Vesuvian Wash for the hair would be delivered in my cellar by the Express Company; and a man called on me from Jones, Butler, & Co., with a proposition to pump out my vinegar barrel, and fill it with Balm of Peru for the gratuitous use of the afflicted in the vicinity.
But this persecution was simply unalloyed felicity when compared with the suffering that came in other forms. I will not attempt to give the number of the letters I received. I cherish a conviction that the mail received at our post-office doubled the first week after Judge Pitman’s cure was announced to a hairless world. I think every bald-headed man in the Tropic of Cancer must have written to me at least twice upon the subject of Pulsifer’s Renovator and Pitman’s hair. Persons dropped me a line to inquire if Pitman’s baldness was hereditary; and if so, if it came from his father’s or his mother’s side. One man, a phrenologist, sent on a plaster head mapped out into town-lots, with a suggestion that I should ink over the bumps that had been barest and most fertile in the case of Pitman. He said he had a little theory which he wanted to demonstrate. A man in San Francisco wrote to inquire if my Pitman was the same Pitman who came out to California in 1849 with a bald head; and if he was, would I try to collect two dollars Pitman had borrowed from him in that year? The superintendent of a Sunday-school in Vermont forwarded eight pages of foolscap covered with an argument supporting the theory that it was impious to attempt to force hair to grow upon a head which had been made bald, because, although Elisha was bald, we find no record in the Bible that he used renovator of any kind. He warned Pitman to beware of Absalom’s fate, and to avoid riding mules out in the woods. A woman in Snyder County, Pennsylvania, sent me a poem inspired by the incident, and entitled “Lines on the Return of Pitman’s Hair.” A party in Kansas desired to know whether I thought Pulsifer’s Renovator could be used beneficially by a man who had been scalped. Two men in New Jersey wrote, in a manner totally irrelevant to the subject, to inquire if I could get each of them a good hired girl.
I received a confidential letter from a man who was willing to let me into a “good thing” if I had five hundred dollars cash capital. Mrs. Singerly, of Frankford, related that she had shaved her dog, and shaved him too close, and she would be relieved if I would inform her if the Renovator would make hair grow on a dog. A devoted mother in Rhode Island said her little boy had accidentally drank a bottle of the stuff, and she would go mad unless I could assure her that there was no danger of her child having his stomach choked up with hair. And over eleven hundred boys inquired what effect the Renovator would have on the growth of whiskers which betrayed an inclination to stagnation.
“SOME BALD-HEADED MISCREANT WOULD STOP ME IN THE MIDST OF THE DANCE.”
But the visitors were a more horrible torment. Bald men came to see me in droves. They persecuted me at home and abroad. If I went to church, the sexton would call me out during the prayers to see a man in the vestibule who wished to ascertain if Pitman merely bathed his head or rubbed the medicine in with a brush. When I went to a party, some bald-headed miscreant would stop me in the midst of the dance to ask if Pitman’s hair began to grow in the full of the moon or when it was new. While I was being shaved, some one would bolt into the shop and insist, as the barber held me by the nose, upon knowing whether Pitman wore ventilators in his hat. If I attended a wedding, as likely as not a bare-headed outlaw would stand by me at the altar and ask if Pitman ever slept in nightcaps; and more than once I was called out of bed at night by wretches who wished to learn, before they left the town, if I thought it hurt the hair to part it behind.
It became unendurable. I issued orders to the servants to admit to the house no man with a bald head. But that very day a stranger obtained admission to the parlour; and when I went down to see him, he stepped softly around, closed all the doors mysteriously, and asked me, in a whisper, if any one could hear us. Then he pulled off a wig; and handing me a microscope, he requested me to examine his scalp and tell him if there was any hope. I sent him over to see Pitman; and I gloat over the fact that he bored Pitman for two hours with his baldness.
I am sorry now that I ever wrote anything upon the subject of his hair. A bald Pitman, I know, is less fascinating than a Pitman with hair; but rather than have suffered this misery, I would prefer a Pitman without an eye-winker, or fuzz enough on him to make a camel’s-hair pencil. But I shall hardly give another certificate of cure in any event. If I should see a patent medicine man take a mummy which died the year Joseph was sold into Egypt, and dose it until it kicked off its rags and danced the polka mazurka while it whistled the tune, I would die at the stake sooner than acknowledge the miracle on paper. Pitman’s hair winds me up as far as medical certificates are concerned.
MUSIC.
“ENDING BY SHINNING UP A TREE.”
A WILD cat was listening with rapt approval to the melody of distant hounds tracking a remote fox.
“Excellent! bravo!” she exclaimed at intervals. “I could sit and listen all day to the like of that. I am passionately fond of music. Ong core!”
Presently the tuneful sounds drew near, whereupon she began to fidget, ending by shinning up a tree, just as the dogs burst into view below her, and stifling their songs upon the body of their victim before her eyes—which protruded.
“There is an indefinable charm,” said she—“a subtle and tender spell—a mystery—a conundrum, as it were—in the sounds of an unseen orchestra. This is quite lost when the performers are visible to the audience. Distant music (if any) for your obedient servant!”
Ambrose Bierce (“Dod Grile.”)
MAXIMS.
NEVER spare the parson’s wine, nor the baker’s pudding.
A house without woman or firelight, is like a body without soul or sprite.
Kings and bears often worry their keepers.
Light purse, heavy heart.
He’s a fool that makes his doctor his heir.
Ne’er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.
To lengthen thy life lessen thy meals.
He that drinks fast pays slow.
He is ill-clothed who is bare of virtue.
Beware of meat twice boil’d, and an old foe reconcil’d.
The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.
He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.
He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner.
Benjamin Franklin.
MODEL OF A LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION OF A PERSON YOU ARE UNACQUAINTED WITH.
Paris, April 2, 1777.
SIR,—The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be. I recommend him, however, to those civilities which every stranger, of whom one knows no harm, has a right to; and I request you will do him all the favour that, on further acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve. I have the honour to be, etc.
Benjamin Franklin.
ECHO-SONG.
“WHO CAN SAY WHERE ECHO DWELLS?”
I.
WHO can say where Echo dwells?
In some mountain-cave methinks,
Where the white owl sits and blinks;
Or in deep sequestered dells,
Where the foxglove hangs its bells,
Echo dwells.
Echo!
Echo!
II.
Phantom of the crystal air,
Daughter of sweet mystery!
Here is one has need of thee;
Lead him to thy secret lair,
Myrtle brings he for thy hair—
Hear his prayer—
Echo!
Echo!
III.
Echo, lift thy drowsy head,
And repeat each charmëd word
Thou must needs have overheard
Yestere’en ere, rosy-red,
Daphne down the valley fled—
Words unsaid,
Echo!
Echo!
IV.
Breathe the vows she since denies!
She hath broken every vow;
What she would she would not now—
Thou didst hear her perjuries.
Whisper, whilst I shut my eyes,
Those sweet lies,
Echo!
Echo!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS.
COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS was in his “library,” which was his “drawing-room,” and was also his “picture gallery,” and likewise his “workshop.” Sometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes by another, according to occasion and circumstance. He was constructing what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy, and was apparently very much interested in his work. He was a white-headed man now, but otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant, visionary, and enterprising as ever. His loving old wife sat near by, contentedly knitting and thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap. The room was large, light, and had a comfortable look—in fact, a home-like look—though the furniture was of a humble sort, and not over-abundant, and the knick-knacks and things that go to adorn a living-room not plenty and not costly. But there were natural flowers, and there was an abstract and unclassifiable something about the place which betrayed the presence in the house of somebody with a happy taste and an effective touch.
Even the deadly chromos on the walls were somehow without offence; in fact, they seemed to belong there, and to add an attraction to the room—a fascination, anyway; for whoever got his eye on one of them was like to gaze and suffer till he died—you have seen that kind of pictures. Some of these terrors were landscapes, some libelled the sea, some were ostensible portraits, all were crimes. All the portraits were recognisable as dead Americans of distinction, and yet, through labelling, added by a daring hand, they were all doing duty here as “Earls of Rossmore.” The newest one had left the works as Andrew Jackson, but was doing its best now as “Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore, Present Earl.” On one wall was a cheap old railroad map of Warwickshire. This had been newly labelled, “The Rossmore Estates.” On the opposite wall was another map, and this was the most imposing decoration of the establishment, and the first to catch a stranger’s attention, because of its great size. It had once borne simply the title SIBERIA; but now the word “FUTURE” had been written in front of that word. There were other additions, in red ink—many cities, with great populations set down, scattered over the vast country at points where neither cities nor populations exist to-day. One of these cities, with population placed at 1,500,000, bore the name “Libertyorloffskoizalinski,” and there was a still more populous one, centrally located and marked “Capitol,” which bore the name “Freedomslovnaivenovich.”
The mansion—the Colonel’s usual name for the house—was a rickety old two-storey frame of considerable size, which had been painted, some time or other, but had nearly forgotten it. It was away out in the ragged edge of Washington, and had once been somebody’s country place. It had a neglected yard around it, with a paling fence that needed straightening up, in places, and a gate that would stay shut. By the door-post were several modest tin signs. “Col. Mulberry Sellers, Attorney-at-Law and Claim Agent,” was the principal one. One learned from the others that the Colonel was a Materialiser, a Hypnotiser, a Mind-cure dabbler, and so on. For he was a man who could always find things to do.
A white-headed negro man, with spectacles and damaged white cotton gloves, appeared in the presence, made a stately obeisance, and announced—
“Marse Washington Hawkins, suh.”
“Great Scott! Show him in, Dan’l, show him in.”
“A STOUTISH, DISCOURAGED-LOOKING MAN.”
The Colonel and his wife were on their feet in a moment, and the next moment were joyfully wringing the hands of a stoutish, discouraged-looking man, whose general aspect suggested that he was fifty years old, but whose hair swore to a hundred.
“Well, well, well, Washington, my boy, it is good to look at you again. Sit down, sit down, and make yourself at home. There now—why, you look perfectly natural; ageing a little, just a little, but you’d have known him anywhere, wouldn’t you, Polly?”
“Oh, yes, Berry, he’s just like his pa would have looked if he’d lived. Dear, dear, where have you dropped from? Let me see, how long is it since——”
“I should say it’s all of fifteen years, Mrs. Sellers.”
“Well, well, how time does get away with us. Yes, and oh, the changes that——”
There was a sudden catch of her voice and a trembling of the lip, the men waiting reverently for her to get command of herself and go on; but, after a little struggle, she turned away with her apron to her eyes, and softly disappeared.
“Seeing you made her think of the children, poor thing—dear, dear, they’re all dead but the youngest. But banish care, it’s no time for it now—on with the dance, let joy be unconfided, is my motto—whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfide, you’ll be the healthier for it every time—every time, Washington—it’s my experience, and I’ve seen a good deal of this world. Come, where have you disappeared to all these years, and are you from there now, or where are you from?”
“I don’t quite think you would ever guess, Colonel. Cherokee Strip.”
“My land!”
“Sure as you live.”
“You can’t mean it. Actually living out there?”
“Well, yes, if a body may call it that; though it’s a pretty strong term for ’dobies and jackass rabbits, boiled beans and slap-jacks, depression, withered hopes, poverty in all its varieties——”
“Louise out there?”
“Yes, and the children.”
“Out there now?”
“Yes, I couldn’t afford to bring them with me.”
“Oh, I see—you had to come—claim against the Government. Make yourself perfectly easy—I’ll take care of that.”
“But it isn’t a claim against the Government.”
“No? Want to be a postmaster? That’s all right. Leave it to me. I’ll fix it.”
“But it isn’t postmaster—you’re all astray yet.”
“Well, good gracious, Washington, why don’t you come out and tell me what it is? What do you want to be so reserved and distrustful with an old friend like me for? Don’t you reckon I can keep a se——”
“There’s no secret about it—you merely don’t give me a chance to——”
“Now, look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that when a man comes to Washington, I don’t care if it’s from heaven, let alone Cherokee Strip, it’s because he wants something. And I know that as a rule he’s not going to get it; that he’ll stay and try for another thing and won’t get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks and they take up a collection and bury him. There—don’t interrupt me, I know what I’m talking about. Happy and prosperous in the Far West, wasn’t I? You know that. Principal citizen of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody, kind of an autocrat, actually a kind of an autocrat, Washington. Well, nothing would do but I must go as Minister to St. James’s, the Governor and everybody insisting, you know, and so at last I consented—no getting out of it, had to do it, so here I came. A day too late, Washington. Think of that—what little things change the world’s history—yes, sir, the place had been filled. Well, there I was, you see. I offered to compromise and go to Paris. The President was very sorry and all that, but that place, you see, didn’t belong to the West, so there I was again. There was no help for it, so I had to stoop a little—we all reach the day some time or other when we’ve got to do that, Washington, and it’s not a bad thing for us, either, take it by and large all around—I had to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople, Washington, consider this—for it’s perfectly true—within a month I asked for China; within another month I begged for Japan; one year later I was away down, down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the bottom office in the gift of the Government of the United States—Flint-picker in the cellars of the War Department. And by George I didn’t get it.”
“Flint-picker?”
“Yes. Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century. The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol. They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts have tumbled down, the decree hasn’t been repealed—been overlooked and forgotten, you see—and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others used to stand still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the same.”
Washington said musingly after a pause:
“How strange it seems—to start for Minister to England at twenty thousand a year and fail for flint-picker at——”
“Three dollars a week. It’s human life, Washington—just an epitome of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome; you aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer.”
There was another meditative silence. Then Washington said, with earnest compassion in his voice—
“And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamour, you get absolutely nothing for it.”
“Nothing?” The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his amazement to expand. “Nothing, Washington? I ask you this: to be a Perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body accredited to the greatest country on earth—do you call that nothing?”
It was Washington’s turn to be amazed. He was stricken dumb; but the wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face, were more eloquent than any words could have been. The Colonel’s wounded spirit was healed, and he resumed his seat, pleased and content. He leaned forward and said, impressively—
“What was due to a man who had become for ever conspicuous by an experience without precedent in the history of the world?—a man made permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James all the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of Sunda—salary payable in guano—which disappeared by volcanic convulsion the day before they got down to my name in the list of applicants. Certainly something august enough to be answerable to the size of this unique and memorable experience was my due, and I got it. By the common voice of this community, by acclamation of the people, that mighty utterance which brushes aside laws and legislation, and from whose decrees there is no appeal, I was named Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body, representing the multifarious sovereignties and civilisations of the globe near the republican court of the United States of America. And they brought me home with a torchlight procession.”
“It is wonderful, Colonel—simply wonderful.”
“It’s the loftiest official position in the whole earth.”
“I should think so—and the most commanding.”
“You have named the word. Think of it. I frown, and there is war; I smile, and contending nations lay down their arms.”
“It is awful. The responsibility, I mean.”
“It is nothing. Responsibility is no burden to me; I am used to it; have always been used to it.”
“And the work—the work! Do you have to attend all the sittings?”
“Who, I? Does the Emperor of Russia attend the conclaves of the governors of the provinces? He sits at home and indicates his pleasure.”
Washington was silent a moment, then a deep sigh escaped him.
“How proud I was an hour ago; how paltry seems my little promotion now! Colonel, the reason I came to Washington is—I am Congressional Delegate from Cherokee Strip!”
The Colonel sprang to his feet and broke out with prodigious enthusiasm—
“Give me your hand, my boy—this is immense news! I congratulate you with all my heart. My prophecies stand confirmed. I always said it was in you. I always said you were born for high distinction and would achieve it. You ask Polly if I didn’t.”
Washington was dazed by this most unexpected demonstration.
“Why, Colonel, there’s nothing to it. That little, narrow, desolate, unpeopled, oblong streak of grass and gravel, lost in the remote wastes of the vast continent—why, it’s like representing a billiard table—a discarded one.”
“Tut-tut, it’s a great, it’s a staving preferment, and just opulent with influence here.”
“Shucks, Colonel, I haven’t even a vote.”
“That’s nothing, you can make speeches.”
“No, I can’t. The population only two hundred——”
“That’s all right, that’s all right——”
“And they hadn’t any right to elect me; we’re not even a territory, there’s no Organic Act, the government hasn’t any official knowledge of us whatever.”
“Never mind about that; I’ll fix that. I’ll rush the thing through, I’ll get you organised in no time.”
“Will you, Colonel?—it’s too good of you; but it’s just your old sterling self, the same old, ever-faithful friend,” and the grateful tears welled up in Washington’s eyes.
“It’s just as good as done, my boy, just as good as done. Shake hands. We’ll hitch teams together, you and I, and we’ll make things hum!”
Samuel L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”).
THE OWL-CRITIC.
A LESSON TO FAULT-FINDERS.
“WHO stuffed that white owl?” No one spoke in the shop:
The barber was busy, and he couldn’t stop;
The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding.
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.
“Don’t you see, Mister Brown,”
Cried the youth, with a frown,
“How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is,
How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is—
In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck ’tis?
I make no apology;
I’ve learned owl-eology.
I’ve passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
And cannot be blinded to any deflections
Arising from unskilful fingers that fail
To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown!
Do take that bird down,
Or you’ll soon be the laughing-stock all over the town!”
And the barber kept on shaving.
“I’ve studied owls,
And other night fowls,
And I tell you
What I know to be true:
An owl cannot roost
With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.
He can’t do it, because
’Tis against all bird-laws.
Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches
An owl has a toe
That can’t turn out so!
I’ve made the white owl my study for years,
And to see such a job almost moves me to tears.
Mister Brown, I’m amazed
You should be so gone crazed
As to put up a bird
In that posture absurd!
To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
The man who stuffed him don’t half know his business!”
And the barber kept on shaving.
“Examine those eyes.
I’m filled with surprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;
So unnatural they seem
They’d make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down;
Have him stuffed again, Brown!”
And the barber kept on shaving.
“With some sawdust and bark
I would stuff in the dark
An owl better than that,
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl
Than that horrid fowl,
Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there’s not one natural feather.”
“THE OWL, VERY GRAVELY, GOT DOWN FROM HIS PERCH.”
Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
“Your learning’s at fault this time, any way;
Don’t waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I’m an owl; you’re another. Sir critic, good-day!”
And the barber kept on shaving.
Jas. T. Fields.
ANNIHILATES AN OBERLINITE.
Columbus, O.,
June the 21, ’62.
I WUZ onto my way to Columbus to attend the annooal gatherin uv the fatheful at that city, a dooty I hev religusly performed fer over 30 yeres. Ther wuz but wun seet vakent in the car, and onto that I sot down. Presently a gentleman carryin uv a karpit bag, sot down beside me, and we towunst commenst conversashen. After discussin the crops, the wether, et settry, I askt wher he resided.
“In Oberlin,” sez he.
“Oberlin!” shreekt I. “Oberlin! wher Ablishnism runs rampant—wher a nigger is 100 per cent. better ner a white man—wher a mulatto is a obgik uv pitty on account uv hevin white blood. Oberlin! that stonest the Dimekratik prophets, and woodent be gathered under Vallandygum’s wings as a hen hawk gathereth chickens, at no price—Oberlin, that gives all the profits uv her college to the support uv the underground ralerode——”
“But,” sez he.
“Oberlin,” continyood I, “that reskoos niggers, and sets at defians the benifisent laws fer takin on em back to their kind and hevenly-minded masters—Oberlin——”
“My jentle frend,” sez he, “Oberlin don’t do nuthin uv the kind. Yoo’ve bin misinformed. Oberlin respex the laws, and hez now a body uv her galyent sons in the feeld a fightin to manetane the Constooshn.”
“A fightin to manetane the Constooshn,” retordid I. “My frend” (and I spoke impressively), “no Oberlin man is a doin any sich thing. Oberlin never fit for no Constooshn. Oberlin commenst this war, Oberlin wuz the prime cause uv all the trubble. Wat wuz the beginnin uv it. Our Suthrin brethrin wantid the territories—Oberlin objectid. They wantid Kansas fer ther blessid instooshn—Oberlin agin objecks. They sent colonies with muskits and sich, to hold the terrytory—Oberlin sent 2 thowsand armed with Bibles and Sharp’s rifles—two instooshns Dimocrisy cood never stand afore—and druv em out. They wantid Breckinridge fer President—Oberlin refused and elektid Linkin. Then they seceded, and why is it that they still hold out?”
He made no anser.
“Becoz,” continyood I, transfixin him with my penetratin gaze, “Oberlin won’t submit. We mite 2-day hev peese, ef Oberlin wood say to Linkin, ‘Resine!’ and to Geff Davis, ‘Come up higher!’ When I say Oberlin, understand it ez figgerative fer the entire Ablishn party, uv wich Oberlin is the fountin hed. There’s wher the trubble is. Our Suthern brethren wuz reasonable. So long ez the dimocrisy controld things, and they got all they wanted, they wuz peeceable. Oberlin ariz—the dimocrisy wuz beet down, and they riz up agin it.”
Jest eggsactly 80-six yeres ago, akordin to Jayneses almanac, a work wich I perooz annually with grate delite, the Amerykin Eagle (whose portrate any wun who possessis a 5 cent peece kin behold) wuz born, the Goddis uv Liberty bein its muther, the Spirit uv Freedom its sire, Tomas Gefferson actin ez physician on the occasion. The proud bird growd ez tho it slept on guano—its left wing dipt into the Pasific, its rite into the Atlantic, its beek thretened Kanady, while his magestik tale cast a shadder ore the Gulf. Sich wuz the Eagle up to March, ’61. Wat is his condishn now? His hed hangs, his tale droops, ther’s no strength in his talons. Wat’s the trubble? Oberlin. He hed bin fed on nigger fer yeres, and hed thrived on the diet. Oberlin got the keepin uv him—she withholds his nateral food—and onless Oberlin is whaled this fall, down goes the Eagle.
Petroleum V. Nasby.
AN ECONOMICAL PROJECT.
To the Authors of the Journal of Paris.
MESSIEURS,—You often entertain us with accounts of new discoveries. Permit me to communicate to the public, through your paper, one that has lately been made by myself, and which I conceive may be of great utility.
I was the other evening in a grand company, where the new lamp of Messrs. Quinquet and Lange was introduced and much admired for its splendour; but a general inquiry was made, whether the oil it consumed was not in proportion to the light it afforded, in which case there would be no saving in the use of it. No one present could satisfy us in that point, which all agreed ought to be known, it being a very desirable thing to lessen, if possible, the expense of lighting our apartments, when every other article of family expense was so much augmented.
I was pleased to see this general concern for economy, for I love economy exceedingly.
I went home, and to bed, three or four hours after midnight, with my head full of the subject. An accidental sudden noise waked me about six in the morning, when I was surprised to find my room filled with light; and I imagined at first that a number of those lamps had been brought into it; but, rubbing my eyes, I perceived the light came in at the windows. I got up and looked out to see what might be the occasion of it, when I saw the sun just rising above the horizon, from whence he poured his rays plentifully into my chamber, my domestic having negligently omitted, the preceding evening, to close the shutters.
I looked at my watch, which goes very well, and found that it was but six o’clock; and still thinking it something extraordinary that the sun should rise so early, I looked into the almanac, where I found it to be the hour given for his rising on that day. I looked forward, too, and found he was to rise still earlier every day till towards the end of June; and that at no time in the year he retarded his rising so long as till eight o’clock. Your readers who, with me, have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regarded the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early, and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes. And, having repeated this observation the three following mornings, I found always precisely the same result.
“WHEN I SPEAK OF THIS DISCOVERY TO OTHERS.”
Yet so it happens that when I speak of this discovery to others, I can easily perceive by their countenances, though they forbear expressing it in words, that they do not quite believe me. One, indeed, who is a learned natural philosopher, has assured me that I must certainly be mistaken as to the circumstance of the light coming into my room; for it being well known, as he says, that there could be no light abroad at that hour, it follows that none could enter from without, and that of consequence, my windows being accidentally left open, instead of letting in the light, had only served to let out the darkness; and he used many ingenious arguments to show me how I might, by that means, have been deceived. I owned that he puzzled me a little, but he did not satisfy me; and the subsequent observations I made, as above mentioned, confirmed me in my first opinion.
This event has given rise in my mind to several serious and important reflections. I consider that if I had not been awakened so early in the morning I should have slept six hours longer by the light of the sun, and in exchange have lived six hours the following night by candle-light; and the latter being a much more expensive light than the former, my love of economy induced me to muster up what little arithmetic I was master of, and to make some calculations, which I shall give you, after observing that utility is, in my opinion, the test of value in matters of invention, and that a discovery which can be applied to no use, or is not good for something, is good for nothing.
I took for the basis of my calculation the supposition that there are 100,000 families in Paris, and that these families consume in the night half a pound of bougies, or candles, per hour. I think this is a moderate allowance, taking one family with another; for though I believe some consume less, I know that many consume a great deal more. Then estimating seven hours per day, as the medium quantity between the time of the sun’s rising and ours, he rising during the six following months from six to eight hours before noon, and there being seven hours of course per night in which we burn candles, the account will stand thus:—
In the six months between the 20th of March and the 20th of September there are—
| Nights | 183 |
| Hours of each night in which we burn candles | 7 |
| —— | |
| Multiplication gives for the total number of hours | 1281 |
| These 1281 hours multiplied by 100,000, the number of inhabitants, give | 128,100,000 |
| One hundred twenty-eight millions and one hundred thousand hours, spent at Paris by candle-light, which, at half a pound of wax and tallow per hour, gives the weight of | 64,050,000 |
| Sixty-four millions and fifty thousand of pounds, which, estimating the whole at the medium price of thirty sols the pound, makes the sum of ninety-six millions and seventy-five thousand livres tournois | 96,075,000 |
An immense sum! that the city of Paris might save every year, by the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.
If it should be said that people are apt to be obstinately attached to old customs, and that it will be difficult to induce them to rise before noon, consequently my discovery can be of little use; I answer, Nil desperandum. I believe all who have common sense, as soon as they have learned from this paper that it is daylight when the sun rises, will contrive to rise with him; and to compel the rest, I would propose the following regulations:—
First. Let a tax be laid of a louis per window on every window that is provided with shutters to keep out the light of the sun.
Second. Let the same salutary operation of police be made use of, to prevent our burning candles, that inclined us last winter to be more economical in burning wood; that is, let guards be placed in the shops of the wax and tallow chandlers, and no family be permitted to be supplied with more than one pound of candles per week.
Third. Let guards also be posted to stop all the coaches, etc., that would pass the street after sunset, except those of physicians, surgeons, and midwives.
Fourth. Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing; and if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest.
All the difficulty will be in the first two or three days, after which the reformation will be as natural and easy as the present irregularity, for ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte. Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, and it is more than probable he will go willingly to bed at eight in the evening; and, having had eight hours sleep, he will rise more willingly at four in the morning following. But this sum of ninety-six millions and seventy-five thousand livres is not the whole of what may be saved by my economical project. You may observe that I have calculated upon only one-half of the year, and much may be saved in the other, though the days are shorter. Besides, the immense stock of wax and tallow left unconsumed during the summer will probably make candles much cheaper for the ensuing winter, and continue them cheaper as long as the proposed reformation shall be supported.
For the great benefit of this discovery, thus freely communicated and bestowed by me on the public, I demand neither place, pension, exclusive privilege, nor any other reward whatever. I expect only to have the honour of it. And yet I know there are little envious minds who will, as usual, deny me this, and say that my invention was known to the ancients, and perhaps they may bring passages out of old books in proof of it. I will not dispute with these people that the ancients knew not the sun would rise at certain hours—they possibly had, as we have, almanacs that predicted it—but it does not follow thence that they knew he gave light as soon as he rose. This is what I claim as my discovery. If the ancients knew it, it might have been long since forgotten, for it certainly was unknown to the moderns, at least to the Parisians, which to prove I need use but one plain, simple argument. They are as well instructed, judicious, and prudent a people as exist anywhere in the world, all professing, like myself, to be lovers of economy; and, from the many heavy taxes required from them by the necessities of the state, have surely an abundant reason to be economical. I say it is impossible that so sensible a people, under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.
Benjamin Franklin.
MISS MEHETABEL’S SON.
A MAN with a passion for bric-à-brac is always stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mosaics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. My own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them. It was plain I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bayley’s Four Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively recognising in him an unfamiliar species.
My professional work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I purposed to employ in studying and classifying my fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a preliminary step, to learn something of his previous history, and to this end I addressed myself to Mr. Sewell that same night.
“I do not want to seem inquisitive,” I said to the landlord, as he was fastening up the bar, which, by the way, was the salle à manger and general sitting-room. “I do not want to seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark this morning at breakfast which—which was not altogether clear to me.”
“About Mehetabel?” asked Mr. Sewell uneasily.
“Yes.”
“Well, I wish he wouldn’t!”
“He was friendly enough in the course of conversation to hint to me that he had not married the young woman, and seemed to regret it.”
“No, he didn’t marry Mehetabel.”
“May I inquire why he didn’t marry Mehetabel?”
“Never asked her. Might have married the girl forty times. Old Elkin’s daughter over at K——, she’d have had him quick enough. Seven years off and on, he kept company with Mehetabel, and then she died.”
“And he never asked her?”
“He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he didn’t think of it. When she was dead and gone, then Silas was struck all of a heap,—and that’s all about it.”
Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me anything more, and obviously there was more to tell. The topic was plainly disagreeable to him for some reason or other, and that unknown reason of course piqued my curiosity.
As I had been absent from dinner and supper that day, I did not meet Mr. Jaffrey again until the following morning at breakfast. He had recovered his bird-like manner, and was full of a mysterious assassination that had just taken place in New York, all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers’ ends. It was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman, with his naïve, benevolent countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in a semicircle like the foot-lights at a theatre, revelling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed.
“You come up to my room to-night,” he cried with horrid glee, “and I’ll give you my theory of the murder. I’ll make it as clear as day to you that it was the detective himself who fired the three pistol-shots.”
It was not so much the desire to have this point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr. Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation.
Mr. Jaffrey’s bedroom was in an L of the building, and was in no way noticeable except for the numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge pile of old magazines which stood in one corner, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threatening each instant to topple over like the Leaning Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades at the windows, some faded chintz valances about the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered with chintz. On a black walnut shelf between the windows lay a choice collection of meerschaum and brierwood pipes.
Filling one of the chocolate-coloured bowls for me, and another for himself, Mr. Jaffrey began prattling; but not about the murder, which appeared to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I do not remember that the topic was even touched upon, either then or afterwards.
“Cosy nest this,” said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing complacently over the apartment. “What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring. In summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit trees under the window; so I have singing birds all the year round. I take it very easy here, I can tell you, summer and winter. Not much society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would term a great intellectual force, but he means well. He’s a realist, believes in coming down to what he calls ‘the hard pan;’ but his heart is in the right place, and he’s very kind to me. The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell out my grain business over at K——, thirteen years ago, and settle down at the Corners. When a man has made a competency, what does he want more? Besides, at that time an event occurred which destroyed any ambition I may have had,—Mehetabel died.”
“The lady you were engaged to?”
“N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was quite understood between us, though nothing had been said on the subject. Typhoid,” added Mr. Jaffrey, in a low tone.
For several minutes he smoked in silence, a vague, troubled look playing over his countenance. Presently this passed away, and he fixed his grey eyes speculatively upon my face.
“If I had married Mehetabel,” said Mr. Jaffrey, slowly, and then he hesitated.
I blew a ring of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my knee, dropped into an attitude of attention.
“If I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should have had—ahem!—a family.”
“Very likely,” I assented, vastly amused at this unexpected turn.
“A boy!” exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively.
“By all means, certainly, a son.”
“Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehetabel’s family want him named Elkanah Elkins, after her grandfather; I want him named Andrew Jackson. We compromise by christening him Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey. Rather a long name for such a short little fellow,” said Mr. Jaffrey, musingly.
“Andy isn’t a bad nickname,” I suggested.
“Not at all. We call him Andy in the family. Somewhat fractious at first,—colic and things. I suppose it is right, or it wouldn’t be so; but the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough, scarlatina, and fits is not visible to the naked eye. I wish Andy would be a model infant, and dodge the whole lot.”
This supposititious child, born within the last few minutes, was clearly assuming the proportions of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel a little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a civil engineer, and it is not strictly in my line to assist at the births of infants, imaginary or otherwise. I pulled away vigorously at the pipe and said nothing.
“What large blue eyes he has,” resumed Mr. Jaffrey, after a pause; “just like Hetty’s; and the fair hair, too, like hers. How oddly certain distinctive features are handed down in families! sometimes a mouth, sometimes a turn of the eyebrow. Wicked little boys, over at K——, have now and then derisively advised me to follow my nose. It would be an interesting thing to do. I should find my nose flying about the world, turning up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this branch of the family and reappearing in that, now jumping over one great-grandchild to fasten itself upon another, and never losing its individuality. Look at Andy. There’s Elkanah Elkin’s chin to the life. Andy’s chin is probably older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing,” he cried, with a sudden, indescribable tenderness, “to lose his mother so early!”
And Mr. Jaffrey’s head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders slanted forward, as if he were actually bending over the cradle of the child.
The whole gesture and attitude was so natural that it startled me. The pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.
“Hush!” whispered Mr. Jaffrey, with a deprecating motion of his hand. “Andy’s asleep!”
He rose softly from the chair, and, walking across the room on tiptoe, drew down the shade at the window through which the moonlight was streaming. Then he returned to his seat, and remained gazing with half-closed eyes into the drooping embers.
I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound silence, wondering what would come next. But nothing came next. Mr. Jaffrey had fallen into so brown a study, that, a quarter of an hour afterwards, when I wished him good-night and withdrew, I do not think he noticed my departure. I am not what is called a man of imagination; it is my habit to exclude most things not capable of mathematical demonstration; but I am not without a certain psychological insight, and I think I understood Mr. Jaffrey’s case.
I could easily understand how a man with an unhealthy, sensitive nature, overwhelmed by sudden calamity, might take refuge in some forlorn place like this old tavern, and dream his life away. To such a man—brooding for ever on what might have been, and dwelling only in the realm of his fancies—the actual world might indeed become as a dream, and nothing seem real but his illusions.
I daresay that thirteen years of Bayley’s Four Corners would have its effect upon me; though instead of conjuring up golden-haired children of the Madonna, I should probably see gnomes and kobolds and goblins engaged in hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for midnight express trains.
“No doubt,” I said to myself that night, as I lay in bed, thinking over the matter, “this once possible but now impossible child is a great comfort to the old gentleman,—a greater comfort, perhaps, than a real son would be. Maybe Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of night, he’s such an unsubstantial infant; but if he doesn’t, and Mr. Jaffrey finds pleasure in talking to me about his son, I shall humour the old fellow. It wouldn’t be a Christian act to knock over his harmless fancy.”
“MR. JAFFREY WHISPERED TO ME.”
I was very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey’s illusion would stand the test of daylight. It did. Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was, so to speak, alive and kicking the next morning. On taking his seat at the breakfast-table, Mr. Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had had a comfortable night.
“Silas!” said Mr. Sewell, sharply, “what are you whispering about?”
Mr. Sewell was in an ill humour; perhaps he was jealous because I had passed the evening in Mr. Jaffrey’s room; but surely Mr. Sewell could not expect his boarders to go to bed at eight o’clock every night, as he did. From time to time during the meal Mr. Sewell regarded me unkindly out of the corner of his eye, and in helping me to the parsnips he poniarded them with quite a suggestive air. All this, however, did not prevent me from repairing to the door of Mr. Jaffrey’s snuggery when night came.
“Well, Mr. Jaffrey, how’s Andy this evening?”
“Got a tooth!” cried Mr. Jaffrey, vivaciously.
“No!”
“Yes, he has! Just through. Gave the nurse a silver dollar. Standing reward for first tooth.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to express surprise that an infant a day old should cut a tooth, when I suddenly recollected that Richard III. was born with teeth.
Feeling myself to be on unfamiliar ground, I suppressed my criticism. It was well I did so, for in the next breath I was advised that half a year had elapsed since the previous evening.
“Andy’s had a hard six months of it,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with the well-known narrative air of fathers. “We’ve brought him up by hand. His grandfather, by the way, was brought up by the bottle”—and brought down by it, too, I added mentally, recalling Mr. Sewell’s account of the old gentleman’s tragic end.
Mr. Jaffrey then went on to give me a history of Andy’s first six months, omitting no detail however insignificant or irrelevant. This history I would in turn inflict upon the reader, if I were only certain that he is one of those dreadful parents who, under the ægis of friendship, bore you at a street-corner with that remarkable thing which Freddy said the other day, and insist on singing to you at an evening party the Iliad of Tommy’s woes.
But to inflict this enfantillage upon the unmarried reader would be an act of wanton cruelty. So I pass over that part of Andy’s biography, and, for the same reason, make no record of the next four or five interviews I had with Mr. Jaffrey. It will be sufficient to state that Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth with astonishing celerity,—at the rate of one year per night, if I remember correctly; and—must I confess it?—before the week came to an end, this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was only little less of a reality to me than to Mr. Jaffrey.
At first I had lent myself to the old dreamer’s whim with a keen perception of the humour of the thing; but by-and-by I found I was talking and thinking of Miss Mehetabel’s son as though he were a veritable personage. Mr. Jaffrey spoke of the child with such an air of conviction!—as if Andy were playing among his toys in the next room, or making mud-pies down in the yard. In these conversations, it should be observed, the child was never supposed to be present, except on that single occasion when Mr. Jaffrey leaned over the cradle. After one of our séances I would lie awake until the small hours, thinking of the boy, and then fall asleep only to have indigestible dreams about him. Through the day, and sometimes in the midst of complicated calculations, I would catch myself wondering what Andy was up to now! There was no shaking him off; he became an inseparable nightmare to me; and I felt that if I remained much longer at Bayley’s Four Corners I should turn into just such another bald-headed, mild-eyed visionary as Silas Jaffrey.
Then the tavern was a gruesome old shell anyway, full of unaccountable noises after dark,—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises.
Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. Clem Jaffrey. Sometimes,
“In the dead vast and middle of the night,”
I used to hear sounds as if some one were turning that rusty crank on the sly. This occurred only on particularly cold nights, and I conceived the uncomfortable idea that it was the thin family ghosts, from the neglected graveyard in the cornfield, keeping themselves warm by running each other through the mangle. There was a haunted air about the whole place that made it easy for me to believe in the existence of a phantasm like Miss Mehetabel’s son, who, after all, was less unearthly than Mr. Jaffrey himself, and seemed more properly an inhabitant of this globe than the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to mention the silent witch of Endor that cooked our meals for us over the bar-room fire.
In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed upon me by Mr. Sewell, who let slip no opportunity to testify his disapprobation of the intimacy, Mr. Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings together—those long autumnal evenings, through the length of which he talked about the boy, laying out his path in life, and hedging the path with roses. He should be sent to the High School at Portsmouth, and then to college; he should be educated like a gentleman, Andy.
“When the old man dies,” said Mr. Jaffrey, rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great joke, “Andy will find that the old man has left him a pretty plum.”
“What do you think of having Andy enter West Point when he’s old enough?” said Mr. Jaffrey, on another occasion. “He needn’t necessarily go into the army when he graduates; he can become a civil engineer.”
This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and indirect, that I could accept it without immodesty.
There had lately sprung up on the corner of Mr. Jaffrey’s bureau a small tin house, Gothic in architecture, and pink in colour, with a slit in the roof, and the word “Bank” painted on one façade. Several times in the course of an evening Mr. Jaffrey would rise from his chair, without interrupting the conversation, and gravely drop a nickel through the scuttle of the bank. It was pleasant to observe the solemnity of his countenance as he approached the edifice, and the air of triumph with which he resumed his seat by the fireplace. One night I missed the tin bank. It had disappeared, deposits and all. Evidently there had been a defalcation on rather a large scale. I strongly suspected that Mr. Sewell was at the bottom of it; but my suspicion was not shared by Mr. Jaffrey, who, remarking my glance at the bureau, became suddenly depressed. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I have failed to instil into Andrew those principles of integrity—which—which——” And the old gentleman quite broke down.
Andy was now eight or nine years old, and for some time past, if the truth must be told, had given Mr. Jaffrey no inconsiderable trouble. What with his impishness and his illnesses, the boy led the pair of us a lively dance. I shall not soon forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night Andy had the scarlet fever,—an anxiety which so affected me that I actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual, dreading to hear the little spectre was dead, and greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey on the door-step with his face wreathed in smiles. When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet fever that had occurred the year before!
It was at this time, towards the end of my second week at Greenton, that I noticed what was probably not a new trait,—Mr. Jaffrey’s curious sensitiveness to atmospherical changes. He was as sensitive as a barometer. The approach of a storm sent his mercury down instantly. When the weather was fair he was hopeful and sunny, and Andy’s prospects were brilliant. When the weather was overcast and threatening he grew restless and despondent, and was afraid the boy wasn’t going to turn out well.
On the Saturday previous to my departure, which had been fixed for Monday, it had rained heavily all the afternoon, and that night Mr. Jaffrey was in an unusually excitable and unhappy frame of mind. His mercury was very low indeed.
“That boy is going to the dogs just as fast as he can go,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with a woful face. “I can’t do anything with him.”
“He’ll come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey. Boys will be boys. I wouldn’t give a snap for a lad without animal spirits.”
“But animal spirits,” said Mr. Jaffrey, sententiously, “shouldn’t saw off the legs of the piano in Tobias’s best parlour. I don’t know what Tobias will say when he finds it out.”
“What, has Andy sawed off the legs of the old spinet?” I returned, laughing.
“Worse than that.”
“Played upon it, then?”
“No, sir. He has lied to me!”
“I can’t believe that of Andy.”
“Lied to me, sir,” repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severely. “He pledged me his word of honour that he would give over his climbing. The way that boy climbs sends a chill down my spine. This morning, notwithstanding his solemn promise, he shinned up the lightning-rod attached to the extension, and sat astride the ridge-pole. I saw him, and he denied it! When a boy you have caressed and indulged and lavished pocket-money on lies to you, and will climb, then there’s nothing more to be said. He’s a lost child.”
“You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey. Training and education are bound to tell in the end, and he has been well brought up.”
“But I didn’t bring him up on a lightning-rod, did I? If he is ever going to know how to behave, he ought to know now. To-morrow he will be eleven years old.”
The reflection came to me that if Andy had not been brought up by the rod, he had certainly been brought up by the lightning. He was eleven years old in two weeks!
I essayed to tranquillise Mr. Jaffrey’s mind, and to give him some practical hints on the management of youth, with that perspicacious wisdom which seems to be the peculiar property of bachelors and elderly maiden ladies.
“Spank him,” I suggested, at length.
“I will!” said the old gentleman.
“And you’d better do it at once!” I added, as it flashed upon me that in six months Andy would be a hundred and forty-three years old!—an age at which parental discipline would have to be relaxed.
The next morning, Sunday, the rain came down as if determined to drive the quicksilver entirely out of my poor friend. Mr. Jaffrey sat bolt upright at the breakfast-table, looking as woe-begone as a bust of Dante, and retired to his chamber the moment the meal was finished. As the day advanced, the wind veered round to the north-east, and settled itself down to work. It was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to think, what Mr. Jaffrey’s condition would be if the weather did not mend its manners by noon; but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm increased in violence, and as night set in the wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key, and the rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky horse that refused to move on. The windows rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors of remote rooms, where nobody ever went, slammed-to in the maddest way. Now and then the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount Agamenticus, bowled across the open country and struck the ancient hostelry point-blank.
Mr. Jaffrey did not appear at supper. I knew he was expecting me to come to his room as usual, and I turned over in my mind a dozen plans to evade seeing him that night.
“AN ATROCIOUS WINK.”
The landlord sat at the opposite side of the chimney-place, with his eye upon me. I fancy he was aware of the effect of this storm on his other boarder; for at intervals, as the wind hurled itself against the exposed gable, threatening to burst in the windows, Mr. Sewell tipped me an atrocious wink, and displayed his gums in a way he had not done since the morning after my arrival at Greenton. I wondered if he suspected anything about Andy. There had been odd times during the past week when I felt convinced that the existence of Miss Mehetabel’s son was no secret to Mr. Sewell.
In deference to the gale, the landlord sat up half-an-hour later than was his custom. At half-past eight he went to bed, remarking that he thought the old pile would stand till morning.
He had been absent only a few minutes when I heard a rustling at the door. I looked up and beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold, with his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying, and the wildest expression on his face.
“He’s gone!” cried Mr. Jaffrey.
“Who? Sewell! Yes, he just went to bed.”
“No, not Tobias,—the boy!”
“What, run away?”
“No,—he is dead! He has fallen off a step-ladder in the red chamber and broken his neck!”
Mr. Jaffrey threw up his hands with a gesture of despair and disappeared. I followed him through the hall, saw him go into his own apartment, and heard the bolt of the door drawn to. Then I returned to the bar-room and sat for an hour or two in the ruddy glow of the fire, brooding over the strange experience of the last fortnight.
On my way to bed I paused at Mr. Jaffrey’s door, and, in a lull of the storm, the measured respiration within told me that the old gentleman was sleeping peacefully.
Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay listening to the soughing of the wind and thinking of Mr. Jaffrey’s illusion. It had amused me at first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor little phantom was dead. I was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it all along. Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, coming and going fainter and fainter, floating around the eaves of the tavern with a gentle, murmurous sound, as if it were turning itself into soft wings to bear away the spirit of a little child.
Perhaps nothing that happened during my stay at Bayley’s Four Corners took me so completely by surprise as Mr. Jaffrey’s radiant countenance the next morning. The morning itself was not fresher or sunnier. His round face literally shone with geniality and happiness. His eyes twinkled like diamonds, and the magnetic light of his hair was turned on full. He came into my room while I was packing my valise. He chirped and prattled and carolled, and was sorry I was going away,—but never a word about Andy. However, the boy had probably been dead several years then!
The open waggon that was to carry me to the station stood at the door; Mr. Sewell was placing my case of instruments under the seat, and Mr. Jaffrey had gone up to his room to get me a certain newspaper containing an account of a remarkable shipwreck on the Auckland Islands. I took the opportunity to thank Mr. Sewell for his courtesies to me, and to express my regret at leaving him and Mr. Jaffrey.
“I have become very much attached to Mr. Jaffrey,” I said; “he is a most interesting person; but that hypothetical boy of his, that son of Miss Mehetabel’s——”
“Yes, I know!” interrupted Mr. Sewell, testily, “fell off a step-ladder and broke his dratted neck. Eleven year old, wasn’t he? Always does, jest at that point. Next week Silas will begin the whole thing over again if he can get anybody to listen to him.”
“I see; our amiable friend is a little queer on that subject.”
Mr. Sewell glanced cautiously over his shoulder, and, tapping himself significantly on the forehead, said in a low voice—
“Room to let. Unfurnished!”
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.