THE LAUGHY-MAN.
Ho, for the Laughy-Man! laughing all day,
Laughing the sunshiny hours away,
Laughing and kicking his little pink heels
Just to impress us with how good he feels!
Hey, for the Laughy-Man!
Ho, for his smiles!
Hail to the angels who taught him such wiles!
Ho, for the Laughy-Man! waking to play,
Waking to laugh at the first peep o' day,
Waking to churn up the blanket and sheet,
Like waves of the sea, with his fists and his feet!
Hey, for the Laughy-Man!
Ho, for his smiles!
Hail to the angels who taught him such wiles!
Ho, for the Laughy-Man! lying abed,
Lying there wagging his cherubin head,
Lying there, merry, a bundle of love
Sent to our home by the seraphs above!
Hey, for the Laughy-Man!
Ho, for his smiles!
Hail to the angels who taught him such wiles!
There were seven kinds of Indians at the back of the largest hotel of the Western town—dirty and dirtier, which is two; young and old, which is four; male and female, making six; and one little clean pappoose. This latter tiny bit of aboriginal humanity was a chubby, round-faced, bright-eyed little tike, with the blackest of hair and the most bronze of complexions. He was playing around alone inside a close high board fence at the rear of the large hotel, his only shirt cut off at the knees, displaying a fat brownish pair of dimpled legs that were warm enough in spite of the fact of their bareness in the chilling air.
Presently around the corner came a trotting, smiling Chinaman, a vender of vegetables. A long slender pole, carved flat and tapering toward the ends, was balanced on his shoulder, and from either end, suspended by a bridle composed of four strings, hung a huge bamboo basket.
As he halted within the gate of the high board fence he lightly swung the receptacles to earth, rested his polished pole conveniently near, lifted a mat containing the day's supplies for the cook within, and carried it off to the kitchen.
Now it not very strangely befell that the vender of vegetables lingered a time in the kitchen, for that exceedingly tempting and savory seat of government was under the personal direction of another little yellow man, who called his countryman "Wong," and gave him to drink of tea. While the two engaged each other with inharmonious gutturals, a dusky cranium and equally dusky countenance came poking out from another door. Its owner was the negro porter, a grinning fellow, whose mania for jokes of the "practical" description was developed to a degree positively unhealthy. No sooner had he made himself certain that the yard was free of observers, and occupied alone by the wee pappoose, than he stealthily slipped from his place, and grabbed the scared little fellow by the tail of his wholly inadequate shirt.
The eyes of the miniature savage were apparently frozen wide open in an instant, while paralysis made him utterly stoic and dumb. The Chinaman's basket had a shallow tray in the top filled with beets; then an inside receptacle, also shallow, filled with celery. Below this last were cabbages, down in the bottom. These extra insides the negro quickly lifted out with his unemployed hand; then a couple of the cabbages, as large together as the wee pappoose, came forth with a jerk. In a second more the silent Indian baby had been dropped within the basket, the various trays had been properly replaced, and the darky had rapidly hopped through the open door with his cabbages, doubling himself like a nut-cracker and stretching his face in violent but silent laughter.
Out came Wong, beaming with the radiance of tea well swallowed. He rearranged his pole, bent his stout Mongolian back, straightened up, lifting his baskets, balanced them neatly, and trotted away with the frightened baby Indian, but quite oblivious that such a lively vegetable ever was grown.
Wong went singing up the street, or rather humming away about a "feast of lanterns," and he thought on how soon he would be enabled to purchase a wagon.
"Good-molling," he said, as he stopped at last at the rear of one of the most imposing houses. "Velly fine molling."
"Good-morning, Wong. It's a little bit chilly," said a gray-haired woman wearing glasses, rubbing her hands.
"Oh yeh, him feel lill bit chilly."
"What you got this morning?" she inquired.
"Oh, for callot, for cell'ly—velly nice for cell'ly—for turnip, for squash, any kine." Then, as she hesitated, "potatoe?—for ahple?—for cabbagee? Oh, lots um good kine, I tink."
She took a squash. "Did you say cabbage, Wong?"
"Oh yeh." He began at once to lift the tray. Next he hoisted forth the shallow inside basket and reached for a cabbage.
"Ki! yi!" he yelled. "Sumin—ah—got, yu nee mah! Kow long hop ti! Ha! What you call um? Hi! for Injun debbil!" And he lapsed again into awful Chinese exclamation points, and danced a fan-tan dango in a wonderful state of excitement. "Hi! What you call um? Sumin-ah-got, no belong for Wong! Huh!" Nerving himself for the fearful ordeal, he lifted the squirming baby forth and dropped it quickly to the ground. No sooner did the wild little thing find itself released than it scrambled to its feet and ran at the skirts of the elderly lady—the only thing it recognized—and clung there like a prickly burr.
"Mercy!" shrieked the lady. "Mercy! Where— Wong, where did you get this child—this savage child?" she demanded.
"Sumin-ah-got, no sabbee," said the terrified Wong, gathering baskets and mats in a desperate haste. "Plitty click for whole lots um for Injun come for nis one. Wong no takee. No see some nis one for baby befloh. Somebody makee for tlick—you sabbee?—makee velly much tlouble. Kow long hop ti! Yu nee mah!"
"But, Wong, you must take it back! I don't know anything about the trick! I don't wan't the Indians coming here. Mercy!"
Wong, however, had rapidly fixed his pole in its place, and swung his baskets clear of the ground, still jabbering wildly in his native tongue, and trotted away with a double-quick motion.
"Wong! Wong!" called the agitated woman. "I can't throw him away! You must take him back! Wong!" But the vender of vegetables, thoroughly alarmed, had fled.
"Did yez call, Miss Hoobart?" said a voice from the door.
"Oh, Maggie! Oh dear! Oh! Oh! What shall we do?" cried the woman. She was trying to shake her skirts of the brown little Indian, but he merely clung the harder, and buried his face in the folds.
"Ach, wurra, wurra!" said Maggie. "Oi wudden't a t'o't ut. Phere did yez git um?"
"Hush, you silly girl. It's an Indian baby, and Wong brought him—and he ran away frightened—and somebody played it as a trick—and the wild, infuriated Indian population may be down upon us at any moment to recover the child!"
"Ach!" screamed the girl, jumping high in the air and glancing quickly about. "Phy don't yez l'ave um in the sthrate, the turrible varmint?"
"What, a tiny child, Maggie? Suppose it should freeze to death? It hasn't any clothing to speak of. Oh dear! I do wish Charles were home!"
"Phat yez goin' to do?" whispered Maggie.
"I don't know. Oh, I don't know! We've got to take him in, I suppose, and wait for Charles." Accordingly she walked very gingerly in, while the very diminutive savage continued to cling to the dress and hide his face. "I don't see," she said, breathing easier when the door was closed, "how I'm going to get him away from my skirt. Don't you think you could take him away, Maggie?"
"Oi wudden' touch um for tin dollars!" cried the girl.
"What shall we do? He will never let go."
"Yez c'u'd l'ave um the skirt—take ut aff, an' put an anither wan, ye moind."
"Yes, I can; that is just the thing." She slipped the outside garment in a jiffy, and the baby sat down on the floor in the midst of the pile.
The warrior sat perfectly still, his big brown eyes and his wee red mouth wide open, his chubby hands playing at random with the skirt.
"Oi moight go out an' infarm Misther Patrick Murphy, the gintleman policemon, mum," ventured Maggie at length.
"Don't you dare to go and leave me an instant," said the woman. "There is nothing in the whole wide world to do but to watch him every minute and lock all the doors and wait for Charles. Oh dear! that I should live to see such a terrible day!"
So the barricades were placed on the doors, and the women brought their chairs to sit and watch their very unwelcome prisoner. As the day grew old it occurred to the lady that perhaps the child was hungry. She prepared a piece of bread with molasses, and handed it out with the tongs. With this the child emulated his parents, for he painted his face from chin to eyes. This continued till the curtain lashes of the bright brown eyes came drooping down; his chubby little face, with molasses adornment, sank slowly to rest on the skirt. The women continued to watch.
As the evening came on Miss Hobart paced the room impatiently. "Charles! Charles, my brother!" she would say, "why don't you come? You ought to know what a terrible, terrible trial it is!"
But the sound of his knock on the door, when he came at his usual time, nearly made the women faint. A thin little man was Mr. Hobart, but sensible, and not to be alarmed. He declared that the morning would be time enough in which to clear the matter up.
"Oh, but it won't," said his elderly sister. "Suppose there should be a night attack? They are very, very frequent—it's the Indian way of proceeding!"
"Well," said he, "I'll go and tell the sheriff. He can hunt the parents up and settle the whole thing in a minute."
"But," she protested, "the Indians are gone to their tents—campoodies—out in the sage-brush long before this—that is, providing they are not lurking around this neighborhood. And just fancy a poor mother deprived of her child all night!"
"Well, what shall I do?"
"Suppose—suppose you take a lantern and go out to the wigwams. You are not afraid?"
"No, of course I'm not; but what's the use?"
In the end he found himself muffled, mittened, provided with the lantern, packing the child—all wrapped in a blanket and fastened loosely in with a shawl-strap—out in the sage-brush, floundering aimlessly about in search of the Indian campoodies. Mile after mile he trudged about in the night, shifting baby and lantern from hand to hand as his arms grew weary, and growing more and more disgusted as it dawned on his mind that all he knew of the way to find campoodies was to wander toward the west in the brush, he shouldered the sleeping warrior and made some lively tracks for home.
"There," said he, as he tossed the wee pappoose, blanket and all, on the lounge, "you can leave it to snooze where you please, for I am going right straight to bed."
His sister sat in a chair all night, dressed, and she waked a hundred times from a dream of hideous Indian depredations. She was wearily sleeping when her brother ate his breakfast and went. An hour later the head of an old and silently whistling Indian appeared at the open window.
"Ketchum pappoose?" said this awful warrior, and his voice was barely audible. She whirled around, saw the face, tried to scream, and failed.
"Injun Jim h-e-a-p sick," drawled the chieftain, who had satisfied himself that his son and heir was present, the youngster being seated on the floor—"h-e-a-p sick, heap likum biscuit-lah-pooh."
Miss Hobart rallied. "Perhaps," she thought, "Charles has pacified the tribe." Then she said, "Oh, Mr. Indian Jim—James, is this your son—your little boy?"
"Yesh, h-e-a-p my boy. Injun Jim heap likum biscuit-lah-pooh, h-e-a-p sick."
"Are you sick? Poor man! you shall have all the biscuit you want. Here," she said, in a timid voice, as he tucked away a package of food, "is your son—your nice little boy—very nice little boy; and I'm very sorry—"
"Yesh, h-e-a-p nice—all same Injun Jim. You like buy um? Two dollar hap, you buy um, h-e-a-p goot!"
"Mercy! Oh, oh!" she gasped. "He would sell it! Two dollars and a half—and after such a night! Oh no—no, Jim—James—take him to his yearning mother, please!"
As the warrior slowly shuffled away to the gate, leading his son and heir by the hand, the bright little face was turned toward the woman who was standing in the door.
"It is a beautiful child," she said. "I wish I had noticed before."