Nothing delighted Uncle Joe so much as to tell one of his charming stories to us, eager listeners as we always were. He liked to get one child on each knee, and to have the others clustering round as near as possible, and then he would start off and go on just for all the world as if he was only reading from a book.
Looking back now, with the calmer judgment of riper years, I hardly know which was most wonderful, the unlimited power of invention of Uncle Joe, or the boundless credulity of us children. Because no man could by any possibility have gone through half the wonderful adventures of which he pretended to have been the hero, if he had lived to twice the ordinary age of man, and kept on searching for adventures all the time. Besides, it would have been five hundred to one against his escaping every time, as Uncle Joe always did, "by the skin o' his teeth."
Once he was tied to the stake, and just going to be scalped by the Indians, when some miraculous thing (I forget what at this moment) occurred to save him; once he was in the very coils of an enormous snake, and was yet preserved; and at another time, he was actually swallowed by a crocodile, (I am sure I don't know how he got down its throat without a disabling nip from some of those teeth which I have noticed in the mouths of stuffed crocodiles in museums,) and escaped by means of employing his penknife in a manner too disagreeable to describe. In short, there never was a man who, according to his own account, had gone through such a series of remarkable adventures as Uncle Joe, and I am therefore quite justified in pronouncing him to have been a most extraordinary man.
I have never discovered what really was Uncle Joe's profession or occupation. For anything I know, he may have been a soldier, a sailor, or a horse-marine; though, for the matter of that, I have so little conception of what may be the duties of persons engaged in the latter profession, that I should dispute the claims of nobody who averred that he had belonged to it. All I know is, that he wore a blue coat with brass buttons, had a hooked nose and a bright eye, and only possessed one arm; the other I solemnly declare I have heard him state, on different occasions, to have been shot off in battle, lost in saving life from a shipwreck, when it got jammed between two planks of the sinking ship, and bitten off by a tiger, under circumstances the details of which I do not happen to remember—it was gone, however, anyhow, was that left-arm of Uncle Joe's, and its loss must have had this great consolation, that it furnished a foundation upon which he built many a romance, pleasing to himself, and interesting to his listeners.
He had been a mighty traveller, had Uncle Joe. From Canada to the farthest extremity of South America, from Constantinople to Hong-Kong, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Cape, all was familiar to him; whilst, as to continental Europe, there seemed to be no hole or corner which he had not explored. England was like his own house to him; that is to say, he knew every county and town in one as well as he knew every room in the other. In fact, to hear him talk on these subjects, you never would for a moment have guessed that which was the real truth, namely, that he had never been further from England than Paris, and had been so particularly ill in crossing the channel that nothing but the fear of the laughter of his friends, coupled with his total and entire ignorance of the French language, prevented his settling in France for the rest of his life, sooner than again undergo the ordeal of that terrible passage.
Happily for us children, (for this occurred before we were at the age of story-hearing, or indeed at any age at all,) he did face the channel once more, and never sought to tempt it again. But all this I only learned many years after, and during the whole of the early portion of my life, I (in common, I am sure, with the great majority of his acquaintance) set Uncle Joe down as a man who had seen more of the world than most living men, and knew more of the geography of foreign lands, as well as of the customs and manners of their inhabitants, than anyone whom I ordinarily met.
With all this sin, if sin it be, of exaggeration, (one wishes to use a mild word in speaking of a relative,) Uncle Joe's virtues greatly predominated over any defects which he may have possessed. He was good-natured to a fault—forgiving beyond most men—tender-hearted—a faithful friend—and full of sympathy for the woes and sorrows of others. I believe he lost a large sum of money in early life by becoming surety for some one whom he thought to be a friend, and who turned out to be an arrant scoundrel. Anyhow, he was far from rich, and was not one of those uncles who have always got a sovereign ready for a nephew going to school, or for spending at the confectioner's, if he comes to see a young relative during school-time. Still, Uncle Joe was the most popular of all our relations so far as the public opinion of the school-room was concerned, and every juvenile heart rejoiced when we were told that he was coming to spend Christmas at our home.
Upon one occasion he was expected to arrive upon the day before Christmas Eve, and we were all greatly delighted at the prospect. Fanny and Kitty, my two eldest sisters, were looking forward with much pleasure to the visits to the school-room which Uncle Joe always paid about tea-time, not only on account of the stories we were sure to hear, but because it was so very amusing to see the violent efforts which Miss Crinkles, the governess, used to make in order to avoid going into fits of laughter at some of our uncle's jokes, and the entire—though only temporary—loss of dignity which followed her inevitable failure to keep her countenance. Tom and Gerald and I (Harry is my name, and I was about twelve at the time of this story) were equally interested, and little Lucy and Mary were employed for several days beforehand in putting on their dolls' best dresses, that they might be in a fit state to receive this honoured relation.
Well, the day before Christmas Eve came—as it always comes every year, if you only look out for it—and our hearts beat high with expectation of Uncle Joe. But no Uncle Joe appeared at luncheon time (he often turned up about that time) and when tea-time had arrived, the hoped-for visit was not paid. Presently the dressing-bell rang, half-an-hour before dinner, and still no Uncle Joe. Even my father began to fidget now, and to wonder where the expected guest could be, and my mother became positively uneasy. If there was one thing rather than another about which our uncle was particular, it was the important point of being in time for dinner. The reason he always gave for this particularity was his sense of the unfairness to the cook which was occasioned by unpunctuality. No cook, he said, could contend against it, and you had no right to expect a good dinner unless you were ready to eat it at the hour for which it had been ordered.
The knowledge of this opinion on the part of Uncle Joe, and of the firmness—not to say obstinacy—with which he always maintained it—increased the uneasiness of my parents as the dinner hour grew nearer and nearer without his appearance, and when half-past seven arrived, and still no Uncle Joe, matters were held to be so serious that messengers were despatched in several directions to make inquiries whether anything had been heard or seen of the expected visitor. It was fortunate that this step was taken, because otherwise there exists a violent probability that this story might never have been told, and we children should have had to mourn over the loss of our favourite relative.