"Have you got any ole boots to-day?"
Always at home, seated in his front parlor, and his frugal wife not permitting the expense of a servant, Uncle Henry, or Master Philip, were obliged to wait on the door. The old gentleman finally concluded that the pedlers and old boot collectors, more as a matter of daily amusement than profit or concern—gave him a call. And laboring under this impression, Uncle Henry determined to give the nuisances, as he called them, a reception commensurate with their impertinence and his worked up ire.
"Now, Philly," said Uncle Henry, one morning after breakfast, "we'll fix these—
"'Got any ole boots?'
"We'll give the rascals a caution, they won't neglect soon, I'll warrant them. Bring me the hammer and nails; that's a man; now get uncle the high chair; so, that's it; now I'll fix this shelf up over the top of the door, on a pivot—bore this hole through here—put the string through that way, here, umph; oh, now we'll have a trap for the scoundrels. I'll learn them how to come pulling people's bells, clean out by the very roots, making us drop all, to come wait on them, rot them—
"'Got any ole boots?'
"I'll give you old boots, by the lord Harry; I'll give you a dose of something you won't forget, to your dying day."
And thus jabbering, fixing and pushing about the revolving shelf, over his hall door, Mr. Mansfield worked away at his trap. Like that of most dwellings in Boston, Uncle Henry's front door was sunk some six or eight feet into the face of the house, reached by a flight of six granite steps—side and top lights to the door, in the ordinary way, with brass plate and bell pull. It was in a neighborhood not plebeian enough to induce butcher boys to enter the hall, with the pork and potatoes, nor admit of the servant girl heaving "slops" out of the front windows; yet not sufficiently parvenu to impress pedlers and
"Got any ole boots?"
with aristocratic or "respectable" awe, ere venturing to mount the steps, pull the bell, and mention tin pots, scrap iron, rags and old leather. Mr. Mansfield was inclined to chuckle in his sleeves at the ruse he would be enabled to give his tormentors through the agency of his revolving battery—charged with ground charcoal and brick dust, to be worked by himself or Philly, by means of a string on the inside. Philly was duly initiated into the modus operandi; when—