My grandfather and Mike Marble were as dear to each other as if they had been brothers. They lived not far apart, and went to school together. For some of Mike's crotchets I am indebted to this old friend of his. Others I picked up, here and there, among old people that knew him, and others still I got from a personal acquaintance with him in his old age.
You will excuse me, if I call him Mike sometimes. He was always so called, when he was a boy, I believe. And while you are excusing me for calling him Mike—you see I take you to be very kind and obliging—you will please excuse me, also, if I happen to prefix the title of Uncle to that nickname; for he was known, far and near, as Uncle Mike in his later days.
It is true that Michael was his name correctly and honestly spelled out. But it is equally true that Michael was a name to which he seldom had to answer. At school, and among his playmates, it was always Mike. I really believe, from what I have heard my grandfather say, that not half the boys and girls in his neighborhood could have been convinced, by any common arguments, that his name was Michael. Indeed, I remember having heard that once, when a schoolmate called the fellow by the long name, just to see how it would seem, he and the other boy both burst right out into a perfect roar of laughter over the sound of it. "For pity's sake," said he, when he got over his laughing fit, "don't call me by that hard name again, as long as I live;" and, as he seemed to be quite in earnest, none of the boys ever addressed him by any other name than Mike, after that.
CHAP. III.[ToC]
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.
"But who is Mike Marble? where does he live? what sort of a man is he? what kind of oddities has he got?"
My little friend, your questions come out so fast, and there is such a long string of them, that they make me think of the way a whole pack of fire crackers go off, when you touch a coal to one of them, and throw the whole into the street. I am going to tell you ever so many things about this same Mike Marble. Before I get through with him, you will get very well acquainted with him, I think. But Uncle Frank, you know, has got some oddities himself. When he has got any thing to do, he, too, has his own way of doing it.