The great drawbacks to the custom of making New-Year’s calls were the calls which had to be made after the day’s hard work was supposed to be over, and when The Boy and his father, returning home very tired, were told that they must call upon Mrs. Somebody, and upon Mrs. Somebody-else, whom they had neglected to visit, because the husbands and the sons of these ladies had called upon the mother of The Boy. New Year’s Day was not the shortest day of the year, by any means, but it was absolutely necessary to return the Somebody’s call, no matter how late the hour, or how tired the victims of the social law. And it bored the ladies of the Somebody household as much as it bored the father and The Boy.
A NEW-YEAR’S CALL
The Boy was always getting lost. The very first time he went out alone he got lost! Told not to go off the block, he walked as far as the corner of Leonard Street, put his arm around the lamp-post, [p 29]
swung himself in a circle, had his head turned the wrong way, and marched off, at a right angle, along the side street, with no home visible anywhere, and not a familiar sign in sight. A ship at sea without a rudder, a solitary wanderer in the Great American Desert without a compass, could not have been more utterly astray. The Boy was so demoralized that he forgot his name and address; and when a kindly policeman picked him up, and carried him over the way, to the Leonard Street station-house for identification, he felt as if the end of everything had come. It was bad enough to be arrested, but how was he to satisfy his own conscience, and explain matters to his mother, when it was discovered that he had broken his solemn promise, and crossed the street? He had no pocket-handkerchief; and he remembers that he spoiled the long silk streamers of his Glengarry bonnet by wiping his eyes upon them. He was recognized by his Forty-second-plaid gingham frock, a familiar object in the neighborhood, and he was carried back to his parents, who had not had time to miss him, and who, consequently, were not distracted. He lost nothing by the adventure but himself, his self-respect, a pint of tears—and one shoe.
He was afterwards lost in Greenwich Street, having gone there on the back step of an ice-cart; and once he was conveyed as far as the Hudson River Railroad Depot, at Chambers Street, on his sled, which he had [p 30]
hitched to the milkman’s wagon, and could not untie. This was very serious, indeed; for The Boy realized that he had not only lost himself but his sleigh, too. Aunt Henrietta found The Boy sitting disconsolately in front of Wall’s bake-shop; but the sleigh did not turn up for several days. It was finally discovered, badly scratched, in the possession of “The Head of the Rovers.”
“The Hounds” and “The Rovers” were rival bands of boys, not in The Boy’s set, who for many years made out-door life miserable to The Boy and to his friends. They threw stones and mud at each other, and at everybody else; and The Boy was not infrequently blamed for the windows they broke. They punched all the little boys who were better dressed than they were, and they were even depraved enough, and mean enough, to tell the driver every time The Boy or Johnny Robertson attempted to “cut behind.”
TOM RILEY’S LIBERTY POLE