Such funny things were happening hourly, and such funnier things were said every minute, that I was in what we used to call, when I was a child, “a continual gale.”
Let one bit of nonsense illustrate the frivolity that, in the retrospect, resembles the pas seul of a child on the edge of a reeking crater.
I was summoned to the drawing-room, one forenoon, to receive a call from the son of an old friend who had promised his mother to look me up, in passing through the city on his way to the “Republic of South Carolina.” That was the letter-head of epistles received from the Palmetto State.
In descending the stairs, I heard the scamper of small boots over the floor of the square, central hall, and caught the flash of golden curls through the arched doorway leading into the narrower passage at the rear of the house. Knowing the infinite capacity of my son for ingenious mischief, I stayed my progress to the parlor, and looked about for some hint as to the nature of the present adventure. Sofa and chairs were in place, as was the mahogany table at the far corner. On this was a silver tray, and on the tray the pitcher of iced water, which was a fixture the year through. Two tumblers flanked it on one side, and my visitor had set on the other the sleekest tall silk hat I had ever seen outside of a shop window. There was absolutely no rational association of ideas between the iced water-pitcher and that stunning specimen of head-gear. Yet I glanced into the depths of both. One was half-full; the other was empty. Clutching the desecrated hat wildly, I sped to the sitting-room. “Oh, mother, what is to be done? Eddie has emptied the water-pitcher into William M.’s hat!”
Whereupon, that gentlest, yet finest, of disciplinarians, who would have sent one of her own bairns to bed in the middle of the day, for an offence one-tenth as flagrant, dropped her sewing on her lap and went off into a speechless convulsion of laughter. A chuckle of intense delight from behind her rocking-chair, and a glimpse of dancing blue eyes under her elbow, put the finishing touches to a scene so discreditable to grandmotherly ideas of domestic management, that the family refused to believe the story told at the supper-table, when the culprit was safe in his crib.
Leaving the dishonored “tile” to the merciful manipulations of the laundress, who begged me to “keep the pore young gentleman a-talkin’ ‘tell she could dry it at the fire,” I went to meet the unsuspecting victim.
It was not difficult to keep him talking, when once he was launched upon the topic paramount in the mind of what he denominated as “every truly loyal and chivalrous Son of the South.” He had a plan of campaign so well concerted and so thoroughly digested, that it could have but one culmination.
“But why Faneuil Hall?” I demurred, plaintively. “You are the sixth man who has informed me that your cavalry are to tie and feed their horses there. Why not the City Hall in New York? There must be stable-room short of Boston.”
He flushed brick-red.
“It is no laughing matter to us who have been ground down so long under the iron heels of Yankee mud-sills!”