I should say here that the Idlewild was not a boat at all, but an idea. She evolved out of our position on Long’s Point, where the Harlem joins the Hudson, and where stood the shop in which we all worked, water to the south of us, water to the west of us, water to the north of us, and the railroad behind us landward, just like the four—or was it the six? hundred—at Balaklava. Anyhow, we got our idea from the shop and the water all around, and we said, after much chaffering about one thing and another, that we were aboard the Idlewild, and that the men were the crew, and that the engineer was the captain, and I was the mate, just as if everything were ship-shape, and this were a really and truly ocean-going vessel.
As I have said before, I do not know exactly how the idea started, except that it did. Old John was always admiring the beautiful yachts that passed up and down the roadstead of the Hudson outside, and this may have had something to do with it. Anyhow, he would stand in the doorway of his engine room and watch everything in the shape of a craft that went up and down the stream. He didn’t know much about boats, but he loved to comment on their charms, just the same.
“That there now must be Morgan’s yacht,” he used to say of a fine black-bodied craft that had a piano-body finish to it, an’ “That there’s the Waterfowl, Governor Morton’s yacht. Wouldn’ ja think, now, them fellers ’d feel comfortable a-settin’ back there on the poop deck an’ smokin’ them dollar cigars on a day like this? Aw, haw!”
It would usually be blistering hot and the water a flashing blue when he became excited over the yacht question.
“Right-o,” I once commented enviously.
“Aw, haw! Them’s the boys as knows how to live. I wouldn’ like nothin’ better on a day like this than to set out there in one o’ them easy chairs an’ do up about a pound o’ tobacco. Come now, wouldn’t that be the ideal life for your Uncle Dudley?”
“It truly would,” I replied sadly but with an inherent desire to tease, “only I don’t think my Uncle Dudley is doing so very badly under the circumstances. I notice he isn’t losing any flesh.”
“Well, I dunno. I’m a little stout, I’ll admit. Still, them conditions would be more congenial-like. I ain’t as active as I used to be. A nice yacht an’ some good old fifty-cent cigars an’ a cool breeze ’d just about do for me.”
“You’re too modest, John. You want too little. You ought to ask for something more suited to your Lucullian instincts. What do you say to a house in Fifth Avenue, a country place at Newport, and the friendship of a few dukes and earls?”
“Well, I’m not backward,” he replied. “If them things was to come my way I guess I could live up to ’em. Aw, haw!”