But every renewal of the fun was an added agony to me, for I clearly foresaw that it would be rehearsed by Jack and Tom to all the boys in the neighborhood. Beside this, I was not in a condition to be hilarious. Plastered with tar from head to foot; streaming with perspiration at every pore; my clothes drenched; my hair matted together, and my straw hat, soaked with water, fastened upon it, and falling limp and wet about my eyes; I was not rendered more comfortable by the fact that I could not move without taking pillow and bed-clothes with me, as, in my desperate desire to conceal myself from view, I had become enwrapped in the bed-clothing like a caterpillar in its chrysalis; and I was conscious of a dim fear that if I sat up, with the pillow stuck fast on the top of my hat, the sight of me might produce fatal results upon the already exhausted family.
At last the point was reached where I thought patience ceased to be a virtue, and I rebelled against being any longer made a spectacle.
I declared if they would all go away but mother, I would tell her all about it. The crowd retired, commissioned to send up a crock of butter, a tub of hot water, and a pair of shears. Maternal love is strong, but I doubt if it was often put to a severer test of its long-suffering than was that of my mother that night.
THE SHOWER-BATH.
Suffice it to say that, after my clothes had been cut to ribbons, the sheets torn up, my head well-nigh shaved, and my whole person subjected first to an African bath of melted butter, and afterward to one of hot soap-suds, I had had my fill of bathing for one day, and was, shortly before midnight, pronounced to be tolerably clean.
P.S.—I never made any marbles of coal-tar.