NOTE V
AS for the show father and Aldrich put on, that is another matter. One may, without too much injustice, reserve judgment on the show. I myself never saw one of their performances, but one of my brothers once did and always, quietly and with commendable firmness, refused to speak of it afterward.
Fancy will, however, serve. Aldrich would show his pictures of McKinley, Grover Cleveland and the others, and then father would sing and do one of his dances. There would be more pictures and another song and dance and after that the picture of the flag, in colors. If the night were fair forty or even fifty people, farmers, their wives, the hired men and the children, would gather in the schoolhouse. The show only cost ten cents. Too much injustice was not done them.
It is, however, rather a shame they did not let father tell stories instead. Perhaps in all his life it never occurred to him they might have been written. Poor father! As a public figure, he had to content himself with the exercise of an art in which he was as bad, I fancy, as any man who has ever lived.
And it is his singing and dancing that remains like a scar in my memory of him. In the late fall, before Aldrich and he started out on their adventure, father used to rehearse upstairs in our house.
The evening meal would have been out of the way and we children wouldbe sitting by the stove, about the table in the kitchen. Mother had washed clothes during the day and now she was doing an ironing. Father walked about, his hands clasped behind his back as though in deep thought, and occasionally he raised his eyes to the ceiling, while his lips moved silently.
Then he went out of the room and we heard him go upstairs into a bedroom above. None of us, in the kitchen below, looked at each other. We pretended to read books, to get our school lessons, or we looked at the floor.
At that time the humor of America—of which we Americans were so inordinately proud—expressed itself in the broader and less subtle jokes of Mark Twain, Bill Nye and Petroleum V. Nasby, and there was a book, commonly read by both children and grown-ups, and reputed to be very funny, called, “Peck’s Bad Boy.†It told, if I remember correctly, of the doings of a certain quite terrible youngster who put chewing gum or molasses on the seats of chairs, threw pepper into people’s eyes, stuck pins into schoolteachers, hung cats over clotheslines by their tails, and did any number of other such charmingly expressive things.
This terrible child was, as I have said, reputed to be very funny and the book recounting his doings must have sold tremendously. And father, having read it, had written a ballad concerning just such another youngster. This child also made life a hell for his fellows, and his father was very proud of him. When the child had done something unusually shocking the father tried, one gathered, to share in thehonor.
At any rate the refrain of father’s song was:
“You grow more like your dad every day.â€
“You grow more like your dad every day.â€
“You grow more like your dad every day.â€
“You grow more like your dad every day.â€
Evening after evening these words rang through our house. They made all of us children shiver a little. Father sang them, danced a few halting steps, and then sang them again.
In the kitchen, as I have already said, we others sat with our eyes on the floor. One could not hear the words of the verses themselves, but the spirit of the song was known to all of us. Am I right? Were there—sometimes—tears in mother’s eyes as she bent over the ironing board?
Of that, after all, I cannot be too sure. I can only be everlastingly sure of the refrain:
“You grow more like your dad every day.â€
* * * * *
And, however that may be, there is always one consoling thought. As a showman, and on stormy nights, there must sometimes have been but slight audiences at the schoolhouses and the takings for Aldrich and father must have been thin. One fancies evenings when eighty cents might cover all the receipts at the door.
One thinks of the eighty cents and shudders, and then a consoling thought comes. Of one thing we may be quite sure—father and Aldrich would not have gone hungry, and at night there must always have been comfortable beds into which they could crawl. Father had promisedAldrich he would see to the matter of bed and board.
And no doubt he did.
Even though the farmer and the farmer’s wife should have proved hard-hearted one remembers the number of Tillies in the farmhouses of Ohio. When everything else failed the Tillies would have taken care of the troubadours. Of that one may be, I should say, very very sure.