The public-school system of the village was reorganized during a recent summer; and in consequence of a considerable enlargement of the single school-building and the great increase of the number of scholars, it was determined to engage an additional woman-teacher in the girls' department. Accordingly, the board of directors advertised for a suitable person, instructing applicants to call upon Judge Twiddler, the chairman. A day or two later, Mrs. Twiddler advertised in a city paper for a cook, and upon the same afternoon an Irish girl came to the house to obtain the place in the kitchen. The judge was sitting upon the front porch at the time reading a newspaper; and when the girl entered the gate of the yard, he mistook her for a school-mistress, and he said to her,
"Did you come about that place?"
"Yes, sor," she answered.
"Oh, very well, then; take a seat and I'll run over a few things in order to ascertain what your qualifications are. Bound Africa."
"If you please, sor, I don't know what you mean."
"I say, bound Africa."
"Bou—bou—Begorra, I don't know what ye're referrin' to."
"Very strange," said the judge. "Can you tell me if 'amphibious' is an adverb or a preposition? What is an adverb?"
"Indade, and ye bother me intirely. I never had anything to do wid such things at my last place."
"Then it must have been a curious sort of an institution," said the judge. "Probably you can tell me how to conjugate the verb 'to be,' and just mention, also, what you know about Herodotus."
"Ah, yer Honor's jokin' wid me. Be done wid yer fun, now."
"Did you ever hear of Herodotus?"
"Never once in the whole coorse of my life. Do you make it with eggs?"
"This is the most extraordinary woman I ever encountered," murmured the judge. "How she ever associated Herodotus with the idea of eggs is simply incomprehensible. Well, can you name the hemisphere in which China and Japan are situated?"
"Don't bother me wid yer fun, now. I can wash the china and the pans as well as anybody, and that's enough, now, isn't it?"
"Dumb! awful dumb! Don't know the country from the crockery. I'll try her once more. Name the limits of the Tropic of Capricorn, and tell me where Asia Minor is located."
"I have a brother that's one, sor; that's all I know about it."
"One? One what?"
"Didn't ye ask me afther the miners, sor? My brother Teddy works wid 'em."
"And this," said the judge, "is the kind of person to whom we are asked to entrust the education of youth. Woman, whatdoyou know? What kind of a school have you been teaching?"
"None, sor. What should I teach school for?"
"Totally without experience, as I supposed," said the judge.
"Mrs. Ferguson had a governess teach the children when I was cookin' for her."
"Cooking! Ain't you a school-teacher? What do you mean by proposing to stop cooking in order to teach school? Why, it's preposterous."
"Begorra, I came here to get the cook's place, sor, and that's all of it."
"Oh, by George! I see now. You ain't a candidate for the grammar school, after all. You want to see Mrs. Twiddler. Maria, come down here a minute. There's a thick-headed immigrant here wants to cook for you."
And the judge picked up his paper and resumed the editorial on "TheImpending Crisis."
They obtained a good teacher, however, and the course of affairs in the girls' department was smooth enough; but just after the opening of the fall session there was some trouble in the boys' department.
Mr. Barnes, the master, read in theEducational Monthlythat boys could be taught history better than in any other way by letting each boy in the class represent some historical character, and relate the acts of that character as if he had done them himself. This struck Barnes as a mighty good idea, and he resolved to put it in practice. The school had then progressed so far in its study of the history of Rome as the Punic wars, and Mr. Barnes immediately divided the boys into two parties, one Romans and the other Carthaginians, and certain of the boys were named after the leaders upon both sides. All the boys thought it was a fine thing, and Barnes noticed that they were so anxious to get to the history lesson that they could hardly say their other lessons properly.
When the time came, Barnes ranged the Romans upon one side of the room and the Carthaginians on the other. The recitation was very spirited, each party telling about its deeds with extraordinary unction. After a while Barnes asked a Roman to describe the battle of Cannæ. Whereupon the Romans hurled their copies of Wayland's Moral Science at the enemy. Then the Carthaginians made a battering-ram out of a bench and jammed it among the Romans, who retaliated with a volley of books, slates and chewed paper-balls. Barnes concluded that the battle of Cannæ had been sufficiently illustrated, and he tried to stop it; but the warriors considered it too good a thing to let drop, and accordingly the Carthaginians dashed over to the Romans with another battering-ram and thumped a couple of them savagely.
Then the Romans turned in, and the fight became general. A Carthaginian would grasp a Roman by the hair and hustle him around over the desk in a manner that was simply frightful, and a Roman would give a fiendish whoop and knock a Carthaginian over the head with Greenleaf's Arithmetic. Hannibal got the head of Scipio Africanus under his arm, and Scipio, in his efforts to break away, stumbled, and the two generals fell and had a rough-and-tumble fight under the blackboard. Caius Gracchus prodded Hamilcar with a ruler, and the latter in his struggles to get loose fell against the stove and knocked down about thirty feet of stove-pipe. Thereupon the Romans made a grand rally, and in five minutes they chased the entire Carthaginian army out of the school-room, and Barnes along with it; and then they locked the door and began to hunt up the apples and lunch in the desks of the enemy.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF CANNÆ.]
After consuming the supplies they went to the windows and made disagreeable remarks to the Carthaginians, who were standing in the yard, and dared old Barnes to bring the foe once more into battle array. Then Barnes went for a policeman; and when he knocked at the door, it was opened, and all the Romans were found busy studying their lessons. When Barnes came in with the defeated troops he went for Scipio Africanus; and pulling him out of his seat by the ear, he thrashed that great military genius with a rattan until Scipio began to cry, whereupon Barnes dropped him and began to paddle Caius Gracchus. Then things settled down in the old way, and next morning Barnes announced that history in the future would be studied as it always had been; and he wrote a note to theEducational Monthlyto say that in his opinion the man who suggested the new system ought to be led out and shot. The boys do not now take as much interest in Roman history as they did on that day.
* * * * *
The young tragedian who represented Scipio Africanus is named Smith. His family came to the village to live only a few weeks before the school opened. Scipio is a very enterprising and ingenious lad. Colonel Coffin's boy leaned over the fence one day and gave to me his impressions of Scipio, a lad about fourteen years old:
"Yes, me and him are right well acquainted now; he knows more'n I do, and he's had more experience. Bill says his father used to be a robber (Smith, by the way, is a deacon in the Presbyterian church, and a very excellent lawyer), and that he has ten million dollars in gold buried in his cellar, along with a whole lot of human bones—people he's killed. And he says his father is a conjurer, and that he makes all the earthquakes that happen anywheres in the world. The old man'll come home at night, after there's been an earthquake, all covered with perspiration and so tired he kin hardly stand. Bill says it's such hard work.
"And Bill tole me that once when a man came around there trying to sell lightning-rods his father got mad and et him—et him right up; and he takes bites out of everybody he comes acrost.
"That's what Bill tells me. That's all I know about it. And he tole me that once he used to have a dog—one of these little kind of dogs—and he was flying his kite, and just for fun he tied the kite-string onto his dog's tail. And then the wind struck her and his dog went a-scuddin' down the street with his hind legs in the air for about a mile, when the kite all of a sudden begun to go up, and in about a minute the dog was fifteen miles high and commanding a view of California and Egypt, I think Bill said. He came down, anyhow, I know, in Brazil, and Bill said he swum home all the way in the Atlantic Ocean; and when he landed, his legs were all nibbled off by sharks.
"I wish father'd buy me a dog, so's I could send him up that way. But I never have any luck. Bill said that where they used to live he went out on the roof one day to fly his kite, and he sat on top of the chimbly to give her plenty of room, and while he was sitting there thinking about nothing, the old man put a keg of powder down below in the fire-place to clean the soot out of the chimbly. And when he touched her off, Bill was blowed over agin the Baptist church steeple, and he landed on the weather-cock with his pants torn, and they couldn't git him down for three days, so he hung there, going round and round with the wind, and he lived by eating the crows that came and sat on him, because they thought he was made of sheet-iron and put up there on purpose.
"He's had more fun than enough. He was telling me the other day about a sausage-stuffer his brother invented. It was a kinder machine that worked with a treadle; and Bill said the way they did in the fall was to fix it on the hog's back, and connect the treadle with a string, and then the hog'd work the treadle and keep on running it up and down until the machine cut the hog all up fine and shoved the meat into the skins. Bill said his brother called it 'Every Hog His Own Stuffer,' and it worked splendid. But I do' know. 'Pears to me 'sif there couldn't be no machine like that. But anyway, Bill said so.
"And he told me about an uncle of his out in Australia who was et by a big oyster once; and when, he got inside, he stayed there until he'd et the oyster. Then he split the shell open and took half a one for a boat, and he sailed along until he met a sea-serpent, and he killed it and drawed off its skin, and when he got home he sold it to an engine company for a hose, for forty thousand dollars, to put out fires with. Bill said that was actually so, because he could show me a man who used to belong to the engine company. I wish father'd let me go out to find a sea-serpent like that; but he don't let me have a chance to distinguish myself.
"Bill was saying only yesterday that the Indians caught him once and drove eleven railroad spikes through his stomach and cut off his scalp, and it never hurt him a bit. He said he got away by the daughter of the chief sneaking him out of the wigwam and lending him a horse. Bill says she was in love with him; and when I asked him to let me see the holes where they drove in the spikes, he said he daresn't take off his clothes or he'd bleed to death. He said his own father didn't know it, because Bill was afraid it might worry the old man.
"And Bill tole me they wasn't going to get him to go to Sunday-school. He says his father has a brass idol that he keeps in the garret, and Bill says he's made up his mind to be a pagan, and to begin to go naked, and carry a tomahawk and a bow and arrow, as soon as the warm weather comes. And to prove it to me, he says his father has this town all underlaid with nitro-glycerine, and as soon as he gets ready he's going to blow the old thing out, and bust her up, let her rip, and demolish her. He said so down at the dam, and tole me not to tell anybody, but I thought they'd be no harm in mentioning it to you.
"And now I believe I must be going. I hear Bill a-whistling. Maybe he's got something else to tell me."
The Smith boy will be profitable to the youth of the community.
* * * * *
Barnes, the pedagogue, is a worthy man who has seen trouble. Precisely what was the nature of the afflictions which had filled his face with furrows and given him the air of one who has been overburdened with sorrows was not revealed until Mr. Keyser told the story one evening at the grocery-store. Whether his narrative is strictly true or not is uncertain. There is a bare possibility that Mr. Keyser may have exaggerated grossly a very simple fact.
"Nobody ever knew how it got in there," said Mr. Keyser, clasping his hands over his knee and spitting into the stove. "Some thought Barnes must've swallowed a tadpole while drinking out of a spring and it subsequently grew inside him, while others allowed that maybe he'd accidentally eaten frogs' eggs some time and they'd hatched out. But anyway, he had that frog down there inside of him settled and permanent and perfectly satisfied with being in out of the rain. It used to worry Barnes more'n a little, and he tried various things to git rid of it. The doctors they give him sickening stuff, and over and over agin emptied him; and then they'd hold him by the heels and shake him over a basin, and they'd bait a hook with a fly and fish down his throat hour after hour, but that frog was too intelligent. He never even gave them a nibble; and when they'd try to fetch him with an emetic, he'd dig his claws into Barnes's membranes and hold on until the storm was over.
"Not that Barnes minded the frog merely being in there if he'd only a kept quiet. But he was too vociferous—that's what Barnes said to me. A taciturn frog he wouldn't have cared about so much. But how would you like to have one down inside of you there a-whooping every now and then in the most ridiculous manner? Maybe, for instance, Barnes'd be out taking tea with a friend, and just when everybody else was quiet it'd suddenly occur to his frog to tune-up, and the next minute you'd hear something go 'Blo-o-o-ood-a-noun! Blo-oo-oo-ood-a-noun!' two or three times, apparently under the table. Then the folks would ask if there was an aquarium in the house or if the man had a frog-pond in the cellar, and Barnes'd get as red as fire and jump up and go home.
"And often when he'd be setting in church, perhaps in the most solemn part of the sermon, he'd feel something give two or three quick kinder jerks under his vest, and presently that reptile would bawl right out in the meeting 'Bloo-oo-oo-ood-a-noun! Bloo-oo-oo-ood-a-nou-ou-oun!' and keep it up until the sexton would come along and run out two or three boys for profaning the sanctuary. And at last he'd fix it on poor old Barnes, and then tell him that if he wanted to practice ventriloquism he'd better wait till after church. And then the frog'd give six or seven more hollers, so that the minister would stop and look at Barnes, and Barnes'd get up and skip down the aisle and go home furious about it.
"It had a deep voice for an ordinary frog—betwixt a French horn and a bark-mill. And Mrs. Barnes told me herself that often, when John'd get comfortably fixed in bed and just dropping off into a nap, the frog'd think it was a convenient time for some music; and after hopping about a bit, it'd all at once grind out three or four awful 'Bloo-oo-ood-a-nouns' and wake Mrs. Barnes and the baby, and start things up generally all around the house. And—would you believe it?—if that frog felt, maybe, a little frisky, or p'raps had some tune running through its head, it'd keep on that way for hours. It worried Barnes like thunder.
"I dunno whether it was that that killed his wife or not; but anyhow, when she died, Barnes wanted to marry agin, and he went for a while to see Miss Flickers, who lives out yer on the river road, you know. He courted her pretty steady for a while, and we all thought there was goin' to be a consolidation. But she was telling my wife that one evening Barnes had just taken hold of her hand and told her he loved her, when all of a sudden something said, 'Bloo-oo-oo-ood-a-nou-ou-oun!'
"'What on earth's that?' asked Miss Flickers, looking sorter scared.
"'I dunno,' said Barnes; 'it sounds like somebody making a noise in the cellar.' Lied, of course, for he knew mighty well what it was.
[Illustration: MR. BARNES PROPOSES]
"''Pears to me 'sif it was under the sofa,' says she.
"'Maybe it wasn't anything, after all,' says Barnes, when just then the frog, he feels like running up the scales again, and he yells out, 'Bloo-oo-ood-a-nou-ou-ou-oun!'
"'Upon my word,' says Miss Flickers, 'I believe you've got a frog in your pocket, Mr. Barnes; now, haven't you?'
"Then he gets down on his knees and owns up to the truth, and swears he'll do his best to git rid of the frog, and all the time he is talking the frog is singing exercises and scales and oratorios inside of him, and worse than ever, too, because Barnes drank a good deal of ice-water that day, and it made the frog hoarse—ketched cold, you know.
"But Miss Flickers, she refused him. Said she might've loved him, only she couldn't marry any man that had continual music in his interior.
"So Barnes, he was the most disgusted man you ever saw. Perfectly sick about it. And one day he was lying on the bed gaping, and that frog unexpectedly made up its mind to come up to ask Barnes to eat more carefully, maybe, and it jumped out on the counterpane. After looking about a bit it came up and tried three or four times to hop back, but he kept his mouth shut, and killed the frog with the back of a hair-brush. Ever since then he runs his drinking-water through a strainer, and he hates frogs worse than you and me hate pison. Now, that's the honest truth about Barnes; you ask him if it ain't."
Then Keyser bought some tobacco and went home.
The editor of the village paper,The Patriot and Advertiser, is Major Slott; and a very clever journalist he is. Even his bitterest adversary, the editor ofThe Evening Mail, in the town above us on the river, admits that. In the last political campaign, indeed,The Mailundertook to tell how it was that the major acquired such a taste for journalism. The story was that shortly after he was born the doctor ordered that the baby should be fed upon goat's milk. This was procured from a goat that was owned by an Irish woman who lived in the rear of the office ofThe Weekly Startlerand fed her goat chiefly upon the exchanges which came to that journal. The consequence, according toThe Mail, was that young Slott was fed entirely upon milk formed from digested newspapers; and he throve on it, although when the Irish woman mixed the Democratic journals carelessly with the Whig papers they disagreed after they were eaten, and the milk gave the baby colic. Old Slott intended the boy to be a minister; but as soon as he was old enough to take notice he cried for every newspaper that he happened to see, and no sooner did he learn how to write than he began to slash off editorials upon "The Need of Reform," etc. He ran away from school four times to enter a newspaper office, and finally, when the paternal Slott put him in the House of Refuge, he started a weekly in there, and called it theHouse of Refuge Record; and one day he slid over the wall and went down to theEraoffice, where he changed his name to Blott, and began his career on that paper with an article on "Our Reformatory Institutions for the Young." Then old Slott surrendered to what seemed to be a combination of manifest destiny and goat's milk, and permitted him to pursue his profession. The major,The Mailalleges, has the instinct so strong that if he should fall into the crater of Vesuvius his first thought on striking bottom would be to write to somebody to ask for a free pass to come out with. "But," continuedThe Mail, "you would hardly believe this story if you ever readThe Patriot. We often suspect, when we are looking over that sheet, that the nurse used to mix the goat's milk with an unfair proportion of water."
The major has a weekly edition in which he publishes serial stories of a stirring character, and he is always looking out for good ones. Recently a tale was submitted by a certain Mr. Stack, a young man who had high ambition without much experience as a writer of fiction. After waiting a long while and hearing nothing about the story, Mr. Stack concluded to call upon the major in order to ascertain why that narrative had not attracted attention. When Stack mentioned his errand, the major reached for the manuscript; and looking very solemn, he said,
"Mr. Stack, I don't think I can accept this story. In some respects it is really wonderful; but I am afraid that if I published it, it would attract almost too much attention. People would get too wild over it. We have to be careful. For instance, here in the first chapter you mention the death of Mrs. McGinnis, the hero's mother. She dies; you inter Mrs. McGinnis in the cemetery; you give an affecting scene at the funeral; you run up a monument over her and plant honeysuckle upon her grave. You create in the reader's mind a strong impression that Mrs. McGinnis is thoroughly dead. And yet, over here in the twenty-second chapter, you make a man named Thompson fall in love with her, and she is married to him, and she goes skipping around through the rest of the story as lively as a grasshopper, and you all the time alluding to Thompson as her second husband. You see that kind of thing won't do. It excites remark. Readers complain about it."
"You don't say I did that? Well, now, do you know I was thinking all the time that it wasMr.McGinnis that I buried in the first chapter? I must have got them mixed up somehow."
"And then," continued the major, "when you introduce the hero, you mention that he has but one arm, having lost the other in battle. But in chapter twelve you run him through a saw-mill by an accident, and you mention that he lost an arm there, too. And yet in the nineteenth chapter you say, 'Adolph rushed up to Mary, threw his arms about her, and clasped her to his bosom;' and then you go on to relate how he sat down at the piano in the soft moonlight and played one of Beethoven's sonatas 'with sweet poetic fervor.' Now, the thing, you see, don't dovetail. Adolph couldn't possibly throw his arms around Mary if one was buried in the field of battle and the other was minced up in a saw-mill, and he couldn't clasp her to his bosom unless he threw a lasso with his teeth and hauled her in by swallowing the slack of the rope. As for the piano—well, you know as well as I do that an armless man can't play a Beethoven sonata unless he knows how to perform on the instrument with his nose, and in that case you insult the popular intelligence when you talk about 'sweet poetic fervor.' I have my fingers on the public pulse, and I know they won't stand it."
"Well, well," said Stack, "I don't know how I ever came to—"
"Let me direct your attention to another incendiary matter," interrupted the major. "In the first love-scene between Adolph and—and—let me see—what's her name?—Mary—you say that 'her liquid blue eye rested softly upon him as he poured forth the story of his love, and its azure was dimmed by a flood of happy tears.' Well, sir, about twenty pages farther on, where the villain insults her, you observe that her black eyes flashed lightning at him and seemed to scorch him where he stood. Now, let me direct attention to the fact that if the girl's eyes were blue they couldn't be black; and if you mean to convey the impression that she had one blue eye and one black eye, and that she only looked softly at Adolph out of the off eye, while the near eye roamed around, not doing anything in particular, why, she is too phenomenal for a novel, and only suitable for a place in the menagerie by the side of the curiosities. And then you say that although her eye was liquid yet it scorched the villain. People won't put up with that kind of thing. It makes them delirious and murderous."
"Too bad!" said Stack. "I forgot what I'd said about her eyes when I wrote that scene with the villain."
"And here, in the twentieth chapter, you say that Magruder was stabbed with a bowie-knife in the hands of the Spaniard, and in the next chapter you give an account of thepost-mortemexamination, and make the doctors hunt for the bullet and find it embedded in his liver. Even patient readers can't remain calm under such circumstances. They lose control of themselves."
"It's unfortunate," said Stack.
"Now, the way you manage the Browns in the story is also exasperating. First you represent Mrs. Brown as taking her twins around to church to be christened. In the middle of the book you make Mrs. Brown lament that she never had any children, and you wind up the story by bringing in Mrs. Brown with her grandson in her arms just after having caused Mr. Brown to state to the clergyman that the only child he ever had died in his fourth year. Just think of the effect of such a thing on the public mind! Why, this story would fill all the insane asylums in the country."
"Those Browns don't seem to be very definite, somehow," said Stack, thoughtfully.
"Worst of all," said major, "in chapter thirty-one you make the lovers resolve upon suicide, and you put them in a boat and drift them over Niagara Falls. Twelve chapters farther on you suddenly introduce them walking in the twilight in a leafy lane, and although afterward she goes into a nunnery and takes the black veil because he has been killed by pirates in the Spanish West Indies, in the next chapter to the last you have a scene where she goes to a surprise-party at the Presbyterian minister's and finds him there making arrangements for the wedding as if nothing had ever happened; and then, after you disclose the fact that she was a boy in disguise, and not a woman at all, you marry them to each other, and represent the boy heroine as giving her blessing to her daughter. Oh, it's awful—awful! It won't do. It really won't. You'd better go into some other kind of business, Mr. Stack."
Then Stack took his manuscript and went home to fix it up so as to make the story run together better. ThePatriotwill not publish it even if Stack reconstructs it.
* * * * *
Major Slott, like most other editors, is continually persecuted by bores, but recently he was the victim of a peculiarly dastardly attack from a person of this class. While he was sitting in the office of thePatriot, writing an editorial about "Our Grinding Monopolies," he suddenly became conscious of the presence of a fearful smell. He stopped, snuffed the air two or three times, and at last lighted a cigar to fumigate the room. Then he heard footsteps upon the stairs, and as they drew nearer the smell grew stronger. When it had reached a degree of intensity that caused the major to fear that it might break some of the furniture, there was a knock at the door. Then a man entered with a bundle under his arm, and as he did so the major thought that he had never smelt such a fiendish smell in the whole course of his life. He held his nose; and when the man saw the gesture, he said,
"I thought so; the usual effect. You hold it tight while I explain."
"What hab you god id that buddle?" asked the major.
"That, sir," said the man, "is Barker's Carbolic Disinfecting Door-mat. I am Barker, and this is the mat. I invented it, and it's a big thing."
"Is id thad thad smells so thudderig bad?" asked the major, with his nostrils tightly shut.
"Yes, sir; smells very strong, but it's a healthy smell. It's invigorating. It braces the system. I'll tell you—"
"Gid oud with the blabed thig!" exclaimed the major.
"I must tell you all about it first. I called to explain it to you. You see I've been investigating the causes of epidemic diseases. Some scientists think they are spread by molecules in the air; others attribute them to gases generated in the sewers; others hold that they are conveyed by contagion; but I—"
"Aid you goig to tague thad idferdal thig away frob here?" asked the major.
"But I have discovered that these diseases are spread by the agency of door-mats. Do you understand? Door-mats! And I'll explain to you how it's done. Here's a man who's been in a house where there's disease. He gets it on his boots. The leather is porous, and it becomes saturated. He goes to another house and wipes his boots on the mat. Now, every man who uses that mat must get some of the stuff on his boots, and he spreads it over every other door-mat that he wipes them on. Now, don't he?"
"Why dode you tague thad sbell frob udder by dose?"
"Well, then, my idea is to construct a door-mat that will disinfect those boots. I do it by saturating the mat with carbolic acid and drying it gradually. I have one here prepared by my process. Shall I unroll it?"
"If you do, I'll blow your braids out!" shouted the major.
"Oh, very well, then. Now, the objection to this beautiful invention is that it possesses a very strong and positive odor."
"I'll bed it does," said the major.
[Illustration: THE CARBOLIC DOOR-MAT]
"And as this is offensive to many persons, I give to each purchaser a 'nose-guard,' which is to be worn upon the nose while in a house where the carbolic mat is placed. This nose-guard is filled with a substance which completely neutralizes the smell, and it has only one disadvantage. Now, what is that?"
"Are you goig to quid and led me breathe, or are you goig to stay here all day log?"
"Have patience, now; I'm coming to the point. I say, what is that? It is that the neutralizing substance in the nose-guard evaporates too quickly. And how do I remedy that? I give to every man who buys a mat and a nose-guard two bottles of 'neutralizer.' What it is composed of is a secret. But the bottles are to be carried in the pocket, so as to be ready for every emergency. The disadvantage of this plan consists of the fact that the neutralizer is highly explosive, and if a man should happen to sit down on a bottle of it in his coat-tail pocket suddenly it might hist him through the roof. But see how beautiful my scheme is."
"Oh, thudder add lightnig! aid you ever goig to quid?"
"See how complete it is! By paying twenty dollars additional, every man who takes a mat has his life protected in the Hopelessly Mutual Accident Insurance Company, so that it really makes no great difference whether he is busted through the shingles or not. Now, does it?"
"Oh, dode ask me. I dode care a ced about id, adyway."
"Well, then, what I want you to do is to give me a first-rate notice in your paper, describing the invention, giving the public some general notion of its merits and recommending its adoption into general use. You give me a half-column puff, and I'll make the thing square by leaving you one of the mats, with a couple of bottles of the neutralizer and a nose-guard. I'll leave them now."
"Whad d'you say?"
"I say I'll just leave you a mat and the other fixings for you to look over at your leisure."
"You biserable scoundrel, if you lay wod ob those blasted thigs dowd here, I'll burder you od the spod! I wod stad such foolishness."
"Won't you notice it, either?"
"Certaidly nod. I woulded do id for ten thousad dollars a lide."
"Well, then, let it alone; and I hope one of those epidemic diseases will get you and lay you up for life."
As Mr. Barker withdrew, Major Slott threw up the windows, and after catching his breath, he called down stairs to a reporter,
"Perkins, follow that man and hear what he's got to say, and then blast him in a column of the awfulest vituperation you know how to write."
Perkins obeyed orders, and now Barker has a libel suit pending againstThe Patriot, while the carbolic mat has not yet been introduced to this market.
* * * * *
Mr. Barker was not a more agreeable visitor than the book-canvasser who, upon the same day, circulated about the village. He came into my office with a portfolio under his arm. Placing it upon the table, removing a ruined hat, and wiping his nose upon a ragged handkerchief that had been so long out of wash that it was positively gloomy, he said,
"Mister, I'm canvassing for the National Portrait Gallery; splendid work; comes in numbers, fifty cents apiece. Contains pictures of all the great American heroes from the earliest times to the present day. Everybody's subscribing for it, and I want to see if I can't take your name.
"Now, just cast your eyes over that," he said, opening his book and pointing to an engraving. "That's—lemme see—yes, that's Columbus. Perhaps you've heard sumfin about him? The publisher was telling me to-day, before I started out, that he discovered—No; was it Columbus that dis—Oh yes! Columbus, he discovered America. Was the first man here. He came over in a ship, the publisher said, and it took fire, and he stayed on deck because his father told him to, if I remember right; and when the old thing busted to pieces, he was killed. Handsome picture, ain't it? Taken from a photograph; all of 'em are; done specially for this work. His clothes are kinder odd, but they say that's the way they dressed in those days.
"Look here at this one. Now, isn't that splendid? William Penn; one of the early settlers. I was reading the other day about him; when he first arrived, he got a lot of Indians up a tree, and when they'd shook some apples down, he set one on top of his son's head and shot an arrow plumb through it, and never fazed him. They say it struck them Indians cold, he was such a terrific shooter. Fine countenance, hasn't he? Face shaved clean; he didn't wear a mustache, I believe, but he seems to've let himself out on hair. Now, my view is that every man ought to have a picture of that patriarch, so's to see how the first settlers looked and what kind of weskits they used to wear. See his legs, too! Trousers a little short, maybe, as if he was going to wade in a creek; but he's all there. Got some kind of a paper in his hand, I see. Subscription list, I reckon.
"Now, how doesthatstrike you? There's something nice. That, I think, is—is—that is—a—a—yes, to be sure, Washington. You recollect him, of course. Some people call him 'Father of his Country,' George Washington. Had no middle name, I believe. He lived about two hundred years ago, and he was a fighter. I heard the publisher telling a man about him crossing the Delaware River up yer at Trenton, and seems to me, if I recollect right, I've read about it myself. He was courting some girl on the Jersey side, and he used to swim over at nights to see her, when the old man was asleep. The girl's family were down on him, I reckon. He looks like the man to do that, now, don't he? He's got it in his eye. If it'd been me, I'd a gone over on the bridge, but he probably wanted to show off before her; some men are so reckless. Now, if you'll go in on this thing, I'll get the publisher to write out some more stories about him, and bring 'em around to you, so's you can study up on him. I know he did ever so many other things, but I've forgot 'em; my memory's so thundering poor.
"Less see; who have we next? Ah, Franklin! Benjamin Franklin. He was one of the old original pioneers, I think. I disremember exactly what he is celebrated for, but I believe it was flying a—oh, yes! flying a kite, that's it. The publisher mentioned it. He was out one day flying a kite, you know, like boys do nowadays, and while she was flickering up in the sky, and he was giving her more string, an apple fell off a tree and hit him on the head, and then he discovered the attraction of gravitation, I think they call it. Smart, wasn't it? Now, if you or me'd a been hit, it'd just a made us mad, like as not, and set us a-cussing. But men are so different. One man's meat's another man's pison. See what a double chin he's got. No beard on him, either, though a goatee would have been becoming to such a round face. He hasn't got on a sword, and I reckon he was no soldier; fit some when he was a boy, maybe, or went out with the home-guard, but not a regular warrior. I ain't one myself, and I think all the better of him for it.
"Ah, here we are! Look at that! Smith and Pocahontas! John Smith. Isn't that just gorgeous? See how she kneels over him and sticks out her hands while he lays on the ground and that big fellow with a club tries to hammer him up. Talk about woman's love! There it is. Modocs, I believe. Anyway, some Indians out West there somewheres; and the publisher tells me that Shacknasty, or whatever his name is, there, was going to bang old Smith over the head with that log of wood, and this girl here, she was sweet on Smith, it appears, and she broke loose and jumped forward, and says to the man with the stick, 'Why don't you let John alone? Me and him are going to marry; and if you kill him, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live,' or words like them; and so the man, he give it up, and both of them hunted up a preacher and were married, and lived happily ever afterward. Beautiful story, ain't it? A good wife she made him, too, I bet, if shewasa little copper-colored. And don't she look just lovely in that picture? But Smith appears kinder sick. Evidently thinks his goose is cooked; and I don't wonder, with that Modoc swooping down on him with such a discouraging club.
"And now we come to—to—ah—to Putnam—General Putnam. He fought in the war, too; and one day a lot of 'em caught him when he was off his guard, and they tied him flat on his back on a horse, and then licked the horse like the very mischief. And what does that horse do but go pitching down about four hundred stone steps in front of the house, with General Putnam laying there nearly skeered to death. Leastways, the publisher said somehow that way, and I oncet read about it myself. But he came out safe, and I reckon sold the horse and made a pretty good thing of it. What surprises me is he didn't break his neck; but maybe it was a mule, and they're pretty sure-footed, you know. Surprising what some of these men have gone through, ain't it?
"Turn over a couple of leaves. That's General Jackson. My father shook hands with him once. He was a fighter, I know. He fit down in New Orleans. Broke up the rebel legislature, and then, when the Ku-Kluxes got after him, he fought 'em behind cotton breastworks and licked 'em till they couldn't stand. They say he was terrific when he got real mad. Hit straight from the shoulder, and fetched his man every time. Andrew his first name was; and look how his hair stands up! And then here's John Adams and Daniel Boone and two or three pirates, and a whole lot more pictures, so you see it's cheap as dirt. Lemme have your name, won't you?"
"I believe not to-day."
"What! won't go in on William Penn and Washington and Smith, and the other heroes?"
"No."
"Well, well! Hang me if I'd a-wasted so much information on you if I'd a knowed you wouldn't subscribe. If every man was like you, it'd break up the business."
Then he wiped his nose and left. I hope he is doing better with the work than he did with me.
Soon after he moved out from the city to live in the village Mr. Butterwick determined to secure the services of a good gardener who could be depended upon to produce from the acre surrounding the house the largest possible crop of fruit, vegetables and flowers. A man named Brown was recommended as an expert, and Mr. Butterwick engaged him. As Mr. Butterwick has no acquaintance with the horticultural art, he instructed Brown to use his own judgment in fixing up the place, and Brown said he would.
On the morning of the first day, while Mr. Butterwick was sitting on the front porch, he saw Brown going out of the gate with a gun upon his shoulder, and Mr. Butterwick conceived the idea that the horticultural expert intended to begin his career in his new place by taking a holiday.
In about an hour, however, Brown came sauntering up the street dragging a deceased dog by the tail. Mr. Butterwick asked him if he had accidentally shot his dog while aiming at a rabbit. But Brown simply smiled significantly and passed silently in through the gate.
Then he buried the dog beneath the grape-arbor; and when the funeral was over, Brown loaded up his gun, rubbed his muddy boots upon the grass, brought his weapon to "right shoulder shift" and sallied out again.
Mr. Butterwick asked him if he was going down to the woods after squirrels; but he put his thumb knowingly to his nose, winked at Mr. Butterwick and went mutely down the road. After a while he loomed up again upon the horizon, and this time Mr. Butterwick noticed that he was hauling after him a setter pup and a yellow dog, both dead, and yoked together with one of Brown's suspenders.
Mr. Butterwick failed to comprehend the situation exactly, but he ventured the remark that Brown must be a very poor shot to hit his own dogs every time instead of the game. Brown, however, was not open to criticism. He walked calmly down the yard, and after entombing the dogs by the grape-arbor, he put four fingers of buckshot in his gun, rearranged his suspenders, shouldered arms and struck out for the front gate with a countenance as impassive as that of a graven image.
Mr. Butterwick inquired if there was a target-shooting match over at the "King of Prussia;" but Brown didn't appear to hear him, and passed serenely down the street. At half-past eleven Brown came within hail again, and presently he marched up the yard with three departed cats and a blue poodle.
[Illustration: THE GARDENER RETREATS]
Mr. Butterwick thought it was extraordinary, and he asked Brown if he was engaged in gunning for domestic animals in order to settle a bet. But Brown only coughed a couple of times, closed one eye sagaciously and began to dig a fresh grave under the arbor. When the last sad rites were over, he charged his gun as usual, rubbed his nose thoughtfully with his sleeve, took a drink at the pump and wandered away.
He had been gone about fifteen minutes, when Mr. Butterwick heard two shots in quick succession. A minute later he saw Brown coming up the road with a considerable amount of velocity, pursued by Mr. Potts and a three-legged dog. Brown kept ahead; and when he had shot through the gate, he dashed into the house and bolted the door. Then Potts arrived with his dog, which stood by, looking as if it were very anxious to lunch upon somebody, while Potts explained to Butterwick that Brown had shot a leg off of his dog, and that he, Potts, intended to have satisfaction for the injury, if he had to go to law about it.
When Mr. Butterwick had pacified Potts and sent him away, Mr.Butterwick sought an interview with Brown:
"Brown, you have been behaving in a most preposterous manner eversince you came here. I employed you as a gardener, not as a gunner.You have nearly killed a valuable animal belonging to Mr. Potts; andI'll thank you to tell me what you mean, and right off, too."
Brown winked again, cleared his throat, pulled up his shirt-collar and said,
"I was goin' to quit soon as I ketched Potts's dog. He'd a bin splendid to bury out yer with the others. Lemme tell you how it is: The best thing to make grape-vines grow is dogs; bury 'em right down among the roots. Some people prefer grandmothers and their other relations. But gimme dogs and cats. Soon as I seen them vines of yourn I said to myself, Them vines wants a few dogs, and I concluded to put in the first day rakin' in all I could find. I'm goin' out again to-morrow, down the other road."
But he didn't. Mr. Butterwick discharged him that night. He was too enthusiastic for a gardener, and Mr. Butterwick thought that life might open out to him a brighter and more beautiful vista in some other capacity.
Subsequently, Mr. Butterwick concluded to attend to his garden himself, and early in the spring he received from the Congressman of our district a choice lot of assorted seeds brought from California by the Agricultural Department. There were more than he wanted, so he gave a quantity of sugar-beet and onion seeds to Mr. Potts, and some turnip and radish seeds to Colonel Coffin; then he planted the remainder, consisting of turnip, cabbage, celery and beet seeds, in his own garden.
When the plants began to come up, he thought they looked kind of queer, but he waited until they grew larger, and then, as he felt certain something was wrong, he sent for a professional gardener to make an examination.
"Mr. Hoops," he said, "cast your eye over those turnips and tell me what you think is the matter with them."
"Turnip!" exclaimed Hoops. "Turnip! Why, bless your soul, man! that's not turnip. That's nothin' but pokeberry. You've got enough pokeberry in that bed to last a million years."
"Well, Mr. Hoops, come over here to this bed. Now, how does that celery strike you? The munificent Federal government is spreading that celery all over this land of the free. Great, isn't it?"
"Well, well!" said Hoops; "and they shoved that off on you for celery, did they? Too bad! It's nothin' on earth but pokeberry. This is the California kind—the deadliest pokeberry that was ever invented."
"Are you sure you're not mistaken, Mr. Hoops? But you haven't seen my beets there in the adjoining bed. The seeds of those beets were sent from Honolulu by our consul there. He reports that the variety attains gigantic size."
"Really, now," said Hoops, "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but to be fair and square with you, as between man and man, those are not beets, you know. They are the Mexican pokeberry. I pledge you my word it's the awfulest variety of that plant that grows. It'll stay in this yer garden for ever. You'll never get rid of it."
"This seems a little hard, Mr. Hoops. But I'd like you to inspect my cabbages. They're all right, I know. The commissioner of agriculture got the seed from Borneo. They are the curly variety, I think. You boil them with pork, and they cut down beautifully for slaw. Look at these plants, will you? Ain't they splendid?"
"Mr. Butterwick," said Hoops, "I've got some bad news to break to you, but I hope you'll stand it like a man. These afflictions come to all of us in this life, sir. They are meant for our good. But really, sir, those are not Borneo cabbages. Cabbages! Why, thunder and lightnin'! They are merely a mixture of California and Mexican pokeberry with the ordinary kind, and a little Osage orange sprinkled through. It's awful, sir! Why, you've got about two acres of pokeberry and not a blessed bit of cabbage or turnips among them."
"Mr. Hoops, this is terrible news; and do you know I gave a lot of those seeds to Potts and Coffin?"
"I know you did; and I seen Colonel Coffin this mornin' with a shot-gun goin' round askin' people if they knew where he could find you."
"Find me! What do you mean?"
"Well, you see, sir, that there onion seed that you gave him was really the seed of the silver maple tree, and it's growed up so thick all over his garden that a cat can't crawl through it. There's about forty million shoots and suckers in that garden, and they'll have to be cut out with a handsaw. It'll take about a year to do it."
"You appall me, Hoops!"
"And that's not the worst of it. The roots are so matted and interlocked jes beneath the surface that you can't make any impression on 'em with a pickaxe. That garden of Coffin's is ruined—entirely ruined, sir. You might blast those roots with gunpowder and it would make no difference. And the suckers will grow faster than they're cut down. He'll have to sell the property, sir."
"And the commissioner of agriculture said that was onion seed. Why didn't Coffin hunthimwith a shot-gun?"
"Yes, sir; and Mr. Potts's got pokeberry and silver maple growin' all over his place, too, and he's as mad as—Well, you just ought to hear him snortin' around town. He'll kill somebody, I'm afeard."
Mr. Butterwick settled the difficulty with Coffin and Potts somehow, but he made up his mind to vote for another man for Congress at the next election.
Mr. Butterwick was the first man to introduce that ingenious and useful implement the lawn-mower into our section of the country. As his mower was the only one in the village, it was at once in great demand. Everybody wanted to borrow it for a few days, and Butterwick lent it with such generosity that it was out most of the time, and a good many people had to wait for it. At last there was quite a rivalry who should have it next, and the folks used to put in their claims with the owner whenever they had an opportunity.
One day Mr. Smith's wife died, and Mr. Butterwick attended the funeral. Smith was nearly wild with grief. As the remains were put into their last resting-place he cried as if his heart would break, and his friends began to get uneasy about his nervous system. Presently he took his handkerchief from his eyes for a moment to rub his nose, and as he did so he saw Butterwick looking at him. A thought seemed to strike Smith. He dashed away a couple of tears; and stepping over a heap of loose earth as they began to shovel it in, he grasped Butterwick by the hand. Butterwick gave him a sympathetic squeeze, and said,
"Sorry for you, Smith; I am indeed! A noble woman and a good wife. But bear up under it, bear up! Our loss, you know, is her gain."
"Ah! she was indeed a woman in a thousand," responded Smith; "and now to think that she has gone—gone, left us for ever! But these afflictions must not make us forget the duty we owe to the living. She has passed away from toil and suffering, but we still have much to do; and, Butterwick, I want to borrow your lawn-mower. If you can fix it for Tuesday, I think maybe the worst of my anguish will be over."
"You may have it, of course."
"Thank you; oh, thank you! Our friends are a great comfort to us in the hour of bereavement;" and then Smith gave his arm to his mother-in-law, put his handkerchief to his eyes and joined the procession of mourners.
Upon the following Sunday, Rev. Dr. Dox preached a splendid sermon over in the Free church, and just as he reached "secondly" he paused, looked around upon the congregation for a minute, and then he beckoned Deacon Moody to come up to the pulpit. He whispered something in Moody's ear, and Moody seemed surprised. The congregation was wild with curiosity to know what was the matter. Then the deacon, blushing scarlet and seeming annoyed, walked down the aisle and whispered in Butterwick's ear. Butterwick nodded, and whispered to his wife, who was perishing to know what it was. She leaned over and communicated it to Mrs. Bunnel, in the pew in front; and when the Bunnels all had it, they sent it on to the people next to them, and so before the doctor reached "thirdly" the whole congregation knew that he wanted to borrow Butterwick's lawn-mower on Monday morning early.
A day or two later, while Butterwick was crossing the creek upon a train of cars, the train ran off the track and rolled his car into the water. Butterwick got out, however, into the stream, and as he emerged, spluttering and blowing, he struck against a stranger who was treading water. The stranger apologized, and said that Butterwick might not recognize him in his dilapidated condition as Martin Thompson, but while they were together, he would like to put in a word for that lawn-mower when the parson was done with it.
[Illustration: TREADING WATER]
At last Butterwick grew tired of lending, and refused all applicants. Then the people began to steal it, and six respectable citizens only escaped going to jail because Butterwick had consideration for their families. Finally he chained it to the pump, and then they sawed off the pump and operated the mower with the log as a roller. Butterwick at last put it on top of his house, and that night fourteen ladders were seen against the wall. They did say that Ramsey, the lawyer, made one effort with a hot-air balloon, and failed only because he fell out and hurt his leg; but this was never traced to any reliable source.
The following week a man arrived and opened an agency for the sale of the mowers in the village, and gradually the excitement abated. Butterwick, however, has cut his grass with a sickle ever since.
The Methodist church in the village is doing now, as it has always done, a good and noble work for Christianity and the cause of public morals; but it has not escaped the trials which are permitted sometimes to afflict the Church militant. Years ago, when the congregation was first organized, it erected a small but very pretty frame meeting-house. In the course of time the people became dissatisfied with the location of the house of worship; and as they had a good offer for the site, they sold it and bought a better one in another quarter. Then they put rollers under the building, and as soon as it was off the ground the purchaser of the lot began to build a dwelling-house on the site. It was slow work pushing the church along the street, and before they got far somebody discovered that the title of the new site was not good, and so the bargain was annulled. The next day the brethren went plunging around town trying to buy another site, but nobody had one to sell; and on the following morning the supervisors got an order from the court requiring that meeting-house to be removed from the public street within twenty-four hours.
The brethren were nearly wild about it, and they begged old Brindley to let them run the concern in on his vacant lot temporarily until they could look around. But Brindley belonged to another denomination, and he said he felt that it would be wrong for him to do anything to help a church that believed false doctrines. Then they ran the meeting-house out on the turnpike beyond the town, whereupon the turnpike company notified them that its charges would be eight dollars a day for toll. So they hauled it back again; and while going down the hill it broke loose, plunged through the fence of Dr. Mackey's garden and brought up on top of his asparagus-bed. He is an Episcopalian, and he sued the meeting for damages; and the sheriff levied upon the meetinghouse. The brethren paid the bill and dragged the building out again.
They wanted to put it in the court-house yard, but Judge Twiddler, who is a Presbyterian, said that after examining the statutes carefully he could find no law allowing a Methodist meeting-house to be located in that place. In despair, the brethren ran the building down to the river-shore and fitted it on a huge raft of logs, concluding to tie it to the wharf until they could buy a lot. But as the owner of the wharf handed them on the third day a bill of twenty-five dollars for wharfage, they took the building out and anchored it in the stream. That night a tug-boat, coming up the river in the dark, ran halfway through the Sunday-school room, and a Dutch brig, coming into collision with it, was drawn out with the pulpit and three of the front pews dangling from the bowsprit. The owners of both vessels sued for damages, and the United States authorities talked of confiscating the meeting-house as an obstruction to navigation. But a few days afterward the ice-gorge sent a flood down the river and broke the building loose from its anchor. It was subsequently washed ashore on Keyser's farm; and he said he was willing to let it stay there at four dollars a day rent until he was ready to plough for corn. As the cost of removing it would have been very great, the trustees ultimately sold it to Keyser for a barn, and then, securing a good lot, they built a handsome edifice of stone.
On the first Sunday that the congregation worshiped in the new church Mr. Potts attended; and in accordance with his custom, he placed his silk high hat just outside of the pew in the aisle. In a few moments Mrs. Jones entered, and as she proceeded up the aisle her abounding skirts caught Mr. Potts' hat and rolled it nearly to the pulpit. Mr. Potts pursued his hat with feelings of indignation; and when Mrs. Jones took her seat, he walked back, brushing the hat with his sleeve. A few moments later Mrs. Hopkins came into church; and as Mr. Potts had again placed his hat in the aisle, Mrs. Hopkins' skirts struck it and swept it along about twenty feet, and left it lying on the carpet in a demoralized condition. Mr. Potts was singing a hymn at the time, and he didn't miss it. But a moment later, when he looked over the end of the pew to see if it was safe, he was furious to perceive that it was gone. He skirmished up the aisle after it again, red in the face, and uttering sentences which were very much out of place in the sanctuary. However, he put the hat down again and determined to keep his eye on it, but just as he turned his head away for a moment Mrs. Smiley came in, and Potts looked around only in time to watch the hat being gathered in under Mrs. Smiley's skirts and carried away by them. He started in pursuit, and just as he did so the hat must have rolled against Mrs. Smiley's ankles, for she gave a jump and screamed right out in church. When her husband asked her what was the matter, she said there must be a dog under her dress, and she gave her skirts a twist. Out rolled Mr. Potts' hat, and Mr. Smiley, being very near-sighted, thought it was a dog, and immediately kicked it so savagely that it flew up into the gallery and lodged on top of the organ. Mr. Potts, perfectly frantic with rage, forgot where he was; and holding his clinched fist under Smiley's nose, he shrieked, "I've half a mind to brain you, you scoundrel!" Then he flung down his hymn-book and rushed from the church. He went home bareheaded, and the sexton brought his humiliating hat around after dinner. After that Mr. Potts expressed a purpose to go habitually to Quaker meeting, where he could say his prayers with his hat on his head, and where the skirts of female worshippers are smaller.
* * * * *
Upon a subsequent occasion Mrs. Whistler had even a greater occasion for dissatisfaction with the sanctuary.
The facts in Mrs. Whistler's case were these: Mrs. Whistler has singular absence of mind, and on the last Sunday she attended church Dr. Dox began to read from the Scriptures the account of the Deluge. Mrs. Whistler was deeply attentive; and when the doctor came to the story of how it rained for so many days and nights, she was so much absorbed in the narrative and so strongly impressed with it that she involuntarily put up her umbrella and held it over her head as she sat in the pew. It appears that Mrs. Moody, who sits in the next pew in front, frequently brings her lap-dog to church with her; and when Mrs. Whistler raised her umbrella suddenly, the action affected the sensibilities of Mrs. Moody's dog in such a manner that he began to bark furiously.
Of course the sexton came in for the purpose of removing the animal, but it dodged into a vacant pew upon the other side of the aisle and defied him, barking vociferously all the time. Then the sexton became warm and indignant, and he flung a cane at the dog, whereupon the dog flew out and bit his leg. The excitement in the church by this time, of course, was simply dreadful. Not only was the story of the Deluge interrupted, but the unregenerate Sunday-school scholars in the gallery actually hissed the dog at the sexton, and seemed to enjoy the contest exceedingly.
Then Elder McGinn came after the dog with his cane, and as he pursued the animal it dashed toward the pulpit and ran up the steps in such a fierce manner that the doctor quickly mounted a chair and remarked, with anger flashing through his spectacles, that if this disgraceful scene did not soon come to an end he should dismiss the congregation. Then the elder crept softly up the stairs, and after a short struggle he succeeded in grasping the dog by one of its hind legs. Then he walked down the aisle with it, the dog meantime yelling with supernatural energy and the Sunday-school boys making facetious remarks.
Mrs. Whistler turned around, with other members of the congregation, to watch the retreating elder, and as she did so she permitted her unconscious umbrella to droop so that the end of one of the ribs caught Mrs. Moody's bonnet. A moment later, when she was straightening up the umbrella, the bonnet was wrenched off, and hung dangling from the umbrella. Mrs. Moody had become exceedingly warm, at any rate, over the onslaught made upon her dog, but when Mrs. Whistler removed her bonnet, she fairly boiled over; and turning around, white with rage, she screamed,
"What'd you grab that bonnet for, you wretch! Haven't you made enough fuss in this church to-day, skeering a poor innocent dog, without snatching off such bonnets as the like of you can't afford to wear, no matter how mean you live at home, you red-headed lunatic, you! You let my bonnet alone, or I'll hit you with this parasol, if it is in meeting, now mind me!"
Then Mrs. Whistler, for the first time, seemed to realize that her umbrella made her conspicuous; so she furled it and concluded to escape from an embarrassing position by going home. As she stepped into the aisle her enemy gave her a parting salute:
"Sneaking off before the collection, too! You'd better spend less for breastpins and give more to the poor heathen if you don't want to ketch it hereafter!"
Then she began to fan herself furiously, and as Mrs. Whistler emerged from the front door and things became calmer the doctor resumed the story of the Flood. But Mrs. Whistler has given up her pew and gone over to the Presbyterians, and there are rumors that Mrs. Moody is going to secede also because Elder McGinn insists that she shall leave her dog at home.
* * * * *
The Dorcas and missionary societies of the church are particularly active, but they were somewhat discouraged a year or two ago by certain unforeseen occurrences. The ladies of the Dorcas Society made up a large quantity of shirts, trousers and socks, and boxed them up and sent them to a missionary station on the west coast of Africa. A man named Ridley went out with the boxes and stayed in Africa for several months. When he returned, the Dorcas Society, of course, was anxious to hear how its donation was received, and Ridley one evening met the members and told them about it in a little speech. He said,
"Well, you know, we got the clothes out there all right, and after a while we distributed them among some of the natives in the neighborhood. We thought maybe it would attract them to the mission, but it didn't; and after some time had elapsed and not a native came to church with the clothes on, I went out on an exploring expedition to find out about it. It seems that on the first day after the goods were distributed one of the chiefs attempted to dress himself in a shirt. He didn't exactly understand it, and he pushed his legs through the arms and gathered the tail up around his waist. He couldn't make it stay up, however, and they say he went around inquiring in his native tongue what kind of an idiot it was that constructed a garment that wouldn't hang on, and swearing some of the most awful heathen oaths. At last he let it drag, and that night he got his legs tangled in it somehow and fell over a precipice and was killed.
"Another chief who got one on properly went paddling around in the dark, and the people, imagining that he was a ghost, sacrificed four babies to keep off the evil spirit.
[Illustration: THE HEATHEN CLOTHE THEMSELVES]
"And then, you know, those trousers you sent out? Well, they fitted one pair on an idol, and then they stuffed most of the rest with leaves and set them up as kind of new-fangled idols and began to worship them. They say that the services were very impressive. Some of the women split a few pairs in half, and after sewing up the legs used them to carry yams in; and I saw one chief with a corduroy leg on his head as a kind of helmet.
"I think, though, the socks were most popular. All the fighting-men went for them the first thing. They filled them with sand and used them as boomerangs and war-clubs. I learned that they were so much pleased with the efficiency of those socks that they made a raid on a neighboring tribe on purpose to try them; and they say they knocked about eighty women and children on the head before they came home. They asked me if I wouldn't speak to you and get you to send out a few barrels more, and to make them a little stronger, so's they'd last longer; and I said I would.
"This society's doing a power of good to those heathen, and I've no doubt if you keep right along with the work you will inaugurate a general war all over the continent of Africa and give everybody an idol of his own. All they want is enough socks and trousers. I'll take them when I go out again."
Then the Dorcas passed a resolution declaring that it would, perhaps, be better to let the heathen go naked and give the clothes to the poor at home. Maybe that is the better way.