THE TRAPEZE PERFORMANCE.
We were getting tired, when I thought how nice it would be to do thetrapeze performance on the chandeliers. There was one in the front parlor and one in the back parlor, and I meant to swing on one of them, and let go and catch the other. I swung beautifully on the front parlor chandelier, when, just as I was going to let go of it, down it came with an awful crash, and that parlor was just filled with broken glass, and the gas began to smell dreadfully.
As it was about supper-time, and Tom's folks were expected home, I thought I would say good-bye to Tom, and not practise any more that day. So we shut the parlor doors, and I went home, wondering what would become of Tom, and whether I had done altogether right in practising with him in his parlor. There was an awful smell of gas in the house that night, and when Mr. McGinnis openedthe parlor door he found what was the matter. He found the cat too. She was lying on the floor, just as dead as she could be.
I'm going to see Mr. McGinnis to-day and tell him I broke the chandelier. I suppose he will tell father, and then I shall wish that everybody had never been born; but I did break that chandelier, though I didn't mean to, and I've got to tell about it.
I had a dreadful time after that accident with Mr. Martin's eye. He wrote a letter to father and said that "the conduct of that atrocious young ruffian was such," and that he hoped he would never have a son like me. As soon as father said, "My son I want to see you up-stairs bring me my new rattan cane," I knew what was going to happen. I will draw some veils over the terrible scene, and will only say that for the next week I did not feel able to hold a pen unless I stood up all the time.
Last week I got a beautiful dog. Father had gone away for a few days and I heard mother say that she wished she had a nice little dog to stay in the house and drive robbers away. The very next day a lovely dog that didn't belong to anybody came into our yard and I made a dog-house for him out of a barrel, and got some beefsteak out of the closet for him, and got a cat for him to chase, and made him comfortable. He is part bull-dog, and his ears and tail are gone and he hasn't but one eye and he's lame in one of his hind-legs and the hair has been scalded off part of him, andhe's just lovely. If you saw him after a cat you'd say he was a perfect beauty. Mother won't let me bring him into the house, and says she never saw such a horrid brute, but women haven't any taste about dogs anyway.
His name is Sitting Bull, though most of the time when he isn't chasing cats he's lying down. He knows pretty near everything. Some dogs know more than folks. Mr. Travers had a dog once that knew Chinese. Every time that dog heard a man speak Chinese he would lie down and howl and then he would get up and bite the man. You might talk English or French or Latin or German to him and he wouldn't pay any attention to it, but just say three words in Chinese and he'd take a piece out of you. Mr. Travers says that once when he was a puppy a Chinaman tried to catch him for a stew; so whenever he heard anybody speak Chinese he remembered that time and went and bit the man to let him know that he didn't approve of the way Chinamen treated puppies. The dog never made a mistake but once. A man came to the house who had lost his pilate and couldn't speak plain, and the dog thought he was speaking Chinese and so he had his regular fit and bit the man worse than he had ever bit anybody before.
Sitting Bull don't know Chinese, but Mr. Travers says he's a "specialist in cats," which means that he knows the whole science of cats. The very first night I let him loosehe chased a cat up the pear-tree and he sat under that tree and danced around it and howled all night. The neighbors next door threw most all their things at him but they couldn't discourage him. I had to tie him up after breakfast and let the cat get down and run away before I let him loose again, or he'd have barked all summer.
The only trouble with him is that he can't see very well and keeps running against things. If he starts to run out of the gate he is just as likely to run head first into the fence, and when he chases a cat round a corner he will sometimes mistake a stick of wood, or the lawn-mower for the cat and try to shake it to death. This was the way he came to get me into trouble with Mr. Martin.
He hadn't been at our house for so long (Mr. Martin I mean) that we all thought he never would come again. Father sometimes said that his friend Martin had been driven out of the house because my conduct was such and he expected I would separate him from all his friends. Of course I was sorry that father felt bad about it, but if I was his age I would have friends that were made more substantial than Mr. Martin is.
Night before last I was out in the back yard with Sitting Bull looking for a stray cat that sometimes comes around the house after dark and steals the strawberries and takes the apples out of the cellar. At least I suppose it is thisparticular cat that steals the apples, for the cook says a cat does it and we haven't any private cat of our own. After a while I saw the cat coming along by the side of the fence, looking wicked enough to steal anything and to tell stories about it afterwards. I was sitting on the ground holding Sitting Bull's head in my lap and telling him that I did wish he'd take to rat-hunting like Tom McGinnis's terrier, but no sooner had I seen the cat and whispered to Sitting Bull that she was in sight than he jumped up and went for her.
He chased her along the fence into the front yard where she made a dive under the front piazza. Sitting Bull came round the corner of the house just flying, and I close after him. It happened that Mr. Martin was at that identicular moment going up the steps of the piazza, and Sitting Bull mistaking one of his legs for the cat jumped for it and had it in his teeth before I could say a word.
When that dog once gets hold of a thing there is no use in reasoning with him, for he won't listen to anything. Mr. Martin howled and said, "Take him off my gracious the dog's mad" and I said, "Come here sir. Good dog. Leave him alone" but Sitting Bull hung on to the leg as if he was deaf and Mr. Martin hung on to the railing of the piazza and made twice as much noise as the dog. I didn't know whether I'd better run for the doctor or thepolice, but after shaking the leg for about a minute Sitting Bull gave it an awful pull and pulled it off just at the knee joint. When I saw the dog rushing round the yard with the leg in his mouth I ran into the house and told Sue and begged her to cut a hole in the wall and hide me behind the plastering where the police couldn't find me. When she went down to help Mr. Martin she saw him just going out of the yard on a wheelbarrow with a man wheeling him on a broad grin.
If he ever comes to this house again I'm going to run away. It turns out that his leg was made of cork and I suppose the rest of him is either cork or glass. Some day he'll drop apart on our piazza then the whole blame will be put on me.
There is one good thing about Sue, if she is a girl: she is real charitable, and is all the time getting people to give money to missionaries and things. She collected mornahundred dollars from ever so many people last year, and sent it to a society, and her name was in all the papers as "Miss Susan Brown," the young lady that gave a hundred dollars to a noble cause and may others go and do likewise.
About a month ago she began to get up a concert for a noble object. I forget what the object was, for Sue didn't make up her mind about it until a day or two before the concert; but whatever it was, it didn't get much money.
Sue was to sing in the concert, and Mr. Travers was to sing, and father was to read something, and the Sunday-school was to sing, and the brass band was to play lots of things. Mr. Travers was real good about it, and attended to engaging the brass band, and getting the tickets printed.
We've got a first-rate band. You just ought to hearit once. I'm going to join it some day, and play on the drum; that is, if they don't find out about the mistake I made with the music.
When Mr. Travers went to see the leader of the band to settle what music was to be played at the concert he let me go with him. The man was awfully polite, and he showed Mr. Travers great stacks of music for him to select from. After a while he proposed to go and see a man somewheres who played in the band, and they left me to wait until they came back.
I had nothing to do, so I looked at the music. The notes were all made with a pen and ink, and pretty bad they were. I should have been ashamed if I had made them. Just to prove that I could have done it better than the man who did do it, I took a pen and ink and tried it. I made beautiful notes, and as a great many of the pieces of music weren't half full of notes, I just filled in the places where there weren't any notes. I don't know how long Mr. Travers and the leader of the band were gone, but I was so busy that I did not miss them, and when I heard them coming I sat up as quiet as possible, and never said anything about what I had done, because we never should praise ourselves or seem to be proud of our own work.
Now I solemnly say that I never meant to do any harm. All I meant to do was to improve the music that the manwho wrote it had been too lazy to finish. Why, in some of those pieces of music there were places three or four inches long without a single note, and you can't tell me that was right. But I sometimes think there is no use in trying to help people as I tried to help our brass band. People are never grateful, and they always manage to blame a boy, no matter how good he is. I shall try, however, not to give way to these feelings, but to keep on doing right no matter what happens.
The next night we had the concert, or at any rate we tried to have it. The Town-hall was full of people, and Sue said it did seem hard that so much money as the people had paid to come to the concert should all have to go to charity when she really needed a new seal-skin coat. The performance was to begin with a song by Sue, and the band was to play just like a piano while she was singing. The song was all about being so weary and longing so hard to die, and Sue was singing it like anything, when all of a sudden the man with the big drum hit it a most awful bang,and nearly frightened everybody to death.
People laughed out loud, and Sue could hardly go on with her song. But she took a fresh start, and got along pretty well till the big drum broke out again, and the man hammered away at it till the leader went and took his drum-stick away from him. The people just howled and yelled,and Sue burst out crying and went right off the stage and longed to die in real earnest.
THERE WAS THE AWFULLEST FIGHT YOU EVER SAW.
When things got a little bit quiet, and the man who played the drum hadmade it up with the leader, the band began to play something on its own account. It began all right, but it didn't finish the way it was meant to finish. First one player and then another would blow a loud note in the wrong place, and the leader would hammer on his music-stand, and the people would laugh themselves 'most sick. After a while the band came to a place where the trombones seemed to get crazy, and the leader just jumped up and knocked the trombone-player down with a big horn that he snatched from another man. Then somebody hit the leader with a cornet and knocked him into the big drum, and there was the awfullest fight you ever saw till somebody turned out the gas.
There wasn't any more concert that night, and the people all got their money back, and now Mr. Travers and the leader of the band have offered a reward for "the person who maliciously altered the music"—that's what the notice says. But I wasn't malicious, and I do hope nobody will find out I did it, though I mean to tell father about it as soon as he gets over having his nose pretty near broke by trying to interfere between the trombone-player and the man with the French horn.
Mr. Martin has gone away. He's gone to Europe or Hartford or some such place. Anyway I hope we'll never see him again. The expressman says that part of him went in the stage and part of him was sent in a box by express, but I don't know whether it is true or not.
I never could see the use of babies. We have one at our house that belongs to mother and she thinks everything of it. I can't see anything wonderful about it. All it can do is to cry and pull hair and kick. It hasn't half the sense of my dog, and it can't even chase a cat. Mother and Sue wouldn't have a dog in the house, but they are always going on about the baby and saying "ain't it perfectly sweet!" Why, I wouldn't change Sitting Bull for a dozen babies, or at least I wouldn't change him if I had him. After the time he bit Mr. Martin's leg father said "that brute sha'n't stay here another day." I don't know what became of him, but the next morning he was gone and I have never seen him since. I have had great sorrows though people think I'm only a boy.
The worst thing about a baby is that you're expected to take care of him and then you get scolded afterwards. Folks say, "Here, Jimmy! just hold the baby a minute, that's a good boy," and then as soon as you have got it they say, "Don't do that my goodness gracious the boy will kill the child hold it up straight you good-for-nothing little wretch." It is pretty hard to do your best and then be scolded for it, but that's the way boys are treated. Perhaps after I'm dead folks will wish they had done differently.
Last Saturday mother and Sue went out to make calls and told me to stay home and take care of the baby. There was a base-ball match but what did they care? They didn't want to go to it and so it made no difference whether I went to it or not. They said they would be gone only a little while, and that if the baby waked up I was to play with it and keep it from crying and be sure you don't let it swallow any pins. Of course I had to do it. The baby was sound asleep when they went out, so I left it just for a few minutes while I went to see if there was any pie in the pantry. If I was a woman I wouldn't be so dreadfully suspicious as to keep everything locked up. When I got back up-stairs again the baby was awake and was howling like he was full of pins; so I gave him the first thing that came handy to keep him quiet. It happened to be a bottle of French polish with a sponge in it on the end of a wirethat Sue uses to black her shoes, because girls are too lazy to use a regular blacking-brush.
The baby stopped crying as soon as I gave him the bottle and I sat down to read. The next time I looked at him he'd got out the sponge and about half his face was jet-black. This was a nice fix, for I knew nothing could get the black off his face, and when mother came home she would say the baby was spoiled and I had done it.
Now I think an all black baby is ever so much more stylish than an all white baby, and when I saw the baby was part black I made up my mind that if I blacked it all over it would be worth more than it ever had been and perhaps mother would be ever so much pleased. So I hurried up and gave it a good coat of black. You should have seen how that baby shined! The polish dried just as soon as it was put on, and I had just time to get the baby dressed again when mother and Sue came in.
I wouldn't lower myself to repeat their unkind language. When you've been called a murdering little villain and an unnatural son it will wrinkle in your heart for ages. After what they said to me I didn't even seem to mind about father but went up-stairs with him almost as if I was going to church or something that wouldn't hurt much.
The baby is beautiful and shiny, though the doctor says it will wear off in a few years. Nobody shows any gratitudefor all the trouble I took, and I can tell you it isn't easy to black a baby without getting it into his eyes and hair. I sometimes think that it is hardly worth while to live in this cold and unfeeling world.
I do love snow. There isn't anything except a bull-terrier that is as beautiful as snow. Mr. Travers says that seven hundred men once wrote a poem called "Beautiful Snow," and that even then, though they were all big strong men, they couldn't find words enough to tell how beautiful it was.
There are some people who like snow, and some who don't. It's very curious, but that's the way it is about almost everything. There are the Eskimos who live up North where there isn't anything but snow, and where there are no schools nor any errands, and they haven't anything to do but to go fishing and skating and hunting, and sliding down hill all day. Well, the Eskimos don't like it, for people who have been there and seen them say they are dreadfully dissatisfied. A nice set the Eskimos must be! I wonder what would satisfy them. I don't suppose it's any use trying to find out, for father says there's no limit to the unreasonableness of some people.
We ought always to be satisfied and contented with ourcondition and the things we have. I'm always contented when I have what I want, though of course nobody can expect a person to be contented when things don't satisfy him. Sue is real contented, too, for she's got the greatest amount of new clothes, and she's going to be married very soon. I think it's about time she was, and most everybody else thinks so too, for I've heard them say so; and they've said so more than ever since we made the snow man.
WE BUILT THE BIGGEST SNOW MAN I EVER HEARD OF.
You see, it was the day before Christmas, and there had been a beautiful snow-storm. All of us boys were sliding down hill, when somebody said, "Let's make a snow man." Everybody seemed to think the idea was a good one, and we made up our minds to build the biggest snow man that ever was, just for Christmas. The snow was about a foot thick, and just hard enough to cut into slabs; so we got a shovel and went to work. We built the biggest snow man I ever heard of. We made him hollow, and Tom McGinnis stood inside of him and helped build while the rest of us worked on the outside. Just as fast as we got a slab of snow in the right place we poured water on it so that it would freeze right away. We made the outside of the man about three feet thick, and he was so tall that Tom McGinnis had to keep climbing up inside of him to help build.
Tom came near getting into a dreadful scrape, for weforgot to leave a hole for him to get out of, and when the man was done, and frozen as hard as a rock, Tom found that he was shut up as tight as if he was in prison. Didn't he howl, though, and beg us to let him out! I told him that he would be very foolish not to stay in the man all night, for he would be as warm as the Eskimos are in their snow huts, and there would be such fun when people couldn't find him anywhere. But Tom wasn't satisfied; he began to talk some silly nonsense about wanting his supper. The idea of anybody talking about such a little thing as supper when they had such a chance to make a big stir as that. Tom always wasan obstinate sort of fellow, and he would insist upon coming out, so we got a hatchet and chopped a hole in the back of the man and let him out.
The snow man was quite handsome, and we made him have a long beak, like a bird, so that people would be astonished when they saw him. It was that beak that made me think about the Egyptian gods that had heads likehawks and other birds and animals, and must have frightened people dreadfully when they suddenly met them near graveyards or in lonesome roads.
One of those Egyptian gods was made of stone, and was about as high as the top of a house. He was called Memnon, and every morning at sunrise he used to sing out witha loud voice, just as the steam-whistle at Mr. Thompson's mill blows every morning at sunrise to wake people up. The Egyptians thought that Memnon was something wonderful, but it has been found out, since the Egyptians died, that a priest used to hide himself somewhere inside of Memnon, and made all the noise.
Looking at the snow man and thinking about the Egyptian gods, I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to hide inside of him and say things whenever people went by. It would be a new way of celebrating Christmas, too. They would be awfully astonished to hear a snow man talk. I might even make him sing a carol, and then he'd be a sort of Christian Memnon, and nobody would think I had anything to do with it.
That evening when the moon got up—it was a beautiful moonlight night—I slipped out quietly and went up to the hill where the snow man was, and hid inside of him. I knew Mr. Travers and Sue were out sleigh-riding, and they hadn't asked me to go, though there was lots of room, and I meant to say something to them when they drove by the snow man that would make Sue wish she had been a little more considerate.
Presently I heard bells and looked out and saw a sleigh coming up the hill. I was sure it was Mr. Travers and Sue; so I made ready for them. The sleigh came up thehill very slow, and when it was nearly opposite to me I said, in a solemn voice, "Susan, you ought to have been married long ago." You see, I knew that would please Mr. Travers; and it was true, too.
She gave a shriek, and said, "Oh, what's that?"
"We'll soon see," said a man's voice that didn't sound a bit like Mr. Travers's. "There's somebody round here that's spoiling for a thrashing."
The man came right up to the snow man, and saw my legs through the hole, and got hold of one of them and began to pull. I didn't know it, but the boys had undermined the snow man on one side, and as soon as the man began to pull, over went the snow man and me right into the sleigh, and the woman screamed again, and the horse ran away and pitched us out, and—
But I don't want to tell the rest of it, only father said that I must be taught not to insult respectable ladies like Miss Susan White, who is fifty years old, by telling them it is time they were married.
Our town has been very lively this winter. First we had two circuses, and then we had the small-pox, and now we've got a course of lectures. A course of lectures is six men, and you can go to sleep while they're talking, if you want to, and you'd better do it unless they are missionaries with real idols or a magic lantern. I always go to sleep before the lectures are through, but I heard a good deal of one of them that was all about art.
Art is almost as useful as history or arithmetic, and we ought all to learn it, so that we can make beautiful things and elevate our minds. Art is done with mud in the first place. The art man takes a large chunk of mud and squeezes it until it is like a beautiful man or woman, or wild bull, and then he takes a marble gravestone and cuts it with a chisel until it is exactly like the piece of mud. If you want a solid photograph of yourself made out of marble, the art man covers your face with mud, and when it gets hard he takes it off, and the inside of it is just like amould, so that he can fill it full of melted marble which will be an exact photograph of you as soon as it gets cool.
This is what one of the men who belong to the course of lectures told us. He said he would have shown us exactly how to do art, and would have made a beautiful portrait of a friend of his, named Vee Nuss, right on the stage before our eyes, only he couldn't get the right kind of mud. I believed him then, but I don't believe him now. A man who will contrive to get an innocent boy into a terrible scrape isn't above telling what isn't true. He could have got mud if he'd wanted it, for there was mornamillion tons of it in the street, and it's my belief that he couldn't have made anything beautiful if he'd had mud a foot deep on the stage.
As I said, I believed everything the man said, and when the lecture was over, and father said, "I do hope Jimmy you've got some benefit from the lecture this time" and Sue said, "A great deal of benefit that boy will ever get unless he gets it with a good big switch don't I wish I was his father O! I'd let him know," I made up my mind that I would do some artthe very next day, and show people that I could get lots of benefit if I wanted to.
I have spoken about our baby a good many times. It's no good to anybody, and I call it a failure. It's a year and three months old now, and it can't talk or walk, and as forreading or writing, you might as well expect it to play base-ball. I always knew how to read and write, and there must be something the matter with this baby, or it would know more.
Last Monday mother and Sue went out to make calls, and left me to take care of the baby. They had done that before, and the baby had got me into a scrape, so I didn't want to be exposed to its temptations; but the more I begged them not to leave me, the more they would do it, and mother said, "I know you'll stay and be a good boy while we go and makethose horrid calls," and Sue said, "I'd better or I'd get what I wouldn't like."
After they'd gone I tried to think what I could do to please them, and make everybody around me better and happier. After a while I thought that it would be just the thing to do some art and make a marble photograph of the baby, for that would show everybody that I had got some benefit from the lectures, and the photograph of the baby would delight mother and Sue.
I took mother's fruit-basket and filled it with mud out of the back yard. It was nice thick mud, and it would stay in any shape that you squeezed it into, so that it was just the thing to do art with. I laid the baby on its back on the bed, and covered its face all over with the mud about two inches thick. A fellow who didn't know anything aboutart might have killed the baby, for if you cover a baby's mouth and nose with mud it can't breathe, which is very unhealthy, but I left its nose so it could breathe, and intended to put an extra piece of mud over that part of the mould after it was dry. Of course the baby howled all it could, and it would have kicked dreadfully, only I fastened its arms and legs with a shawl-strap so that it couldn't do itself any harm.
THE MOMENT THEY SAW THE BABY THEY SAID THE MOST DREADFUL THINGS.
The mud wasn't half dry when mother and Sue and father came in, for he met them at the front gate. They all came up-stairs, and the moment they saw the baby they said the most dreadful things to me without waiting for me to explain. I did manage to explain a little through the closet door while father was looking for his rattan cane, but it didn't do the least good.
I don't want to hear any more about art or to see any more lectures. There is nothing so ungrateful as people, and if I did do what wasn't just what people wanted, they might have remembered that I meant well, and only wanted to please them and elevate their minds.
I have the same old, old story to tell. My conduct has been such again—at any rate, that's what father says; and I've had to go up-stairs with him, and I needn't explain what that means. It seems very hard, for I'd tried to do my very best, and I'd heard Sue say, "That boy hasn't misbehaved for two days good gracious I wonder what can be the matter with him." There's a fatal litty about it, I'm sure. Poor father! I must give him an awful lot of trouble, and I know he's had to get two new bamboo canes this winter just because I've done so wrong, though I never meant to do it.
It happened on account of coasting. We've got a magnificent hill. The road runs straight down the middle of it, and all you have to do is to keep on the road. There's a fence on one side, and if you run into it something has got to break. John Kruger, who is a stupid sort of a fellow, ran into it last week head-first, and smashed three pickets, and everybody said it was a mercy he hit it with his head, or he might have broken some of his bones andhurt himself. There isn't any fence on the other side, but if you run off the road on that side you'll go down the side of a hill that's steeper than the roof of the Episcopal church, and about a mile long, with a brook full of stones down at the bottom.
The other night Mr. Travers said— But I forgot to say that Mr. Martin is back again, and coming to our house worse than ever. He was there, and Mr. Travers and Sue, all sitting in the parlor, where I was behaving, and trying to make things pleasant, when Mr. Travers said, "It's a bright moonlight night let's all go out and coast." Sue said, "Oh that would be lovely Jimmy get your sled." I didn't encourage them, and I told father so, but he wouldn't admit that Mr. Travers or Sue or Mr. Martin or anybody could do anything wrong. What I said was, "I don't want to go coasting. It's cold and I don't feel very well, and I think we ought all to go to bed early so we can wake up real sweet and good-tempered." But Sue just said, "Don't you preach Jimmy if you're lazy just say so and Mr. Travers will take us out." Then Mr. Martin he must put in and say, "Perhaps the boy's afraid don't tease him he ought to be in bed anyhow." Now I wasn't going to stand this, so I said, "Come on. I wanted to go all the time, but I thought it would be best for old people to stay at home, and that's why I didn't encourage you." So I got out mydouble-ripper, and we all went out on the hill and started down.
I sat in front to steer, and Sue sat right behind me, and Mr. Travers sat behind her to hold her on, and Mr. Martin sat behind him. We went splendidly, only the dry snow flew so that I couldn't see anything, and that's why we got off the road and on to the side hill before I knew it.
The hill was just one glare of ice, and the minute we struck the ice the sled started away like a hurricane. I had just time to hear Mr. Martin say, "Boy mind what you're about or I'll get off," when she struck something—I don't know what—and everybody was pitched into the air, and began sliding on the ice without anything to help them, except me. I caught on a bare piece of rock, and stopped myself. I could see Sue sitting up straight, and sliding like a streak of lightning, and crying, "Jimmy father Charles Mr. Martin O my help me." Mr. Travers was on his stomach, about a rod behind her, and gaining a little on her, and Mr. Martin was on his back, coming down head-first, and beating them both. All of a sudden he began to go to pieces. Part of him would slide off one way, and then another part would try its luck by itself. I can tell you it was an awful and surreptitious sight. They all reached the bottom after a while, and when I saw they were not killed, I tried it myself, and landed all right. Sue wassitting still, and mourning, and saying, "My goodness gracious I shall never be able to walk again my comb is broken and that boy isn't fit to live." Mr. Travers wasn't hurt very much, and he fixed himself all right with some pins I gave him, and his handkerchief; but his overcoat looked as if he'd stolen it from a scarecrow. When he had comforted Sue a little (and I must say some people are perfectly sickening the way they go on), he and I collected Mr. Martin—all except his teeth—and helped put him together, only I got his leg on wrong side first, and then we helped him home.
This was why father said that my conduct was such, and that his friend Martin didn't seem to be able to come into his house without being insulted and injured by me. I never insulted him. It isn't my fault if he can't slide down a hill without coming apart. However, I've had my last suffering on account of him. The next time he comes apart where I am I shall not wait to be punished for it, but shall start straight for the North-pole, and if I discover it the British government will pay me mornamillion dollars. I'm able to sit down this morning, but my spirits are crushed, and I shall never enjoy life any more.
I'm in an awful situation that a boy by the name of Bellew got me into. He is one of the boys that writes stories and makes pictures forHarper's Young People, and I think people ought to know what kind of a boy he is. A little while ago he had a story in theYoung Peopleabout imitation screw-heads, and how he used to make them, and what fun he had pasting them on his aunt's bureau. I thought it was a very nice story, and I got some tin-foil and made a whole lot of screw-heads, and last Saturday I thought I'd have some fun with them.
Father has a dreadfully ugly old chair in his study, that General Washington brought over with him in theMayflower, and Mr. Travers says it is stiffer and uglier than any of the Pilgrim fathers. But father thinks everything of that chair, and never lets anybody sit in it except the minister. I took a piece of soap, just as that Bellew used to, and if his name is Billy why don't he learn how to spell it that's what I'd like to know, and made what looked likea tremendous crack in the chair. Then I pasted the screw-heads on the chair, and it looked exactly as if somebody had broken it and tried to mend it.
I couldn't help laughing all day when I thought how astonishedfather would be when he saw his chair all full of screws, and how he would laugh when he found out it was all a joke. As soon as he came home I asked him to please come into the study, and showed him the chair and said"Father I cannot tell a lie I did it but I won't do it any more."
Father looked as if he had seen some disgusting ghosts, and I was really frightened, so I hurried up and said, "It's all right father, it's only a joke look here they all come off," and rubbed off the screw-heads and the soap with my handkerchief, and expected to see him burst out laughing, just as Bellew's aunt used to burst, but instead of laughing he said, "My son this trifling with sacred things must be stopped," with which remark he took off his slipper, and then— But I haven't the heart to say what he did. Mr. Travers has made some pictures about it, and perhaps people will understand what I have suffered.
I think that boy Bellew ought to be punished for getting people into scrapes. I'd just like to have him come out behind our barn with me for a few minutes. That is, I would, only I never expect to take any interest in anything any more. My heart is broken and a new chocolate cigar that was in my pocket during the awful scene.
I've got an elegant wasps' nest with young wasps in it that will hatch out in the spring, and I'll change it for a bull-terrier or a shot-gun or a rattlesnake in a cage that rattles good with any boy that will send me one.
There never was such luck. I've always thought that I'd rather have a monkey than be a million heir. There is nothing that could be half so splendid as a real live monkey, but of course I knew that I never could have one until I should grow up and go to sea and bring home monkeys and parrots and shawls to mother just as sailors always do. But I've actually got a monkey and if you don't believe it just look at these pictures of him that Mr. Travers made for me.
It was Mr. Travers that got the monkey for me. One day there came a woman with an organ and a monkey into our yard.
She was an Italian, but she could speak a sort of English and she said that the "murderin' spalpeen of a monkey was just wearing the life of her out." So says Mr. Travers "What will you take for him?" and says she "It's five dollars I'd be after selling him for, and may good-luck go wid ye!"
What did Mr. Travers do but give her the money andhand the monkey to me, saying, "Here, Jimmy! take him and be happy." Wasn't I just happy though?
Jocko—that's the monkey's name—is the loveliest monkeythat ever lived. I hadn't had him an hour when he got out of my arms and was on the supper-table before I could get him. The table was all set and Bridget was just going to ring the bell, but the monkey didn't wait for her.
To see him eating the chicken salad was just wonderful. He finished the whole dish in about two minutes, and was washing it down with the oil out of the salad-bottle when I caught him. Mother was awfully good about it and only said, "Poor little beast he must be half starved Susan how much he reminds me of your brother." A good mother is as good a thing as a boy deserves, no matter how good he is.
The salad someway did not seem to agree with Jocko for he was dreadfully sick that night. You should have seen how limp he was, just like a girl that has fainted away and her young man is trying to lift her up. Mother doctored him. She gave him castor-oil as if he was her own son,and wrapped him up in a blanket and put a mustard plaster on his stomach and soaked the end of his tail in warm water. He was all right the next day and was real grateful. I know he was grateful because he showed it by trying to do good to others, at any rate to the cat. Our cat wouldn't speak to him at first, but he coaxed her with milk, just as he had seen me do and finally caught her. It must have been dreadfully aggravoking to the cat, for instead of letting her have the milk he insisted that she was sick and must have medicine. So he took Bridget's bottle of hair-oil and a big spoon and gave the cat such a dose. When I caught him and made him let the cat go there were about six table-spoonfuls of oil missing. Mr. Travers said it was a good thing for it would improve the cat's voice and make her yowl smoother, and that he had felt for a long time that she needed to be oiled. Mother said that the monkey was cruel and it was a shame but I know that he meant to bekind. He knew the oil mother gave him had done him good, and he wanted to do the cat good. I know just how he felt, for I've been blamed many a time for trying to do good, and I can tell you it always hurt my feelings.
The monkey was in the kitchen while Bridget was getting dinner yesterday and he watched her broil the steak as if he was meaning to learn to cook and help her in her work, he's that kind and thoughtful. The cat was out-doors, but two of her kittens were in the kitchen, and they were not old enough to be afraid of the monkey. When dinner was served Bridget went up-stairs and by-and-by mothersays "What's that dreadful smell sure's you're alive Susan the baby has fallen into the fire." Everybody jumped up and ran up-stairs, all but me, for I knew Jocko was in the kitchen and I was afraid it was he that was burning. When I got into the kitchen there was that lovely monkey broiling one of the kittens on the gridiron just as he had seen Bridget broil the steak. The kitten's fur was singeing and she was mewing, and the other kitten was sitting up on the floor licking her chops and enjoying it and Jocko was on his hind-legs as solemn and busy as an owl. I snatched the gridiron away from him and took the kitten off before she was burned any except her fur, and when mother and Susan came down-stairs they couldn't understand what it was that had been burning.
This is all the monkey has done since I got him day before yesterday. Father has been away for a week but is coming back in a few days, and won't he be delighted when he finds a monkey in the house?
I haven't any monkey now, and I don't care what becomes of me. His loss was an awful blow, and I never expect to recover from it. I am a crushed boy, and when the grown folks find what their conduct has done to me, they will wish they had done differently.