WE HURRIED INTO THE ROOM.
All at once there was the most awful flash of lightning and the most tremendous clap of thunder that was everheard. Father and mother and Sue were down-stairs, and they rushed up-stairs crying the darling boy is killed. That meant me. But I wasn't killed, neither was Tom, and we hurried into the room where we were collecting lightning to see what was the matter. There we found the tin pail knocked into splinters and the lightning spilled all over the floor. It had set fire to the carpet, and burned a hole right through the floor into the kitchen, and pretty much broke up the whole kitchen stove.
Father cut the kite-string and let the kite go, and told me that it was as much as my life was worth to send up a kite in a thunder-storm. You see, so much lightning will come down the string that it will kill anybody that stands near it. I know this is true, because father says so, but I'd like to know how Franklin managed. I forgot to say that father wasn't a bit pleased.
I had a birthday last week. When I woke up in the morning I found right by the side of my bed a mahogany box, with a round hole on one side of it and a ground-glass door on the other side. I thought it was a new kind of rat-trap; and so I got out of bed and got a piece of cheese, and set the trap in the garret, which is about half full of rats. But it turned out that the box wasn't a rat-trap. Mr. Travers gave it to me, and when he came to dinner he explained that it was a camera for taking photographs, and that it would improve my mind tremendously if I would learn to use it.
I soon found out that there isn't anything much better than a camera, except, of course, a big dog, which I can't have, because mother says a dog tracks dirt all over the house, and father says a dog is dangerous, and Sue says a dog jumps all over you and tears your dresses a great good-for-nothing ugly beast. It's very hard to be kept apart from dogs; but our parents always know what is best for us, though we may not see it at the time; and I don't believefather really knows how it feels when your trousers are thin and you haven't any boots on, so it stings your legs every time.
But I was going to write about the camera. You take photographs with the camera—people and things. There's a lens on one end of it, and when you point it at anything, you see a picture of it upside down on the little glass door at the back of the camera. Then you put a dry plate, which is a piece of glass with chemicals on it, in the camera, and then you take it out and put it in some more chemicals, the right name of which is a developer, and then you see a picture on the dry plate, only it is right side up, and not like the one on the ground-glass door.
It's the best fun in the world taking pictures; and I can't see that it improves your mind a bit—at least not enough to worry you. You have to practise a great deal before you can take a picture, and everybody who knows anything about it tells you to do something different. There are five men in our town who take photographs, and each one tells me to use a different kind of dry plate and a different kind of developer, and that all the other men may mean well, and they hope they do, but people ought not to tell a boy to use bad plates and poor developers; and don't you pay any attention to them, Jimmy, but do as I tell you.
I've got so now that I make beautiful pictures. I took a photograph of Sue the other day, and another of old Deacon Brewster, and you can tell which is which just as easy as anything, if you look at them in the right way, and remember that Deacon Brewster, being a man, is smoking a pipe, and that, of course, a picture of Sue wouldn't have a pipe in it. Sue don't like to have me take pictures, but that's because she is a girl, and girls haven't the kind of minds that can understand art. Mr. McGinnis—Tom's father—don't like my camera either; but that's because he is near-sighted, and thought it was a gun when I pointed it at him, and he yelled, "Don't shoot, for mercy's sake!" and went out of our front yard and over the fence in lessenasecond. When he found out what it was he said he never dreamed of being frightened, but had business down-town, and he didn't think boys ought to be trusted with such things, anyway.
I made a great discovery last week. You know I said that when you look through the camera at anything you see it upside down on the ground glass. This doesn't look right, and unless you stand on your head when you take a photograph, which is very hard work, you can't help feeling that the picture is all wrong. I was going to take a photograph of a big engraving that belongs to father, when I thought of turning it upside down. This made it lookall right on the ground glass. This is my discovery; and if men who take photographs could only get the people they photograph to stand on their heads, they would get beautiful pictures. Mr. Travers says that I ought to get a patent for this discovery, but so far it has only got me into trouble.
Saturday afternoon everybody was out of the house except me and the baby and the nurse, and she was down in the kitchen, and the baby was asleep. So I thought I would take a picture of the baby. Of course it wouldn't sit still for me; so I thought of the way the Indians strap their babies to a flat board, which keeps them from getting round-shouldered, and isvery convenient besides. I got a nice flat piece of board and tied the baby to it, and put him on a table, and leaned him up against the wall. Then I remembered my discovery, and just stood the baby on his head so as to get a good picture of him.
I DID GET A BEAUTIFUL PICTURE.
I did get a beautiful picture. At least I am sure it would have been ifI hadn't been interrupted while I was developing it. I forgot to put the baby right side up, and in about ten minutes mother came in and found it, and then she came up into my room and interrupted me. Father came home a little later and interrupted me some more. So the picture was spoiled, and so was father's new rattan. Of course I deserved it for forgetting the baby;but it didn't hurt it any to stand on its head a little while, for babies haven't any brains like boys and grown-up people, and, besides, it's the solemn truth that I meant to turn the baby right side up, only I forgot it.
After the time I tried to photograph the baby, my camera was taken away from me and locked up for ever so long. Sue said I wasn't to be trusted with it and it would go off some day when you think it isn't loaded and hurt somebody worse than you hurt the baby you good-for-nothing little nuisance.
Father kept the camera locked up for about a month, and said when I see some real reformation in you James you shall have it back again. But I shall never have it back again now, and if I did, it wouldn't be of any use, for I'm never to be allowed to have any more chemicals. Father is going to give the camera to the missionaries, so that they can photograph heathen and things, and all the chemicals I had have been thrown away, just because I made a mistake in using them. I don't say it didn't serve me right, but I can't help wishing that father would change his mind.
I have never said much about my other sister, Lizzie, because she is nothing but a girl. She is twelve years old, and of course she plays with dolls, and doesn't know enoughto play base-ball or do anything really useful. She scarcely ever gets me into scrapes, though, and that's where Sue might follow her example. However, it was Lizzie who got me into the scrape about my chemicals, though she didn't mean to, poor girl.
One night Mr. Travers came to tea, and everybody was talking about freckles. Mr. Travers said that they were real fashionable, and that all the ladies were trying to get them. I am sure I don't see why. I've mornamillion freckles, and I'd be glad to let anybody have them who would agree to take them away. Sue said she thought freckles were perfectly lovely, and it's a good thing she thinks so, for she has about as many as she can use; and Lizzie said she'd give anything if she only had a few nice freckles on her cheeks.
Mother asked what made freckles, and Mr. Travers said the sun made them just as it makes photographs. "Jimmy will understand it," said Mr. Travers. "He knows how the sun makes a picture when it shines on a photograph plate, and all his freckles were made just in the same way. Without the sun there wouldn't be any freckles."
This sounded reasonable, but then Mr. Travers forgot all about chemicals. As I said, the last time I wrote, chemicals is something in a bottle like medicine, and you have to put it on a photograph plate so as to make the picture thatthe sun has made show itself. Now if chemicals will do this with a photograph plate, it ought to do it with a girl's cheek. You take a girl and let the sun shine on her cheek, and put chemicals on her, and it ought to bring out splendid freckles.
I'm very fond of Lizzie, though she is a girl, because she minds her own business, and don't meddle with my things and get me into scrapes. I'd have given her all my freckles if I could, as soon as I knew she wanted them, and as soon as Mr. Travers said that freckles were made just like photographs, I made up my mind I would make some for her. So I told her she should have the best freckles in town if she'd come up to my room the next morning, and let me expose her to the sun and then put chemicals on her.
Lizzie has confidence in me, which is one of her best qualities, andshows that she is a good girl. She was so pleased when I promised to make freckles for her; and as soon as the sun got up high enough to shine into my window she came up to my room all ready to be freckled.
I exposed her to the sun for six seconds. I only exposed my photograph plates three seconds, but I thought that Lizzie might not be quite as sensitive, and so I exposed her longer. Then I took her into the dark closet where I kept the chemicals, and poured chemicals on her cheeks. I made her hold her handkerchief on her face so that the chemicalscouldn't get into her eyes and run down her neck, for she wanted freckles only on her cheeks.
I watched her very carefully, but the freckles didn't come out. I put more chemicals on her, and rubbed it in with a cloth; but it was no use, the freckles wouldn't come. I don't know what the reason was. Perhaps I hadn't exposed her long enough, or perhaps the chemicals was weak. Anyway, not a single freckle could I make.
MOTHER AND SUE MADE A DREADFUL FUSS.
So after a while I gave it up, and told her it was no use, and she couldgo and wash her face. She cried a little because she was disappointed, but she cried more afterwards. You see, the chemicals made her cheek almost black, and she couldn't wash it off. Mother and Sue made a dreadful fuss about it, and sent for the doctor, who said he thought it would wear off in a year or so, and wouldn't kill the child or do her very much harm.
This is the reason why they took my chemicals away, and promised to give my camera to the missionaries. All I meant was to please Lizzie, and I never knew the chemicals would turn her black. But it isn't the first time I have tried to be kind and have been made to suffer for it.
The other day I was at Tom McGinnis's house, and he had some company. He was a big boy, and something like a cousin of Tom's. Would you believe it, that fellow said there wasn't any Santa Claus?
Now that boy distinctly did tell—but I won't mention it. We should never reveal the wickedness of other people, and ought always to be thankful that we are worse than anybody else. Otherwise we should be like the Pharisee, and he was very bad. I knew for certain that it was a fib Tom McGinnis's cousin told. But all the same, the more I thought about it the more I got worried.
If there is a Santa Claus—and of course there is—how could he get up on the top of the house, so he could come down the chimney, unless he carried a big ladder with him; and if he did this, how could he carry presents enough to fill mornahundred stockings? And then how could he help getting the things all over soot from the chimney, and how does he manage when the chimney is all full of smokeand fire, as it always is at Christmas! But then, as the preacher says, he may be supernatural—I had to look that word up in the dictionary.
The story Tom McGinnis's cousin told kept on worrying me, and finally I began to think how perfectly awful it would be if there was any truth in it. How the children would feel! There's going to be no end of children at our house this Christmas, and Aunt Eliza and her two small boys are here already. I heard mother and Aunt Eliza talking about Christmas the other day, and they agreed that all the children should sleep on cot bedsteads in the back parlor, so that they could open their stockings together, and mother said, "You know, Eliza, there's a big fireplace in that room, and the children can hang their stockings around the chimney."
Now I know I did wrong, but it was only because I did not want the children to be disappointed. We should always do to others and so on, and I know I should have been grateful if anybody had tried to get up a Santa Claus for me in case of the real one being out of repair. Neither do I blame mother, though if she hadn't spoken about the fireplace in the way she did, it would never have happened. But I do think that they ought to have made a little allowance for me, since I was only trying to help make the Christmas business successful.
It all happened yesterday. Tom McGinnis had come to see me, and all the folks had gone out to ride except Aunt Eliza's little boy Harry. We were talking about Christmas, and I was telling Tom how all the children were to sleep in the back parlor, and how there was a chimney there that was just the thing for Santa Claus. We went and looked at the chimney, and then I said to Tom what fun it would be to dress up and come down the chimney and pretend to be Santa Claus, and how it would amuse the children, and how pleased the grown-up folks would be, for they are always wanting us to amuse them.
Tom agreed with me that it would be splendid fun, and said we ought to practise coming down the chimney, so that we could do it easily on Christmas-eve. He said he thought I ought to do it, because it was our house; but I said no, he was a visitor, and it would be mean and selfish in me to deprive him of any pleasure. But Tom wouldn't do it. He said that he wasn't feeling very well, and that he didn't like to take liberties with our chimney, and, besides, he was afraid that he was so big that he wouldn't fit the chimney. Then we thought of Harry, and agreed that he was just the right size. Of course Harry said he'd do it when we asked him, for he isn't afraid of anything, and is so proud to be allowed to play with Tom and me that he would do anything we asked him to do.
Well, Harry took off his coat and shoes, and we all went up to the roof, and Tom and I boosted Harry till he got on the top of the chimney and put his legs in it and slid down. He went down like a flash, for he didn't know enough to brace himself the way the chimney-sweeps do. Tom and I we hurried down to the back parlor to meet him; but he had not arrived yet, though the fireplace was full of ashes and soot.
We supposed he had stopped on the way to rest; but after a while we thought we heard a noise, like somebody calling, that was a great way off. We went up on the roof, thinking Harry might have climbed back up the chimney, but he wasn't there. When we got on the top of the chimney we could hear him plain enough. He was crying and yelling for help, for he was stuck about half-way down the chimney, and couldn't get either up or down.
We talked it over for some time, and decided that the best thing to do was to get a rope and let it down to him, and pull him out. So I got the clothes-line and let it down, but Harry's arms were jammed close to his sides, so he couldn't get hold of it. Tom said we ought to make a slippernoose, catch it over Harry's head, and pull him out that way, but I knew that Harry wasn't very strong, and I was afraid if we did that he might come apart.
Then I proposed that we should get a long pole and pushHarry down the rest of the chimney, but after hunting all over the yard we couldn't find a pole that was long enough, so we had to give that plan up. All this time Harry was crying in the most discontented way, although we were doing all we could for him. That's the way with little boys. They never have any gratitude, and are always discontented.
As we couldn't poke Harry down, Tom said let's try to poke him up. So we told Harry to be patient and considerate, and we went down-stairs again, and took the longest pole we could find and pushed it up the chimney.Bushels of soot came down, and flew over everything, but we couldn't reach Harry with the pole. By this time we began to feel discouraged. We were awfully sorry for Harry, because, if we couldn't get him out before the folks came home, Tom and I would be in a dreadful scrape.
Then I thought that if we were to build a little fire the draught might draw Harry out. Tom thought it was an excellent plan. So I started a fire, but it didn't loosen Harry a bit, and when we went on the roof to meet him we heard him crying louder than ever, and saying that something was on fire in the chimney and was choking him. I knew what to do, though Tom didn't, and, to tell the truth, he was terribly frightened.
We ran down and got two pails of water, and pouredthem down the chimney. That put the fire out, but you would hardly believe that Harry was more unreasonable than ever, and said we were trying to drown him. There is no comfort in wearing yourself out in trying to please little boys. You can't satisfy them, no matter how much trouble you take, and for my part I am tired of trying to please Harry, and shall let him amuse himself the rest of the time he is at our house.
THEY GOT HARRY OUT ALL SAFE.
We had tried every plan we could think of to get Harry out of thechimney, but none of them succeeded. Tom said that if we were to pour a whole lot of oil down the chimney it would make it so slippery that Harry would slide right down into the back parlor, but I wouldn't do it, because I knew the oil would spoil Harry's clothes, and that would make Aunt Eliza angry. All of a sudden I heard a carriage stop at our gate, and there were the grown folks, who had come home earlier than I had supposed they would. Tom said that he thought he would go home before his own folks began to get uneasy about him, so he went out of the back gate, and left me to explain things. They had to send for some men to come and cut a hole through the wall. But they got Harry out all safe; and after they found that he wasn't a bit hurt, instead of thanking me for all Tom and I had done for him, they seemedto think that I deserved the worst punishment I ever had, and I got it.
I shall never make another attempt to amuse children on Christmas-eve.