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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Eugene Wood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Back Home
+
+Author: Eugene Wood
+
+Posting Date: December 8, 2008 [EBook #2642]
+Release Date: May, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK HOME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+BACK HOME
+
+By Eugene Wood
+
+
+
+
+                                TO
+                         THE SAINTED MEMORY
+               OF HER WHOM, IN THE DAYS BACK HOME,
+                       I KNEW AS "MY MA MAG"
+           AND WHO WAS MORE TO ME THAN I CAN TELL, EVEN
+                  IF MY TARDY WORDS COULD REACH HER
+                      THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+
+                   "That she who is an angel now
+                    Might sometimes think of me"
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     INTRODUCTION
+     THE OLD RED SCHOOL-HOUSE
+     THE SABBATH-SCHOOL
+     THE REVOLVING YEAR
+     THE SWIMMING-HOLE
+     THE FIREMEN'S TOURNAMENT
+     THE DEVOURING ELEMENT
+     CIRCUS DAY
+     THE COUNTY FAIR
+     CHRISTMAS BACK HOME
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+GENTLE READER:--Let me make you acquainted with my book, "Back Home."
+(Your right hand, Book, your right hand. Pity's sakes! How many times
+have I got to tell you that? Chest up and forward, shoulders back and
+down, and turn your toes out more.)
+
+It is a little book, Gentle Reader, but please don't let that prejudice
+you against it. The General Public, I know, likes to feel heft in its
+hand when it buys a book, but I had hoped that you were a peg or two
+above the General Public. That mythical being goes on a reading spree
+about every so often, and it selects a book which will probably last out
+the craving, a book which "it will be impossible to lay down, after it
+is once begun, until it is finished." (I quote from the standard book
+notice). A few hours later the following dialogue ensues:
+
+
+"Henry!"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Aren't you 'most done reading?"
+
+"Just as soon as I finish this chapter." A sigh and a long wait.
+
+"Henry!"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Did you lock the side-door?" No answer.
+
+"Henry! Did you?"
+
+"Did I what?"
+
+"Did you lock the side-door?"
+
+"In a minute now."
+
+"Yes, but did you?"
+
+"M-hm. I guess so."
+
+"'Guess so!' Did you lock that side-door? They got in at Hilliard's
+night before last and stole a bag of clothes-pins."
+
+"M."
+
+"Oh, put down that book, and go and lock the side-door. I'll not get a
+wink of sleep this blessed night unless you do."
+
+"In a minute now. Just wait till I finish this..."
+
+"Go do it now."
+
+Mr. General Public has a card on his desk that says, "Do it Now," and so
+he lays down his book with a patient sigh, and comes back to it with a
+patent grouch.
+
+"Oh, so it is," says the voice from the bedroom. "I remember now, I
+locked it myself when I put the milk-bottles out.... I'm going to stop
+taking of that man unless there's more cream on the top than there has
+been here lately."
+
+"M."
+
+"Henry!"
+
+"Oh, what is it?"
+
+"Aren't you 'most done reading?"
+
+"In a minute, just as soon as I finish this chapter."
+
+"How long is that chapter, for mercy's sakes?"
+
+"I began another."
+
+"Henry!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Aren't you coming to bed pretty soon? You know I can't go to sleep when
+you are sitting up."
+
+"Oh, hush up for one minute, can't ye? It's a funny thing if I can't
+read a little once in a while."
+
+"It's a funny thing if I've got to be broke of my rest this way. As much
+as I have to look after. I'd hate to be so selfish.... Henry! Won't you
+please put the book down and come to bed?"
+
+"Oh, for goodness sake! Turn over and go to sleep. You make me tired."
+
+Every two or three hours Mrs. General Public wakes up and announces that
+she can't get a wink of sleep, not a wink; she wishes he hadn't brought
+the plagued old book home; he hasn't the least bit of consideration for
+her; please, please, won't he put the book away and come to bed?
+
+He reaches "THE END" at 2:30A.M., turns off the gas, and creeps into
+bed, his stomach all upset from smoking so much without eating anything,
+his eyes feeling like two burnt holes in a blanket, and wishing that
+he had the sense he was born with. He'll have to be up at 6:05, and he
+knows how he will feel. He also knows how he will feel along about three
+o'clock in the afternoon. Smithers is coming then to close up that deal.
+Smithers is as sharp as tacks, as slippery as an eel, and as crooked as
+a dog's hind leg. Always looking for the best of it. You need all
+your wits when you deal with Smithers. Why didn't he take Mrs. General
+Public's advice, and get to bed instead of sitting up fuddling himself
+with that fool love-story?
+
+That's how a book should be to be a great popular success, and one
+that all the typewriter girls will have on their desks. I am guiltily
+conscious that "Back Home" is not up to standard either in avoirdupois
+heft or the power to unfit a man for business.
+
+Here's a book. Is it long? No. Is it exciting? No. Any lost diamonds
+in it? Nup. Mysterious murders? No. Whopping big fortune, now teetering
+this way, and now teetering that, tipping over on the Hero at the last
+and smothering him in an avalanche of fifty-dollar bills? No. Does She
+get Him? Isn't even that. No "heart interest" at all. What's the use of
+putting out good money to make such a book; to have a cover design for
+it; to get a man like A. B. Frost to draw illustrations for it, when he
+costs so like the mischief, when there's nothing in the book to make a
+man sit up till 'way past bedtime? Why print it at all?
+
+You may search me. I suppose it's all right, but if it was my money,
+I'll bet I could make a better investment of it. If worst came to worst,
+I could do like the fellow in the story who went to the gambling-house
+and found it closed up, so he shoved the money under the door and went
+away. He'd done his part.
+
+And yet, on the other hand, I can see how some sort of a case can be
+made out for this book of mine. I suppose I am wrong-I generally am in
+regard to everything--but it seems to me that quite a large part of the
+population of this country must be grown-up people. If I am right
+in this contention, then this large part of the population is being
+unjustly discriminated against. I believe in doing a reasonable amount
+for the aid and comfort of the young things that are just beginning to
+turn their hair up under, or who rub a stealthy forefinger over their
+upper lips to feel the pleasant rasp, but I don't believe in their
+monopolizing everything. I don't think it 's fair. All the books
+printed--except, of course, those containing valuable information; we
+don't buy those books, but go to the public library for them--all the
+books printed are concerned with the problem of How She can get Him, and
+He can get Her.
+
+Well, now. It was either yesterday morning or the day before that you
+looked in the glass and beheld there The First Gray Hair. You smiled a
+smile that was not all pure pleasure, a smile that petered out into a
+sigh, but nevertheless a smile, I will contend. What do you think
+about it? You're still on earth, aren't you? You'll last the month out,
+anyhow, won't you? Not at all ready to be laid on the shelf? What do you
+think of the relative importance of Love, Courtship, and Marriage? One
+or two other things in life just about as interesting, aren't there?
+Take getting a living, for instance. That 's worthy of one's attention,
+to a certain extent. When our young ones ask us: "Pop, what did you say
+to Mom when you courted her?" they feel provoked at us for taking it so
+lightly and so frivolously. It vexes them for us to reply: "Law, child!
+I don't remember. Why, I says to her: 'Will you have me?' And she says:
+'Why, yes, and jump at the chance.' What difference does it make what
+we said, or whether we said anything at all? Why should we charge our
+memories with the recollections of those few and foolish months of mere
+instinctive sex-attraction when all that really counts came after,
+the years wherein low passion blossomed into lofty Love, the dear
+companionship in joy and sorrow, and in that which is more, far more
+than either joy or sorrow, 'the daily round, the common task?'" All that
+is wonderful to think of in our courtship is the marvel, for which
+we should never cease to thank the Almighty God, that with so little
+judgment at our disposal we should have chosen so wisely.
+
+If you, Gentle Reader, found your first gray hair day before yesterday
+morning, if you can remember, 'way, 'way back ten or fifteen years
+ago... er... er... or more, come with me. Let us go "Back Home." Here's
+your transportation, all made out to you, and in your hand. It is no use
+my reminding you that no railroad goes to the old home place. It isn't
+there any more, even in outward seeming. Cummins's woods, where you had
+your robbers' cave, is all cleared off and cut up into building lots.
+The cool and echoing covered bridge, plastered with notices of dead and
+forgotten Strawberry Festivals and Public Vendues, has long ago been
+torn down to be replaced by a smart, red iron bridge. The Volunteer
+Firemen's Engine-house, whose brick wall used to flutter with the gay
+rags of circus-bills, is gone as if it never were at all. Where the
+Union Schoolhouse was is all torn up now. They are putting up a new
+magnificent structure, with all the modern improvements, exposed
+plumbing, and spankless discipline. The quiet leafy streets echo to the
+hissing snarl of trolley cars, and the power-house is right by the
+Old Swimming-hole above the dam. The meeting-house, where we attended
+Sabbath-school, and marveled at the Greek temple frescoed on the wall
+behind the pulpit, is now a church with a big organ, and stained-glass
+windows, and folding opera-chairs on a slanting floor. There isn't any
+"Amen Corner," any more, and in these calm and well-bred times nobody
+ever gets "shouting happy."
+
+But even when "the loved spots that our infancy knew" are physically the
+same, a change has come upon them more saddening than words can tell.
+They have shrunken and grown shabbier. They are not nearly so spacious
+and so splendid as once they were.
+
+Some one comes up to you and calls you by your name. His voice echoes in
+the chambers of your memory. You hold his hand in yours and try to peer
+through the false-face he has on, the mask of a beard or spectacles, or
+a changed expression of the countenance. He says he is So-and-so. Why,
+he used to sit with you in Miss Crutcher's room, don't you remember?
+There was a time when you and he walked together, your arms upon each
+other's shoulders. But this is some other one than he. The boy you knew
+had freckles, and could spit between his teeth, ever and ever so far.
+
+They don't have the same things to eat they used to have, or, if they
+do, it all tastes different. Do you remember the old well, with the
+windlass and the chain fastened to the rope just above the bucket, the
+chain that used to cluck-cluck when the dripping bucket came within
+reach to be swung upon the well-curb? How cold the water used to be,
+right out of the northwest corner of the well! It made the roof of your
+mouth ache when you drank. Everybody said it was such splendid water. It
+isn't so very cold these days, and I think it has a sort of funny taste
+to it.
+
+Ah, Gentle Reader, this is not really "Back Home" we gaze upon when
+we go there by the train. It is a last year's bird's nest. The nest is
+there; the birds are flown, the birds of youth, and noisy health, and
+ravenous appetite, and inexperience. You cannot go "Back Home" by train,
+but here is the magic wishing-carpet, and here is your transportation in
+your hand all made out to you. You and I will make the journey together.
+Let us in heart and mind thither ascend.
+
+I went to the Old Red School-house with you. Don't you remember me? I
+was learning to swim when you could go clear across the river without
+once "letting down." I saw you at the County Fair, and bought a slab
+of ice-cream candy just before you did. I was in the infant-class in
+Sabbath-school when you spoke in the dialogue at the monthly concert.
+Look again. Don't you remember me? I used to stub my toe so; you ought
+to recollect me by that. I know plenty of people that you know. I may
+not always get their names just right, but then it's been a good while
+ago. You Il recognize them, though; you'll know them in a minute.
+
+EUGENE WOOD.
+
+
+
+
+BACK HOME
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD RED SCHOOL-HOUSE
+
+
+  Oh, the little old red school-house on the hill,
+                 (2d bass: On the hill.)
+  Oh, the little old red school-house on the hill,
+               (2d bass: On the hi-hi-hi-yull)
+                And my heart with joy o'erflows,
+                Like the dew-drop in the rose,*
+  Thinking of the old red SCHOOL-HOUSE I o-o-on the hill,
+                 (2d tenor and 1st bass: The hill, the hill.)
+
+  THE MALE QUARTET'S COMPENDIUM.
+
+
+     * I call your attention to the chaste beauty of this line,
+     and the imperative necessity of the chord of the diminished
+     seventh for the word "rose."  Also "school-house" in the
+     last line must be very loud and staccato.  Snap it off.
+
+
+If the audience will kindly come forward and occupy the vacant seats
+in the front of the hall, the entertainment will now begin. The male
+quartet will first render an appropriate selection and then.... Can't
+you see them from where you are? Let me assist you in the visualization.
+
+The first tenor, the gentleman on the extreme left, is a stocky little
+man, with a large chest and short legs conspicuously curving inward. He
+has plenty of white teeth, ash-blonde hair, and goes smooth-shaven for
+purely personal reasons. His round, dough-colored face will never look
+older (from a distance) than it did when he was nine. The flight of
+years adds only deeper creases in the multitude of fine wrinkles, and
+increasing difficulty in hoisting his tiny, patent-leather foot up on
+his plump knee.
+
+The second tenor leans toward him in a way to make another man anxious
+about his watch, but the second tenor is as honest as the day. He is
+only "blending the voices." He works in the bank. He is going to be
+married in June sometime. Don't look around right away, but she's the
+one in the pink shirt-waist, the second one from the aisle, the one...
+two... three... the sixth row back. See her? Say, they've got it bad,
+those two. What d' ye think? She goes down by the bank every day at
+noon, so as to walk up with him to luncheon. She lives across the
+street, and as soon as ever she has finished her luncheon, there she is,
+out on the front porch hallooing: "Oo-hoo!" How about that? And if he so
+much as looks at another girl--m-M!
+
+The first bass is one of these fellows with a flutter in his voice.
+No, I don't mean a vibrato. It's a flutter, like a goat's tail. It is
+considered real operatic.
+
+The second bass has a great, big Adam's apple that slides up and down
+his throat like a toy-monkey on a stick. He is tall, and has eyebrows
+like clothes-brushes, and he scowls fit to make you run and hide under
+the bed. He is really a good-hearted fellow, though. Pity he has the
+dyspepsia so bad. Oh, my, yes! Suffers everything with it, poor man.
+He generally sings that song about "Drink-ing! DRINK-ang! Drink-awng!"
+though he's strictly temperate himself. When he takes that last low
+note, you hold on to your chair for fear you'll fall in too.
+
+But why bring in the male quartet?
+
+Because "The Little Old Red School-house" is more than a mere
+collocation of words, accurately descriptive. It is what Mat King would
+call a "symblem," and as such requires the music's dying fall to lull
+and enervate a too meticulous and stringent tendency to recollect that
+it wasn't little, or old, or red, or on a hill. It might have been
+big and new, and built of yellow brick, right next to the Second
+Presbyterian, and hence close to the "branch," so that the spring
+freshets flooded the playground, and the water lapped the base of the
+big rock on which we played "King on the Castle,"--the big rock so
+pitifully dwindled of late years. No matter what he facts are. Sing 'of
+"The Little Old Red Schoolhouse On the Hill" and in everybody's heart
+a chord trembles in unison. As we hear its witching strains, we are all
+lodge brethren, from Maine to California and far across the Western Sea;
+we are all lodge brethren, and the air is "Auld Lang Syne," and we are
+clasping hands across, knitted together into one living solidarity;
+and this, if we but sensed it, is the real Union, of which the federal
+compact is but the outward seeming. It is a Union in which they have
+neither art nor part whose parents sent them to private schools, so as
+not to have them associate with "that class of people." It is the
+true democracy which batters down the walls that separate us from each
+other--the walls of caste distinction, and color prejudice, and national
+hatred, and religious contempt, all the petty, anti-social meannesses
+that quarrel with
+
+     "The Union of hearts, the Union of hands,
+     And the flag of our Union forever."
+
+Old Glory has floated victoriously on many a gallant fight by sea
+and land, but never do its silver stars glitter more bravely or its
+blood-red stripes curve more proudly on the fawning breeze than when it
+floats above the school-house, over the daily battle against ignorance
+and prejudice (which is ignorance of our fellows), for freedom and for
+equal rights. It is no mere pretty sentimentality that puts the flag
+there, but the serious recognition of the bed-rock principle of our
+Union: That we are all of one blood, one bounden duty; that all these
+anti-social prejudices are just as shameful as illiteracy, and that they
+must disappear as soon as ever we shall come to know each other well.
+Knowledge is power. That is true. And it is also true: A house divided
+against itself cannot stand.
+
+"The Flag of our Union forever!" is our prayer, our heart's desire for
+us and for our children after us. Heroes have died to give us that,
+heroes that with glazing eyes beheld the tattered ensign and spent their
+latest breath to cheer it as it passed on to triumph. "We who are about
+to die salute thee!" The heart swells to think of it. But it swells,
+too, to think that, day by day, thousands upon thousands of little
+children stretch out their hands toward that Flag and pledge allegiance
+to it. "We who are about to LIVE salute thee!"
+
+It is no mere chance affair that all our federal buildings should be so
+ugly and so begrudged, and that our school-houses should be so beautiful
+architecturally--the one nearest my house is built from plans that took
+the first prize at the Paris Exposition, in competition with the
+whole world--so well-appointed, and so far from being grudged that the
+complaint is, that there are not enough of them.
+
+That So-and-so should be the President, and such-and-such a party
+have control is but a game we play at, amateurs and professionals; the
+serious business is, that in this country no child, how poor soever it
+may be, shall have the slightest let or hindrance in the equal chance
+with every other child to learn to read, and write, and cipher, and do
+raffia-work.
+
+It is a new thing with us to have splendid school-houses. After all, the
+norm, as you might say, is still "The Old Red School-house." You must
+recollect how hard the struggle is for the poor farmer, with wheat only
+a dollar a bushel, and eggs only six for a quarter; with every year
+or so taxes of three and sometimes four dollars on an eighty-acre farm
+grinding him to earth. It were folly to expect more in rural districts
+than a tight box, with benches and a stove in it. Never-the-less, it is
+the thing signified more than its outward seeming that catches and holds
+the eye upon the country school-house as you drive past it. You count
+yourself fortunate if, mingled with the creaking of the buggy-springs,
+you hear the hum of recitation; yet more fortunate if it is recess time,
+and you can see the children out at play, the little girls holding to
+one another's dress-tails as they solemnly circle to the chant:
+
+    "H-yar way gow rand tha malbarry bosh,
+     Tha malbarry bosh, tha malbarry bosh,
+     H-yar way gow rand tha malbarry bosh
+       On a cay-um and frasty marneng."
+
+The boys are at marbles, if it is muddy enough, or one-old-cat, or
+pom-pom-peel-away, with the normal percentage of them in reboant
+tears--that is to say, one in three.
+
+But even this is not the moment of illumination, when it comes upon you
+like a flood how glorious is the land we live in, upon what sure and
+certain footing are its institutions, when we know by spiritual insight
+that whatsoever be the trial that awaits us, the people of these United
+States, we shall be able for it! Yes. We shall be able for it.
+
+If you would learn the secret of our nation's greatness, take your stand
+some winter's morning just before nine o'clock, where you can overlook a
+circle of some two or three miles' radius, the center being the Old Red
+School-house. You will see little figures picking their way along the
+miry roads, or ploughing through the deep drifts, cutting across the
+fields, all drawing to the school-house, Bub in his wammus and his
+cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about his
+neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens; and little Sis, in a
+thick shawl, trudging along behind him, stepping in his tracks. They
+chirrup, "Good-morning, sir!" As far as you can see them you have to
+watch them, and something rises in your throat. Lord love 'em! Lord love
+the children!
+
+And then it comes to you, and it makes you catch your breath to think of
+it, that every two or three miles all over this land, wherever there are
+children at all, there is the Old Red Schoolhouse. At this very hour a
+living tide, upbearing the hopes and prayers of God alone knows how many
+loving hearts, the tide on which all of our longed-for ships are to come
+in, is setting to the school-house. Oh, what is martial glory, what is
+conquest of an empire, what is state-craft alongside of this? Happy is
+the people that is in such a case!
+
+The city schools are now the pattern for the country schools: but in
+my day, although a little they were pouring the new wine of frothing
+educational reform into the old bottles, they had not quite attained the
+full distention of this present. We still had some kind of a good
+time, but nothing like the good times they had out at the school near
+grandpap's, where I sometimes visited. There you could whisper! Yes,
+sir, you could whisper. So long as you didn't talk out loud, it was all
+right. And there was no rising at the tap of the bell, forming in line
+and walking in lock-step. Seemingly it never entered the school-board's
+heads that anybody would ever be sent to state's prison. They left the
+scholars unprepared for any such career. They have remedied all that in
+city schools. Now, when a boy grows up and goes to Sing Sing, he knows
+exactly what to do and how to behave. It all comes back to him.
+
+But what I call the finest part of going to school in the country was,
+that you didn't go home to dinner. Grandma had a boy only a few years
+older than I was, and when I went a-visiting, she fixed us up a "piece."
+They call it "luncheon" now, I think--a foolish, hybrid mongrel of a
+word, made up of "lump," a piece of bread, and "noon," and "shenk,"
+a pouring or drink. But the right name is "piece." What made this
+particular "piece" taste so wonderfully good was that it was in a
+round-bottomed basket woven of splints dyed blue, and black and red,
+and all in such a funny pattern. It was an Indian basket. My grandma's
+mother, when she was a little girl, got that from the squaw of old Chief
+Wiping-Stick.
+
+The "piece" had bread-and-butter (my grandma used to let me churn
+for her sometimes, when I went out there), and some of the slices had
+apple-butter on them. (One time she let me stir the cider, when it was
+boiling down in the big kettle over the chunk-fire out in the yard. The
+smoke got in my eyes.) Sometimes there was honey from the hives over by
+the gooseberry bushes--the gooseberries had stickers on them--and we had
+slices of cold, fried ham. (I was out at grandpap's one time when they
+butchered. They had a chunk-fire then, too, to heat the water to scald
+the hogs. And say! Did your grandma ever roast pig's tails in the ashes
+for you?) And there were crullers. No, I don't mean "doughnuts." I mean
+crullers, all twisted up. They go good with cider. (Sometimes my grandma
+cut out thin, pallid little men of cruller dough, and dropped them into
+the hot lard for my Uncle Jimmy and me. And when she fished them out,
+they were all swelled up and "pussy," and golden brown).
+
+And there was pie. Neither at the school nooning nor at the table did
+one put a piece of pie upon a plate and haggle at it with a fork. You
+took the piece of pie up in your hand and pointed the sharp end toward
+you, and gently crowded it into your face. It didn't require much
+pressure either.
+
+And there were always apples, real apples. I think they must make apples
+in factories nowadays. They taste like it. These were real ones, picked
+off the trees. Out at grandpap's they had bellflowers, and winesaps, and
+seek-no-furthers, and, I think, sheep-noses, and one kind of apple that
+I can't find any more, though I have sought it carefully. It was the
+finest apple I ever set a tooth in. It was the juiciest and the spiciest
+apple. It had sort of a rollicking flavor to it, if you know what I
+mean. It certainly was the ne plus ultra of an apple. And the name of it
+was the rambo. Dear me, how good it was! think I'd sooner have one right
+now than great riches. And all these apples they kept in the apple-hole.
+You went out and uncovered the earth and there they were, all in a big
+nest of straw; and such a gush of perfume distilled from that pile of
+them that just to recollect it makes my mouth all wet.
+
+They had a big red apple in those days that I forget the name of. Oh, it
+was a whopper! You'd nibble at it and nibble at it before you could
+get a purchase on it. Then, after you got your teeth in, you'd pull and
+pull, and all of a sudden the apple would go "tock!" and your head would
+fly back from the recoil, and you had a bite about the size of your
+hand. You "chomped" on it, with your cheek all bulged out, and blame
+near drowned yourself with the juice of it.
+
+Noon-time the girls used to count the seeds:
+
+     "One I love, two I love, three my love I see;
+     Four I love with all my heart, and five I cast away.
+     Six he loves; seven she loves; eight... eight..."
+
+I forget what eight is, and all that follows after. And then the others
+would tease her with, "Aw, Jennie!" knowing who it was she had named
+the apple for, Wes. Rinehart, or 'Lonzo Curl, or whoever. And you'd
+be standing there by the stove, kind of grinning and not thinking of
+anything in particular when somebody would hit you a clout on your back
+that just about broke you in two, and would tell you "to pass it on,"
+and you'd pass it on, and the next thing was you'd think the house was
+coming down. Such a chasing around and over benches, and upsetting the
+water-bucket, and tearing up Jack generally that teacher would say,
+"Boys! boys! If you can't play quietly, you'll have to go out of doors!"
+Play quietly! Why, the idea! What kind of play is it when you are right
+still?
+
+Outdoors in the country, you can whoop and holler, and carry on, and
+nobody complains to the board of health. And there are so many things
+you can do. If there is just the least little fall of snow you can make
+a big wheel, with spokes in it, by your tracking. I remember that it was
+called "fox and geese," but that's all I can remember about it. If there
+was a little more snow you tried to wash the girls' faces in it, and
+sometimes got yours washed. If there was a good deal of wet snow you had
+a snowball fight, which is great fun, unless you get one right smack dab
+in your ear--oh, but I can't begin to tell you all the fun there is at
+the noon hour in the country school, that the town children don't know
+anything about. And when it was time for school to "take up," there
+wasn't any forming in line, with a monitor to run tell teacher who
+snatched off Joseph Humphreys' cap and flung it far away, so he had to
+get out of the line, and who did this, and who did that--no penitentiary
+business at all. Teacher tapped on the window with a ruler, and the boys
+and girls came in, red-faced and puffing, careering through the aisles,
+knocking things off the desks with many a burlesque, "oh, exCUSE me!"
+and falling into their seats, bursting into sniggers, they didn't know
+what at. They had an hour and a half nooning. Counting that it took five
+minutes to shovel down even grandma's beautiful "piece," that left an
+hour and twenty-five minutes for roaring, romping play. If you want to
+know, I think that is fully as educational and a far better preparation
+for life than sitting still with your nose stuck in a book.
+
+In the city schools they don't think so. Even the stingy fifteen
+minutes' recess, morning and afternoon, has been stolen from the
+children. Instead is given the inspiriting physical culture, all making
+silly motions together in a nice, warm room, full of second-hand air.
+Is it any wonder that one in every three that die between fifteen and
+twenty-five, dies of consumption?
+
+You must have noticed that almost everybody that amounts to anything
+spent his early life in the country. The city schools have great
+educational advantages; they have all the up-to-date methods, but the
+output of the Old Red Schoolhouse compares very favorably with that of
+the city schools for all that. The two-mile walk, morning and evening,
+had something to do with it, not only because it and the long nooning
+were good exercise, but because it impressed upon the mind that what
+cost so much effort to get must surely be worth having. But I think I
+know another reason.
+
+If the city child goes through the arithmetic once, it is as much as
+ever. In the Old Red School-house those who hadn't gone through the
+arithmetic at least six times, were little thought of. In town, the last
+subject in the book was "Permutation," to which you gave the mere look
+its essentially frivolous nature deserved. It was: "End of the line. All
+out!" But in the country a very important department followed. It was
+called "Problems." They were twisters, able to make "How old is Ann?"
+look like a last year's bird's nest. They make a big fuss about the
+psychology of the child's mind nowadays. Well, I tell you they couldn't
+teach the man that got up that arithmetic a thing about the operation of
+the child's mind. He knew what was what. He didn't put down the answers.
+He knew that if he did, weak, erring human nature, tortured by suspense,
+determined to have the agony over, would multiply by four and divide by
+thirteen, and subtract 127--didn't, either. I didn't say "substract." I
+guess I know they'd get the answer somehow, it didn't matter much how.
+
+In the country they ciphered through this part, and handed in their sums
+to Teacher, who said she'd take 'em home and look 'em over; she didn't
+have time just then. As if that fooled anybody! She had a key! And when
+you had done the very last one on the very last page, and there wasn't
+anything more except the blank pages, where you had written, "Joe Geiger
+loves Molly Meyers," and, "If my name you wish to see, look on page
+103," and all such stuff, then you turned over to the beginning, where
+it says, "Arithmetic is the science of numbers, and the art of computing
+by them," and once more considered, "Ann had four apples and her brother
+gave her two more. How many did she then have?" There were the four
+apples in a row, and the two apples, and you that had worried over
+meadows so long and so wide, and men mowing them in so many days and
+a half, had to think how many apples Ann really did have. Some of the
+fellows with forked hairs on their chins and uncertain voices--the big
+fellows in the back seats, where the apple-cores and the spit-balls come
+from knew every example in the book by heart.
+
+And there is yet another reason why the country school has brought forth
+men of whom we do well to be proud. At the county-seat, every so often,
+the school commissioners held an examination. Thither resorted many, for
+the most part anxious to determine if they really knew as much as they
+thought they did. If you took that examination and got a "stiff kit"
+for eighteen months, you had good cause to hold your head up and step
+as high as a blind horse. A "stiff kit" for eighteen months is no small
+thing, let me tell you. I don't know if there is anything corresponding
+to a doctor's hood for such as win a certificate to teach school for
+two years hand-running; but there ought to be. A fellow ought not to
+be obliged to resort to such tactics as taking out a folded paper and
+perusing it in the hope that some one will ask him: "What you got there,
+Calvin?" so as to give you a chance to say, carelessly, "Oh, jist a
+'stiff-kit' for two years."
+
+(When you get as far along as that, you simply have to take a term in
+the junior Prep. Department at college, not because there is anything
+left for you to learn, but for the sake of putting a gloss on your
+education, finishing it off neatly.)
+
+And then if you were going to read law with Mr. Parker, or study
+medicine with old Doc. Harbaugh, and you kind of run out of clothes, you
+took that certificate and hunted up a school and taught it. Sometimes
+they paid you as high as $20 a month and board, lots of board, real
+buckwheat cakes ("riz" buckwheat, not the prepared kind), and real maple
+syrup, and real sausage, the kind that has sage in it; the kind that you
+can't coax your butcher to sell you. The pale, tasteless stuff he gives
+you for sausage I wouldn't throw out to the chickens. Twenty dollars a
+month and board! That's $4 a month more than a hired man gets.
+
+But it wasn't alone the demonstration that, strange as it might seem,
+it was possible for a man to get his living by his wits (though that
+has done much to produce great men) as it was the actual exercise of
+teaching. Remember the big boys on the back seats, where the apple-cores
+and the spit-balls come from. The school-director that hired you gave
+you a searching look-over and said: "M-well-l-l, I'm afraid you haint
+hardly qualified for our school--oh, that's all right, sir; that's all
+right. Your 'stiff-kit' is first-rate, and you got good recommends, good
+recommends; but I was thinkin'--well, I tell you. Might's well out with
+it first as last. I d' know's I ort to say so, but this here district
+No. 34 is a poot' tol'able hard school to teach. Ya-uss. A poot-ty
+tol'able hard school to teach. Now, that's jist the plumb facts in the
+matter. We've had four try it this winter a'ready. One of 'em stuck it
+out four weeks--I jimminy! he had grit, that feller had. The balance of
+'em didn't take so long to make up their minds. Well, now, if you're a
+mind to try it--I was goin' to say you didn't look to me like you had
+the heft. Like to have you the worst way. Now, if you want to back
+out.... Well, all right. Monday mornin', eh? Well, you got my
+sympathies."
+
+I believe that some have tried to figure out that St. Martin of Tours,
+ought to be the patron saint of the United States. One of his feast-days
+falls on July 4, and his colors are red, white and blue. But I rather
+prefer, myself, the Boanerges, the two sons of Zebedee. When asked: "Are
+ye able to drink of this cup?" they answered: "We are able." They didn't
+in the least know what it was; but they knew they were able for anything
+that anybody else was, and, perhaps, able for a little more. At any
+rate, they were willing to chance it. That's the United States of
+America, clear to the bone and back again to the skin.
+
+You ask any really great man: "Have you ever taught a winter term in a
+country school?" If he says he hasn't, then depend upon it he isn't
+a really great man. People only think he is. The winter term breeds
+Boanerges--sons of thunder. Yes, and of lightning, too. Something struck
+the big boys in the back seats, as sure as you're a foot high; and if it
+wasn't lightning, what was it? Brute strength for brute strength, they
+were more than a match for Teacher. It was up to him. It was either
+prove himself the superior power, or slink off home and crawl under the
+porch.
+
+The curriculum of the Old Red School-house, which was, until lately, the
+universal curriculum, consisted in reading, writing, and arithmetic or
+ciphering. I like the word "ciphering," because it makes me think of
+slates--slates that were always falling on the floor with a rousing
+clatter, so that almost always at least one corner was cracked. Some
+mitigation of the noise was gained by binding the frame with strips of
+red flannel, thus adding warmth and brightness to the color scheme. Just
+as some fertile brain conceived the notion of applying a knob of rubber
+to each corner, slates went out, and I suppose only doctors buy them
+nowadays to hang on the doors of their offices. Maybe the teacher's
+nerves were too highly strung to endure the squeaking of gritty pencils,
+but I think the real reason for their banishment is, that slates invited
+too strongly the game of noughts and crosses, or tit-tat-toe, three in
+a row, the champion of indoor sports, and one entirely inimical to the
+study of the joggerfy lesson. But if slates favored tit-tat-toe, they
+also favored ciphering, and nothing but good can come from that. Paper
+is now so cheap that you need not rub out mistakes, but paper and pencil
+can never surely ground one in "the science of numbers and the art of
+computing by them." What is written is written, and returns to plague
+the memory, but if you made a mistake on the slate, you could spit on it
+and rub it out with your sleeve and leave no trace of the error, either
+on the writing surface or the tables of the memory. What does the hymn
+say?
+
+      "Forget the steps already trod,
+      And onward urge thy way."
+
+The girls used to keep a little sponge and some water in a discarded
+patchouli bottle with a glass stopper, to wash their slates with; but it
+always seemed to me that the human and whole-hearted way was otherwise.
+
+Reading, writing, and arithmetic,--these three; and the greatest of
+these three is arithmetic. Over against it stands grammar, which may be
+said to be derived from reading and writing. Show me a man that, as
+a boy at school, excelled in arithmetic and I will show you a useful
+citizen, a boss in his own business, a leader of men; show me the boy
+that preferred grammar, that read expressively, that wrote a
+beautiful hand and curled his capital S's till their tails looked like
+mainsprings, and I will show you a dreamer and a sentimentalist--a man
+that works for other people. While I have breath in me, I will maintain
+the supereminence of arithmetic. There is no room for disputation in
+arithmetic, no exceptions to the rule. Twice two is four, and that's
+all there is about it: but whether there be pronunciations, they shall
+cease; whether there be rules of grammar, they shall vanish away. Why,
+look here. It's a rule of grammar, isn't it, that the subject of a
+sentence must be put in the nominative case? Let it kick and bite, and
+hang on to the desks all it wants to, in it goes and the door is slammed
+on it. You think so? What is the word "you?" Second person, plural
+number, objective case. Oh, no; the nominative form is "ye."
+
+Don't you remember it says: "Woe unto you, ye lawyers"? Those who fight
+against: "Him and me went down town," fight against the stars in
+their courses, for the objective case in every language is bound and
+determined to be The Whole Thing. Arithmetic alone is founded on a rock.
+All else is fleeting, all else is futile, chaotic--a waste of time. What
+is reading but a rival of morphine? There are probably as many men in
+prison, sent there by Reading, as by Rum.
+
+"Oh, not good Reading!" says the publisher.
+
+"Not good Rum, either," says the publican.
+
+Fight it out. It's an even thing between the two of you; Literature and
+Liquor, Books and Booze, which can take a man's mind off his business
+most effectually.
+
+Still, merely as a matter of taste, I will defend the quality of
+McGuffey's School Readers against all comers. I don't know who McGuffey
+was; but certainly he formed the greatest intellects of our age,
+present company not excepted. The true test of literature is its eternal
+modernity. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. It always seems of the
+age in which it is read. Now, almost the earliest lection in McGuffey's
+First Reader goes directly to the heart of one of the greatest of modern
+problems. It does not palter or beat about the bush. It asks right out,
+plump and plain: "Ann, how old are you?"
+
+Year by year, until we reached the dizzy height of the Sixth Reader,
+were presented to us samples of the best English ever written. If you
+can find, up in the garret, a worn and frayed old Reader, take it
+down and turn its pages over. See if anything in these degenerate days
+compares in vital strength and beauty with the story of the boy that
+climbed the Natural Bridge, carving his steps in the soft limestone with
+his pocket knife. You cannot read it without a thrill. The same inspired
+hand wrote "The Blind Preacher," and who that ever can read it can
+forget the climax reached in that sublime line: "Socrates died like a
+philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a god!"
+
+Not long ago I walked among the graves in that spot opposite where Wall
+Street slants away from Broadway, and my feet trod on ground worth, in
+the market, more than the twenty-dollar gold pieces that would cover
+it. My eye lighted upon a flaking brownstone slab, that told me Captain
+Michael Cresap rested there. Captain Michael Cresap! The intervening
+years all fled away before me, and once again my boyish heart thrilled
+with that incomparable oration in McGuffey's Reader, "Who is there
+to mourn for Logan? Not one." Captain Cresap was the man that led the
+massacre of Logan's family.
+
+And there was more than good literature in those Readers. There was one
+piece that told about a little boy alone upon a country road at
+night. The black trees groaned and waved their skinny arms at him.
+The wind-torn clouds fitfully let a pale and watery moonlight stream
+a little through. It was very lonely. Over his shoulder the boy saw
+indistinct shapes that followed after, and hid themselves whenever he
+looked squarely at them. Then, suddenly, he saw before him in the gloom,
+a gaunt white specter waiting for him--waiting to get him, its arms
+spread wide out in menace. He was of our breed, though, this boy. He did
+not turn and run. With God knows what terror knocking at his ribs, he
+trudged ahead to meet his fate, and lo! the grisly specter proved to be
+a friendly guide-post to show the way that he should walk in. Brother
+(for you are my kin that went with me to public school), in the life
+that you have lived since you first read the story of Harry and the
+Guide-post, has it been an idle tale, or have you, too, found that what
+we dreaded most, what seemed to us so terrible in the future has, after
+all, been a friendly guide-post, showing us the way that we should walk
+in?
+
+McGuffey had a Speller, too. It began with simple words in common use,
+like a-b ab, and e-b eb, and i-b, ib, proceeding by gradual, if not by
+easy stages to honorificatudinibility and disproportionableness, with
+a department at the back devoted to twisters like phthisic, and
+mullein-stalk, and diphtheria, and gneiss. We used to have a fine old
+sport on Friday afternoons, called "choose-up-and-spell-down." I don't
+know if you ever played it. It was a survival, pure and simple, from the
+Old Red School-house. There was where it really lived. There was
+where it flourished as a gladiatorial spectacle. The crack spellers of
+District Number 34 would challenge the crack spellers of the Sinking
+Spring School. The whole countryside came to the school-house in wagons
+at early candle-lighting time, and watched them fight it out. The
+interest grew as the contest narrowed down, until at last there were the
+two captains left--big John Rice for District Number 34, and that wiry,
+nervous, black-haired girl of 'Lias Hoover's, Polly Ann. She married
+a man by the name of Brubaker. I guess you didn't know him. His folks
+moved here from Clarke County. Polly Ann's eyes glittered like a
+snake's, and she kept putting her knuckles up to the red spots in her
+cheeks that burned like fire. Old John, he didn't seem to care a cent.
+And what do you think Polly Ann missed on? "Feoffment." A simple little
+word like "feoffment!" She hadn't got further than "pheph--" when she
+knew that she was wrong, but Teacher had said "Next!" and big John took
+it and spelled it right. She had a fit of nervous crying, and some were
+for giving her the victory, after all, because she was a lady. But big
+John said: "She missed, didn't she? Well. And I spelled it right, didn't
+I? Well. She took her chances same as the rest of us. 'Taint me you got
+to consider, it's District Number 34. And furthermore. AND FURTHERMORE.
+Next time somebuddy asts her to go home with him from singin'-school,
+mebby she won't snigger right in his face, and say 'No! 's' loud 'at
+everybuddy kin hear it."
+
+It's quite a thing to be a good speller, but there are people who can
+spell any word that ever was, and yet if you should ask them right quick
+how much is seven times eight, they'd hem and haw and say: "Seven tums
+eight? Why--ah, lemme see now. Seven tums--what was it you said? Oh,
+seven tums eight. Why--ah, seven tums eight is sixty-three--fifty-six I
+mean." There's nothing really to spelling. It's just an idiosyncrasy.
+If there was really anything useful in it, you could do it by
+machinery--just the same as you can add by machinery, or write with a
+typewriter, or play the piano with one of these things with cut paper
+in it. Spelling is an old-fashioned, hand-powered process, and as such
+doomed to disappear with the march of improvement.
+
+One Friday afternoon we chose up and spelled down, and the next Friday
+afternoon we spoke pieces. Doubtless this accounts for our being a
+nation of orators. I am far from implying or seeming to imply that this
+is anything to brag of. Anybody that can be influenced by a man with a
+big mouth, a loud voice, and a rush of words to the face--well, I've got
+my opinion of all such.
+
+Oratory and poetry--all foolishness, I say. Better far are
+drawing-lessons, and raffia-work, and clay-modeling than: "I come not
+here to talk," and "A soldier of the Legion lay dying at Algiers," and
+"Old Ironsides at anchor lay." (I observe that these lines are more or
+less familiar to you, and that you are eager to add selections to the
+list, all of them known to me as well as you.) That children, especially
+boys, loathe to speak a piece is a fact profoundly significant. They
+know it is nothing in the world but foolishness; and if there is one
+thing above another that a child hates, it is to be made a fool in
+public. That's what makes them work their fingers so, and gulp, and
+stammer, and tremble at the knees. That is what sends them to their
+seats, after all is over, mad as hornets. This is something that I know
+about. It happened that, instead of getting funny pieces to recite as I
+wanted to, discerning that one silly turn deserves another, my parents,
+well-meaning in their way, taught me solemn things about: "O man
+immortal, live for something!" and all such, and I had to humiliate
+myself by disgorging them in public. The consequence was, that not only
+on Friday afternoons but whenever anybody came to visit the school, I
+was butchered to make a Roman holiday. Teacher was so proud of me, and
+the visitors let on that they were tickled half to death, but I knew
+better. I could see the other scholars look at one another, as much
+as to say: "Well, if you'll tell me why!" Even in my shame and anger
+I could see that. But there is one happy memory of a Friday afternoon.
+Determined to show my friends and fellow-citizens that I, too, was born
+in Arcadia, and was a living, human boy, I announced to Teacher: "I got
+another piece."
+
+"Oh, have you?" cried she, sure of an extra O-man-immortal intellectual
+treat. "Let us hear it, by all means."
+
+Whereupon I marched up to the platform and declaimed that deathless
+lyric:
+
+"When I was a boy, I was a bold one. My mammy made me a new shirt out o'
+dad's old one."
+
+All of it? Certainly. Isn't that enough? That was the only distinctly
+popular platform effort I ever made. I am proud of it now. I was proud
+of it then. But the news of my triumph was coldly received at home.
+
+I don't know whether it has since gone out of date, but in my day
+and time a very telling feature of school exhibitions was reading in
+concert. The room was packed as full of everybody's ma as it could be,
+and yet not mash the children out of shape, and a whole lot of young
+ones would read a piece together. Fine? Finest thing you ever heard. I
+remember one time teacher must have calculated a leetle mite too close,
+or else one girl more was in the class than she had reckoned on; but on
+the day, the two end girls just managed to stand upon the platform and
+that was all. They recited together:
+
+     "There was a sound of revelry by night
+     And Belgium's capital...."
+
+I forget the rest of it. Well, anyhow, they were supposed to make
+gestures all together. Teacher had rehearsed the gestures, and they all
+did it simultaneously, just as if they had been wound up with a spring.
+But, as I said, the two end girls had all they could do to keep on the
+platform, and it takes elbow room for: "'T is but the car rattling
+over the stony street," and one girl--well, she said she stepped off on
+purpose, but I didn't believe her then and I don't now. We had our laugh
+about it, whichever way it was.
+
+We had our laugh.... Ah, life was all laughter then. That was before
+care came to be the shadow at our heel. That was before black Sorrow
+met us in the way, and would not let us pass unless we gave to her our
+dearest treasure. That was before we learned that what we covet most
+is, when we get it, but a poor thing after all, that whatsoever chalice
+Fortune presses to our lips, a tear is in the bottom of the cup. In
+those happy days gone by if the rain fell, 't was only for a little
+while, and presently the sky was bright again, and the birds whistled
+merrily among the wet and shining leaves. Now "the clouds return after
+the rain."
+
+It can never be with us again as once it was. For us the bell upon the
+Old Red School-house calls in vain. We heed it not, we that
+hearkened for it years ago. The living tide of youth flows toward the
+school-house, and we are not of it. Never again shall we sit at those
+old desks, whittled and carved with rude initials, and snap our fingers,
+eager to tell the answer. Never again shall we experience the thrill of
+pride when teacher praised us openly. Never again shall we sit trembling
+while the principal, reads the note, and then scowls at us fiercely
+with: "Take off your coat, sir!" Ah, me! Never again, never again.
+
+Well, who wants it to be that way again? We're men and women now. We've
+duties and responsibilities. Who wants to be a child again? Not I. Let
+me stick just at my present age for about a hundred years, and I'll
+never utter a word of complaint.
+
+
+
+
+THE SABBATH-SCHOOL
+
+
+     "We-a love the Sunday-school.
+      We-a love the Sunday-school.
+      (Girls)--So do I.
+      (Boys)-So do I.
+      (School)--We all love the Sunday-school."
+
+
+      "SPARKLING DEWDROPS."
+
+
+Some people believe that when General Conference assigned them to the
+Committee on Hymn-Book Revision, power and authority were given unto
+them to put a half-sole and a new heel on any and all poetry that might
+look to them to be a little run over on one side. If they felt as I
+do about the lines that head this article they would have "Sunday"
+scratched out and "Sabbath" written in before you could bat an eye. The
+mere substitution of one word for another may seem a light matter to a
+man that has never composed anything more literary than an obituary for
+the Western Advocate of Sister Jane Malinda Sprague, who was born in
+Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1816, removed with her parents at
+a tender age to New Sardis, Washington County, Ohio, where, etc., etc.
+If he wanted to extract a word he would do it, and never even offer to
+give the author gas. But I know just how it hurts. I know or can imagine
+how the gifted poet that penned the deathless lines I have quoted must
+have walked the floor in an agony until every word and syllable was
+just to suit him, and so, though I feel sure he meant to write
+"Sabbath-school," I don't dare change it.
+
+To most persons one word seems about as good as another, Sunday or
+Sabbath, but when there are young people about the house you learn to be
+careful how you talk before them. Now, I would not go so far as to say
+that "Sunday" is what you might call exactly rowdy, but er... but...
+er... Let me illustrate. If a man says, "It's a beautiful Sunday
+morning," like enough he has on red-and-green stockings, baggy
+knickerbockers, a violet-and-purple sweater, a cap shaped like a
+milk-roll, and is smoking a pipe. He very likely carries a bagful of
+golf-sticks, or is pumping up his bicycle. But if a man says, "This
+beautiful Sabbath morn," you know for a certainty that he wears a
+long-tailed black coat, a boiled shirt, and a white tie. He is bald from
+his forehead upward, his upper lip is shaven, and his views and those
+of the late Robert Reed on the disgusting habit of using tobacco are
+absolutely at one.
+
+Not alone a regard for respectability, but the hankering to be
+historically accurate, urges me to make the change I speak of.
+Originally the institution was a Sunday-school, and not very respectable
+either. I should hate to think any of my dear young friends were in the
+habit of attending such a low-class affair as Robert Raikes conducted.
+Sunday-schools were for "little ragamuffins," as he called them, who
+worked such long hours on week-days (from five in the morning until nine
+at night) that if they were to learn the common branches at all it had
+to be on a Sunday. A ragged school was bad enough in itself, putting
+foolish notions into the heads of gutter-brats and making them
+discontented and unhappy in their lot; but to teach a ragged school
+on Sunday was a little too much. So Robert Raikes encountered the most
+violent opposition, although from that beginning dates popular education
+in England.
+
+To be able to read is no Longer a sign that Pa can afford to do without
+the young ones' wages on a Saturday night, and can even pay for
+their schooling. It is no longer a mark of wealth or even of hard-won
+privilege, but the common fate of all; to know the three R's, and Sunday
+is not now set apart for secular instruction. So good and wholesome an
+institution as the Sunday-school was not permitted to perish, but was
+changed to suit the environment. It is now become the Sabbath-school for
+the study of the Bible, a Christian recrudescence of the synagogue.
+For some eighteen centuries it was supposed that a regularly ordained
+minister should have exclusive charge of this work. At rare intervals
+nowadays a clergyman may be found to maintain that because a man has
+been to college and to the theological seminary, and has made the study
+of the Scriptures his life-work (moved to that decision after careful
+self-examination) that therefore he is better fitted to that ministry
+than Miss Susie Goldrick, who teaches a class in Sabbath-school very
+acceptably. Miss Goldrick is in the second year in the High School, and
+last Friday afternoon read a composition on English Literatoor, in which
+she spoke in terms of high praise of John Bunion, the well-known author
+of "Progress and Poverty." Miss Goldrick is very conscientious,
+and always keeps her thumbnail against the questions printed on the
+lesson-leaf, so as not to ask twice, "What did the disciples then do?"
+
+It were a grave error to suppose that no secular learning is acquired in
+the modern Sabbath-school. I remember once, when quite young, speaking
+to my teacher, in the interval between the regular class work and the
+closing exercises, about peacocks. I had read of them, but had never
+seen one. What did they look like? She said a peacock was something like
+a butterfly. I have always remembered that, and when I did finally see
+a peacock, I was interested to note the essential accuracy of the
+description.
+
+Also, one day a new lady taught our class, Miss Evans having gone up to
+Marion to spend a Sunday with her brother, who kept a stove store there,
+and this new lady borrowed two flower vases from off the pulpit and a
+piece of string from Turkey-egg McLaughlin to explain to us boys how the
+earth went around the sun. We had too much manners to tell her that we
+knew that years and years ago when we were in Miss Humphreys's room. I
+don't remember what the earth going around the sun had to do with the
+lesson for the day, which was about Samuel anointing David's head with
+oil--did I ever tell you how I anointed my own head with coal oil?--but
+I do remember that she broke both the vases and cut her finger, and had
+to keep sucking it the rest of the time, because she didn't want to get
+her handkerchief all bloodied up. It was a kind of fancy handkerchief,
+made of thin stuff trimmed with lace--no good.
+
+The Sabbath-school may be said to be divided into three courses, namely,
+the preparatory or infant-class, the collegiate or Sabbath-school
+proper, and the post-graduate or Mr. Parker's Bible-class.
+
+What can a mere babe of three or four years learn in Sabbath-school?
+sneers the critic. Not much, I grant you, of justification by Faith, or
+Effectual Calling; but certain elementary precepts can be impressed
+upon the mind while it is still in a plastic condition that never can
+be wholly obliterated, come what may in after life. Prime among these
+elementary precepts is this: "Always bring a penny."
+
+Some one has said, "Give me the first seven years of a child's life
+and I care not who has the remainder." I cannot endorse this without
+reserve; but I maintain as a demonstrated fact: "Bring up a child to
+contribute a copper cent, and when he is old he will not depart from
+it." It was recently my high privilege to attend a summer gathering
+of representative religious people in the largest auditorium in this
+country. Sometimes under that far-spreading roof ten thousand souls were
+assembled and met together. This fact could be guessed at with tolerable
+accuracy from the known seating capacity, but the interesting thing was
+that it could be predicated with mathematical certainty that exactly ten
+thousand people were present, because the offertory footed up
+exactly one hundred dollars. What an encouragement to these faithful
+infant-class teachers that have labored unremittingly, instant in season
+and out of season, saying over and over again with infinite patience,
+"Always bring a penny," to know that their labor has not been in vain,
+and that as a people we have made it the rule of our lives always to
+bring a penny--and no more.
+
+I have often tried to think what a Sabbath-school must be like in
+California, where they have no pennies. It seems hardly possible that
+the institution can exist under such a patent disability, and yet it
+does. Do they work it on the same principle as the post-office in
+that far-off land where you 'cannot buy one postal card because the
+postmaster cannot make change, but must buy five postal cards or
+two two-cent stamps and a postal? In other words, does a nickel, the
+smallest extant coin, serve for five persons for one Sunday or one
+person for five Sundays? I have often wondered about this.
+
+Subsidiary instruction in the preparatory course consists of sitting
+right still and being nice, keeping your fingers out of Johnny Pym's
+eye, because it hurts him and makes him cry, not grabbing in the basket
+when it goes by, even though it does have pennies in it, coaching in a
+repertory of songs like: "Beautiful, Beautiful Little Hands," "You in
+Your Little Corner and I in Mine," "The Consecrated Cross-Eyed Bear,"
+"Pass Around the Wash-Rag"--the grown folks call that "Pass Along the
+Watchword" and stories about David and Goliath, Samson and the three
+hundred foxes with fire tied to their tails, Moses in the bulrushes, the
+infant Samuel, Hagar in the wilderness, and so forth. The clergy have
+often objected that these stories, being told at the same period of life
+with those about Santa Claus, "One time there was a little boy and he
+had a dog named Rover," the little girl that had hair as black as ebony,
+skin as white as snow, and cheeks as red as blood, because her Ma,
+who was a queen by occupation, happened to cut her finger with a
+black-handled knife along about New Year's--the clergy, I say, have
+often objected that all these matters, being brought to a child's
+attention at the same period in its life, are likely to be regarded in
+after years as of equal evidential value. I am not much of a hand to
+argue, myself, but I should like to have one of these carping critics
+meet my friend, Mrs. Sarah M. Boggs, who has taught the infant-class
+since 1867, having missed only two Sundays in that time, once, in 1879,
+when it stormed so that nobody in town was out, and once, last winter a
+year ago, when she slipped off the back porch and hurt her knee. I can
+just see Sister Boggs laying down the law to anybody that finds fault
+with the infant-class, let him be preacher or who. Why the very idea!
+Do you mean to say, sir--I guess Sister Boggs can straighten him out all
+right.
+
+No less faithful is Mr. Parker, the leading lawyer of the town, who
+conducts the Bible-class. I believe one morning he didn't get there
+until after the last bell was done ringing, but otherwise his record of
+attendance compares favorably with Sister Boggs's. Both teachers agree
+to ignore the stated lesson for the day, but whereas Sister Boggs leads
+her flock through the flowery meads of narration, Mr. Parker and his
+class have camped out by preference for the last forty years in the
+arid wilderness of Romans and Hebrews and Corinthians First and Second,
+flinging the plentiful dornicks of "Paul says this" and "Paul says that"
+at each other's heads in friendly strife. Mr. Parker's class is also
+very assiduous in its attendance upon the Young People's meetings,
+seemingly holding the dogma, "Once a young person always a young
+person." The prevailing style of hairdressing among the members is to
+grow the locks long on the left side of the head, and to bring the thin
+layer across to the right, pasted down very carefully with a sort of
+peeled onion effect.
+
+There is a whole lot of them, and they jower away at each other all
+through the time between the opening and the closing exercises, having
+the liveliest kind of a time getting over about two verses of the Bible
+and the whole ground of speculative theology.
+
+Immeasurably more impermanent in method and personnel is the regular
+collegiate department, the Sabbath-school proper. In the early days,
+away back when sugar was sixteen cents a pound, the thing to do was
+to learn Scripture verses by heart. If you were a rude, rough boy who
+didn't exactly love the Sunday-school as much as the hymn made you say
+you did, but still one who had rather sing it than stir up a muss, you
+hunted for the shortest verses you could find and said them off. From
+four to eight was considered a full day's work. But if you were a boy
+who put on an apron and helped your Ma with the dishes, a boy who always
+wiped your feet before you came in, a boy that never got kept in at
+school, a boy that cried pretty easy, a nice, pale boy, with bulging
+blue eyes, you came to Sabbath-school and disgorged verses like
+buck-shot out of a bag. The four-to-eight-verse boys sat and listened,
+and improved their minds. There was generally one other boy like you
+in the class, and it was nip-and-tuck between you which should get the
+prize, until finally you came one Sunday, all bloated up with 238 verses
+in your craw, and he quit discouraged. The prize was yours. It was a
+beautiful little Bible with a brass clasp; it had two tiny silk strings
+of an old-gold color for bookmarks, and gilt edges all around that made
+the leaves stick together at first. It was printed in diamond type, so
+small it made your ears ring when you tried to read it.
+
+Other faculties than that of memory were called into action in those
+days by problems like these: "Who was the meekest man? Who was the
+strongest man? Who was the father of Zebedee's children? Who had the
+iron bedstead, and whose thumbs and great-toes were cut off?" To set a
+child to find these things in the Bible without a concordance seems
+to us as futile as setting him to hunt a needle in a haystack. But our
+fathers were not so foolish as we like to think them; they didn't care
+two pins if we never discovered who had the iron bedstead, but they
+knew that, leafing over the book, we should light upon treasure where
+we sought it not, kernels of the sweetest meat in the hardest shells,
+stories of enthralling interest where we least expected them, but, most
+of all, and best of all, texts that long afterward in time of trouble
+should come to us, as it were the voice of one that also had eaten the
+bread of affliction, calling to us across the chasm of the centuries
+and saying: "O, tarry thou the Lord's leisure: be strong and He shall
+comfort thine heart."
+
+In the higher classes, that still were not high enough to rank with Mr.
+Parker's, the exegetical powers were stimulated in this wise: "'And they
+sung a hymn and went out.' Now what do you understand by that?" We told
+what we "understood," and what we "held," and what we "believed," and
+laid traps for the teacher and tried to corner him with irrelevant
+texts wrenched from their context. He had to be an able man and a
+nimble-witted man. Mere piety might shine in the prayer-meeting, in the
+class-room, at the quarterly love-feast, but not in the Sabbath-school.
+I remember once when Brother Butler was away they set John Snyder to
+teach us. John didn't know any more than the law allowed, and we made
+him feel it, until finally, badgered beyond endurance, he blurted out
+that all he knew was that he was a sinner saved by grace. Maybe he
+couldn't just tell where to find this, that, and t' other thing in the
+Bible, but he could turn right to the place where it said that though
+a body's sins were as scarlet, yet they should be white as snow. It was
+regarded as a very poor sort of an excuse then, but thinking it over
+here lately, it has seemed to me that maybe John had the root of the
+matter in him after all.
+
+The comparative scarcity of polemical athletes and the relative plenty
+of the Miss Susie Goldrick kind of teachers, apparently called into
+being the Berean Lesson Leaf system, with its Bible cut up into
+lady-bites of ten or twelve verses, its Golden Topics, Golden Texts, its
+apt alliterations, like:
+
+  S  AMUEL
+     EEKS
+     AUL
+     ORROWING
+
+and its questions prepared in tabloid form, suitable for the most
+enfeebled digestions, see directions printed on inside wrapper. Among
+the many evidences of the degeneracy of the age is the scandalous
+ignorance of our young people regarding the sacred Scriptures, which
+at the very lowest estimate are incontestably the finest English ever
+written. Those whose childhood antedates the lesson leaf are not so
+unfamiliar with that wondrous treasure-house of thought. It is not for
+me to say what has wrought the change. I can only point out that lesson
+leaves, being about the right size for shaving papers, barely last from
+Sunday to Sunday, while that very identical Bible with the blinding type
+that I won years and years ago, by learning verses, is with me still.
+Yes, and as I often wonder to discover, some of those very verses that I
+gobbled down as heedlessly as any ostrich are with me still.
+
+Remain to be considered the opening and closing exercises, principally
+devoted, I remember, to learning new tunes and singing old ones out of
+books with pretty titles, like "Golden Censer," "Silver Spray," "Pearl
+and Gold," "Sparkling Dewdrops," and "Sabbath Chimes." I wasn't going to
+tell it, but I might as well, I suppose. I can remember as far back as
+"Musical Leaves." There must be quite a lot of people scattered about
+the country who sung out of that when they were little. I wish a few of
+us old codgers might get together some time and with many a hummed and
+prefatory, "Do, mi, Sol, do; Sol, mi... mi-i-i-i," finally manage to
+quaver out the sweet old tunes we learned when we were little tads, each
+with a penny in his fat, warm hand: "Shall we Gather at the River?"
+and "Work, for the Night is Coming"; and what was the name of that one
+about:
+
+   "The waves shall come and the rolling thunder shock
+    Shall beat upon the house that is founded on a rock,
+    And it never shall fall, never, never, never."
+
+What the proper English tune is to "I think when I read that sweet story
+of old" I cannot tell, but I am sure it can never melt my heart as that
+one in the old "Musical Leaves." with its twistful repetitions of the
+last line:
+
+    "I should like to have been with Him then,
+     I should like to have been with Him then,
+     When He took little children like lambs to His fold,
+     I should like to have been with Him then."
+
+I fear we could not sing that without breaking down. As we recall it, we
+draw an inward fluttering breath, something grips our throats and makes
+them ache, our eyes blur, and a tear slips down upon the cheek, not of
+sorrow--God knows not all of sorrow--but if we had it all to live over
+again, how differently we--oh, well, it's too late now, but still.
+
+Leafing over my little girl's "Arabian Nights" the other day, when I
+came to the story of "The Enchanted Horse," I found myself humming,
+"Land ahead! Its fruits are waving." My father used to lead the singing
+in Sabbath-school, and when he was sol-fa-ing that tune to learn it, I
+was devouring that story, and was just about at the picture where Prince
+What's-his-name rises up into the air on the Enchanted Horse, with his
+true love hanging on behind, and all the multitude below holding their
+turbans on as they look up and exclaim: "Well, if that don't beat the
+Dutch!"
+
+And another tune still excites in me the sullen resentment that it
+did when I first heard it. In those days, just as a fellow got to the
+exciting part in "Frank at Don Carlos's Ranch," or whatever the book
+was, there was kindling to be split, or an armful of wood to be brought
+in, or a pitcher of water from the well, or "run over to Mrs. Boggs's
+and ask her if she won't please lend me her fluting-iron," or "run down
+to Galbraith's and get me a spool of white thread, Number 60, and hurry
+right back, because then I want you to go over to Serepta Downey's
+and take her that polonaise pattern she asked me to cut out for her,"
+or--there was always something on hand. So what should one of these
+composers do--I don't know what ever possessed the man--but go write a
+Sabbath-school song with this chorus:
+
+    "There'll be something to do,
+     There'll be something to do,
+     There'll be something for children to do:
+     On that bright shining shore,
+     Where there's joy evermore,
+     There'll be something for children to do."
+
+I suppose he thought that would be an inducement!
+
+One of these days America is going to be the musical center of the
+world. When that day is fully come, and men sit down to write about it,
+I hope they won't forget to give due credit to the reed organ, Stephen
+Foster, and the Sabbath-school. The reed organ had a lot to do with
+musical culture. It is much decried now by people that prefer a piano
+that hasn't been tuned for four years; but the reed organ will come into
+its own some day, don't forget. Without it the Sabbath-school could not
+have been. Anybody that would have a piano in a Sabbath-school ought to
+be prosecuted.
+
+When music, heavenly maid, was just coming to after that awful lick the
+Puritans hit her, the first sign of returning life was that people began
+to tire of the ten or a dozen tunes to which our great-grandfathers
+droned and snuffled all their hymns. In those days there was raised up a
+man named Stephen Foster, who "heard in his soul the music of wonderful
+melodies," and we have been singing them ever since--"'Way Down upon
+the Swanee Ribber," and "Old Kentucky Home," and "Nellie Gray," and the
+rest. Then Bradbury and Philip Phillips and many more of them began to
+write exactly the same kind of tunes for sacred words. They were just
+the thing for the Sabbath-school, but they were more, much more.
+
+You know that when a fellow gets so he can shave himself without cutting
+half his lip off, when it takes him half an hour to get the part in his
+hair to suit him, when he gets in the way of shining his shoes and has
+a pretty taste in neckties, he doesn't want to bawl the air of a piece
+like the old stick-in-the-muds up in the Amen corner or in Mr. Parker's
+class. He wants to sing bass. Air is too high for him anyhow unless he
+sings it with a hog noise. Oh, you get out! You do, too, know what a
+"hog noise" is. You want to let on you've always lived in town. Likely
+story if you never heard anybody in the hog-pasture with a basket of
+nubbins calling, "Peeg! Peeg! Boo-eel Booee!" A man's voice breaks into
+falsetto on the "Boo-ee!" Well, anyhow, such a young man as I am telling
+you of would be ashamed to sing with a hog noise. He wants to sing bass.
+Now the regular hymn-tunes change the bass as often as they change the
+soprano, and if you go fumbling about for the note, by the time you get
+it right it is wrong, because the tune has gone on and left you. The
+Sabbath-school songs had the young man Absalom distinctly in view. They
+made the bass the same all through the measure, and all the changes were
+strictly on the do, sol and fa basis. As far as the other notes in the
+scale were concerned, the young man Absalom need not bother his head
+with them. With do, sol and fa he could sing through the whole book from
+cover to cover as good as anybody.
+
+When people find out what fun it is to sing by note, it is only a step
+to the "Messiah," two blocks up and turn to the right, as you might say.
+After that, it is only going ahead till you get to "Vogner." Yes, and
+many's the day you called the hogs. Don't tell me.
+
+Once a month on Sunday evenings there were Sabbath-school concerts.
+The young ones sat in the front seats, ten or twelve in a pew. "Now,
+children," said the superintendent, "I want you all to sing loud
+and show the folks how nice you can sing. Page 65. Sixty-fi'th page,
+'Scatter Seeds of Kindness.' Now, all sing out now." We licked our
+thumbs and scuffled through the book till we found the place. We scowled
+at it, and stuck out our mouths at it, and shrieked at it, and bawled
+at it, and did the very best we knew to give an imitation of two hundred
+little pigs all grabbed by the hind leg at once. That was what made
+folks call it a concert.
+
+There were addresses to the dear children by persons that teetered on
+their toes and dimpled their cheeks in dried-apple smiles as us. Some
+complain that they do not know how to talk to children and keep them
+interested. Oh, pshaw! Simple as A B C. Once you learn the trick you can
+talk to the little folks for an hour and a half on "Banking as Related
+to National Finance," and keep them on the quiver of excitement. Ask
+questions. And to be sure that they give the right answers (a very
+important thing) remember this: When you wish them to say "Yes, sir,"
+end your question with "Don't they?" or "isn't it?" When you wish them
+to say "No, sir," end your question with "Do they?" or "Is it?" When
+you wish them to choose between two answers, mention first the one they
+mustn't take, then pause, look archly at them, and mention the one they
+must take. Thus:
+
+Q. --Now, dear children, I wonder if you can tell me where the sun
+rises. In the north, doesn't it?
+
+A. --Yes, sir.
+
+Q. --Yes, you are right. In the north. And because it rises in the north
+every afternoon at three, how do we walk about? On our feet, do we?
+
+A. --No, sir.
+
+Q. --No. Of course not. Then how is it we do walk about? On our ears
+or--(now the look) on our noses?
+
+A. --On our noses.
+
+This method, if carefully and systematically employed, was never known
+to fail. It is called the Socratic method.
+
+The most interesting feature of the monthly Sabbath-school concert is
+universally conceded to be the treasurer's report. So much on hand at
+the last meeting, so much contributed by each class during the month
+last past, so much expended, so much left on hand at present. We used
+to sit and listen to it with slack jaws and staring eyes. Money, money,
+oceans of money! Thirty-eight cents and seventy-six cents and a dollar
+four cents! My!
+
+The librarian's report was nowhere. It was a bully library, too, and
+contained the "Through by Daylight" Series, and the "Ragged Dick"
+Series, and the "Tattered Tom" Series, and the "Frank on the Gunboat"
+Series, and the "Frank the Young Naturalist" Series, and the "Elm
+Island" Series--Did you ever read "The Ark of Elm Island", and "Giant
+Ben of Elm Island"? You didn't? Ah, you missed it--and the "B. O. W. C."
+Series--and say! there was a book in that library--oo-oo! "Cast up
+by the Sea," all about wreckers, and false lights on the shore, and
+adventures in Central Africa, and there's a nigger queen that wants to
+marry him, and he don't want to because he loves a girl in England--I
+think that's kind of soft--and he kills about a million of them trying
+to get away. You want to get that book. Don't let them give you "Patient
+Henry" or "Charlie Watson, the Drunkard's Little Son." They're about
+boys that take sick and die--no good.
+
+It was a bully library, but the report wasn't interesting. Major
+Humphreys's always was. He was the treasurer because he worked in the
+bank. He came from the Western Reserve, and said "cut" when he meant
+coat, and "hahnt" when he meant heart. I can shut my eyes and hear
+him read his report now: "Infant-class, Mrs. Sarah M. Boggs, one
+dolla thutty-eight cents; Miss Dan'ells's class, fawty-six cents; Miss
+Goldrick's class, twenty-faw cents; Mr. Pahnker's class, ninety-three
+cents; Miss Rut's class, naw repawt."
+
+Poor old Miss Root! There was hardly ever any report from her class.
+Often she hadn't a penny to give, and perhaps the other old ladies, who
+found the keenest possible delight in doing what they called "running up
+the references," had no more, for they were relics of an age when women
+weren't supposed to have money to fling right and left in the foolish
+way that women will if they're not looked after--shoes for the baby, and
+a new calico dress every two or three years or so.
+
+Yes, it is rather interesting for a change now and then to hear these
+folks go on about what a terrible thing the Sabbath-school is, and how
+it does more harm than good. They get really excited about it, and storm
+around as if they expected folks to take them seriously. They know, just
+as well as we do, that this wouldn't be any kind of a country at all if
+we couldn't look back and remember the Sabbath-school, or if we couldn't
+fix up the children Sunday afternoons, and find their lesson leaves for
+them, and hunt up a penny to give to the poor heathen, and hear them say
+the Golden Text before they go, and tell them to be nice. Papa and mamma
+watch them from the window till they turn the corner, and then go back
+to the Sunday paper with a secure sort of feeling. They won't learn
+anything they oughtn't to at the Sabbath-school.
+
+
+
+
+THE REVOLVING YEAR
+
+
+   "'It snows!' cries the schoolboy, 'Hurrah!'
+     And his shout is heard through parlor and hall."
+
+
+     MCGUFFEY's THIRD READER.
+
+
+(Well, maybe it was the Second Reader. And if it was the Fourth, what
+difference does it make? And, furthermore, who 's doing this thing, you
+or me?)
+
+
+Had it not been that never in my life have I ever heard anybody say
+either "It snows!" or "Hurrah!" it is improbable that I should have
+remembered the first line of a poem describing the effect produced upon
+different kinds of people by the sight of the first snowstorm of winter.
+Had it not been for the plucky (not to say heroic) effort to rhyme
+"hall" with "hurrah" I should not have remembered the second, and still
+another line of it, depicting the emotions of a poor widow with a large
+family and a small woodpile, is burned into my memory only by reason
+of the shocking language it contains, the more shocking in that it was
+deliberately put forth to be read by innocent-minded children. Poor
+Carrie Rinehart! When she stood up to read that, she got as red as a
+beet, and I believed her when she told me afterward that she thought she
+would sink right through that floor. Of course, some had to snicker, but
+the most of us, I am thankful to say, were a credit to our bringing up,
+and never let on we heard it. All the same it was a terrible thing to
+have to speak right out loud before everybody. If any of the boys (let
+alone the girls), had said that because he felt like saying it, he would
+have been sent in to the principal, and that night his daddy would have
+given him another licking.
+
+Even now I cannot bring myself to write the line without toning it down.
+
+"'It snows!' cries the widow. 'Oh G--d!'"
+
+At the beginning of winter, I will not deny, that the schoolboy might
+have shouted: "It's snowin'! Hooee!" when he saw the first snow flakes
+sifting down, and realized that the Old Woman was picking her geese.
+A change is always exciting, and winter brings many joyous sports
+and pastimes, skating, and snowballing, and sliding down hill,
+and--er--er--I said skating didn't I? and--er--Oh, yes, sleigh-riding,
+and--er--Well, I guess that's about all.
+
+Skating, now, that's fine. I know a boy who, when the red ball goes up
+in the street-cars, sneaks under his coat a pair of wooden-soled skates,
+with runners that curl up over the toes like the stems of capital
+letters in the Spencerian copy-book. He is ashamed of the old-fashioned
+things, which went out of date long and long before my day, but he says
+that they are better than the hockeys. Well, you take a pair of such
+skates and strap them on tightly until you can't tell by the feel which
+is feet and which is wooden soles, and you glide out upon the ice above
+the dam for, say about four hours, with the wind from the northwest and
+the temperature about nine below, and I tell you it is something grand.
+And if you run over a stick that is frozen in the ice, or somebody bumps
+into you, or your feet slide out from under you, and you strike on your
+ear and part of your face on the ice, and go about ten feet ah, it's
+great! Simply great. And it's nice too, to skate into an air-hole into
+water about up to your neck, and have the whole mob around you whooping
+and "hollering" and slapping their legs with glee, because they know it
+isn't deep enough to drown you, and you look so comical trying to claw
+out. And when you do get out, it takes such along time to get your
+skates of, and you feel so kind of chilly like, and when you get home
+your clothes are frozen stiff on you--Oh, who would willingly miss such
+sport?
+
+And sleigh-riding! Me for sleigh-riding! You take a nice, sharp day in
+winter, when the sky is as blue as can be because all the moisture is
+frozen out of the air, a day when the snow under the sleigh runners
+whines and creaks, as if thousands of tiny wineglasses were being
+crushed by them, and the bells go jing-jing, jing-jing on the frosty
+air which just about takes the hide off your face; when you hold your
+mittens up to your ears and then have to take them down to slap yourself
+across the chest to get the blood agoing in your fingers; when you kick
+your feet together and dumbly wonder why it is your toes don't click
+like marbles; when the cold creeps up under your knitted pulse-warmers,
+and in at every possible little leak until it has soaked into your very
+bones; when you snuggle down under the lap-robe where it is warm as
+toast (day before yesterday's toast) and try to pull your shoulders up
+over your head; when a little drop hangs on the end of your nose,
+which has ceased to feel like a living, human nose, and now resembles
+something whittled to a point; when you hold your breath as long as
+you can, and your jaw waggles as if you were playing chin-chopper with
+it--Ah, that's the sport of kings! And after you have got as cold as you
+possibly can get, and simply cannot stand it a minute longer, you ride
+and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride.
+Once in a while you turn out for another sleigh, and nearly upset in the
+process, and you can see that in all points its occupants are exactly as
+you are, just as happy and contented. There aren't any dogs to run out
+and bark at you. Old Maje and Tige, and even little Bounce and Guess
+are snoozing behind the kitchen stove. All there is is just jing-jing,
+jing-jing, jing-jing, not a bird-cry or a sound of living creature.
+jing-jing, jing-jing..... Well, yes, kind o' monotonous, but still....
+You pass a house, and a woman comes out to scrape off a plate to the
+chickens standing on one foot in a corner where the sun can get at them,
+and the wind cannot. She scrapes slowly, and looks at you as much as to
+say: "I wonder who's sick. Must be somebody going for the doctor, day
+like this." And then she shudders: "B-b-b-oo-oo-oo!" and runs back into
+the house and slams the door hard. You snuffle and look at the chimney
+that has thick white smoke coming out of it, and consider that very
+likely a nice, warm fire is making all that smoke, and you snuffle
+again, and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride
+and 'ride. And about an hour and a half after you have given up all
+hopes, and are getting resigned to your fate, you turn off the big road
+and up the lane to the house where you are going on your pleasure-trip,
+and you hop out as nimble as a sack of potatoes, and hobble into the
+house, and don't say how-de-do or anything, but just make right for the
+stove. The people all squall out: "Why, ain't you 'most froze?" and
+if you answer, "Yes sum," it's as much as ever. Generally you can't do
+anything but just stand and snuffle and look as if you hadn't a friend
+on earth. And about the time you get so that some spots are pretty warm,
+and other spots aren't as cold as they were, why then you wrap up, and
+go home again with the same experience, only more so. Fine! fine!
+
+It's nice, too, when there's a whole crowd out together in a wagon-bed
+with straw in it. There's something so cozy in straw! And the tin horns
+you blow in each other's ear, and the songs you sing: "Jingle bells,
+jingle bells, jingle all the way," and "Waw-unneeta! Waw-unneeta, ay-usk
+thy sowl if we shud part," and "Nearer, my God, to Thee," and "Johnny
+Shmoker," and that variation of "John Brown's Body," where every time
+you sing over the verse you leave off one more word, and somebody always
+forgets, and you laugh fit to kill yourself, and just have a grand time.
+And maybe you take a whole lot of canned cove oysters with you, and when
+you get out to Makemson's, or wherever it is you're going, Mrs. Makemson
+puts the kettle on and makes a stew, cooking the oysters till they are
+thoroughly done. And she makes coffee, the kind you can't tell from tea
+by the looks, and have to try twice before you can tell by the taste.
+Ah! winter brings many joyous sports and pastimes. And you get back home
+along about half-past two, and the fire's out, and the folks are in bed,
+and you have to be at the store to open up at seven--Laws! I wish it was
+so I could go sleigh-riding once more in the long winter evenings,
+when the pitcher in the spare bedroom bursts, and makes a noise like a
+cannon.
+
+And sliding down hill, I like that.
+
+What? Coasting? Never heard of it. If it's anything like sliding down
+hill, it's all right. For a joke you can take a barrel-stave and hold on
+to that and slide down. It goes like a scared rabbit, but that isn't
+so much the point as that it slews around and spills you into a drift.
+Sleds are lower and narrower than they used to be, and they also lack
+the artistic adornment of a pink, or a blue, or a black horse, painted
+with the same stencil but in different colors, and named "Dexter," or
+"Rarus," or "Goldsmith Maid." These are good names, but nobody ever
+called his sled by a name. Boggs's hill, back of the lady's house that
+taught the infant-class in Sunday-school, was a good hill. It had a
+creek at the bottom, and a fine, long ride, eight or ten feet, on the
+ice. But Dangler's hill was the boss. It was the one we all made up our
+minds we would ride down some day when the snow was just right. We'd
+go over there' and look up to the brow of the hill and say: "Gee! But
+wouldn't a fellow come down like sixty, though?"
+
+"Betchy!"
+
+We'd look up again, and somebody would say: "Aw, come on. Less go over
+to Boggs's hill."
+
+"Thought you was goin' down Dangler's."
+
+"Yes, I know, but all the other fellows is over to Boggs's."
+
+"A-ah, ye're afraid."
+
+"Ain't either."
+
+"Y' are teether."
+
+"I dare you."
+
+"Oh, well now--"
+
+"I double dare you."
+
+"All right. I will if you will. You go first."
+
+"Nah, you go first. The fellow that's dared has got to go first. Ain't
+that so, Chuck? Ain't that so, Monkey?"
+
+"I'll go down if you will, on'y you gotta go first."
+
+"Er--er--Who all 's over at Boggs's hill?"
+
+"Oh, the whole crowd of 'em, Turkey-egg McLaughlin, and Ducky
+Harshberger, and--Oh, I don' know who all."
+
+"Tell you what less do. Less wait till it gets all covered with ice, and
+all slick and smooth. Then less come over and go down."
+
+"Say, won't she go like sixty then! Jeemses Rivers! Come on, I'll beat
+you to the corner."
+
+That was the closest we ever came to going down Dangler's hill. Railroad
+hill wasn't so bad, over there by the soap-factory, because they didn't
+run trains all the time, and you stood a good chance of missing being
+run over by the engine, but Dangler's Well, now, I want to tell you
+Dangler's was an awful steep hill, and a long one, and when you think
+that it was so steep nobody ever pretended to drive up it even in the
+summer-time, and you slide down the hill and think that, once you got to
+going.
+
+Fun's fun, I know, but nobody wants to go home with half his scalp
+hanging over one eye, and dripping all over the back porch. Because,
+you know, a fellow's mother gets crosser about blood on wood-work than
+anything else. Scrubbing doesn't do the least bit of good; it has to be
+planed off, or else painted.
+
+Let me see, now. Have I missed anything? I'll count 'em off on my
+fingers. There's skating, and sleigh-riding, and sliding down hill, and
+Oh, yes. Snowballing and making snow-men. Nobody makes a snow-man but
+once, and nobody makes a snow-house after it has caved in on him once
+and like to killed him. And as for snowballing--Look here. Do you know
+what's the nicest thing about winter? Get your feet on a hot stove,
+and have the lamp over your left shoulder, and a pan of apples, and
+something exciting to read, like "Frank Among the Indians." Eh, how
+about it? In other words, the best thing about winter is when you can
+forget that it is winter.
+
+The excitement that prompts "It snows!" and "Hurrah!" mighty soon peters
+out, and along about the latter part of February, when you go to the
+window and see that it is snowing again--again? Consarn the luck!--you
+and the poor widow with the large family and the small woodpile are
+absolutely at one.
+
+You do get so sick and tired of winter. School lets out at four o'clock,
+and it's almost dark then. There's no time for play, for there's all
+that wood and kindling to get in, and Pap's awful cranky when he hops
+out of bed these frosty mornings to light the fire, and finds you've
+been skimpy with the kindling. And the pump freezes up, and you've got
+to shovel snow off the walks and out in the back-yard so Tilly can hang
+up the clothes when she comes to do the washing. And your mother is just
+as particular about your neck being clean as she is in summer when
+the water doesn't make you feel so shivery. And there's the bottle
+of goose-grease always handy, and the red flannel to pin around your
+throat, and your feet in the bucket of hot water before you go to
+bed--Aw, put 'em right in. Yes, I know it's hot. That's what going to
+make you well. In with 'em. Aw, child, it isn't going to scald you. Go
+on now. The water'll be stone-cold in a minute. "Oh, I don't like winter
+for a cent. Kitchoo! There, I've gone and caught fresh cold.
+
+"I wish it would hurry up and come spring.
+
+    "When the days begin to lengthen,
+       The cold begins to strengthen."
+
+Now, you know that doesn't stand to reason. Every day the sun inches a
+little higher in the heavens. His rays strike us more directly and for a
+longer time each day. But it's the cantankerous fact, and it simply has
+to stand to reason. That's the answer, and the sum has to be figured out
+somehow in accordance with it. Like one time, when I was about sixteen
+years old, and in the possession of positive and definite information
+about the way the earth went around the sun and all, I was arguing with
+one of these old codgers that think they know it all, one of these
+men that think it is so smart to tell you: "Sonny, when you get older,
+you'll know more 'n you do now--I hope." Well, he was trying to tell me
+that the day lengthened at one end before it did at the other. I did my
+best to dispel the foolish notion from his mind, and explained to him
+how it simply could not be, but no, sir! he stood me down. Finally,
+since pure reasoning was wasted on him, I took the almanac off the nail
+it hung by, and--I bedog my riggin's if the old skidama link wasn't
+right after all. Sundown keeps coming a minute later every day, while,
+for quite a while there, sun-up sticks at the same old time, 7:30 A.M.
+Did you ever hear of anything so foolish?
+
+"Very early, while it is yet dark," the alarm clock of old Dame Nature
+begins to buzz. It may snow and blow, and winter may seem to have
+settled in in earnest, but deep down in the earth, the root-tips, where
+lie the brains of vegetables, are gaping and stretching, and ho-humming,
+and wishing they could snooze a little longer. When it thaws in the
+afternoon and freezes up at sunset as tight as bricks, they tell me
+that out in the sugar-camp there are great doings. I don't know about
+it myself, but I have heard tell of boring a hole in the maple-tree,
+and sticking in a spout, and setting a bucket to catch the drip, and
+collecting the sap, and boiling down, and sugaring off. I have heard
+tell of taffy-pullings, and how Joe Hendricks stuck a whole gob of
+maple-wax in Sally Miller's hair, and how she got even with him by
+rubbing his face with soot. It is only hearsay with me, but I'll tell
+you what I have done: I have eaten real maple sugar, and nearly pulled
+out every tooth I had in my head with maple-wax, and I have even gone so
+far as to have maple syrup on pancakes. It's good, too. The maple syrup
+came on the table in a sort of a glass flagon with a metal lid to it,
+and it was considered the height of bad manners to lick off the last
+drop of syrup that hung on the nose of the flagon. And yet it must not
+be allowed to drip on the table-cloth. It is a pity we can't get any
+more maple syrup nowadays, but I don't feel so bad about the loss of it,
+as I do to think what awful liars people can be, declaring on the label
+that 'deed and double, 'pon their word and honor, it is pure, genuine,
+unadulterated maple syrup, when they know just as well as they know
+anything that it is only store-sugar boiled up with maple chips.
+
+Along about the same time, the boys come home with a ring of mud around
+their mouths, and exhaling spicy breaths like those which blow o'er
+Ceylon's isle in the hymn-book. They bear a bundle of roots, whose
+thick, pink hide mother whittles off with the butcher-knife and sets
+to steep. Put away the store tea and coffee. To-night as we drink the
+reddish aromatic brew we return, not only to our own young days, but
+to the young days of the nation when our folks moved to the West in a
+covered wagon; when grandpap, only a little boy then, about as big as
+Charley there, got down the rifle and killed the bear that had climbed
+into the hog-pen; when they found old Cherry out in the timber with her
+calf between her legs, and two wolves lying where she had horned them
+to death--we return to-night to the high, heroic days of old, when our
+forefathers conquered the wilderness and our foremothers reared the
+families that peopled it. This cup of sassafras to-night in their loving
+memory! Earth, rest easy on their moldering bones!
+
+Some there be that still take stock in the groundhog. I don't believe
+he knows anything about it. And I believe that any animal that had
+the sense that he is reputed to have would not have remained a mere
+ground-hog all these years. At least not in this country. Anyhow, it's
+a long ways ahead, six weeks is, especially at the time when you do wish
+so fervently that it would come spring. We keep on shoveling coal in the
+furnace, and carrying out ashes, and longing and crying: "Oh, for pity's
+sakes! When is this going to stop?" And then, one morning, we awaken
+with a start Wha--what? Sh! Keep still, can't you? There is a more
+canorous and horn-like quality to the crowing of Gildersleeve's rooster,
+and his hens chant cheerily as they kick the litter about. But it wasn't
+these cheerful sounds that wakened us with a start. There! Hear that?
+Hear it? Two or three long-drawn, reedy notes, and an awkward boggle at
+a trill, but oh, how sweet! How sweet! It is the song-sparrow, blessed
+bird! It won't be long now; it won't be long.
+
+The snow fort in the back-yard still sulks there black and dirty. "I'll
+go when I get good and ready, and not before," it seems to say. Other
+places the thinner snow has departed and left behind it mud that seizes
+upon your overshoe with an "Oh, what's your rush?" In the middle of
+the road it lies as smooth as pancake-batter. A load of building stone
+stalls, and people gather on the sidewalk to tell the teamster quietly
+and unostentatiously that he ought to have had more sense than to pile
+it on like that with the roads the way they are. Every time the cruel
+whip comes down and the horses dance under it, the women peering out of
+the front windows wince, and cluck "Tchk! Ain't it terrible? He ought
+to be arrested." This way and that the team turns and tugs, but all in
+vain. Somebody puts on his rubber boots and wades out to help, fearing
+not the muddy spokes. Yo hee! Yo hee! No use. He talks it over with the
+teamster. You can hear him say: "Well, suit yourself. If you want to
+stay here all night."
+
+And then the women exult: "Goody! Goody! Serves him right. Now he has to
+take off some of the stone. Lazy man's load!"
+
+The mother of children flies to the back-door when school lets out.
+"Don't you come in here with all that mud!" she squalls excitedly. "Look
+at you! A peck o' dirt on each foot. Right in my nice clean kitchen that
+I just scrubbed. Go 'long now and clean your shoes. Go 'long, I tell
+you. Slave and slave for you and that's all the thanks I get. You'd
+keep the place looking like a hogpen, if I wasn't at you all the time. I
+never saw such young ones since the day I was made. Never. Whoopin' and
+hollerin' and trackin' in and out. It's enough to drive a body crazy."
+
+(Don't you care. It's just her talk. If it isn't one thing it's another,
+cleaning your shoes, or combing your hair, or brushing your clothes, or
+using your handkerchief, or shutting the door softly, or holding your
+spoon with your fingers and not in your fist, or keeping your finger out
+of your glass when you drink--something the whole blessed time. Forever
+and eternally picking at a fellow about something. And saying the same
+thing over and over so many times. That's the worst of it!)
+
+Pap and mother read over the seed catalogues, all about "warm, light
+soils," and "hardy annuals," and "sow in drills four inches apart." It
+kind of hurries things along when you do that. In the south window of
+the kitchen is a box full of black dirt in which will you look out what
+you're doing? Little more and you'd have upset it. There are tomato
+seeds in that, I'll have you know. Oh, yes, government seeds. Somebody
+sends 'em, I don't know who. Congressman, I guess, whoever he is. I
+don't pretend to keep track of 'em. And say. When was this watered last?
+There it is. Unless I stand over you every minute--My land! If there's
+anything done about this house I've got to do it.
+
+Between the days when it can't make up its mind whether to snow or to
+rain, and tries to do both at once, comes a day when it is warm enough
+(almost) to go without an overcoat. The Sunday following you can hardly
+hear what the preacher has to say for the whooping and barking. The
+choir members have cough drops in their cheeks when they stand up to
+sing, and everybody stops in at the drug store with: "Say, Doc, what's
+good for a cold?"
+
+Eggs have come down. Yesterday they were nine for a quarter; to-day
+they're ten. Gildersleeve wants a dollar for a setting of eggs, but
+he'll let you have the same number of eggs for thirty cents if you'll
+wait till he can run a needle into each one. So afraid you'll raise
+chickens of your own.
+
+Excited groups gather about rude circles scratched in the mud, and there
+is talk of "pureys," and "reals," and "aggies," and "commies," and "fen
+dubs!" There is a rich click about the bulging pockets of the boys, and
+every so often in school time something drops on the floor and rolls
+noisily across the room. When Miss Daniels asks: "Who did that?" the
+boys all look so astonished. Who did what, pray tell? And when she picks
+up a marble and inquires: "Whose is this?" nobody can possibly imagine
+whose it might be, least of all the boy whose most highly-prized shooter
+it is. At this season of the year, too, there is much serious talk as
+to the exceeding sinfulness of "playing for keeps." The little boys, in
+whose thumbs lingers the weakness of the arboreal ape, their ancestor,
+and who "poke" their marbles, drink in eagerly the doctrine that when
+you win a marble you ought to give it back, but the hard-eyed fellows,
+who can plunk it every time, sit there and let it go in one ear and out
+the other, there being a hole drilled through expressly for the purpose.
+What? Give up the rewards of skill? Ah, g'wan!
+
+The girls, even to those who have begun to turn their hair up under, are
+turning the rope and dismally chanting: "All in together, pigs in the
+meadow, nineteen twenty, leave the rope empty," or whatever the rune is.
+
+It won't be long now. It won't be long.
+
+  "For lo; the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the
+   flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds
+   is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the
+   fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines, with the
+   tender grape give a good smell.  Arise my love, my fair one
+   and come away."
+
+
+                  THE SONG OF SOLOMON.
+
+Out in the woods the leaves that rustled so bravely when we shuffled
+our feet through them last fall are sodden and matted. It is warm in the
+woods, for the sun strikes down through the bare branches, and the cold
+wind is fended off. The fleshy lances of the spring beauty have stabbed
+upward through the mulch, and a tiny cup, delicately veined with pink,
+hangs its head bashfully. Anemones on brown wire stems aspire without
+a leaf, and in moist patches are May pinks, the trailing arbutus of the
+grown-ups. As we carry home a bunch, the heads all lopping every way
+like the heads of strangled babies, we can almost hear behind us in the
+echoing forests a long, heart-broken moan, as of Rachel mourning for
+her children, and will not be comforted because they are not. The wild
+flowers don't look so pretty in the tin cups of water as they did back
+in the woods. There is something cheap and common about them. Throw 'em
+out. The poor plants that planned through all the ages how to attract
+the first smart insects of the season, and trick them into setting
+the seeds for next years' flowers did not reckon that these very means
+whereby they hoped to rear a family would prove their undoing at the
+hands of those who plume themselves a little on their refinement, they
+"are so fond of flowers."
+
+Old Winter hates to give up that he is beaten. It's a funny thing, but
+when you hear a person sing, "Good-a-by, Summer, good-a-by, good-a-by,"
+you always feel kind of sad and sorry. It's going, the time of year when
+you can stay out of doors most of the time, when you can go in swimming,
+and the Sunday-school picnic, and the circus, and play base-ball and
+camp out, and there's no school, and everything nice, and watermelons,
+and all like that. Good-by, good-by, and you begin to sniff a little.
+The departure of summer is dignified and even splendid, but the earth
+looks so sordid and draggle-trailed when winter goes, that onions could
+not bring a tear. Old winter likes to tease. Aha! You thought I
+was gone, did you? "Not yet, my child, not yet!" And he sends us
+huckleberry-colored clouds from the northwest, from which snow-flakes
+big as copper cents solemnly waggle down, as if they really expected
+the schoolboy to shout: "It snows! Hurrah!" and makes his shout heard
+through parlor and hall. But they only leave a few dark freckles on the
+garden beds. Alas, yes! There is no light without its shadow, no joy
+without its sorrow tagging after. It isn't all marbles and play in the
+gladsome springtide. Bub has not only to spade up the garden--there is
+some sense in that--but he has to dig up the flower beds, and help his
+mother set out her footy, trifling plants.
+
+The robins have come back, our robins that nest each spring in the old
+seek-no-further. To the boy grunting over the spading-fork presents
+himself Cock Robin. "How about it? Hey? All right? Hey?" he seems
+to ask, cocking his head, and flipping out the curt inquiries
+with tail-jerks. Glad of any excuse to stop work, the boy stands
+statue-still, while Mr. Robin drags from the upturned clods the long,
+elastic fish-worms, and then with a brief "Chip!" flashes out of sight.
+Be right still now. Don't move. Here he comes again, and his wife with
+him. They fly down, he all eager and alert to wait upon her, she whining
+and scolding. She doesn't think it's much of a place for worms. And
+there's that boy yonder. He's up to some devilment or other, she just
+knows. She oughtn't to have come away and left those eggs. They'll get
+cold now, she just knows they will. Anything might happen to them when
+she 's away, and then he 'll be to blame, for he coaxed her. He knows
+she told him she didn't want to come. But he would have it. For half a
+cent she'd go back right now. And, Heavens above! Is he going to be all
+'day picking up a few little worms?
+
+She cannot finish her sentences for her gulps, for he is tamping down
+in her insides the reluctant angleworms that do not want to die, two
+or three writhing in his bill at once, until he looks like Jove's
+eagle with its mouth full of thunderbolts. And all the time he is
+chip-chipping and flirting his tail, and saying: "How's that? All right?
+Hey? Here's another. How's that? All right? Hey? Open now. Like that?
+Here's one. Oh, a beaut! Here's two fat ones? Great? Hey? Here y' go.
+Touch the spot? Hey? More? Sure Mike. Lots of 'em. Wide now. Boss. Hey?
+Wait a second--yes, honey. In a second.... I got him. Here's the kind
+you like. Oh, yes, do. Do take one more. Oh, you better."
+
+"D' ye think I'm made o' rubber?" she snaps at him. "I know I'll have
+indigestion, and you'll be to bla--Mercy land! Them eggs!" and she
+gathers up her skirts and flits. He escorts her gallantly, but returns
+to pick a few for himself, and to cock his head knowingly at the boy,
+as much as to say: "Man of family, by Ned. Or--or soon will be. Oh, yes,
+any minute now, any minute."
+
+And if I remember rightly, he even winks at the boy with a wink whose
+full significance the boy does not learn till many years after when
+it dawns upon him that it meant: "You got to make allowances for 'em.
+Especially at such a time. All upset, you know, and worried. Oh, yes.
+You got to; you got to make allowances for 'em."
+
+Day by day the air grows balmier and softer on the cheek. Out in the
+garden, ranks of yellow-green pikes stand stiffly at "Present.
+Hump!" and rosettes of the same color crumple through the warm soil,
+unconsciously preparing for a soul tragedy. For an evening will come
+when a covered dish will be upon the supper-table, and when the cover is
+taken off, a subtle fragrance will betray, if the sense of sight do not,
+that the chopped-up lettuces and onions are in a marsh of cider vinegar,
+demanding to be eaten. And your big sister will squall out in comic
+distress: "Oh, ma! You are too mean for anything! Why did you have 'em
+tonight? I told you Mr. Dellabaugh was going to call, and you know how I
+love spring onions! Well, I don't care. I'm just going to, anyhow."
+
+Things come with such a rush now, it is hard to tell what happens in
+its proper order. The apple-trees blossom out like pop-corn over the hot
+coals. The Japan quince repeats its farfamed imitation of the Burning
+Bush of Moses; the flowering currants are strung with knobs of vivid
+yellow fringe; the dead grass from the front yard, the sticks and stalks
+and old tomato vines, the bits of rag and the old bones that Guess has
+gnawed upon are burning in the alley, and the tormented smoke is darting
+this way and that, trying to get out from under the wind that seeks to
+flatten it to the ground. All this is spring, and--and yet it isn't. The
+word is not yet spoken that sets us free to live the outdoor life; we
+are yet prisoners and captives of the house.
+
+But, one day in school, the heat that yesterday was nice and cozy
+becomes too dry and baking for endurance. The young ones come in from
+recess red, not with the brilliant glow of winter, but a sort of scalded
+red. They juke their heads forward to escape their collars' moist
+embrace; they reach their hands back of them to pull their clinging
+winter underwear away. They fan themselves with joggerfies, and puff
+out: "Phew!" and look pleadingly at the shut windows. One boy, bolder
+than his fellows, moans with a suffering lament: "Miss Daniels, cain't
+we have the windows open? It's awful hot!" Frightful dangers lurk in
+draughts. Fresh air will kill folks. So, not until the afternoon is the
+prayer answered. Then the outer world, so long excluded, enters once
+more the school-room life. The mellifluous crowing of distant roosters,
+the rhythmic creaking of a thirsty pump, the rumble of a loaded wagon,
+the clinking of hammers at the blacksmith shop, the whistle of No. 3
+away below town, all blend together in the soft spring air into one
+lulling harmony.
+
+Winter's alert activity is gone. Who cares for grades and standings now?
+The girls, that always are so smart, gape lazily, and stare at vacancy
+wishing.... They don't know what they wish, but if He had a lot of
+money, why, then they could help the poor, and all like that, and have a
+new dress every day.
+
+James Sackett--his real name is Jim Bag, but teacher calls him James
+Sackett--has his face set toward: "A farmer sold 16 2-3 bu. wheat for
+66 7-8 c. per bu.; 19 2-9 bu. oats for," etc., etc., but his soul is
+far away in Cummins's woods, where there is a robbers' cave that he, and
+Chuck Higgins, and Bunt Rogers, and Turkey-egg McLaughlin are going
+to dig Saturday afternoons when the chores are done. They are going
+to--Here Miss Daniels should slip up behind him and snap his ear, but
+she, too, is far away in spirit. Her beau is coming after supper to take
+her buggy-riding. She wonders.... She wonders.... Will she have to teach
+again next fall? She wonders....
+
+Wait. Wait but a moment. A subtle change is coming.
+
+The rim of the revolving year has a brighter and a darker half, a joyous
+and a somber half, Autumnal splendors cannot cheer the melancholy that
+we feel when summer goes from us, but when summer comes again the heart
+leaps up in glee to meet it. Wait but a moment now. Wait.
+
+The distant woodland swims in an amethystine haze. A long and fluting
+note, honey-sweet as it were blown upon a bottle, comes to us from far.
+It is the turtle-dove. The blood beats in our ears. Arise, my love, my
+fair one, and come away.
+
+So gentle it can scarce be felt, a waft of air blows over us, the first
+sweet breath of summer. A veil of faint and subtle perfume drifts around
+us. The vines with the tender grape give a good smell. And evermore as
+its enchantment is cast about us we are as once we were when first we
+came beneath its spell; we are by the smokehouse at the old home place;
+we stand in shoes whose copper toes wink and glitter in the sunlight,
+a gingham apron sways in the soft breeze, and on the green, upspringing
+turf dances the shadow of a tasseled cap. Life was all before us then.
+Please God, it is not all behind us now. Please God, our best and wisest
+days are yet to come the days when we shall do the work that is worthy
+of us. Dear one, mother of my children here and Yonder--and Yonder--the
+best and wisest days are yet to come. Arise, my love, my fair one, and
+come away.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWIMMING-HOLE
+
+
+It is agreed by all, I think, that the two happiest periods in a man's
+life are his boyhood and about ten years from now. We are exactly in the
+position described in the hymn:
+
+       "Lo!  On a narrow neck of land
+       'Twixt two unbounded seas we stand,
+        And cast a wishful eye."*
+
+     *[I am told, on good authority, that this last line of the
+     three belongs to another hymn.  As it is just what I want to
+     say, I'm going to let it stand as it is.]
+
+If I remember right, the hymn went to the tune of "Ariel," and I can see
+John Snodgrass, the precentor, sneaking a furtive C from his pitch-pipe,
+finding E flat and then sol, and standing up to lead the singing,
+paddling the air gently with: Down, left, sing. Well, no matter about
+that now. What I am trying to get at, is that we have all a lost Eden
+in the past and a Paradise Regained in the future. 'Twixt two unbounded
+seas of happiness we stand on the narrow and arid sand-spit of the
+present and cast a wishful eye. In hot weather particularly the wishful
+eye, when directed toward the lost Eden of boyhood, lights on and
+lingers near the Old Swimming-hole.
+
+I suppose boys do grow up into a reasonable enjoyment of their faculties
+in big seaside cities and on inland farms where there is no accessible
+body of water larger than a wash-tub, but I prefer to believe that the
+majority of our adult male population in youth went in swimming in the
+river up above the dam, where the big sycamore spread out its roots
+a-purpose for them to climb out on without muddying their feet. Some, I
+suppose, went in at the Copperas Banks below town, where the current had
+dug a hole that was "over head and hands," but that was pretty far and
+almost too handy for the boys from across the tracks.
+
+The wash-tub fellows will have to be left out of it entirely. It was an
+inferior, low-grade Eden they had anyhow, and if they lost it, why, they
+'re not out very much that I can see. And I rather pity the boys that
+lived by the sea. They had a good time in their way, I suppose,
+with sailboats and things, but the ocean is a poor excuse for a
+swimming-hole. They say salt-water is easier to swim in; kind of bears
+you up more. Maybe so, but I never could see it; and even so, if it
+does, that slight advantage is more than made up for by the manifold
+disadvantages entailed. First place, there's the tide to figure on. If
+it was high tide last Wednesday at half-past ten in the morning, what
+time will it be high tide today? A boy can't always go when he wants to,
+and it is no fun to trudge away down to the beach only to find half a
+mile of soft, gawmy mud between him and the water. And he can't go in
+wherever it is deep enough and nobody lives near. People own the beach
+away out under water, and where he is allowed to go in may be a perfect
+submarine jungle of eel-grass or bottomed with millions of razor-edged
+barnacles that rip the soles of his feet into bleeding rags. Then,
+too, when one swims, more or less water gets into one's nose and mouth.
+River-water may not be exactly what a fastidious person would choose
+to drink habitually, but there is this in its favor as compared with
+sea-water: it will stay down after it is swallowed; also, it doesn't gum
+up your hair; also, if you want to take a cake of soap with you, all you
+have to look out for is that you don't lose the soap. Nobody tries to
+use toilet soap in sea-water more than once.
+
+And surf-bathing! If there is a bigger swindle than surf-bathing, the
+United States Postal authorities haven't heard of it yet. It is all very
+well for the women. They can hang on to the ropes and squeal at the big
+waves and have a perfectly lovely time. Some of the really daring ones
+crouch down till they actually get their shoulder-blades wet. You
+have to see that for yourself to believe it, but it is as true as I
+am sitting here. They do so--some of them. But good land! There's no
+swimming in surf-bathing, no fun for a man. The water is all bouncing up
+and down. One second it is over head and hands, and the next second it
+is about to your knees, with a malicious undertow tickling your feet and
+tugging at your ankles; and growling: "Aw, you think you're some, don't
+you? Yes. Well, for half a cent wouldn't take you out and drown you."
+And I don't like the looks of that boat patrolling up and down between
+the ropes and the raft. It is too suggestive, too like the skeleton at
+the banquet, too blunt a reminder that maybe what the undertow growls is
+not all a bluff.
+
+Another drawback to the ocean as a swimming-hole is that the distances
+are all wrong. If you want to go to the other side of the "crick"
+you must take a steamboat. There is no such thing as bundling up your
+clothes and holding them out of water with one hand while you swim with
+the other, perhaps dropping your knife or necktie in transit. I have
+never been on the other side of the "crick" even on a steamboat, but
+I am pretty sure that there are no yellow-hammers' nests over there or
+watermelon patches. There were above the dam. At the seaside they give
+you as an objective point a raft, anchored at what seems only a little
+distance from where it gets deep enough to swim in, but which turns out
+to be a mighty far ways when the water bounces so. When you get there,
+blowing like a quarter-horse and weighing nine tons as you lift yourself
+out, there is nothing to do but let your feet hang over while you get
+rested enough to swim back. It wasn't like that above the dam.
+
+I tell you the ocean is altogether too big. Some profess to admire it
+on that account, but it is my belief that they do it to be in style.
+I admit that on a bright, blowy day, when you can sit and watch the
+shining sails far out on the horizon's rim, it does look right nice,
+but I account for it in this way: it puts you in mind of some of these
+expensive oil paintings, and that makes you think it is kind of high
+class. And another thing: It recalls the picture in the joggerfy that
+proved the earth was round because the hull of a ship disappears before
+the sails, as it would if the ship was going over a hill. You sweep your
+eye along where the sky and water meet, and it seems you can note the
+curvature of the earth. Maybe it is that, and maybe it is all in your
+own eye. I am not saying.
+
+There are good points, too, about the sea on a clear night when the moon
+is full; or when there is no moon, and the phosphorescence in the water
+shows, as if mermaids' children were playing with blue-tipped matches. I
+like to see it when a gale is blowing, and the white caps race. Yes, and
+when it is a flat calm, with here and there a tiny cat's-paw crinkling
+the water into gray-green crepe. And also when--but there! it is no use
+cataloguing all kinds of weather and all hours of the day and night.
+What I don't approve of in the ocean is its everlasting bigness. It is
+so discouraging. It makes a body seem so no-account and insignificant.
+You come away feeling meaner than a sheep-killing dog. "Oh, what's the
+use?" you say to yourself. "What's the use of my breaking my neck to do
+anything or be anybody? Before I was born--before History began--before
+any foot of being that could be called a man trod these sands, the waves
+beat thus the pulse of time. When I am gone--when all that man has made,
+that seems so firm and everlasting, shall have crumbled into the earth,
+whence it sprang, this wave, so momentary and so eternal, shall still
+surge up the slanting beach, and trail its lacy mantle in retreat.... O
+spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go hence, and
+be no more seen."
+
+And that's no way for a man to feel. He ought to be confident and sure
+of himself. If he hasn't yet done all that he laid out to do, he should
+feel that it is in him to do it, and that he will before the time comes
+for him to go, and that when it is done it shall be orth while.
+
+It is the ocean's everlasting bigness that makes it so cold to swim in.
+At the seaside bathing pavilions they have a blackboard whereon they
+chalk up "70" or "72" or whatever they think folks will like. They never
+say in so many words that a man went down into the water and held a
+thermometer in it long enough to get the true temperature, but they
+lead you to believe it. All I have to say is that they must have very
+optimistic thermometers. I just wish some of these poor little seashore
+boys could have a chance to try the Old Swimming-hole up above the dam.
+Certainly along about early going-barefoot time the water is a little
+cool, but you take it in the middle of August--ah, I tell you! When you
+come out of the water then you don't have to run up and down to get your
+blood in circulation or pile the warm sand on yourself or hunt for the
+steam-room. Only thing is, if you stay in all day, as you want to, it
+thins your blood, and you get the "fever 'n' ager." But you can stay in
+as long as you want to, that 's the point, without your lips turning the
+color of a chicken's gizzard.
+
+And there's this about the Old Swimming-hole, or there was in my day:
+There were no women and girls fussing around aid squalling: "Now, you
+stop splashin' water on me! Quit it now! Quee-yut!" I don't think t
+looks right for women folks to have anything to do with water in large
+quantities. On a sail-boat, now, they are the very--but perhaps we had
+better not go into that. At a picnic, indeed, trey used to take off
+their shoes and stockings and paddle their feet in the water, but that
+was as much as ever they did. They never thought of going in swimming.
+Even at the seashore, now when Woman is so emancipated, they go bathing
+not swimming. I don't like to see a woman swim any more than I like to
+see a woman smoke a cigar. And for the same reason. It is more fun
+than she is entitled to. A woman's place is home minding the baby, and
+cooking the meals. Nothing would do her but she had to be born a woman,
+she had the same liberty of choice that we men had. Very well, I say,
+let her take the consequencies.
+
+It is only natural, then, that she should refuse to let her boys go
+swimming. She pays off her grudge that way. Just because she can't go
+herself she is bound the they shan't either. She says they will get
+drowned, but we know about that. It is only an excuse to keep them from
+having a little fun. She has to say something. They won't get drowned.
+Why, the idea! They haven't the least intention of any such thing.
+
+"Well, but Robbie, supposing you couldn't help yourself?"
+
+"How couldn't help myself?"
+
+"Why, get the cramps. Suppose you got the cramps, then what?"
+
+"Aw, pshaw! Cramps nothin'! They hain't no sich of a thing. And, anyhow,
+if I did get 'em, wouldn't jist kick 'em right out. This way."
+
+"Now, Robbie, you know you did have a terrible cramp in your foot just
+only the other night. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Aw, that! That ain't nothin'. That ain't the cramps that drownds
+people. Didn't I tell you wouldn't fist kick it right out? That's what
+they all do when they git the cramps. But they don't nobody git 'em now
+no more."
+
+"I don't want you to go in the water and get drowned. You know you can't
+swim."
+
+This is too much. Oh, this is rank injustice! Worse yet, it is bad
+logic.
+
+"How 'm I ever goin' to learn if you don't let me go to learn?"
+
+"Well, you can't go, and that's the end of it."
+
+Isn't that just like a woman? Perfectly unreasonable! Dear! dear!
+
+"Now, Ma, listen here. S'posin' we was all goin' some place on a
+steamboat, me and you and Pa and the baby and all of us, and--"
+
+"That won't ever happen, I guess."
+
+"CAN'T YOU LET ME TELL YOU? And s'posin' the boat was to sink, and I
+could swim and save you from drown--"
+
+"You're not going swimming, and that's all there is about it."
+
+"Other boys' mas lets them go. I don't see why I can't go."
+
+No answer.
+
+"Ma, won't you let me go? I won't get drowned, hope to die if I do. Ma,
+won't you let me go? Ma! Ma-a!--Maw-ah!"
+
+"Stop yelling at me that way. Good land! Do you think I'm deaf?"
+
+"Won't you let me go? Please, won't you let--"
+
+"No, I won't. I told you I wouldn't, and I mean it. You might as well
+make up your mind to stay at home, for you're--not--going. Hush up now.
+This instant, sir! Robbie, do you hear me? Stop crying. Great baby!
+wouldn't be ashamed to cry that way, as big as you are!"
+
+Mean old Ma! Guess she'd cry too'f she could see the other kids that
+waited for him to go and ask her--if she could see them moving off,
+tired of waiting. They're 'most up to Lincoln Avenue.
+
+"Oooooooooooo-hoo--hoo--hoo--hoohoooooooooo-ah! I wanna gow-ooooo."
+
+"Did you hoe that corn your father told you to?"
+
+"Oooooooooooo-hoo-hoo-hoo-oooooooo! I wanna gow-ooooooo."
+
+"Robbie! Did you hoe that corn?"
+
+The last boy, the one with the stone-bruise on his heel, limps around
+the corner. They have all the fun. His ma won't let him go barefoot
+because it spreads his feet.
+
+"Robbie! Answer me."
+
+"Mam?"
+
+"Did you hoe that corn your father told you to?"
+
+"Yes mam."
+
+"All of it? Did you hoe all of it?"
+
+"Prett' near all of it." Well begun is half done. One hill is a good
+beginning, and half done is pretty nearly all.
+
+"Go and finish it."
+
+"I will if you'll let me go swimmin'."
+
+It flashes upon him that even now by running he can catch up with the
+other fellows. He can finishing the hoeing when he gets back.
+
+"You'll do it anyhow, and you're not going swimming. Now, that's the end
+of it. You march out to that garden this minute, or I'll take a stick to
+you. And don't let me hear another whimper out of you. Robbie! Come back
+here and shut that door properly. I shall tell your father how you have
+acted. Wouldn't be ashamed--I'd be ashamed to show temper that way."
+
+It says for children to obey their parents, but if more boys minded
+their mothers there would be fewer able to swim. While I shrink
+with horror from even seeming to encourage dropping the hoe when the
+sewing-machine gets to going good, by its thunderous spinning throwing
+up an impervious wall of sound to conceal retreat into the back alley,
+across the street, up the alley back of Alexander's, and so on up
+to Fountain Avenue in time to catch up with the gang, still I regard
+swimming as an exercise of the extremest value in the development of the
+growing boy. It builds up every muscle. It is particularly beneficial
+to the lungs. To have a good pair of lungs is the same thing as having
+a good constitution. It is nice to have a healthy boy, and it is nice to
+have an obedient boy, but if one must choose which he will have--that's
+a very difficult question. I think it should be left to the casuists.
+Nevertheless, now is the boy's only chance to grow. He will have
+abundant opportunities to learn obedience.
+
+In the last analysis there are two ways of acquiring the art of
+swimming, the sudden way and the slow way. I have never personally known
+anybody that learned in the sudden way, but I have heard enough about it
+to describe it. It it's the quickest known method. One day the boy its
+among the gibbering white monkeys at the river's edge, content to splash
+in the water that comes but half way to his crouching knees. The next
+day he swims with the big boys as bold as any of them. In the meantime
+his daddy has taken him out in a boat, out where it is deep--Oh! Ain't
+it deep there?--and thrown him overboard. The boat is kept far enough
+away to be out of the boy's reach and yet near enough to be right there
+in case anything happens. (I like that "in case anything happens." It
+sounds so cheerful.) It being what Aristotle defines as "a ground-hog
+case," the boy learns to swim immediately. He has to.
+
+It seems reasonable that he should. But still and all, I don't just
+fancy it. Once when a badly scared man grabbed me by the arms in deep
+water I had the fear of drowning take hold of my soul, and it isn't a
+nice feeling at all. Somehow when I hear folks praising up this method
+of teaching a child to swim, I seem to hear the little fellow's screams
+that he doesn't want to be thrown into the water. I can see him clinging
+to his father for protection, and finding that heart hard and unpitying.
+I can see his fingernails whiten with his clutch on anything that gives
+a hand-hold. His father strips off his grip, at first with boisterous
+laughter, and then with hot anger at the little fool. He calls him a
+cry-baby, and slaps his mouth for him, to stop his noise. The little
+body sprawls in the air and strikes with a loud splash, and the child's
+gargling cry is strangled by the water whitened by his mad clawings. I
+can see his head come up, his eyes bulging, and his face distorted with
+the awful fear that is ours by the inheritance of ages. He will sink and
+come up again, not three times, but a hundred times. Eventually he will
+win safe to shore, panting and trembling, his little heart knocking
+against his ribs, it is true, but lord of the water from that time
+forth. It is a very fine method, yes... but... well, if it was my boy I
+had just as lief he tarried with the little white monkeys at the river's
+edge. Let him squeal and crouch and splash and learn how to half drown
+the other fellow by shooting water at him with the heel of his hand.
+Let him alone. He will be watching the others swim. He will edge out a
+little farther and kick up his heels while with his hands he holds on
+the ground. He will edge out a little farther still and try to keep his
+feet on the bottom and swim with his hands. Be patient in his attempt to
+combine the two methods of travel. He is not the only one that fears to
+be one thing or the other, and regards a mixture of both as the safest
+way to get along.
+
+No, I cannot say that I wholly approve of the sudden method of learning
+to swim. It has the advantange of lumping all the scares of a lifetime
+into one and having it over with, and yet I don't suppose the scare of
+being thrown into the water by one's daddy is really greater than being
+ducked in mid-stream by some hulking, cackle-voiced big boy. It seems
+greater though, I suppose, because a fellow cannot very well relieve
+his feelings by throwing stones at his daddy and bawling: "Goldarn you
+anyhow, you--you big stuff! I'll get hunk with you, now you see if I
+don't!" Here would be just the place to make the little boy tie knots
+in the big boy's shirt-sleeves, soak the knots in water, and pound them
+between stones. But that is kind of common, I think. They told about it
+at the swimming-hole above the dam, but nobody was mean enough to do it.
+Maybe they did it down at the Copperas Banks below town. The boys from
+across the tracks went there, a race apart, whom we feared, and who
+hated us, if the legend chalked up on the fences "DAMB THE PRODESTANCE,"
+meant anything.
+
+Under the slow method of learning to swim one had leisure to observe the
+different fashions--dog-fashion and cow-fashion, steamboat-fashion,
+and such. The little kids and beginners swam dog-fashion, which on that
+account was considered contemptible. The fellow was sneered at that
+screwed up his face as if in a cloud of suffocating dust, and fought the
+water with noise and fury, putting forth enough energy to carry him a
+mile, and actually going about two feet if he were headed down stream.
+Scientific men say that the use of the limbs, first on one side and then
+on the other, is instinctive to all creatures of the monkey tribe. That
+is the way they do in an emergency, since that is the way to scramble up
+among the tree limbs. I know that it is the easiest way to swim, and
+the least effective. When the arms are extended together in the breast
+stroke, it is as much superior to dogfashion as man is superior to the
+ape. I have always thought that to swim thus with steady and deliberate
+arm action, the water parting at the chin and rising just to the root of
+the underlip, was the most dignified and manly attitude the human being
+could put himself in. Cow-fashion was a burlesque of this, and the
+swimmer reared out of water with each stroke, creating tidal waves. It
+was thought to be vastly comic. Steamboat-fashion was where a fellow
+swam on his back, keeping his body up by a gentle, secret paddling
+motion with his hands, while with his feet he lashed the water into
+foam, like some river stern-wheeler. If he could cry: "Hoo! hoo! hoo!"
+in hoarse falsetto to mimic the whistle, it was an added charm.
+
+It was a red-headed boy from across the tracks on his good behavior at
+the swimming-hole above the dam that I first saw swim hand-over-hand, or
+"sailor-fashion" as we called it, rightly or wrongly, I know not. I can
+hear now the crisp, staccato little smack his hand gave the water as he
+reached forward.
+
+It has ever since been my envy and despair. It is so knowing, so
+"sporty." I class it with being able to wear a pink-barred shirt front
+with a diamond-cluster pin in it; with having my clothes so nobby and
+stylish that one thread more of modishness would be beyond the human
+power to endure; with being genuinely fond of horseracing; with being
+a first-class poker player, I mean a really first-class one; with being
+able to swallow a drink of whisky as if I liked it instead of having
+to choke it down with a shudder; with knowing truly great men like
+Fitzsimmons, or whoever it is that is great now, so as to be able to
+slap him on the back and say: "Why, hello! Bob, old boy, how are you?"
+with being delighted with the company of actors, instead of finding them
+as thin as tissue-paper--what wouldn't I give if I could be like that?
+My life has been a sad one. But I might find some comfort in it yet if
+I coin only get that natty little spat on the water when I lunge forward
+swimming overhand.
+
+We used to think the Old Swimming-hole was a bully place, but I know
+better now. The sycamore leaned well out over the water, and there was
+a trapeze on the branch that grew parallel with the shore, but the water
+near it was never deep enough to dive into. And that is another occasion
+of humiliation. I can't dive worth a cent. When I go down to the slip
+behind Fulton Market--they sell fish at Fulton Market; just follow your
+nose and you can't miss it--and see the rows of little white monkeys
+doing nothing but diving, I realize that the Old Swimming-hole with all
+its beauties, its green leafiness, its clean, long grass to lie upon
+while drying in the sun, or to pull out and bite off the tender,
+chrome-yellow ends, was but a provincial, country-fake affair. There
+were no watermelon rinds there, no broken berry-baskets, no orange peel,
+no nothing. All the fish in it were just common live ones. And there was
+no diving. But at the real, proper city swimming-place all the little
+white monkeys can dive. Each is gibbering and shrieking: "Hey, Chim-meel
+Chimmee! Hey, Chim-mee! Chimmee! Hey, CHIM-MEEEE! How'ss t 'iss?"
+crossing himself and tipping over head first, coming up so as to "lay
+his hair," giving a shaking snort to clear his nose and mouth of water,
+regaining the ladder with three overhand strokes (every one of them
+with that natty little spat that I can't get), climbing up to the
+string-piece and running for Chimmy, red-eyed, shivering, and dripping,
+to ask: "How wass Cat?" And I can't dive for a cent--that is, I can't
+dive from a great elevation. I set my teeth and vow I just will dive
+from ten feet above the water, and every time it gets down to a poor,
+picayune dive off the lowest round of the ladder. I blame my early
+education for it. I was taught to be careful about pitching myself head
+foremost on rocks and broken bottles. I used to think it was a fine
+swimming-hole, and that I was having a grand, good time, well worth any
+ordinary licking; but now that I have traveled around and seen things, I
+know that it was a poor, provincial, country-jake affair after all.
+The first time I swam across and back without "letting down" it was
+certainly an immense place, but when I went back there a year ago last
+summer--why, pshaw! it wasn't anything at all. It was a dry summer,
+I admit, but not as dry as all that. A poor, pitiful, provincial,
+two-for-a cent--and yet... and yet... And yet I sat there after I had
+dressed, and mused upon the former things--the life that was, but never
+could be again; the Eden before whose gate was a flaming sword turning
+every way. The night was still and moonless. The Milky Way slanted
+across the dark dome above. It was far from the street lamps that
+greened among the leafy maples in the silent streets. Gushes of air
+stirred the fluttering sycamore, and whispered in the tall larches that
+marched down the boundary line of the Blymire property. The last group
+of swimmers had turned into the road from around the clump of willows at
+the end of the pasture. The boy that is always the last one had nearly
+caught up with the others, for the velvet pat of his bare feet in the
+deep dust was slowing. Their eager chatter softened and softened, until
+it blended with the sounds of night that verge on silence, the fall of a
+leaf, the up-springing of a trodden tuft of grass, the sleepy twitter
+of a dreaming bird, and the shrilling of locusts patiently turning a
+creaking wheel. I heard the thump of hoofs and buggy wheels booming
+in the covered bridge, and a shudder came upon me that was not all the
+chill of falling dew. Again I was a little boy, standing in a circle of
+my fellows and staring at something pale, stretched out upon the ground.
+Ben Snyder had dived for It and found It and brought It up and laid It
+on the long, clean grass. Some one had said we ought to get a barrel and
+roll It on the barrel, but there was none there. And then some one
+said: "No, it was against the law to touch anything like That before
+the Coroner came." So, though we wished that something might be done,
+we were glad the law stepped in and stringently forbade us touching what
+our flesh crept to think of touching. No longer existed for us the boy
+that had the spy-glass and the "Swiss Family Robinson." Something cold
+and terrible had taken his place, something that could not see, and yet
+looked upward with unwinking eyes. The gloom deepened, and the dew began
+to fall. We could hear the boy that ran for the doctor whimpering a long
+way off. We wanted to go home, and yet we dared not. Something might get
+us. And we could not leave That alone in the dark with It's eyes wide
+open. The locusts in the grass turned and turned their creaking wheel,
+and the wind whispered in the tall larches. We heard the thump of hoofs
+and wheels booming in the covered bridge. It was the doctor, come too
+late. He put his head down to It's bosom (the cold trickled down our
+backs), and then he said it was too late. If we had known enough, he
+said, we might have saved him. We slunk away. It was very lonesome. We
+kept together, and spoke low. We stopped to hearken for a moment outside
+the house where the boy had lived that had the spy-glass and the "Swiss
+Family Robinson." Some one had told his mother. And then, with a great
+and terrible fear within us, we ran each to his own home, swiftly and
+silently. We knew now why mother did not want us to go swimming.
+
+But the next afternoon when Chuck Grove whistled in our back alley and
+held up two fingers, I dropped the hoe and went with him. It was bright
+daylight then, and that is different from the night.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIREMEN'S TOURNAMENT
+
+It isn't only Christmas that comes but once a year and when it comes it
+brings good cheer; it's any festival that is worth a hill of beans, High
+School Commencement, Fourth of July, Sunday-school excursion, Election'
+bonfire, Thanksgiving Day (a nice day and one whereon you can eat roast
+turkey till you can't choke down another bite, and pumpkin-pie, and
+cranberry sauce. Tell you!)--but about the best in the whole lot, and
+something the city folks don't have, is Firemen's Tournament. That comes
+once a year, generally about the time for putting up tomatoes.
+
+The first that most of us know about it is when we see the bills up,
+telling how much excursion rates will be to our town from Ostrander
+and Mt. Victory, and Wapatomica, and New Berlin, and Foster's,
+and Caledonia, and Mechanicsburg--all the towns around on both the
+railroads. But before that there was the Citizens' Committee, and then
+the Executive Committee, and the Finance Committee, and the Committee
+on Press and Publicity, and Printing and Prizes, and Decorations and
+Badges, and Music, and Reception to Firemen, and Reception to Guests--as
+many committees as there are nails in the fence from your house to mine.
+And these committees come around and tell you that we want to show the
+folks that we've got public spirit in our town, some spunk, some git-up
+to us. We want our town to contrast favorably with Caledonia where they
+had the Tournament last year. We want to put it all over the Caledonia
+people (they think they're so smart), and we can do it, too, if
+everybody will take a-holt and help. Well, we want all we can get. We
+expect a pretty generous offer from you, for one. Man that has as pretty
+and tasty got-up store as you have, and does the business that you do,
+ought to show his appreciation of the town and try to help along....
+Oh, anything you're a mind to give. 'Most anything comes in handy for
+prizes. But what we principally need is cash, ready cash. You see,
+there's a good deal of expense attached to an enterprise of this
+character. So many little things you wouldn't think of, that you've
+just got to have. But laws! you'll make it all back and more, too. We
+cackleate there'll be, at the very least, ten thousand people in town
+that day, and it's just naturally bound to be that some of them will do
+their trading.
+
+Thank you very much, that's very handsome of you. Good day. (What are
+you growling about? Lucky to get five cents out of that man.)
+
+The Ladies' Aid of Center Street M. E., has secured the store-room
+recently vacated by Rouse & Meyers, and is going to serve a dinner that
+day for the benefit of the Carpet Fund of their church and about time,
+too, I say. I like to broke my neck there a week ago last Sunday night,
+when our minister was away. Caught my foot in a hole in the carpet, and
+a little more and wouldn't have gone headlong. So, it's: "Why, I've been
+meaning for more than a year, to call on you, Mrs.--. Mrs.--(Let me
+look at my list. Oh, yes) Mrs. Cooper, but we've had so much sickness
+at home--you know my husband's father is staying with us at present,
+and he's been in very poor health all winter--and when it hasn't been
+sickness, it's been company. You know how it is. And it seemed as if
+I--just--could--not make out to get up your way. What a pretty little
+place you have! So cozy! I was just saying to Mrs. Thorpe here, it was
+so seldom you saw a really pretty residence in this part of town. We
+think that up on the hill, where we reside, you know, is about the
+handsomest.... Yes, there are a great many wealthy people live up
+there. The Quackenbushes are enormously wealthy. I was saying to Mrs.
+Quackenbush only the other day that I thought the hill people were
+almost too exclusive .... Yes, it is a perfectly lovely day....
+Er--er--We're soliciting for the Firemen's Tournament--well, not for the
+Tournament exactly, but the Ladies' Aid are going to give a dinner
+that day for the Carpet Fund and we thought perhaps you 'd like to help
+along.... Oh, any little thing, a boiled ham or--... Well, we shall want
+some cake, but we'd druther--or, at least, rawther--have something more
+substantial, don't you know, pie or pickles or jelly, don't you know.
+And will you bring it or shall I send Michael with the carriage for
+it?.... Oh, thank you! If you would. It would be so much appreciated.
+So sorry we couldn't make a longer stay, but now that we've found the
+way.... Yes, that's very true. Well, good-afternoon."
+
+The lady of the house watches them as Michael inquires: "Whur next,
+mum?" and bangs the door of the carriage. Then she turns and says to
+herself: "Huh!" Mrs. Thorpe is that instant observing: "Did you notice
+that crayon enlargement she had hanging up? Wouldn't it kill you?" To
+which the other lady responds: "Well, between you and I, Mrs. Thorpe, if
+I couldn't have a real hand-painted picture I wouldn't have nothing at
+all."
+
+The lady of the house bakes a cake. She'll show them a thing or two in
+the cake line. And while it is in the oven what does that little dev--,
+that provoking Freddie, do but see if he can't jump across the kitchen
+in two jumps. Fall? What cake wouldn't fall? Of course it falls. But it
+is too late now to bake another, and if they don't like it, they know
+what they can do. She doesn't know that she's under any obligation to
+them.
+
+Mrs. John Van Meter hears Freddie say off the little speech his mother
+taught him--Oh, you may be sure she'd be there as large as life, taking
+charge of everything, just as if she had been one of the workers,
+when, to my certain knowledge, she hadn't been to one of the committee
+meetings, not a one. I declare I don't know what Mr. Craddock is
+thinking of to let her boss every body around the way she does--and she
+smiles and says: "It's all right. It's just lovely. Tell your mamma Mrs.
+Van Meter is ever and ever so much obliged to her. Isn't he a dear boy?"
+And when he is gone, she says: "What are we ever going to do with
+all this cake? It seems as if everybody has sent cake. And whatever
+possessed that woman to attempt a cake, I--can't imagine. Ts! ts! ts!
+H-well. Oh, put it somewhere. Maybe we can work it off on the country
+people. Mrs. Filkins, your coffee smells PERfectly grand! Perfectly
+grand. Do you think we'll have spoons enough?"
+
+The Tournament prizes are exhibited in the windows of the leading
+furniture emporium at the corner of Main and Center, each with a card
+attached bearing the name of the donor in distinctly legible characters.
+Old man Hagerman has been mowing all the rag-weed and cuckle-burrs along
+the line of march, and the lawns have had an unusual amount of shaving
+and sprinkling. Out near the end of Center Street, the grandstand has
+been going up, tiers of seats rising from each curb line. The street has
+been rolled and sprinkled and scraped until it is in fine condition for
+a running track. Why don't you pick up that pebble and throw it over
+into the lot? Suppose some runner should slip on that stone and fall and
+hurt himself, you'd be to blame.
+
+The day before the Tournament, they hang the banner:
+
+        "WELCOME VOLUNTEER FIREMEN"
+
+from Case's drugstore across to the Furniture Emporium. Along the line
+of march you may see the man of the house up on a step-ladder against
+the front porch, with his hands full of drapery and his mouth full of
+tacks. His wife is backing toward the geranium bed to get a good view,
+cocking her head on one side.
+
+"How 'v vif?" he asks as well as he can for the tacks.
+
+"Little higher. Oh, not so much. Down a little. Whope! that's .... Oh,
+plague take the firemen! Just look at that! Mercy! Mercy!"
+
+The man of the house can't turn his head.
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't have had it happen for I don't know what! Ts! Ts! Ts!
+That lovely silverleaf geranium that Mrs. Pritchard give me a slip of.
+Broke right off! Oh, my! My! My! Do you s'pose it'd grow if I was to
+stick it into the ground just as it is with all them buds on it?"
+
+The man of the house lets one end of the drapery go and empties his
+mouth of tacks into his disengaged hand.
+
+"I don't know. Ow! jabbed right into my gum! But I can tell you this:
+If you think I'm going to stick up on this ladder all morning while you
+carry on about some fool old geranium that you can just as well fuss
+with when I'm gone, why, you're mighty much mistaken."
+
+"Well, you needn't take my head off. I feel awful about that geranium."
+
+"Well, why don't you look where you're going? Is this right?"
+
+"Yes, I told you. I wish now I'd done it myself. I can't ask you to do a
+thing about the house but there's a row raised right away."
+
+People that don't want to go to the trouble of tacking up these alphabet
+flags on the edge of the veranda eaves (it takes fourteen of them to
+spell "WELCOME FIREMEN"), say they think a handsome flag--a really
+handsome one, not one of these twenty-five centers--is as pretty and
+rich looking a decoration as a body can put up.
+
+Tents are raised in the vacant lots along Center Street, and counters
+knocked together for the sale of ice-cold lemonade, lemo, lemo, lemo,
+made in the shade, with a spade, by an old maid, lemo, lemo. Here y' are
+now, gents, gitch nice cool drink, on'y five a glass. There is even the
+hook for the ice-cream candy man to throw the taffy over when he pulls
+it. I like to watch him. It makes me dribble at the mouth to think about
+it.
+
+The man that sells the squawking toys and the rubber balloons on sticks
+is in town. All he can say is: "Fi' cent." He will blow up the balloons
+tomorrow morning. The men with the black-velvet covered shields, all
+stuck full of "souvenirs," are here, and the men with the little canes.
+I guess we'll have a big crowd if it doesn't rain. What does the paper
+say about the weather?
+
+The boys have been playing a new game for some time past, but it is
+only this evening that you notice it. The way of it is this: You take
+an express-wagon--it has to have real wheels: these sawed-out wheels
+are too baby--and you tie a long rope to the tongue and fix loops on the
+rope, so that the boys can put each a loop over his shoulder. (You want
+a good many boys.) And you get big, long, thick pieces of rag and you
+take and tie them so as to make a big, big, long piece, about as long as
+from here to 'way over there. And you lay this in the wagon, kind of in
+folds like. Then you go up to where they water the horses and two of you
+go at the back end of the wagon and the rest put the loops over their
+shoulders, and one boy says, "Are you ready?" and he has a Fourth of
+July pistol and he shoots off a cap. And when you hear that, you run
+like the dickens and the two boys behind the wagon let out the hose (the
+big, long, thick piece of rag) and fix it so it lies about straight on
+the ground. And when you have run as far as the hose will reach, the boy
+with the Fourth of July pistol says: "Twenty-eight and two-fifths,"
+and that's the game. And the kids don't like for big folks to stand and
+watch them, because they always make fun so.
+
+In other towns they have Boys' Companies organized strictly for
+Tournament purposes. There was talk of having one here. Mat. King, the
+assistant chief, was all for having one so that we could compete in what
+he calls "the juveline contests," but it fell through somehow.
+
+
+Along about sun-up you hear the big farm-wagons clattering into town,
+chairs in the wagon bed, and Paw, and Maw, and Mary Elizabeth, and
+Martin Luther, and all the family, clean down to Teedy, the baby. He's
+named after Theodore Roosevelt, and they have the letter home now,
+framed and hanging up over the organ. But for all the wagon is so full,
+there is room for a big basket covered with a red-ended towel. (Seems to
+me I smell fried chicken, don't you?)
+
+I just thought I'dt see if you'd bite. You've formed your notions
+of country people from "The Old Homestead" and these by-gosh-Mirandy
+novels. The real farmers, nowadays, drive into town in double-seated
+carriages with matched bays, curried so that you can see to comb
+your hair in their glossy sides. The single rigs sparkle in the sun,
+conveying young men and young women of such clean-cut, high-bred
+features as to make us wonder. And yet I don't know why we should
+wonder, either. They all come from good old stock. The young fellows
+run a little too strongly to patent-leather shoes and their horses are
+almost too skittish for my liking, but the girls are all right. If their
+clothes set better than you thought they would, why, you must remember
+that they subscribe for the very same fashion magazines that you do, and
+there is such a thing as a mail-order business in this country, even if
+you aren't aware of it.
+
+All the little boys in town are out with their baskets chanting sadly:
+
+          PEANUTS?  FIVE A BAG
+
+You 'll hear that all day long.
+
+But there isn't much going on before the excursion trains come in. Then
+things begin to hop. The grand marshal and his aides gallop through
+the streets as if they were going for the doctor. The trains of ten and
+fifteen coaches pile up in the railroad yard, and the yardmaster nearly
+goes out of his mind. People are so anxious to get out of the cars, in
+which they have been packed and jammed for hours, that they don't mind
+a little thing like being run over by a switching engine. Every platform
+is just one solid chunk of summer hats and babies and red shirts and
+alto horns. They have been nearly five hours coming fifty miles. Stopped
+at every station and sidetracked for all the regular trains. Such a
+time! Lots of fun, though. The fellows got out and pulled flowers, and
+seed cucumbers, and things and threw them at folks. You never saw such
+cut-ups as they are. Pretty good singers, too. Good part of the way,
+they sung "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and "How Can I Bear to Leave
+Thee," nice and slow, you know, a good deal of tenor and not much bass,
+and plenty of these "minor chords." (Yes, I know, some people call them
+"barber-shop chords," but I think "minor" is a nicer name.)
+
+The band played "Hiawatha" eighteen times. One old fellow got on at
+Huntsville, and he says, to Joe Bangs (that's the leader), "Shay," he
+says, "play 'Turkey in er Straw,' won't you? Aw, go on. Play it. Thass
+goof feller. Go on."
+
+Joe, he never heard of the tune. Don't you know it? Goes like this: ...
+No, that ain't it. That's "Gray Eagle." Funny, I can't think how that
+tune starts. Well, no matter. They played an arrangement that had "Old
+Zip Coon" in it.
+
+"Naw," he says, "tha' ain' it 't all. Go on. Play it. Play 'Turkey in
+er Straw.' Ah, ye don't know it. Thass reason. Betch don' know it. Don'
+know 'Turkey in er Straw!' Ho! Caw seff ml-m' sishn. Ho! You--you--you
+ain' no m'sishn. You--you you're zis bluff." Only about half-past eight,
+too. Think of that! So early in the morning. Ah me! That's one of the
+sad features of such an occasion.
+
+If there is anything more magnificent than a firemen's parade, I don't
+know what it is. The varnished woodwork on the apparatus looks as if it
+had just come out of the shop and every bit of bright work glitters fit
+to strike you blind. You take, now, a nice hose-reel painted white and
+striped into panels with a fine red line, every other panel fruits and
+flowers, and every other panel a piece of looking-glass shaped like a
+cut of pie and; I tell you, it looks gay. That's what it does. It looks
+gay. Some of the hook-and-ladder trucks are just one mass of
+golden-rod and hydrangeas, and some of them are all fixed with this
+red-white-and-blue paper rope, sort of chenille effect, or more like a
+feather boa. Everybody has on white cotton gloves, and those entitled to
+carry speaking trumpets have bouquets in the bells of them, salvias, and
+golden-rod, and nasturtiums, and marigolds, and all such.
+
+The Wapatomicas always have a dog up on top of their wagon. First off,
+you would think it didn't help out much, it is such a forlorn looking
+little fice; but this dog, I want you to know, waked up the folks late
+one night, 'way 'long about ten or eleven o'clock, barking at a fire.
+Saved the town, as you might say. And after that, the fire-boys took him
+for a mascot. I guess he didn't belong to anybody before. And another
+wagon has a chair on it, and in that chair the cutest little girl you
+almost eyer saw, hair all frizzed at the ends, and a wide blue sash and
+her white frock starched as stiff as a milk-pail. Everybody says: "Aw,
+ain't she just too sweet?"
+
+The Caledonias have tried to make quite a splurge this year. They walk
+four abreast, with their arms locked, and their white gloves on each
+other's shoulders. Their truck has on it what they call "an allegorical
+figure." There is a kind of a business (looks to me like it is the axle
+and wheels of a toy wagon, stood up on end and covered with white paper
+muslin and a string tied around the middle) that is supposed to be an
+hour-glass. Then there is a scythe covered with cotton batting, and then
+a man in a bath-robe (I saw the figure of the goods when the wind blew
+it open) also covered with white cotton batting. The man has a wig and
+beard of wicking. First, I thought it was Santa Claus, and then I saw
+the scythe and knew it must be old Father Time. The hour-glass puzzled
+me no little though. The man has cotton batting wings. One of them is
+a little wabbly, but what can you expect from Caledonia? They're always
+trying to butt the bull off the bridge. They're jealous of our town. Oh,
+they stooped to all the mean, underhanded tricks you ever heard of to
+get the canning factory to go to their place instead of here. But we
+know a thing or two ourselves. Yes, we got the canning factory, all
+right, all right.
+
+Did you notice how neat and trim our boys looked? None of this flub-dub
+of scarlet shirts with a big white monogram on the breast, or these
+fawn-colored suits with querlycues of braid all over. They spot very
+easily. And did you notice how the Caledonias had long, lean men
+walking with short, fat men, and nobody keeping step? Our boys were all
+carefully graded and matched, and their dark blue uniforms with just the
+neat nickel badge, I think, presented the best appearance of all. And
+I'll tell you another thing. They'll put it all over the Caledonias this
+afternoon. They won't let 'em get a smell.
+
+Don't you like the fife-and-drum corps? The fifes set my teeth on edge,
+but I could follow the drums all day with their:
+
+  Tucket a brum, brum brum-brum, tuck-all de brum
+  Tucket a brum-brum, tuck-all de brum-brum-brum
+  Tucket a blip-blip-blip-blip, tucka tuck-all de brum,
+  Tucket a brum-brum, tuck-all de brum-brum-brum!
+
+Part of the time the drummers click their sticks together instead of
+hitting the drum-head. That's what makes it sound so nice. I wish I
+could play the snare-drum.
+
+In the Mechanicsburg band is a boy about fourteen years old, a muscular,
+sturdy chunk of a lad. He walks with his heels down, his calves bulged
+out behind, his head up, and the regular, proper swagger of a bandsman.
+He hasn't any uniform, but he's all right. He plays a solo B part, and
+he and the other solo cornet spell each other. On the repeat of every
+strain my boy rests, and rubs his lips with his forefinger, while he
+looks at the populace with bright, expectant eyes. When he blows, he
+scowls, and brings the cushion of muscle on the point of his chin clear
+up to his under lip, and he draws his breath through the corners of his
+mouth. He's the real thing. Bright boy, too, I judge, the kind that has
+a quick answer for everybody, like: "Aw, go chase yerself," or "Go on,
+yeh big stiff." Watch him on the countermarch when they pass the Radnor
+cornet band. The Radnors broke up the Mechanicsburg band last year
+and they're going to try to do it again this year. The musicians blow
+themselves the color of a huckleberry, and the drummers grit their
+teeth, and try to pound holes in their sheep-skins. Aha! It's the Radnor
+band got rattled in its time this year. Went all to pieces. The boy
+snatches, a rest. "Yah!" he squawks. "Didge ever get left?" and picks up
+the tune again. I wish I could play the cornet. Wouldn't play solo B or
+I wouldn't play any--Ooooooooh! Did you see that? Took that stick by the
+other end from the knob and slung it away, 'way up in the air, whirling
+like sixty, and caught it when it came down and never missed a step.
+Look at him juggle it from hand to hand, over his shoulder, and behind
+his back, and under one leg, whirling so fast that you can hardly see
+it, and all in perfect step. Whope! I thought he was going to drop it
+that time but he didn't. That's something you don't see in the cities.
+There, all the drum-major does with his stick is just to point it the
+way the band is to go. I like our fashion the best. Geeminentally! Look
+at that! I bet it went up in the air forty feet if it went an inch. I
+wish I was a drummajor. I guess I'd sooner be a drum-major than anything
+else. Oh, well, detective--that's different.
+
+Let's go farther along. Don't get too near the judges' stand. I know.
+It's the best place to see the finish of an event, but I've been to
+Firemen's Tournament before. You let me pick out the seats. Up close to
+the judges' stand is all right till you come to the "wet races." What?
+Oh, you wait and see. Fun? Well, I should say so. Hope they'll clear all
+those boys off the rail. Here! Get down off that rail. Think we can see
+through you? You're thin, but you're not thin enough for that. Yes, I
+mean you, and don't you give me any of your impudence either. Look at
+those women out there. Right spang in the way of the scraper. Isn't
+that a woman all over? A woman and a hen, I don't know which is--Well,
+hel-lo! Where'd you come from? How's all the folks? Where's Lizzie?
+Didn't she come with you? Aw, isn't that too bad? Scalding hot! Ts! Ts!
+Ts! Seems as if they made preserving kettles apurpose so's they'd tip
+up when you go to pour anything.... Why, I guess we can. Move over a
+little, Charley. Can you squeeze in? That's all right. Pretty thick
+around here, isn't it? There's the band starting up. About time, I
+think. Teedle-eedle umtum, teedle-eedle, um-tum. "Hiawatha," of course.
+What other tune is there on earth? I've got so I know almost all of it.
+
+First is--let me see the program. First is what Mat. King calls "the
+juveline contest." It says here: "Run with truck carrying three ladders
+one hundred yards. Take fifteen-foot ladder from truck, raise it against
+structure"--that's the judges' stand--"and boy ascend. Time to be taken
+when climber grasps top rung of ladder." They're off. That pistol-shot
+started them. Why can't people sit down? See just as well if they did.
+New Berlin's, I guess. Pretty good. He's hanging out the slate with the
+time on it. Eighteen and four-fifths. Oh, no, never in the world. Here's
+the Mt. Victory boys. See that light-haired boy. Go it, towhead! Ah,
+they've got the ladder crooked. Eighteen. That's not so bad .... Oh,
+quit your fooling. He's nothing of the kind. Honestly? What! that old
+skeezicks? Who to, for pity's sake? Well, I thought he was a confirmed
+old bachelor, if anybody ever was. Well, sir, that just goes to show
+that any man, I don't care who he is, can get married if he--Who were
+those? Are those the Caledonia juveniles? I don't think much of 'em, do
+you? Seventeen and two-fifths. I wouldn't have thought it. So their team
+gets the first prize. Well, we weren't in that.
+
+What's next? "First prize, silver water-set, donated by Hon. William
+Krouse." Since when did old Bill Krouse get to be "Honorable?" Yes,
+well, don't talk to me about Bill Krouse. I know him and his whole
+connection and there isn't an honest hair--"Association trophy will
+also be competed for." Oh, that's the goldlined loving cup we saw in the
+window. Our boys have won it twice and the Caledonias have won it twice.
+If we get it this time, it will be ours for keeps. "Run with truck one
+hundred and fifty yards; take twenty-five foot ladder," and so forth
+and so forth, Dan O'Brien's the boy for scaling ladders. He was going to
+enlist in the Boer War, he hates the English so. Down on them the worst
+way. And say, what do you think? Last year, at Caledonia, he won the
+first prize for individual ladder scaling. And what do you suppose the
+first prize was? A picture of Queen Victoria. Isn't that Caledonia all
+over? there's a kind of rivalry between our boys and the Caledonias.
+
+Here they come now. Those are the Caledonian. Tell by the truck .... Do
+you think so? I don't think they're anything so very much. Nix. You'll
+never do it. Look at the way they run with their heads up. That shows
+they're all winded. Look at the clumsy way they got the ladder off the
+wagon. Blap! The judge thought it was coming through the boards on him.
+Oh, pretty good, pretty good, but you just wait till you see our boys.
+Look at the fool hanging there on the ladder waiting till the time is
+announced. Isn't that Caledonia all over? Yah! Come down! Come down!
+What is it? Twenty-five seconds. What's the record? Twenty-four and
+four-fifths? Oh, well, it isn't so bad for Caledonia, but you just
+ what our boys do. Hear those yaps from Caledonia yell! If there's
+anything I despise it is for a man to whoop and holler and make a public
+spectacle of himself. Who's this? Oh, the Radnors. They're out of it.
+Look at them. Pulling every which way. That ladder's too straight up
+and down. Twenty-seven and two-fifths. What did I tell you?... What time
+does your train go? Well, why don't you and your wife come take supper
+with us? Why didn't you look us up noon-time?... I could have told you
+better than that. (They went to the Ladies' Aid dinner.) Well, we shan't
+have much, I expect, but we'll try and scrape up something more
+filling than layer-cake. The idea of expecting to feed hungry people
+on layer-cake! It's an imposition.... I didn't notice which one it
+was. Doesn't matter any way. Only twenty-eight. Ah, here are our boys.
+They've got blue silk running-breeches on. Well, maybe it is sateen. Let
+the women folks alone for knowing sateen from silk a mile off. How much
+a yard did you say it was? Notice the way they start with their hands
+on the ground, just like the pictures on the sporting page of the Sunday
+newspapers. Here they come. Oh, I hope they'll win. That's Charley
+Rodehaver in front. Run! Oh, why don't you run? Come on! Come on!
+Come on! Come on! COME ON! COME ON! COME O--O-oh! See Dan skip up that
+ladder! Go it, Dan! Go it, old boy! Hooray-ay! Hooray-ay, ay! What's the
+time? Twenty-four! Twenty--four flat! BROKE THE RECORD! Hooray-ay-ay!
+Where's Caledonia now? Where's Caledonia now? Oh, I'm so glad our boys
+won. There goes the Caledonia chief. I'll bet he feels like thirty
+cents, Spanish. Ya-a-a-ah! Ya-a-a-ah! Where's Caledonia now? They can't
+beat that, the other fellows can't, and it's our trophy for keeps....
+Oh, some crank in the next row. "Wouldn't I please sit down and not
+obstruct the view." Guess he comes from Caledonia. Looks like it. You
+stand up, too, why don't you? Those planks are terribly hard.... I
+didn't notice. Yes, that wasn't so bad. Twenty-five and two-fifths. But
+it's our trophy. There goes Dan now. Hey, Dan! Good boy, Dan! Wave your
+handkerchief at him. Hooray-ay-ay! Good boy, Dan!
+
+Next is a wet race. Now look out. Let's see what the program says: "Run
+seventy-five yards to structure, on top of which an empty barrel has
+been placed with spout outlet near top. Barrel to be filled with water
+by means of buckets from reservoir"--That big tin-lined box opposite
+is the reservoir. They are filling it now with a hose attached to the
+water-plug yonder--"until water issues from spout." What are they all
+laughing at? Which one? Oh, but isn't she mad? Talk about a wet hen.
+Why, Charley, the hose got away from the man that was filling the
+reservoir and the lady was splashed. Why don't you use your eyes and see
+what's going on and not be bothering me to tell you? Ip! There it goes
+again. Oh, ho! ho! ho! hee! hee! didn't I tell you it would be fun? See
+it run out of his sleeves.... I always get to coughing when I laugh as
+hard as that. Oh, dear me! Makes the tears come.
+
+These are the fellows from Luxora. Oh, the clumsy things! Let the ladder
+get away from them, and it fell and hit that man in the second row right
+on the head. Hope it didn't hurt him much. See 'em scurry with the water
+buckets. Aw, get a move on! Get a move! Why, what makes them so slow?
+"Water, water!" Well, I should think as much. Not for themselves though.
+Those fellows at the bottom of the ladder are catching it, aren't they?
+Oh, pshaw, they don't mind it. They get it worse than that at a real
+fire when they aren't half so well fixed for it. Why, is there no bottom
+to that barrel at all? Why, look!... Say, the judge forgot to close the
+valve. There's a hose connected with the bottom of the barrel to run the
+water off after each trial and he's forgotten to--... Well, isn't that
+too bad! All that work for nothing. I suppose they'll let them try
+it over again.... That man must have got a pretty hard rap. They're
+carrying him out. His head's all bloody.... Wapatomicas, I guess. Yes,
+Wapatomicas. I hope the valve's closed this time. Whope! did you see
+that? One fellow got hit with a water bucket and it was about half-full.
+It's running out of the spout. Yes, and it's falling on those people
+right where you wanted to sit. Hear the girls squeal. Talk about your
+fun. I don't want any better fun than this. Look at 'em come down the
+ladder just holding the sides with their hands. They couldn't do that if
+the ladder was dry.
+
+Ah, here's our crowd. Come on! Come on! Come on! COME ON! Oh, don't be
+so slow with those buckets! Aren't they fine? Say, they don't care if
+they do spill a drop or two. Why. Why, what are they coming down for?
+It isn't running out of the spout yet. Come back! COME BACK! Oh, pshaw!
+Just threw it away by being in too much of a hurry. That judge looks
+funny, doesn't he, with a rubber overcoat on and the sun shining? See,
+he's telling them: "One bucket more." They'll let 'em have another
+trial, of course.... No? Oh, that's an outrage. That' s not fair. The
+Caledonias will get it now.... Yes, sir, they did get it. Oh, well,
+accidents will happen. What? "Where's Caledonia now?" Well, they got it
+by a fluke. What say?... Well only for--Oh, pshaw! Now, don't tell
+me that because I was there and--Well, I say they didn't .... I know
+better, they didn't.... Oh, shut up. You don't know what you're talking
+about. I tell you--Now, Mary, don't you interfere. I'm not quarreling.
+I'm just telling this gentleman back of me that--Well, all right, if
+you're going to cry. If there was any fouling done it was the Caledonias
+that did it, though.
+
+The next is where they "run three hundred feet from the judges' stand,
+raise ladder, hose company to couple to hydrant, break coupling in hose
+and put on nozzle, scale ladder, and fill twenty-five gallon barrel."
+Only the Caledonias, and our boys are entered in this. Now we'll see
+which is the best. All right, Mary, I won't say a word.... Say, for
+country-jakes, those Caledonias didn't do so badly. I give them that
+much. Look at the water fly! I'll bet those folks near the judges' stand
+wish they'd brought their umbrellas. Now you see why these are the best
+seats, don't you? I told you I'd been to Firemen's Tournaments before.
+What? You'll have to talk louder than that if you want me to hear with
+all this noise.... Oh, that'll be all right. They'll be so hungry they
+won't notice it.
+
+Here, be careful how you wabble that hose around. Good thing they turned
+the water off at the plug just when they did or we'd have been--Here's
+our company. Where's Caledonia now? Eh? Pretty work! Pretty work! Say,
+do you know that hose full of water's heavy? Now watch Riley. Riley's
+the one that's got the nozzle. Always up to some monkeyshine. Ah!
+See him? See him? Oh, is n't he soaking them? Oh-ho! Ho! Ho! ha! ha!
+hee-hee! Yip.
+
+Blame clumsy fool!... P-too! Yes, in my mouth and in my ears and down
+the back of my neck. All over. Running out of my sleeves. Everything
+I got on is just ruined. Completely ruined. Come on. Let's go home.
+There's nothing more to see, much. Aw, come on. Well, stay if you want
+to, but I'm going home, and get some dry clothes on me. You get me to go
+to another Firemen's Tournament and you'll know it. Look at that monkey
+from Caledonia laughing at me. For half a cent I'd go up and smack his
+face for him.... Aw, let up on your "Where's Caledonia now?" Give us a
+rest. Well, are you coming, you folks?... Kind of a fizzle this year,
+wasn't it?
+
+However, after supper, with dry clothes on, it isn't so bad. The streets
+are packed. All the firemen are parading and shouting: "Who? Who? Who
+are we?" The Caledonias got one more prize than our boys. Well, why
+shouldn't they? Entered in three more events. I don't see as that's
+anything to brag of or to carry brooms about. All the fife-and-drum
+corps are out, and the bands are all playing "Hiawatha" at once, but
+not together. Not all either. There's one band in front of Hofmeyer's
+playing "Oh, Happy Day! That Fixed my Choce." That's funny: to play a
+hymn-tune in front of a beer-saloon. Hofmeyer seems to think it's all
+right. He's inviting them in to have something. "Took the hint?" I don't
+understand.... Oh, is that so? I didn't know there were other words to
+that tune.
+
+See that woman with four little ones. Her husband's carrying two more.
+"I want to go howm. Why cain't we gow howm? I do' want to gow howm
+pretty soon. I want to gow na-ow!" Eh, Mary, how would you like to lug
+them around all day and then stand up in the cars all the way home?
+
+Well, good-by. Hope you had a nice time. Give my regards to all the
+folks. Don't be in such a rush, my friend.... Oh, did you see? It must
+be the man that got hit on the head with the ladder. Taking him home on
+a stretcher. Gee! That's tough. Skull fractured, eh? Dear! Dear! I
+hear they have been keeping company a long time, and were to have been
+married soon. No wonder she cried and took on so. Poor girl! Yes, it's
+the women that suffer .... Oh, quite a day for accidents. I didn't mind,
+though, after I had changed my clothes. I took some quinine, and I
+guess I'll be all right. Lucky you got a seat. Well, you're off at last.
+Good-by. Remember me to all. Good-by.
+
+Well, thank goodness, that's over. Another ten minutes of them and
+wouldn't have--Well, Mary, what else could I do but ask them home after
+he told me what they didn't have to eat at the Ladies' Aid?... It was
+all right. Plenty good enough. Better than they have at home and I'll
+bet on it. The table looked beautiful. I'm glad the Tournament doesn't
+come but once a year. I'm about ready to drop.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVOURING ELEMENT
+
+
+Mr. Silverstone was gloomily considering whether he had not better blow
+out the lights in the New York One Price Clothing Store, and lock up for
+the night. Kerosene was fifteen cents a gallon, and not a customer had
+been in since supper-time. Business was "ofle, simbly ofle."
+
+The streets were empty. There were lights only in the barber shop where
+one patron was being lathered while two mandolins and a guitar gave a
+correct imitation of two house-flies and a bluebottle in Riley's
+where, in default of other occupation, Mr. Riley was counting up;
+in Oesterle's, where a hot discussion was going on as to whether
+Christopher Columbus was a Dutchman or a Dago, and in Miller's, where
+Tom Ball was telling Tony, who impassively wiped the perforated brass
+plate let into the top of the bar, that he, Tom Ball, "coul' lick em man
+ill Logan coun'y."
+
+Lamps shone in every parlor, where little girls labored with: "And one
+and two, three and one and two, three," occasionally coming out to look
+at the clock to see if the hour was any nearer being up than it was
+five minutes ago. They also shone in sitting-rooms, where boys looked
+fiercely at "X2 +2Xy+y2," mothers placidly darned stockings, and
+fathers, Weekly Examiner in hand, patiently struggled to disengage from
+"boiler-plate" and bogus news about people snatched from the jaws of
+death by the timely use of Dr. McKinnon's Healing Extract of Timothy and
+Red-top, items of real news, such as who was sick and what ailed them,
+who cut his foot with the ax while splitting stove-wood, and where the
+cake sale by the Rector's Aid of Grace P.E. would be held next week.
+
+At the prayer-meeting, Uncle Billy Nicholson was giving in his
+experience and had just got to that part about: "Sometimes on
+the mountaintop, and sometimes in the valley, but still,
+nevertheless--" when, all of a sudden, something happened.
+
+The mandolins stopped with a jerk. Mr. Riley stood tranced at: "And ten
+is thirty-five." Mr. Ball was stricken dumb in the celebration of his
+own great physical powers. The crowd in Oesterle's forgot Columbus, and
+were as men beholding a ghost. The drowsy congregation sat up rigid, and
+Mr. Silverstone gave a guilty start. He had been thinking of that very
+thing!
+
+The next instant, front doors were wrenched open, and the street echoed
+with the sound of windows being raised. Fathers and sons rushed out on
+the front porch, followed by little girls, to whom any excuse to stop
+practising was like a plank to a drowning man.
+
+They had heard aright. Up by the Soldiers' Monument fell the clump of
+tired feet, and upon the air floated the wild alarm of--.
+
+"FIRE! Pooh-ha! FIRE! Poof! FIRE!"
+
+Mat King, the assistant chief, kicked off his slippers, and swiftly
+laced up his shoes, grabbed his speaking-trumpet and his helmet, and
+tore out of the house. If he could only get to the engine-house before
+Charley Lomax, the chief! But Charley was the lone customer in the
+barber's char. With the lather on one side of his face, he clapped on
+his hat and broke for the firebell, four doors below.
+
+"Where's it at?"
+
+"FIRE! Pooh-ha! FIRE! Sm-poohl Fi--(gulp)--FIRE!"
+
+"It's Linc Hoover. Hay, Linc! Where's the fire?"
+
+"FIRE! Pooh-ha! FIRE! ha, ha! FIRE!"
+
+"Hay, Linc! Where's it at? Tell me and I'll run. Hay! Where's it at?"
+
+"FIRE! Swope's be--(gulp) Swope's barn. FIRE!"
+
+"Which Swope? Henry or the old man?"
+
+"FIRE! Pooh! J. K. Swope. Whoo-ha, whooh-ha! Out out on West End Avenue.
+Poof!"
+
+The news thus being passed, the fresher runners scampered ahead,
+bawling: "FOY-URRR' FOY-URRR! and Linc, the hero, slowed down, gasping
+for breath and spitting cotton.
+
+"Whew!" he whistled, gustily, his arms dropping and his whole frame
+collapsing. "Gee! I'm 'bout tuckered. Sm-pooh! Sm-pooh! Run all th'
+way f'm--sm-ha, sm-ha!--run all th' way f'm--mouth's all stuck
+together--p'too! ha! Pooh! Fm West End Avenue and Swo--Swope's. Gee! I'm
+hot's flitter."
+
+"Keep y' coat on when you're all of a prespiration, that way. How'd it
+ketch?"
+
+"Ount know. 'S comin' by there an' I--whoof! I smelt smoke and--Gosh!
+I'm all out o' breath--an' I looked an' I je-e-est could see a
+light--wisht I had a drink o' somepin' to rench mum mouth out. Whew! Oh,
+laws! An' it was Swope's barn and I run in an' opened the door, didn't
+stop to knock or nung, an' I hollered out: 'Yib barn's afire!' an' he
+run out in his sockfeet, an' he says: 'My Lord!' he says. 'Linc,' he
+says, 'run git the ingine an' I putt." Linc drew in a long, tremulous
+breath like a man that has looked on sorrow.
+
+"Why 'n't you--"
+
+"Betchy 't was tramps," interrupted a bystander. "Git in the haymow an'
+think they got to have their blamed old pipe a-goin'--"
+
+"Cigarettes, more likely," said another. "More darn devilment comes from
+cigarettes--"
+
+"Why'n't you--"
+
+"Ount know nung 'bout tramps," said Linc. "All I seen was the fire. I
+was a-comin' long a-past there an' I smelt the smoke an' thinks I--What
+say?"
+
+"Why'n't you telefoam down?"
+
+Linc, the hero, shrunk a foot. "I gosh!" he admitted, "I never thought
+to."
+
+"Jist'a' telefoamed, you could 'a' saved yourself all that--"
+
+"Ain't they weltin' the daylights out o' that bell? All foolishness! Now
+they're ringin' the number--one, two, three, four. Yes, sir, that's up
+in the West End. You goin'? Come on, then."
+
+"No, Frank, I can't let you go. You've got your lessons to get. Well,
+now, mother, make up your mind if you're comin' along. Cora, what on
+earth are you doing out here in the night air with nothing around you?
+Now, you mosey right back into that parlor, and don't you make a move
+off that piano-stool till your hour's up. Do you hear me? No. Frank.
+I told you once you couldn't go and that ends it. Stop your whining! I
+can't have you running hither and yon all hours of the night, and we not
+know where you are. Well, hurry up, then, mother. Take him in with you.
+Oh, just throw a shawl over your head. Nobody 'll see you, or if they
+do they won't care." The apparatus trundles by, the bells on the trucks
+tolling sadly as the striking gear on the rear axle engages the cam. A
+hurrying throng scuffles by in the gloom. The tolling grows fainter, the
+throng thinner.
+
+"Good land! Is she going to be all night? Wish 't I hadn't proposed it.
+That's the worst of taking a woman anyplace. Fuss and fiddle by the
+hour in front of the looking-glass. Em! (Be all over by the time we get
+there) Oh, Em! Em!... EM! (Holler my head offl) EM!.... Well, why don't
+you answer me? Well, I didn't hear you.  How much long--Oh, I know
+about-- 'Hour' you mean.... Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Conklin? Hello, Fred.
+Pleased to meet you, Miss Shoemaker. Yes, I saw in the paper you were
+visiting your sister. This your first visit to our little burg? Yes,
+we think it's quite a place. You see, we're trying to make your stay as
+interesting as possible.... Oh, no, not altogether on your account. No,
+no. Ha! Ha-ha-ha! Hum! ah!... Well, yes, if she ever gets done primping
+up. Oh, there you are. Miss Shoemaker, let me make you acquainted with
+my wife. Now, you girls'll have to get a move on if you want to see
+anything."
+
+The male escorts grasp the ladies' arms and shove them ahead, that being
+the only way if you are ever going to get any place. The women gasp and
+pant and make a great to-do.
+
+"Ooh! Wait till I get my breath. Will! Weeull! Don't go so fay-ust!
+Oooh! I can't stand it. Oh, well, you're a man."
+
+But when they turn the corner that gives them a good view of the
+blaze, fluttering great puffs of flame, and hear the steady crackle and
+snapping, as it were, of a great popper full of pop-corn, they, too,
+catch the infection, and run with a loud swashing and slatting of
+skirts, giggling and squealing about their hair coming down.
+
+In the waving orange glare the crowd is seen, shifting and moving. It
+seems impossible for the onlookers to remain constant in one spot. The
+chief, Charley Lomax, is gesticulating with wide arm movements. He puts
+his speaking-trumpet to his mouth. "Yoffemoffemoffemoffemoffi" he says.
+
+"Wha-at?" the men halloo back.
+
+"Yoffemoffemoffemoffemoff."
+
+"What'd he say?"
+
+"Search me. John, you run over and ask him what he wants. Or, no; I'll
+go myself."
+
+"Why in Sam Hill didn't you come sooner?" demands the angry chief.
+
+"Well, why in Sam Hill don't you talk so 's a body can understand you?
+'Yoffemoffemoffemoffem.' Who can make sense out o' that?"
+
+"The hose ain't long enough to reach from here to the hydrant. You 'n'
+some more of 'em run down t' th' house an' git that other reel."
+
+"Aw, say, Chief! Look here. I'm awful busy right now. Can't somebody
+else go?"
+
+"You go an' do what I tell you to, and don't gimme none o' your back
+talk."
+
+(Too dag-gon bossy and dictatorial, that Charley Lomax is. Getting
+'most too big for his breeches. Never mind, there's going to be a fire
+election week from Tuesday. See whether he'll be chief next year or not.
+Sending a man away from the fire right at the most interesting part!)
+
+"I'll go, Chief, wommetoo," puts in jumbo Lee, all in a huddle of
+words. "Ije slivsnot. Aw ri. Mon Jim. Shoonmeansmore of 'em go
+gitth'otherreel."
+
+Jumbo isn't a member of the fire department, though he is wild to join.
+He isn't old enough. He is six feet one inch, weighs 180, and won't
+be sixteen till the 5th of next February. Nobody ever saw him when
+he wasn't eating. They say he clips his words so as to save time for
+eating. He takes a cracker out of his pocket, shoves it in his mouth
+whole, jams his hat down till his ears stick out, and, with his
+companions, tears down the road, seemingly propelled as much by his
+elbows as by his legs. Why, under the combined strain of growing and
+running, he doesn't part a seam somewhere is a dark mystery.
+
+Crash! The roof of the barn caves in and reveals what we had not before
+suspected, that Platt's barn, on the other side of the alley, is afire
+too. Say! This is getting interesting. The wind is setting directly
+toward Swope's house. It has been so terribly dry this last month or
+so that the house will go like powder if it ever catches. Why, I think
+Swope has a well and cistern both. Used to have, anyway, before they put
+the water-works in, and the board of health condemned the wells. Say!
+There was a put-up job if there ever was one. Why, sure! Sure he had
+stock in the water works. Doc. Muzzey? I guess, yes.... Pity they ever
+traded off the hand-engine. They got a light-running hook-and-ladder
+truck. Won two prizes at the tournament, just with that truck. But if
+they had that hand-engine now though! "Up with her! Down with her!" Have
+that fire out in no time!
+
+They're not trying to save the barns. They're a dead loss. What little
+water they can get from the cisterns and wells around--hasn't it been
+dry?--they are using to try to save Swope's house, and the one next
+to it. Is that where Lonny Wheeler lives? I knew it was up this way
+somewhere. Don't he look ridiculous, sitting up there a-straddle of his
+ridgepole, with a tin-cup? A tin-cup, if you please. Over this way
+a little. See better. They're wetting down the roof. Line of fellows
+passing buckets to the ladder, and a line up the ladder. What big sparks
+those are! Puts you in mind of Fourth of July. How the roof steams! Must
+be hot up there.
+
+O-o-o-oh!
+
+A universal indrawn breath from all spectators proclaims their horror.
+One of the men on the roof missed his footing and slipped, rolling over
+and over till he reached the roof of the porch, where he spread-eagled
+for a fall. The women begin to moan. Some poor fellow gone to his death.
+Or, if he be so lucky as to miss death itself, he is doomed to languish
+all his days a helpless cripple. Like enough the sole support of an aged
+mother; or perhaps his wife is sitting up for him at home now, tiptoeing
+into the bedroom every little while to look at the sleeping children.
+That's generally the way of it. Who is there so free and foot-loose
+that, if harm befall him, some woman will not go mourning all her days?
+It must take the heart out of brave men to think what their women folk
+must suffer, mothers and wives and--Who? Dan O'Brien? Oh, he'll be all
+right. He'll light on his feet like a cat. I believe that boy is made of
+India rubber. He never gets hurt. Why, one time--Ah! There he goes
+now up the ladder as if nothing had happened. Hooray-ayayay!
+Hooray-ay-ay-ay! I thought he'd broken his neck as sure as shooting.
+
+Wandering about one cannot fail to encounter what the gallant
+fire-laddies have rescued from the devouring element. There is the piano
+with a deep scratch across the upper part, and the top lid hanging by
+one hinge. It caught in the door, and the boys were kind of in a hurry.
+There is the parlor carpet, plucked up by the roots, as it were; and
+two tubs, the washboard and a bag of clothes-pins; a stuffed chair,
+with three casters gone, the coffee-pot, a crayon enlargement, a winter
+overcoat, a blanket, a pile of old dresses, the screw-driver and a paper
+of tacks in the colander, the couch with a triangular rip in the cover,
+the coal-scuttle, a pile of dishes, the ax and wood-saw, a fancy pillow,
+the sewing-machine with the top gone, the wash-boiler, the basket of
+dirty clothes, with the stove-shaker and the parlor clock in together,
+and a heap of books, all spraddled and sprawled every which way. Upon
+this pitiful mound sits Mrs. Swope with her baby sound asleep upon her
+bosom. She mingles her tears with the sustaining tea that Mrs. Farley
+has made for her. Swope, still in his socks and with his wife's
+shoulder-cape upon him, caught up somehow, is trying to soothe her. He
+is as mad as a hornet, and doesn't dare to show it. All this furniture
+he had insured. It was all old stuff their folks had given them. If the
+gallant fire-laddies had been as discreet as they were zealous, they
+would have let the furniture go, and Swope and his wife would have had
+an entire, brand-new outfit. As it is, who can ever make that junk look
+like anything any more?
+
+What's this coming up the road? Jumbo Lee and his friends with the other
+hose-reel. Now they will connect it with the hydrant, and have water
+a-plenty to save the house. Now the fellows are coming down from the
+ladder. Cistern's empty, I suppose. The other reel didn't come any too
+soon. How the roof steams! Or is it smoking?
+
+"Don't stand around here with that reel! Up to that water-plug. Farther
+up the street. Front o' Cummins's."
+
+Jumbo crams another cracker into his mouth and speeds away, hunching the
+patient, unresenting air with his elbows.
+
+Ah! See--that little flicker of flame on the roof! Do, for pity's sake,
+hurry up with that connection! The roof is really burning. See? They are
+trying to chop away the burning place. But there's another! And another!
+
+A-a-ah! Hooray-ay! Connection's made! Now you'll see something. Out of
+the way there! One side! One side! Up you go!... Wha-at? Is that the
+best they can do? Why, it won't run out of the nozzle at all when it's
+up on the roof. Not a drop. Feeble little dribble when it's on the
+ground-level. There's your water-works for you. It is a good long way
+from the fire-plug I know, but there ought to be more pressure than
+that. Oh, pshaw! If we only had the old hand-engine! "Up with her! Down
+with her!" Have that fire out in no time. The house will have to go now.
+Too bad!
+
+Somebody in the second story is rescuing property from the devouring
+element. He has just tossed out a wash-bowl and pitcher. Luckily they
+both fell on the sod and rolled apart. He takes down the roller-shade
+and flings it out. The lace curtains follow. They catch on the edge
+of the veranda roof, and languidly wave there as for some holiday.
+Bed-clothes issue and pillows hurtle out. What's he doing now? No use.
+No use. You can't get the mattress out of that window. A waste-paper
+basket, a rag rug, a brush and comb--as fast as his hands can fly he's
+throwing out things.
+
+The women began to whimper.
+
+"Oh, the poor man! The roof will fall in on him! He'll smother to death!
+Oh, why doesn't somebody go tell him to come away? Not you! Don't you
+think of such a trick! Oh, why does he risk his life for a lot of trash
+I wouldn't have around the house?"
+
+The smoke oozes out of the open window. It must be choking in there.
+For a long time no jettison of household goods appears. Perhaps the man,
+whoever he is, has seen his peril and fled while yet it was possible to
+flee. Ah, but suppose he has been overcome and lies there huddled in a
+heap, never to rouse again? Is there none to save him? Is there none?
+Ah! A couple of collars and a magazine flutter out into the light! He
+is still there. He is still alive. Plague take the idiot! Why doesn't he
+come down out of that?
+
+"Yoffemoffemoffemoffemoff. Yoffemoff!"
+
+But no! He will do it himself. The Chief rushes gallantly into the
+burning building and disappears up the dark stair.
+
+Desperate measures are now to be resorted to. On the lawn a line of
+men forms. They bend their necks, cowering before the fierce glow, but
+daring it, and prepared to face it at even closer range. You are to
+witness now an exhibition of that heroism which is commoner with us
+than we think, that spirit of do and dare which mocks at danger and
+even welcomes pain. It is a far finer sentiment than the cold-hearted
+calculation which looks ahead, and figures out first whether it is worth
+while or not.
+
+The men dash forward in the withering heat. With frantic haste they fix
+the hook into the lattice-work beneath the porch and scamper back.
+
+"Yo hee! Yo hee!"
+
+The thick rope tautens as the firemen lay their weight to it. You can
+almost see the bristling fibers stand up on it.
+
+"Yo hee! Yo hee!"
+
+With a splintering crash the timber parts, and a piece of lattice-work
+is dragged away.
+
+Another sortie and another. Bit by bit the porch is ripped and torn to
+rubbish. You smile. It seems so futile. What are these kindlings saved
+when the whole house is burning? Is this what you call heroism? Yet
+the charge at Balaklava was not more futile. It had even less of
+commonsense, less of hope of benefit to mankind to back it and inspire
+it. Heroism is an instinct, not a thoughtout policy. Its quality is the
+same, in two-ounce samples or in car-load lots.
+
+The weather-boarding slips down in a sparkling fall. The joists and
+stringers, all outlined and gemmed with coals, are, as it were, a golden
+grille, through which the world may look unhindered in upon the holy
+place of home, heretofore conventually private. There stands the family
+altar, pitifully grotesque amid the ruinous splendor of the destroying
+fire, the tea-kettle upon it proudly flaunting its steamy plume. What?
+Is a common cooking-stove an altar? Yes, verily, in lineal descent.
+Examine an ancient altar and you will see its sacrificial stone scored
+and guttered to catch the dripping from the roasting meat. Who is
+the priestess, after an order older than Melchisedec's, but she that
+ministers to us that most comfortable sacrament, wherein we are made
+partakers not alone of the outward and visible food which we do carnally
+press with our teeth, but also of that inward and spiritual sustenance,
+the patient and enduring love of wife and mother, without which there
+can be no such thing as home? All other sacraments wherein men break
+the bread of amity together are but copies of this pattern, the Blessed
+Sacrament of the Household Altar, the first and primal one of all, the
+one that shall perdure, please God! throughout all ages of ages.
+
+The flames die down. The timbers sink together with a softer fall. The
+air grows chill. We fetch a sigh. We cannot bear to look at that mute
+figure of the priestess seated on the sordid heap of broken furniture,
+her sleeping baby pressed against her breast, her gaze fixed--but
+seeing naught--upon her ruined temple. We do not like to think upon such
+things. We do not like to think at all. Is there nothing more to laugh
+at?
+
+The firemen, having all borrowed the makings of a cigarette from each
+other, put on their hats and coats, left on the hook-and-ladder truck in
+the custody of a trusted member. The apparatus trundles off, the bells
+dolorously tolling as the striking gear on the rear axle engages the
+cam.
+
+Who is this weeping man approaches, supported by two friends, that
+comfort him with: "All right, Tom. You done noble," uttered in pacifying
+if not convincing tones? Heart-brokenly he cries: "I dull le ver' bes' I
+knowed, now di' n't I? Charley? Billy, I dub bes' I knowed how. An' nen
+he says to me--Oo-hoo-hoo-oooo-oo! He says to me: 'Come ou' that, ye
+cussed fool!' Oo-oooo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo! Smf! Lemme gi' amma ham hankshiff.
+Leg go my arm. Waw gi' amma hankshifp. Oo-oo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo! Fmf! I
+ash you as may wurl--I ash you as may--man of world, is that--is that
+proper way address me? Me! Know who I am? I'm Tom Ball. 'S who I am. I
+kill lick em man ill Logan Coun'y. Ai' thasso? Hay? 'S aw ri. Mfi choose
+stay up there, aw thas sec--aw thas second floor and rescue fel-cizzen's
+propprop'ty from devouring em--from devouring emlement, thas my bizless.
+Ai' tham my bizless, Charley? Ai' tham my bizless, Billy? W'y, sure.
+Charley, you're goof feller. You too, Billy. You're goof feller, too.
+Say. Wur-wur if Miller's is open yet? 'Spose it is? Charley; I dub bes'
+I knowed how, di'n't I, now? Affor that Chief come up thas stairway and
+say me: 'Come ou' that, ye cussed fool!' Aw say! 'Come ou' that--'Called
+me fool, too! Oo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo!"
+
+"Hello, Dan! Hurt yourself any? (That's Dan O'Brien. Fell off the roof.)
+Well, sir, I thought sure you'd broken your neck. You don't know your
+luck. And let me tell you one thing, my bold bucko: You'll do that just
+once too often. Now you mark."
+
+
+The day before the Weekly Examiner goes to press, Mr. Swope hands the
+editor a composition entitled: "A Card of Thanks," signed by John K.
+and Amelia M. Swope, and addressed to the firemen and all who showed by
+their many acts of kindness, and so forth and so on.
+
+"Kind of help to fill up the paper," says Mr. Swope, covering his
+retreat.
+
+"Sure," replies the editor. When Mr. Swope is good and gone, he says:
+"Dog my riggin's if I didn't forget all about writing up that fire. Been
+so busy here lately. Good thing he come in. Hay, Andy!"
+
+"Watch want?" from the composing-room.
+
+"Got room for about two sticks more?"
+
+"Yes, guess so. If it don't run over that."
+
+A brief silence. Then:
+
+"Hay, Andy?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Is it 'had have,' or 'had of?"
+
+"What's the connection?"
+
+"Why-ah. 'If the gallant fire-laddies, under the able direction of Chief
+Charley Lomax, had of had a sufficiency of water with which to cope with
+the devouring element--'etc."
+
+"'Had have,' I guess. I don't know."
+
+"Guess you're right. Run it that way anyhow."
+
+
+
+
+CIRCUS DAY
+
+
+Only the other day, the man that in all this country knows better than
+anybody else how a circus should be advertised, said (with some sadness,
+I do believe) that it didn't pay any longer to put up showbills; the
+money was better invested in newspaper advertising.
+
+"It doesn't pay." Ah, me! How the commercial spirit of the age plays
+whaley with the romance of existence! You shall not look long upon
+the showbill now that there is no money to be had from it. "Youth's
+sweet-scented manuscript" is about to close, but ere it does, let us
+turn back a little to the pages illuminated by the glowing colors of the
+circus poster.
+
+Saturday afternoon when we went by the enginehouse, its brick wall
+fluttered with the rags and tatters of "Esther, the Beautiful Queen,"
+and the lecture on "The Republic: Will it Endure?" (Gee! But that was
+exciting!) Sunday morning, after Sunday-school, there was a sudden
+quickening among the boys. We stopped nibbling on the edges of the
+lesson leaf and followed the crowd in scuttling haste. Miraculously,
+over-night, the shabby wall had blossomed into thralling splendor. What
+was Daniel in the Lions' Den, compared with Herr Alexander in the same?
+Not, as the prophet is pictured, in the farthest corner from the lions,
+and manifestly saying to himself: "If I was only out of this!" But with
+his head right smack dab in the lion's mouth. Right in it. Yes, sir.
+
+"S' Posin'!" we gasped, all goggle-eyed, "jist s'posin' that there lion
+was to shut his mouth! Ga-ash!"
+
+The Golden Text? It faded before the lemon-and-scarlet glories of the
+Golden Chariot. Drawn by sixteen dappled steeds, each with his neck
+arching like a fish-hook and reined with fancy scalloped reins, it
+occupied the center of the foreground. The band rode in it, far more
+fortunate than our local band whose best was, Charley Wells's depot
+'bus. And nobler than all his fellows was the bass-drummer. He had a
+canopy over him, a carved and golden canopy, on whose top revolved a
+clown's head with its tongue stuck out. On each quarter of this rococo
+shallop a golden circus-girl in short skirts gaily skipped rope with
+a nubia or fascinator, or whatever it is the women call the thing they
+wrap around their heads in cold weather when they hang out the clothes.
+There were big pieces of looking-glass let into the sides of the
+band-wagon, and every decorator knows that when you put looking-glass on
+a thing it is impossible to fix it so that it will be any finer.
+
+Winding back and forth across the picture was the long train of
+tableau-cars and animal cages, diminishing with distance until away,
+'way up in the upper left-hand corner the hindmost van was all immersed
+in the blue-and-yellow haze just this side of out-of-sight. That with
+our own eyes we should behold the glories here set forth we knew right
+well. Cruel Fortune might cheat us of the raptures to be had inside the
+tents, but the street-parade was ours, for it was free.
+
+It seems to me that we did not linger so long before these pictures, nor
+before those of the rare and costly animals, which, if we but knew it,
+were the main reason why we were permitted to go (if we did get to go).
+To look at these animals is improving to the mind, and since we could
+not go alone, an older person had to accompany us, and... and... I trust
+I make myself clear. But we didn't want to improve our minds if it was
+a possible thing to avoid it. The pictures of these animals were in
+the joggerfy book anyhow, though not in colors, unless we had a box
+of paints. There can be no doubt that the show-bill pictures of the
+menageries were in colors. I seem to recollect that Mr. Galbraith, who
+kept the dry-goods store across the street from the engine-house, was
+very much exercised in his mind about the way one of these pictures was
+printed. It was the counterfeit presentment of the Hip-po-pot-a-mus,
+or Behemoth of Holy Writ. His objection to the hip--you know was not
+because its open countenance was so fearsome, but because it was so red.
+Six feet by two of flaming crimson across the street in the afternoon
+sun made it necessary for him to take the goods to the back window of
+the store to show to customers. He didn't like it a bit.
+
+No. Neither before the large and expensive pictures of the
+street-parade, nor the large and expensive wild beasts did we linger.
+The swarm was thickest, sand the jabbering loudest, the "O-o-oh's," the
+"M! Looky's" the "Geeminently's" shrillest, in front of where the deeds
+of high emprise were set forth. Men with their fists clenched on their
+breasts, and their neatly slippered toes touching the backs of their
+heads, crashed through paper-covered hoops beneath which horses madly
+coursed; they flew through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring
+young men on the flying; trapeze, or they posed in living pyramids.
+
+And as the sons of men assembled themselves together, Satan came also,
+the spirit I, that evermore denies.
+
+"A-a-ah!" sneers his embodiment in one whose crackling voice cannot
+make up its mind whether to be bass or treble, "A-a-ah, to the show they
+down't do hay-uf what they is in the pitchers."
+
+A chilling silence follows. A cold uneasiness strikes into all the
+listeners. We are all made wretched by destructive criticism. Let us
+alone in our ideals. Let us alone, can't you?
+
+"Now... now," pursues the crackle-voiced Mephisto, pointing to where
+Japanese jugglers defy the law of gravitation and other experiences of
+daily life, "now, they cain't walk up no ladder made out o' reel sharp
+swords."
+
+"They can so walk up it," stoutly declares one boy. Hurrah! A champion
+to the rescue! The others edge closer to him. They like him.
+
+"Nah, they cain't. How kin they? They'd cut their feet all to pieces."
+
+"They kin so. I seen 'em do it. The time I went with Uncle George I seen
+a man, a Japanee.... Yes, sharp. Cut paper with 'em.... A-a-ah, I did
+so. I guess I know what I seen an' what I didn't."
+
+The little boys breathe easier, but fearing another onslaught, make all
+haste to call attention to the most fascinating one of all, the picture
+of a little boy standing up on top of his daddy's head. And, as if that
+weren't enough, his daddy is standing up on a horse and the horse is
+going round the ring lickety-split. And, as if these circumstances
+weren't sufficiently trying, that little show-boy is standing on only
+one foot. The other is stuck up in the air like five minutes to six, and
+he has hold of his toe with his hand. I'll bet you can't do that just
+as you are on the ground, let alone on your daddy's head, and him on a
+horse that's going like sixty. Now you just try it once. Just try it....
+Aa-ah! Told you you couldn't.
+
+Now, how the show-actors can do that looks very wonderful to you. It
+really is very simple. I'll tell you about it. All show-actors are born
+double-jointed. You have only two hip-joints. They have four. And it's
+the same all over with them. Where you have only one joint, they have
+two. So, you see, the wonder isn't how they can bend themselves every
+which way, but how they can keep from doubling up like a foot-rule.
+
+And another thing. Every day they rub themselves all over with
+snake-oil. Snakes are all limber and supple, and it stands to reason
+that if you take and try out their oil, which is their express essence,
+and then rub that into your skin, it will make you supple and limber,
+too. I should think garter-snakes would do all right, if you could catch
+enough of them, but they 're so awfully scarce. Fishworms won't do. I
+tried 'em. There's no grease in 'em at all. They just dry up.
+
+And I suppose you know the reason why they stay on the horse's back.
+They have rosin on their feet. Did you ever stand up on a horse's back?
+I did. It was out to grandpap's, on old Tib.... No, not very long. I
+didn't have any rosin on my feet. I was going to put some on, but my
+Uncle Jimmy said: "Hay! What you got there?" I told him. "Well," he
+says, "you jist mosey right into the house and put that back in the
+fiddle-box where you got it. Go on, now. And if I catch you foolin' with
+my things again, I'll.... Well, I don't know what I will do to you." So
+I put it back. Anyhow, I don't think rosin would have helped me stay on
+a second longer, because old Tib, with an intelligence you wouldn't have
+suspected in her, walked under the wagon-shed and calmly scraped me off
+her back.
+
+And did you ever try to walk the tight-rope? You take the clothes-line
+and stretch it in the grape-arbor--better not make it too high at
+first--and then you take the clothes-prop for a balance-pole and go
+right ahead--er--er as far as you can. The real reason why you fall
+off so is that you don't have chalk on your shoes. Got to have lots of
+chalk. Then after you get used to the rope wabbling so all-fired fast,
+you can do it like a mice. And while I'm about it, I might as well tell
+you that if you ever expect to amount to a hill of beans as a trapeze
+performer you must have clear-starch with oil of cloves in it to rub on
+your hands. Finest thing in the world. My mother wouldn't let me have
+any. She said she couldn't have me messing around that way, I blame
+her as much as anybody that I am not now a competent performer on the
+trapeze.
+
+I don't know that I had better go into details about the state of mind
+boys are in from the time the bills are first put up until after the
+circus has actually departed. I don't mean the boys that get to go to
+everything that comes along, and that have pennies to spend for candy,
+and all like that, whenever they ask for it. I mean the regular, proper,
+natural boys, that used to be "Back Home," boys whose daddies tormented
+them with: "Well, we Il see--" that's so exasperating!--or, "I wish you
+wouldn't tease, when you know we can't spare the money just at present."
+A perfectly foolish answer, that last. They had money to fritter away at
+the grocery, and the butcher-shop, and the dry-goods store, but when it
+came to a necessity of life, such as going to the circus, they let on
+they couldn't afford it. A likely story.
+
+"Only jist this little bit of a once. Aw, now, please. Please, cain't I
+go? Aw now, I think you might. Aw now, woncha? Aw, paw. I ain't been to
+a reely show for ever so long. Aw, the Scripture pammerammer, that don't
+count. Aw, paw. Please cain't I go? Aw, please!" And so forth and so on,
+with much more of the same sort. No, I can't go into details, it's too
+terrible.
+
+Even those of us whose daddies said plainly and positively: "Now, I
+can't let you go. No, Willie. That's the end of it. You can't go." Even
+those, I say, hoped against hope. It simply could not be that what the
+human heart so ardently longed for should be denied by a loving father.
+This same conviction applies to other things, even when we are grown up.
+It is against nature and the constituted scheme of things that we cannot
+have what we want so badly. (And, in general, it may be said that we can
+have almost anything we want, if we only want it hard enough. That's the
+trouble with us. We don't want it hard enough.) We boys lay there in
+the shade and pulled the long stalks of grass and nibbled off the sweet,
+yellow ends, as we dramatized miracles that could happen just as well as
+not, if they only would, consarn 'em! For instance, you might be going
+along the street, not thinking of anything but how much you wanted to go
+to the circus, and how sorry you were because you hadn't the money, and
+your daddy wouldn't give you any; and first thing you 'd know, you 'd
+stub your toe on something, and you'd look down and there'd be a half a
+dollar that somebody had lost--Gee! If it would only be that way! But we
+knew it wouldn't, because only the other Sunday, Brother Longenecker had
+said: "The age of miracles is past." So we had to give up all hopes. Oh,
+it's terrible. Just terrible!
+
+But some of the boys lay there in the grass with their hands under their
+heads, looking up at the sky, and making little white spots come in and
+out on the corners of their jaws, they had their teeth set so hard,
+and were chewing so fiercely. You could almost hear their minds creak,
+scheming, scheming, scheming. I suppose there were ways for boys to make
+money in those times, but they always fizzled out when you came to try
+them, to say nothing of the way they broke into your day. Why, you had
+scarcely any time to play in. You 'd go 'round to some neighbor's house
+with a magazine, and you'd say: "Good afternoon, Mrs. Slaymaker. Do you
+want to subscribe for this?" Just the way you had studied out you would
+say. And she'd take it, and go sit down with it, and read it clear
+through while you played with the dog, and then when she got all through
+with it, and had read all the advertisements, she'd hand it back to you
+and say: No, she didn't believe she would. They had so many books and
+papers now that she didn't get a chance hardly to read in any of them,
+let alone taking any new ornes. Were you getting many new subscribers?
+Just commenced, eh? Well, she wished you all the luck in the world.
+How was your ma? That's good. Did she hear from your Uncle John's folks
+since they moved out to Kansas?
+
+I have heard that there were boys who, under the dire necessity of going
+to the circus, got together enough rags, old iron, and bottles to make
+up the price, sold 'em, collected the money, and went. I don't believe
+it. I don't believe it. We all had, hidden under the back porch, our
+treasure-heap of rusty grates, cracked fire-pots, broken griddles and
+lid-lifters, tub-hoops and pokers, but I do not believe that any human
+boy ever collected fifty cents' worth. I want you to understand that
+fifty cents is a whole lot of money, particularly when it is laid out in
+scrap-iron. Only the tin-wagon takes rags, and they pay in tinware,
+and that's no good to a boy that wants to go to the circus. And as for
+bottles--well, sir, you wash out a whole, whole lot of bottles, a whole
+big lot of 'em, a wash-basket full, and tote 'em down to Mr. Case's
+drug--and book-store, as much as ever you and your brother can wag, and
+see what he gives you. It's simply scandalous. You have no idea of how
+mean and stingy a man can be until you try to sell him old bottles. And
+the cold-hearted way in which he will throw back ink-bottles that you
+worked so hard to clean, and the ones that have reading blown into the
+glass--Oh, it's enough to set you against business transactions all
+your life long. There's something about bargain and sale that's mean and
+censorious, finding this fault and finding that fault, and paying just
+as little as ever they can. It gets on one's nerves. It really does.
+
+The boys that made the little white spots come on the corners of their
+jaws as they lay there in the grass, scheming, scheming, scheming,
+planned rags, and bottles, and scrap-iron, and more also. Sometimes it
+was a plan so much bigger that if they had kept it to themselves, like
+the darkey's cow, they would have "all swole up and died."
+
+"Sst! Come here once. Tell you sumpum. Now don't you go and blab it out,
+now will you? Hope to die? Well.... Now, no kiddin'. Cross your heart?
+Well.... Ah, you will, too. I know you. You go and tattle everything you
+hear.... Well.... Cheese it! Here comes somebody. Make out we're talkin'
+about sumpum else. Ah, he did, did he? What for, I wonder? (Say sumpum,
+can't ye?) Why 'nu' ye say sumpum when he was goin' by? Now he'll
+suspicion sumpum 's up, and nose around till he.... Aw, they ain't
+no use tellin' you anything.... Well. Put your head over so 's I can
+whisper. Sure I am.... Well, I could learn, couldn't I? Now don't you
+tell a living soul, will you? If anybody asts you, you tell 'em you
+don't know anything at all about it. Say, why 'n't you come along? I
+promised you the last time. That's jist your mother callin' you. Let on
+you don't hear her. Aw, stay. Aw, you don't either have to go. Say. Less
+you and me get up early, and go see the circus come in town, will you? I
+will, if you will. All right. Remember now. Don't you tell anybody what
+I told you. You know."
+
+
+If a fellow just only could run off with a circus! Wouldn't it be great?
+No more splitting kindling and carrying in coal; no more: "Hurry up,
+now, or you'll be late for school;" no more poking along in a humdrum
+existence, never going any place or seeing anything, but the glad,
+free, untrammeled life, the life of a circus-boy, standing up on top of
+somebody's head (you could pretend he was your daddy. Who'd ever know
+the difference?) and your leg stuck up like five minutes to six, and him
+standing on top of a horse--and the horse going around the ring, and the
+ring master cracking his whip--aw, say! How about it?
+
+Maybe the show-people would take you even if you didn't have two joints
+to common folks' one, and hadn't had early advantages in the way of
+plenty of snakes to try the grease out of. And then... and then....
+Travel all around, and be in a new town every day! And see things! The
+water-works, and Main Street, and the Soldiers' Monument, and the Second
+Presbyterian Church. All the sights there are to see in strange places.
+And then when the show came back to your own home-town next year, people
+would wonder whose was that slim and gracile figure in the green silk
+tights and spangled breech-clout that capered so nimbly on the bounding
+courser's back, that switched the natty switch and shrilly called out:
+"Hep! Hep!" They'd screw up their eyes to look hard, and they'd say:
+"Yes, sir. It is. It's him. It's Willie Bigelow. Well, of all things!"
+And they'd clap their hands, and be so proud of you. And they'd wonder
+how it was that they could have been so blind to your many merits when
+they had you with them. They'd feel sorry that they ever said you were
+a "regular little imp," if ever there was one, and that you had the Old
+Boy in you as big as a horse. They'd feel ashamed of themselves, so they
+would. And they'd come and apologize to you for the way they had acted,
+and you'd say: "Oh, that's all right. Forgive and forget." And they'd
+miss you at home, too. Your daddy would wish he hadn't whaled you the
+way he did, just for nothing at all. And your mother, too, she'd be
+sorry for the way she acted to you, tormenting the life and soul out of
+you, sending you on errands just when you got a man in the king row, and
+making you wash your feet in a bucket before you went to bed, instead of
+being satisfied to let you pump on them, as any reasonable mother would.
+She'll think about that when you're gone. It'll be lonesome then, with
+nobody to bang the doors, and upset the cream-pitcher on the clean
+table-cloth, and fall over backward in the rocking-chair and break a
+rocker off. Your daddy will sigh and say:
+
+"I wonder where Willie is to-night. Poor boy, I sometimes fear I was too
+harsh with him." And your mother will try to keep back her tears, but
+she can't, and first thing she knows she'll burst out crying, and...
+and... and old Maje will go around the house looking for you, and
+whining because he can't find his little playmate.... It will seem as if
+you were dead--dead to them, and.... Smf! Smf!
+
+(Confound that orchestra leader anyhow! How many times have I got to
+tell him that this is the music-cue for "Where is My Wandering Boy
+To-night?")
+
+We were all going to get up early enough to see the show come in at the
+depot. Very few of us did it. Somehow we couldn't seem to wake up. Here
+and there a hardy spirit compasses the feat.
+
+All the town is asleep when this boy slips out of his front-gate and
+snicks the latch behind him softly. It is very still, so still that
+though he is more than a mile away from the railroad he can hear Johnny
+Mara, the night yardmaster, bawl out: "Run them three empties over on
+Number Four track!" the short exhaust of the obedient pony-engine, and
+the succeeding crash of the cars as they bump against their fellows. It
+is very still, scarey still. The gas-lamp flaring and flickering among
+the green maples at the corner has a strange look to him. His footfalls
+on the sidewalk sound so loud he takes the soft middle of the dusty
+road. He hears some one pursuing him and his bosom contracts with fear,
+as he stands to see who it is. Although he hardly knows the boy bound on
+the same errand as his, he takes him to his heart, as a chosen friend.
+They are kin.
+
+On the freight-house platform they find other boys. Some of them have
+waited up all night so as not to miss it. They are from across the
+tracks. They have all the fun, those fellows do. They can swear and chew
+tobacco, and play hookey from school and have a good time. They get
+to go barefoot before anybody else, and nobody tells them it will thin
+their blood to go in swimming so much. Yes, and they can fight, too.
+They'd sooner fight than eat. Our boys, conscious of inferiority, keep
+to themselves. The boys from across the tracks show off all the bad
+words they can think of. One of them has a mouth-harp which he plays
+upon, now and then opening his hands hollowed around the instrument.
+Patsy Gubbins dances to the music, which is a thing even more reckless
+and daredevil than swearing. Patsy's going with a "troupe" some day. Or
+else, he's going to get a job firing on an engine. He isn't right sure
+which he wants to do the most.
+
+Now and then a brakeman goes by swinging his lantern. The boys would
+like to ask him what time it is, but for one thing they're too bashful.
+Being a brakeman is almost as good as going with a "troupe" or a circus.
+You get to go to places that way, too, Marysville, and Mechanicsburg,
+and Harrod's--that is, if you're on the local freight, and then you lay
+over in Cincinnati. Some ways it's better than firing, and some ways it
+isn't so good. And then there is another reason why they don't ask
+the brakeman what time it is. He'd say it was "forty-five" or maybe
+"fifty-three," and never tell what hour.
+
+"Say! Do you know it's cold? You wouldn't think it would be so cold in
+the summer-time."
+
+The maple-trees, from being formless blobs, insensibly begin to look
+like lace-work. Presently the heavens and the earth are bathed in liquid
+blue that casts a spell so potent on the soul of him that sees it that
+he yearns for something he knows not what, except that it is utterly
+beyond him, as far beyond him as what he means to be will be from what
+he shall attain to. One dreams of romance and renown, of all that should
+be and is not. And as he dreams the birds awaken. In the East there
+comes a greenish tinge. Far up the track, there is a sullen roar, and
+then the hoarse diapason of an engine whistle. The roar strengthens and
+strengthens. It is the circus train.
+
+Under the witchcraft of the dreaming blue, each boy had a firm and
+stubborn purpose. Over and over again he rehearsed how he would go up
+to the man that runs the show, and say: "Please, mister, can I go with
+you?" And the man would say, "Yes." (As easy as that.) But the purpose
+wavered as he saw the roustabouts come tumbling out, all frowsy and
+unwashed, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, cross and savage. And the
+man whose word they jump to obey, he's kind of discouraging, it's all
+business with him. The fellows may plead with their eyes; he never sees
+them. If he does, he tells them where to get to out of that and how
+quick he wants it done, in language that makes the boldest efforts of
+the boys from across the tracks seem puny in comparison. The lads
+divide into two parties. One follows the buggy of the boss canvasman to
+Vandeman's lots where the stand is made. They will witness the spectacle
+of the raising of the tents, but they will also be near the man that
+runs the show, and if all goes well it may be he will like your looks
+and saunter up to you and say: "Well, bub, and how would you like to
+travel with us?" You don't know. Things not half so strange as that have
+happened. And if you were right there at the time....
+
+The other party lingers awhile looking up wistfully at the unresponsive
+windows of the sleeping-cars, behind which are the happy circus-actors.
+Perhaps the show-boy that stands up on top of his daddy's head will look
+out. If he should raise the window and smile at you, and get to talking
+with you maybe he would introduce you to his pa, and tell him that you
+would like to go with the show, and his pa would be a nice sort of a
+man, and he'd say: "Why, yes. I guess we can fix that all right." And
+there you'd be.
+
+Or if it didn't come out like that, why, maybe the boy would be another
+"Little Arthur, the Boy Circus-rider," like it told about in he Ladies'
+Repository. It seems there was a man, and one day he went by where there
+was a circus, and in a quiet secluded, vine-clad nook only a few
+steps from the main tent, he heard somebody sigh, oh, so sadly and so
+pitifully! Come to find out, it was Little Arthur, the Boy Circus-rider.
+He had large sensitive violet eyes, and a wealth of clustering ringlets,
+and he was very, very unhappy. So the man took from his pocket a Bible
+that he happened to have with him, and he read from it to Little Arthur,
+which cheered him up right away, because up to that moment he had only
+heard of the Bible. (Think of that!) And that night at the show, what do
+you s'pose? Little Arthur fell off the horse and hurt himself. And this
+man was at the show and he went back in the dressing-room, and held
+Little Arthur's hand. And the clown was crying, and the actors were
+crying, for they all loved Little Arthur in their rude, untutored way.
+And Little Arthur opened his large sensitive violet eyes, and saw the
+man, and said off the text that the man taught him that afternoon.
+
+And then he died. It was a sad story, but it made you wish it had been
+you that happened to have a Bible in your pocket as you passed the
+secluded, vine-clad nook only a few paces from the main tent, and had
+heard Little Arthur sigh so pitifully. It was those sensitive eyes we
+looked for in the sleeping-car windows, and all in vain. I think I saw
+the wealth of clustering ringlets, or at least the makings of it. I
+am almost positive I saw curl-papers as the curtain was drawn aside a
+moment.
+
+But whether a boy stands gazing at the sleepers, or runs over to the
+lots, there is something pathetic about it, something almost terrible.
+It is the death of an ideal. I can't conceive of a boy coming down to
+the depot to see the circus train come in another time. Hitherto, the
+show has been to him the ne plus ultra of romance. It comes in the night
+from 'way off yonder; it goes in the night to 'way off yonder. It is all
+splendor, all deeds of high emprise. It stands to reason then, that the
+closer you get to it, the closer you get to pure romance. And it isn't
+that way at all.
+
+What gravels a boy the most of all is to have to do the same old thing
+over and over again, day after day, week in, week out. Once he has seen
+the circus come in, he cannot blind himself to the fact that everything
+is marked and numbered; that all is system, and that everything is done
+today exactly as it was done yesterday, and as it will be done tomorrow.
+
+"What town is this?" he hears a man inquire of another.
+
+"Blest if I know. What's the odds what town it is?"
+
+Didn't know what town it was! Didn't care!
+
+The keen morning air, or something, makes a fellow mighty unromantic,
+too. Perhaps it was the thin blue wood-smoke from the field-stoves, and
+the smell of the hot coffee and the victuals the waiters are carrying
+about, some to the tent where the bare tables are for the canvasmen,
+some to the table covered with a red and white table-cloth as befits
+performers. These have no rosy cheeks. Their lithe limbs are not richly
+decked with silken tights. Insensibly the upper lip curls. They're not
+so much. They're only folks. That's all, just folks.
+
+But when ideals die, great truths are born. To such a boy at such a
+moment there comes the firm conviction which increasing years can only
+emphasize: Home is but a poor prosaic place, but Home--Ah, my brother,
+think on this--Home is where Breakfast is.
+
+"Hay! Wait for me, you fellows! Hay! Hold on a minute. Well, ain't I
+a-comin' jis''s fast's ever I kin? What's your rush?"
+
+It is the exceptional boy has this experience. The normal one preserves
+the delicate bloom of romance, by never seeing the show until it makes
+its Grand Triumphal Entree in a Pageant of Unparalleled Magnificence far
+Surpassing the Pomp and Splendor of Oriental Potentates.
+
+The hitching-posts are full of whinnering country horses, and people are
+in town you wouldn't think existed if you hadn't seen their pictures in
+Puck and Yudge, people from over by Muchinippi, and out Noodletoozy way,
+big, red-necked men with the long loping step that comes from walking on
+the plowed ground. Following them are lanky women with their front teeth
+gone, and their figures bowed by drudgery, dragging wide-eyed children
+whose uncouth finery betrays the "country jake," even if the freckles
+and the sun-bleached hair could keep the secret. From the far-off
+fastnesses, where there are still log-cabins chinked with mud, they have
+ventured to see the show come into town, and when they have seen that,
+they will retire again beyond our ken. How every sense is numbed and
+stunned by the magnificence and splendor of the painted and gilded
+wagons as they rumble past, the driver rolling and pitching in his seat,
+as he handles the ribbons of eight horses all at once! The farmer's
+heart is filled with admiration of his craft, as much as the children's
+hearts are at the gaudy pictures.
+
+The allegorical tableau-car solemnly waggles past, Europe, and Asia, and
+Africa, and Australia brilliant in grease-paint and gorgeous cheesecloth
+robes. And can you guess who the fat lady is up on the very tip-top of
+all, on the tip-top where the wobble is the worst? Our own Columbia!
+It must be fine to ride around that way all dressed up in a flag. But
+a sourer lot of faces you never saw in your life. No. I am wrong. For
+downright melancholy and despondency you must wait till the funny old
+clown comes along in his little bit of a buggy drawn by a little bit of
+a donkey.
+
+"And, oh, looky! Here comes the elephants, just the same as in the
+joggerfy books. And see the men walking beside them. They come from the
+place the elephants do. See, they have on the clothes they wear in that
+country. Don't they look proud? Who wouldn't be proud to get to walk
+with an elephant? And if you ever do anything to an elephant to make him
+mad, he'll always remember it, and some day he'll get even with you.
+One time there was a man, and he gave an elephant a chew of tobacco,
+and--O-o-ooh! See that man in the cage with the lions! Don't it just
+make the cold chills run over you? I wouldn't be there for a million
+dollars, would you, ma?
+
+"What they laughing at down the street? Ma, make Lizzie get down; she's
+right in my way. I don't want to see it pretty soon. I want to see it
+naow! Oh, ain't it funny? See the old clowns playing on horns! Ain't it
+too killing? Aw, look at them ponies. I woosht I had one. Johnny Pym
+has got a goat he can hitch up. What was that, pa? What was that went
+'OoOOoohm!'"
+
+"Whoa, Nell, whoa there! Steady, gal, steaday! Ho, there! Ho!
+Whoa--whoa-hup! Whad dy y' about? Fool horse. Whoa... whoa so, gal,
+soo-o. Lion, I guess, or a tagger, or sumpum or other."
+
+And talk about music. You thought the band was grand. You just wait.
+Don't you hear it down the street? It'll be along in a minute now.
+
+There it is. That's the cally-ope. That's what the show bills call:
+"The Steam Car of the Muses."... Mm-well, I don't know but it is just a
+leetle off the pitch, especially towards the end of a note, but you
+must remember that you can't haul a very big boiler on a wagon, and the
+whistles let out an awful lot of steam. It's pretty hard to keep the
+pressure even. But it's loud. That's the main thing. And the man that
+plays on it--no, not that fellow in the overalls with a wad of greasy
+waste in his hand. He 's only the engineer. I mean the artist, the man
+that plays on the keys. Well, he knows what the people want. He has
+his fingers on the public pulse. Does he give them a Bach fugue, or
+Guillmant's "Grand Choeur?" 'Deed, he doesn't. He goes right to the
+heart, with "Patrick's Day in the Morning," and "The Carnival of
+Venice," and "Home, Sweet Home," and "Oh, Where, Oh Where has my Little
+Dog Gone?" He knows his business. A shade off the key, perhaps, but my!
+Ain't it grand? So loud and nice!
+
+"Well, that's all of it.... Why, child, I can't make it any longer than
+it is."
+
+"What do you want me to drive round into the other street for? You've
+seen all there is to see. Got all your trading done, mother? Well, then
+I expect we'd better put for home. Now, Eddy, I told you 'No' once, and
+that's the end of it. Hush up now! Look here, sir! Do you want me to
+take and 'tend to you right before everybody? Well, I will now, if I
+hear another whimper out o' ye. Ck-ck-ck! Git ep there, Nelly."
+
+Some day, when we get big, and have whole, whole lots of money we're
+going to the circus every time it comes to town, to the real circus, the
+one you have to pay to get into. For if merely the street parade is so
+magnificent, what must the show itself be?
+
+How people can sit at the table on circus day and stuff, and stuff the
+way they do is more than I can understand. You'd think they hadn't any
+more chances to eat than they had to go to the show. And they can find
+more things to do before they get started! And then, after the house
+is all locked up and everything, they've got to go back after a
+handkerchief! What does anybody want with a handkerchief at a circus?
+
+It's exasperating enough to have to choose between going in the
+afternoon and not going at all. Why, sure, it's finer at night. Lots
+finer. You know that kind of a light the peanut-roaster man has got
+down by the post-office. Burns that kind of stuff they use to take out
+grease-spots. Ye-ah. Gasoline. Well, at the circus at night, they don't
+have just one light like that, but bunches and bunches of them on the
+tentpoles. No, silly! Of course not. Of course they don't set the tent
+afire. But say! What if they did, eh? The place would be all full
+of people, laughing at the country jake that comes out to ride the
+trick-mule, and you'd happen to look up and see where the canvas was
+ju-u-ust beginning to blaze, and you'd jump up and holler: "Fire! Fire!"
+as loud as ever you could because you saw it first, and you'd point to
+the place. Excitement? Well, I guess yes. The people would all run every
+which way, and fall all over themselves, and the women would squeal--And
+do you know what I'd do? Wouldn't just let myself down between the kind
+of bedslat benches, and drop to the ground, and lift up the canvas and
+there I'd be all safe. And after I was all safe, then I'd go back and
+rescue folks.
+
+We-ell, I s'pose I'd have to rescue a girl. It seems they always do
+that. But it would be nicer, I think, to rescue some real rich man. He'd
+say: "My noble preserver! How can I sufficiently reward you?" and take
+out his pocketbook. And wouldn't say: "Take back your proffered gold,"
+and make like I was pushing it away, "take back your proffered gold. I
+but did my duty." And then wouldn't forget all about it. And one day,
+after I'd forgotten all about, it, the man would die, and will me a
+million dollars, or a thousand, I don't know. Enough to make me rich.
+
+And say! Wouldn't the animals get excited when they saw the show was
+afire? They'd just roar and roar, and upset the cages, and maybe they'd
+get loose. O-o-o-Oh! How about that? If there was a lion come at me I'd
+climb a tree. What would you do? Ah, your pa's shot-gun nothing! Why,
+you crazy, that would only infuriate him the more. What you want to do
+is to take an express rifle, like Doo Challoo did, and aim right for his
+heart. An express rifle is what you send off and get, and they ship it
+to you by express.
+
+So you see what a fellow misses by having to go to the show in the
+afternoon, like the girls and the a-b-abs. The boys from across the
+tracks get to go at night. They have all the fun. When they go they
+don't have to poke along, and poke along, and keep hold of hands so as
+not to get lost.... Aw, hurry up, can't you? Don't you hear the band
+playing? It'll be all over before we get there.
+
+But finally the lots are reached, and there are the tents, with all
+kinds of flags snapping from the centerpoles and the guy-ropes. And
+there are the sideshows. Alas! You never thought of the sideshows when
+you asked if you could go. And now it's too late. It must be fine in the
+side-shows. I never got to go to one. I didn't have the money. But if
+the big, painted banners, bulging in and out, as the wind plays with
+them, are anything to go by, it must be something grand to see the Fat
+Lady, and the Circassian Beauty, whose frizzled head will just about fit
+a bushel basket, and the Armless Wonder. They say he can take a pair of
+scissors with his toes and cut your picture out of paper just elegant.
+
+Oh, and something else you miss by going in the afternoon. At night you
+can sneak around at the back, and when nobody is looking you can just
+lift up the canvas and go right in for nothing.... Why, what's wrong
+about that? Ah, you're too particular.... And if the canvasman catches
+you, you can commence to cry and say you had only forty cents, and
+wanted to see the circus so bad, and he'll take it and let you in,
+and you can have ten cents, don't you see, to spend for lemonade,
+red lemonade, you understand; and peanuts, the littlest bags, and the
+"on-riest" peanuts that ever were.
+
+As far as I can see, the animal part of the show is just the same as it
+always was. The people that take you to the show always pretend to be
+interested in them, but it's my belief they stop and look only to tease
+you. Away, 'way back in ancient times, there used to be a man that took
+the folks around and told them what was in each cage, and where it came
+from, and how much it cost, and what useful purpose it served in the
+wise economy of nature, and all about it. That was before my time. But
+I can recollect something they had that they don't have any more. I can
+remember when Mr. Barnum first brought his show to our town. It didn't
+take much teasing to get to go to that, because in those days Mr. Barnum
+was a "biger man than old Grant." "The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by
+Himself" was on everybody's marble-topped centertable, just the same as
+"The History of the Great Rebellion." You show some elderly person from
+out of town the church across the street from the Astor House, and
+say: "That's St. Paul's Chapel. General Montgomery's monument is in the
+chancel window. George Washington went to meeting there the day he was
+inaugurated president," and your friend will say: "M-hm." But you tell
+him that right across Broadway is where Barnum's Museum used to be, and
+he'll brighten right up and remember all about how Barnum strung a
+flag across to St. Paul's steeple and what a fuss the vestry of Trinity
+Parish made. That's something he knows about, that's part of the history
+of our country.
+
+Well, when Mr. Barnum first came to our town, all around one tent were
+vans full of the very identical Moral Waxworks that we had read about,
+and had given up all hopes of ever seeing because New York was so far
+away. There was the Dying Zouave. Oh, that was a beauty! The Advance
+Courier said that "the crimson torrent of his heart's blood spouted in
+rhythmic jets as the tide of life ebbed silently away;" but I guess by
+the time they got to our town they must have run all out of pokeberry
+juice, for the "crimson torrent" didn't spout at all. But his bosom
+heaved every so often, and he rolled up his eyes something grand! I
+liked it, but my mother said it was horrid. That's the way with women.
+They don't like anything that anybody else does. There's no pleasing
+'em. And she thought the Drunkard's Family was "kind o' low." It wasn't
+either. It was fine, and taught a great moral lesson. I told her so, but
+she said it was low, just the same. She thought the Temperance Family
+was nice, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as the Drunkard's Family.
+Why, let me tell you. The Drunkard's Wife was in a ragged calico dress,
+and her eye was all black and blue, where he had hit her the week
+before. And the Drunkard had hold of a black quart bottle, and his nose
+was all red, and he wore a plug hat that was even rustier and more caved
+in than Elder Drown's, if such a thing were possible. And there was--But
+I can't begin to tell you of all the fine things Mr. Barnum had that
+year, but never had again.
+
+Another thing Mr. Barnum had that year that never appeared again. It
+may be that after that time the Funny Old Clown did crack a joke, but
+I never heard him. The one that Mr. Barnum had got off the most comical
+thing you ever heard. I'll never forget it the longest day I live.
+Laugh? Why, I nearly took a conniption over it. It seems the clown got
+to crying about something.... Now what was it made him cry? Let me see
+now.... Ain't it queer I can't remember that? Fudge! Well, never mind
+now. It will come to me in a minute.
+
+I feel kind of sorry for the poor little young ones that grow up and
+never know what a clown is like. Oh, yes, they have them to-day, after a
+fashion. They stub their toes and fall down the same as ever, but there
+is a whole mob of them and you can't take the interest in them that you
+could in "the one, the only, the inimitable" clown there used to be, a
+character of such importance that he got his name on the bills. He was a
+mighty man in those days. The ring-master was a kind of stuck-up fellow,
+very important in his own estimation, but he didn't have a spark of
+humor. Not a spark. And he'd be swelling around there, all so grand,
+and the clown, just to take him down a peg or two, would ask him a
+conundrum. And do you think he could ever guess one? Never. Not a one.
+And when the clown would tell him what the answer was, he'd be so vexed
+at himself that he'd try to take it out on the poor clown, and cut at
+him with his long whip. But Mr. Clown was just as spry in his shoes as
+he was under the hat, and he'd hop up on the ring-side out of the way,
+and squall out: "A-a-aah! Never touched me!" We had that for a byword.
+Oh, you'd die laughing at the comical remarks he'd make. And he'd be so
+quick about it. The ring-master would say something, and before you'd
+think, the clown would make a joke out of it.... I wish I could remember
+what it was he said that was so funny, the time he started crying. Seems
+to me it was something about his little brother.... Well, no matter.
+
+Yes, sir, there are heads of families to-day, I'll bet you, that have
+grown up without ever having heard a clown sing a comic song, and ask
+the audience to join in the chorus. And if you say to such people: "Here
+we are again, Mr. Merryman," or "Bring on another horse," or "What will
+the little lady have now? the banners, my lord?" they look at you so
+funny. They don't know what you mean, and they don't know whether to get
+huffy or not. Well, I suppose it had to be that the Funny Old Clown with
+all his songs, and quips, and conundrums, and comical remarks should
+disappear. Perhaps he "didn't pay."
+
+I can't see that the rest of the show has changed so very much. Perhaps
+the trapeze performances are more marvelous and breath-suspending than
+they used to be. But they were far and far beyond what we could dream of
+then, and to go still farther as little impresses us as to be told that
+people live still even westerly of Idaho. The trapeze performers are
+up-to-date in one respect. The fellow that comes down with his arms
+folded, one leg stuck out and the other twined around the big rope,
+revolving slowly, slowly--well, the band plays the Intermezzo from
+"Cavalleria Rusticana" nowadays when he does that. It used to play: "O
+Thou, Sweet Spirit, Hear my Prayer!" But the lady in the riding-habit
+still smiles as if it hurt her when her horse walks on its hind legs;
+the bareback rider does the very same fancy steps as the horse goes
+round the ring in a rocking-chair lope; the attendants still slant the
+hurdles almost flat for the horse to jump; they still snake the banners
+under the rider's feet as he gives a little hop up, and they still bang
+him on the head with the paper-covered hoop to .... Hold on a minute.
+Now.
+
+Now... That story the clown told that was so funny, that had something
+to do with those hoops. I wish I could think of it. It would make you
+laugh, I know.
+
+People try to lay the blame of the modern circus's failure to interest
+them on the three rings. They say so many things to watch at once keeps
+them from being watching properly any one act. They can't give it the
+attention it deserves. But I'll tell you what's wrong: There isn't any
+Funny Old Clown, a particular one, to give it human interest. It is
+all too splendid, too magnificent, too far beyond us. We want to hear
+somebody talk once in awhile.
+
+They pretended that the tent was too big for the clown to be heard, but
+I take notice it wasn't too big for the fellow to get up and declaim
+"The puffawmance ees not yait hawf ovah. The jaintlemanly agents will
+now pawss around the ring with tickets faw the concert." I used to hate
+that man. When he said the performance was not yet half over, he lied
+like a dog, consarn his picture! There were only a few more acts to
+come. He knew it and we knew it. We wanted the show to go on and on, and
+always to be just as exciting as at the very first, and it wouldn't!
+We had got to the point where we couldn't be interested in anything any
+more. We were as little ones unable to prop their eyelids open and yet
+quarreling with bed. We were surfeited, but not satisfied. We sat there
+and pouted because there wasn't any more, and yet we couldn't but yawn
+at the act before us. We were mad at ourselves, and mad at everybody
+else. We clambered down the rattling bedslats seats, sour and sullen.
+We didn't want to look at the animals; we didn't want to do this, and
+we didn't want to do that. We whined and snarled, and wriggled and shook
+ourselves with temper, and we got a good hard slap, side of the head,
+right before everybody, and then we yelled as if we were being killed
+alive.
+
+"Now, mister, if I ever take you any place again, you'll know it. I'd
+be ashamed of myself if I was you. Hush up! Hush up, I tell you. Now
+you mark. You're never going to the show again. Do you hear me? Never! I
+mean it. You're never going again."
+
+But at eventide there was light. After supper, after a little rest and
+a good deal of food, while chopping the kindling for morning (it's
+wonderful how useful employ tends to induce a cheerful view of life)
+out of her dazzling treasure-heap of jewels, Memory took up, one after
+another, a glowing recollection and viewed it with delight. The evening
+performance, the one all lighted up with bunches and bunches of lights,
+was a-preparing, and in the gentle breeze the far-off music waved as it
+had been a flag. A harsh and rumbling noise as of heavy timbers falling
+tore through the tissue of sweet sounds. The horses in the barn next
+door screamed in their stalls to hear it. Ages and ages ago, on distant
+wind-swept plains their ancestors had hearkened to that hunting-cry, and
+summoned up their valor and their speed. It still thrilled in the blood
+of these patient slaves of man, though countless generations of them had
+never even so much as seen a lion.
+
+"And is that all the difference, pa, that the lion roars at night and
+the ostrich in the daytime?"
+
+Out on the back porch in the deepening dusk we sat, with eyes relaxed
+and dreaming, and watched the stars that powdered the dark sky. Before
+our inward vision passed in review the day of splendor and renown. We
+sighed, at last, but it was the happy sigh of him who has full dined.
+Ambition was digesting. In our turn, when we grew up, we, too, were to
+do the deeds of high emprise. We were to be somebody.
+
+(I never heard of anybody sitting up to see the show depart. And yet it
+seems to me that would be the best time to run off with it.)
+
+The next day we visited the lots. It was no dream. See the litter that
+mussed up the place.
+
+We were all there. None had heard the man that runs the show say
+genially: "Yes, I think we can arrange to take you with us." Here was
+the ring; here the tent-pole holes, and here a scrap of paper torn from
+a hoop the bareback rider leaped through.... Oh, now I know what I was
+going to tell you that the clown said. The comicalest thing!
+
+He picked up one of these hoops and began to sniffle.
+
+So the ring-master asked him what he was crying about.
+
+"I--I--was thinking of my mother. Smf! My good old mother!"
+
+So the ring-master asked him what made him think of his mother.
+
+"This." And he held up the paper-covered hoop.
+
+The ring-master couldn't see how that put the clown in mind of his
+mother. He was awful dumb, that man.
+
+"It looks just like the pancakes she used to make for us."
+
+Well, sir, we just hollered and laughed at that. And after we had
+quieted down a little, the ringmaster says: "As big as that?"
+
+"Bigger," says the clown. "Why, she used to make 'em so big we used 'em
+for bedclothes."
+
+"Indeed" (Just like that. He took it all in, just as if it was so.)
+
+"Oh, my, yes! I mind one time I was sleeping with my little brother, and
+I waked up just as cold--Brr! But I was cold!"
+
+"But how could that be, sir? You just now said you had pancakes for
+bedclothes."
+
+"Yes, but my little brother got hungry in the night, and et up all the
+cover."
+
+Laugh? Why, they screamed. Me? I thought I'd just about go up. But the
+ring master never cracked a smile. He didn't see the joke at all.
+
+Good-by, old clown, friend of our childhood, goodby, good-by forever!
+And you, our other friend, the street parade, must you go, too? And you,
+the gorgeous show-bills, must you tread the path toward the sundown?
+Good-by! Good-by! In that dreary land where you are going, the Kingdom
+of the Ausgespielt, it may comfort you to recollect the young hearts you
+have made happy in the days that were, but never more can be again.
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTY FAIR
+
+
+Whether or not the name had an influence on the weather, I don't know.
+Perhaps it did rain some years, but, as I remember, County Fair time
+seems to have had a sky perfectly cloudless, with its blue only a little
+dulled around the edges where it came close to the ground and the dust
+settled on it. Things far off were sort of hazy, but that might have
+been the result of the bonfires of leaves we had been having evenings
+after supper. In Fair weather, when the sun had been up long enough
+to get a really good start, it was right warm, but in the shade it
+was cool, and nights and mornings there was a chill in the air that
+threatened worse things to come.
+
+The harvest is past, the summer is ended. Down cellar the swing-shelf is
+cram-jam full of jellyglasses, and jars of fruit. Out on the hen-house
+roof are drying what, when the soap-box wagon was first built, promised
+barrels and barrels of nuts to be brought up with the pitcher of cider
+for our comforting in the long winter evenings, but what turns out, when
+the shucks are off, to be a poor, pitiful half-peck, daily depleted by
+the urgent necessity of finding out if they are dry enough yet. Folks
+are picking apples, and Koontz's cider-mill is in full operation. (Do
+you know any place where a fellow can get some nice long straws?) Out in
+the fields are champagne-colored pyramids, each with a pale-gold heap
+of corn beside it, and the good black earth is dotted with orange blobs
+that promise pumpkin-pies for Thanksgiving Day. No. Let me look again.
+Those aren't pie-pumpkins; those are cow-pumpkins, and if you want to
+see something kind of pitiful, I'll show you Abe Bethard chopping up
+one of those yellow globes--with what, do you suppose? With the cavalry
+saber his daddy used at Gettysburg.
+
+The harvest is past, the summer is ended. As a result of all the good
+feeding and the outdoor air we have had for three or four months past,
+the strawberry shortcakes, and cherry-pies, and green peas, and
+new potatoes, and string beans, and roasting-ears, and all such
+garden-stuff, and the fresh eggs, broken into the skillet before Speckle
+gets done cackling, and the cockerels we pick off the roost Saturday
+evenings (you see, we're thinning 'em out; no sense in keeping all of
+'em over winter)--as a result, I say, of all this good eating, and the
+outdoor life, and the necessity of stirring around a little lively these
+days we feel pretty good. And yet we get kind of low in our minds, too.
+The harvest is past, the summer is ended. It's gone, the good playtime
+when we didn't have to go to school, when the only foot-covering we wore
+was a rag around one big toe or the other; the days when we could stay
+in swimming all day long except mealtimes; the days of Sabbath-school
+picnics and excursions to the Soldiers' Home--it's gone. The harvest
+is past, the summer is ended. The green and leafy things have heard the
+word, and most of them are taking it pretty seriously, judging by their
+looks. But the maples and some more of them, particularly the maples,
+with daredevil recklessness, have resolved, as it were, to die with
+their boots on, and flame out in such violent and unbelievable colors
+that we feel obliged to take testimony in certain outrageous cases,
+and file away the exhibits in the Family Bible where nobody will bother
+them. The harvest is past, the summer is ended. Rainy days you can see
+how played-out and forlorn the whole world looks. But at Fair time, when
+the sun shines bright, it appears right cheerful.
+
+It seems to me the Fair lasted three days. One of them was a holiday
+from school, I know, and unless I'm wrong, it wasn't on the first day,
+because then they were getting the things in, and it wasn't on the last
+day, because then they were taking the things out, so it must have been
+on the middle day, when everybody went. Charley Wells had both the depot
+'buses out with "County FAIR" painted on muslin hung on the sides. The
+Cornet Band rode all round town in one, and so on over to the "scene of
+the festivities" as the Weekly Examiner very aptly put it, and then both
+'buses stood out in front of the American House, waiting for passengers,
+with Dinny Enright calling out: "This sway t' the Fair Groun's! Going
+RIGHT over!" Only he always waited till he got a good load before he
+turned a wheel. (Dinny's foreman at the chair factory now. Did you know
+that? Doing fine. Gets $15 a week, and hasn't drunk a drop for nearly
+two years.)
+
+Everybody goes the middle day of the Fair, everybody that you ever did
+know or hear tell of. You'll be going along, kind of half-listening to
+the man selling Temperance Bitters, and denouncing the other bitters
+because they have "al-cue-hawl" in them, and "al-cue-hawl will make you
+drunk," (which is perfectly true), and kind of half-listening to the man
+with the electric machine, declaring: "Ground is the first conductor;
+water is the second conductor," and you'll be thinking how slippery the
+grass is to walk on, when a face in the crowd will, as it were, sting
+your memory. "I ought to know that man," says you to yourself. "Now, who
+the mischief is he? Barker? No, 't isn't Barker, Barkdull? No. Funny
+I can't think of his name. Begins with B I'm pretty certain." And you
+trail along after him, as if you were a detective, sort of keeping out
+of his sight, and yet every once in a while getting a good look at him.
+"Mmmmmm!" says you. "What is that fellow's name? Why, sure. McConica."
+And you walk up to him and stick out your hand while he's gassing with
+somebody, and there's that smile on your face that says: "I know you
+but you don't know me," and he takes it in a limp sort of fashion, and
+starts to say: "You have the advantage of--" when, all of a sudden, he
+grabs your hand as if he were going to jerk your arm out of its socket
+and beat you over the head with the bloody end, and shouts out: "Why,
+HELLO, Billy! Well, suffering Cyrus and all hands round! Hold still a
+second and let me look at you. Gosh darn your hide, where you been for
+so long? I though you'd clean evaporated off the face the earth. Why,
+how AIR you? How's everything? That's good. Let me make you acquainted
+with my wife. Molly, this is Mr.--" But she says: "Now don't you tell me
+what his name is. Let me think. Why, Willie Smith! Well, of all things!
+Why, how you've changed! Honest, I wouldn't have knowed you. Do you mind
+the time we went sleigh-ridin' the whole posse of us, and got upset down
+there by Hanks's place?" And then you start in on "D' you mind?" and
+"Don't you recollect?" and you talk about the old school-days, and who's
+married, and who's moved out to Kansas, and who's got the Elias Hoover
+place now, and how Ella Trimble--You know Ella Diefenbaugh, old Jake
+Diefenbaugh's daughter, the one that lisped. Course you do. Well, she
+married Ed Trimble, and he died along in the early part of the summer.
+Typhoid. Was getting well but he took a relapse, and went off like that!
+And now she's left with three little ones, and they guess poor Ella has
+a pretty hard time making out. And this old schoolmate that you start
+to tell a funny story about is dead, and the freckle-faced boy with the
+buck teeth that put the rabbit in the teacher's desk, he's dead, too,
+and the boy that used to cry in school when they read:
+
+   "Give me three grains of corn, mother,
+    Only three grains o f corn;
+    To save what little life I have, mother,
+    Till the coming o f the morn."
+
+well, he studied law with old judge Rodehaver, and got to be Prosecuting
+Attorney, but he took to drinking--politics, you know--and now he's just
+gone to the dogs. Smart as a steel-trap, and bright as a dollar. Oh, a
+terrible pity! A terrible pity. And as you hear the fate of one after
+another of the happy companions of your childhood, and the sadness of
+life comes over you, they start to tell something that makes you laugh
+again. I tell you. Did you ever see one of these concave glasses, such
+as the artists use when they want to get an idea of how a picture looks
+all together as a whole, and not as an assemblage of parts? Well, what
+the concave glass is to a picture, so such talk is to life. It sort of
+draws it all together, and you see it as a whole, its sunshine and its
+shadow, its laughter and its tears, its work and its play, its past and
+its present. But not its future. The Good Man has mercifully hidden that
+from us.
+
+It does a body good to get such a talk once in a while.
+
+And there are the young fellows and the girls. This young gentleman in
+the rimless eye-glasses, who is now beginning to "go out among 'em" the
+last time you saw him was in meeting when Elder Drown was preaching, and
+my gentleman stood up in the seat and shouted shrilly: "'T ain't at all,
+man. 'T ain't at all!" And this sweet girl-graduate--the last time you
+saw her was just after Becky Daly, in the vain effort to "peacify" the
+squalling young one, had given her a fresh egg to play with. I kind
+o' like the looks of the younger generation of girls. But I don't know
+about the young fellows. They look to me like a trifling lot. Nothing
+like what they were in our young days. I don't see but what us old
+codgers had better hold on a while longer to the County Clerk's office,
+and the Sheriff's office, and the Probate judgeship, and the presidency
+of the National Bank. It wouldn't be safe to trust the destinies of
+the country in the hands of such heedless young whiffets. Engaged to be
+married! Oh, get out! What? Those babies?
+
+I kept awake most of the time the man was lecturing on: "The Republic:
+Will it Endure?" but I don't remember that he said anything in it about
+the crops. (We can't go 'round meeting the folks all day. We really must
+give a glance at the exhibition.) And I am one of those who hold to the
+belief that while the farmers can raise ears of corn as long as from
+your elbow to your fingertips, as big 'round as a rollingpin, and set
+with grains as regular and even as an eight-dollar set of artificial
+teeth; as long as they grow potatoes the size of your foot, and such
+pretty oats and wheat, and turnips, and squashes, and onions, and apples
+and all kinds of truck, and raise them not only in increasing size but
+increasing quantities to the acre I feel as if the Republic would last
+the year out anyway. Not that I have any notion that mere material
+prosperity will make and keep us a free people, but it goes to show that
+the farmers are not plodding along, doing as their fathers did before
+them, but that they are reading and studying, and taking advantage of
+modern methods. There are two ways of increasing your income. One is by
+enlarging your output, and the other is by enlarging your share of the
+proceeds from the sale of that output. The Grand Dukes will not always
+run this country.  The farmers saved the Union once by dying for it;
+they will save it again by living for it.
+
+The scientific fellows tell us that we have not nearly reached the
+maximum of yield to the acre of crops that are harvested once a year,
+but in regard to the crops that are harvested twice a day it looks to me
+as if we were doing fairly well. Nowadays we hardly know what is meant
+by the expression, "Spring poor." It is a sinister phrase, and tells
+a story of the old, cruel days when farmers begrudged their cattle the
+little bite they ate in wintertime, so that when the grass came again
+the poor creatures would fall over trying to crop it. They were so
+starved and weak that, as the saying went, they had to lean up against
+the fence to breathe. They don't do that way now, as one look at the
+fine, sleek cows will show you. A cow these days is a different sort of
+a being, her coat like satin, and her udder generous, compared with the
+wild-eyed things with burrs in their tails, and their flanks crusted
+with filth, their udders the size of a kid glove, and yielding such a
+little dab of milk and for such a short period. Hear the dairymen boast
+now of the miraculous yearly yield in pounds of butter and milk, and
+when they say: "You've got to treat a cow as if she were a lady," it
+sounds like good sense.
+
+Pigs are naturally so untidy about their persons, and have such shocking
+table-manners that it seems difficult to treat a sow like a lady, but
+that one in the pen yonder, with her litter of sucking pigs, seems
+very interesting. Come, let's have a look. Aren't the little pigs dear
+things? I'd like to climb in and take one of them up to pet it; do you
+s'pose she'd mind it if I did? I can see decided improvement in the
+modern hogs over old Mose Batcheller's. If you remember, his were what
+were known as "razorbacks." They could go like the wind, and the fence
+was not made that could stop them. If they couldn't root under it, they
+could turn themselves sidewise and slide through between the rails.
+It was told me that, failing all else, they could give their tails a
+swing--you remember the big balls of mud they used to have on their
+tails' ends--they could swing their tails after the manner of an athlete
+throwing the hammer, and fly over the top of the tallest stake-and-rider
+fence ever put up. I don't know whether this is the strict truth or not,
+but it is what was told me as a little boy, and I don't think people
+would wilfully deceive an innocent child.
+
+The pigs nowaday aren't as smart as that, but they cut up better at
+hog-killing time. They aren't quite so trim; indeed, they are nothing
+but cylinders of meat, whittled to a point at the front end, and set on
+four pegs, but as you lean on the top-rail of the pens out at the County
+Fair and look down upon them, you can picture in your mind, without
+much effort, ham, and sidemeat, and bacon, and spare-ribs, and smoked
+shoulder, and head-cheese, and liver-wurst, and sausages, and glistening
+white lard for crullers and pie-crust--Yes, I think pigs are right
+interesting. I know they've got Scripture for it, the folks that think
+it is wrong to eat pork, but somehow I feel sorry for them; they miss
+such a lot, not only in the eating line, but other ways. They are always
+being persecuted, and harassed, and picked at. Whereas the pork-fed man,
+it seems to me, sort of hankers to be picked at. It gives him a good
+chance to slap somebody slonchways. He feels better after he has seen
+his persecutors go away with a cut lip, and fingering of their teeth to
+see if they're all there.
+
+You'll just have to take me gently but firmly by the sleeve and lead me
+past the next exhibit, the noisy one, where there's so much cackling
+and crowing. I give you fair warning that if you get me started talking
+about chickens, the County Fair will have to wait till some other time.
+I don't know much about ducks, and geese, and guinea-hens, and pea-fowl,
+and turkeys, but chickens--Why, say. We had a hen once (Plymouth Rock
+she was; we called her Henrietta), and honestly, that hen knew more than
+some folks. One time she--all right. I'll hush. Let's go in here.
+
+I don't remember whether the pies, and cakes, and canned fruit, and such
+are in Pomona Hall or the Fine Arts Hall. Fine Arts Hall I think. They
+ought to be. I speak to be one of the judges that give out the premiums
+in this department. I'd be generous and let somebody else do the judging
+of the cakes, because I don't care much for cake. Oh, I can manage
+to choke it down, but I haven't the expert knowledge, practical and
+scientific, that I have in the matter of pie. I'd bear my share of the
+work when it came to the other things, jellies and preserves, and pies,
+but not cake. Wouldn't know just exactly how to go at it in the matter
+of jellies. I'd take a glass of currant, and hold it up to the light to
+note its crimson glory. And I'd lift off the waxed paper top and peer
+in, and maybe give the jelly a shake. And then I'd take a spoon and
+taste, closing my eyes so as to appear to deliberate--they'd roll up
+in an ecstacy anyhow--and I'd smack my lips, and say: "Mmmmm!" very
+thoughtfully, and set the glass back, and write down in my book my
+judgment, which would invariably be: "First Prize." Because if there is
+anything on top of this green earth that I think is just about right, it
+is currant jelly. Grape jelly is nice, and crab-apple jelly has its good
+points, and quince jelly is very delicate, but there is something about
+currant jelly that seems to touch the spot. Quince preserves are good
+if there is enough apple with the quince, and watermelon preserves are a
+great favorite, not because they are so much better tasting, but because
+the lucent golden cubes in the spicy syrup appeal so to the eye. But
+if you want to know what I think is really good eating in the preserve
+line, you just watch my motions when I come to the tomato preserves,
+these little fig-tomatoes, and see how quick the red card is put on
+them. Yes, indeed. It's been a long time, hasn't it? since you had any
+tomato-preserves, you that haven't been "Back Home" lately.
+
+It's no great trick to put up other fruit so that it will keep, but I'd
+look the canned tomatoes over pretty carefully, and if I saw that one
+lady had not only put them up so that they hadn't turned foamy, but had
+also succeeded with green corn, and that other poser, string beans,
+I'd give her first premium, because I'd know she was a first-rate
+housekeeper, and a careful woman, and one that deserved encouragement.
+
+But I'd save myself for the pies. I can tell a rich, short, flaky crust,
+and I can tell the kind that is as brown as a dried apple, and tough as
+the same on the top, and sad and livery on the bottom. And I know about
+fillings, how thick they ought to be, and how they ought to be seasoned,
+and all. Particularly pumpkin-pies, because I had early advantages that
+way that very few other boys had. I was allowed to scrape the crock that
+had held the pumpkin for the pies. So that's how I know as much as I do.
+
+I suppose, however, when all is said and done, that there is no pie that
+can quite come up to an apple-pie. You take nice, short crust that's
+been worked up with ice-water, and line the tin with it, and fill it
+heaping with sliced, tart apples--not sauce. Mercy, no!--and sweeten
+them just right, and put on a lump of butter, and some allspice, and
+perhaps a clove, and a little lemon peel, and then put on the cover,
+and trim off the edge, and pinch it up in scallops, and draw a couple of
+leaves in the top with a sharp knife, and have the oven just right, and
+set it in there, and I tell you that when ma opens the oven-door to see
+how the pie is coming on, there distils through the house such a perfume
+that you cry out in a choking voice: "Say! Ain't dinner 'most ready?"
+
+But I fully recognize the fact that very often our judgment is warped by
+feeling, and I am inclined to believe that even the undoubted merit of
+the apple-pie would not prevail against a vinegar-pie, if such should be
+presented to me for my decision. A vinegar-pie? Well, it has a top and
+bottom crust, the same as any other pie, but its filling is made
+of vinegar, diluted with water to the proper degree of sub-acidity,
+sweetened with molasses, thickened with flour, and all baked as any
+other pie. You smile at its crude simplicity, and wonder why I should
+favor it. To you it doesn't tell the story that it does to me. It
+doesn't take you back in imagination to "the airly days," when folks
+came over the mountains in covered wagons, and settled in the Western
+Reserve, leaving behind them all the civilization of their day, and its
+comforts, parting from relatives and friends, knowing full well that
+in this life they never more should look upon their faces--leaving
+everything behind to make a new home in the western wilds.
+
+Is was a land of promise that they came to. The virgin soil bore
+riotously. There were fruit-trees in the forest that Johnny Appleseed
+had planted on his journeyings. The young husband could stand in his
+dooryard and kill wild turkeys with his rifle. They fed to loathing
+on venison, and squirrels, and all manner of game, and once in a great
+while they had the luxury of salt pork. They were well-nourished,
+but sometimes they pined for that which was more than mere food. They
+hungered for that which should be to the meals' victuals what the flower
+is to the plant.
+
+"I whoosh't--I woosh't was so we could hev pie," sighed one such. (Let
+us call him Uriah Kinney). I think that sounds as if it were his name.
+
+"Land's sakes!" snapped his wife, exasperated that he should be thinking
+of the same thing that she was. "Land's sakes! Haow d' ye s'pose I kin
+make a pie when I hain't got e'er a thing to make it aout o'? You gimme
+suthirnn to make it aout o', an' you see haow quick--"
+
+"I ain't a-faultinn ye, Mary Ann," interposed Uriah gently. "I know haow
+'t is. I was on'y tellin' ye. I git I git a kind o' hum'sick sometimes.
+'Pears like as if I sh'd feel more resigned like.... Don't ye cry, Mary
+Ann. I know, I know. You feel julluk I do 'baout back home, an' all luk
+that."
+
+O woman! When the heft of thy intellect is thrown against a problem,
+something has got to give. Not long after, Uriah sits down to dinner,
+and can hardly ask a blessing, he has to swallow so. A pie is on the
+table!
+
+"Gosh, Mary Ann, but this is good!" says he, holding out his hand
+for the third piece. "This is lickinn good!" And he celebrates her
+achievement far and wide.
+
+"My Mary Ann med me a pie t' other day, was the all-firedest best pie I
+ever et."
+
+"Med you what?"
+
+"Med me a pie."
+
+"Pie? Whutch talkinn' baout? Can't git nummore pies naow. Frot 's all
+gin aout."
+
+"I golly, she med it just the same. Smartest woman y' ever see." The man
+dribbled at the mouth.
+
+"What sh' make it aout o'?"
+
+"Vinegar an' worter, I think she said. I d' know 's I ever et anythinn
+I relished julluk that. My Mary Ann, tell yew! She's 'baout's smart 's
+they make 'em."
+
+I wish I knew who she really was whom I have called Mary Ann Kinney, she
+that made the first vinegar-pie. I wish I knew where her grave is that
+I might lay upon it a bunch of flowers, such as she knew and
+liked--sweet-william, and phlox, and larkspur, and wild columbine. It
+couldn't make it up to her for all the hardships she underwent when she
+was bringing up a family in that wild, western country, and especially
+that fall when they all had the "fever 'n' ager" so bad, Uriah and the
+twins chilling one day, and Hiram and Sophronia Jane the next, and she
+just as miserable as any of them, but keeping up somehow, God only knows
+how. It couldn't make it up to her, but as I laid the pretty posies
+against the leaning headstone on which is written:
+
+   "A Loving Wife, a Mother Dear,
+    Faithful Friend Lies Buried Here."
+
+I believe she 'd get word of it somehow, and understand what I was
+trying to say by it.
+
+I'll ask to be let off the committee that judges the rest of the
+exhibits in the Fine Arts Hall, the quilts and the Battenberg, and the
+crocheting, and such. I know the Log Cabin pattern, and the
+Mexican Feather pattern, and I think I could make out to tell the
+Hen-and-Chickens pattern of quilts, but that's as much as ever. And as
+to the real, hand-painted views of fruit-cake, and grapes and apples on
+a red table-cloth, I am one of those that can't make allowances for the
+fact that she only took two terms. I call to mind one picture that Miss
+Alvalou Ashbaker made of her pap, old "Coonrod" Ashbaker. The Lord knows
+he was a "humbly critter," but he wasn't as "humbly" as she made him out
+to be, with his eyes bulging out of his head as if he was choking on a
+fishbone. And, instead of her dressing him up in his Sunday clothes, I
+wish I may never see the back of my neck if that girl didn't paint him
+in a red-and-black barred flannel shirt, with porcelain buttons on it!
+And his hair looked as if the calf had been at it. Wouldn't you think
+somebody would have told her? And that isn't all. She got the premium!
+
+Neither am I prepared to pass judgment on the fancy penmanship displayed
+by Professor Swope, framed elegantly in black walnut, and gilt,
+depicting a bounding deer, all made out of hair-line, shaded spirals,
+done with his facile pen. (No wonder a deer can jump so, with all those
+springs inside him.) Professor Swope writes visiting cards for you,
+wonderful birds done in flourishes and holding ribbons in their bills.
+He puts your name on the ribbon place. Neatest and tastiest thing you
+can imagine. I like to watch him do it, but it makes me feel unhappy,
+somehow. I never was much of a scribe, and it's too late for me to learn
+now.
+
+I don't feel so downcast when I examine the specimens of writing done by
+the children of District No. 34. I can just see the young ones working
+at home on these things, with their tongues stuck out of one corner of
+their mouths.
+
+    "Rome was not built in a day
+     Rome was not built in a day
+     Rome was not built in a day"
+
+and so on, bearing down hard on the downstroke of the curve in the
+capital "R," and clubbing the end of the little "t." And in the higher
+grades, they toil over "An Original Social Letter," describing to
+an imaginary correspondent a visit to Crystal Lake, or the Magnetic
+Springs. I can hear them mourn: "What shall I say next?" and "Ma, make
+Effie play some place else, won't you? She jist joggles the table like
+everything. Now, see what you done! Now I got to write it all over
+again. No, I cain't 'scratch it out. How'd it look to the County Fair
+all scratched out? Plague take it all!"
+
+The same hands have done maps of North and South America, and
+red-and-blue ink pictures of the circulation of the blood. It does beat
+all how smart the young ones are nowadays. I could no more draw off a
+picture of the circulation of the blood--get it right, I mean--why, I
+wouldn't attempt it.
+
+I am kind of mixed up in my recollection of the hall right next to the
+Fine Arts. You know it had two doors in each end. Sometimes I can
+see the central space between the doors, roped off and devoted to
+sewing-machines with persons demonstrating that they ran as light as a
+feather, and how it was no trouble at all to tuck and gather, and
+fell; to organs, which struck me with amaze, because by some witchcraft
+(octave coupler, I think they called it) the man could play on keys
+that he didn't touch, and pianos, whereon young ladies were prevailed to
+perform "Silvery Waves"--that's a lovely piece, I think, don't you?--and
+
+    "Listen to the mocking-bird, TEE-die-eedle-DONG
+     Lisen to the mocking-bird, teedle-eedle-EE-dle DONG
+     The mocking-bird still singing oer her grave,
+                             toomatooral-oo-cal-LEE!"
+
+And then again I can see that central, roped-off space given over
+to reckless deviltry, sheer impudent, brazen-faced, bold,
+discipline-defying er--er--wickedness. I had heard that people did
+things like that, but this was the first time I had ever caught a
+glimpse of such carryings-on in the broad open daylight, right before
+everybody. I stood there and watched them for hours, expecting every
+minute to see fire fall from heaven on them and burn up every son and
+daughter of Belial. But it didn't.
+
+I seem to recollect that it was a hot day, and that, tucked away where
+not a breath of air could get to them, were three fellows in their
+shirtsleeves, one playing on an organ, one on a yellow clarinet, and
+one on a fiddle. Every chance he could get, the fiddler would say to the
+organist: "Gimme A, please," and saw away trying to get into some sort
+of tune, but the catgut was never twisted that would hold to pitch
+with the perspiration dribbling down his fingers in little rills. The
+clarinet man looked as if he wanted to cry, and he had to twitter his
+eyelids all the time to keep the sweat from blinding him, and every once
+in a while, his soggy reed would let go of a squawk that sounded like
+a scared chicken. But the organ groaned on unrelentingly, and the tune
+didn't matter so much as the rhythm which was kept up as regular as a
+clock, whack! whack! whack! whack! And there were two or three other
+fellows with badges on that went around shouting: "Select your podners
+for the next quadrille! One more couple wanted right over here!"
+
+Dancing. M-hm.
+
+The fiddler "called off" and chanted to the tune, with his mouth on one
+side: "Sullootch podners! First couple forward and back. Side couples
+the same. Doe see do-o-o-o. Al-lee-man LEFT! Ballunce ALL! Sa-weeny the
+corners!" I don't know whether I get the proper order of these commands
+or not, or whether my memory serves me as to their effect, but it seems
+to me that at "Bal-lunce ALL!" the ladies demurely teetered, first on
+one foot and then on the other, like a frozen-toed rooster, while the
+gents fairly tore themselves apart with grape-vine twists and fancy
+steps, and slapped the dust out of the cracks in the floor. When it came
+to "SaWEENG your podners!" the room billowed with flying skirts, and the
+ladies squealed like anything. It made you a little dizzy to watch them
+do "Graaan' right and left," and you could understand how those folks
+felt--there were always one or two in each set--who had to be hauled
+this way and that, not sure whether they were having a good time or
+not, but hoping they were, their faces set in a sickly grin, while their
+foreheads wrinkled into a puzzled: "How's that? I didn't quite catch
+that last remark" expression. I don't know if it affected you in the
+same way that it did me, but after I had stood there for a time and
+watched those young men and women thus wasting the precious moments that
+dropped like priceless pearls into the ocean of Eternity, and were
+lost irrevocably, young, men and women giving themselves up to present
+enjoyment without one serious thought in their minds as to who was going
+to wash the supper dishes, or what would happen if the house took fire
+while they were away I say I do not know how the sight of such reckless
+frivolity affected you, but I know that after so long a time my face
+would get all cramped up from wearing a grin, and I'd have to go out and
+look at the reapers and binders to rest myself so I could come back and
+look some. There are two things that you simply have to do at the County
+Fair, or you aren't right sure you've been. One is to drink a glass of
+sweet cider just from the press, (which, I may say in passing, is an
+over-rated luxury. Cider has to be just the least bit "frisky" to be
+good. I don't mean hard, but "frisky." You know). And the other is to
+buy a whip, if it is only the little toy, fifteen-cent kind. On the
+next soap-box to the old fellow that comes every year to sell pictorial
+Bibles and red, plush-covered albums, the old fellow in the green
+slippers that talks as if he were just ready to drop off to sleep--on
+the next soap-box to him is the man that sells the whips. You can buy
+one for a dollar, two for a dollar, or four for a dollar, but not one
+for fifty cents, or one for a quarter. Don't ask me why, for I don't
+know. I am just stating the facts. It can't be done, for I've seen it
+tried, and if you keep up the attempt too long, the whip-man will lose
+all patience with your unreasonableness, and tell you to go 'long about
+your business if you've got any, and not bother the life and soul out of
+him, because he won't sell anything but a dollar's worth of whips, and
+that's all there is about it.
+
+He sells other things, handsaws, and pencils, and mouth-harps, and two
+knives for a quarter, of such pure steel that he whittles shavings off
+a wire nail with 'em, and is particular to hand you the very identical
+knife he did it with. He has jewelry, though I don't suppose you could
+cut a wire nail with it. You might, at that.
+
+To him approaches a boy.
+
+"Got 'ny collar-buttons?"
+
+"Well, now, I'll just look and see. Here's a beautiful rolled-plate gold
+watch-chain, with an elegant jewel charm. Lovely blue jewel." He dangles
+the chain and its rich glass pendant, and it certainly does look fine.
+"That'd cost you $2.50 at the store. How'd that strike you?"
+
+"Hpm. I want a collar-button."
+
+"Well, now, you hold on a minute. Lemme look again. Ah, here's a package
+'at orta have some in it. Yes, sir, here's four of 'em, enough to last
+you a lifetime; front, back, and both sleeves, the kind that flips and
+don't tear the buttonholes. Well, by ginger! Now, how'd that git in
+here, I want to know? That gold ring? Well, I don't care. It'll have to
+go with the collar-buttons. Tell you what I'll do with you: I'll let you
+have this elegant solid gold rolled-plate watch-chain and jewel, this
+elegant, solid gold ring to git married with--Hay? How about it?--and
+these four collar-buttons for--for--twenty-five cents, or a quarter of a
+dollar."
+
+That boy never took that quarter out of his breeches pocket. It just
+jumped out of itself. But I see that you are getting the fidgets. You're
+hoping that I'll come to the horse-racing pretty soon. You want to
+have it all brought back to you, the big, big race-track which, as you
+remember it now, must have been about the next size smaller than the
+earth's orbit around the sun. You want me to tell about the old farmer
+with the bunch of timothy whiskers under his chin that gets his old
+jingling wagon on the track just before a heat is to be trotted, and
+all the people yell at him: "Take him out!" You want me to tell how
+the trotters looked walking around in their dusters, with the eye-holes
+bound with red braid, and how the drivers of the sulkies sat with the
+tails of their horses tucked under one leg. Well, I'm not going to
+do anything of the kind, and if you don't like it, you can go to the
+box-office and demand your money back. I hope you'll get it. First
+place, I don't know anything about racing, and consequently I don't
+believe it's a good thing for the country. All I know is, that some
+horses can go faster than others, but which are the fastest ones I can't
+tell by the looks, though I have tried several times.... I did not walk
+back. I bought a round-trip ticket. They will tell you that these events
+at the County Fair tend to improve the breed of horses. So they do--of
+fast horses. But the fast horses are no good. They can't any of them go
+as fast as a nickel trolley-car when it gets out where there aren't any
+houses. And they not only are no good; they're a positive harm. You know
+and I know that just as soon as a man gets cracked after fast horses,
+it's good-by John with him.
+
+In the next place, I wouldn't mind it if it was only interesting to me.
+But it isn't. It bores me to death. You sit there and sit there trying
+to keep awake while the drivers jockey and jockey, scheming to get the
+advantage of the other fellow, and the bell rings so many times for them
+to come back after you think: "They're off this time, sure," that you
+get sick of hearing it. And when they do get away, why, who can tell
+which horse is in the lead? On the far side of the track they don't
+appear to do anything but poke along, and once in a while some fool
+horse will "break" and that's annoying. And then when they come into
+the stretch, the other folks that see you with the field-glasses, keep
+nudging you and asking: "Who 's ahead, mister? Hay? Who's ahead?" And
+it's ruinous to the voice to yell: "Go it! Go it! Go IT, ye devil,
+you!" with your throat all clenched that way and your face as red as a
+turkey-gobbler's. And that second when they are going under the wire,
+and the horse you rather like is about a nose behind the other one
+that you despise--Oh, tedious, very tedious. Ho hum, Harry! If I wasn't
+engaged, I wouldn't marry. Did you think to put a saucer of milk out for
+the kitty before you locked up the house?
+
+No. Horse-racing bores me to death, and as I am one of the charter
+members of the Anti-Other-Folks-Enjoyment Society, organized to stop
+people from amusing themselves in ways that we don't care for, you
+can readily see that it is a matter of principle with me to ignore
+horseracing, and not to give it so much encouragement as would come from
+mentioning it.
+
+If you're so interested in improving the breed of horses by competitive
+contests, what 's the matter with that one where the prize is $5 for the
+team that can haul the heaviest load on a stoneboat, straight pulling?
+Pile on enough stones to build a house, pretty near, and the owner
+of the team, a young fellow with a face like Keats, goes "Ck! Ck! Ck!
+Geet... ep... thah BILL! Geet ep, Doll-ay!" and cracks his whip, and
+kisses with his mouth, and the horses dance and tug, and jump around and
+strain till the stone-boat slides on the grass, and then men climb on
+until the load gets so heavy that the team can't budge it. Then another
+team tries, and so on, the competitors jawing and jowering at each other
+with: "Ah, that ain't fair! That ain't fair! They started it sideways."
+
+"That don't make no difference."
+
+"Yes, it does, too, make a difference. Straight ahead four inches.
+that's the rule."
+
+"Well, didn't they go straight ahead four inches? What's a matter with
+ye?"
+
+"I'll darn soon show ye what's the matter with me, you come any o' your
+shenanigan around here."
+
+"Mighty ready to accuse other folks o' shenannigan, ain't ye? For half
+a cent I'd paste you in the moot."
+
+"Now, boys! Now boys! None o' that."
+
+Lots more excitement than a horse-race. Lots more improving to the mind,
+and beneficial to the country.
+
+And if you hanker after the human element of skill, what's the matter
+with the contest where the women see who can hitch up a horse the
+quickest? Didn't you have your favorite picked out from the start? I
+did. She was about thirteen years old, dressed in an organdie, and I
+think she had light blue ribbons flying from her hat, light blue or
+pink, I forget which. Her pa helped her unharness, and you could tell by
+the way he look-at her that he thought she was about the smartest
+young one for her age in her neighborhood. (You ought to hear her play
+"General Grant's Grand March" on the organ he bought for her, a fine
+organ with twenty-four stops and two full sets of reeds, and a mirror in
+the top, and places to set bouquets and all.) There was a woman in the
+contest that seemed, by her actions, to think that the others were just
+wasting their time competing with her, but when they got the word "Go!"
+(Old Nate Wells was the judge; he sold out the livery-stable business
+to Charley, you recollect) her horse backed in wrong, and she got the
+harness all twisty-ways, and everything went bewitched. And wasn't she
+provoked, though? Served her right, I say. A little woman beside her was
+the first to jump into her buggy, and drive off with a strong inhalation
+of breath, and that nipping together of the lips that says: "A-a-ah! I
+tell ye!" The little girl that we picked out was hopping around like a
+scared cockroach, and her pa seemed to be saying: "Now, keep cool! Keep
+cool! Don't get flustered," but when another woman drove off, I know she
+almost cried, she felt so bad. But she was third, and when she and her
+pa drove around the ring, the people clapped her lots more than the
+other two. I guess they must have picked her for a favorite the same as
+you and I did. Bless her heart! I hope she got a good man when she grew
+up.
+
+Around back of the Old Settlers' Cabin, where they have the relics, the
+spinning-wheel, the flax-hackle, and the bunch of dusty tow that nobody
+knows how to spin in these degenerate days; the old flint-lock rifle,
+and the powder-horn; the tinder-box, and the blue plate, "more'n a
+hundred years old;" the dog-irons, tongs, poker, and turkey-wing of an
+ancient fireplace--around back of the Old Settlers' Cabin all the early
+part of the day a bunch of dirty canvas has been dangling from a rope
+stretched between two trees. It was fenced off from the curious, but
+after dinner a stranger in fringy trousers and a black singlet went
+around picking out big, strong, adventurous young fellows to stand about
+the wooden ring fastened to the bottom of the bunch of canvas, which
+went over the smoke-pipe of a sort of underground furnace in which a
+roaring fire had been built. As the hot air filled the great bag, it was
+the task of these helpers to shake out the wrinkles and to hold it down.
+Older and wiser ones forbade their young ones to go near it. Supposing
+it should explode; what then? But we have always wanted to fly away
+up into the air, and what did we come to the Fair for, if not for
+excitement? The balloon swells out amazingly fast, and when the
+guy-ropes are loosened and drop to the ground, the elephantine bag
+clumsily lunges this way and that, causing shrill squeals from those who
+fear to be whelmed in it. The man in the singlet tosses kerosene into
+the furnace from a tin cup, and you can see the tall flames leap upward
+from the flue into the balloon. It grows tight as a drum.
+
+"Watch your horses!" he calls out. There is a pause.... "Let go all!"
+The mighty shape shoots up twenty feet or so, and the man in the singlet
+darts to the corner to cut a lone detaining rope. As he runs he sheds
+his fringy trousers.
+
+"Good-by, everybody!" he cries out, and the sinister possibilities in
+that phrase are overlooked in the wonder at seeing him lurch upward
+through the air, all glorious in black tights and yellow breech-clout.
+Up and up he soars above the tree-tops, and the wind gently wafts him
+along, a pendant to a dusky globe hanging in the sky. He is just a speck
+now swaying to and fro. The globe plunges upward; the pendant drops like
+a shot. There is a rustling sound. It is the intake of the breath of
+horror from ten thousand pairs of lungs. Look! Look! The edges of the
+parachute ruffle, and then it blossoms out like an opening flower. It
+bounces on the air a little, and rocking gently sinks like thistle-down
+behind the woods.
+
+It is all over. The Fair is over. Let's go home. Isn't it wonderful
+though, what men can do? You'll see; they'll be flying like birds, one
+of these days. That's what we little boys think, but we overhear old
+Nate Wells say to Tom Slaymaker, as we pass them: "Well, I d' know. I
+d' know 's these here b'loon ascensions is worth the money they cost
+the 'Sociation. I seen so many of 'em, they don't interest me nummore.
+'Less, o' course, sumpun should happen to the feller."
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS BACK HOME
+
+
+It was the time of year when the store windows are mighty interesting.
+Plotner's bakery, that away, 'way back in the summer-time, was an
+ice-cream saloon, showed a plaster man in the window, with long, white
+whiskers, in top boots and a brown coat and peaked hat, all trimmed with
+fur, and carrying a little pinetree with arsenical foliage. Over his
+head dangled a thicket of canes hanging by their crooks from a twine
+string stretched across. They were made of candy striped spirally in red
+and white. There were candy men and women in the window, and chocolate
+mice with red eyes, and a big cake, all over frosting, with a candy
+preacher on it marrying a candy man and lady. The little children stood
+outside, with their joggerfies, and arithmetics, and spellers, and
+slates bound in red flannel under their arms, and swallowed hard as they
+looked. Whenever anybody went in for a penny's worth of yeast and opened
+the door, that had a bell fastened to it so that Mrs. Plotner could
+hear in the back room, and come to wait on the customer, the smell of
+wintergreen and peppermint and lemonsticks and hot taffy gushed out so
+strong that they couldn't swallow fast enough, but stood there choking
+and dribbling at the mouth.
+
+Brown's shoe store exhibited green velvet slippers with deers' heads
+on them, and Galbraith's windows were hung with fancy dressgoods, and
+handkerchiefs with dogs' heads in the corners; but, next to Plotner's,
+Case's drug-and-book store was the nicest. When you first went in, it
+smelled of cough candy and orris root, but pretty soon you could notice
+the smell of drums and new sleds, and about the last smell, (sort of
+down at the bottom of things) was the smell of new books, the fish-glue
+on the binding, and the muslin covers, and the printer's ink, and that
+is a smell that if it ever gets a good hold of you, never lets go. There
+were the "Rollo" books, and the "Little Prudy" books, and "Minnie and
+Her Pets," and the "Elm Island" series, and the "Arabian Nights," with
+colored pictures, and There were skates all curled up at the toes, and
+balls of red and black leather in alternate quarters, and China mugs,
+with "Love the Giver," and "For a Good Boy" in gilt letters on them.
+Kind of Dutch letters they were. And there were dolls with black, shiny
+hair, and red cheeks, and blue eyes, with perfectly arched eyebrows.
+They had on black shoes and white stockings, with pink garters, and they
+almost always toed in a little. They looked so cold in the window with
+nothing but a "shimmy" on, and fairly ached to be dressed, and nursed,
+and sung to. The little girls outside the window felt an emptiness in
+the hollow of their left arms as they gazed. There was one big doll in
+the middle all dressed up. It had real hair that you could comb, and it
+was wax. Pure wax! Yes, sir. And it could open and shut its eyes, and if
+you squeezed its stomach it would cry, of course, not like a real baby,
+but more like one of those ducks that stand on a sort of bellows thing.
+Though they all "chose" that doll and hoped for miracles, none of them
+really expected to find it in her stocking sixteen days later. (They
+kept count of the days.) Maybe Bell Brown might get it; her pa bought
+her lots of things. She had parlor skates and a parrot, only her ma
+wouldn't let her skate in the parlor, it tore up the carpet so, and the
+parrot bit her finger like anything.
+
+The little boys kicked their copper-toed boots to keep warm and
+quarreled about which one chose the train of cars first, and then began
+to quarrel over an army of soldiers.
+
+"I choose them!"
+
+"A-aw! You choosed the ingine and the cars."
+
+"Dung care. I choose everything in this whole window."
+
+"A-aw! That ain't fair!"
+
+In the midst of the wrangle somebody finds out that Johnny Pym has
+a piece of red glass, and then they begin fighting for turns looking
+through it at the snow and the court-house. But not for long. They
+fall to bragging about what they are going to get for Christmas. Eddie
+Cameron was pretty sure he 'd get a spy-glass. He asked his pa, and his
+pa said "Mebby. He'd see about it." Then, just in time, they looked up
+and saw old man Nicholson coming along with his shawl pinned around him.
+They ran to the other side of the street because he stops little boys,
+and pats them on the head, and asks them if they have found the Savior.
+It makes some boys cry when he asks them that.
+
+The Rowan twins--Alfaretta and Luanna May--are working a pair of
+slippers for their pa, one apiece, because it is such slow work. Along
+about suppertime they make Elmer Lonnie stay outside and watch for his
+coming, and he has to say: "Hello, pa!" very loud, and romp with him
+outside the gate so as to give the twins time to gather up the colored
+zephyrs and things, and hide them in the lower bureau drawer in the
+spare bedroom. At such a time their mother finds an errand that takes
+her into the parlor so that she can see that they do not, by any chance,
+look into the middle drawer in the farther left-hand corner, under the
+pillow-slips.
+
+One night, just at supper-time, Elmer Lonnie said: "Hello, pa!" and
+then they heard pa whispering and Elmer Lonnie came in looking very
+solemn--or trying to--and said: "Ma, Miss Waldo wants to know if you
+won't please step over there a minute."
+
+"Did she say what for? Because I'm right in the midst of getting
+supper. I look for your pa any minute now, and I don't want to keep him
+waiting."
+
+"No 'm, she didn't say what for. She jist said: 'Ast yer ma won't she
+please an' step over here a minute.' I wouldn't put anythin' on. 'T
+ain't cold. You needn't stay long, only till... I guess she's in some of
+a hurry."
+
+"Well, if Harriet Waldo thinks 'at I haven't anythin' better to do 'n
+trot around after her at her beck an'.... All right, I'll come."
+
+The twins got their slippers hid, and Mrs. Rowan threw her shawl over
+her head, and went next door to take Mrs. Waldo completely by surprise.
+The good woman immediately invented an intricate problem in crochet
+work demanding instant solution. Mr. Rowan had brought home a crayon
+enlargement of a daguerreotype of Ma, taken before she was married, when
+they wore their hair combed down over their ears, and wide lace collars
+fastened with a big cameo pin, and puffed sleeves with the armholes
+nearly at the elbows. They wore lace mitts then, too. The twins thought
+it looked so funny, but Pa said: "It was all the style in them days.
+Laws! I mind the first time I took her home from singin' school....
+Tell you where less hide it. In between the straw tick, and the feather
+tick." And Luanna May said: "What if company should come?" Elmer Lonnie
+ran over to Mrs. Waldo's to tell Ma that Pa had come home, and wanted
+his supper right quick, because he had to get back to the store, there
+was so much trade in the evenings now.
+
+"I declare, Emmeline Rowan, you're gettin' to be a reg'lar gadabout,"
+said Mr. Rowan, very savagely. "Gad, gad, gad, from mornin' till night.
+Ain't they time in daylight fer you an' Hat Waldo to talk about your
+neighbors 'at you can't stay home long enough to git me my supper?"
+
+He winked at the twins so funny that Alfaretta, who always was kind of
+flighty, made a little noise with her soft palate and tried to pass it
+off for a cough. Luanna May poked her in the ribs with her elbow, and
+Mrs. Rowan spoke up quite loud: "Why, Pa, how you go on! I wasn't but
+a minute, an' you hardly ever come before halfpast. And furthermore,
+mister, I want to know how I'm to keep this house a-lookin' like
+anything an' you a-trackin' in snow like that. Just look at you. I sh'd
+think you'd know enough to stomp your feet before you come in.
+Luanna May, you come grind the coffee. Alfie, run git your Pa his old
+slippers." That set both of them to giggling, and Mrs. Rowan went out
+into the kitchen and began to pound the beefsteak.
+
+"D' you think she sispicioned anythin'?" asked Mr. Rowan out of one side
+of his mouth, and Elmer Lonnie said, "No, sir," and wondered if his Pa
+"sispicioned anythin"' when Ma said, "Run git the old slippers."
+
+Mr. Waldo always walked up with Mr. Rowan, and just about that time his
+little Mary Ellen was climbing up into his lap and saying: "I bet you
+can't guess what I'm a-goin' to buy you for a Christmas gift with my
+pennies what I got saved up."
+
+"I'll just bet I can."
+
+"No, you can't. It's awful pretty--I mean, they're awful pretty. Somepin
+you want, too." How could he guess with her fingering his tarnished cuff
+buttons and looking down at them every minute or two?
+
+"Well, now, let me see. Is it a gold watch?"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Aw, now! I jist set my heart on a gold watch and chain."
+
+"Well, but it'd cost more money 'n I got. Three or fifteen dollars,
+mebby."
+
+"Well, let me see. Is it a shotgun?"
+
+"No, sir. Oh, you just can't guess it."
+
+"Is it a--a--Is it a horse and buggy?"
+
+"Aw, now, you're foolin'. No, it ain't a horse and buggy."
+
+"I know what it is. It's a dolly with real hair that you can comb, and
+all dressed up in a blue dress. One that can shut its eyes when it goes
+bye-bye."
+
+Little Mary Ellen looks at him very seriously a minute, and sighs, and
+says: "No, it ain't that. But if it was, wouldn't you let me play with
+it when you was to the store?" And he catches her up in his arms and
+says: "You betchy! Now, I ain't goin' to guess any more! I want to be
+surprised. You jump down an' run an' ask Ma if supper ain't most ready.
+Tell her I'm as hungry as a hound pup."
+
+He hears her deliver the message, and also the word her mother sends
+back: "Tell him to hold his horses. It 'll be ready in a minute."
+
+"It will, eh? Well, I can't wait a minute, an' I'm goin' to take a
+hog-bite right out of YOU!" and he snarls and bites her right in the
+middle of her stomach, and if there is anything more ticklesome than
+that, it hasn't been heard of yet.
+
+After supper, little Eddie Allgire teases his brother D. to tell him
+about Santa Claus. D. is cracking walnuts on a flat-iron held between
+his knees.
+
+"Is they any Santy Claus, D.?"
+
+"W'y, cert, they is. Who says not?"
+
+"Bunty Rogers says they ain't no sech a person."
+
+"You tell Bunt Rogers that he's a-gittin' too big fer his britches, an'
+first thing he knows, he'll whirl round an' see his naked nose. Tell him
+I said so."
+
+"Well, is they any Santy Claus?"
+
+"W'y cert. Ain't I a-tellin' you? Laws! ain't you never seen him yet?"
+
+"I seen that kind of a idol they got down in Plotner's winder."
+
+"Well, he looks jist like that, on'y he's alive."
+
+"Did you ever see him, D.?"
+
+"O-oh, well! Think I'm goin' to tell everything I know? Well, I guess
+not."
+
+"Well, but did you now?"
+
+"M-well, that 'd be tellin'."
+
+"Aw, now, D., tell me."
+
+"Look out what you're doin'. Now see that. You pretty near made me mash
+my thumb."
+
+"Aw, now, D., tell me. I think you might. I don't believe you ever did."
+
+"Oh, you don't, hey? Well, if you had 'a saw what I saw. M-m! Little
+round eyes an' red nose an' white whiskers, an' heard the sleigh bells,
+an' oh, my! them reindeers! Cutest little things! Stompin' their little
+feet" Here he stopped, and went on cracking nuts.
+
+"Tell some more. Woncha, please? Ma, make D. tell me the rest of it."
+
+"Huck-uh! Dassant. 'T wouldn't be right. Like's not he won't put anythin'
+in my stockin' now fer what I did tell."
+
+"How'll he know?"
+
+"How'll he know? Easy enough. He goes around all the houses evenings now
+to see how the young ones act, an' if he finds they're sassy, an' don't
+mind their Ma when she tells them to leave the cat alone, an' if they
+whine: 'I don' want to go out an' cut the kindlin'. Why cain't D. do
+it?' then he puts potatoes an' lumps o' coal in their stockin's. Oh,
+he'll be here, course o' the evenin'."
+
+"D' you s'pose he's round here now?" Eddie got a little closer to his
+brother.
+
+"I wouldn't wonder. Yes, sir. There he goes now. Sure's you're alive."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Right over yan. Aw, you don't look. See? There he is. Aw! you're too
+slow. Didn't you see him? Now the next time I tell you--Look, look!
+There! He run right acrost the floor an' into the closet. Plain 's day.
+didn't you see him? You saw him, mother?"
+
+Mrs. Allgire nodded her head. She was busy counting the stitches in a
+nubia she was knitting for old Aunt Pashy, Roebuck.
+
+"W'y, you couldn't help but see him, didn't you take notice to his white
+whiskers?"
+
+"Ye-es," said the child, slowly, with the wide-open stare of hypnosis.
+
+"Didn't you see the evergreen tree he carried?"
+
+"M-hm," said Eddie, the image taking shape in his mind's eye.
+
+"And his brown coat all trimmed with fur, an' his funny peaked hat? An'
+his red nose? W'y, course you did." The boy nodded his head. He was sure
+now. Yes. Faith was lost in sight. He believed.
+
+"I expect he's in the closet now. Go look."
+
+"No. You." He clung to D.
+
+"I can't. I got this flat-iron in my lap, an' wouldn't spill the
+nut-shells all over the floor. You don't want me to, do you, Ma?"
+
+Mrs. Allgire shook her head.
+
+"Well, now," said D. "Anybody tell you they ain't sich a person as Santy
+Claus, you kin jist stand 'em down 'at you know better, 'cause you seen
+him, didn't you?"
+
+Eddie nodded his head. Anyhow, what D. told him was "the Lord said unto
+Moses," and now that he had the evidence of his own eyes--Well, the next
+day he defied Bunt Rogers and all his works. To tell the plain truth,
+Bunt wasn't too well grounded in his newly cut infidelity.
+
+
+In the public schools the children were no longer singing:
+
+  "None knew thee but to love thee, thou dear one of my heart;
+   Oh, thy mem'ry is ever fresh and green.
+   The sweet buds may wither and fond hearts be broken,
+   Still I love thee, my darling, Daisy Deane."
+
+They turned over now to page 53, and there was a picture of Santa Claus
+just as in Plotner's window, except that he had a pack on his back and
+one leg in the chimney. This is what they sang:
+
+  "Ho, ho, ho!  Who wouldn't go?
+   Ho, ho, ho!  Who wouldn't go?
+   Up on the house-top, click, click, click
+   Down through the chimney with good St. Nick."
+
+Miss Munsell, who taught the D primary, traded rooms with Miss Crutcher,
+who taught the "a-b Abs." Miss Munsell was a big fat lady, and she
+smiled so that the dimples came in both cheeks and her double Chin was
+doubter than ever, when she told the children what a dear, nice teacher
+Miss Crutcher was, and how fond she was of them, and wouldn't they like
+to make a Christmas present to their dear, kind teacher? They all said
+"Yes, mam." Well, now, the way to do would be for each child to bring
+money (if Miss Munsell had smiled at a bird in the tree as she did then,
+it would have had to come right down and perch in her hand), just as
+much money as ever they could, and all must bring something, because it
+would make Miss Crutcher feel so bad to think that there was one
+little boy or one little girl that didn't love her enough to give her a
+Christmas present. And if everybody brought a dime or maybe a quarter,
+they could get her such a nice present. If their papas wouldn't let
+them have that much money, why surely they would let them have a penny,
+wouldn't they, children? And the children said: "Yes, mam."
+
+"And now all that love their dear, kind teacher, raise their hands. Why,
+there's a little girl over that hasn't her hand up! That's right, dear,
+put it up, bless your little heart! Now, we mustn't say a word to Miss
+Crutcher, must we? No. And that will be our secret, won't it? And all be
+sure to have your money ready by to-morrow. Now, I wonder if you can be
+just as still as little mice. I'm going to give this little girl a pin
+to drop and see if I can hear it out in the hall."
+
+Then she tiptoed down the hall clear to her own room and Mary Ellen
+Waldo let the pin drop, and Miss Mussell didn't come back to say whether
+she heard the pin drop or not. The children sat in breathless
+silence. Selma Morgenroth knocked her slate off and bit her lip with
+mortification while the others looked at her as much as to say: "Oh,
+my! ain't you 'shamed?" Then Miss Crutchet came back and smiled at the
+children, and they smiled back at her because they knew something she
+didn't know and couldn't guess at all. It was a secret.
+
+The next morning Miss Crutchet traded rooms again, and the little
+children gave Miss Mussell their money, and she counted it, and it came
+to $2.84. The next day she came again because there were three that
+hadn't their money, so there was $2.88 at last. Miss Mussell had three
+little girls go with her after school to pick out the present. They
+chose a silver-plated pickle caster, which is exactly what girls of
+seven will choose, and, do you know, it came exactly to $2.88?
+
+Then, on the last day of school, Miss Mussell came in, and, with the
+three little girls standing on the platform and following every move
+with their eyes as a dog watches his master, she gave the caster to Miss
+Crutchet and Miss Crutchet cried, she was so surprised. They were tears
+of joy, she said. After that, she went into Miss Munsell's room, and
+three little girls in there gave Miss Mussell a copy of Tennyson's poems
+that cost exactly $2.53, which was what Miss Crutchet had collected, and
+Miss Mussell cried because she was so surprised. How they could guess
+that she wanted a copy of Tennyson's poems, she couldn't think, but
+she would always keep the book and prize it because her dear pupils had
+given it to her. And just as Selma Morgenroth called out to the monitor,
+Charley Freer, who sat in Miss Crutchers chair, while she was absent:
+"Teacher! Make Miky Ryan he should ka-vit a-pullin' at my hair yet!" and
+the school was laughing because she called Charley Freer "teacher," in
+came Miss Crutchet as cross as anything, and boxed Miky Ryan's ears
+and shook Selma Morgenroth for making so much noise. They didn't give
+anything, though they promised they would.
+
+It was not alone in the day schools that there were extra preparations.
+The Sunday-schools were getting ready, too, and when Janey Pettit came
+home and told her Pa how big her class was, he started to say something,
+but her Ma shook her head at him and he looked very serious and seemed
+to be trying hard not to smile. He was very much interested, though,
+when she told him that Iky Morgenroth, whose father kept the One-Price
+Clothing House down on Main Street, had joined, and how he didn't know
+enough to take his hat off when he came into church. Patsy Gubbins and
+Miky Ryan and six boys from the Baptist Sunday-School had joined, too,
+and they all went into Miss Sarepta Downey's class, so that she had two
+whole pews full to teach, and they acted just awful. The infant
+class was crowded, and there was one little boy that grabbed for the
+collection when it was passed in front of him, and got a whole handful
+and wouldn't give it up, and they had to twist the money out of his
+fist, and he screamed and "hollered" like he was being killed. And
+coming home, Sophy Perkins, who goes to the Baptist Church, told
+her that there wasn't going to be any Christmas tree at their
+Sabbath-school. She said that there wasn't hardly anybody out. The
+teachers just sat round and finally went into the pastor's Bible class.
+Mr. Pettit said he was surprised to hear it. It couldn't have been the
+weather that kept them away, could it? Janey said she didn't know. Then
+he asked her what they were going to sing for Christmas, and she
+began on "We three kings of Orient are," and broke off to ask him what
+"Orient" meant, and he told her that Orient was out on the Sunbury pike,
+about three miles this side of Olive Green, and her Ma said: "Lester
+Pettit, I wish't you'd ever grow up and learn how to behave yourself.
+Why, honey, it means the East. The three wise men came from the East,
+don't you mind?"
+
+At the Centre Street M. E. Church, where Janey Pettit went to
+Sunday-school, there were big doings. Little Lycurgus Emerson, whose
+mother sent him down to Littell's in a hurry for two pounds of brown
+sugar, and who had already been an hour and a half getting past
+Plotner's and Case's, heard Brother Littell and Abel Horn talking over
+what they had decided at the "fishery meetin'." (By the time Curg got
+so that he shaved, he knew that "officiary" was the right way to say
+it, just as "certificate" is the right way to say "stiffcut.") There was
+going to be a Christmas tree clear up to the ceiling, all stuck full of
+candles and strung with pop-corn, and a chimney for Santa Claus to climb
+down and give out the presents and call out the names on them. Every
+child in the Sunday-school was to get a bag of candy and an orange, and
+there were going to be "exercises." Curg thought it would be kind of
+funny to go through gymnastics, but, just then, he saw Uncle Billy
+Nicholson come in, and he hid. He didn't want to be patted on the head
+and--asked things.
+
+Uncle Billy had his mouth all puckered up, and his eyebrows looked more
+like tooth-brushes than ever. He put down the list of groceries that
+Aunt Libby had written out for him, because he couldn't remember things
+very well, and commenced to lay down the law.
+
+"Such carryin's on in the house o' God!" he snorted. "Why the very idy!
+Talk about them Pharisees an' Sadducees a-makin' the temple a den o'
+thieves! W'y, you're a-turnin' it into a theayter with your play-actin'
+tomfoolery! They'll be no blessin' on it, now you mark."
+
+"Aunt Libby say whether she wanted stoned raisins?" asked Brother
+Littell, who was copying off the list on the order book.
+
+"I disremember, but you better send up the reg'lar raisins. Gittin' too
+many newfangled contraptions these days. They're a-callin' it a theayter
+right now, the Babtists is. What you astin' fer your eatin' apples?
+Whew! My souls alive! I don't wonder you grocery storekeepers git rich
+in a hurry. No, I guess you needn't send 'ny up. Taste too strong o'
+money. Don't have no good apples now no more anyways. All so dried up
+and pethy. An' what is it but a theayter, I'd like to know? Weth your
+lectures about the Ar'tic regions an' your mum-socials, an' all like
+that, chargin' money fer to git in the meetin' house. I tell you what it
+is, Brother Littell, the women folks 'd take the money they fritter away
+on ribbons and artificial flowers an' gold an'costly apparel, which I
+have saw them turned away from the love-feast fer wearin', an' 'ud give
+it in fer quarterage an' he'p support the preachin' of the Word, they
+wouldn't need to be no shows in the meetin' house an' they 'd be more
+expeerimental religion."
+
+Abel Horn (Abel led the singing in meeting, and had a loud bass voice;
+he always began before everybody and ended after everybody) was standing
+behind Uncle Billy, and Lycurgus could see him with his head juked
+forward and his eyebrows up and his mouth wide open in silent laughter,
+very disconcerting to Brother Littell, who didn't want to anger Uncle
+Billy, and maybe lose his trade by grinning in his face.
+
+"An' now you got to go an' put up a Christmas tree right in the altar,"
+stormed Uncle Billy, "an' dike it all out with pop-corn an' candles.
+You're gittin' as bad 's the Catholics, every bit. Worse, I say, becuz
+they never had the Gospel light, an' is jist led round by the priest an'
+have to pay to git their sins forgive. But you, you're a-walkin'
+right smack dab into it, weth your eyes open, teachin' fer Gospel the
+inventions o' men."
+
+"W'y what, Uncle Billy?"
+
+"W'y, this here Santy Claus a-climbin' down a chimley an' a-cuttin' up
+didoes fer to make them little ones think they is a reel Santy Claus
+'cuz they seen him to the meetin' house. Poot soon when they git a
+little older 'n' they find out how you been afoolin' 'em about Santy
+Claus, they'll wonder if what you been a-tellin' 'em about the Good Man
+ain't off o' the same bolt o' goods, an' another one o' them cunningly
+devised fables. Think they'll come any blessin' on tellin' a lie? An'
+a-actin' it out? No, sir. No, sir. Ain't ary good thing to a lie, no way
+you kin fix it. How kin they be? Who's the father of lies? W'y the Old
+Scratch! That's who. An' here you go a--"
+
+The old man was so wroth that he couldn't finish and turned and stamped
+out, slamming the door after him.
+
+Brother Littell winked and waited till Mr. Nicholson got out before he
+mildly observed "Kind o' hot in under the collar, 'pears like."
+
+"Righteous mad, I s'pose," said Abel Horn.
+
+"You waited on yit, bub?" asked Brother Littell. "I betchy he's
+a-thinkin' right now he'll take his letter out o' Centre Street an' go
+to the Barefoot Church. He would, too, if 't wasn't clean plumb at the
+fur end o' town an' a reg'lar mud-hole to git there."
+
+"Pity him an' a few more of 'em up in the Amen corner wouldn't go," said
+Abel Horn. "Mind the time we sung, 'There is a Stream?' You know
+they's a solo in it fer the soprano. Well, 't is kind o' operatic an'
+skallyhootin' up an' down the scale. I give the solo to Tilly Wilkerson
+an' if that old skeezicks didn't beller right out in the middle of it:
+'It's a disgrace tud Divine service!' He did. You could 'a' heard him
+clear to the court-house. My! I thought I'd go up. Tilly, she was kind
+o' scared an' trimbly, but she stuck to it like a major. Said afterwards
+she'd 'a' finished that solo if it was the last act she ever done."
+
+"Who's a-goin' to be Santy Claus?" asked Brother Littell, with cheerful
+irrevelance.
+
+"The committee thought that had better be kept a secret," replied Abel,
+with as much dignity as his four feet nine would admit of.
+
+"Ort to be somebody kind o' heavy-set, ort n't it?" hinted the grocer,
+giving a recognizable description of himself.
+
+"Well, I don' know 'bout that," contested Abel. "Git somebody kind o'
+spry an' he could pad out weth a pilfer. A pussy man 'd find it rather
+onhandy comin' down that chimbly an' hoppin' hether an' yan takin'
+things off o' the tree. Need somebody with a good strong voice, too,
+to call off the names.... Woosh's you'd git them things up to the house
+soon 's you kin, Otho. Ma's in a hurry fer 'em."
+
+"Betchy two cents," said Brother Littell to his clerk, Clarence
+Bowersox, "'at Abel Horn 'll be Santy Claus."
+
+"Git out!" doubted Clarence.
+
+"'Ll, you see now. He's the daggonedest feller to crowd himself in an'
+be the head leader o' everything. W'y, he ain't no more call to be Santy
+Claus 'n that hitchin' post out yan. Little, dried-up runt, bald 's a
+apple. Told me one time: 'I never grow'd a' inch tell I was sixteen
+'n' then I shot up like a weed.'... Bub, you tell yer Ma if she wants a
+turkey fer Christmas she better be gittin' her order in right quick."
+
+Only six more days till Christmas now--only five--only four--only
+three--only two--Christmas Eve. One day more of holding in such swelling
+secrets, and some of the young folks would have popped right wide open.
+Families gather about the Franklin stove, Pa and Ma gaping and rubbing
+their eyes--saying, "Oh, hum!" and making out that they are just plumb
+perishing for the lack of sleep. But the children cannot take the hint.
+They don't want to go to bed. The imminence of a great event nerves them
+in their hopeless fight against the hosts of Nod. They sit and stare
+with bulging eyes at the red coals and dancing flames, spurting out here
+and there like tiny sabers.
+
+The mystic hour draws near. Sometime in the night will come the jingle
+of silver bells, and the patter of tiny hoofs. Old Santa will halloo:
+"Whoa!" and come sliding down the chimney. The drowsing heads, fuddled
+with weariness, wrestle clumsily with the problem, "How is he to get
+through the stove without burning himself?" Reason falters and Faith
+triumphs. It would be done somehow, and then the reindeer would fly
+to the next house, and the next, and so on, and so on. The mystic hour
+draws near. Like a tidal wave it rolls around the world, foaming at its
+crest in a golden spray of gifts and love. The mystic hour.
+
+"Oh, just a little longer, just a little longer."
+
+"No, no. You cain't hardly prop your eyes open now. Come now. Get to
+bed. Now, Elmer Lonnie; now, Mary Ellen; now, Janey; now, Eddie; now,
+Lycurgus. Don't be naughty at the last minute and say, 'I don't want
+to,' or else Santa Claus won't come a-near. No, sir."
+
+After the last drink of water and the last "Now I lay me," a long
+pause.... Then from the spare bedroom the loud rustling of stiff paper,
+the snap of broken, string, and whispers of, "Won't her eyes stick out
+when she sees that!" and, "He's been just fretting for a sled; I'm so
+glad it was so 't we could get it for him," and, "I s'pose we ort n't to
+spent so much, but seems like with such nice young ones 's we've got 't
+ain't no more 'n right we should do for 'em all we can afford, 'n'
+mebby a little more. Janey 's 'stiffcut' said she was 100 in everything,
+deportment an' all."
+
+At one house something white slips down the staircase to where a good
+view can be had through the half-open parlor door. It pauses when a step
+cracks loudly in the stillness. The parlor door is slammed to.
+
+"D' you think he saw?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm afraid so. Little tyke!"
+
+Something white creeps back and crawls into bed. A heart thumps
+violently under the covers, and two big, round eyes stare up at the dark
+ceiling. Somebody has eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and
+the gates of Eden have shut behind him forever.
+
+He does not sense that now; he is glad in the exulting consciousness
+that he is "a little kid" no longer. Pretty soon he'll be a man, and
+then.... and then.... Oh, what grand things are to happen then!
+
+The mutual gifts are brought out with many a shamefaced: "It looks awful
+little, but 't was the best I could do for the money. You see I spent
+more on the children than I lotted to," and many a cheerful fib of:
+"Why, that's exactly what I've been wishing for." Some poor fools, that
+have never learned and never will learn that the truest word ever spoken
+is: "It is more blessed to give than to receive," make their husbands a
+present of a parlor lamp or a pair of lace curtains, and their wives
+a present of a sack of flour, or enough muslin to make half a dozen
+shirts. And there are deeper depths. There are such words as: "What
+possessed you to buy me that old thing? Well, I won't have it! Now!" The
+stove-door is slammed open and the gift crammed in upon the coals, and
+two people sit there with lips puffed out, chests heaving and hearts
+burning with hate.
+
+It is the truth, but cover it up. Cover it up. Turn away the head. On
+this Holy Night of Illusion let us forget the truth for once. There
+are three hundred and sixty-four other nights in which to consider the
+eternal verities. On this one, let us be as little children. "Let us now
+go even to Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass."
+
+The mystic hour draws nigh. The lights go out, one by one. The watchman
+at the flax mills rings the bell, and they that are waking count the
+strokes that tremble in the frosty air. Eleven o'clock. Father and
+mother sit silent by the fire. The tree in the corner of the room
+flashes its tinselry in the dying light. A cinder tinkles on the hearth.
+Their thoughts are one. "He would be nine years old, if he had lived,"
+murmurs the mother. Their hands grope for each other, meet and clasp.
+Something aches in their throats. The red coals swell and blur into a
+formless mass.
+
+The mystic hour is come. The town sleeps. The moon rides high in the
+clear heavens. The wind sighs in the fir trees. Faint and far-off across
+the centuries sounds the chant of angels.
+
+The hour is come.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Eugene Wood
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