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[Illustration: THACKERAY AND THE BOY]
A BOY I KNEW
AND FOUR DOGS
By Laurence Hutton
Profusely Illustrated
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1898
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| By LAURENCE HUTTON. |
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Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers.
_All rights reserved._
TO
MARK TWAIN
THE CREATOR OF
TOM SAWYER
ONE OF THE BEST BOYS
I EVER KNEW
_May the light of some morning skies
In days when the sun knew how to rise,
Stay with my spirit until I go
To be the boy that I used to know._
H. C. Bunner, in "Rowen."
ILLUSTRATIONS
THACKERAY AND THE BOY _Frontispiece_
THE BOY'S MOTHER Facing p. 4
ST. JOHN'S CHAPEL AND PARK " 6
THE BOY'S UNCLE JOHN " 8
THE BOY IN KILTS " 10
THE BOY PROMOTED TO TROUSERS " 12
"CRIED, BECAUSE HE HAD BEEN KISSED" " 14
"GOOD-MORNING, BOYS" " 16
PLAYING "SCHOOL" " 18
THE BOY'S SCOTCH GRANDFATHER " 20
THE HOUSE OF THE BOY'S GRANDFATHER--CORNER
OF HUDSON AND NORTH MOORE STREETS " 22
"ALWAYS IN THE WAY" " 24
READY FOR A NEW-YEAR'S CALL " 26
A NEW-YEAR'S CALL " 28
TOM RILEY'S LIBERTY-POLE " 30
THE BOY ALWAYS CLIMBED OVER " 32
THE CHIEF ENGINEER " 34
"MRS. ROBERTSON DESCENDED IN FORCE UPON THE
DEVOTED BAND" " 36
THE BOY AS VIRGINIUS " 38
JOHNNY ROBERTSON " 40
JANE PURDY " 42
JOE STUART " 44
BOB HENDRICKS " 46
MUSIC LESSONS " 48
THE BOY'S FATHER " 56
WHISKIE " 62
PUNCH " 64
MOP AND HIS MASTER " 68
ROY AND HIS MASTER " 74
ROY " 76
"HE TRIES VERY HARD TO LOOK PLEASANT" " 80
ROY " 82
THE WAITING THREE " 84
MOP 87
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The papers upon which this volume is founded--published here by the
courtesy of The Century Company--appeared originally in the columns of
_St. Nicholas_. They have been reconstructed and rearranged, and not a
little new matter has been added.
The portraits are all from life. That of The Boy's Scottish grandfather,
facing page 20, is from a photograph by Sir David Brewster, taken in St.
Andrews in 1846 or 1847. The subject sat in his own garden, blinking at
the sun for many minutes, in front of the camera, when tradition says
that his patience became exhausted and the artist permitted him to move.
The Boy distinctly remembers the great interest the picture excited when
it first reached this country.
Behind the tree in the extreme left of the view of The Boy's
Scottish-American grandfather's house in New York, facing page 22, may
be seen a portion of the home of Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in 1843 or
1844, some years earlier than the period of "The Story of a Bad Boy."
Warm and constant friends--as men--for upwards of a quarter of a
century, it is rather a curious coincidence that the boys--as
boys--should have been near neighbors, although they did not know each
other then, nor do they remember the fact.
The histories of "A Boy I Knew" and the "Four Dogs" are absolutely true,
from beginning to end; nothing has been invented; no incident has been
palliated or elaborated. The author hopes that the volume may interest
the boys and girls he does not know as much as it has interested him. He
has read it more than once; he has laughed over it, and he has cried
over it; it has appealed to him in a peculiar way. But then, he knew The
Dogs, and he knew The Boy!
L. H.
A BOY I KNEW
A BOY I KNEW
He was not a very good boy, or a very bad boy, or a very bright boy, or
an unusual boy in any way. He was just a boy; and very often he forgets
that he is not a boy now. Whatever there may be about The Boy that is
commendable he owes to his father and to his mother; and he feels that
he should not be held responsible for that.
His mother was the most generous and the most unselfish of human beings.
She was always thinking of somebody else--always doing for others. To
her it was blessed to give, and it was not very pleasant to receive.
When she bought anything, The Boy's stereotyped query was, "Who is to
have it?" When anything was bought for her, her own invariable remark
was, "What on earth shall I do with it?" When The Boy came to her, one
summer morning, she looked upon him as a gift from Heaven; and when she
was told that it _was_ a boy, and not a bad-looking or a bad-conditioned
boy, her first words were, "What on earth shall I do with it?"
She found plenty "to do with it" before she got through with it, more
than forty years afterwards; and The Boy has every reason to believe
that she never regretted the gift. Indeed, she once told him, late in
her life, that he had never made her cry! What better benediction can a
boy have than that?
The Boy's father was a scholar, and a ripe and good one. Self-made and
self-taught, he began the serious struggle of life when he was merely a
boy himself; and reading, and writing, and spelling, and languages, and
mathematics came to him by nature. He acquired by slow degrees a fine
library, and out of it a vast amount of information. He never bought a
book that he did not read, and he never read a book unless he considered
it worth buying and worth keeping. Languages and mathematics were his
particular delight. When he was tired he rested himself by the solving
of a geometrical problem. He studied his Bible in Latin, in Greek, in
Hebrew, and he had no small smattering of Sanskrit. His chief
recreation, on a Sunday afternoon or on a long summer evening, was a
walk with The Boy among the Hudson River docks, when the business of the
day, or the week, was over and the ship was left in charge of some old
quartermaster or third mate. To these sailors the father would talk in
each sailor's own tongue, whether it were Dutch or Danish, Spanish or
Swedish, Russian or Prussian, or a _patois_ of something else, always to
the great wonderment of The Boy, who to this day, after many years of
foreign travel, knows little more of French than "_Combien?_" and little
more of Italian than "_Troppo caro_." Why none of these qualities of
mind came to The Boy by direct descent he does not know. He only knows
that he did inherit from his parent, in an intellectual way, a sense of
humor, a love for books--as books--and a certain respect for the men by
whom books are written.
[Illustration: THE BOY'S MOTHER]
It seemed to The Boy that his father knew everything. Any question upon
any subject was sure to bring a prompt, intelligent, and intelligible
answer; and, usually, an answer followed by a question, on the father's
part, which made The Boy think the matter out for himself.
The Boy was always a little bit afraid of his father, while he loved and
respected him. He believed everything his father told him, because his
father never fooled him but once, and that was about Santa Claus!
When his father said, "Do this," it was done. When his father told him
to go or to come, he went or he came. And yet he never felt the weight
of his father's hand, except in the way of kindness; and, as he looks
back upon his boyhood and his manhood, he cannot recall an angry or a
hasty word or a rebuke that was not merited and kindly bestowed. His
father, like the true Scotchman he was, never praised him; but he never
blamed him--except for cause.
The Boy has no recollection of his first tooth, but he remembers his
first toothache as distinctly as he remembers his latest; and he could
not quite understand _then_ why, when The Boy cried over that raging
molar, the father walked the floor and seemed to suffer from it even
more than did The Boy; or why, when The Boy had a sore throat, the
father always had symptoms of bronchitis or quinsy.
The father, alas! did not live long enough to find out whether The Boy
was to amount to much or not; and while The Boy is proud of the fact
that he is his father's son, he would be prouder still if he could think
that he had done something to make his father proud of _him_.
From his father The Boy received many things besides birth and
education; many things better than pocket-money or a fixed sum per
annum; but, best of all, the father taught The Boy never to cut a
string. The Boy has pulled various cords during his uneventful life, but
he has untied them all. Some of the knots have been difficult and
perplexing, and the contents of the bundles, generally, have been of
little import when they have been revealed; but he saved the strings
unbroken, and invariably he has found those strings of great help to him
in the proper fastening of the next package he has had occasion to
send away.
[Illustration: ST. JOHN'S CHAPEL AND PARK]
The father had that strong sense of humor which Dr. Johnson--who had no
sense of humor whatever--denied to all Scotchmen. No surgical operation
was necessary to put one of Sydney Smith's jokes into the father's head,
or to keep it there. His own jokes were as original as they were
harmless, and they were as delightful as was his quick appreciation of
the jokes of other persons.
A long siege with a certain bicuspid had left The Boy, one early spring
day, with a broken spirit and a swollen face. The father was going, that
morning, to attend the funeral of his old friend, Dr. McPherson, and,
before he left the house, he asked The Boy what should be brought back
to him as a solace. Without hesitation, a brick of maple sugar was
demanded--a very strange request, certainly, from a person in that
peculiar condition of invalidism, and one which appealed strongly to the
father's own sense of the ridiculous.
When the father returned, at dinner-time, he carried the brick,
enveloped in many series of papers, beginning with the coarsest kind and
ending with the finest kind; and each of the wrappers was fastened with
its own particular bit of cord or ribbon, all of them tied in the
hardest of hard knots. The process of disentanglement was long and
laborious, but it was persistently performed; and when the brick was
revealed, lo! it was just a brick--not of maple sugar, but a plain,
ordinary, red-clay, building brick which he had taken from some pile of
similar bricks on his way up town. The disappointment was not very
bitter, for The Boy knew that something else was coming; and he realized
that it was the First of April and that he had been April-fooled! The
something else, he remembers, was that most amusing of all amusing
books, _Phoenixiana_, then just published, and over it he forgot his
toothache, but not his maple sugar. All this happened when he was about
twelve years of age, and he has ever since associated "Squibob" with the
sweet sap of the maple, never with raging teeth.
It was necessary, however, to get even with the father, not an easy
matter, as The Boy well knew; and he consulted his uncle John, who
advised patient waiting. The father, he said, was absolutely devoted to
_The Commercial Advertiser_, which he read every day from frontispiece
to end, market reports, book notices, obituary notices, advertisements,
and all; and if The Boy could hold himself in for a whole year his uncle
John thought it would be worth it. _The Commercial Advertiser_ of that
date was put safely away for a twelvemonth, and on the First of April
next it was produced, carefully folded and properly dampened, and was
placed by the side of the father's plate; the mother and the son
making no remark, but eagerly awaiting the result. The journal was
vigorously scanned; no item of news or of business import was missed
until the reader came to the funeral announcements on the third page.
Then he looked at the top of the paper, through his spectacles, and then
he looked, over his spectacles, at The Boy; and he made but one
observation. The subject was never referred to afterwards between them.
But he looked at the date of the paper, and he looked at The Boy; and he
said: "My son, I see that old Dr. McPherson is dead again!"
[Illustration: THE BOY'S UNCLE JOHN]
The Boy was red-headed and long-nosed, even from the beginning--a shy,
introspective, self-conscious little boy, made peculiarly familiar with
his personal defects by constant remarks that his hair _was_ red and
that his nose _was_ long. At school, for years, he was known familiarly
as "Rufus," "Red-Head," "Carrot-Top," or "Nosey," and at home it was
almost as bad.
His mother, married at nineteen, was the eldest of a family of nine
children, and many of The Boy's aunts and uncles were but a few years
his senior, and were his daily, familiar companions. He was the only
member of his own generation for a long time. There was a constant fear,
upon the part of the elders, that he was likely to be spoiled, and
consequently the rod of verbal castigation was rarely spared. He was
never praised, nor petted, nor coddled; and he was taught to look upon
himself as a youth hairily and nasally deformed and mentally of but
little wit. He was always falling down, or dropping things. He was
always getting into the way, and he could not learn to spell correctly
or to cipher at all. He was never in his mother's way, however, and he
was never made to feel so. But nobody except The Boy knows of the agony
which the rest of the family, unconsciously, and with no thought of
hurting his feelings, caused him by the fun they poked at his nose, at
his fiery locks, and at his unhandiness. He fancied that passers-by
pitied him as he walked or played in the streets, and he sincerely
pitied himself as a youth destined to grow up into an awkward, tactless,
stupid man, at whom the world would laugh so long as his life lasted.
An unusual and unfortunate accident to his nose when he was eight or ten
years old served to accentuate his unhappiness. The young people were
making molasses candy one night in the kitchen of his maternal
grandfather's house--the aunts and the uncles, some of the neighbors'
children, and The Boy--and the half of a lemon, used for flavoring
purposes, was dropped as it was squeezed by careless hands--very likely
The Boy's own--into the boiling syrup. It was fished out and put, still
full of the syrup, upon a convenient saucer, where it remained, an
exceedingly fragrant object. After the odor had been inhaled by one
or two of the party, The Boy was tempted to "take a smell of it"; when
an uncle, boylike, ducked the luckless nose into the still simmering
lemonful. The result was terrible. Red-hot sealing-wax could not have
done more damage to the tender, sensitive feature.
[Illustration: THE BOY IN KILTS]
The Boy carried his nose in a sling for many weeks, and the bandage,
naturally, twisted the nose to one side. It did not recover its natural
tint for a long time, and the poor little heart was nearly broken at the
thought of the fresh disfigurement. The Boy felt that he had not only an
unusually long nose, but a nose that was crooked and would always be as
red as his hair.
He does not remember what was done to his uncle. But the uncle was for
half a century The Boy's best and most faithful of friends. And The Boy
forgave him long, long ago.
The Boy's first act of self-reliance and of conscious self-dependence
was a very happy moment in his young life; and it consisted in his being
able to step over the nursery fender, all alone, and to toast his own
shins thereby, without falling into the fire. His first realization of
"getting big" came to him about the same time, and with a mingled shock
of pain and pleasure, when he discovered that he could not walk under
the high kitchen-table without bumping his head. He tried it very often
before he learned to go around that article of furniture, on his way
from the clothes-rack, which was his tent when he camped out on rainy
days, to the sink, which was his oasis in the desert of the basement
floor. This kitchen was a favorite playground of The Boy, and about that
kitchen-table centre many of the happiest of his early reminiscences.
Ann Hughes, the cook, was very good to The Boy. She told him stories,
and taught him riddles, all about a certain "Miss Netticoat," who wore a
white petticoat, and who had a red nose, and about whom there still
lingers a queer, contradictory legend to the effect that "the longer she
stands the shorter she grows." The Boy always felt that, on account of
her nose, there was a peculiar bond of sympathy between little Miss
Netticoat and himself.
As he was all boy in his games, he would never cherish anything but a
boy-doll, generally a Highlander, in kilts and with a glengarry, that
came off! And although he became foreman of a juvenile hook-and-ladder
company before he was five, and would not play with girls at all, he had
one peculiar feminine weakness. His grand passion was washing and
ironing. And Ann Hughes used to let him do all the laundry-work
connected with the wash-rags and his own pocket-handkerchiefs, into
which, regularly, every Wednesday, he burned little brown holes with the
toy flat-iron, which _would_ get too hot. But Johnny Robertson and
Joe Stuart and the other boys, and even the uncles and the aunts, never
knew anything about that--unless Ann Hughes gave it away!
[Illustration: THE BOY PROMOTED TO TROUSERS]
The Boy seems to have developed, very early in life, a fondness for new
clothes--a fondness which his wife sometimes thinks he has quite
outgrown. It is recorded that almost his first plainly spoken words were
"Coat and hat," uttered upon his promotion into a more boyish apparel
than the caps and frocks of his infancy. And he remembers very
distinctly his first pair of long trousers, and the impression they made
upon him, in more ways than one. They were a black-and-white check, and
to them was attached that especially manly article, the suspender. They
were originally worn in celebration of the birth of the New Year, in
1848 or 1849, and The Boy went to his father's store in Hudson Street,
New York, to exhibit them on the next business-day thereafter. Naturally
they excited much comment, and were the subject of sincere
congratulation. And two young clerks of his father, The Boy's uncles,
amused themselves, and The Boy, by playing with him a then popular game
called "Squails." They put The Boy, seated, on a long counter, and they
slid him, backward and forward between them, with great skill and no
little force. But, before the championship was decided, The Boy's mother
broke up the game, boxed the ears of the players, and carried the human
disk home in disgrace; pressing as she went, and not very gently, the
seat of The Boy's trousers with the palm of her hand!
He remembers nothing more about the trousers, except the fact that for a
time he was allowed to appear in them on Sundays and holidays only, and
that he was deeply chagrined at having to go back to knickerbockers at
school and at play.
The Boy's first boots were of about this same era. They were what were
then known as "Wellingtons," and they had legs. The legs had red leather
tops, as was the fashion in those days, and the boots were pulled on
with straps. They were always taken off with the aid of the boot-jack of
The Boy's father, although they could have been removed much more easily
without the use of that instrument. Great was the day when The Boy first
wore his first boots to school; and great his delight at the sensation
he thought they created when they were exhibited in the primary
department.
The Boy's first school was a dame's school, kept by a Miss or Mrs.
Harrison, in Harrison Street, near the Hudson Street house in which he
was born. He was the smallest child in the establishment, and probably a
pet of the larger girls, for he remembers going home to his mother in
tears, because one of them had kissed him behind the class-room door.
He saw her often, in later years, but she never tried to do it again!
[Illustration: "CRIED, BECAUSE HE HAD BEEN KISSED"]
At that school he met his first love, one Phoebe Hawkins, a very sweet,
pretty girl, as he recalls her, and, of course, considerably his senior.
How far he had advanced in the spelling of proper names at that period
is shown by the well-authenticated fact that he put himself on record,
once as "loving his love with an F, because she was Feeby!"
Poor Phoebe Hawkins died before she was out of her teens. The family
moved to Poughkeepsie when The Boy was ten or twelve, and his mother and
he went there one day from Red Hook, which was their summer home, to
call upon his love. When they asked, at the railroad-station, where the
Hawkinses lived and how they could find the house, they were told that
the carriages for the funeral would meet the next train. And, utterly
unprepared for such a greeting, for at latest accounts she had been in
perfect health, they stood, with her friends, by the side of Phoebe's
open grave.
In his mind's eye The Boy, at the end of forty years, can see it all;
and his childish grief is still fresh in his memory. He had lost a bird
and a cat who were very dear to his heart, but death had never before
seemed so real to him; never before had it come so near home. He never
played "funeral" again.
In 1851 or 1852 The Boy went to another dame's school. It was kept by
Miss Kilpatrick, on Franklin or North Moore Street. From this, as he
grew in years, he was sent to the Primary Department of the North Moore
Street Public School, at the corner of West Broadway, where he remained
three weeks, and where he contracted a whooping-cough which lasted him
three months. The other boys used to throw his hat upon an awning in the
neighborhood, and then throw their own hats up under the awning in order
to bounce The Boy's hat off--an amusement for which he never much cared.
They were not very nice boys, anyway, especially when they made fun of
his maternal grandfather, who was a trustee of the school, and who
sometimes noticed The Boy after the morning prayers were said. The
grandfather was very popular in the school. He came in every day,
stepped upon the raised platform at the principal's desk, and said in
his broad Scotch, "Good morning, boys!" to which the entire body of
pupils, at the top of their lungs, and with one voice, replied,
"_G-o-o-d morning, Mr. Scott!_" This was considered a great feature in
the school; and strangers used to come from all over the city to witness
it. Somehow it made The Boy a little bit ashamed; he does not know why.
He would have liked it well enough, and been touched by it, too, if it
had been some other boy's grandfather. The Boy's father was present
once--The Boy's first day; but when he discovered that the President of
the Board of Trustees was going to call on him for a speech he ran away;
and The Boy would have given all his little possessions to have run
after him. The Boy knew then, as well as he knows now, how his father
felt; and he thinks of that occasion every time he runs away from some
after-dinner or occasional speech which he, himself, is called upon to
make.
[Illustration: "GOOD MORNING, BOYS"]
After his North Moore Street experiences The Boy was sent to study under
men teachers in boys' schools; and he considered then that he was grown
up.
The Boy, as has been said, was born without the sense of spell. The Rule
of Three, it puzzled him, and fractions were as bad; and the proper
placing of e and i, or i and e, the doubling of letters in the middle of
words, and how to treat the addition of a suffix in "y" or "tion"
"almost drove him mad," from his childhood up. He hated to go to school,
but he loved to _play_ school; and when Johnny Robertson and he were not
conducting a pompous, public funeral--a certain oblong hat-brush, with a
rosewood back, studded with brass tacks, serving as a coffin, in which
lay the body of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, or the Duke of Wellington,
all of whom died when Johnny and The Boy were about eight years
old--they were teaching each other the three immortal and exceedingly
trying "R's"--reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic--in a play-school. Their
favorite spelling-book was a certain old cook-book, discarded by the
head of the kitchen, and considered all that was necessary for their
educational purpose. From this, one afternoon, Johnnie gave out
"Dough-nut," with the following surprising result. Conscious of the
puzzling presence of certain silent consonants and vowels, The Boy thus
set it down: "D-O, dough, N-O-U-G-H-T, nut--doughnut!" and he went up
head in a class of one, neither teacher nor pupil perceiving the
marvellous transposition.
All The Boy's religious training was received at home, and almost his
first text-book was "The Shorter Catechism," which, he confesses, he
hated with all his little might. He had to learn and recite the answers
to those awful questions as soon as he could recite at all, and, for
years, without the slightest comprehension as to what it was all about.
Even to this day he cannot tell just what "Effectual Calling," or
"Justification," is; and I am sure that he shed more tears over
"Effectual Calling" than would blot out the record of any number of
infantile sins. He made up his youthful mind that if he could not be
saved without "Effectual Calling"--whatever that was--he did not want to
be saved at all. But he has thought better of it since.
[Illustration: PLAYING "SCHOOL"]
It is proper to affirm here that The Boy did not acquire his
occasional swear-words from "The Shorter Catechism." They were born in
him, as a fragment of Original Sin; and they came out of him innocently
and unwittingly, and only for purposes of proper emphasis, long before
the days of "Justification," and even before he knew his A, B, C's.
His earliest visit to Scotland was made when he was but four or five
years of age, and long before he had assumed the dignity of trousers, or
had been sent to school. His father had gone to the old home at St.
Andrews hurriedly, upon the receipt of the news of the serious illness
of The Boy's grandmother, who died before they reached her. Naturally,
The Boy has little recollection of that sad month of December, spent in
his grandfather's house, except that it _was_ sad. The weather was cold
and wet; the house, even under ordinary circumstances, could not have
been a very cheerful one for a youngster who had no companions of his
own age. It looked out upon the German Ocean--which at that time of the
year was always in a rage, or in the sulks--and it was called "Peep o'
Day," because it received the very first rays of the sun as he rose upon
the British Isles.
The Boy's chief amusement was the feeding of "flour-scones" and
oat-cakes to an old goat, who lived in the neighborhood, and in daily
walks with his grandfather, who seemed to find some little comfort and
entertainment in the lad's childish prattle. He was then almost the only
grandchild; and the old man was very proud of his manner and appearance,
and particularly amused at certain gigantic efforts on The Boy's part to
adapt his own short legs to the strides of his senior's long ones.
After they had interviewed the goat, and had watched the wrecks with
which the wild shore was strewn, and had inspected the Castle in ruins,
and the ruins of the Cathedral, The Boy would be shown his grandmother's
new-made grave, and his own name in full--a common name in the
family--upon the family tomb in the old kirk-yard; all of which must
have been very cheering to The Boy; although he could not read it for
himself. And then, which was better, they would stand, hand in hand, for
a long time in front of a certain candy-shop window, in which was
displayed a little regiment of lead soldiers, marching in double file
towards an imposing and impregnable tin fortress on the heights of
barley-sugar. Of this spectacle they never tired; and they used to
discuss how The Boy would arrange them if they belonged to him; with a
sneaking hope on The Boy's part that, some day, they were to be his very
own.
[Illustration: THE BOY'S SCOTCH GRANDFATHER]
At the urgent request of the grandfather, the American contingent
remained in St. Andrews until the end of the year; and The Boy still
remembers vividly, and he will never forget, the dismal failure of
"Auld Lang Syne" as it was sung by the family, with clasped hands, as
the clock struck and the New Year began. He sat up for the occasion--or,
rather, was waked up for the occasion; and of all that family group he
has been, for a decade or more, the only survivor. The mother of the
house was but lately dead; the eldest son, and his son, were going, the
next day, to the other side of the world; and every voice broke before
the familiar verse came to an end.
As The Boy went off to his bed he was told that his grandfather had
something for him, and he stood at his knee to receive--a Bible! That it
was to be the lead soldiers and the tin citadel he never for a moment
doubted; and the surprise and disappointment were very great. He seems
to have had presence of mind enough to conceal his feelings, and to kiss
and thank the dear old man for his gift. But as he climbed slowly up the
stairs, in front of his mother, and with his Bible under his arm, she
overheard him sob to himself, and murmur, in his great disgust: "Well,
he has given me a book! And I wonder how in thunder he thinks I am going
to read his damned Scotch!"
This display of precocious profanity and of innate patriotism, upon the
part of a child who could not read at all, gave unqualified pleasure to
the old gentleman, and he never tired of telling the story as long as he
lived.
The Boy never saw the grandfather again. He had gone to the kirk-yard,
to stay, before the next visit to St. Andrews was made; and now that
kirk-yard holds everyone of The Boy's name and blood who is left in the
town.
The Boy was taught, from the earliest awakening of his reasoning powers,
that truth was to be told and to be respected, and that nothing was more
wicked or more ungentlemanly than a broken promise. He learned very
early to do as he was told, and not to do, under any consideration, what
he had said he would not do. Upon this last point he was almost morbidly
conscientious, although once, literally, he "beat about the bush." His
aunt Margaret, always devoted to plants and to flowers, had, on the back
stoop of his grandfather's house, a little grove of orange and lemon
trees, in pots. Some of these were usually in fruit or in flower, and
the fruit to The Boy was a great temptation. He was very fond of
oranges, and it seemed to him that a "home-made" orange, which he had
never tasted, must be much better than a grocer's orange; as home-made
cake was certainly preferable, even to the wonderful cakes made by the
professional Mrs. Milderberger. He watched those little green oranges
from day to day, as they gradually grew big and yellow in the sun. He
promised faithfully that he would not pick any of them, but he had a
notion that some of them might drop off. He never shook the trees,
because he said he would not. But he shook the stoop! And he hung about
the bush, which he was too honest to beat. One unusually tempting
orange, which he had known from its bud-hood, finally overcame him. He
did not pick it off, he did not shake it off; he compromised with his
conscience by lying flat on his back and biting off a piece of it. It
was not a very good action, nor was it a very good orange, and for that
reason, perhaps, he went home immediately and told on himself. He told
his mother. He did not tell his aunt Margaret. His mother did not seem
to be as much shocked at his conduct as he was. But, in her own quiet
way, she gave him to understand that promises were not made to be
cracked any more than they were made to be broken--that he had been
false to himself in heart, if not in deed, and that he must go back and
make it "all right" with his aunt Margaret. She did not seem to be very
much shocked, either; he could not tell why. But they punished The Boy.
They made him eat the rest of the orange!
[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF THE BOY'S GRANDFATHER--CORNER OF HUDSON
AND NORTH MOORE STREETS]
He lost all subsequent interest in that tropical glade, and he has never
cared much for domestic oranges since.
Among the many bumps which are still conspicuously absent in The Boy's
phrenological development are the bumps of Music and Locality. He
whistled as soon as he acquired front teeth; and he has been singing
"God Save the Queen" at the St. Andrew's Society dinners, on November
the 30th, ever since he came of age. But that is as far as his sense of
harmony goes. He took music-lessons for three quarters, and then his
mother gave it up in despair. The instrument was a piano. The Boy could
not stretch an octave with his right hand, the little finger of which
had been broken by a shinny-stick; and he could not do anything whatever
with his left hand. He was constantly dropping his bass-notes, which, he
said, were "understood." And even Miss Ferguson--most patient of
teachers--declared that it was of no use.
The piano to The Boy has been the most offensive of instruments ever
since. And when his mother's old piano, graceful in form, and with
curved legs which are still greatly admired, lost its tone, and was
transformed into a sideboard, he felt, for the first time, that music
had charms.
He had to practise half an hour a day, by a thirty-minute sand-glass
that could _not_ be set ahead; and he shed tears enough over "The
Carnival of Venice" to have raised the tide in the Grand Canal. They
blurred the sharps and the flats on the music-books--those tears; they
ran the crotchets and the quavers together, and, rolling down his
cheeks, they even splashed upon his not very clean little hands; and,
literally, they covered the keys with mud.
[Illustration: "ALWAYS IN THE WAY"]
Another serious trial to The Boy was dancing-school. In the first place,
he could not turn round without becoming dizzy; in the second place, he
could not learn the steps to turn round with; and in the third place,
when he did dance he had to dance with a girl! There was not a boy in
all Charraud's, or in all Dodworth's, who could escort a girl back to
her seat, after the dance was over, in better time, or make his
"thank-you bow" with less delay. His only voluntary terpsichorean effort
at a party was the march to supper; and the only steps he ever took with
anything like success were during the promenade in the lancers. In
"hands-all-round" he invariably started with the wrong hand; and if in
the set there were girls big enough to wear long dresses, he never
failed to tear such out at the gathers. If anybody fell down in the
polka it was always The Boy; and if anybody bumped into anybody else,
The Boy was always the bumper, unless his partner could hold him up and
steer him straight.
Games, at parties, he enjoyed more than dancing, although he did not
care very much for "Pillows and Keys," until he became courageous enough
to kneel before somebody except his maiden aunts. "Porter" was less
embarrassing, because, when the door was shut, nobody but the little
girl who called him but could tell whether he kissed her or not. All
this happened a long time ago!
The only social function in which The Boy took any interest whatever was
the making of New-Year's calls. Not that he cared to make New-Year's
calls in themselves, but because he wanted to make more New-Year's calls
than were made by any other boy. His "list," based upon last year's
list, was commenced about February 1; and it contained the names of
every person whom The Boy knew, or thought he knew, whether that person
knew The Boy or not, from Mrs. Penrice, who boarded opposite the Bowling
Green, to the Leggats and the Faures, who lived near Washington Parade
Ground, the extreme social limits of his city in those days. He usually
began by making a formal call upon his own mother, who allowed him to
taste the pickled oysters as early as ten in the morning; and he
invariably wound up by calling upon Ann Hughes in the kitchen, where he
met the soap-fat man, who was above his profession, and likewise the
sexton of Ann Hughes's church, who generally came with Billy, the barber
on the corner of Franklin Street. There were certain calls The Boy
always made with his father, during which he did not partake of pickled
oysters; but he had pickled oysters everywhere else; and they never
seemed to do him any serious harm.
[Illustration: READY FOR A NEW-YEAR'S CALL]
The Boy, if possible, kept his new overcoat until New Year's Day--and he
never left it in the hall when he called! He always wore new green kid
gloves--why green?--fastened at the wrists with a single hook and eye;
and he never took off his kid gloves when he called, except on that
particular New Year's Day when his aunt Charlotte gave him the
bloodstone seal-ring, which, at first, was too big for his little
finger,--the only finger on which a seal-ring _could_ be worn--and had
to be made temporarily smaller with a piece of string.
When he received, the next New Year, new studs and a scarf-pin--all
bloodstones, to match the ring--he exhibited no little ingenuity of
toilet in displaying them both, because studs are hardly visible when
one wears a scarf, unless the scarf is kept out of the perpendicular by
stuffing one end of it into the sleeve of a jacket; which requires
constant attention and a good deal of bodily contortion.
When The Boy met Johnny Robertson or Joe Stuart making calls, they never
recognized each other, except when they were calling together, which did
not often occur. It was an important rule in their social code to appear
as strangers in-doors, although they would wait for each other outside,
and compare lists. When they _did_ present themselves collectively in
any drawing-room, one boy--usually The Boy's cousin Lew--was detailed to
whisper "T. T." when he considered that the proper limit of the call
was reached. "T. T." stood for "Time to Travel"; and at the signal all
conversation was abruptly interrupted, and the party trooped out in
single file. The idea was not original with the boys. It was borrowed
from the hook-and-ladder company, which made all _its_ calls in a body,
and in two of Kipp and Brown's stages, hired for the entire day. The
boys always walked.
The great drawbacks to the custom of making New-Year's calls were the
calls which _had_ to be made after the day's hard work was supposed to
be over, and when The Boy and his father, returning home very tired,
were told that they _must_ call upon Mrs. Somebody, and upon Mrs.
Somebody-else, whom they had neglected to visit, because the husbands
and the sons of these ladies had called upon the mother of The Boy. New
Year's Day was not the shortest day of the year, by any means, but it
was absolutely necessary to return the Somebody's call, no matter how
late the hour, or how tired the victims of the social law. And it bored
the ladies of the Somebody household as much as it bored the father and
The Boy.
[Illustration: A NEW-YEAR'S CALL]
The Boy was always getting lost. The very first time he went out alone
he got lost! Told not to go off the block, he walked as far as the
corner of Leonard Street, put his arm around the lamp-post, swung
himself in a circle, had his head turned the wrong way, and marched off,
at a right angle, along the side street, with no home visible anywhere,
and not a familiar sign in sight. A ship at sea without a rudder, a
solitary wanderer in the Great American Desert without a compass, could
not have been more utterly astray. The Boy was so demoralized that he
forgot his name and address; and when a kindly policeman picked him up,
and carried him over the way, to the Leonard Street station-house for
identification, he felt as if the end of everything had come. It was bad
enough to be arrested, but how was he to satisfy his own conscience, and
explain matters to his mother, when it was discovered that he had
broken his solemn promise, and crossed the street? He had no
pocket-handkerchief; and he remembers that he spoiled the long silk
streamers of his Glengarry bonnet by wiping his eyes upon them. He was
recognized by his Forty-second-plaid gingham frock, a familiar object in
the neighborhood, and he was carried back to his parents, who had not
had time to miss him, and who, consequently, were not distracted. He
lost nothing by the adventure but himself, his self-respect, a pint of
tears--and one shoe.
He was afterwards lost in Greenwich Street, having gone there on the
back step of an ice-cart; and once he was conveyed as far as the Hudson
River Railroad Depot, at Chambers Street, on his sled, which he had
hitched to the milkman's wagon, and could not untie. This was very
serious, indeed; for The Boy realized that he had not only lost himself
but his sleigh, too. Aunt Henrietta found The Boy sitting disconsolately
in front of Wall's bake-shop; but the sleigh did not turn up for several
days. It was finally discovered, badly scratched, in the possession of
"The Head of the Rovers."
"The Hounds" and "The Rovers" were rival bands of boys, not in The Boy's
set, who for many years made out-door life miserable to The Boy and to
his friends. They threw stones and mud at each other, and at everybody
else; and The Boy was not infrequently blamed for the windows they
broke. They punched all the little boys who were better dressed than
they were, and they were even depraved enough, and mean enough, to tell
the driver every time The Boy or Johnny Robertson attempted to "cut
behind."
[Illustration: TOM RILEY'S LIBERTY POLE]
There was also a band of unattached guerillas who aspired to be, and
often pretended to be, either "Hounds" or "Rovers"--they did not care
which. They always hunted in couples, and if they met The Boy alone they
asked him to which of the organizations he himself belonged. If he said
he was a "Rover," they claimed to be "Hounds," and pounded him. If he
declared himself in sympathy with the "Hounds," they hoisted the
"Rovers'" colors, and punched him again. If he disclaimed both
associations, they punched him anyway, on general principles. "The Head
of the Rovers" was subsequently killed, in front of Tom Riley's
liberty-pole in Franklin Street, in a fireman's riot, and "The Chief of
the Hounds," who had a club-foot, became a respectable egg-merchant,
with a stand in Washington Market, near the Root-beer Woman's place of
business, on the south side. The Boy met two of the gang near the
Desbrosses Street Ferry only the other day; but they did not recognize
The Boy.
The only spot where The Boy felt really safe from the interference of
"The Hounds" and "The Rovers" was in St. John's Square, that delightful
oasis in the desert of brick and mortar and cobble-stones which was
known as the Fifth Ward. It was a private enclosure, bounded on the
north by Laight Street, on the south by Beach Street, on the east by
Varick Street, and on the west by Hudson Street; and its site is now
occupied by the great freight-warehouses of the New York Central and
Hudson River Railroad Company.
In the "Fifties," and long before, it was a private park, to which only
the property owners in its immediate neighborhood had access. It
possessed fine old trees, winding gravel-walks, and meadows of grass. In
the centre was a fountain, whereupon, in the proper season, the children
were allowed to skate on both feet, which was a great improvement over
the one-foot gutter-slides outside. The Park was surrounded by a high
iron railing, broken here and there by massive gates, to which The Boy
had a key. But he always climbed over. It was a point of etiquette, in
The Boy's set, to climb over on all occasions, whether the gates were
unlocked or not. And The Boy, many a time, has been known to climb over
a gate, although it stood wide open! He not infrequently tore his
clothes on the sharp spikes by which the gates were surmounted; but that
made no difference to The Boy--until he went home!
The Boy once had a fight in the Park, with Bill Rice, about a certain
lignum-vitae peg-top, of which The Boy was very fond, and which Bill Rice
kicked into the fountain. The Boy got mad, which was wrong and foolish
of The Boy; and The Boy, also, got licked. And The Boy never could make
his mother understand why he was silly and careless enough to cut his
under-lip by knocking it against Bill Rice's knuckles. Bill subsequently
apologized by saying that he did not mean to kick the top into the
fountain. He merely meant to kick the top. And it was all made up.
[Illustration: THE BOY ALWAYS CLIMBED OVER]
The Boy did not fight much. His nose was too long. It seemed that he
could not reach the end of it with his fists when he fought; and that
the other fellows could always reach it with theirs, no matter how
far out, or how scientifically, his left arm was extended. It was "One,
two, three--and recover"--on The Boy's nose! The Boy was a good runner.
His legs were the only part of his anatomy which seemed to him as long
as his nose. And his legs saved his nose in many a fierce encounter.
The Boy first had daily admission to St. John's Park after the family
moved to Hubert Street, when The Boy was about ten years old; and for
half a decade or more it was his happy hunting-ground--when he was not
kept in school! It was a particularly pleasant place in the autumn and
winter months; for he could then gather "smoking-beans" and
horse-chestnuts; and he could roam at will all over the grounds without
any hateful warning to "Keep Off the Grass."
The old gardener, generally a savage defender of the place, who had no
sense of humor as it was exhibited in boy nature, sometimes let the boys
rake the dead leaves into great heaps and make bonfires of them, if the
wind happened to be in the right direction. And then what larks! The
bonfire was a house on fire, and the great garden-roller, a very heavy
affair, was "Engine No. 42," with which the boys ran to put the fire
out. They all shouted as loudly and as unnecessarily as real firemen
did, in those days; the foreman gave his orders through a real trumpet,
and one boy had a real fireman's hat with "Engine No. 42" on it. He was
chief engineer, but he did not run with the machine: not because he was
chief engineer, but because while in active motion he could not keep his
hat on. It was his father's hat, and its extraordinary weight was
considerably increased by the wads of newspaper packed in the lining to
make it fit. The chief engineer held the position for life on the
strength of the hat, which he would not lend to anybody else. The rest
of the officers of the company were elected, _viva voce_, every time
there was a fire.
This entertainment came to an end, like everything else, when the
gardener chained the roller to the tool-house, after Bob Stuart fell
under the machine and was rolled so flat that he had to be carried home
on a stretcher, made of overcoats tied together by the sleeves. That is
the only recorded instance in which the boys, particularly Bob, left the
Park without climbing over. And the bells sounded a "general alarm." The
dent made in the path by Bob's body was on exhibition until the next
snow-storm.
[Illustration: THE CHIEF ENGINEER]