and fires. The Columbia Baseball Club was organized in 1853 or 1854. It
had nine members, and The Boy was secretary and treasurer. The uniform
consisted chiefly of a black leather belt with the initials [reversed
C]B[reversed B]C in white letters, hand-painted, and generally turned
the wrong way. The first base was an ailantus-tree; the second base
was another ailantus-tree; the third base was a button-ball-tree; the
home base was a marble head-stone, brought for that purpose from an old
burying-ground not far away; and "over the fence" was a home-run. A
player was caught out on the second bounce, and he was "out" if hit by a
ball thrown at him as he ran. The Boy was put out once by a crack on the
ear, which put The Boy out very much.
"The Hounds" and "The Rovers" challenged "The Columbias" repeatedly. But
that was looked upon simply as an excuse to get into the Park, and the
challenges were never accepted. The challengers were forced to content
themselves with running off with the balls which went over the fence; an
action on their part which made home-runs through that medium very
unpopular and very expensive. In the whole history of "The Hounds" and
"The Rovers," nothing that they pirated was ever returned but The Boy's
sled.
Contemporary with the Columbia Baseball Club was a so-called
"Mind-cultivating Society," organized by the undergraduates of
McElligott's School, in Greene Street. The Boy, as usual, was secretary
when he was not treasurer. The object was "Debates," but all the
debating was done at the business meetings, and no mind ever became
sufficiently cultivated to master the intricacies of parliamentary law.
The members called it a Secret Society, and on their jackets they wore,
as conspicuously as possible, a badge-pin consisting of a blue enamelled
circlet containing Greek letters in gold. In a very short time the
badge-pin was all that was left of the Society; but to this day the
secret of the Society has never been disclosed. No one ever knew, or
will ever know, what the Greek letters stood for--not even the members
themselves.
The Boy was never a regular member of any fire-company, but almost as
long as the old Volunteer Fire Department existed, he was what was known
as a "Runner." He was attached, in a sort of brevet way, to "Pearl Hose
No. 28," and, later, to "11 Hook and Ladder." He knew all the fire
districts into which the city was then divided; his ear was always
alert, even in the St. John's Park days, for the sound of the
alarm-bell, and he ran to every fire at any hour of the day or night, up
to ten o'clock P.M. He did not do much when he got to the fire but stand
around and "holler." But once--a proud moment--he helped steer the
hook-and-ladder truck to a false alarm in Macdougal Street--and once--a
very proud moment, indeed--he went into a tenement-house, near Dr.
Thompson's church, in Grand Street, and carried two negro babies
down-stairs in his arms. There was no earthly reason why the babies
should not have been left in their beds; and the colored family did not
like it, because the babies caught cold! But The Boy, for once in his
life, tasted the delights of self-conscious heroism.
[Illustration: "MRS. ROBERTSON DESCENDED IN FORCE UPON THE
DEVOTED BAND"]
When The Boy, as a bigger boy, was not running to fires he was going to
theatres, the greater part of his allowance being spent in the
box-offices of Burton's Chambers Street house, of Brougham's Lyceum,
corner of Broome Street and Broadway, of Niblo's, and of Castle Garden.
There were no afternoon performances in those days, except now and then
when the Ravels were at Castle Garden; and the admission to pit and
galleries was usually two shillings--otherwise, twenty-five cents. His
first play, so far as he remembers, was "The Stranger," a play dismal
enough to destroy any taste for the drama, one would suppose, in any
juvenile mind. He never cared very much to see "The Stranger" again, but
nothing that was a play was too deep or too heavy for him. He never saw
the end of any of the more elaborate productions, unless his father took
him to the theatre (as once in a while he did), for it was a strict rule
of the house, until The Boy was well up in his teens, that he must be in
by ten o'clock. His father did not ask him where he was going, or where
he had been; but the curfew in Hubert Street tolled at ten. The Boy
calculated carefully and exactly how many minutes it took him to run to
Hubert Street from Brougham's or from Burton's; and by the middle of the
second act his watch--a small silver affair with a hunting-case, in
which he could not keep an uncracked crystal--was always in his hand. He
never disobeyed his father, and for years he never knew what became of
Claude Melnotte after he went to the wars; or if Damon got back in time
to save Pythias before the curtain fell. The Boy, naturally, had a most
meagre notion as to what all these plays were about, but he enjoyed his
fragments of them as he rarely enjoys plays now. Sometimes, in these
days, when the air is bad, and plays are worse, and big hats are worse
than either, he wishes that he were forced to leave the modern
play-house at nine-forty-five, on pain of no supper that night, or
twenty lines of "Virgil" the next day.
[Illustration: THE BOY AS VIRGINIUS]
On very stormy afternoons the boys played theatre in the large garret of
The Boy's Hubert Street house; a convenient closet, with a door and a
window, serving for the Castle of Elsinore in "Hamlet," for the gunroom
of the ship in "Black-eyed Susan," or for the studio of Phidias in "The
Marble Heart," as the case might be. "The Brazilian Ape," as requiring
more action than words, was a favorite entertainment, only they all
wanted to play Jocko the Ape; and they would have made no little success
out of the "Lady of Lyons" if any of them had been willing to play
Pauline. Their costumes and properties were slight and not always
accurate, but they could "launch the curse of Rome," and describe "two
hearts beating as one," in a manner rarely equalled on the regular
stage. The only thing they really lacked was an audience, neither Lizzie
Gustin nor Ann Hughes ever being able to sit through more than one act
at a time. When The Boy, as Virginius, with his uncle Aleck's
sword-cane, stabbed all the feathers out of the pillow which represented
the martyred Virginia; and when Joe Stuart, as Falstaff, broke the
bottom out of Ann Hughes's clothes-basket, the license was revoked, and
the season came to an untimely end.
Until the beginning of the weekly, or the fortnightly, sailings of the
Collins line of steamers from the foot of Canal Street (a spectacle
which they never missed in any weather), Joe Stuart, Johnny Robertson,
and The Boy played "The Deerslayer" every Saturday in the back-yard of
The Boy's house. The area-way was Glimmer-glass, in which they fished,
and on which they canoed; the back-stoop was Muskrat Castle; the rabbits
were all the wild beasts of the Forest; Johnny was Hawk-Eye, The Boy was
Hurry Harry, and Joe Stuart was Chingachgook. Their only food was
half-baked potatoes--sweet potatoes if possible--which they cooked
themselves and ate ravenously, with butter and salt, if Ann Hughes was
amiable, and entirely unseasoned if Ann was disposed to be disobliging.
They talked what they fondly believed was the dialect of the Delaware
tribe, and they were constantly on the lookout for the approaches of
Rivenoak, or the Panther, who were represented by any member of the
family who chanced to stray into the enclosure. They carefully turned
their toes in when they walked, making so much effort in this matter
that it took a great deal of dancing-school to get their feet back to
the "first position" again; and they even painted their faces when they
were on the war-path. The rabbits had the worst of it!
The campaign came to a sudden and disastrous conclusion when the hostile
tribes, headed by Mrs. Robertson, descended in force upon the devoted
band, because Chingachgook broke one of Hawk-Eye's front teeth with an
arrow, aimed at the biggest of the rabbits, which was crouching by the
side of the roots of the grape-vine, and playing that he was a panther
of enormous size.
[Illustration: JOHNNY ROBERTSON]
Johnny Robertson and The Boy had one great superstition--to wit, Cracks!
For some now inexplicable reason they thought it unlucky to step on
cracks; and they made daily and hourly spectacles of themselves in the
streets by the eccentric irregularity of their gait. Now they would take
long strides, like a pair of ostriches, and now short, quick steps,
like a couple of robins; now they would hop on both feet, like a brace
of sparrows; now they would walk on their heels, now on their toes; now
with their toes turned in, now with their toes turned out--at right
angles, in a splay-footed way; now they would walk with their feet
crossed, after the manner of the hands of very fancy, old-fashioned
piano-players, skipping from base to treble--over cracks. The whole
performance would have driven a sensitive drill-sergeant or
ballet-master to distraction. And when they came to a brick sidewalk
they would go all around the block to avoid it. They could cross Hudson
Street on the cobblestones with great effort, and in great danger of
being run over; but they could not possibly travel upon a brick
pavement, and avoid the cracks. What would have happened to them if they
_did_ step on a crack they did not exactly know. But, for all that, they
never stepped on cracks--of their own free will!
The Boy's earliest attempts at versification were found, the other day,
in an old desk, and at the end of almost half a century. The copy is in
his own boyish, ill-spelled print; and it bears no date. The present
owner, his aunt Henrietta, well remembers the circumstances and the
occasion, however, having been an active participant in the acts the
poem describes, although she avers that she had no hand in its
composition. The original, it seems, was transcribed by The Boy upon
the cover of a soap-box, which served as a head-stone to one of the
graves in his family burying-ground, situated in the back-yard of the
Hudson Street house, from which he was taken before he was nine years of
age. The monument stood against the fence, and this is the legend it
bore--rhyme, rhythm, metre, and orthography being carefully preserved:
"Three little kitens of our old cat
Were berrid this day in this grassplat.
They came to there deth in an old slop pale,
And after loosing their breth
They were pulled out by the tale.
These three little kitens have returned to their maker,
And were put in the grave by The Boy,
Undertaker."
At about this period The Boy officiated at the funeral of another cat,
but in a somewhat more exalted capacity. It was the Cranes' cat, at Red
Hook--a Maltese lady, who always had yellow kittens. The Boy does not
remember the cause of the cat's death, but he thinks that Uncle Andrew
Knox ran over her, with the "dyspepsia-wagon"--so called because it had
no springs. Anyway, the cat died, and had to be buried. The grave was
dug in the garden of the tavern, near the swinging-gate to the stable,
and the whole family attended the services. Jane Purdy, in a deep crape
veil, was the chief mourner; The Boy's aunts were pall-bearers, in white
scarves; The Boy was the clergyman; while the kittens--who did not look
at all like their mother--were on hand in a funeral basket, with black
shoestrings tied around their necks.
[Illustration: JANE PURDY]
Jane was supposed to be the disconsolate widow. She certainly looked the
part to perfection; and it never occurred to any of them that a cat,
with kittens, could not possibly have left a widow behind her.
The ceremony was most impressive; the bereaved kittens were loud in
their grief; when, suddenly, the village-bell tolled for the death of an
old gentleman whom everybody loved, and the comedy became a tragedy. The
older children were conscience-stricken at the mummery, and they ran,
demoralized and shocked, into the house, leaving The Boy and the kittens
behind them. Jane Purdy tripped over her veil, and one of the kittens
was stepped on in the crush. But The Boy proceeded with the funeral.
When The Boy got as far as a room of his own, papered with scenes from
circus-posters, and peopled by tin soldiers, he used to play that his
bed was the barge _Mayflower_, running from Barrytown to the foot of
Jay Street, North River, and that he was her captain and crew. She made
nightly trips between the two ports; and by day, when she was not tied
up to the door-knob--which was Barrytown--she was moored to the handle
of the wash-stand drawer--which was the dock at New York. She never was
wrecked, and she never ran aground; but great was the excitement of The
Boy when, as not infrequently was the case, on occasions of sweeping,
Hannah, the up-stairs girl, set her adrift.
The _Mayflower_ was seriously damaged by fire once, owing to the
careless use, by a deck-hand, of a piece of punk on the night before the
Fourth of July; this same deck-hand being nearly blown up early the very
next morning by a bunch of fire-crackers which went off--by
themselves--in his lap. He did not know, for a second or two, whether
the barge had burst her boiler or had been struck by lightning!
[Illustration: JOE STUART]
Barrytown is the river port of Red Hook--a charming Dutchess County
hamlet in which The Boy spent the first summer of his life, and in which
he spent the better part of every succeeding summer for a quarter of a
century; and he sometimes goes there yet, although many of the names he
knows were carved, in the long-agoes, on the tomb. He always went up and
down, in those days, on the _Mayflower_, the real boat of that name,
which was hardly more real to him than was the trundle-bed of his
vivid, nightly imagination. They sailed from New York at five o'clock
P.M., an hour looked for, and longed for, by The Boy, as the very
beginning of summer, with all its delightful young charms; and they
arrived at their destination about five of the clock the next morning,
by which time The Boy was wide awake, and on the lookout for Lasher's
Stage, in which he was to travel the intervening three miles. And
eagerly he recognized, and loved, every landmark on the road.
Barringer's Corner; the half-way tree; the road to the creek and to
Madame Knox's; and, at last, the village itself, and the tavern, and the
tobacco-factory, and Massoneau's store, over the way; and then, when
Jane Purdy had shown him the new kittens and the little chickens, and he
had talked to "Fido" and "Fanny," or to Fido alone after Fanny was
stolen by gypsies--Fanny was Fido's wife, and a poodle--he rushed off to
see Bob Hendricks, who was just his own age, barring a week, and who has
been his warm friend for more than half a century; and then what good
times The Boy had!
Bob was possessed of a grandfather who could make kites, and swings, and
parallel-bars, and things which The Boy liked; and Bob had a mother--and
he has her yet, happy Bob!--who made the most wonderful of cookies,
perfectly round, with sparkling globules of sugar on them, and little
round holes in the middle; and Bob and The Boy for days, and weeks, and
months together hen's-egged, and rode in the hay-carts, and went for the
mail every noon, and boosted each other up into the best
pound-sweet-tree in the neighborhood; and pelted each other with little
green apples, which weighed about a pound to the peck; and gathered
currants and chestnuts in season; and with long straws they sucked new
cider out of bung-holes; and learned to swim; and caught their first
fish; and did all the pleasant things that all boys do.
At Red Hook they smoked their first cigar--half a cigar, left by uncle
Phil--and they wished they hadn't! And at Red Hook they disobeyed their
mothers once, and were found out. They were told not to go wading in the
creek upon pain of not going to the creek at all; and for weeks they
were deprived of the delights of the society of the Faure boys, through
whose domain the creek ran, because, when they went to bed on that
disastrous night, it was discovered that Bob had on The Boy's stockings,
and that The Boy was wearing Bob's socks; a piece of circumstantial
evidence which convicted them both. When the embargo was raised and they
next went to the creek, it is remembered that Bob tore his trousers in
climbing over a log, and that The Boy fell in altogether.
[Illustration: BOB HENDRICKS]
The Boy usually kept his promises, however, and he was known even to
keep a candy-cane--twenty-eight inches long, red and white striped like
a barber's pole--for a fortnight, because his mother limited him to the
consumption of two inches a day. But he could not keep any knees to his
trousers; and when The Boy's mother threatened to sew buttons--brass
buttons, with sharp and penetrating eyes--on to that particular portion
of the garment in question, he wanted to know, in all innocence, how
they expected him to say his prayers!
One of Bob's earliest recollections of The Boy is connected with a toy
express-wagon on four wheels, which could almost turn around on its own
axis. The Boy imported this vehicle into Red Hook one summer, and they
used it for the transportation of their chestnuts and their currants and
their apples, green and ripe, and the mail, and most of the dust of the
road; and Bob thinks, to this day, that nothing in all these after years
has given him so much profound satisfaction and enjoyment as did that
little cart.
Bob remembers, too--what The Boy tries to forget--The Boy's daily
practice of half an hour on the piano borrowed by The Boy's mother from
Mrs. Bates for that dire purpose. Mrs. Bates's piano is almost the only
unpleasant thing associated with Red Hook in all The Boy's experience of
that happy village. It was pretty hard on The Boy, because, in The
Boy's mind, Red Hook should have been a place of unbroken delights. But
The Boy's mother wanted to make an all-round man of him, and when his
mother said so, of course it had to be done or tried. Bob used to go
with The Boy as far as Dr. Bates's house, and then hang about on the
gate until The Boy was released; and he asserts that the music which
came out of the window in response to The Boy's inharmonic touch had no
power whatever to soothe his own savage young breast. He attributes all
his later disinclination to music to those dreary thirty minutes of
impatient waiting.
The piano and its effect upon The Boy's uncertain temper _may_ have been
the innocent cause of the first, and only, approach to a quarrel which
The Boy and Bob ever had. The prime cause, however, was, of course, a
girl! They were playing, that afternoon, at Cholwell Knox's, when
Cholwell said something about Julia Booth which Bob resented, and there
was a fight, The Boy taking Cholwell's part; why, he cannot say, unless
it was because of his jealousy of Bob's affection and admiration for
that charming young teacher, who won all hearts in the village, The
Boy's among the number. Anyway, Bob was driven from the field by the
hard little green apples of the Knox orchard; more hurt, he declares, by
the desertion of his ally than by all the blows he received.
[Illustration: MUSIC LESSONS]
It never happened again, dear Bob, and, please God, it never will!
Another trouble The Boy had in Red Hook was Dr. McNamee, a resident
dentist, who operated upon The Boy, now and then. He was a little more
gentle than was The Boy's city dentist, Dr. Castle; but he hurt, for all
that. Dr. Castle lived in Fourth Street, opposite Washington Parade
Ground, and on the same block with Clarke and Fanning's school. And to
this day The Boy would go miles out of his way rather than pass Dr.
Castle's house. Personally Dr. Castle was a delightful man, who told The
Boy amusing stories, which The Boy could not laugh at while his mouth
was wide open. But professionally Dr. Castle was to The Boy an awful
horror, of whom he always dreamed when his dreams were particularly bad.
As he looks back upon his boyhood, with its frequent toothache and its
long hours in the dentists' chairs, The Boy sometimes thinks that if he
had his life to live over again, and could not go through it without
teeth, he would prefer not to be born at all!
It has rather amused The Boy, in his middle age, to learn of the
impressions he made upon Red Hook in his extreme youth. Bob, as has been
shown, associates him with a little cart, and with a good deal of the
concord of sweet sounds. One old friend remembers nothing but his
phenomenal capacity for the consumption of chicken pot-pie. Another old
friend can recall the scrupulously clean white duck suits which he wore
of afternoons, and also the blue-checked long apron which he was forced
to wear in the mornings; both of them exceedingly distasteful to The
Boy, because the apron was a girl's garment, and because the duck suit
meant "dress-up," and only the mildest of genteel play; while Bob's
sister dwells chiefly now upon the wonderful valentine The Boy sent once
to Zillah Crane. It was so large that it had to have an especial
envelope made to fit it; and it was so magnificent, and so delicate,
that, notwithstanding the envelope, it came in a box of its own. It had
actual lace, and pinkish Cupids reclining on light-blue clouds; and in
the centre of all was a compressible bird-cage, which, when it was
pulled out, like an accordion, displayed not a dove merely, but a plain
gold ring--a real ring, made of real gold. Nothing like it had ever been
seen before in all Dutchess County; and it was seen and envied by every
girl of Zillah's age between Rhinebeck and Tivoli, between Barrytown and
Pine Plains.
The Boy did an extensive business in the valentine line, in the days
when February Fourteenth meant much more to boys than it does now. He
sent sentimental valentines to Phoebe Hawkins and comic valentines to
Ann Hughes, both of them written anonymously, and both directed in a
disguised hand. But both recipients always knew from whom they came;
and, in all probability, neither of them was much affected by the
receipt. The Boy, as he has put on record elsewhere, never really, in
his inmost heart, thought that comic valentines were so very comic,
because those that came to him usually reflected upon his nose, or were
illuminated with portraits of gentlemen of all ages adorned with
supernaturally red hair.
In later years, when Bob and The Boy could swim--a little--and had
learned to take care of themselves in water over their heads, the
mill-pond at Red Hook played an important part in their daily life
there. They sailed it, and fished it, and camped out on its banks, with
Ed Curtis--before Ed went to West Point--and with Dick Hawley, Josie
Briggs, and Frank Rodgers, all first-rate fellows. But that is another
story.
The Boy was asked, a year or two ago, to write a paper upon "The Books
of his Boyhood." And when he came to think the matter over he
discovered, to his surprise, that the Books of his Boyhood consisted of
but one book! It was bound in two twelvemo green cloth volumes; it bore
the date of 1850, and it was filled with pictorial illustrations of "The
Personal History and Experiences of David Copperfield, the Younger." It
was the first book The Boy ever read, and he thought then, and
sometimes he thinks now, that it was the greatest book ever written.
The traditional books of the childhood of other children came later to
The Boy: "Robinson Crusoe," and the celebrated "Swiss Family" of the
same name; "The Desert Home," of Mayne Reid; Marryat's "Peter Simple";
"The Leather Stocking Tales"; "Rob Roy"; and "The Three Guardsmen" were
well thumbed and well liked; but they were not The Boy's first love in
fiction, and they never usurped, in his affections, the place of the
true account of David Copperfield. It was a queer book to have absorbed
the time and attention of a boy of eight or nine, who had to skip the
big words, who did not understand it all, but who cried, as he has cried
but once since, whenever he came to that dreadful chapter which tells
the story of the taking away of David's mother, and of David's utter,
hopeless desolation over his loss.
How the book came into The Boy's possession he cannot now remember, nor
is he sure that his parents realized how much, or how often, he was
engrossed in its contents. It cheered him in the measles, it comforted
him in the mumps. He took it to school with him, and he took it to bed
with him; and he read it, over and over again, especially the early
chapters; for he did not care so much for David after David became
Trotwood, and fell in love.