YOUNG AMERICA IN POLITICS.
For a month Jack labored manfully to keep his pledge to eschew the
society of boys, and a very miserable month it was. He at first
determined to not even answer any boy who spoke to him, but this led
to his being called "Proudy," and "Codfish," and "Bloated Aristocrat."
All this was very galling to a youth who considered himself as
pre-eminently a man of the people. Then, one day, as he was hoeing
potatoes in the family garden, half a dozen boys leaned on the fence
for an hour, and shouted themselves hoarse by exclaiming in concert,
"Tombstone!" To hold one's tongue, as Jack did throughout the
infliction, is to prove one's self a possessor of a high degree of
self-control. When, however, the half dozen boys grew angry at their
inability to elicit any response, and began to throw stones at the
young gardener, Jack's endurance escaped him suddenly and he dashed at
the fence, hoe in hand. All the boys fled except one who, being a
rowdy, had hugged one of the palings in the affectionate manner
peculiar to rowdies, and had unconsciously established an entangling
alliance between the paling and a hole in his shirt. Him, Jack pounded
over the head with the hoe handle until utter breathlessness compelled
the operator to discontinue his labors; then Jack cut him loose with
his pocket-knife and sent him away after an interchange of terrible
threats had been effected. As the rowdy's skull had a roof of wondrous
thickness, he sustained no injury in his mental parts, so he changed
his base only to a point from which he could watch Jack's going in and
coming out.
An hour later, as Jack was going to the store, with two empty jugs to
be filled, respectively, with vinegar and molasses, the rowdy sprang
at him from a sheltering fence corner. Jack shouted "Foul!" but the
rowdy was not particular to regard the rules of the ring just then, so
he stuck one dirty finger in Jack's mouth so as to obtain a secure
grip, and then with amazing celerity, invested Jack with a bloody nose
and a black eye. Jack was not going to abandon the family property,
even in a fight, so he retained tight hold of the jugs, raised his
hands alternately and smote his antagonist, first with one jug and
then with the other. Then the rowdy made haste to cry "Foul!" but
Jack, merely remarking, "What's sauce for the goose—" allowed the
rowdy to complete the quotation for himself, striking him meanwhile
wherever an unprotected point presented itself. A final blow in the
pit of the stomach caused the rowdy to curl up on the lap of mother
earth, and then Jack discovered, for the first time, that all that
remained of the jugs were their respective handles, and that the rowdy
was bleeding profusely in several places.
Jack had never before seen a more dangerous wound than a cut finger,
and even of these he had seen but one at a time, so he greatly feared
that the rowdy would bleed to death. What to do, he did not know; he
recalled the little affair of Moses with the Egyptian taskmaster, and
determined that flight was the dictate of prudence, but as for burying
his victim in the sand, there was no sand nearer than the river bank,
a mile away, and the dirt under the rowdy was a hard-beaten footpath.
Away flew Jack toward home and into his father's office, where he
exclaimed:
"Father, there's a rowdy dying out on the path to the store."
"Heaven be praised!" said the doctor; "that'll lessen the state prison
expenses a few dollars."
"He's bleeding to death," explained Jack.
"Oh," said the doctor arising and snatching a case of instruments,
"that's a different thing; it now becomes an opportunity for
experimental surgery."
"It was I that killed him," continued Jack, in a very thin voice.
"Eh?" exclaimed the doctor, dropping his instruments. "Then you'd
better get out as fast as you can, and not let me know where you are
until you have to. Don't _ever_ do it—I don't want even to see you
again—I wash my hands of you forever."
"Father!" screamed Jack in utter agony, while gallows trees sprung up
before his eyes in every direction, "let me tell you how it was." And
Jack hastily detailed his experiences of the morning, concluding with:
"It was all because I was trying so hard to mind you, and not have
anything to do with boys."
The doctor threw his arms around the youth, and exclaimed:
"You're a darling, noble, splendid boy, but there is no knowing how a
jury may look at the case, when your previous reputation is
considered. Get ready to hide."
Jack hurried up to his room for what seemed to him necessities, but he
had time to reflect upon his varied experiences to do right, with
their lamentable results, and to wonder if it were not really true, as
was implied by some novels he had been unfortunate enough to read,
that fate occasionally forbade some people to do right successfully.
Of one thing he was very sure; come what would, he never could ask
nice little Mattie Baker to become the wife of a murderer. Then he
tiptoed feebly, after one or two ineffectual efforts, to his father's
room, which overlooked the scene of the battle; it might be that the
doctor had reached the wounded boy in time to staunch the flow of
blood before it was eternally too late. From the window, Jack, with
great astonishment and not entirely without disgust, beheld the rowdy
sauntering away with his hands in his pockets, while beside him walked
the doctor, violently shaking his fist and head at the beaten man, and
filling the air with threats which a breeze wafted back to Jack.
The surprise was too much for Jack's nerves; he dropped upon his
father's bed and doubted whether he ever would regain his breath
again; then he bemoaned the loss of the vagabond life which had been
just within his grasp, and which is the ideal of every boy at a
certain period of his life. From this he was recovered by the thought
that, after all, nice little Mattie Barker was not to be entirely a
memory of the past. His eye and nose finally obtruded themselves upon
his attention, and very unsightly objects they were in a mirror; he
hoped nice little Mattie Barker would not see him until his face
regained its natural appearance; and he would certainly take care
never to have himself so disfigured again.
Then his father returned, hastily searched the house for Jack, caught
him in his arms, and actually cried over him, upon which the boy felt
himself a hero indeed. But when his father assured him that his latest
exploit would have a wonderful effect in keeping boys away from him,
Jack did not seem so elated as the doctor would have had him; he
looked so solemn that the doctor asked what the matter was, and Jack
burst out crying, and answered:
"I'm so dreadfully lonely all the time."
The doctor started to ask if either he or his wife were not always at
home, but recalling the drift of a previous conversation on the same
topic, he grew suddenly very cool and undemonstrative and removed
himself, whereupon Jack, who read the human face as correctly as boys
usually do, waxed angry, and lost sight of all his principles, as
every one does in anger, and determined that if he could not have fun
with the boys he would have it without them, and have all he wanted,
too.
He did not lose much time in discovering a way of amusing himself.
August had worked through into September, and though the public was to
have no opportunity of disarranging national affairs at the ballot-box
that autumn, a gubernatorial campaign had opened most vigorously in
the State of which Doveton considered itself the mainstay. The rival
candidates were Baggs and Puttytop, and though both were men of fair
intellect and reputation, as politicians go, and the adult mind could
find but little reason to distinguish between them, the boys of
Doveton, who never for a moment doubted that they were in perfect
sympathy with the inner sense of statesmanship, and knew the
constitutional rights and special needs of Doveton beside, were, to a
man, for Baggs. Jack had gained this precious bit of information from
Matt, so he promptly ranged himself, mentally, with his natural
allies, and sought for means to discourage the Puttytop adherents, who
stupidly saw not though they had eyes, and heard not though they had
ears.
Just then an announcement was made that the famous General Twitchwire,
who was stumping the state for Puttytop, would address the sovereign
voters of Doveton in the main room of the county court house, on the
evening of the second Wednesday in September, the regular fall session
of the county court having begun on the morning of the same day, and
the town being full of countrymen who had legal grievances of their
own, or of some one else, to look to.
Now the county court house was a new building which the demon of
improvement had lately caused to be erected, and as the appropriations
had been exhausted in the manner not unknown to political managers
elsewhere, the main room was the only one which had been completed.
Pipes had been laid for gas, one of them terminating in the ceiling in
the centre of the room, but for evening meetings it was, at present,
necessary to light lamps or candles. So, early in the afternoon
preceding the Puttytop meeting, Jack secreted himself in an upper room
of the court house, with a monkey-wrench, a gunmaker's saw, and a yard
of rubber tubing in his shirt bosom. He dragged a step ladder down
into the main room, and standing upon this he wrenched from its place
the cap upon the pipe from which the central chandelier was one day to
hang. Then he returned to the room above, sawed in two the pipe which
was to feed the chandelier, stretched an end of his rubber tube over
the lower portion of severed pipe, and yelled through it to test the
apparatus. He heard his cry repeated in the lower room so distinctly
that his only fear was that somebody outside might hear it. Then he
sat upon the floor, munched crackers, wished that he had a drink of
water, and waited.
Evening came at last, and from the edges of the window casings, Jack
saw the adherents of Puttytop coming from various directions. From the
neighborhood of the hotel came the noise of the Doveton Brass Band
playing "Hail to the Chief;" this indicated that the famous General
Twitchwire was to be escorted in style to the court house, and Jack
lamented that he could not be outside, behind some good board fence,
to throw stones at the band, but he recalled the line,
"They also serve who stand and wait,"
from the Sixth Reader, and was nobly sustained thereby. Then the sound
of the music came nearer, the band playing
"The Campbells are coming,"
and then Jack saw a transparency, and yet another, and it required
every word of his comforting line to support him in his privation. A
tremendous hubbub in the room below came up through the gas pipe and
rubber tube, and Jack applied his ear to the latter to hear what
General Twitchwire might endeavor to delude his hearers into
believing.
The address began on time, and General Twitchwire had just informed
his audience that if through supineness and lack of concerted action
the gubernatorial chair became occupied, he would not say filled, by a
person with the deficient mental acumen and erroneous views which
characterized the person who was the standard-bearer of the party
opposed to good government, the consequence could not fail to be most
disastrous—when a distant yet loud voice was heard to exclaim,—
"You don't say!"
The speaker glared angrily about, and the chairman of the meeting, who
had taken the precaution to arrange that admission should be only by
tickets of a peculiar color, wondered whether counterfeit tickets had
been imposed upon the doorkeeper. The general resumed the thread of
his discourse, and had just pronounced a glowing eulogium upon
Puttytop, when a voice exclaimed:
"Hang Puttytop! Give us a man!"
Then the sheriff and two constables, all of whom were Puttytop men,
began suspiciously to scan the audience. But not a Baggs adherent
could they see, except Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel, to whom it was well
known that a frequenter of Gripp's rum-shop had sold a ticket for ten
cents, the inducement offered being that the meeting would close with
a lottery, in which every ticket holder would be entitled to a prize
of some sort. But Nuderkopf, judging by his snores, was slumbering
soundly; besides, the disturbing voice used a better English accent
than Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel could ever be suspected of acquiring.
Several other remarks of the speaker were greeted with derisive yells
through Jack's speaking tube, and the famous General Twitchwire took
occasion to remark, with a great display of offended dignity, that if
the authorities could not suppress such disturbers it was pretty
certain that the party in Doveton was upon its last legs.
"Gott macht es!" (God grant!) shouted Jack down the pipe.
This seemed to offer a clue to the offender. The language was
certainly Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel's, and he was positively the only
Baggs man present, so the sheriff and the two constables dashed at him
and rudely aroused him. It was the only evening meeting, except some
of a religious character, which Nuderkopf had attended during his
residence in Doveton; he had frequently to be aroused in church; he
was very religious and musically inclined; the force of association
caused him to imagine he was in church; the silence to indicate a
temporary and dangerous stagnation of religious service, so he cleared
his throat and successfully launched the first line of a devotional
song before he opened his eyes, when a rude hand was clapped over his
mouth and another was applied with great force to the side of his
head, and then he was pulled at and dragged, and finally lifted over
the back of his seat, which happened to be the last bench of the jury
box, and was dropped out of the window, landing on the sidewalk three
feet below, in a state of confusion which bordered upon imbecility.
This was too much for such of Nuderkopf's religious associates as were
there present, even although they were Puttytop men, so they arose to
points of order, several of them speaking at a time, and they were
rebuked by the chair, and hooted at by the rowdies, who always
infested political meetings; and one excitable German cast an
opprobrious epithet at a conspicuous rowdy, and the rowdy retorted by
snatching a transparency from a bearer and throwing it lancewise at
the German, and the cloth caught fire, and a general yell ensued, and
everybody looked out for number one, with the result of making number
two of everybody else, and the famous General Twitchwire stepped
suddenly to a window and jumped out, and the sheriff and the two
constables bawled "order" until they were themselves their only
auditors, and a body of quiet but observant Baggs men in the window of
a house directly opposite, agreed with each other that the Puttytop
ticket didn't seem to be looking up so very much, after all.
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