One afternoon, as I was hurrying down Broadway to catch the five o'clock
train, I met Waterford. He is an old friend of mine, and I used to like
him pretty well.
“Hello!” said he, “where are you going?”
“Home,” I answered.
“Is that so?” said he. “I didn't know you had one.”
I was a little nettled at this, and so I said, somewhat brusquely
perhaps:
“But you must have known I lived somewhere.”
“Oh, yes! But I thought you boarded,” said he. “I had no idea that you
had a home.”
“But I have one, and a very pleasant home, too. You must excuse me for
not stopping longer, as I must catch my train.”
“Oh! I'll walk along with you,” said Waterford, and so we went down the
street together.
“Where is your little house?” he asked.
Why in the world he thought it was a little house I could not at the
time imagine, unless he supposed that two people would not require
a large one. But I know, now, that he lived in a very little house
himself.
But it was of no use getting angry with Waterford, especially as I saw
he intended walking all the way down to the ferry with me, so I told him
I didn't live in any house at all.
“Why, where DO you live?” he exclaimed, stopping short.
“I live in a boat,” said I.
“A boat! A sort of 'Rob Roy' arrangement, I suppose. Well, I would not
have thought that of you. And your wife, I suppose, has gone home to her
people?”
“She has done nothing of the kind,” I answered. “She lives with me, and
she likes it very much. We are extremely comfortable, and our boat is
not a canoe, or any such nonsensical affair. It is a large, commodious
canal-boat.”
Waterford turned around and looked at me.
“Are you a deck-hand?” he asked.
“Deck-grandmother!” I exclaimed.
“Well, you needn't get mad about it,” he said. “I didn't mean to
hurt your feelings; but I couldn't see what else you could be on a
canal-boat. I don't suppose, for instance, that you're captain.”
“But I am,” said I.
“Look here!” said Waterford; “this is coming it rather strong, isn't
it?”
As I saw he was getting angry, I told him all about it,--told him how we
had hired a stranded canal-boat and had fitted it up as a house, and how
we lived so cosily in it, and had called it “Rudder Grange,” and how we
had taken a boarder.
“Well!” said he, “this is certainly surprising. I'm coming out to see
you some day. It will be better than going to Barnum's.”
I told him--it is the way of society--that we would be glad to see him,
and we parted. Waterford never did come to see us, and I merely mention
this incident to show how some of our friends talked about Rudder
Grange, when they first heard that we lived there.
After dinner that evening, when I went up on deck with Euphemia to have
my smoke, we saw the boarder sitting on the bulwarks near the garden,
with his legs dangling down outside.
“Look here!” said he.
I looked, but there was nothing unusual to see.
“What is it?” I asked.
He turned around and seeing Euphemia, said:
“Nothing.”
It would be a very stupid person who could not take such a hint as that,
and so, after a walk around the garden, Euphemia took occasion to go
below to look at the kitchen fire.
As soon as she had gone, the boarder turned to me and said:
“I'll tell you what it is. She's working herself sick.”
“Sick?” said I. “Nonsense!”
“No nonsense about it,” he replied.
The truth was, that the boarder was right and I was wrong. We had spent
several months at Rudder Grange, and during this time Euphemia had
been working very hard, and she really did begin to look pale and
thin. Indeed, it would be very wearying for any woman of culture and
refinement, unused to house-work, to cook and care for two men, and to
do all the work of a canal-boat besides.
But I saw Euphemia so constantly, and thought so much of her, and had
her image so continually in my heart, that I did not notice this until
our boarder now called my attention to it. I was sorry that he had to do
it.
“If I were in your place,” said he, “I would get her a servant.”
“If you were in my place,” I replied, somewhat cuttingly, “you would
probably suggest a lot of little things which would make everything very
easy for her.”
“I'd try to,” he answered, without getting in the least angry.
Although I felt annoyed that he had suggested it, still I made up my
mind that Euphemia must have a servant.
She agreed quite readily when I proposed the plan, and she urged me
to go and see the carpenter that very day, and get him to come and
partition off a little room for the girl.
It was some time, of course, before the room was made (for who ever
heard of a carpenter coming at the very time he was wanted?) and, when
it was finished, Euphemia occupied all her spare moments in getting it
in nice order for the servant when she should come. I thought she was
taking too much trouble, but she had her own ideas about such things.
“If a girl is lodged like a pig, you must expect her to behave like a
pig, and I don't want that kind.”
So she put up pretty curtains at the girl's window, and with a box that
she stood on end, and some old muslin and a lot of tacks, she made a
toilet-table so neat and convenient that I thought she ought to take it
into our room and give the servant our wash-stand.
But all this time we had no girl, and as I had made up my mind about the
matter, I naturally grew impatient, and at last I determined to go and
get a girl myself.
So, one day at lunch-time, I went to an intelligence office in the city.
There I found a large room on the second floor, and some ladies, and one
or two men, sitting about, and a small room, back of it, crowded with
girls from eighteen to sixty-eight years old. There were also girls upon
the stairs, and girls in the hall below, besides some girls standing on
the sidewalk before the door.
When I made known my business and had paid my fee, one of the several
proprietors who were wandering about the front room went into the
back apartment and soon returned with a tall Irishwoman with a bony
weather-beaten face and a large weather-beaten shawl. This woman was
told to take a chair by my side. Down sat the huge creature and stared
at me. I did not feel very easy under her scrutinizing gaze, but I bore
it as best I could, and immediately began to ask her all the appropriate
questions that I could think of. Some she answered satisfactorily, and
some she didn't answer at all; but as soon as I made a pause, she began
to put questions herself.
“How many servants do you kape?” she asked.
I answered that we intended to get along with one, and if she understood
her business, I thought she would find her work very easy, and the place
a good one.
She turned sharp upon me and said:
“Have ye stationary wash-tubs?”
I hesitated. I knew our wash-tubs were not stationary, for I had helped
to carry them about. But they might be screwed fast and made stationary
if that was an important object. But, before making this answer,
I thought of the great conveniences for washing presented by our
residence, surrounded as it was, at high tide, by water.
“Why, we live in a stationary wash-tub,” I said, smiling.
The woman looked at me steadfastly for a minute, and then she rose
to her feet. Then she called out, as if she were crying fish or
strawberries:
“Mrs. Blaine!”
The female keeper of the intelligence office, and the male keeper, and
a thin clerk, and all the women in the back room, and all the patrons in
the front room, jumped up and gathered around us.
Astonished and somewhat disconcerted, I rose to my feet and confronted
the tall Irishwoman, and stood smiling in an uncertain sort of a way, as
if it were all very funny; but I couldn't see the point. I think I must
have impressed the people with the idea that I wished I hadn't come.
“He says,” exclaimed the woman, as if some other huckster were crying
fish on the other side of the street--“he says he lives in a wash-toob.”
“He's crazy!” ejaculated Mrs. Blaine, with an air that indicated
“policeman” as plainly as if she had put her thought into words.
A low murmur ran through the crowd of women, while the thin clerk edged
toward the door.
I saw there was no time to lose. I stepped back a little from the tall
savage, who was breathing like a hot-air engine in front of me, and made
my explanations to the company. I told the tale of “Rudder Grange,” and
showed them how it was like to a stationary wash-tub--at certain stages
of the tide.
I was listened to with great attention. When I had finished, the tall
woman turned around and faced the assemblage.
“An' he wants a cook to make soup! In a canal-boat!” said she, and off
she marched into the back-room, followed closely by all the other women.
“I don't think we have any one here who would suit you,” said Mrs.
Blaine.
I didn't think so either. What on earth would Euphemia have done with
that volcanic Irishwoman in her little kitchen! I took up my hat and
bade Mrs. Blaine good morning.
“Good morning,” said she, with a distressing smile.
She had one of those mouths that look exactly like a gash in the face.
I went home without a girl. In a day or two Euphemia came to town and
got one. Apparently she got her without any trouble, but I am not sure.
She went to a “Home”--Saint Somebody's Home--a place where they keep
orphans to let, so to speak. Here Euphemia selected a light-haired,
medium-sized orphan, and brought her home.
The girl's name was Pomona. Whether or not her parents gave her this
name is doubtful. At any rate, she did not seem quite decided in her
mind about it herself, for she had not been with us more than two weeks
before she expressed a desire to be called Clare. This longing of her
heart, however, was denied her. So Euphemia, who was always correct,
called her Pomona. I did the same whenever I could think not to say
Bologna--which seemed to come very pat for some reason or other.
As for the boarder, he generally called her Altoona, connecting her in
some way with the process of stopping for refreshments, in which she was
an adept.
She was an earnest, hearty girl. She was always in a good humor, and
when I asked her to do anything, she assented in a bright, cheerful way,
and in a loud tone full of good-fellowship, as though she would say:
“Certainly, my high old cock! To be sure I will. Don't worry about
it--give your mind no more uneasiness on that subject. I'll bring the
hot water.”
She did not know very much, but she was delighted to learn, and she was
very strong. Whatever Euphemia told her to do, she did instantly with a
bang. What pleased her better than anything else was to run up and
down the gang-plank, carrying buckets of water to water the garden.
She delighted in out-door work, and sometimes dug so vigorously in
our garden that she brought up pieces of the deck-planking with every
shovelful.
Our boarder took the greatest interest in her, and sometimes watched her
movements so intently that he let his pipe go out.
“What a whacking girl that would be to tread out grapes in the vineyards
of Italy! She'd make wine cheap,” he once remarked.
“Then I'm glad she isn't there,” said Euphemia, “for wine oughtn't to be
cheap.”
Euphemia was a thorough little temperance woman.
The one thing about Pomona that troubled me more than anything else was
her taste for literature. It was not literature to which I objected, but
her very peculiar taste. She would read in the kitchen every night after
she had washed the dishes, but if she had not read aloud, it would not
have made so much difference to me. But I am naturally very sensitive to
external impressions, and I do not like the company of people who, like
our girl, cannot read without pronouncing in a measured and distinct
voice every word of what they are reading. And when the matter thus read
appeals to one's every sentiment of aversion, and there is no way of
escaping it, the case is hard indeed.
From the first, I felt inclined to order Pomona, if she could not attain
the power of silent perusal, to cease from reading altogether; but
Euphemia would not hear to this.
“Poor thing!” said she; “it would be cruel to take from her her only
recreation. And she says she can't read any other way. You needn't
listen if you don't want to.”
That was all very well in an abstract point of view; but the fact was,
that in practice, the more I didn't want to listen, the more I heard.
As the evenings were often cool, we sat in our dining-room, and the
partition between this room and the kitchen seemed to have no influence
whatever in arresting sound. So that when I was trying to read or to
reflect, it was by no means exhilarating to my mind to hear from the
next room that:
“The la dy ce sel i a now si zed the weep on and all though the boor ly
vil ly an re tain ed his vy gor ous hold she drew the blade through his
fin gers and hoorl ed it far be hind her dryp ping with jore.”
This sort of thing, kept up for an hour or so at a time, used to drive
me nearly wild. But Euphemia did not mind it. I believe that she had
so delicate a sense of what was proper, that she did not hear Pomona's
private readings.
On one occasion, even Euphemia's influence could scarcely restrain me
from violent interference.
It was our boarder's night out (when he was detained in town by his
business), and Pomona was sitting up to let him in. This was necessary,
for our front-door (or main-hatchway) had no night-latch, but was
fastened by means of a bolt. Euphemia and I used to sit up for him, but
that was earlier in the season, when it was pleasant to be out on
deck until quite a late hour. But Pomona never objected to sitting (or
getting) up late, and so we allowed this weekly duty to devolve on her.
On this particular night I was very tired and sleepy, and soon after I
got into bed I dropped into a delightful slumber. But it was not long
before I was awakened by the fact that:
“Sa rah did not fl inch but gras ped the heat ed i ron in her un in jur
ed hand and when the ra bid an i mal a proach ed she thr ust the lur id
po ker in his--”
“My conscience!” said I to Euphemia, “can't that girl be stopped?”
“You wouldn't have her sit there and do nothing, would you?” said she.
“No; but she needn't read out that way.”
“She can't read any other way,” said Euphemia, drowsily.
“Yell af ter yell res oun ded as he wil dly spr rang--”
“I can't stand that, and I won't,” said I. “Why don't she go into the
kitchen?--the dining-room's no place for her.”
“She must not sit there,” said Euphemia. “There's a window-pane out.
Can't you cover up your head?”
“I shall not be able to breathe if I do; but I suppose that's no
matter,” I replied.
The reading continued.
“Ha, ha! Lord Mar mont thun der ed thou too shalt suf fer all that this
poor--”
I sprang out of bed.
Euphemia thought I was going for my pistol, and she gave one bound and
stuck her head out of the door.
“Pomona, fly!” she cried.
“Yes, sma'am,” said Pomona; and she got up and flew--not very fast, I
imagine. Where she flew to I don't know, but she took the lamp with her,
and I could hear distant syllables of agony and blood, until the boarder
came home and Pomona went to bed.
I think that this made an impression upon Euphemia, for, although she
did not speak to me upon the subject (or any other) that night, the next
time I heard Pomona reading, the words ran somewhat thus:
“The as ton ish ing che ap ness of land is ac count ed for by the want
of home mar kets, of good ro ads and che ap me ans of trans por ta ti on
in ma ny sec ti ons of the State.”