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THE COURT OF BOYVILLE
By
William Allen White
Author Of The Real Issue, etc.
Illustrated by ORSON LOWELL (with the exception of the first story,
the illustrations for which are by GUSTAV VERBEEK).
1898
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
THE MARTYRDOM OF "MEALY" JONES
A RECENT CONFEDERATE VICTORY
"WHILE THE EVIL DAYS COME NOT"
JAMES SEARS: A NAUGHTY PERSON
MUCH POMP AND SEVERAL CIRCUMSTANCES
"THE HERB CALLED HEARTS-EASE"
Where is Boyville? By what track
May we trace our journey back;
Up what mountains, thro' what seas
By what meadow-lands and leas,
Must we travel to the bourne
Of the shady rows of corn
That lead down to the Willows
Where the day is always morn?
ILLUSTRATIONS
"Say, boys, where's its bottle?"
The three boys were scuffling for the possession of a piece of rope
He saw Abe catch Jimmy and hold his head under water
He felt his father's finger under his collar and his own feet shambling
Mrs. Jones stooped to the floor and took her child by an arm
His feet hanging out of the back of the wagon that had held the coffin
His luck was bad
He withdrew from the game and sat alone against the barn
As she turned to her turkey-slicing
The new preacher, for whom the party was made
The first long dress
"Dickey, Dickey, for gracious sake, keep still"
"Did you know my dad was a soldier?"
During the next two hours the boy wandered on the prairie
"Mary Pennington, aged two years, three months, and ten days"
Piggy went to get his flying hat
She stroked his hand and snuggled closer to him
Miss Morgan smiled happily at the clouds
Chased the little girls around the yard with it
She would not have invited Harold Jones to sit and sing with her
during the opening hour
Harold Jones
To study his tastes
... The comradeship ... was beautiful to see
The red-headed Pratt girl
He could only snap chalk in a preoccupied way and listen to his
Heart's Desire
Piggy was piling up the primary urchins in wiggling, squealing piles
He watched the teacher's finger crook a signal for the note to be
brought forward
... fought boys who were three classes above him ... whipped groups of
boys of assorted sizes
Over his mother's shoulders Piggy saw the hired girl giggle
Her son ate rapidly in silence
His cleanliness pleased his mother and she boasted of it to the
mothers of other boys
A little maid in a black-and-red check
Piggy sat on the front porch, and reviewed the entire affair
It began when his Heart's Desire had fluttered into his autograph
album
At this important bit of repartee
His heart was full of bitterness
Throwing sticks in the water to scare the fish
A crawler, a creeper, a toddler, a stumbler, and a sneaker
James
Mrs. Jones came out to take care of the butter
The sort of boy who would unsex himself by looking at a baby
Jimmy heard Mrs. Jones tell his little sister Annie that morning that
she was no longer the baby
His father strutting around town ... bragging of the occurrence that
filled the boy with shame
He jumped for the slanting boards with his bare feet, and his heart
was glad
He sat on a log and slowly lifted up his foot, twisting his face into
an agonized knot
"Spit, spit, spy, tell me whur my chicken is, er I'll hit ye in the
eye"
"I'll pay for your chicken, I say. Now you keep away from me"
An irregular circumference that touched his ears and his chin and his
hair
"Got anything here fit to eat?"
"What'd you want to take Annie's doll away from her for?"
She drew him down and kissed his cheek while he pecked at her lips
Piggy Pennington ... galloped his father's fat delivery horse up and
down the alley
Mammoth Consolidated Shows
Oil made by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun to fry
How many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman
Brother Baker--a tiptoeing Nemesis
Dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets, hurrying
their seniors
The Balloon-Vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving
his wares in a red and blue trail behind him
The Blue Sash about the country girl's waist and the flag in her
Beau's hat
"One's a trick elephant. You'd die a-laughing if you saw him"
"It's an awful good one. Can't he go just this once?"
8 Funny Clowns--count them 8
"Well, son, you're a daisy. They generally drop the first kick"
The other wranglers ... dropped out for heavy repairs
When Mr. Pennington's eyes fell on Bud, he leaned on a show-case and
laughed till he shook all over
"Miss Morgan, I just want you to look at my boy"
"Now, Henry, don't ever have anything to do with that kind of trash
again"
"Here's a dollar I got for ridin' the trick mule ... I thought it
would be nice for the missionary society"
"Gee, we're going to have pie, ain't we"
PROLOGUE
We who are passing "through the wilderness of this world" find it
difficult to realize what an impenetrable wall there is around
the town of Boyville. Storm it as we may with the simulation of
light-heartedness, bombard it with our heavy guns, loaded with
fishing-hooks and golf-sticks, and skates and base-balls, and
butterfly-nets, the walls remain. If once the clanging gates of the
town shut upon a youth, he is banished forever. From afar he may peer
over the walls at the games inside, but he may not be of them. Let him
try to join them, and lo, the games become a mockery, and he finds
that he is cavorting still outside the walls, while the good citizens
inside are making sly sport of him. Who, being recently banished from
Boyville, has not sought to return? In vain does he haunt the swimming
hole; the water elves will have none of him. He hushes their laughter,
muffles their calls, takes the essence from their fun, and leaves it
dust upon their lips.
But we of the race of grown-ups are a purblind people. Otherwise,
when we acknowledge what a stronghold this Boyville is, we the
banished would not seek to steal away the merry townsmen, and bruise
our hearts and theirs at our hopeless task. We have learned many
things in our schools, and of the making of books there has been no
end; so it is odd that we have not learned to let a boy be a boy. Why
not let him feel the thrill from the fresh spring grass under his
feet, as his father felt it before him, and his father's father, even
back to Adam, who walked thus with God! There is a tincture of iron
that seeps into a boys blood with the ozone of the earth, that can
come to him by no other way. Let him run if he will; Heavens air is a
better elixir than any that the alchemist can mix. What if he roams
the woods and lives for hours in the water? What if he prefers the
barn to the parlor? What if he fights? Does he not take the risk of
the scratched face and the bruises? Should he not be in some measure
the judge of the situation before him when the trouble begins? Boys
have an ugly name for one of their kind who discovers suddenly, in a
crisis of his own making, that he is not allowed to fight. And it were
better to see a boy with a dozen claw-marks down his face than to see
him eat that name in peace.
Now this conclusion may seem barbaric to elders who have to pay for
new clothes to replace the torn ones, And according to their light
perhaps the elders see clearly. But the grown-up people forget that
their wisdom has impaired their vision to see as boys see and to pass
judgment upon things in another sphere.
For Boyville is a Free Town in the monarchy of the world. Its
citizens mind their own business, and they desire travellers in this
waste to do likewise. The notion that spectacled gentry should come
nosing through the streets and alleys of Boyville, studying
the sanitation, which is not of the best, and objecting to the
constitution and by laws,--which were made when the rivers were dug
and the hills piled up,--the notion of an outsider interfering with
the Divine right of boys to eat what they please, to believe what they
please, and, under loyalty to the monarchy of the world, to do what
they please, is repugnant to this free people. Nor does it better
matters when the man behind the spectacles explains that to eat
sheep-sorrel is deleterious; to feed younkers Indian turnip is cruel;
to suck the sap of the young grapevine in spring produces malaria; to
smoke rattan is depraving, and to stuff one's stomach with paw-paws
and wild-grapes is dangerous in the extreme.
For does not the first article of the law of this Free Town expressly
state, that boys shall be absolved from obeying any and all laws
regulating the human stomach, and be free of the penalties thereto
attaching? And again when Wisdom says that the boy shall give up his
superstitions, the boy points to hoary tradition, which says that the
snakes tail does not in fact and in truth die till sundown; that if
a boy kills a lucky bug he shall find a nickel; that to cross one's
heart and lie, brings on swift and horrible retribution; that letting
the old cat die causes death in the family; that to kill a toad makes
the cow give bloody milk; that horsehairs in water turn to snakes in
nine days; that spitting on the bait pleases the fish, and that to
draw a circle in the dust around a marble charms it against being hit.
What tradition, ancient and honorable in Boyville, declares is true,
that is the Law everlasting, and no wise mans word shall change the
law one jot nor one tittle. For in the beginning it was written, to
get in the night wood, to eat with a fork at table, to wear shoes on
Sunday, to say "sir" to company, and "thank you" to the lady, to go to
bed at nine to remember that there are others who like gravy, to stay
out of the water in dog days, to come right straight home from school,
to shinny on your own side, and to clean those feet for Heaven's
sake,--that is the whole duty of boys. As it was in the beginning, so
it shall be ever after.
Now most of us grown-ups do not admit these things, and not being
able to speak the language of the people whose rights we are
seeking to destroy, we will never know how utterly futile are our
conspiracies. But that is immaterial.
The main point that the gentle reader should bear in mind is this:
The town of Boyville is free and independent; governed only by the
ancient laws, made by the boys of the elder days--by the boys who
found bottom in the rivers that flowed out of Eden; by little Seth,
little Enoch, little Methuselah, and little Noah; by the boys who
threw mud balls from willow withes broken from trees whereon David
hung his harp a thousand years thereafter. For Boyville was old when
Nineveh was a frontier post.
Boyville hears from afar the buzz about principalities and powers,
the clatter of javelins and the clash of arms, the hubbub of the
"Pride and pomp and circumstance of glorious war." The courtiers of
Boyville cheer for each new hero, and claim fellowship with all "like
gentlemen unafraid." But the Free Town has its own sovereign, makes
its own idols. And the clatter and clash and hubbub that attend the
triumphs of the kingdoms of the earth pass by unconquered Boyville as
the shadow of a dream.
THE MARTYRDOM OF "MEALY" JONES
A WAIL IN B MINOR
Oh, what has become of the ornery boy,
Who used to chew slip'ry elm, "rosum" and wheat:
And say "jest a coddin'" and "what d'ye soy;"
And wear rolled-up trousers all out at the seat?
And where is the boy who had shows in the barn,
And "skinned a cat backards" and turned "summersets;"
The boy who had faith in a snake-feeder yarn,
And always smoked grape vine and corn cigarettes?
Where now is the small boy who spat on his bait,
And proudly stood down near the foot of the class,
And always went "barefooted" early and late,
And washed his feet nights on the dew of the grass?
Where is the boy who could swim on his back,
And dive and tread water and lay his hair, too;
The boy who would jump off the spring-board ker-whack,
And light on his stomach as I used to do?
Oh where and oh where is the old-fashioned boy?
Has the old-fashioned boy with his old-fashioned ways,
Been crowded aside by the Lord Fauntleroy,--
The cheap tinselled make-believe, full of alloy
Without the pure gold of the rollicking joy
Of the old-fashioned boy in the old-fashioned days?
[Illustration: The Court of Boyville
The Martyrdom of Mealy Jones]
His mother named him Harold, and named him better than she knew. He
was just such a boy as one would expect to see bearing a heroic name.
He had big, faded blue eyes, a nubbin of a chin, wide, wondering ears,
and freckles--such brown blotches of freckles on his face and neck and
hands, such a milky way of them across the bridge of his snub nose,
that the boys called him "Mealy." And Mealy Jones it was to the end.
When his parents called him Harold in the hearing of his playmates,
the boy was ashamed, for he felt that a nickname gave him equal
standing among his fellows. There were times in his life--when he
was alone, recounting his valorous deeds--that Mealy more than half
persuaded himself that he was a real boy. But when he was with
Winfield Pennington, surnamed "Piggy" in the court of Boyville, and
Abraham Lincoln Carpenter, similarly knighted "Old Abe," Mealy saw
that he was only Harold, a weak and unsatisfactory imitation. He was
handicapped in his struggle to be a natural boy by a mother who had
been a "perfect little lady" in her girlhood and who was moulding her
son in the forms that fashioned her. If it were the purpose of this
tale to deal in philosophy, it would be easy to digress and show that
Mealy Jones was a study in heredity; that from his mother's side of
the house he inherited wide, white, starched collars, and from his
father's side, a burning desire to spit through his teeth. But this is
only a simple tale, with no great problem in it, save that of a boy
working out his salvation between a fiendish lust for suspenders
with trousers and a long-termed incarceration in ruffled waists with
despised white china buttons around his waist-band.
No one but Piggy ever knew how Mealy Jones learned to swim; and
Harold's mother doesn't consider Piggy Pennington any one, for the
Penningtons are Methodists and the Joneses are Baptists, and Very
hard-shelled ones, too. However, Mealy Jones did learn to swim
"dog-fashion" years and years after the others had become
post-graduates in aquatic lore and could "tread water," "swim
sailor-fashion," and "lay" their hair. Mrs. Jones permitted her son
to go swimming occasionally, but she always exacted from him a solemn
promise not to go into the deep water. And Harold, who was a good
little boy, made it a point not to "let down" when he was beyond the
"step-off." So of course he could not know how deep it was; although
the bad little boys who "brought up bottom" had told him that it was
twelve feet deep.
One hot June afternoon Mealy stood looking at a druggist's display
window, gazing idly at the pills, absently picking out the various
kinds which he had taken. He had just come from his mother with
the expressed injunction not to go near the river. His eyes roamed
listlessly from the pills to the pain-killer, and; turning wearily
away, he saw Piggy and Old Abe and Jimmy Sears. The three boys were
scuffling for, the possession of a piece of rope. Pausing a moment in
front of the grocery store, they beckoned for Mealy. The lad joined
the group. Some one said,--
"Come on, Mealy, and go swimmin'."
"Aw, Mealy can't go," put in Jimmy; "his ma won't let him."
"Yes, I kin, _too_, if I want to," replied Mealy, stoutly--but, alas!
guiltily.
"Then come on," said Piggy Pennington. "You don't dast. My ma don't
care how often I go in--only in dog days."
[Illustration: _The three boys were scuffling for the possession of a
piece of rope_.]
After some desultory debate they started--the four boys--pushing one
another off the sidewalk, "rooster-fighting," shouting, laughing,
racing through the streets. Mealy Jones longed to have the other boys
observe his savage behavior. He knew, however, that he was not of
them, that he was a sad make-believe. The guilt of the deed he was
doing, oppressed him. He wondered how he could go into crime so
stolidly. Inwardly he quaked as he recalled the stories he had read of
boys who had drowned while disobeying their parents. His uneasiness
was increased by the ever-present sense that he could not cope with
the other boys at their sports. He let them jostle him, and often
would run, after his self-respect would goad him to jostle back. Mealy
was glad when the group came to the deep shade of the woods and walked
slowly.
It was three o'clock when the boys reached the swimming-hole. There
the great elm-tree, with its ladder of exposed roots, stretched over
the water. Piggy Pennington, stripped to the skin, ran whooping down
the sloping bank, splashed over the gravel at the water's edge, and
plunged into the deepest water. Old Abe followed cautiously, bathing
his temples and his wrists before sousing all over. Jimmy Sears threw
his shirt high up on the bank as he stood ankle-deep in the stream.
Piggy's exhilaration having worn off by this time, he picked up a
mussel-shell and threw it at Jimmy's feet. The water dashed wide of
its mark and sprinkled Mealy, who was sitting on a log, taking off his
shoes.
"Here, Piggy, you quit that," said Mealy.
Jimmy said nothing. He sprang into the air head foremost toward Piggy,
who dived from sight. His pursuer saw the direction Piggy took and
followed him. The boys were a few feet apart when Jimmy came to the
surface, puffing and spouting and shaking the water from his eyes and
hair. He hesitated in his pursuit. Piggy observed the hesitation, and
with a quick overhand movement shot a stinging stream of water from
the ball of his hand into his antagonist's face. Then Piggy turned
on his side and swam swiftly to shallow water, where he stood and
splashed his victim, who was lumbering toward shore with his eyes
shut, panting loudly. With every splash Piggy said, "How's that, Jim?"
or "Take a bite o' this," or "Want a drink?" When Jimmy got where he
could walk on the creek bottom, he made a feint of fighting back,
but he soon ceased, and stood by, gasping for breath, before saying,
"Let's quit."
Then followed the fun of ducking, the scuffling and the capers of the
young human animals at play--at play even as gods in the elder days.
Mealy saw it all through envious eyes and with a pricking conscience,
as he doggedly fumbled the myriad buttons which his mother had
fastened upon his pretty clothes. He heard Piggy dare Abe across the
creek, and call him a cowardly calf, and say, "Any one't 'ull take a
dare'll steal sheep." Mealy saw Jimmy grin as he cracked rocks under
water while the other boys were diving, and watched Old Abe, as
he made the waves rise under his chin, swimming after the fleeing
culprit. He saw Abe catch Jimmy and hold his head under water until
Mealy's smile faded to a horrified grin. Then he saw the victim and
the victor come merrily to the shallows, laughing as though nothing
unusual had occurred. It was high revel in Boyville, and the satyrs
were in the midst of their joy.
[Illustration: _He saw Abe catch Jimmy and hold his head under
water_.]
Then Mealy heard Piggy say, "Aw, come in, Mealy; it won't hurt you."
"Is it cold?" asked Mealy.
"Naw," replied Piggy.
"Naw, course it ain't," returned Jimmy.
"Warm as dish-water," cried Abe.
Mealy's ribs shone through his skin. His big milky eyes made him seem
uncanny, standing there shivering in the shade. He hobbled down the
pebbly bank on his tender feet, his bashful grin breaking into a dozen
contortions of pain as he went. The boys stood watching him like
tigers awaiting a Christian martyr. He paused at the water's edge, put
in a toe and jerked it out with a spasm of cold.
"Aw, that ain't cold," said Piggy.
"Naw, when you get in you won't mind it," insisted Abe.
Mealy replied, "Oo, oo! I think that's pretty cold."
"Wet your legs and you won't get the cramp," advised Jimmy Sears.
Mealy stooped over to scoop up some water in his hands. He heard the
boys laugh, and the next instant felt a shower of water on his back.
It made the tears come.
"Uhm-m-m--no fair splashin'," he whined.
Mealy put one foot in the water and drew it out quickly, gasping, "Oo!
I ain't goin' in. It's too cold for me. It'll bring my measles out."
He started--trembling--up the bank; then he heard a splashing behind
him.
"Come back here," cried Piggy, whose hands were uplifted; "come back
here and git in this water or I'll muddy you." Piggy's hands were full
of mud. He was about to throw it when the Jones boy pretended to laugh
and giggled, "Oh, I was just a-foolin'."
But he paused again at the water's edge, and Piggy, who had come up
close enough to touch the rickety lad, reached out a muddy hand and
dabbed the quaking boy's breast. The other boys roared with glee.
Mealy extended a deprecatory hand, and took Piggy's wet, glistening
arm and stumbled nervously into the stream, with an "Oo-oo!" at every
uncertain step. When the water came to Mealy's waist Abe cried, "Duck!
duck, or I'll splash you!" The boy sank down, with his teeth biting
his tongue as he said, "Oo! I wouldn't do you that way."
When the shock of the tepid water had spent itself, Mealy's grin
returned, and he shivered happily, "Oo--it's good, ain't it?"
Ten minutes later the boys were diving from the roots of the elm-tree
into the deep water on the other side of the creek. Ten minutes after
that they were sliding down a muddy toboggan which they had revived by
splashing water upon the incline made and provided by the town boys
for scudding. Ten minutes afterward they were covering themselves
with coats of mud, adorned--one with stripes made with the point of a
stick, another with polka-dots, another with checks, and Mealy with
snake-like, curving stripes. Then the whole crew dashed down the path
to the railroad bridge to greet the afternoon passenger train. When it
came they jumped up and down and waved their striped and spotted arms
like the barbarian warriors which they fancied they were. They swam up
the stream leisurely, and, as they rounded the bend that brought their
landing-place into view, the quick eye of Piggy Pennington saw that
some one had been meddling with their clothes. He gave the alarm. The
boys quickened their strokes. When they came to the shallows of the
ford they saw the blue-and-white starched shirt of Mealy Jones lying
in a pool tied into half a dozen knots, with the water soaking them
tighter and tighter. The other boys' clothes were not disturbed.
"Mealy's got to chaw beef," cried Piggy Pennington. The other boys
echoed Piggy's merriment. Great sorrows come to grown-up people, but
there is never a moment in after-life more poignant with grief than,
that which stabs a boy when he learns that he must wrestle with a
series of water-soaked knots in a shirt. As Mealy sat in the broiling
sun, gripping the knots with his teeth and fingers, he asked himself
again and again how he could explain his soiled shirt to his mother.
Lump after lump rose in his throat, and dissolved into tears that
trickled down his nose. The other boys did not heed him. They were
following Piggy's dare, dropping into the water from the overhanging
limb of the elm-tree.
They did not see the figure of another boy, in a gingham shirt, blue
overalls, and a torn straw hat, sitting on a stone back of Mealy,
smiling complacently. Not until the stranger walked down to the
water's edge where Mealy sat did the other boys spy him.
"Who is it?" asked Abe.
"I never saw him before," replied Jimmy Sears.
"Oh, I'll tell you who it is," returned Abe, after looking the
stranger over. "It's the new boy. Him an' his old man come to town
yesterday. They say he's a fighter. He licked every boy in the
Mountain Jumpers this mornin'."
By this time the new boy was standing over Mealy, saying, "How you
gittin' along?"
Mealy looked up, and said with the petulance of a spoiled child, "Hush
your mouth, you old smartie! What good d't do you to go an' tie my
clo'es?"
Piggy and Jimmy and Abe came hurrying to the landing. They heard the
new boy retort, "Who said I tied your clo'es?" Mealy made no reply.
The new boy repeated the query. Mealy saw the boys in the water
looking on, and his courage rose; for Mealy was in the primary
department of life, and had not yet learned that one must fight alone.
He answered, "I did," with an emphasis on the "I," as he tugged at the
last knot. The new boy had been looking Mealy over, and he replied
quickly, "You're a liar!"
There was a pause, during which Mealy looked helplessly for some one
to defend him. He was sure that his companions would not stand there
and see him whipped. One of the boys in the water said diplomatically,
"Aw, Mealy, I wouldn't take that!"
"You're another," faltered Mealy, who looked supplication and surprise
at his friends, and wondered if they were really going to desert him.
The new boy waded around Mealy, and leaned over him, and said, shaking
his fist in the freckled face, "You're a coward, and you don't dast
take it up and fight it out."
Mealy's cheeks flushed. He felt anger mantling his frame. He was one
of those most pitiable of mortals whose anger brings tears with it.
The last knot in the shirt was all but conquered, when Mealy bawled in
a scream of passionate sobs,--
"When I git this shirt fixed I'll show you who's a coward."
The new boy sought a level place on the bank for a fight, and sneered,
"Oh, cry baby! cry baby! Say, boys, where's its bottle?"
[Illustration: "_Say, boys, where's its bottle_?"]
Mealy rose with a stone in each hand, and hobbled over the pebbles,
trying, "Touch me now! Touch me if you dare!"
"Aw, you coward! drop them rocks," snarled the new boy.
Mealy looked at his friends imploringly. He felt lonely, deserted, and
mistreated, but he saw in the faces of his comrades the reflection of
the injunction to put down the stones. He did so, and his anger began
to cool. But he whimpered again, "Well now, touch me if you dare!"
The new boy came over briskly, and made a feint to slap the naked lad,
who warded off the blow, sniffling, "You just leave me alone. I ain't
hurtin' you." The boys in the water laughed--it seemed to Mealy such
a cruel laugh. Anger enveloped him again, and he struck out blindly
through his tears, hand over hand, striking the new boy in the mouth
and making it bleed, before he realized that the fight had begun. The
new boy tried to clinch Mealy, but the naked body slipped away from
him; and just then the combatants saw the satisfied grin freeze on the
faces of the boys in the water. A step crunched the gravel near them,
and in a moment that flashed vividly with rejoicing that the fight was
ended, then with abject, chattering terror, Mealy Jones saw his
father approaching. Mealy did not run. The uplifted cane and the red,
perspiring face of his father transfixed the lad, yet he felt called
upon to say something. His voice came from a dry throat, and he spoke
through an idiotic grin as he said, "I didn't know you wanted me, pa."
After the burst of his father's anger ten awful minutes of shame
passed for Mealy while he was putting on his wet clothes. The boys
in the water swam noiselessly upstream to the roots of the elm-tree,
where he saw them looking at his disgrace. During those ten minutes
Mealy realized that his father's deepening silence portended evil; so
he tried to draw his father into a discussion of the merits of the
case by whimpering from time to time, "Well, I guess they ast me to
come," or "Piggy said it wouldn't hurt, 'cause 't ain't in dog days,"
or "I wasn't in where it was deep. I was only a-wadin'." The new boy,
who was seated upon a log near by with a stone in his hand, which he
had picked up fearing the elder Jones would join the fray, sniffed
audibly. He called to the other boys derisively, "Say, any of you boys
got the baby's blocks?" It did not lift the mantle of humiliation that
covered Mealy to hear his father reply to the new boy, "That will do
for you, sir." While Mealy wept he wiped away his tears first with one
hand and then with the other, employing the free hand in fastening
his clothes together. He did not fear the punishment that might be in
store for him. He was thinking of the agony of his next meeting with
Piggy Pennington. Mealy fancied that Abe Carpenter, who was a quiet,
philosophical boy, would not tease him, but horror seized him when he
thought of Piggy.
As Mealy fastened his last button, he felt his father's finger under
his collar, and his own feet shambling blindly over the pebbles, up
the path, into the bushes; he heard the boys in the water laugh with
the new boy, and then--stories differ. The boys say that he howled
lustily, "Oh, pa, I won't do it any more," over and over again. Mealy
Jones says that it didn't hurt a bit.
[Illustration: _He felt his father's finger under his collar and his
own feet shambling_.]
This much is certain: that Master Harold Jones walked through the town
that day a few feet ahead of his fathers who tapped the boy's legs
with a hooked cane whenever his steps lagged. At the door of the Jones
home Mrs. Jones stood to welcome the martial procession, which she
saw, and then heard, approaching some time before it arrived. To his
wife, whose face pictured anxious grief, Mr. Jones said, as he
turned the captive over to her: "I found this young gentleman in
swimming--swimming and fighting. I have attended to his immediate
wants, I believe. I leave him to you."
Harold Jones was but a lad--a good lad whose knowledge of the golden
text was his Sunday-school teacher's pride. Yet he had collected other
scraps of useful information as he journeyed through life. One of
these was a perfectly practical familiarity with the official road map
to his mother's heart. Therefore, when he crossed the threshold of the
Jones home Harold began at once to weep dolefully.
"Harold Jones, what do you mean by such conduct?" asked his mother.
The boy stood by the window long enough to see that his father had
turned the corner toward the town. Then he fell on the floor, and
began to bewail his lot, refusing to answer the first question his
mother asked, but telling instead how "all the other boys in this town
can go swimmin' when they want to," hinting that he wouldn't care, if
papa had only just come and brought him home, but that papa--and this
was followed by a vocal cataract of woe that made the dish-pans ring.
He noted that his mother bent over him and said, "My poor boy;" at
which sign little Harold punctured the levees of his grief again,
and said he "never was goin' to face any of the boys in this town
again"--he "just couldn't bear it." Mrs. Jones paused in her work at
this, put down a potato that she was peeling, and stood up stiffly,
saying in a freezing tone, "Harold Jones, you don't mean to tell me
that your father punished you in front of those other little boys?"
Her son only sobbed and nodded an affirmative, and gave lusty voice to
the tearful wish that he was dead. Mrs. Jones stooped to the floor and
took her child by an arm, lifting him to his feet. She smoothed his
hair and took him with her to the big chair in the dining-room, where
she raised his seventy pounds to her lap, saying as she did so,
"Mama's boy will soon be too big to hold." At that the spoiled child
only renewed his weeping and clutched her tightly. There, little by
little, he forgot the mishaps of the day. There the anguish lifted
from his heart, and when his mother asked, "Harold, why did you go
into the water when we told you not to?" the child only shook his
head, and, after repeated questioning, his answer came,--
"Well, they asked me, mom."
"Who asked you?" persisted Mrs. Jones.
"Piggy Pennington and Jimmy Sears," returned the lad.
[Illustration: _Mrs. Jones stooped to the floor and took her child by
an arm_.]
To the query, "Well, do you have to do everything they ask you to,
Harold?" the lad's answer was a renewal of the heart-breaking sobs.
These softened the mother's heart, as many and many a woman's heart
has been melted through all the ages. She soothed the truant child and
petted him, until the cramping in his throat relaxed sufficiently to
admit of the passage of an astonishingly large slice of bread and
butter and sugar. After it was disposed of, Harold busied himself by
assorting his old iron scraps on the back porch, and his mother smiled
as she fancied she heard the boy trying to whistle a tune.
Harold had left the porch before his father came home with the
beefsteak for supper, and Mrs. Jones met her husband with: "Pa Jones,
what could you be thinking of--punishing that boy before the other
children? Do you want to break what little spirit he has? Why, that
child was nearly in hysterics for an hour after you left!"
Mr. Jones hung up his crooked cane, put a stick of wood in the stove,
scraped his pipe with his knife, and blew through the stem.
"I guess he wasn't hurt much," replied the father. Then he added, as
he put a live coal in the pipe: "I s'pose you went an' babied him an'
spoiled it all." There was a puffing pause, after which Mr. Jones
added, "If you'd let him go more, an' didn't worry your head off when
he was out of sight, he'd amount to more."
Mrs. Jones always gave her husband three moves before she spoke. "Yes!
yes! you'd make that boy a regular little rowdy if you had your way,
William Jones."
In the mean time Harold Jones had heard a long, shrill whistle in the
alley, and, answering it, he ran as rapidly as his spindling legs
would carry him. He knew it was the boys. They were grinning broadly
when he came to them. It was Piggy Pennington who first spoke, "Oh,
pa, I won't do it any more," repeating the phrase several times in a
suppressed voice, and leering impishly at Mealy.
"Aw, you're makin' that up," answered Mealy in embarrassment. But
Piggy continued his teasing until Abe Carpenter said: "Say, Mealy, we
want you to go to the cave with us to-morrow; can you?"
The "can you" was an imputation on his personal liberty that Mealy
resented. He replied "Uh-huh! you just bet your bottom dollar I can."
Piggy began teasing again, but Abe silenced him, and the boys sat in
the dirt behind the barn, chattering about the new boy, whose name,
according to the others, was "Bud" Perkins. Mealy entered the
conversation with much masculine pomp--too much, in fact; for when he
became particularly vain-glorious some one in the group was certain to
glance at his shoes--and shoes in June in Boyville are insignia of the
weaker sex, the badges of shame.
But Mealy did not feel his disgrace. He walked up the ash path to the
kitchen with an excellent imitation of manly pride in his gait. He
kicked at a passing cat, and shook his head bravely, talking to
himself about the way he would have whipped the new boy if his father
had not interrupted the fight.
As Mrs. Jones heard the boy's step on the porch, she said to his
father, "Now, pa, that boy has been punished enough to-day. Don't you
say a word to him." Harold walked by his father with averted face. At
supper the boy did not look at his father, and when the dishes were
put away, Mr. Jones, who sat in the kitchen smoking, heard his wife
and the child in a front room, chatting cheerily. The lonesome father
smoked his pipe and recalled his youth. The boy's voice brought back
his own shrill treble, and he coughed nervously. After Mrs. Jones had
put the lad to bed, and was in the pantry arranging for breakfast, the
father knocked the ashes from his briar into the stove, and, humming
an old tune, went to the boy's bedroom door. He paused awkwardly on
the threshold. The boy turned his face toward the wall. The action cut
the father to the quick. He walked to the bed and bent over the child,
touching a father's rough-bearded face to the soft cheek. He found the
soft hand--with a father's large hand--under the sheet, and he held
the little hand tightly as he said:
"Well, Harold"--there he paused for a second. But he continued, "Do
you think you'd a-licked that boy--if--if--I hadn't a-come?"
Then the two laughed, and a little throb of joyous pain tingled in
their throats--such as only boys may feel.
A RECENT CONFEDERATE VICTORY
A LITTLE DREAM-BOY
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
And wake up a little man lying forlorn,
Asleep where his life wanders out of the morn.
Little Boy Blue, blow a merry, sweet note,
Over the pool where the white lilies float,--
Fill out the sails of a little toy boat.
Blow on my dream of a little boy there,--
Blow thro' his little bark-whistle, and snare
Your breath in a tangle of curly brown hair.
Blow and O blow from your fairy land far,
Blow while my little boy wears a tin star,
And rides a stick-horse to a little boy's war.
Blow for the brave man my dream-boy would be,
Blow back his tears when he wakes up to see
His knight errant gone and instead--only me.
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
Blow for a little boy lying forlorn,
Asleep where his life wanders out of the morn.
[Illustration]
A RECENT CONFEDERATE VICTORY
In a small town, every man who has been in the community long enough
to become thoroughly known to the townsmen has a place in the human
mosaic; that place seldom changes. Occasionally a man is a year in
finding his place. The town of Willow Creek located Calhoun Perkins in
two days. Wednesday he arrived in town with his son, whom he called
"Bud;" Thursday night it was reported that he had been fishing the
second time. That settled it. After that the boasting of Perkins about
his family in Tennessee and his assertion that he expected to go into
business only made the men laugh when Perkins left a group of them.
They were not interested in Perkins by the following Saturday; and
Monday every man in the town felt that his judgment of a man who would
go fishing every day had been handsomely vindicated, when it was
learned that Perkins had served in the Confederate army. When Perkins
had been in the town three years, the anecdotes illustrating his
shiftlessness multiplied, and his name was a synonym for that trait of
character known in the vernacular as "no-'count." In the third spring,
after a winter's tussle with rheumatism, Perkins died. His funeral was
of so little importance that none of the corpulent old ladies in black
alpaca, holding their handkerchiefs carefully folded in their hands,
came panting across the town to attend it. No women came at all. And
the Perkins boy stood by stolidly while the dry clods were rumbling
upon the pine box in the grave. The boy wished to be alone, and he
would not sit on the seat with the driver. He wiped a little moisture
from his eyes, and rode to town with his feet hanging out of the back
of the wagon that had held the coffin.
[Illustration: _His feet hanging out of the back of the wagon that had
held the coffin_.]
When the wagon came to the thick of the town, Bud Perkins quietly slid
to the ground, and joined a group of afternoon idlers who were playing
marbles on the south side of a livery barn. Here and there in the
group a boy said: "H'lo, Bud," when the Perkins boy joined the
coterie, but many of the youngsters, being unfamiliar with the
etiquette of mourning, were silent, and played on at their game. When
the opportunity came the Perkins boy put a marble in the ring without
saying a word. He went back to "taws," and "lagged for goes," with
the others. He spoke only when he was addressed. A black sense of
desolation lowered over him, and he could not join in the ejaculations
and responses of the game. His luck was bad, and he lost marble after
marble. In an hour, when the sun was still in the south, he withdrew
from the game and sat alone against the barn, drawing figures on the
earth with a broken piece of hoop-iron. The boy could not fight off
the thought of the empty home waiting for him down by the river. He
saw, as he sat there, all the furniture, his father's clothes hanging
at the foot of the bed, the stove in disorder; and then he realized
that in the whole town not one hand was held out to him. He was a
child, yet the heartlessness of it all cut him to the quick. This
thought overwhelmed him, again and again, each time with more
agonizing force, like an increasing wave, and as one flood washed over
him with fiercer passion than the others, the boy rose hurriedly, ran
around the barn, and flung himself upon a pile of hay. There he gave
way to a storm of sobs. One of the group, who had been watching him
more closely than the others, soon withdrew from the game, and going
in the opposite direction from that taken by Bud Perkins, came
tiptoeing around the haystack.
[Illustration: _His luck was bad_.]
[Illustration: _He withdrew from the game and sat alone against the
barn_.]
The paroxysm of sobs had ceased, and Bud was lying face downward as if
asleep. He heard the step, but pretended not to hear it. He felt some
one pressing the hay beside him. He knew who it was, and the two boys
lay upon the hay without speaking. The Perkins boy turned his head
away from the new-comer; but try as he would, Bud could not keep from
sniffling. In a few moments the other boy tried to roll the Perkins
boy over. It was a vain attempt. Then the sobbing began anew. But it
was a short attack, and, at length, the other boy said: "Bu-ud?" Again
he said, "Bu-ud?" There came no response. "O, Bud--I got somethin'
to tell you!" The sniffling continued, and the other boy kept on
pleading. "Ah, Bud, come on; I got somethin' real good," he said.
Silence answered. The teasing went on: "Say, Bud, I won back all your
marbles." That was repeated twice. Then a hand went over toward the
other boy. He filled it with marbles, and it went back. Another
silence was followed by a rustle of hay, and a dirty face turned over,
and a voice said through a pathetic, apologetic smile: "This old
nicked glassey ain't mine." The two heads nestled together, and four
eyes gazed at the blue sky and the white clouds for a long time. It
was the Perkins boy who spoke: "Say, Piggy, I bet you'd cry, too, if
you was me."
Piggy wormed his arm under the hay around the Perkins boy's neck, as
he asked, "What you goin' to do to-night, Bud?"
"I dunno. Why?" replied Bud.
"Well, I'm comin' out to stay all night. They're goin' to have a party
at our house, and ma said I could."
Bud drew himself up slowly; then threw himself with a quick spring on
top of Piggy, and the two began to wrestle like kittens in the hay.
Even while Piggy Pennington and Bud Perkins were sitting at dusk on
the back-porch steps of the Pennington house, eating turkey-wings
which Mrs. Pennington had given to them, and devouring ham sandwiches
which Piggy had taken from the big platterful in the pantry, looking
the hired girl boldly in the face as he did it, even then the
preparations for the Pennington entertainment were progressing
indoors. The parlor, the sitting-room, and the dining-room, which had
been decorated during the warm afternoon with borrowed palms and with
roses from the neighbor's vines, were being ventilated. Windows were
rising, and doors opening. The velvety air of May was fluttering
everywhere. And there was so much life in it, that when Mrs.
Pennington saw the two boys pass out of the alley gate, she saw the
Perkins boy grab her son's hat and run away whooping, while Piggy
followed, throwing clods at his companion's legs and feet. She
thought, as she turned to her turkey-slicing, that the Perkins child
was not taking his father's death "very hard." But she did not know
that the boyish whoop was the only thing that saved him from sobbing,
as he left the home where he saw such a contrast to his own. How could
a woman carrying the responsibilities of the social honor of the
Methodist church in Willow Creek have time to use her second sight?
[Illustration: _As she turned to her turkey-slicing_.]
The guests at the Pennington house that evening divided the honors
equally between the new preacher, for whom the party was made, and
Miss Morgan, whose last niece had married and left her but two days
before. Most of the guests had met the new preacher; but none of
them--save one or two of her intimate friends--could know how the
lonely little old woman was faring in the cottage whence one by one
her adopted birds had flown. They called her "little Miss Morgan" in
the town, and the story of her life of devotion to her brothers' and
sisters' children was familiar to every one about her. For ten years
she had lived in Willow Creek caring for her brothers' orphans.
She came to the community from the East, and found what she
brought--culture, friends, and kindness at every turn. The children
whom she had cared for had grown up, filed through the town's real
estate college, and then mating had left the little spinster alone.
[Illustration: _The new preacher, for whom the party was made_.]
At the Penningtons' that evening she was cheerful enough--so cheerful,
indeed, in her little bird-like way, that many of those who talked
with her fancied that the resourceful little body was beyond the reach
of petty grief. The modest, almost girlish smile beamed through the
wrinkles of fifty autumns as brightly that evening at the Penningtons'
as the town had ever seen it. From her place in a high-backed chair in
the corner, Miss Morgan, in her shy, self-deprecatory way, shed her
faint benediction about her as she had done for a decade. There was a
sweetness in Miss Morgan's manner that made the old men gallant to her
in a boyish way; and the wives, who loved her, were proud of their
husbands' chivalry. During the evening at the Penningtons' the
conversation found much of its inspiration in the Memorial Day
services on the morrow and in anecdotes about the thriftlessness of
Calhoun Perkins. Memorial Day was one of the holidays which Miss
Morgan kept in her heart. Then she decorated each year a lover's
grave--a grave she had never seen. The day had been sacred in her
heart to the memory of a spring night, and the moon and the lilacs and
the blue uniform of a soldier. Upon other days she waved this memory
away with a gay little sigh, and would have none of it. But on
Memorial Day she bade the vision come into her heart and bide a while.
But she did not open the door there at the party. They said to one
another, going home that night: "Well, I don't see's she minds it a
bit. Isn't that pluck for you--not lonesome, not grumpy--just the same
little body she was when we first saw her. Well--I know one thing--I
couldn't do it."
As for Miss Morgan, while she was walking home that night, she was
thinking of the women of her age whom she had just left; the romance
seemed to be gone completely from their lives, their faces seemed a
trifle hard to her, and she was wondering if life would have gone so
with her if there had been no Shiloh.
The town clock in the schoolhouse was tolling eleven, as Miss Morgan
turned the key in the front door. The night was starry and inviting,
and as her house stood among the trees, somewhat back from the street,
Miss Morgan did not feel afraid to sit in a porch chair, refreshing
herself, before going indoors. The wind brought the odor of the lilacs
from the bush at the house corner, and the woman sat drinking in the
fragrance. She saw a pair of lovers strolling by, who did not observe
her. She could hear the murmur of their voices; she did not try to
catch their words. She sat silently dreaming and wondering. Again and
again her eyes went to the stars in a vain questioning, and her lips
moved. Maybe she was asking "where," maybe she was asking "why." As
the moments slipped by, the years fell away from her. She had carried
her little romance in her heart unsullied by reality. To-night the
talk of Memorial Day had brought it all back, and the thrill of other
days returned with the odor of the lilacs. She yielded to a vague,
crazy notion, and in an impulsive, girlish run she went to the corner
of the porch and broke a sprig from the lilac-tree.