would be dotted over with boys holding them, or setting them up, or
winding them in, and all talking and screaming at the tops of their
voices under the roasting sun. One might think that kite-flying, at
least, could be carried on quietly and peaceably; but it was not.
Besides the wild debate of the rival excellences of the different kites,
there were always quarrels from getting the strings crossed; for, as the
boys got their kites up, they drew together for company and for an
easier comparison of their merits. It was only a mean boy who would try
to cross another fellow's string; but sometimes accidents would happen;
two kites would become entangled and both would have to be hauled in,
while their owners cried and scolded, and the other fellows cheered and
laughed. Now and then the tail of a kite would part midway, and then the
kite would begin to dart violently from side to side, and then to whirl
round and round in swifter and narrower circles till it dashed itself to
the ground. Sometimes the kite-string would break, and the kite would
waver and fall like a bird shot in the wing; and the owner of the kite,
and all the fellows who had no kites, would run to get it where it came
down, perhaps a mile or more away. It usually came down in a tree, and
they had to climb for it; but sometimes it lodged so high that no one
could reach it; and then it was slowly beaten and washed away in the
winds and rains, and its long tail left streaming all winter from the
naked bough where it had caught. It was so good for kites on the
Commons, because there were no trees there, and not even fences, but a
vast open stretch of level grass, which the cows and geese kept cropped
to the earth; and for the most part the boys had no trouble with their
kites there. Some of them had paper fringe pasted round the edges of
their kites; this made a fine rattling as the kite rose, and when the
kite stood, at the end of its string, you could hear the humming if you
put your ear to the twine. But the most fun was sending up messengers.
The messengers were cut out of thick paper, with a slit at one side, so
as to slip over the string, which would be pulled level long enough to
give the messenger a good start, and then released, when the wind would
catch the little circle, and drive it up the long curving incline till
it reached the kite.
It was thought a great thing in a kite to pull, and it was a favor to
another boy to let him take hold of your string and feel how your kite
pulled. If you wanted to play mumble-the-peg, or anything, while your
kite was up, you tied it to a stake in the ground, or gave it to some
other fellow to hold; there were always lots of fellows eager to hold
it. But you had to be careful how you let a little fellow hold it; for,
if it was a very powerful kite, it would take him up. It was not certain
just how strong a kite had to be to take a small boy up, and nobody had
ever seen a kite do it, but everybody expected to see it.
THE BUTLER GUARDS
The Butler Guards were the finest military company in the world. I do
not believe there was a fellow in the Boy's Town who even tried to
imagine a more splendid body of troops: when they talked of them, as
they did a great deal, it was simply to revel in the recognition of
their perfection. I forget just what their uniform was, but there were
white pantaloons in it, and a tuft of white-and-red cockerel plumes that
almost covered the front of the hat, and swayed when the soldier walked,
and blew in the wind. I think the coat was gray, and the skirts were
buttoned back with buff, but I will not be sure of this; and somehow I
cannot say how the officers differed from the privates in dress; it was
impossible for them to be more magnificent. They walked backward in
front of the platoons, with their swords drawn, and held in their
white-gloved hands at hilt and point, and kept holloing,
"Shoulder-r-r--arms! Carry--arms! Present--arms!" and then faced round,
and walked a few steps forward, till they could think of something else
to make the soldiers do.
[Illustration: THE BUTLER GUARDS]
Every boy intended to belong to the Butler Guards when he grew up; and
he would have given anything to be the drummer or the marker. These were
both boys, and they were just as much dressed up as the Guards
themselves, only they had caps instead of hats with plumes. It was
strange that the other fellows somehow did not know who these boys were;
but they never knew, or at least my boy never knew. They thought more of
the marker than of the drummer; for the marker carried a little flag,
and when the officers holloed out, "By the left flank--left! Wheel!" he
set his flag against his shoulder, and stood marking time with his feet
till the soldiers all got by him, and then he ran up to the front rank,
with the flag fluttering behind him. The fellows used to wonder how he
got to be marker, and to plan how they could get to be markers in other
companies, if not in the Butler Guards. There were other companies that
used to come to town on the Fourth of July and Muster Day, from smaller
places round about; and some of them had richer uniforms: one company
had blue coats with gold epaulets, and gold braid going down in loops on
the sides of their legs; all the soldiers, of course, had braid straight
down the outer seams of their pantaloons. One Muster Day a captain of
one of the country companies came home with my boy's father to dinner;
he was in full uniform, and he put his plumed helmet down on the entry
table just like any other hat.
There was a company of Germans, or Dutchmen, as the boys always called
them; and the boys believed that they each had hay in his right shoe,
and straw in his left, because a Dutchman was too dumb, as the boys said
for stupid, to know his feet apart any other way; and that the Dutch
officers had to call out to the men when they were marching, "Up mit de
hay-foot, down mit de straw-foot--_links, links, links!_" (left, left,
left!). But the boys honored even these imperfect intelligences so much
in their quality of soldiers that they would any of them have been proud
to be marker in the Dutch company; and they followed the Dutchmen round
in their march as fondly as any other body of troops. Of course, school
let out when there was a regular muster, and the boys gave the whole day
to it; but I do not know just when the Muster Day came. They fired the
cannon a good deal on the river-bank, and they must have camped
somewhere near the town, though no recollection of tents remained in my
boy's mind. He believed with the rest of the boys that the right way to
fire the cannon was to get it so hot you need not touch it off, but just
keep your thumb on the touch-hole, and take it away when you wanted the
cannon to go off. Once he saw the soldiers ram the piece full of
dog-fennel on top of the usual charge, and then he expected the cannon
to burst. But it only roared away as usual.
PETS
[Illustration]
As there are no longer any Whig boys in the world, the coon can no
longer be kept anywhere as a political emblem, I dare say. Even in my
boy's time the boys kept coons just for the pleasure of it, and without
meaning to elect Whig governors and presidents with them. I do not know
how they got them--they traded for them, perhaps, with fellows in the
country that had caught them, or perhaps their fathers bought them in
market; some people thought they were very good to eat, and, like
poultry and other things for the table, they may have been brought alive
to market. But, anyhow, when a boy had a coon, he had to have a
store-box turned open side down to keep it in, behind the house; and he
had to have a little door in the box to pull the coon out through when
he wanted to show it to other boys, or to look at it himself, which he
did forty or fifty times a day, when he first got it. He had to have a
small collar for the coon, and a little chain, because the coon would
gnaw through a string in a minute. The coon himself never seemed to take
much interest in keeping a coon, or to see much fun or sense in it. He
liked to stay inside his box, where he had a bed of hay, and whenever
the boy pulled him out, he did his best to bite the boy. He had no
tricks; his temper was bad; and there was nothing about him except the
rings round his tail and his political principles that anybody could
care for. He never did anything but bite, and try to get away, or else
run back into his box, which smelled, pretty soon, like an animal-show;
he would not even let a fellow see him eat.
My boy's brother had a coon, which he kept a good while, at a time when
there was no election, for the mere satisfaction of keeping a coon.
During his captivity the coon bit his keeper repeatedly through the
thumb, and upon the whole seemed to prefer him to any other food; I do
not really know what coons eat in a wild state, but this captive coon
tasted the blood of nearly that whole family of children. Besides biting
and getting away, he never did the slightest thing worth remembering; as
there was no election, he did not even take part in a Whig procession.
He got away two or three times. The first thing his owner would know
when he pulled the chain out was that there was no coon at the end of
it, and then he would have to poke round the inside of the box pretty
carefully with a stick, so as not to get bitten; after that he would
have to see which tree the coon had gone up. It was usually the tall
locust-tree in front of the house, and in about half a second all the
boys in town would be there, telling the owner of the coon how to get
him. Of course the only way was to climb for the coon, which would be
out at the point of a high and slender limb, and would bite you awfully,
even if the limb did not break under you, while the boys kept whooping
and yelling and holloing out what to do, and Tip the dog just howled
with excitement. I do not know how that coon was ever caught, but I know
that the last time he got away he was not found during the day, but
after nightfall he was discovered by moonlight in the locust-tree. His
owner climbed for him, but the coon kept shifting about, and getting
higher and higher, and at last he had to be left till morning. In the
morning he was not there, nor anywhere.
It had been expected, perhaps, that Tip would watch him, and grab him if
he came down, and Tip would have done it probably if he had kept awake.
He was a dog of the greatest courage, and he was especially fond of
hunting. He had been bitten oftener by that coon than anybody but the
coon's owner, but he did not care for biting. He was always getting
bitten by rats, but he was the greatest dog for rats that there almost
ever was. The boys hunted rats with him at night, when they came out of
the stables that backed down to the Hydraulic, for water; and a dog who
liked above all things to lie asleep on the back-step, by day, and would
no more think of chasing a pig out of the garden than he would think of
sitting up all night with a coon, would get frantic about rats, and
would perfectly wear himself out hunting them on land and in the water,
and keep on after the boys themselves were tired. He was so fond of
hunting, anyway, that the sight of a gun would drive him about crazy; he
would lick the barrel all over, and wag his tail so hard that it would
lift his hind legs off the ground.
I do not know how he came into that family, but I believe he was given
to it full grown by somebody. It was some time after my boy failed to
buy what he called a Confoundland dog, from a colored boy who had it for
sale, a pretty puppy with white and black spots which he had quite set
his heart on; but Tip more than consoled him. Tip was of no particular
breed, and he had no personal beauty; he was of the color of a mouse or
an elephant, and his tail was without the smallest grace; it was smooth
and round, but it was so strong that he could pull a boy all over the
town by it, and usually did; and he had the best, and kindest, and
truest ugly old face in the world. He loved the whole human race, and as
a watch-dog he was a failure through his trustful nature; he would no
more have bitten a person than he would have bitten a pig; but where
other dogs were concerned, he was a lion. He might be lying fast asleep
in the back-yard, and he usually was, but if a dog passed the front of
the house under a wagon, he would be up and after that dog before you
knew what you were about. He seemed to want to fight country dogs the
worst, but any strange dog would do. A good half the time he would come
off best; but, however he came off, he returned to the back-yard with
his tongue hanging out, and wagging his tail in good-humor with all the
world. Nothing could stop him, however, where strange dogs were
concerned. He was a Whig dog, of course, as any one could tell by his
name, which was Tippecanoe in full, and was given him because it was the
nickname of General Harrison, the great Whig who won the battle of
Tippecanoe. The boys' Henry Clay Club used him to pull the little wagon
that they went about in singing Whig songs, and he would pull five or
six boys, guided simply by a stick which he held in his mouth, and
which a boy held on either side of him. But if he caught sight of a dog
that he did not know, he would drop that stick and start for that dog as
far off as he could see him, spilling the Henry Clay Club out of the
wagon piecemeal as he went, and never stopping till he mixed up the
strange dog in a fight where it would have been hard to tell which was
either champion and which was the club wagon. When the fight was over
Tip would come smilingly back to the fragments of the Henry Clay Club,
with pieces of the vehicle sticking about him, and profess himself, in a
dog's way, ready to go on with the concert.
Any crowd of boys could get Tip to go off with them, in swimming, or
hunting, or simply running races. He was known through the whole town,
and beloved for his many endearing qualities of heart. As to his mind,
it was perhaps not much to brag of, and he certainly had some defects of
character. He was incurably lazy, and his laziness grew upon him as he
grew older, till hardly anything but the sight of a gun or a bone would
move him. He lost his interest in politics, and, though there is no
reason to suppose that he ever became indifferent to his principles, it
is certain that he no longer showed his early ardor. He joined the
Free-Soil movement in 1848, and supported Van Buren and Adams, but
without the zeal he had shown for Henry Clay. Once a year, as long as
the family lived in the Boy's Town, the children were anxious about Tip
when the dog-law was put in force, and the constables went round
shooting all the dogs that were found running at large without muzzles.
At this time, when Tip was in danger of going mad and biting people, he
showed a most unseasonable activity, and could hardly be kept in bounds.
A dog whose sole delight at other moments was to bask in the summer sun,
or dream by the winter fire, would now rouse himself to an interest in
everything that was going on in the dangerous world, and make forays
into it at all unguarded points. The only thing to do was to muzzle him,
and this was done by my boy's brother with a piece of heavy twine, in
such a manner as to interfere with Tip's happiness as little as
possible. It was a muzzle that need not be removed for either eating,
drinking, or fighting; but it satisfied the law, and Tip always came
safely through the dog-days, perhaps by favor or affection with the
officers who were so inexorable with some dogs.
While Tip was still in his prime the family of children was further
enriched by the possession of a goat; but this did not belong to the
whole family, or it was, at least nominally, the property of that eldest
brother they all looked up to. I do not know how they came by the goat,
any more than I know how they came by Tip; I only know that there came a
time when it was already in the family, and that before it was got rid
of it was a presence there was no mistaking. Nobody who has not kept a
goat can have any notion of how many different kinds of mischief a goat
can get into, without seeming to try, either, but merely by following
the impulses of its own goatishness. This one was a nanny-goat, and it
answered to the name of Nanny with an intelligence that was otherwise
wholly employed in making trouble. It went up and down stairs, from
cellar to garret, and in and out of all the rooms, like anybody, with a
faint, cynical indifference in the glance of its cold gray eyes that
gave no hint of its purposes or performances. In the chambers it chewed
the sheets and pillow-cases on the beds, and in the dining-room, if it
found nothing else, it would do its best to eat the table-cloth.
Washing-day was a perfect feast for it, for then it would banquet on the
shirt-sleeves and stockings that dangled from the clothes-line, and
simply glut itself with the family linen and cotton. In default of these
dainties, Nanny would gladly eat a chip-hat; she was not proud; she
would eat a split-basket, if there was nothing else at hand. Once she
got up on the kitchen table, and had a perfect orgy with a lot of
fresh-baked pumpkin-pies she found there; she cleaned all the pumpkin so
neatly out of the pastry shells that, if there had been any more pumpkin
left, they could have been filled up again, and nobody could have told
the difference. The grandmother, who was visiting in the house at the
time, declared to the mother that it would serve the father and the boys
just right if she did fill these very shells up and give them to the
father and the boys to eat. But I believe this was not done, and it was
only suggested in a moment of awful exasperation, and because it was the
father who was to blame for letting the boys keep the goat. The mother
was always saying that the goat should not stay in the house another
day, but she had not the heart to insist on its banishment, the children
were so fond of it. I do not know why they were fond of it, for it never
showed them the least affection, but was always taking the most unfair
advantages of them, and it would butt them over whenever it got the
chance. It would try to butt them into the well when they leaned down to
pull up the bucket from the curb; and if it came out of the house, and
saw a boy cracking nuts at the low flat stone the children had in the
back-yard to crack nuts on, it would pretend that the boy was making
motions to insult it, and before he knew what he was about it would fly
at him and send him spinning head over heels. It was not of the least
use in the world, and could not be, but the children were allowed to
keep it till, one fatal day, when the mother had a number of other
ladies to tea, as the fashion used to be in small towns, when they sat
down to a comfortable gossip over dainty dishes of stewed chicken, hot
biscuit, peach-preserves, sweet tomato-pickles, and pound-cake. That day
they all laid off their bonnets on the hall table, and the goat, after
demurely waiting and watching with its faded eyes, which saw everything
and seemed to see nothing, discerned a golden opportunity, and began to
make such a supper of bonnet-ribbons as perhaps never fell to a goat's
lot in life before. It was detected in its stolen joys just as it had
chewed the ribbon of a best bonnet up to the bonnet, and was chased into
the back-yard; but, as it had swallowed the ribbon without being able to
swallow the bonnet, it carried that with it. The boy who specially owned
the goat ran it down in a frenzy of horror and apprehension, and managed
to unravel the ribbon from its throat, and get back the bonnet. Then he
took the bonnet in and laid it carefully down on the table again, and
decided that it would be best not to say anything about the affair. But
such a thing as that could not be kept. The goat was known at once to
have done the mischief; and this time it was really sent away. All the
children mourned it, and the boy who owned it the most used to go to the
house of the people who took it, and who had a high board fence round
their yard, and try to catch sight of it through the cracks. When he
called "Nanny!" it answered him instantly with a plaintive "Baa!" and
then, after a vain interchange of lamentations, he had to come away, and
console himself as he could with the pets that were left him.
But all were trifling joys, except maybe Tip and Nanny, compared with
the pony which the boys owned in common, and which was the greatest
thing that ever came into their lives. I cannot tell just how their
father came to buy it for them, or where he got it; but I dare say he
thought they were about old enough for a pony, and might as well have
one. It was a Mexican pony, and as it appeared on the scene just after
the Mexican war, some volunteer may have brought it home. One volunteer
brought home a Mexican dog, that was smooth and hairless, with a skin
like an elephant, and that was always shivering round with the cold; he
was not otherwise a remarkable dog, and I do not know that he ever felt
even the warmth of friendship among the boys; his manners were reserved
and his temper seemed doubtful. But the pony never had any trouble with
the climate of Southern Ohio (which is indeed hot enough to fry a
salamander in summer); and though his temper was no better than other
ponies', he was perfectly approachable. I mean that he was approachable
from the side, for it was not well to get where he could bite you or
kick you. He was of a bright sorrel color, and he had a brand on one
haunch.
My boy had an ideal of a pony, conceived from pictures in his
reading-books at school, that held its head high and arched its neck,
and he strove by means of checks and martingales to make this real pony
conform to the illustrations. But it was of no use; the real pony held
his neck straight out like a ewe, or, if reined up, like a camel, and he
hung his big head at the end of it with no regard whatever for the
ideal. His caparison was another mortification and failure. What the boy
wanted was an English saddle, embroidered on the morocco seat in crimson
silk, and furnished with shining steel stirrups. What he had was the
framework of a Mexican saddle, covered with rawhide, and cushioned with
a blanket; the stirrups were Mexican, too, and clumsily fashioned out of
wood. The boys were always talking about getting their father to get
them a pad, but they never did it, and they managed as they could with
the saddle they had. For the most part they preferred to ride the pony
barebacked, for then they could ride him double, and when they first
got him they all wanted to ride him so much that they had to ride him
double. They kept him going the whole day long; but after a while they
calmed down enough to take him one at a time, and to let him have a
chance for his meals.
They had no regular stable, and the father left the boys to fit part of
the cow-shed up for the pony, which they did by throwing part of the
hen-coop open into it. The pigeon-cots were just over his head, and he
never could have complained of being lonesome. At first everybody wanted
to feed him as well as ride him, and if he had been allowed time for it
he might have eaten himself to death, or if he had not always tried to
bite you or kick you when you came in with his corn. After a while the
boys got so they forgot him, and nobody wanted to go out and feed the
pony, especially after dark; but he knew how to take care of himself,
and when he had eaten up everything there was in the cow-shed he would
break out and eat up everything there was in the yard.
The boys got lots of good out of him. When you were once on his back you
were pretty safe, for he was so lazy that he would not think of running
away, and there was no danger unless he bounced you off when he trotted;
he had a hard trot. The boys wanted to ride him standing up, like
circus-actors, and the pony did not mind, but the boys could not stay
on, though they practised a good deal, turn about, when the other
fellows were riding their horses, standing up, on the Commons. He was
not of much use in Indian fights, for he could seldom be lashed into a
gallop, and a pony that proposed to walk through an Indian fight was
ridiculous. Still, with the help of imagination, my boy employed him in
some scenes of wild Arab life, and hurled the Moorish javelin from him
in mid-career, when the pony was flying along at the mad pace of a
canal-boat. The pony early gave the boys to understand that they could
get very little out of him in the way of herding the family cow. He
would let them ride him to the pasture, and he would keep up with the
cow on the way home, when she walked, but if they wanted anything more
than that they must get some other pony. They tried to use him in
carrying papers, but the subscribers objected to having him ridden up to
their front doors over the sidewalk, and they had to give it up.