“Then he can fwallow Budgie too, an’ there’ll be two Djonahs—ha—ha—ha!
Make his mouf so big he can fwallow Mike, an’ zen mate it ’ittle aden,
so Mike tan’t det _out_; nashty old Mike!”
[Illustration: TWO GREAT HANDS SEIZED TODDIE]
I explained that Mike would not come upstairs again, so I was permitted
to depart after securing the window.
Again I settled myself with book and cigar; there was at least for me
the extra enjoyment that comes from the sense of pleasure earned by
honest toil. Pretty soon Budge entered the room. I affected not to
notice him, but he was not in the least abashed by my neglect.
“Uncle Harry,” said he, throwing himself in my lap, between my book and
me, “I don’t feel a bit nice.”
“What’s the matter, old fellow?” I asked. Until he spoke I could have
boxed his ears with great satisfaction to myself; but there is so much
genuine feeling in whatever Budge says that he commands respect.
“Oh, I’m tired of playin’ with Toddie, an’ I feel lonesome. Won’t you
tell me a story?”
“Then what’ll poor Toddie do, Budge?”
“Oh, he won’t mind—he’s got a dead mouse to be Jonah now, so I don’t
have no fun at all. Won’t you tell me a story?”
“Which one?”
“Tell me one that I never heard before at all.”
“Well, let’s see; I guess I’ll tell——”
“Ah—ah—ah—ah—ee—ee—ee!” sounded afar off, but fatefully. It came
nearer—it came down the stairway and into the library, accompanied by
Toddie, who, on spying me, dropped his inarticulate utterance, held up
both hands, and exclaimed:—
“Djonah bwoke he tay-al!”
[Illustration: “HE’S GOT A DEAD MOUSE TO BE JONAH NOW”]
True enough; in one hand Toddie held the body of a mouse, and in the
other that animal’s caudal appendage; there was also perceptible,
though not by the sense of sight, an objectionable odor in the room.
“Toddie,” said I, “go throw Jonah into the chicken coop, and I’ll give
you some candy.”
“Me too,” shouted Budge, ”’cos I found the mouse for him.”
I made both boys happy with candy, exacted a pledge not to go out in
the rain, and then, turning them loose on the piazza, returned to my
book. I had read, perhaps, half a dozen pages, when there arose and
swelled rapidly in volume a scream from Toddie. Madly determined to put
both boys into chairs, tie them, and clap adhesive plaster over their
mouths, I rushed out upon the piazza.
“Budgie tried to eat my candy,” complained Toddie.
“I didn’t,” said Budge.
“What _did_ you do?” I demanded.
“I didn’t bite it at all—I only wanted to see how it would feel between
my teeth—that’s all.”
I felt the corners of my mouth breaking down, and hurried back to the
library, where I spent a quiet quarter of an hour in pondering over
the demoralizing influence exerted upon principle by a sense of the
ludicrous. For some time afterward the boys got along without doing
anything worse than make a dreadful noise, which caused me to resolve
to find some method of deadening piazza floors if _I_ ever owned a
house in the country. In the occasional intervals of comparative quiet,
I caught snatches of very funny conversation. The boys had coined a
great many words whose meaning was evident enough, but I wondered
greatly why Tom and Helen had never taught them the proper substitutes.
Among others was the word “deader,” whose meaning I could not imagine.
Budge shouted:—
“O Tod! there comes a deader! See where all them things like rooster’s
tails are a-shakin’?—Well, there’s a deader under them.”
“Datsh funny,” remarked Toddie.
“An’ see all the peoples a-comin’ along,” continued Budge, “_they_ know
’bout the deader, an’ they’re goin’ to see it fixed. Here it comes.
Hello, deader!”
“Hay-oh, deader!” echoed Toddie.
What _could_ “deader” mean?
“Oh, here it is right in front of us,” cried Budge, “and _ain’t_ there
lots of people? An’ two horses to pull the deader—_some_ deaders has
only one.”
My curiosity was too much for my weariness; I went to the front window,
and, peering through, saw—a funeral procession! In a second I was on
the piazza, with my hands on the children’s collars; a second later two
small boys were on the floor of the hall, the front door was closed,
and two determined hands covered two threatening little mouths.
When the procession had fairly passed the house, I released the boys
and heard two prolonged howls for my pains. Then I asked Budge if he
wasn’t ashamed to talk that way when a funeral was passing.
“_’Twasn’t_ a funeral,” said he, ”’Twas only a deader, an’ deaders
can’t hear noffin’.”
“But the people in the carriages could,” said I.
“Well,” said he, “they were so glad that the other part of the deader
had gone to heaven that they didn’t care _what_ I said. Everbody’s glad
when the other part of deaders go to heaven. Papa told me he was glad
dear little Phillie was in heaven, an’ I _was_, but I do want to see
him again awful.”
“Wantsh to shee Phillie aden awfoo,” said Toddie, as I kissed Budge
and hurried off to the library, unfit just then to administer further
instruction or reproof. Of one thing I was very certain—I wished the
rain would cease falling, so the children could go out of doors, and
I could get a little rest, and freedom from responsibility. But the
skies showed no sign of being emptied, the boys were snarling on the
stairway, and I was losing my temper quite rapidly.
Suddenly I bethought me of one of the delights of my own childish
days—the making of scrap-books. One of Tom’s library drawers held
a great many _Lady’s Journals_. Of course Helen meant to have them
bound, but I could easily re-purchase the numbers for her; they would
cost two or three dollars, but peace was cheap at that price. On a
high shelf in the play-room I had seen some supplementary volumes of
“Mercantile Agency” reports, which would in time reach the rag-bag;
there was a bottle of mucilage in the library desk, and the children
owned an old pair of scissors. Within five minutes I had located two
happy children on the bath-room floor, taught them to cut out pictures
(which operation I quickly found they understood as well as I did)
and to paste them into the extemporized scrap-book. Then I left them,
recalling something from Newman Hall’s address on the “Dignity of
Labor.” Why hadn’t I thought before of showing my nephews some way of
occupying their minds and hands? Who could blame the helpless little
things for following every prompting of their unguided minds? Had I not
a hundred times been told, when sent to the woodpile or the weediest
part of the garden in my youthful days, that
“Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do?”
Never again would I blame the children for being mischievous when their
minds were neglected.
I spent a peaceful, pleasant hour over my novel, when I felt that a
fresh cigar would be acceptable. Going upstairs in search of one, I
found that Budge had filled the bath-tub with water, and was sailing
boats, that is, hair-brushes.
Even this seemed too mild an offense to call for a rebuke, so I passed
on without disturbing him, and went to my own room. I heard Toddie’s
voice, and having heard from my sister that Toddie’s conversations with
himself were worth listening to, I paused outside the door. I heard
Toddie softly murmur:—
“Zere, pitty yady, ’tay _zere_. Now, ’ittle boy, I put you wif your
mudder, ’tause mudders like zere ’ittle boys wif zem. An’ you s’all
have ’ittle sister tudder side of you,—zere. Now, ’ittle boy’s an’
’ittle girl’s mudder, don’t you feel happy?—isn’t I awfoo good to give
you your ’ittle tsilderns? You ought to say, ‘Fank you, Toddie,—you’s a
nice, fweet ’ittle djentleman.’”
I peered cautiously—then I entered the room hastily. I didn’t
say anything for a moment, for it was impossible to do justice
impromptu, to the subject. Toddie had a progressive mind—if pictorial
ornamentation was good for old books, why should not similar
ornamentation be extended to objects more likely to be seen? Such may
not have been Toddie’s line of thought, but his recent operations
warranted such a supposition. He had cut out a number of pictures, and
pasted them upon the wall of my room—my sister’s darling room, with its
walls tinted exquisitely in pink. As a member of a hanging committee,
Toddie would hardly have satisfied taller people, but he had arranged
the pictures quite regularly, at about the height of his own eyes, had
favored no one artist more than another, and had hung indiscriminately
figure pieces, landscapes, and genre pictures. The temporary break of
wall-line occasioned by the door communicating with his own room he had
overcome by closing the door and carrying a line of pictures across
its lower panels. Occasionally a picture fell off the wall, but the
mucilage remained faithful, and glistened with its fervor of devotion.
And yet so untouched was I by this artistic display, that when I
found strength to shout, “Toddie,” it was in a tone which caused this
industrious amateur decorator to start violently, and drop his mucilage
bottle, open end first, upon the carpet.
“What will mamma say?” I asked.
Toddie gazed, first blankly, and then inquiringly, into my face;
finding no answer or sympathy there he burst into tears, and replied:—
“I dunno.”
The ringing of the lunch bell changed Toddie from a tearful cherub into
a very practical, business-like boy, and shouting, “Come on, Budge!” he
hurried downstairs, while I tormented myself with wonder as to how I
could best and most quickly undo the mischief Toddie had done.
I will concede to my nephews the credit of keeping reasonably quiet
during meals; their tongues, doubtless, longed to be active in both the
principal capacities of those useful members, but they had no doubt
as to how to choose between silence and hunger. The result was a
reasonably comfortable half-hour. Just as I began to cut a melon, Budge
broke the silence by exclaiming:—
“O Uncle Harry, we haven’t been out to see the goat to-day!”
“Budge,” I replied, “I’ll carry you out there under an umbrella after
lunch, and you may play with that goat all the afternoon, if you like.”
“Oh, won’t that be nice?” exclaimed Budge. “The poor goat! he’ll think
I don’t love him a bit, ’cause I haven’t been to see him to-day. Does
goats go to heaven when they die, Uncle Harry?”
“Guess not—they’d make trouble in the golden streets I’m afraid.”
“Oh, dear! then Phillie can’t see my goat. I’m so awful sorry,” said
Budge.
“_I_ can see your goat, Budgie,” suggested Toddie.
“Huh!” said Budge, very contemptuously. “_You_ ain’t dead.”
“Well, Izhe _goin’_ to be dead some day, an’ zen your nashty old
goat sha’n’t see me a bit—see how he like _zat_.” And Toddie made a
ferocious attack on a slice of melon nearly as large as himself.
After lunch, Toddie was sent to his room to take his afternoon nap,
and Budge went to the barn on my shoulders. I gave Mike a dollar, with
instructions to keep Budge in sight, to keep him from teasing the
goat, and to prevent his being impaled or butted. Then I stretched
myself on a lounge and wondered whether only half a day of daylight
had elapsed since I and the most adorable woman in the world had been
so happy together. How much happier I would be when next I met her!
The very torments of this rainy day would make my joy seem all the
dearer and more intense. I dreamed happily for a few moments with my
eyes open, and then somehow they closed, without my knowledge. What
put into my mind the wreck scene from the play of “David Copperfield,”
I don’t know; but there it came, and in my dream I was sitting in the
balcony at Booth’s, and taking a proper interest in the scene, when
it occurred to me that the thunder had less of reverberation and more
woodenness than good stage thunder should have. The mental exertion
I underwent on this subject disturbed the course of my nap, but as
wakefulness returned, the sound of the poorly simulated thunder did
not cease; on the contrary, it was just as noisy, and more hopelessly
a counterfeit than ever. What could the sound be? I stepped through
the window to the piazza, and the sound was directly over my head. I
sprang down the terrace and out upon the lawn, looked up, and beheld
my youngest nephew strutting back and forth on the tin roof of the
piazza, holding over his head a ragged old parasol. I roared:—“Go in,
Toddie—this instant!”
The sound of my voice startled the young man so severely that he lost
his footing, fell, and began to roll toward the edge and to scream,
both operations being performed with great rapidity. I ran to catch him
as he fell, but the outer edge of the water trough was high enough to
arrest his progress, though it had no effect in reducing the volume of
his howls.
“Toddie,” I shouted, “lie perfectly still until uncle can get to you!
Do you hear?”
“Ess, but don’t want to lie ’till,” came in reply from the roof.
”’Tan’t shee noffin’ but sky an’ wain.”
[Illustration: HOLDING OVER HIS HEAD A RAGGED PARASOL]
“Lie still,” I reiterated, “or I’ll whip you dreadfully.” Then I dashed
upstairs, removed my shoes, climbed out and rescued Toddie, shook him
soundly, and then shook myself.
“I wash only djust pyayin mamma, an’ walkin’ in ze wain wif an
umbayalla,” Toddie explained.
I threw him upon his bed and departed. It was plain that neither logic,
threats, nor the presence of danger could keep this dreadful child
from doing whatever he chose; what other means of restraint could be
employed? Although not as religious a man as my good mother could
wish, I really wondered whether prayer, as a last resort, might not
be effective. For his good and my own peace, I would cheerfully have
read through the whole prayer-book. I could hardly have done it just
then, though, for Mike solicited an audience at the back door, and
reported that Budge had given the carriage sponge to the goat, put
handfuls of oats into the pump cylinder, pulled hairs out of the black
mare’s tail, and with a sharp nail drawn pictures on the enamel of the
carriage-body. Budge made no denial, but looked very much aggrieved,
and remarked that he couldn’t never be happy without somebody having
to go get bothered; and he wished there wasn’t nobody in the world
but organ-grinders and candy-store men. He followed me into the house,
flung himself into a chair, put on a look which I imagine Byron wore
before he was old enough to be malicious, and exclaimed:—
“I don’t see what little boys was made for, anyhow; if ev’rybody gets
cross with them, an’ don’t let ’em do what they want to. I’ll bet when
I get to heaven, the Lord won’t be as ugly to me as Mike is,—an’ some
other folks, too. I wish I could die and be buried right away,—me an’
the goat—an’ go to heaven, where we wouldn’t be scolded.”
Poor little fellow! First I laughed inwardly at his idea of heaven,
and then I wondered whether my own was very different from it, or
any more creditable. I had no time to spend, however, even in pious
reflection. Budge was quite wet, his shoes were soaking, and he already
had an attack of catarrh; so I took him to his room and redressed him,
wondering all the while how much similar duties my own father had had
to do for me had shortened his life, and how with such a son as I was,
he lived as long as he did. The idea that I was in some slight degree
atoning for my early sins, so filled my thoughts that I did not at
first notice the absence of Toddie. When it _did_ become evident to me
that my youngest nephew was not in the bed in which I had placed him,
I went in search of him. He was in none of the chambers, but hearing
gentle murmurs issue from a long, light closet, I looked in and saw
Toddie sitting on the floor, and eating the cheese out of a mouse-trap.
A squeak of my boots betrayed me, and Toddie, equal to the emergency,
sprang to his feet and exclaimed:—
“I didn’t hurt de ’ittle mousie one bittie; I just letted him out, and
he runded away.”
[Illustration: “I DIDN’T HURT DE ’ITTLE MOUSIE”]
And still it rained. Oh, for a single hour of sunlight, so that the
mud might be only damp dirt, and the children could play without
tormenting other people! But it was not to be; slowly, and by the aid
of songs, stories, an improvised menagerie, in which I personated
every animal, besides playing ostrich and armadillo, and with a great
many disagreements, the afternoon wore to its close, and my heart
slowly lightened. Only an hour or two more, and the children would be
in bed for the night, and then I would enjoy, in unutterable measure,
the peaceful hours which would be mine. Even now they were inclined to
behave themselves; they were tired and hungry, and stretched themselves
on the floor to await dinner. I embraced the opportunity to return
to my book, but I had hardly read a page, when a combined crash and
scream summoned me to the dining-room. On the floor lay Toddie, a great
many dishes, a roast leg of lamb, several ears of green corn, the
butter-dish and its contents, and several other misplaced edibles. One
thing was quite evident; the scalding contents of the gravy-dish had
been emptied on Toddie’s arm, and how severely the poor child might
be scalded I did not know. I hastily split open his sleeve from wrist
to shoulder, and found the skin very red; so, remembering my mother’s
favorite treatment for scalds and bums, I quickly spread the contents
of a dish of mashed potato on a clean handkerchief, and wound the whole
around Toddie’s arm as a poultice. Then I demanded an explanation.
“I was only djust reatchin’ for a pieshe of bwed,” sobbed Toddie, “an’
then the bad old tabo beginded to froe all its fings at me, an’ tumble
down bang.”
He undoubtedly told the truth as far as he knew it; but reaching over
tables is a bad habit in small boys, especially when their mothers
cling to old-fashioned heirlooms of tables, which have folding leaves;
so I banished Toddie to his room, supperless, to think of what he had
done. With Budge alone, I had a comfortable dinner off the salvage from
the wreck caused by Toddie, and then I went upstairs to see if the
offender had repented. It was hard to tell, by sight, whether he had
or not, for his back was to me, as he flattened his nose against the
window, but I could see that my poultice was gone.
“Where is what uncle put on your arm, Toddie?” I asked.
“I ate it up,” said the truthful youth.
“Did you eat the handkerchief, too?”
“No; I froed nashty old handkerchief out the window—don’t want dirty
old handkerchiefs in my nice ’ittle room.”
I was so glad that his burn had been slight that I forgave the
insult to my handkerchief, and called up Budge, so that I might at
once get both boys into bed, and emerge from the bondage in which I
had lived all day long. But the task was no easy one. Of course my
brother-in-law, Tom Lawrence, knows better than any other man the
necessities of his own children, but no children of mine shall ever
be taught so many methods of imposing upon parental good-nature. Their
program called for stories, songs, moral conversations, frolics, the
presentation of pennies, the dropping of the same, at long intervals,
into tin savings-banks, followed by a deafening shaking-up of both
banks; then a prayer must be offered, and no conventional one would be
tolerated; then the boys performed their own devotions, after which I
was allowed to depart with an interchange of “God bless yous.” As this
evening I left the room with their innocent benedictions sounding in my
ears, a sense of personal weakness, induced by the events of the day,
moved me to fervently respond “Amen!”
[Illustration: A TRIBUTE TO MOTHERS]
Mothers of American boys, accept from me a tribute of respect, which
no words can fitly express—of wonder greater than any of the great
things of the world ever inspired—of adoration as earnest and devout
as the Catholic pays to the Virgin. In a single day, I, a strong man,
with nothing else to occupy my mind, am reduced to physical and mental
worthlessness by the necessities of two boys not overmischievous or
bad. And you—Heaven only knows how—have unbroken weeks, months, years,
yes, lifetimes of just such experiences, and with them the burden of
household cares, of physical ills and depressions, of mental anxieties
that pierce thy hearts with as many sorrows as grieved the Holy
Mother of old. Compared with thy endurance, that of the young man,
the athlete, is as weakness; the secret of thy nerves, wonderful even
in their weakness, is as great as that of the power of the winds. To
display decision, thy opportunities are more frequent than those of the
greatest statesmen; thy heroism laughs into insignificance that of
fort and field; thou art trained in a school of diplomacy such as the
most experienced court cannot furnish. Do scoffers say thou canst not
hold the reins of government? Easier is it to rule a band of savages
than to be the successful autocrat of thy little kingdom. Compared with
the ways of men, even thy failures are full of glory. Be thy faults
what they may, thy one great, mysterious, unapproachable success places
thee, in desert, far above warrior, ruler or priest.
The foregoing soliloquy passed through my mind as I lay upon the bed
where I had thrown myself after leaving the children’s room. Whatever
else attempted to affect me mentally, found my mind a blank until the
next morning, when I awoke to realize that I had dropped asleep just
where I fell, and that I had spent nearly twelve hours lying across a
bed in an uncomfortable position, and without removing my daily attire.
My next impression was that quite a bulky letter had been pushed under
my chamber-door. Could it be that my darling—I hastily seized the
envelope and found it addressed in my sister’s writing, and promising a
more voluminous letter than that lady had ever before honored me with.
I opened it, dropping an enclosure which, doubtless, was a list of
necessities which I would please pack, etc. and read as follows:—
JULY 1, 1875.
“MY DEAR OLD BROTHER:—_Wouldn’t_ I like to give you the warmest of
sisterly hugs? I can’t believe it, and yet I am in ecstasies over it.
To think that _you_ should have got that perfection of a girl, who
has declined so many great catches—_you_, my sober, business-like,
unromantic big brother—oh, it’s too wonderful! But now I think of it,
you are just the people for each other. I’d like to say that it’s just
what I’d always longed for, and I invited you to Hillcrest to bring
it about; but the trouble with such a story would be that it wouldn’t
have a word of truth in it. You always _did_ have a faculty for doing
just what you pleased, and what nobody ever expected you to do, but
now you’ve exceeded yourself.
“And to think that my little darlings played an important part in
bringing it all about! I shall take the credit of _that_, for if it
hadn’t been for me who would have helped you, sir? I shall expect you
to remember both of them handsomely at Christmas.
“I don’t believe I am guilty of breach of confidence in sending the
enclosed, which I have just received from my sister-in-law that is to
be. It will tell you some causes of your success of which you, with
a man’s conceit, haven’t imagined for a minute, and it will tell you,
too, of a maiden’s first and natural fear under such circumstances—a
fear which I know you, with your honest, generous heart, will hasten
to dispel. As you’re a man, you’re quite likely to be too stupid to
read what’s written between the lines; so I’d better tell you that
Alice’s fear is that in letting herself go so easily, she may have
seemed to lack proper reserve and self-respect. You don’t need to be
told that no woman alive has more of these very qualities.
“Bless your dear old heart, Harry,—you deserve to be shaken to death
if you’re not the happiest man alive. I _must_ hurry home and see you
both with my own eyes, and learn to believe that all this wonderful,
glorious thing has come to pass. Give Alice a sister’s kiss for me
(if you know how to give more than one kind), and give my cherubs a
hundred each from the mother that wants to see them so much.
“With love and congratulations,
“HELEN.”
The other letter, which I opened with considerable reverence and more
delight, ran as follows:
“HILLCREST, June 29, 1875.