unadulterated, had very little trouble in wearing out the diluted energy
which his father had acquired from his superfluous stores, and night
coming on found Jarley, after a three hours' steady circus with his son,
in his normal condition mentally. But physically! What a poor wreck of a
human system was his when the last bit of the boyish spirit was
consumed! Had he worked at brick-laying for a week without rest Jarley
could not have been more prostrated physically. But he was happy. His
tests had proved that he could do certain things, but the results he had
expected as to the value of those things were not what he had hoped for.
At any rate, his experiment gave him greater sympathy with his boy than
he had ever had before, and they have become great chums. The greatest
disappointment of the whole affair is Jack's, who wonders why it is that
he and his father have no more afternoon acrobatics such as they had in
the play-room that day, but until he is a good many years older his
father cannot tell him, for the boy could not in the present stage of
his intellectual development understand him if he tried.
As for Mr. Baker and the people at the office, they were not at all
astonished to hear the next day that Jarley was laid up, and would
probably, not appear at the office again for a week, although they were
a little surprised when they learned that his trouble was rheumatism,
and not softening of the brain.
JARLEY'S THANKSGIVING
Jarley was in a blue mood the night before Thanksgiving. Things hadn't
gone quite to suit him during the year. He had lost two of his most
profitable clients--men upon whom for two years previously he had been
able to count for a steady income. It is true that he had lost them by
winning their respective suits, and had made two strong friends by so
doing; but, as he once put it to Mrs. Jarley, the worst position a man
could possibly get himself into was that of one who is long on friends
and short on income. He did not underestimate the value of friends, but
he didn't want too many of them; because beyond a certain number they
became luxuries rather than necessities, and his financial condition was
such that he could not afford luxuries.
"I love them all," he said, "but I haven't money enough to entertain a
quarter of them. The last time Billie Hicks was up here he smoked
sixteen Invincible cigars. Now, I am very fond of Billie Hicks, but with
cigars at twenty cents apiece I can't afford him more than one Sunday in
a year. He's getting a little cold because I haven't asked him up
since."
"Why don't you buy cheaper cigars? At our grocery store they have some
very nice looking ones at two for five cents," suggested Mrs. Jarley.
"I don't wish to have to move out of the house," said Jarley.
Mrs. Jarley failed to see the connection.
"Very likely you don't," said Jarley; "but if I smoked one of your
two-and-a-half-cent grocery cigars in this house, you'd see the point in
a minute. If you will get me a yard of cotton cloth, and let me put it
in the furnace fire, you'll get a fair idea of the kind of atmosphere
we'd be breathing if I allowed a cigar like that to be lit within fifty
feet of the front door."
"But you can get a good cigar for ten cents, can't you?" Mrs. Jarley
asked.
"Yes--very good," assented Jarley; "but Billie would probably smoke
thirty-two of those, and carry three or four away with him in his
pockets. I'd lose even more that way. It's a singular thing about
friends. They have some conscience about Invincible cigars, but they'll
take others by the handful."
Jarley was also somewhat blue upon this occasion because none of his
inventions--the little things he thought out in his leisure moments, and
out of some of which he had hoped to gain a deal of profit--had been
successful. The public had refused to place any confidence whatsoever in
his patent reversible spats, which, when turned inside out, could be
made useful as galoches; and the beaux of New York actually rejected
with scorn the celluloid chrysanthemum, which he had hoped would become
a popular boutonnière because of its durability and cheapness. An
impecunious young man with care could make one fifteen-cent
chrysanthemum of the Jarley order last through a whole season, and it
could be colored to suit the wearer's taste with the ordinary
paint-boxes that children so delight in; but in spite of this the
celluloid chrysanthemum was a distinct failure, and Jarley had had his
trouble for his pains, to say nothing of the cost of the model. But
worst of all the failures, because of the prospective losses its failure
entailed, was the Jarley safety lightning razor. Its failure was not due
to any lack of merit, for it certainly possessed much that was ingenious
and commendable. The affair was not different in principle from a
lawn-mower. Six little sharp blades set on a cylinder would revolve
rapidly as the pretty machine was pushed up and down the cheek of the
person shaving, and leave the face of that person as smooth as a piece
of velvet; but in announcing it to the world its inventor had made the
unfortunate statement that a child could use it with impunity, and some
would-be smart person on a comic paper took it up and wrote an
undeniably clever article on the futility of inventing a razor for
children. The consequence was that the safety razor was laughed out of
existence, and the additions to his residence which Jarley was going to
pay for out of the proceeds had to be abandoned.
"I don't like a blue funk," he said, "and generally I can find
something to be thankful for at this season; but I'm blest if this year,
beyond the fact that we're all alive, I can see any cause for
celebrating my thankfulness. I haven't enough of it to last ten minutes,
much less a day, what with the positive failure of my inventions, the
loss of income from what I once considered safe investments that have
gone to the wall, and the reduction of my professional earnings, not to
mention the fact that almost at the beginning of my professional year I
am as tired physically and mentally as I ought to be at the finish."
"Oh, well, say you are thankful, anyhow," suggested Mrs. Jarley. "You
will convince others that you are, and maybe, if you say it often
enough, you will convince yourself of the fact."
"Thanks," said Jarley. "It's possibly a good suggestion, but I don't
believe in pretending to be what I'm not. It might convince me that I am
thankful for something, but I don't want to be convinced when I know I'm
not."
Which shows, I think, how very blue Jarley was.
"There's one thing," he added, with a sigh of relief at the
thought--"I'll have a day of rest to-morrow anyhow. I've bought Jack a
football, and he can take it out on the tennis-court and play with it
all day, with intervals for meals."
"Why did you do that?" asked Mrs. Jarley, with a gesture not so much of
indignation as of disapproval. "I think football is such a brutal game;
and if Jack has a football at his present age, when he's in college
he'll want to play. I don't want to have my boy wearing his hair like a
Comanche Indian, and coming home with broken ribs and dislocated limbs."
"We'll let the broken ribs of 1904 and the wig of the same period
suffice for the evils of that year," retorted Jarley. "It's the present
I'm looking after, not the future ten or twelve years removed. If Jack
hasn't that football to-morrow he'll have me, and I've no desire in the
present condition of my physical well-being to be used by him as a
plaything. Deprived of the leathern ball, he might use me as a football
instead, and I must rest. That's all there is about it. Besides, if he
becomes an aspirant for football honors now it will be a good thing for
him. He'll take care of himself and try to improve his physique if he
once gets the notion in his head that he wants to go on a university
eleven. I want my boy to learn to be a man, and the football ambition is
likely to be a very useful aid in that direction. He knits reins very
well with a spool and a pin now, and I think it's time he graduated in
that art, unless the woman of the future, of whom we hear so much, is to
take man's place to such an extent that the man will have to take up
woman's work. If I thought the masculine tendency of our present-day
girls was likely to go much further, I might consent to the effemination
of Jack simply to secure his comfort as a married man of the future; but
I don't think that, and in consequence Jack is going to be brought up as
a boy, and not as a girl. The football goes."
This remark was another indication of Jarley's depression. He rarely
combated Mrs. Jarley's ideas, and when he did, and with a certain air of
irritation, it was invariably a sign of his low mental state.
"When you say that the football goes, do you mean that it stays?"
queried Mrs. Jarley, who was a little tired herself, and could not,
therefore, resist the temptation to indulge in a bit of innocent
repartee.
"I do," said Jarley, shortly. "Goes is sometimes a synonym for stays.
When I feel stronger I may invent a new language, which will have fewer
absurdities than English as she is spoke."
And with this Jarley went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just man
who is truly weary.
If he had foreseen the result of his football investment it is doubtful
if his sleep would have been so tranquil--unless, perchance, he were
fashioned after that rare pattern of mankind, Louis XVI. of France, who
called for his six or seven course dinner with a mob of howling,
bloodthirsty Parisians in his antechamber, and who on the eve of his
execution slept well, despite his knowledge that within fifteen hours
his head would in all probability be lopped off by the guillotine to
gratify the lust for blood which was the chief characteristic of the
promoters of the first French Republic.
At six on the morning of Thanksgiving Day Jarley was sleeping
peacefully, but the youthful Jack was not. Thanksgiving Day was not a
holiday in his eyes, but a day set apart for work, thanks to his
father's indulgence in providing him with a football. He had gone to bed
the night before with the ball hugged tightly to his breast; and along
about ten o'clock, when Jarley himself had gone into the nursery to put
that treasured good-night kiss upon the forehead of his sleeping boy,
tired as he was and blue as he was, he had difficulty in repressing the
laughter that manifested itself within him, for Jack lay prone, face
upward, with the football under the small of his back, and seemingly as
comfortable as though he were resting upon eider-down.
"That is certainly a characteristic football attitude," Jarley said,
when Mrs. Jarley had come to see what had caused her husband's chuckle.
"Yes--and so good for the spine!" returned Mrs. Jarley.
The attitude was changed, but the ball was left where Jack would see it
the first thing on awaking in the morning. At six, as I have said,
Jarley was sleeping peacefully, but Jack was not. He had opened his
eyes some minutes before, and on catching sight of his treasured
football he began to grin. The grin grew wider and wider, until
apparently it got too wide for the bed, and the boy leaped out of his
couch upon the floor. The first thing he did was to pat the ball gently
but firmly, very much as a kitten manifests its interest in a ball of
yarn. Then his attentions to his new plaything grew more pronounced and
vigorous, and within fifteen minutes it had been chased out of the
nursery into the parental bedchamber. Still Jarley slept. Mrs. Jarley
was merely half asleep. She tried to tell Jack to be quiet; but she was
not quite wide awake enough to do so as forcibly as was necessary, and
the result was that instead of abating his ardor, Jack plunged into his
sport more vigorously than ever.
And then Jarley was awakened--and what an awakening it was! Not one of
those peaceful comings-to that betoken the tranquil mind after a good
rest, but a return to consciousness with every warlike tendency in his
being aroused to the highest pitch. Jack had passed the ball with
considerable momentum on to the mantel-piece, which sent it backward on
the rebound to no less a feature than the nose of the slumbering Jarley.
"What the deuce was that?" cried Jarley, sitting up straight in bed. He
had forgotten all about the football, and to his suddenly restored
consciousness it seemed as if the ceiling must have fallen. Then he
rubbed his nose, which still ached from the force of the impact between
itself and the ball.
"It was the ball did it, papa," said Jack, meekly. "'Twasn't me."
In an instant Jarley was on the floor; and Jack, scenting trouble,
incontinently fled. The parent was angry from the top of his head to the
soles of his feet, but as the soles of his feet touched the floor his
anger abated. After all, Jack hadn't meant to hurt him, and having
witnessed several games of football, he knew how innately perverse an
oval-shaped affair like the ball itself could be. Furthermore, there was
Mrs. Jarley, who had disapproved of his purchase from the outset. If he
wreaked vengeance upon poor little Jack for his unwitting offence,
Jarley knew that he would in a measure weaken his position in the
argument of the night before. So, instead of chastising Jack, as he
really felt inclined to do, he picked up the ball, and repairing to the
nursery, summoned the boy to him in his sweetest tones.
"Never mind, old chap," he said, as Jack appeared before him. "I know
you didn't mean it; but you must play in here until it is time for you
to go out. Papa is very sleepy, and you disturb him."
"All right," said Jack. "I'll play in here. I forgot."
Then Jarley patted Jack on the head, rubbed his nose again dubiously,
for it still smarted from the effects of the blow it had sustained, and
retired to his bed once more. If he fondly hoped to sleep again, he soon
found that his hope was based upon a most shifting foundation, for the
whoops and cries and noises of all sorts, vocal and otherwise, that
emanated from the next room destroyed all possibility of his doing
anything of the sort. At first the very evident enjoyment of his son and
heir, as Jarley listened to his goings-on in the nursery, amused him
more or less; but his quiet smile soon turned to one of blank dismay
when he heard a thunderous roar from Jack, followed by a crash of glass.
Again springing from his bed, Jarley rushed into the nursery.
"Well, what's happened now?" he asked.
Jack's under lip curved in the manner which betokens tears ready to be
shed.
"Nun-nothing," he sobbed. "I was just k-kicking a goal, and that picture
got in the way."
Jarley looked for the picture that had got in the way, and at once
perceived that it would never get in the way again, since it was
irretrievably ruined. However, he was not overcome by wrath over this
incident, because the picture was not of any particular value. It was
only a highly colored print of three cats in a basket, which had come
with a Sunday newspaper, and had been cheaply framed and hung up in the
nursery because Jack had so willed. On principle Jarley had to show a
certain amount of displeasure over the accident, and he did as well as
he could under the circumstances, and retired.
For a while Jack played quietly enough, and Jarley was just about
dozing off into that delicious forty winks prior to getting up when
shrieks from the second Jarley boy came from the nursery. This time Mrs.
Jarley, with one or two expressions of natural impatience, deemed it her
duty to interfere. Jarley, she reasoned, had a perfect right to spoil
Jack if he pleased, but he had no right to permit Jack to do bodily
injury to Tommy; and as Tommy was making the house echo and re-echo with
his wails, she deemed it her duty to take a hand. Jarley meanwhile
pretended to sleep. He was as wide awake as he ever was; but the
atmosphere was not full of warmth, and upon this occasion, as well as
upon many others, his conscience permitted him to overlook the
shortcomings of his elder son, and to assume a somnolence which, while
it was not real, certainly did conduce to the maintenance of his
personal comfort. Mrs. Jarley, therefore, rose up in her wrath. It was
merely a motherly wrath, however, and those of us who have had mothers
will at once realize what that wrath amounted to. She repaired
immediately to the nursery, and without knowing anything of the
technical terms of the noble game of football, instinctively realized
that Jack and Tommy were having a "scrimmage." That is to say, she was
confronted with a structure made up as follows: basement, the ball;
first story, Tommy, with his small and tender stomach placed directly
over the ball; second story and roof, Jack, lying stomach upward and
wiggling, his back accurately registered on Tommy's back, to the
detriment and pain of Tommy.
"Get _up_, Jack!" Mrs. Jarley cried. "What on earth are you trying to do
to Tommy? Do you want to kill him?"
"Nome," Jack replied, innocently. "He wanted to play football, and I'm
letting him. He's Harvard and I'm Yale."
A smothered laugh from the adjoining room showed that Jarley was not so
soundly sleeping that he could not hear what was going on. Tommy
meanwhile continued to wail.
"Well, get up,--right away!" cried Mrs. Jarley. "I sha'n't have you
abusing Tommy this way."
"Ain't abusin' him," retorted Jack, rising. "I was 'commodatin' him. He
wanted to play. When I don't let him play I get scolded, and when I do
let him I'm scolded. 'Pears to me you don't want me to do anything."
Thus Thanksgiving Day began, not altogether well, but equanimity was
soon restored all around, and everything might have run smoothly from
that time on had not a cold drizzling rain set in about breakfast-time.
It was clearly to be an in-door day. And what a day it was!
At ten o'clock the football came into play again.
At eleven the score stood: one clock knocked off the mantel-piece in the
library; three chandelier globes broken to bits; one plaster Barye bear
destroyed by a low kick from the parlor floor; Tommy with his nose very
nearly out of joint, thanks to a flying wedge represented by Jack; Mrs.
Jarley's amiability in peril, and Jarley's irritability well developed.
At twelve the ball was confiscated, but restored at twelve-five for the
sake of peace and quiet.
At one, dinner was served and eaten in moody silence, Jack having
inadvertently punted the ball through the pantry, grazing the chignon
of the waitress, and landing in the mayonnaise. It was not a happy
dinner, and Jarley began to wish either that he had never been born or
that all footballs were in Ballyhack, wherever that might be.
"If it would only clear off!" he moaned. "That boy needs a playground as
big as the State of Texas anyhow, and here we are cooped up in the
house, with a football added."
"We'll have to take it away from him," said Mrs. Jarley, "or else you'll
have to take Jack up into the attic and play with him. I can't have
everything in the house smashed."
"We'll compromise on Jack's going to the attic. I have no desire to play
football," returned Jarley; and this was the plan agreed upon. It would
have been a good plan if Jarley had expended some of his inventive
genius upon some such game as football solitaire, and instructed Jack
therein beforehand; but this he had not done, and the result was that at
three o'clock Jarley found himself in the attic involved in a furious
game, in which he represented variously Harvard, the goal, the
goal-posts, the referee, and acting with too great frequency as
understudy for the ball. What he was not, Jack was, and the worst part
of it was that there was no tiring Jack. The longer he played, the
better he liked it. The oftener Jarley's shins received kicks intended
for the football, the louder he laughed. When Jarley, serving as a
goal-post, stood at one end of the attic, Jarley junior, standing
several yards away, often appeared to mistake him for two goal-posts,
and to make an honest effort to kick the ball through him. Slowly the
hours passed, until finally six o'clock struck, and Master Jack's supper
was announced.
The day was over at last. Wearily Jarley dragged himself down the stairs
and reckoned up the day's losses. In glass and bric-à-brac destroyed he
was some twenty or thirty dollars out. In mayonnaise dressing lost at
dinner through the untoward act of the football he was out one
pleasurable sensation to his palate, and Jarley was one of those, to
whom, that is a loss of an irreparable nature. In bodily estate he was
practically a bankrupt. Had he bicycled all morning and played golf all
the afternoon he could not have been half so weary. Had he been thrown
from a horse flat upon an asphalt pavement he could not have been half
so bruised; all of which Mrs. Jarley considerately noted, and with an
effort recovered her amiability for her husband's sake, so that after
eight o'clock, at which hour Jack retired to bed, a little rest was
obtainable, and Jarley's equanimity was slowly restored.
"Well," said Mrs. Jarley, as they went up-stairs at eleven, "it hasn't
been a very peaceful day, has it, dear?"
"Oh, that all depends on how you spell peace. If you spell it p-i-e-c-e,
it's been full of pieces," returned Jarley, with a smile; "but I say, my
dear, I want to modify my statement last night that I had nothing to be
thankful for. I have discovered one great blessing."
"What's that--a football?" queried Mrs. Jarley.
"Not by ten thousand long shots!" cried Jarley. "No, indeed. It's this:
I'm more thankful than I can express that Jack is not twins. If he had
been, you'd have been a widow this evening."
HARRY AND MAUDE AND I--ALSO JAMES
We both loved Maude deeply, and Maude loved us. We know that, because
Maude told us so. She told Harry so one Sunday evening on the way home
from church, and she told me so the following Saturday afternoon on the
way to the matinée.
This was the cause of the dispute Harry and I had in the club corner
that Saturday night. Harry and I are confidants, and neither of us has
secrets that the other does not share, and so, of course, Maude's
feeling towards each of us was fully revealed.
We did not quarrel over it, for Harry and I never quarrel. I want to
quarrel, but it is a peculiar thing about me that I always want to
quarrel with men named Harry, but never can quite do it. Harry is a name
which, _per se_, arouses my ire, but which carries with it also the
soothing qualities which dispel irritation.
This is a point for the philosopher, I think. Why is it that we cannot
quarrel with some men bearing certain names, while with far better men
bearing other names we are always at swords' points? Who ever quarrelled
with a man who had so endeared himself to the world, for instance, that
the world spoke of him as Jack, or Bob, or Willie? And who has not
quarrelled with Georges and Ebenezers and Horaces _ad lib_., and been
glad to have had the chance?
But this is a thing apart. This time we have set out to tell that other
story which is always mentioned but never told.
Maude loved us. That was the point upon which Harry and I agreed. We had
her authority for it; but where we differed was, which of the two did
she love the better?
Harry, of course, took his own side in the matter. He is a man of
prejudice, and argues from sentiment rather than from conviction.
He said that on her way home from church a girl's thoughts are of
necessity solemn, and her utterances are therefore, the solemn truth. He
added that, in a matter of such importance as love, the conclusion
reached after an hour or two of spiritual reflection and instruction,
such as church in the evening inspires, is the true conclusion.
On the other hand, I maintained that human nature has something to do
with women. Very little, of course, but still enough to make my point a
good one. It is human nature for a girl to prefer matinées to Sunday
evening services. This is sad, no doubt, but so are some other great
truths. Maude, as a true type of girlhood, would naturally think more of
the man who was taking her to a matinée than of the fellow who was
escorting her home from church, therefore she loved me better than she
did Harry, and he ought to have the sense to see it and withdraw.
Unfortunately, Harry is near-sighted in respect to arguments evolved by
the mind of another, though in the perception of refinements in his own
reasoning he has the eye of the eagle. "Love on the way to a matinée,"
he said, "is one part affection and nine parts enthusiasm."