"Well, my dear Billy, you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if
you mean to be an industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose
your parents were to lose all their property, what would become of
them without a little son who could make money and keep accounts?"
"Oh," said Billy, with surprise, "hasn't father got enough stamps to
see him through?"
"He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
should go by some accident, when your father was too old to make any
more stamps for himself?"
"You haven't thought of Brother Daniel--"
True; for nobody ever had in connection with the active employments
of life.
"No, Billy," I replied, "I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is
more of a student than a business man, and--"
"Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I mean he'd support them? I meant
I'd have to take care of father and mother and him, too, when they'd
all got to be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven, and he's
twenty-two; so he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?"
"Forty, Billy, last August."
"Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you,
Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than
that, and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed,
and wheels him round in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, I
bet! Well, I tell you how I'll keep my accounts: I'll have a stick
like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a
piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll
gouge a piece out of the other."
"Spend a _what?_" said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister
Lu, who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.
"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Oolburn with a farewell
glance of contempt.
"Dear, dear! Where does the boy learn such horrid words?"
"Why, ma, don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one," said Billy,
drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. "And don't I wish I
had lots of 'em!"
"Oh!" sighed his mother, "to think I should have a child so addicted
to slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!"
"Well, mother," replied Billy, "if you wanted two boys just alike
you'd oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like
Daniel now, when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a
dog fight; hear 'em! It's Joe Casey's dog--I know his bark!"
With these words my nephew snatched his Glengarry bonnet from the
table and bolted downstairs to see the fun.
"What will become of him?" said Lu hopelessly; "he has no taste for
anything but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why
_isn't_ he like Daniel?" "I suppose because his maker never repeats
himself. Even twins often possess strongly marked individualities.
Don't you think it would be a good plan to learn Billy better before
you try to teach him? If you do, you'll make something as good of him
as Daniel; though it will be rather different from that model."
"Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do
Billy. But we all know the proverb about old maid's daughters and old
bachelor's sons. I wish you had Billy for a month--then you'd see."
"I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in
other directions. But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he
was a new problem, not to be worked without finding out the value of
X in his particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will
no more solve the next one than the rule of three will solve a
question in calculus--or, to rise into your sphere, than the receipt
for one-two-three-fourcake will conduct you to a successful issue
through plum pudding."
I excel in metaphysical discussion, and was about giving further
elaboration to my favorite idea, when the door burst open. Master
Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the traces
of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his
hands.
"Oh my! my!! my!!!" exclaimed his mother.
"Don't you get scared, ma!" cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of
triumph; "I smashed the nose off him! He won't sass me again for
nothing _this_ while. Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dog
fight after all? There was that nasty, good-for-nothing Joe Casey, 'n
Patsy Grogan, and a lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd
caught this poor little ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail, and
were trying to set Joe's dog on him, though he's ten times littler."
"You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to
see you playing with those ragamuffins?"
"Yes, I _played_ 'em! I polished 'em--that's the play I did! Says I,
'Put down that poor little pup; ain't you ashamed of yourself, Patsy
Grogan? 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way
they always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some
awful great fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog,
or I'll show you who I am'; and when he held on, I let him have it.
Then he dropped the pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one
on the bugle."
"_Bugle!_ Oh! Ooh! Ooh!"
"The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I
was trying to give as good as I got--only a fellow can't do it well
with only one hand, Uncle Teddy--up came a policeman, and the whole
crowd ran away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!"
With that Billy set down his "ki-oodle," bid farewell to every fear,
and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the
legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with
an expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction
of his dilapidated raiment and depraved associations. I felt such
sincere pride in this young Mazzini of the dog nation that I was
vexed at Lu for bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation;
but she was not the only conservative who fails to see a good cause
and a heroic heart under a bloody nose and torn jacket. I resolved
that if Billy was punished he should have his recompense before long
in an extra holiday at Barnum's or the Hippotheatron.
You already have some idea of my other nephew, if you have noticed
that none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities,
Billy, ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to
call Billy William. He was one of those youths who never gave their
parents a moment's uneasiness; who never had to have their wills
broken, and never forgot to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella.
In boyhood he was intended for a missionary. Had it been possible for
him to go to Greenland's icy mountains without catching cold, or
India's coral strand without getting bilious, his parents would have
carried out their pleasing dream of contributing him to the world's
evangelization. Lu and Mr. Lovegrove had no doubt that he would have
been greatly blessed if he could have stood it....
Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think
they took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener
does in getting a nice blanch on his celery, and so long as he was
not absolutely sick, the graver he was the better. He was a sensitive
plant, a violet by a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing....
At the time I introduce Billy, both Lu and her husband were much
changed. They had gained a great deal in width of view and liberality
of judgment. They read Dickens and Thackeray with avidity; went now
and then to the opera; proposed to let Billy take a quarter at
Dodworth's; had statues in their parlor without any thought of shame
at their lack of petticoats, and did multitudes of things which, in
their early married life, they would have considered shocking. . . .
They would greatly have liked to see Daniel shine in society. Of his
erudition they were proud even to worship. The young man never had
any business, and his father never seemed to think of giving him any,
knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough to "see him
through." If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed a
professorship in some college and given him the chair; but that would
have taken him away from his own room and the family physician.
Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the
world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously
forgetting that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man
to mint the small change of every-day society in the exclusive
cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots.
With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from
becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, his parents were
equally unaware of their share in the harm done him when they
ascribed to a delicate organization the fact that, at an age when
love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a Balmoral
without his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They
flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness; but
Daniel had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he
thought he should never marry at all.
About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's
convoy, the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the
dog under his arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy
Spitzenbergs, and other indignities had been offered him to the
extent of the brush and comb. He also had a whole jacket on....
Billy and I also obtained permission to go out together and be gone
the entire afternoon. We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an
old shoebox, and then strolled hand-in-hand across that most
delightful of New York breathing places--Stuyvesant Square.
"Uncle Teddy," exclaimed Billy with ardor, "I wish I could do
something to show you how much I think of you for being so good to
me. I don't know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a
hymn for you--a smashing big hymn--six verses, long metre, and no
grumbling?"
"No, Billy, you make me happy enough just by being a good boy."
"Oh, Uncle Teddy!" replied Billy decidedly. "I'm afraid I can't do
it. I've tried so often, and always make such a mess of it." ...
We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on
account of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual
conflicts of Billy's which so much interested me, amused ourselves
with looking out until just as we reached the Astor House, when he
asked me where we were going.
"Where do you guess?" said I.
He cast a glance through the front window and his face became
irradiated. Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of
pleasing a child to create sunshine enough for the chasing away of
the blues of adult devils!
"We're going to Barnum's!" said Billy, involuntarily clapping his
hands.
So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down on the
place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class
largely represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make
believe that they only come to amuse the children, or because they've
country cousins visiting them, but never fail to refer to the vulgar
set one finds there, and the fact of the animals smelling like
anything but Jockey Club; yet I notice that after they've been in the
hall three minutes they're as much interested as any of the people
they come to pooh-pooh, and only put on the high-bred air when they
fancy some of their own class are looking at them. I boldly
acknowledge that I go because I like it. I am especially happy, to be
sure, if I have a child along to go into ecstasies, and give me a
chance, by asking questions, for the exhibition of that fund of
information which is said to be one of my chief charms in the social
circle, and on several occasions has led that portion of the public
immediately about the Happy Family into the erroneous impression that
I was Mr. Barnum glibly explaining his five hundred thousand
curiosities.
On the present occasion we found several visitors of the better class
in the room devoted to the aquarium. Among these was a young lady,
apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet,
which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet
silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable
pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium;
her eyes, a soft, expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair which
exactly matched their color, and, at that rat-and-miceless day, fell
in such graceful abandon as to show at once that nature was the only
maid who crimped their waves into them. Her complexion was rosy with
health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was faultless, her nose
sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her voice as musical
as a wood-robin's when she spoke to the little boy of six at her
side, to whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king.
Billy and I were flattening our noses against the abode of the
balloon fish and determining whether he looked most like a horse-
chestnut burr or a ripe cucumber, when his eyes and my own
simultaneously fell on the child and lady. In a moment, to Billy the
balloon fish was as though he had not been.
"That's a pretty little boy," said I. And then I asked Billy one of
those senseless routine questions which must make children look at
us, regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at
Bushmen.
"How would you like to play with him?"
"Him!" replied Billy scornfully, "that's his first pair of boots; see
him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to 'em! But,
crackey! isn't _she_ a smasher?"
After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the
learned seal, and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room
into another Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the
pretty girl and child were coming too.
Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in astonishment at the
Lightning Calculator--wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy for
him to do his sums by--finally thought he had discovered it, and
resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his
arithmetic lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to
relate in full how he became so confused among the wax-works that he
pinched the solemnest showman's legs to see if he was real, and
perplexed the beautiful Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling
her he had read in his geography all about the way they sold girls
like her.
We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the
dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had
always languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I
stood ready to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the
signboard at the head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated
there, not seeming at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty
girl and the child following after--a sudden intuition flashed across
me. Could it be possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which
whirled me down at ten years--a little boy's first love?
We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous
compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco
lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising
monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the
swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand.
Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The
other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped
his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed
the glove not an inch from one of his big tusks, then marched around
the tank and presented it to the lady with a chivalry of manner in
one of his years quite surprising.
"That's a real nice boy--you said so, didn't you, Lottie?--and I wish
he'd come and play with me," said the little fellow by the young
lady's side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back
to me with his cheeks roseate with blushes.
As he heard this Billy idled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
then faced about and said:
"P'raps I will some day. Where do you live?"
"I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa--and Lottie stays there,
too, now--she's my cousin. Where d'you live?"
"Oh! I live close by--right on that big green square, where I guess
the nurse takes you once in awhile," said Billy patronizingly. Then,
looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, "I never saw you out
there."
"No; Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and
I've just come to visit him."
"Say, will you come and play with me some time?" chimed in the
inextinguishable Jimmy. "I've got a cooking-stove--for real fire--and
blocks, and a ball with a string."
Billy, who belonged to a club for the practise of the great American
game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battist among
the I. G. B. B. 0., or "Infant Giants," smiled from an altitude upon
Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday
afternoon.
Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my
room over "Pickwick" with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the
door told of Daniel. I called "Come in!" and, entering with a slow,
dejected air, he sat down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained
silent, though occasionally looking up as if about to speak, then
dropping his head again, to ponder on the coals. Finally I laid down
Dickens and spoke myself:
"You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?"
"I don't feel very well, uncle."
"What's the matter, my boy?"
"Oh-ah, I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you."