Nosing around in an old box--packed away,
and lost to memory for years--an hour ago
I found a musty package of gilt paper, or rather,
a roll it was, with the green-tarnished gold of the
old sheet for the outer wrapper. I picked it up
mechanically to toss it into some obscure corner,
when, carelessly lifting it by one end, a child's tin
whistle dropped therefrom and fell tinkling on the
attic floor. It lies before me on my writing table
now--and so, too, does the roll entire, though now
a roll no longer,--for my eager fingers have unrolled
the gilded covering, and all its precious contents
are spread out beneath my hungry eyes.
Here is a scroll of ink-written music. I don't
read music, but I know the dash and swing of the
pen that rained it on the page. Here is a letter,
with the selfsame impulse and abandon in every
syllable; and its melody--however sweet the other
--is far more sweet to me. And here are other
letters like it--three--five--and seven, at least. Bob
wrote them from the front, and Billy kept them
for me when I went to join him. Dear boy! Dear
boy!
Here are some cards of bristol-board. Ah! when
Bob came to these there were no blotches then.
What faces--what expressions! The droll, ridiculous,
good-for-nothing genius, with his "sad mouth,"
as he called it, "upside down," laughing always--
at everything, at big rallies, and mass-meetings and
conventions, county fairs, and floral halls, booths,
watermelon-wagons, dancing-tents, the swing, the
Daguerrean-car, the "lung-barometer," and the air-
gun man. Oh! what a gifted, good-for-nothing boy
Bob was in those old days! And here's a picture
of a girlish face--a very faded photograph--even
fresh from "the gallery," five and twenty years ago,
it was a faded thing. But the living face--how
bright and clear that was!--for "Doc," Bob's awful
name for her, was a pretty girl, and brilliant, clever,
lovable every way. No wonder Bob fancied her!
And you could see some hint of her jaunty loveliness
in every fairy face he drew, and you could
find her happy ways and dainty tastes unconsciously
assumed in all he did--the books he read--the
poems he admired, and those he wrote; and, ringing
clear and pure and jubilant, the vibrant beauty
of her voice could clearly be defined and traced
through all his music. Now, there's the happy pair
of them--Bob and Doc. Make of them just whatever
your good fancy may dictate, but keep in mind
the stern, relentless ways of destiny.
You are not at the beginning of a novel, only at
the threshold of one of a hundred experiences that
lie buried in the past, and this particular one most
happily resurrected by these odds and ends found
in the gilded roll.
You see, dating away back, the contents of this
package, mainly, were hastily gathered together
after a week's visit out at the old Mills farm; the
gilt paper, and the whistle, and the pictures, they
were Billy's; the music pages, Bob's, or Doc's; the
letters and some other manuscripts were mine.
The Mills girls were great friends of Doc's, and
often came to visit her in town; and so Doc often
visited the Mills's. This is the way that Bob first
got out there, and won them all, and "shaped the
thing" for me, as he would put it; and lastly, we
had lugged in Billy,--such a handy boy, you know,
to hold the horses on picnic excursions, and to
watch the carriage and the luncheon, and all that.--
"Yes, and," Bob would say, "such a serviceable
boy in getting all the fishing tackle in proper order,
and digging bait, and promenading in our wake up
and down the creek all day, with the minnow-
bucket hanging on his arm, don't you know!"
But jolly as the days were, I think jollier were
the long evenings at the farm. After the supper in
the grove, where, when the weather permitted,
always stood the table ankle-deep in the cool green
plush of the sward; and after the lounge upon the
grass, and the cigars, and the new fish stories, and
the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable
to get back to the girls again, and in the old
"best room" hear once more the lilt of the old
songs and the staccatoed laughter of the piano
mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills
girls, and the gallant soprano of the dear girl Doc.
This is the scene I want you to look in upon,
as, in fancy, I do now--and here are the materials
for it all, husked from the gilded roll:
Bob, the master, leans at the piano now, and Doc
is at the keys, her glad face often thrown up side-
wise toward his own. His face is boyish--for there
is yet but the ghost of a mustache upon his lip.
His eyes are dark and clear, of over-size when looking
at you, but now their lids are drooped above
his violin, whose melody has, for the time, almost
smoothed away the upward kinkings of the corners
of his mouth. And wonderfully quiet now
is every one, and the chords of the piano, too, are
low and faltering; and so, at last, the tune itself
swoons into the universal hush, and--Bob is rasping,
in its stead, the ridiculous, but marvelously
perfect imitation of the "priming" of a pump, while
Billy's hands forget the "chiggers" on the bare
backs of his feet, as, with clapping palms, he dances
round the room in ungovernable spasms of delight.
And then we all laugh; and Billy, taking advantage
of the general tumult, pulls Bob's head down and
whispers, "Git 'em to stay up 'way late to-night!"
And Bob, perhaps remembering that we go back
home to-morrow, winks at the little fellow and whispers,
"You let me manage 'em! Stay up till broad
daylight if we take a notion--eh?" And Billy
dances off again in newer glee, while the inspired
musician is plunking a banjo imitation on his
enchanted instrument, which is unceremoniously
drowned out by a circus-tune from Doc that is
absolutely inspiring to every one but the barefooted
brother, who drops back listlessly to his old position
on the floor and sullenly renews operations on
his "chigger" claims.
"Thought you was goin' to have pop-corn to-night
all so fast!" he says, doggedly, in the midst of a
momentary lull that has fallen on a game of whist.
And then the oldest Mills girl, who thinks cards stupid
anyhow, says: "That's so, Billy; and we're going
to have it, too; and right away, for this game's
just ending, and I shan't submit to being bored with
another. I say 'pop-corn' with Billy! And after
that," she continues, rising and addressing the party
in general, "we must have another literary and
artistic tournament, and that's been in contemplation
and preparation long enough; so you gentlemen can
be pulling your wits together for the exercises, while
us girls see to the refreshments."
"Have you done anything toward it!" queries
Bob, when the girls are gone, with the alert Billy in
their wake.
"Just an outline," I reply. "How with you?"
"Clean forgot it--that is, the preparation; but I've
got a little old second-hand idea, if you'll all help me
out with it, that'll amuse us some, and tickle Billy,
I'm certain."
So that's agreed upon; and while Bob produces
his portfolio, drawing paper, pencils and so on, I
turn to my note-book in a dazed way and begin
counting my fingers in a depth of profound abstraction,
from which I am barely aroused by the reappearance
of the girls and Billy.
"Goody, goody, goody! Bob's goin' to make
pictures!" cries Billy, in additional transport to that
the cake pop-corn had produced.
"Now, you girls," says Bob, gently detaching the
affectionate Billy from one leg and moving a chair
to the table, with a backward glance of intelligence
toward the boy,--"you girls are to help us all you
can, and we can all work; but, as I'll have all the
illustrations to do, I want you to do as many of
the verses as you can--that'll be easy, you know,--
because the work entire is just to consist of a series
of fool-epigrams, such as, for instance,--listen,
Billy:
Here lies a young man
Who in childhood began
To swear, and to smoke, and to drink,--
In his twentieth year
He quit swearing and beer,
And yet is still smoking, I think."
And the rest of his instructions are delivered in
lower tones, that the boy may not hear; and then, all
matters seemingly arranged, he turns to the boy with
--"And now, Billy, no lookin' over shoulders, you
know, or swinging on my chair-back while I'm at
work. When the pictures are all finished, then you
can take a squint at 'em, and not before. Is that all
hunky, now?"
"Oh! who's a-goin' to look over your shoulder--
only DOC." And as the radiant Doc hastily quits
that very post, and dives for the offending brother,
he scrambles under the piano and laughs derisively.
And then a silence falls upon the group--a
gracious quiet, only intruded upon by the very juicy
and exuberant munching of an apple from a remote
fastness of the room, and the occasional thumping
of a bare heel against the floor.
At last I close my note-book with a half slam.
"That means," says Bob, laying down his pencil,
and addressing the girls,--"that means he's
concluded his poem, and that he's not pleased with it
in any manner, and that he intends declining to read
it, for that self-acknowledged reason, and that he
expects us to believe every affected word of his
entire speech--"
"Oh, don't!" I exclaim.
"Then give us the wretched production, in all its
hideous deformity!"
And the girls all laugh so sympathetically, and
Bob joins them so gently, and yet with a tone, I
know, that can be changed so quickly to my further
discomfiture, that I arise at once and read, without
apology or excuse, this primitive and very callow
poem recovered here to-day from the gilded roll: