[Illustration]
I’ve been here three days now. I came safe all the way, but that glass
vial you put that medicine into, down in the corner of the trunk, broke,
and some white stockings down there, they soaked it all up; but I sha’
n’t have to take it now, and no matter, I guess, for I feel well, all
but my legs feeling weak so I can’t run hardly any. When I got here, the
boys were playing ball; but they all ran to shake hands, and slapped my
shoulders so they almost slapped me down, and hollered out, “How are
you, Billy?” “How fares ye?” “Welcome back!” “Got well?” “Good for you,
Billy!” Gus Beals--he’s the great tall one we call “Mr. Augustus”--he
called out, “How are you, red-top?” And then Dorry called out to him,
“How are you, hay-pole?” Dorry and Bubby Short want me to tell you to
thank Aunt Phebe for their doughnuts, and you, too, for that molasses
candy. The candy got soft, and the paper jammed itself all into the
candy, but Bubby Short says he loves paper when it has molasses candy
all over it. I gave some of the things to Benjie. Something hurt me all
the way coming, in the toe of my boot; and when I got here I looked, and
’t was a five-cent piece right in the toe! I know who ’t was! ’T was
Uncle Jacob when he made believe look to see if that boot-top wasn’t
made of mighty poor leather. I went to spend it yesterday, down to the
Two Betseys’ shop. Lame Betsey called me a poor little dear, and was
just going to kiss me, but I twisted my face round. I’m too big for all
that now, I guess. She looked for something to give me, and was just
going to give me a stick of candy; but the other Betsey said ’t was no
use to give little boys candy, for they’d only swallow it right down, so
she gave me a row of pins, for she said pins were proper handy things
when your buttons ripped off. Just when I was coming back from the Two
Betseys’ shop I met Gapper Skyblue. He goes about selling cakes now. A
good many boys were round him, in a hurry to buy first, and all you
could hear was, “Here, Gapper!”
[Illustration]
“This way, Gapper!” “You know me, Gapper!” “Me, me, me!” One boy--he’s a
new boy--spoke up loud and said, “Mr. Skyblue, please attend to me, if
you please, for I have five pennies to spend!” He came from Jersey. The
fellers call him “Old Wonder Boy,” because he brags and tells such big
stories. But now, just as soon as he begins to tell, Dorry begins too,
and always tells the biggest,--makes them up, you know. O, I tell you,
Dorry gives it to him good! You’d die a laughing to hear Dorry, and so
do all the fellers. W. B.,--that’s what we call Old Wonder Boy
sometimes,--W stands for Wonder, and B stands for Boy,--he says cents
are not cents; says they are pennies, for the Jersey folks call them
pennies, and he guesses they know. He says he gets his double handful of
pennies to spend every day down in Jersey. But Bubby Short says he knows
that’s a whopper, for he knows there wouldn’t anybody’s mother give them
their double handful of pennies to spend every day, nor cents either,
nor their father either. And then Dorry told Old Wonder Boy that he
supposed it took his double handful of pennies to buy a roll of lozenges
down in Jersey. Then W. B. said that our lozenges were all flour and
water, but down in Jersey they were clear sugar, and just as plenty as
huckleberries. Dorry said he didn’t believe any huckleberries grew out
there, or if they did, they’d be nothing but red ones, for the ground
was red out in Jersey. But W. B. said no matter if the ground was red,
the huckleberries were just as black as Yankee huckleberries, and
blacker too, and three times bigger, and ten times thicker. Said he
picked twenty quarts one day.
Dorry said, “Poh, that wasn’t much of a pick!” Says he, “Now I’ll tell
you a huckleberry story that’s worth something.” Then all the boys began
to hit elbows, for they knew Dorry would make up some funny thing. Says
he: “I went a huckleberrying once to Wakonok Swamp, and I carried a
fourteen-quart tin pail, and a great covered basket, besides a good many
quart and pint things. You’d better believe they hung thick in that
swamp! I found a thick spot, and I slung my fourteen-quart tin pail
round my waist, and picked with both hands, and ate off the bushes with
my mouth all the while. I got all my things full without stirring two
yards from the spot, and then I didn’t know what to do. But I’ll tell
you what I did. I took off my jacket, and cut my fishing-line, and tied
up the bottom ends of my jacket sleeves and picked them both full. And
then I didn’t know what to do next. But I’ll tell you what I did. I took
off my overalls, and tied up the bottoms of their legs, and picked them
so full you wouldn’t know but there was a boy standing up in ’em!” Then
the boys all clapped.
“Well,” Old Wonder Boy said, “how did you get them home?”
“O, got them home easy enough,” Dorry said. “First I put the overalls
over my shoulders, like a boy going pussy-back. I slung all the quart
and pint things round my waist, and hung the covered basket on one arm,
and took the fourteen-quart tin pail in that same hand. Then I tied my
jacket to the end of my fishing-pole, and held it up straight in my
other hand like--like a flag in a dead calm!”
O, you ought to ’ve seen the boys,--how they winked at one another and
puffed out their cheeks; and some of ’em rolled over and over down hill
to keep from laughing! Bubby Short got behind the fence, and put his
face between two bars, and called out, “S--e--double l!” But Dorry says
they don’t know what a “s--e--double l” is down in Jersey. But I don’t
believe that W. B. believes Dorry’s stories; for I looked him in the
face, and he had a mighty sly look when he asked Dorry how it was he got
his huckleberries home.
To-day they got a talking about potatoes. Old Wonder Boy said that down
in Jersey they grow so big you have to pry ’em up out of the hill, and
it don’t take much more than two to make a peck. Dorry told him that
down in Maine you could stand on top the potato-hills and look all round
the country, they were so high; and he asked W. B. how they planted ’em
in Jersey, with their eyes up or down? He said he didn’t know which way
they did turn their eyes. Then Dorry told him the Yankees always planted
potatoes eyes up, so they could see which way to grow. Said he planted a
hill of potatoes in his father’s garden, last summer, with their eyes
all down, and waited and waited, but they didn’t come up. And when he
had waited a spell longer, he raked off the top of that hill of
potatoes, and all he saw was some roots sticking up. And he began to dig
down. And he kept digging. Followed their stems. But he never got to the
potato-tops; and says he, “I never did get to those potato-tops!” O, you
ought to ’ve heard the boys!
Old Wonder Boy wanted to know where Dorry thought they’d gone to. Dorry
thought to himself a minute, and looked just as sober, and then says he,
just like a school-teacher, “The earth, in the middle, is afire. I think
when they got deep enough to feel the warm, they guessed ’t was the sun,
and so kept heading that way.”
Is the world afire in the middle? Dorry told me that part of his story
was really true. How Uncle Jacob would laugh to sit down and hear Dorry
and Old Wonder Boy tell about whales. W. B. calls ’em wales. His uncle
is a ship-captain, he says, and once he saw a wale, and the wale was
making for his ship, and it chased ’em. And, no matter how they steered,
that wale would chase. And by and by, in a calm day, he got under the
vessel and boosted her up out of water, when all the crew gave a
yell,--such a horrid yell that the wale let ’em down so sudden that the
waves splashed up to the tops of the masts, and they thought they were
all drowned.
“O, poh!” Dorry cried out. “My uncle was a regular whaler, and went a
whaling for his living. And once he was cruising about the
whaling-grounds and ’t was in a place where the days were so short that
the nights lasted almost all day. And they got chased by a whale. And he
kept chasing them. Night and day. And there came up a gale of wind that
lasted three days and nights; and the ship went like lightning, night
and day, the whale after them. And, when the wind went down, the whale
was so tuckered that he couldn’t swim a stroke. So he floated. Then the
cap’n sang out to ’em to lower a boat. And they did. And the cap’n got
in and took a couple of his men to row him. The whale was rather longer
than a liberty-pole. About as long as a liberty-pole and a half. He was
asleep, and they steered for the tail end. A whale’s head is about as
big as the Two Betseys’ shop, and ’t is filled with clear oil, without
any trying out. The cap’n landed on the whale’s tail, and went along up
on tiptoe, and the men rowed the boat alongside, and kept even with him;
and, when he got towards her ears, he took off his shoes, and threw ’em
to the men to catch. After a while he got to the tip-top of her head.
Now I’ll tell you what he had in his hand. He had a great junk of cable
as big round as the trunk of a tree, and not quite a yard long. In one
end of it there was a point of a harpoon stuck in, and the other end of
it was lighted. He told the men to stand ready. Then he took hold of the
cable with both hands, and with one mighty blow he stuck that pointed
end deep in the whale’s head, and then gave one jump into the boat, and
he cried out to the men, ‘Row! row for your lives! To the tail end! If
you want to live, row!’ And before that whale could turn round they were
safe aboard the ship! But now I’ll tell you the best part of the whole
story. They didn’t have any more long dark nights after that. They kept
throwing over bait to keep her chasing, and the great lamp blazed, and
as fast as the oil got hot it tried out more blubber, and that whale
burned as long as there was a bit of the inside of him left. Flared up,
and lighted up the sea, and drew the fishes, and they drew more whales;
and they got deep loaded, and might have loaded twenty more ships. And
when they left they took a couple in tow,--of whales,--and knocked out
their teeth for ivory, and then sold their carcasses to an empty
whaler.”
Dorry says some parts of this story are true. But he didn’t say which
parts. Said I must look in the whale-book and find out.
Your affectionate grandchild,