PHAETON'S CHARIOT.
Ned and I pushed on the project for a printing-office with great
energy. We made the acquaintance of a man named Alvord, who kept a job
office--where they never seemed to be in a hurry, as they always were
in the newspaper offices--and was never unwilling to answer questions
or sell us old type. It was great fun to explore the mysteries of his
establishment. I think he liked boys as much as Jack-in-the-Box did,
and I'm sure it was a pleasure to us, in laying out Ned's capital, to
pay so much of it to so pleasant a man.
But energy without skill is like zeal without knowledge; in fact, it is
about the same thing, and we couldn't really make much progress till
Phaeton should take hold; and he would have nothing to do with it till
he had finished his apparatus for "a horizontal balloon-ascension,"
which he was at work upon every minute that he could spare from sleep
and meals.
With the help of the carriage-maker and the blacksmith, and Ned's
capital--which he drew upon much more freely than had been bargained
for--he constructed a low, broad, skeleton-like carriage, the body of
which was hung below the axles of the wheels, instead of above them,
and almost touched the ground. This was to prevent it from tipping over
easily. The front axle turned on a swivel, and was controlled by two
stout handles, by means of which the carriage could be steered. On the
front of the box were three iron hooks. At the back there was a single
hook. The wheels were pretty large, but the whole was made as light as
possible.
When it was finished, Phaeton brought it home and put it away carefully
in the wood-shed.
"I am afraid," said he, "that somebody will steal this car, or come in
and damage it, unless we put a lock on this wood-shed door."
"Who would want to steal it or damage it?" said Ned.
"The Dublin boys," said Phaeton, half under his breath. "Two of them
were seen prowling around here the other day."
One section of the town, which was divided from ours by the deep gorge
of the river, was popularly known as Dublin, and the boys who lived
there, though probably very much like other boys, were always
considered by us as our natural enemies--plotters against the peace of
boy society, capable of the most treacherous designs and the darkest
deeds ever perpetrated in the juvenile world. Every piece of mischief
not obviously to be accounted for in any other way, was laid to the
Dublin boys as a matter of course.
"But we haven't any padlock," said Ned, "except that old brass one, and
the key of that is lost, and we couldn't turn it when we had it."
"I suppose we shall have to buy a new one," said Phaeton.
"All right--buy one," said Ned.
"I haven't any money," said Phaeton.
"Nor I," said Ned--"spent the last cent for a beautiful little font of
Tuscan type; weighed just five pounds, fifteen cents a pound--nothing
the matter with it, only the Es are gone."
"The Es are gone?" said Phaeton. "Do you mean to say that you have been
buying a font of type with no Es in it?"
"Yes; why? What's the harm in that?" said Ned. "You don't expect
everything to be perfect when you buy things second-hand."
"Of course not," said Phaeton; "but what can you do without Es? If the
Qs or the Xs were gone, it wouldn't so much matter; but there's hardly
a word that hasn't at least one E in it. Just count the Es on a page of
any book. And you've been fooling away your money on a font of type
with no Es! Mr. Alvord ought to be ashamed of himself to cheat a boy
like that."
"You needn't be scolding me for fooling away the money," said Ned.
"What have you been doing, I should like to know? Fooling away the
money on that old torrid-zontal balloon thing, which will probably make
a shipwreck of you the first time you try it. And, besides, I didn't
buy the type of Mr. Alvord."
"Where did you get it?"
"Bought it of a boy that I met on the stairs when I was coming down
from Alvord's."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know. He lives on one of those cross-streets down by the
aqueduct. I went to his house with him to get the type. He said he used
to have a little office, but his father wouldn't let him keep it any
more, just because the baby ate some of the ink."
"It's too bad," said Phaeton; "the type will never be of any use. What
do you suppose could have become of the Es?"
"I don't know," said Ned, a little morosely, "unless the baby sister
ate them too."
"They'd set rather heavy on her stomach," said Phaeton. "But how are we
going to get a lock for this door?"
"I don't see that we can get one at all," said Ned.
I suggested that the door of the wood-shed might be nailed up, to keep
out the Dublin boys, till we had a chance to get a padlock.
"That's a first-rate idea," said Phaeton, and he at once brought out
the hammer and nail-box, and began to nail up the door. It was a heavy,
panelled door, which had evidently come from some old mansion that was
torn down.
"It's as well to make it strong while we're about it," said he; "for if
those fellows should come, they'd pry it open if they could," and he
put in a few more nails.
"Father showed me how to drive nails so as to make them hold," said I.
"Let me show you;" and taking the hammer from his hand, I drove eight
or ten more nails into the door, driving them in pairs, each pair
slanting in opposite directions.
"That's a thing worth knowing," said Ned. "Let me practice on it a
little."
He took the hammer, and drove one or two pairs in the manner I had
shown him, and was so pleased with his success, that he kept on till he
had used up all the nails in the box.
"No Dublin boy is going to get that car this night," said he, as he
gave a final blow to the last nail.
"No," said Phaeton; "I think that's pretty safe."
As it began to rain, I was obliged to hurry home. That night, as I
afterward learned, there was sorrow in the breast of the youngest
member of the Rogers family. Little May Rogers, who never went to sleep
without her favorite cat, Jemima, curled up on the foot of her little
bed, couldn't go to sleep because Jemima was nowhere to be found in the
house, and had not come when every outside door in turn was opened, and
she was called from the vasty darkness. Even when Mrs. Rogers stood in
the kitchen-door and rasped the carving-knife on the steel, Jemima
failed to come bounding in. That was considered decisive as to her
fate. The cat would be sure to come at that sound, if she were able to
come at all.
But a much more serious commotion shook the family next morning. When
Mr. Rogers went down to his breakfast, it was not ready; in fact, the
kitchen fire was not made.
"How is this, Biddy?" said he to the cook.
"Sure, I couldn't help it, sir; I could get no kindlings."
"Why so, Biddy?"
"Because, sir, the wood-shed door's bewitched. I couldn't get it open.
And everything outside is soakin' wet wid the rain, and so of course I
couldn't kindle the fire."
Mr. Rogers walked out to the wood-shed door, and attempted to open it
with an impatient and vigorous jerk, but the handle came off in his
hand. Then he tried to get hold of it by the edge, but there wasn't a
crack where he could insert his fingers. Then he took hold of it at the
bottom, where there was considerable space, but it would not budge a
hair. He was becoming a little excited, for he had an engagement to
leave town by the early train. He went into the house for some sort of
tool, and brought out the poker. Cutting a little hole with his
pocket-knife at the edge of the door, he inserted the poker, and pried;
but the poker bent double, and the door did not stir. Then he went in
again, and brought out the stove-wrench. Cutting the hole a little
larger, he pried at the door with the wrench; but the wrench was of
cast-iron, and snapped in two.
"Biddy," said he, "I see a light at Robbins's,"--it was very early in
the morning--"go over and borrow an axe."
Biddy soon returned with an axe, and Mr. Rogers tried to pry the door
open with that, but only succeeded in breaking splinters from the edge.
"Biddy," said he, "bring a light, and let's see what ails it."
Biddy brought out a candle, but trembled so at the idea of letting out
the witches, that she dropped it at Mr. Rogers's feet, and it struck on
its lighted end and immediately went out.
Biddy made rapid apologies, and ran in for another candle. But Mr.
Rogers would wait no longer. He raised the axe in fury, and began to
slaughter the door, like a mediæval soldier before the gate of a
besieged castle.
Slice after slice was torn off and flew inward, striking the opposite
side of the shed; but the door as a whole would not fall. When a
considerable hole had been made, a frightened cat, its eyes gleaming
wildly, and its tail as large as a feather-duster, leaped out from the
inner darkness, passing over Mr. Rogers's head, and knocking his hat
off, landed somewhere in the yard, and immediately made for the woods.
Biddy, who arrived on the ground with the second candle just in time to
witness this performance, dropped the light again, and fled screaming
into the house.
This aroused two neighbors, who threw up their windows, thrust their
heads out, and, hearing the powerful blows of the axe, thought a maniac
was abroad, and hallooed for the police.
The watchman on that beat, ever on the alert, waited only eight or nine
minutes, till he could call four others to his aid, when all five of
them started for the scene of the trouble. Separating after they had
entered Mr. Rogers's gate, they made a little circuit through the yard,
and cautiously approached him, two on each side, and one behind. As the
one behind laid his hand on his shoulder, Mr. Rogers dropped the axe,
whirled around, and "hauled off," as the boys say, but caught the gleam
of the silver star on the policeman's breast, and dropped his fist.
"What do you want?" said he.
"If it's you, we don't want anything," said the policeman, who, of
course, knew Mr. Rogers very well. "But we thought we wanted a crazy
man."
"Then you might as well take me," said Mr. Rogers, "for I am pretty
nearly crazy. The mischief has got into this door, so that it couldn't
be opened, and the cook had no kindlings and I no breakfast; and I
shall lose the early train, and if I don't reach Albany to-day, I can't
tell how many dollars it will cost me, but a good many."
Mr. Rogers drew out his handkerchief, and wiped the perspiration from
his brow.
One of the policemen produced a bull's-eye lantern, and examined the
ruined door, passing it up and down the edge where the outer frame,
studded with many nails, still clung tightly to the jambs, all the
central portion having been cut away in ragged slices.
"This door has been nailed up with a great many nails," said he.
"I can't imagine who would do that," said Mr. Rogers; "this isn't the
first day of April."
Neither could the policemen. In fact, I have observed that policemen
have very little imagination. In this instance, five of them, all
imagining at once, could not imagine who nailed up that door. The
nearest they could come to it was, that it was probably done with a
heavy, blunt instrument, in the hands of some person or persons
unknown.
When, later in the day, we boys stood contemplating what Ned called the
"shipwreck of the door"--older people than he call all sorts of wrecks
shipwrecks--he remarked that he didn't know what his father would say,
if he should find out who did it.
Mr. Rogers had taken the next train for Albany.
"He will find out," said Phaeton; "for I shall tell him as soon as he
gets home."
The day that his father returned, Phaeton told, at the tea-table, the
whole story of how the door was bewitched. A week had then passed,
and--such are the soothing influences of time--Mr. Rogers laughed
heartily at the whole affair, and at his own excitement most of all.
"I had no idea," said Ned, solemnly, "that so much trouble could be
caused by a few nails."
His mother thought "few" was good.
The next day I heard little May Rogers telling another child about it.
This was her story:
"You see, brother Fay and brother Neddie, they drived a nail in the
wood-shed door; and Biddy, she lended Mr. Robbins's axe; and then Papa,
he got besited; and so we haven't any wood-shed door any more."
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the preparations for the horizontal balloon ascension had
gone on. But, as Ned remarked long ago, nothing could be done without
capital, and he was obliged to make another business call upon his Aunt
Mercy.
"What's new down at your house?" said she, after the greetings were
over.
"Nothing particular," said Ned.
"I hear that idiotic brother of yours has been cutting up a pretty
caper," said Aunt Mercy, after a pause.
"What was it?" said Ned.
"Why, don't you know?"
"I don't know what you have been told, and I can't think of anything
very bad that Fay has done."
"Gracious me!" said Aunt Mercy. "Don't you call it bad to go around
slyly in the night and nail up every door and window in the house?"
"Yes, that would be pretty bad, Aunty. But Fay hasn't done so."
"You admit that it was bad, then?"
"Why, certainly--but it isn't true. Only one door was nailed up--the
wood-shed door."
"I do believe you're standing up for him. But I tell you, a boy that
would nail up one door would nail up a hundred."
"He might if he had nails enough," said Ned, in a low voice.
"That's just it," said Aunt Mercy. "That fellow would nail up just as
many doors as he could get nails for. I've no doubt it was only the
givin' out of the nails that prevented him from going through every
house in the neighborhood. Mark my words, he'll come to some bad end.
Don't you have anything to do with him, Edmund Burton."
Ned said he thought it would be rather hard not to have anything to do
with his own brother.
"Yes, I suppose so," said Aunt Mercy. "But do the best you can."
"Yes, Aunty, I'll do my best."
"Now tell me," said she, "about your muddle. Have you made a muddle
yet?"
I thought Ned might have answered conscientiously that he had made a
muddle. But he said:
"No, Aunty, we've put that off for a while. We think it will be best to
do some other things first."
"What are the other things?"
"One of them is a printing-office. We think of setting up a little
printing-office to print little books and papers and cards and things,
if we can get together enough money for it. It takes rather more
capital than we have at present."
I suppose Aunt Mercy thought I was the other one besides himself
included in Ned's "we."
"I should have supposed," said she, "that it was best to finish one
muddle before going into another. But you know best, Edmund Burton. I
have great confidence in your judgment." And she leaned back in her
chair and closed her eyes, and seemed to be dreaming for some minutes.
I doubt if she more than half knew which Edmund Burton she was talking
to--the one who had long since gone down beneath the waters of a
distant sea, or the young scapegrace who, without intending to
represent anything falsely, had got so much money from her on false
representations.
"I don't know how it is," said he to me one day. "I never intend to
cheat Aunt Mercy; and yet, whenever I go to see her, things seem to fix
themselves somehow so that she misunderstands. I guess it's her
imagination."
"How much money do you need for your new muddle?" said she, when she
came out of her reverie.
"Jack-in-the-Box says he thinks twenty-five or thirty dollars would fit
up a good one," said Ned.
"Who is Jack-in-the-Box?"
"A gentleman connected with the railroad."
"Queer name for a railroad director," said Aunt Mercy. "But I suppose
you've blundered on it. French, very likely. Might be Jacquin Thibaux.
(I studied French two terms at Madam Farron's.) Some of those old
Huguenot names have got into strange shapes. But it doesn't matter. I
dare say Monsieur Thibaux is right about it. I haven't any money with
me to-night, but I'll send it over to you to-morrow. Don't let that
ignorant brother of yours meddle with your printing-office; he'll
misspell every word, and disgrace the family."
"I'll try to keep him straight," said Ned. "Good-night, Aunty."
"Good-night, Edmund Burton, my dear boy."
"I thought part of this capital," said I to Ned, as we walked away,
"was for the horizontal balloon."
"So it is," said he; "but I couldn't explain that to Aunt Mercy,
because Fay has never explained it to me. I have no idea how he's going
to make that queer thing go."
When Phaeton was furnished with a little more money, we soon saw how
the thing was to go. He built three enormous kites, six feet high. They
were not bow-kites--the traditional kite always represented in
pictures, but seldom used in our country. They were the far more
powerful six-cornered kite, familiar to the boys of the Middle States.
He certainly built them with great skill, and Ned and I had the
pleasure of helping him--if holding the paste-cup and hunting for
material to make the tails was helping.
As each was finished, Phaeton carefully stood it up in the wood-shed to
dry, where there was no more danger of Dublin boys; for Mr. Rogers had
sent a carpenter to put on a new door and furnish it with a lock.
Nevertheless, Phaeton took the first kite to his room for the night,
and put it against the wall behind the bed. But Ned, who tossed a great
deal, managed to kick a hole through it in his sleep. After that, they
were left in the wood-shed over night, where a similar misfortune
befell the second. Biddy, breaking kindlings in an unscientific way
with the hatchet, sent a piece of wood flying through the kite, tearing
a large hole on what a sailor would call the starboard quarter.
When Phaeton complained of her carelessness, she seemed to think she
had improved the kite, saying: "The two kites were not comrades
before--but they are now."
When an enterprising boy attempts to carry out some little project of
his own, it is astonishing to see how even the best natured household
will seem to conspire against him. If he happens to leave a few of his
things on the dining-room floor, they are carelessly stepped upon by
his own mother, or swept out-of-doors by an ignorant servant. I have
seen a boy trying to make a galvanic battery, and his sister looking on
and fervently hoping it would fail, so that she could have the glass
cups to put into her play-house.
However, Phaeton had about as little of this sort of thing to endure as
any boy ever had. When the kites were finished and dry, and the holes
patched up, and the tails hung, Phaeton said he was ready to harness up
his team as soon as the wind was right.
"Which way do you want it?" said I.
"It must be a steady breeze, straight down the turnpike," said he.
One reason why Phaeton chose this road was, that here he would
encounter no telegraph wires. At the railway crossing, two men, riding
on loads of hay, had come in contact with the wires and been seriously
hurt. Another repetition of the accident might have been prevented by
raising the wires on higher poles, but the company had chosen rather to
run them down the pole on one side, under the street, and up the next
pole.
"But I don't see how these kites are going to work," said Ned, "if you
fly them side by side, and hitch the strings to those three hooks."
"Why not?"
"Because they'll interfere with each other, and get all tangled up."
"You would think so," said Phaeton, "if you haven't made a study of
kite-flying, as I have. If you look at a dozen boys flying their kites
at once on the common, you will see that, no matter how near together
two or three boys stand, their kites will not go in exactly the same
direction. Either the strings will slant away from each other a little,
or else they will cross."
"How do you account for that?" said Ned.
"I suppose it's because you never can make two kites exactly alike; or,
if they are exactly alike, they are not hung precisely the same; and so
the wind bears a little more on the left side of one, and a little more
on the right side of the other."
"I guess that's so," said Ned. "And yet it seems to me it would be
better to fly them tandem."
"How would you get them up?" said I.
"First get up one," said Ned. "And when it was well up, fasten the end
of the string to the back of the next kite, and let that up, and do the
same with the third. Then you would have a straight pull by the whole
team in line."
"And the pull of all three kites would come on the last string, and
probably break it," said Phaeton.
"I didn't think of that," said Ned. "I see your way is the best, after
all. But hurry up and have it over with, for we want you to help us
about the printing-office; we can't get along without you."
"It never will be 'over with,'" said Phaeton. "I shall ride out every
fine day, when the wind is in the right direction."
"Why, is that all it's for?" said Ned--"merely your own amusement?"
"Not at all," said Phaeton. "It is a great invention, to be introduced
all over the country. Better than a locomotive, because it will run on
a common road. Better than horses, because it doesn't eat anything. But
then, I'm going to enjoy it myself as much as I can. However, we'll
find time for the printing."