THE ART DESERVATIVE.
When Phaeton's kites went wobbling down the sky, Owney Geoghegan and
three or four others of the Dublin boys who had escaped their mothers,
started off on a chase for them. Phaeton, Ned, Holman, and I took the
car up the bank, and when we arrived at the top we saw Monkey Roe
walking away pretty rapidly.
"_Gravitas pro vehiculum!_--wait for the wagon!" shouted Holman to him.
Roe seemed a little uncertain whether to stop, but finally leaned
against the fence and waited for us.
I observed that the drove of cattle had gone down to a shallow place in
the canal on the other side of the bridge, and were most of them
standing in the water, either drinking or contemplating. Their drivers
were throwing stones at them, and saying uncomplimentary things, but
they took it philosophically--which means they didn't mind it much.
When you are stolidly indifferent to anything that ought to move you,
your friends will say you take it philosophically.
"Wasn't it an odd thing, Roe," said Holman, "that all those Dublin boys
should have got the idea that a prize was offered for anybody who could
beat this machine?"
"Yes, it was very odd," said Roe. "Fay, what sort of wood is this?"
"Chestnut."
"But I say, Roe," continued Holman, "who in the world could have told
them so?"
"Probably somebody who was fond of a practical joke," said Roe. "Who
did the blacksmith work for you, Fay?"
"Fanning."
"And I suppose," persisted Holman, still talking to Roe, "that it must
have been the same practical joker who sent their mothers after them."
"Very likely," said Roe. "Are you going to get the kites and harness
her up again, Fay?"
"Haven't made up my mind."
It was evident that Monkey Roe didn't want to talk about the mystery of
the Dublin boys, and Holman--probably satisfied by this time that his
suspicions were correct--himself changed the subject.
"When I saw this thing tearing down the turnpike," said he, "with all
that rabble at its heels, and go splash into the canal, I was reminded
of the story of Phaeton, which I had for my Latin lesson last week."
Of course, we asked him to tell the story.
"Phaeton," said Holman, "was a young scapegrace who was fond of fast
horses, and thought there was nothing on four legs or any number of
wheels that he couldn't drive. His father was the Sun-god Helios--which
is probably a corruption of 'Held a hoss' (I must ask Jack-in-the-Box
about it)--and his mother's maiden name was Clymene--which you can
easily see is only changed a little from 'climb-iny.' This shows how
Phaeton came by his passion for climbing in the chariot and holding the
hosses.
"One day, one of the boys, named Epaphus, tried to pick a quarrel with
him by saying that he was not really a son of Helios, but was only
adopted out of the poor-house. Phaeton felt pretty badly about it, for
he didn't know but it might be true. So he went home as fast as he
could, and asked Helios, right out plump, whether he was his own son,
or only adopted out of the poor-house. 'Certainly,' said the old
gentleman, 'you are my own son, and always have been, ever since you
were born.'
"This satisfied Phaeton, but he was afraid it might not satisfy the
boys who had heard Epaphus's remark. So he begged to be allowed to
drive the chariot of the Sun one day, just to show people that he was
his father's own boy. Helios shook his head. That was a very particular
job; the chariot had to go out on time and come in on time, every day,
and there couldn't be any fooling about it. But the youngster hung on
and teased so, that at last his father told him he might drive just one
day, if he would never ask again."
"Did he have a gag-bit?" said Ned, remembering his brother's remarks on
the occasion of our brisk morning canter.
"Probably not," said Holman, "for gag-bits were not then invented. The
next morning old Helios gave the boy all the instructions he could
about the character of the horses and the bad places in the road, and
started him off.
"He hadn't gone very far when the team ran away with him, and went
banging along at a terrible rate, knocking fixed stars out of their
places, overturning and scattering an immense pile of new ones that had
been corded up at the side of the road to dry (that's what makes the
Milky Way), and at last setting the world on fire.
"Jupiter saw that something must be done, pretty quick, too, so he
threw a sand-bag, or a thunder-bolt, or something of that sort, at him,
and knocked over the chariot, and the next minute it went plump into
the river Eridanus--which I've no doubt is the Latin for Erie Canal.
You can easily see how it would come: Erie canal--Erie ditch--Erie
drain--Erie drainus--Eridanus. That's the way Professor Woodruff
explains words to the advanced class. He can tell you where any word
came from in two minutes.
"Phaeton wasn't so lucky as you, Fay, for there was no Patsy Rafferty
to pull him out, and he was drowned, while his poor sisters stood on
the tow-path and cried till they turned into poplar-trees."
We were all deeply interested in this remarkable story from Grecian
mythology, told in good plain American, and from our report Holman was
often called upon to repeat it to the other boys. It was this that gave
Fayette Rogers the name of Phaeton.
The fate of the horizontal balloon for a time dampened Phaeton's ardor
for invention, and he was willing at last to unite with Ned and me in
an enterprise which promised to be more business-like than
brilliant--the printing-office scheme.
Meanwhile, we had been doing what we could ourselves. The first
necessity was a press. Ned, whom we considered a pretty good
draughtsman, drew a plan for one, and he and I made it. There was
nothing wrong about the plan; it was strong and simple--two great
virtues in any machine. But we constructed the whole thing of soft
pine, the only wood that we could command, or that our tools would cut.
Consequently, when we put on the pressure to print our first
sheet--feeling as proud as if we were Faust, Gutenberg, Schöfer, the
Elzevirs, Ben Franklin, and the whole Manutius family rolled into
one--not only did the face of the types go into the paper, but the
bottoms of them went right into the bed of the press.
[Illustration: NED'S PLAN FOR A PRESS.]
"It acts more like a pile-driver than a printing-press," said Ned,
ruefully.
"It'll never do," said I. "We can't get along without Fay. When he
makes a press, it will print."
"When Fay makes a press," said Ned, "he'll probably hire somebody else
to make it. But I guess that's the sensible way. I suppose the boys
would laugh at this thing, even if it worked well; it looks so
dreadfully cheese-pressy."
"It does look a little that way," said I. "But Fay will get up
something handsome, and I've no doubt we can find some good use for
this--perhaps keep it in the corner for the boys to fool with when they
call. They'll be certain to meddle with something, and this may keep
their hands from the good one."
"I don't intend to run the office on any such principles," said Ned.
"The boy that meddles with anything will be invited to leave."
"Then you'll make them all angry, and there won't be any good-will to
it," said I. "I've heard Father say that the good-will of the
_Vindicator_ office was worth more than all the type and presses. He
says the _Vindicator_ lives on its good-will."
"That may be all very nice for the _Vindicator_," said Ned; "but this
office will have to live on hard work."
"But we must be polite to the boys that patronize the establishment,"
said I.
"Oh, yes; be polite to them, of course," said Ned. "But tell them
they've got to keep out of our way when the press is running."
Whether the press ever would have run, or even crawled, without Phaeton
to manage it, is doubtful. But he now joined in the enterprise, and
very soon organized the concern. As Ned had predicted, he hired a man
who was a carriage-maker by trade, but had a genius for odd jobs, to
make us a press. In those days, the small iron presses which are now
manufactured in great numbers, and sold to boys throughout the country,
had not been heard of. Ours was a pretty good one, made partly of wood
and partly of iron, with a powerful knee-joint, which gave a good
impression. The money to pay for it came from Aunt Mercy _via_ Ned.
There was a small, unused building in our yard, about fifteen feet
square, sometimes called the "wash-house," and sometimes "the
summer-kitchen," now abandoned and almost empty. Phaeton, looking about
for a place for the proposed printing-office, fixed upon this as the
very thing that was wanted. He said it could not have been better if it
had been built on purpose.
After some negotiation with my parents, their consent was obtained, and
Phaeton and Ned took me into partnership, I furnishing the building,
and they furnishing the press and type. We agreed that the name of the
firm should be Rogers & Co. On the gable of the office we erected a
short flag-staff, cut to the form of a printer's "shooting-stick," and
whenever the boys saw the Stars and Stripes floating from it, they knew
the office was open for business.
"This font of Tuscan," said Ned to Phaeton, as we were putting the
office in order, "is not going to be so useless as you suppose, even if
the Es are all gone."
"How so?" said Phaeton.
"Because I asked a printer about it, and he says when you find a box
empty you simply use some other letter in place of the one that is
missing--generally X. And here are plenty of Xs."
Phaeton only smiled, and went on distributing type into his case of
pica.
"I say, Fay," said Ned again, after awhile, "don't you think it would
be proper to do a little something for Patsy Rafferty, just to show
your gratitude for his services in pulling you out of the canal?"
"I've thought about it," said Phaeton.
"We might print him a dozen cards, with his name on," said Ned, "and
not charge him a cent. Get them up real stylish--red ink, perhaps; or
Patsy in black and Rafferty in red; something that'll please him." And
Ned immediately set up the name in Tuscan, to see how it would look. It
looked like this:
MR. PATSY RAFFXRTY, XSQ.
"How do you think he'd like that, done in two colors?" said Ned.
"I don't believe he'd care much about it," said Phaeton. "But I've
invited him to come over here this afternoon, and perhaps we can find
out what he would like."
Patsy came in the afternoon, and was made acquainted with some of the
mysteries of printing. After a while, Ned showed him what he intended
to print on a dozen cards for him.
"It's very nice, indeed," said Patsy; "but that's not my name."
"Not your name?" said Ned.
"No," said Patsy. "My father's name is Mr. Patsy Rafferty, Esquire; but
I'm only Patsy Rafferty, without any handle or tail to it."
"If that's all that ails it," said Ned, "it's easy enough to take off
the handle and tail," and he took them off.
Patsy took another look at it.
"That's not exactly the way I spell my name," said he. "There ought to
be an E there, instead of an X."
"Of course there ought," said Ned, "but you see we haven't any Es in
that style of type, and it's an old established rule in all
printing-offices that when there's a letter you haven't got, you simply
put an X in place of it. Everybody understands it."
"I didn't understand it," said Patsy, "and I think my name looks better
when it's spelled the way I was christened."
"All right!" said Ned. "We'll make it as you want it; but it'll have to
be set in some other kind of type, and that Tuscan is the prettiest
thing in the office."
Patsy still preferred correctness to beauty, and had his way.
"And now what color will you have?" said Ned. "We can print it in
black, or red, or blue, or partly one color and partly another--almost
any color, in fact."
Patsy, true to the tradition of his ancestors, chose green.
"I'm awful sorry," said Ned, "but we haven't any green ink. It's about
the only color we haven't got."
"You can make it by mixing blue and yellow together," said Patsy.
"True," said Ned; "but the fact is, we haven't any yellow. Green and
yellow are about the only colors we haven't got."
After studying the problem a few minutes, Patsy chose to have his
visiting-cards printed in alternate red and blue letters, and we set
about it at once, Ned arranging the type, while I took the part of
devil and managed the ink. As they were to be in two colors, of course
each card had to go through the press twice; and they were not very
accurately "registered," as a printer would say--that is, the red
letters, instead of coming exactly on even spaces between the blue,
would sometimes be too far one way, sometimes too far the other,
sometimes even lapping over the blue letters. But out of fifty or sixty
that we printed, Patsy selected thirteen that he thought would do--"a
dozen, and one for luck"--and, without waiting for them to dry, packed
them together and put them into his pocket, expressing his own
admiration and anticipating his mother's. He even intimated that when
she saw those she would probably order some for herself.
Patsy asked about Phaeton's chariot, and whether it was hurt much when
it went into the canal.
"Hardly damaged at all," said Phaeton.
Patsy hinted that he would like to see it, and he and Phaeton went over
to Rogers's. When Phaeton returned an hour later, he was alone.
"Where's Patsy?" said Ned.
"Gone home with the chariot," said Phaeton.
"Gone home with the chariot?" said Ned, in astonishment.
"Yes," said Phaeton, "I have given it to him. I saw, by the way he
looked at it and talked about it, that it would be a great prize to
him, and I didn't intend to use it any more myself, so I made him a
present of it."
"But you had no right to," said Ned. "That chariot was built with my
money."
"Not exactly," said Phaeton. "It was built with money that I borrowed
of you. I still owe you the money, but the car was mine."
"Well, at any rate," said Ned, who saw this point clearly enough, "you
might have sold the iron on it for enough to buy another font of type."
"Yes, I might," said Phaeton. "But I preferred giving it to Patsy. He's
a good deal of a boy, and I hope Father won't forget that he said he
should do something for him."
"But what use will the car be to him?" said Ned.
"He says it'll be a glorious thing to slide down hill in summer," said
Phaeton.
A few days afterward, Patsy came again to see Phaeton, and wanted to
know if he could not invent some means by which the car could be
prevented from going down hill too fast. He said that when Berny Rourke
and Lukey Finnerty and he took their first ride in it, down one of the
long, grassy slopes that bordered the Deep Hollow, it went swifter, and
swifter, until it reached the edge of the brook, where it struck a lump
of sod and threw them all into the water.
"Water is an excellent thing," said Ned, "for a sudden stoppage of a
swift ride. They always use it in horizontal balloon-ascensions, and on
the Underground Railroad they're going to build all the depots of it."
Phaeton, who appeared to be thinking deeply, only smiled, and said
nothing. At last he exclaimed:
"I have it, Patsy! Come with me."
They went off together, and Phaeton hunted up an old boot, the leg of
which he drove full of shingle-nails, driving them from the inside
outward. Then he filled it with stones and sand, and sewed the top
together. Then he found a piece of rope, and tied one end to the
straps.
"There, Patsy," said he, "tie the other end of the rope to one of the
hooks on the car, and take the boot in with you. When you are going
fast enough, throw it out for a drag. I don't believe a streak of
lightning could make very good headway, if it had to pull that thing
along on the ground after it."
Patsy, Berny, and Lukey tried it, but were thrown into the brook as
before. Phaeton said the true remedy was, more old boots; and they
added one after another, till they had a cluster of seven, which acted
as an effectual drag, and completely tamed the spirit of the machine,
after which it soon became the most popular institution in Dublin.
Patsy said seven was one of the lucky numbers.
To return to the printing business. When I was about to sit down at the
tea-table, that evening, Mother exclaimed:
"What in the world ails your hands?"
I looked at them. Some of my fingers were more red than blue, some were
more blue than red, and some about equally red and blue. I said I
guessed Patsy Rafferty's visiting-cards were what ailed my hands.
"Well, I wish you'd wash your hands of Patsy Rafferty's
visiting-cards," said she.
"Can't do it with any such slimpsy water as we have here," said I.
"And where do they have any that is less slimpsy?" said Mother.
"At the printing-offices," said I. "They put a little ley in it. We
haven't any at our office, but that's the next thing we're going to
buy. Don't worry; it won't rub off on the bread and butter, and we
shall have a can of ley next week."
"The next thing to be done," said Ned, when we had the office fairly in
running order, "is to get up a first-rate business-card of our own,
have it large enough, print it in colors, and make a stunning thing of
it."
"That reminds me," said Phaeton, "that I was talking with
Jack-in-the-Box about our office the other day, and I told him we ought
to have a pretty poetical motto to put up over the door. He suggested
two or three, and wrote them down for me. Perhaps one of them would
look well on the card."
"What are they?" said Ned.
After some searching, Phaeton found a crumpled piece of paper in one of
his pockets, and smoothing it out showed the following, hastily
scratched in pencil:
Faith, he'll prent it.--_Burns_.
I have misused the king's press.--_Shakespeare_.
So careful of the type she seems.--_Tennyson_.
"I don't like one of them," said Ned.
"Why not?" said Phaeton.
"Well, the first one is spelled wrong. We _print_ here, we don't
_prent_."
"But it means the same thing," said Phaeton; "that's the Scotch of it.
Burns was a Scotchman."
"Was he?" said Ned. "Well, I never heard of him before, and we don't
want any of his Scotch spelling. That second motto is all wrong; the
press belongs to us, not to any king, and we're not going to misuse it.
The third one would do pretty well, but it says 'she,' and we're none
of us girls."
"Perhaps you can think of a better one," said Phaeton.
"Yes, I can," said Ned. "I heard Uncle Hiram say that printing was
called the art deservative of all arts, and that would be just the
motto for us."
"What does it mean?" said I.
"It means," said Ned, "that printers deserve more than any other
artists."
"Didn't he say _pre_servative?" said Phaeton.
"Oh, no," said Ned; "that wouldn't mean anything. Printing has nothing
to do with preserving--unless we should print the labels for Mother's
fruit-cans next fall. He said 'deservative,' I heard him distinctly,
and we'll put it on the card."
"Very well," said Phaeton; "you set up the card according to your own
taste, and we'll see how we like it."
The next day Phaeton and I went fishing. While we were gone Ned set up
the card, and on our return we found, to our consternation, that he had
not only set it up, but printed scores of them, and given away a good
many to the boys. It ran as follows:
[Illustration]
"Good gracious, Ned!" said Phaeton, "why did you print this thing
before we had seen it?"
"Because I felt sure you'd like it," said Ned, "and I wanted to
surprise you."
"You've succeeded admirably in that," said Phaeton.
"I hope there's nothing wrong about it," said Ned. "I took a great deal
of pains with it. Oh, yes; now I see there's one letter upside down.
But what of that? Very few people will notice it, and they will know
it's an accident."
"One?" said Phaeton. "There are half a dozen standing on their heads.
And that's not the worst. Just look at the spelling!"
"I don't see anything wrong about that," said Ned. "You must remember
that what's wrong by Webster may be right by Worcester."
"What do you call that?" said Phaeton, pointing at the first word in
the third line.
"Job, of course," said Ned. "Some people spell it with a J, but that
can't be right. J-o-b spells Job, the name of that king of Israel who
had so many boils on him at once."
"He wasn't king of Israel," said Phaeton.
"Well, king of Judah, then," said Ned. "I always get those two mixed.
What's the use of being too particular. Those old kings are as dead now
as Julia Cæsar. And everybody knows how dead she is."
"Well, then, what's this?" said Phaeton, pointing to the second word on
the right-hand side of the press.
"Don't you know what dodgers are?" said Ned. "Little bills with
'Bankrupt Sale!' or 'Great Excitement!' or something of that sort
across the top, to throw around in the yards, or hand to the people
coming out of church."
"Oh, yes; dodgers," said Phaeton. "But I never saw it spelled so
before. Have you given out many of these cards?"
"I gave one to Holman," said Ned, "and one to Monkey Roe, and one to
Jack-in-the-Box."
"What did Jack-in-the-Box say to it?" said Phaeton.
"Oh, he admired it amazingly," said Ned. "He said it was the most
entertaining business-card he had ever seen. But he thought perhaps it
would be well for us to have a proof-reader. I asked him what that was,
and he said it was a round-shouldered man, with a green shade over his
eyes, who knew everything. He sits in the corner of your office, and
when you print anything he reads the first one and marks the mistakes
on it, so that you can correct them before you print any more. We might
get Jimmy the Rhymer; he's awful round-shouldered, but he doesn't know
everything. The only man in this town who knows everything is
Jack-in-the-Box himself, and I suppose we couldn't get him."
"I suppose not," said Phaeton, "though I know he'd look over a proof
for us, any time we took one to him. But now tell me whether you've
given out any more of these cards."
"Well, yes, a few," said Ned. "Patsy Rafferty was over here; he rolled
for me, or I couldn't have got them done so soon; and when he went
home, he took fifty to leave at the doors of the houses on his way. I
thought if we were going to do business, it was time to be letting
people know about it."
"Just so," said Phaeton. "And is that all?"
"Not quite. Uncle Jacob was going to ride out to Parma, and I gave him
about forty, and asked him to hand them to people he met on the road."
"Y-e-s," said Phaeton, with a deep sigh; "and is _that_ all?"
"I put a dozen or two on that little shelf by the post-office window,"
said Ned, "so that anybody who came for his letters could take one. And
now that's all; and I hope you won't worry over one or two little
mistakes. Everybody makes some mistakes. There is no use in pretending
to be perfect. But if you two fellows had been here in the office,
instead of going off to enjoy yourselves fishing and leaving me to do
all the work, you might have had the old card just as you wanted it. Of
course you'd have spelled it right, but there might have been bad taste
about it that would look worse than my spelling. And now I'm going home
to supper."
"The worst thing about Ned," said Phaeton, after he had gone, "is, that
there's too much go-ahead in him. Very few people are troubled in that
way."
"But what are we going to do about that dreadful card?" said I. "When
the people see that, they may be afraid to give us any jobs, for fear
that we'll misspell everything."
"I don't know what we can do now," said Phaeton, "unless we get out a
good one, and say on it that no others are genuine. I must think about
it over night."