_A NEW MRS. TOODLES.--POTTS' ADVENTURES_.
One evening I met Mr. Potts out upon the turnpike, taking a walk;
and I joined him. As we proceeded he became rather confidential. The
subject of the mania for collecting bric-a-brac came up; and after an
expression of opinion from me respecting the matter, Mr. Potts told
the story of his wife's fondness for that kind of thing. He said,
"My wife is the most infatuated bric-a-brac hunter I ever heard of.
She's an uncommonly fine woman about most things; loves her children;
makes splendid pies; don't fool with any of those fan-dangling ways
women have of fixing their hair; and she's an angel for temper. But
she beats Mrs. Toodles for going to auctions. She's filled my house
with the wildest mess of bric-a-brac and such stuff you ever came
across outside of a museum of natural curiosities. She's spent
more money for wrecks that wouldn't be allowed in the cellar of a
poor-house than'd keep a family in comfort for years.
"You know Scudmore, who sold out the other day? She was there, bidding
away like a millionaire. Came home with a wagon-load of things--four
albata tea-pots without lids or handles; two posts of a bedstead and
three slats; a couple of churns and fourteen second-hand sun-bonnets,
and more mournful refuse like that. Said she didn't intend to buy,
but she bid on them to run them up to help Mrs. Scudmore, and the
auctioneer knocked them down quicker'n a wink. Said it was 'Lot 47,'
and she had to take it all. And she said maybe she could make up the
sun-bonnets into bibs for the baby and use the tea-pots for preserves.
She thought she might make a pretty fair bedstead out of the posts by
propping the other ends on a chair; and she said it was a lucky thing
she was so forehanded about those churns, because she might have a
cow knocked down to her, and then she would be all ready for
butter-making. More'n likely she'll buy some old steer and bring him
home while she's rummaging around for bric-a-brac.
"When the Paxtons had their sale in January she was around there,
of course, and came home after dinner with the usual dismembered
furniture; and when I said to her, 'Emma, why under Heaven did you buy
in the mud-dredge and the sausage-stuffer?' she said she thought the
sausage-stuffer would do for a cannon for the boys on the Fourth of
July, and there was no telling if Charley wouldn't want to be a
civil engineer when he grew up, and perhaps he'd get a contract for
deepening the channel of the river; and then he'd rise up and bless
the foresight of the mother who'd bought a mud-dredge for two dollars
and saved it up for him.
"I sold that scoop on Wednesday for old iron for fifteen cents; and
I'll bang the head off of Charley if he ever goes to dredging mud or
playing cannon with the sausage-stuffer. I won't have my boys carrying
on in that way.
"Over there at Robinson's sale I believe she'd've bid on the whole
concern if I hadn't come in while she was going it. As it was,
she bought an aneroid barometer, three dozen iron skewers, a
sacking-bottom and four volumes of Eliza Cook's poems. Said she
thought those volumes were some kind of cookery-books, or she wouldn't
have bid on them, and the barometer would be valuable to tell us which
was north. _North_, mind you! She thought it indicated the points of
the compass. And yet they want to let women vote! I threw in those
skewers along with the mud-dredge, and she's used the sacking-bottom
twice to patch Charley's pants; and that's all the good we ever got
out of that auction.
"But she don't care for utility; it's simply a mania for buying
things. We haven't a stove in the house, and yet what does she do at
Murphy's sale but bid on sixty-two feet and three elbows of rusty
stovepipe and cart it home with four debilitated gingham umbrellas.
Said the umbrellas were a bargain because, by putting in new covers
and handles and a rib here and there, they would do for birthday
presents for her aunts. And the stovepipe could be sent out to the
farm to be put around the peach trees to keep the cows off. How in
thunder she was ever going to get a stovepipe around a peach tree
never crossed her mind. She is just as impractical as a baby.
"When Bailey had the auction at his insurance office, there she was,
and, sure enough, that afternoon she landed in our side yard with
Bailey's poll-parrot and a circular saw. It amused me. She wanted to
use that saw as a dinner-gong, but it was cracked, and so she has
turned it into a griddle for muffins. Bailey had taught the parrot to
swear so that I was afraid it'd demoralize Charley, and I don't mind
telling you in confidence that I killed it by putting bug-poison in a
water-cracker.
"Now, I see there's an auction advertised for Friday at Peters'; and
Peters has a pyramid of old tomato cans and bric-a-brac of that sort
piled up in his back yard. Now, you see if that woman don't bid on
those cans until she runs them up to a dollar apiece, and then come
lugging them around to our house with some extraordinary idea about
loading them up with gunpowder and selling them to the government
during the next war for bombshells. If she does, that winds the thing
up. I'm a good-natured man, but no woman shall bring home three
hundred tomato cans to my house and retain a claim upon my affections.
I'll resign first."
My feeling was that he was a little mixed in his notions about
bric-a-brac, but that he really had a grievance.
* * * * *
Potts told me, also, that he came home very late one night recently,
and when he went up stairs his wife and children were in bed asleep.
He undressed as softly as he could, and then, as he felt thirsty, he
thought he would get a drink of water. Fortunately, he saw a gobletful
standing on the washstand, placed there for him, evidently, by Mrs.
Potts. He seized it and drank the liquid in two or three huge gulps,
but just as he was draining the goblet he gagged, dropped the glass to
the floor, where it was shivered to atoms, while he ejected something
from his mouth. He was certain that a live animal of some kind had
been in the water, and that he had nearly swallowed it. This theory
was confirmed when he saw the object which he spat out go bounding
over the floor. He pursued it, kicking a couple of chairs over while
doing so, and at last he put his foot on it and held it. Of course
Mrs. Potts was wide awake by this time and scared nearly to death, and
the baby was screaming at the top of its lungs. Mrs. Potts got out of
bed and turned up the gas, and said,
"Mr. Potts, what in the name of common sense is the matter?"
"It's a mouse!" shouted Potts, in an excited manner. "It's a mouse in
the goblet. I nearly swallowed it, but I spat it out, and now I've got
my foot on it. Get a stick and kill it, quick!"
[Illustration: MR. POTTS' MOUSE]
Mrs. Potts was at first disposed to jump on a chair and scream, for,
like all women, she feared a mouse very much more than she did a
tiger. But at Potts' solicitation she got the broom and prepared to
demolish the mouse when Potts lifted his foot. He drew back, and she
aimed a fearful blow at the object and missed it. Then, as it did not
move, she took a good look at it. Then she threw down the broom, and
after casting a look of scorn at Potts, she said,
"Come to bed, you old fool! that's not a mouse."
"What d'you mean?"
"Why, you simpleton, that's the baby's India-rubber bottle-top that
I put in the goblet to keep it sweet. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself carrying on in this manner at one o'clock in the morning."
Then Potts turned in. After this he will drink at the pump.
* * * * *
In the course of the conversation I remarked that I had seen some men
fixing Potts' roof recently; and when I asked Potts if anything was
the matter, he said,
"My roof was shingled originally; but as it leaked, I had the shingles
removed and a gravel-and-felt roof put on. The first night after it
was finished there was a very high wind, which blew the gravel
off with such force that it broke thirty-four panes of glass in
Butterwick's house, next door. The wind also tore up the felt and blew
it over the edge, so that it hung down over the front of the house
like a curtain. Of course it made the rooms pitch-dark, and I did not
get up until one o'clock in the afternoon, but lay there wondering how
it was the night seemed so long.
"Then I had a tin roof put on, and it did well enough for a while.
But whenever there was a heavy rain or the wind was high, it used to
rattle all night with a noise like the battle of Gettysburg. At last
it began to leak, and a tinner sent a man around to find the hole. He
spent a week on that roof, and he spread half a ton of solder over
it, but still it leaked. And finally, when the snow came, the water
trickled down the wall and ran into an eight-hundred-dollar piano,
which will be closed out at a low figure to anybody who wants mahogany
kindling-wood. When the tin was removed and the new slate roof was put
on, the slates used to get loose and slide down on the head of the
hired girl while she was hanging up the clothes. And when the man came
to replace the slates, he plunged off the roof and broke four ribs
and his leg, whereupon he sued me for damages. And while the case was
pending in court a snow-storm came. The snow blew in under the slates,
and my oldest boy spent the day with some of his friends snow-balling
and sledding in the garret. Then the snow on the garret floor
melted and wet the wall-paper down stairs, so that the house became
frightfully damp, and we had to move over to the hotel for a
fortnight.
"Then I tried the 'Patent Incombustible' roofing, because the man said
it would not only keep out the rain, but it was perfectly fireproof. A
week after it was on, Butterwick's stable caught fire and flung up
a great many sparks. All the houses in the neighborhood, however,
escaped--all except mine. My roof was in flames before the stable
was done burning; and when the firemen had put it out, they got to
fighting on my front stairs, with the result that the banister was
broken to splinters, a two-inch stream was played into the parlor for
fifteen minutes, and Chief Engineer Johnson bled all over our best
carpet.
"I have the 'Impervious Cement Roof' on now, and it seems to do well
enough, excepting that it isn't impervious. It lets in the water at
eight different places; and whenever there is a shower, I have to rush
my family out on the roof to shelter it with umbrellas. I fully expect
it will explode some night, or do some other deadly and infamous
thing. I am going to put the house up at auction and live in a circus
tent."
* * * * *
They had a big excitement over at Potts' the other day about their
cat. They heard the cat howling and screeching somewhere around the
house for two or three days, but they couldn't find her. Potts used to
get up at night, fairly maddened with the noise, and heave things out
the back window at random, hoping to hit her and discourage her. But
she never seemed to mind them; and although eventually he fired off
pretty nearly every movable thing in the house excepting the piano,
she continued to shriek and scream in a manner that was simply
appalling. At last, one day, Potts made a critical examination of the
premises, and, guided by the noise, he finally located the cat in the
tin waterspout which descends the north wall of the house. He thinks
the cat must have been skylarking on the roof some dark night and
accidentally tumbled into the spout.
Potts tried to shake her down by hammering on the spout with a stick;
but the more he pounded, the louder she yelled, and the two noises
roused the entire neighborhood and attracted the attention of the
police. Then he procured a clothes-prop; and ascending to the roof, he
endeavored to push the animal out. But the stick was not long enough
to reach her. All it was good for was to make her howl more loudly;
and it did that. At last Potts concluded to take the spout down and
coax the cat out. When he got it on the ground, he peeped in at the
end, and he could see the animal's eyes shining like balls of fire far
back in the darkness of the hole. After shaking her up for a while
without inducing her to move, he made up his mind that she must be
jammed in the pipe and unable to budge. He wanted to cut the pipe
open, but Butterwick said it would be a pity to spoil such a good
spout for a mere cat.
So Potts finally determined to blow her out with powder. He procured a
small charge; and pushing it pretty well in with a stick, he "tamped"
the end of the spout with clay and lighted the slow-match. Two minutes
later there was an explosion, and the tamping-clay flew out and struck
Butterwick with some violence in the ribs, curling him all up on the
grass by the pump. When he recovered his breath, he got up and said,
"Hang your infernal cat! It's an outrage for you to be endangering the
lives of people with your diabolical schemes for getting at a beas'
that ought to've been killed long ago."
Then Butterwick sullenly got over the fence and went home, and the cat
meanwhile kept up a yowling that made everybody's hair stand on end.
Potts said that he made a mistake in not placing the butt of the spout
against something solid. And so, after putting in a couple of pounds
of powder, he turned the spout up and rested the end upon the ground,
propping it against the pump. Then he lighted the slow-match, and the
crowd scattered. There was a loud explosion, a general distribution of
fragments of tin around the yard, and then out from the upper end of
the spout there sailed something black. It ascended; it went higher
and higher and higher, until it was a mere speck; then it came sailing
down, down, down, until it struck the earth. It was the cat, singed
off, burned to a crisp, looking as if it had been spending the summer
in Vesuvius, but apparently still active and hearty; for as soon as it
alighted it set up a wild, unearthly screech and darted off for the
woodshed, where it continued to howl until Potts went in and killed it
with his shotgun. It cost him forty dollars for a new spout, but he
says he doesn't grudge the money now that he has stopped that fiendish
noise.
* * * * *
Potts' clock got out of order one day last winter and began to strike
wrong. That was the cause of the fearful excitement at his house on a
certain night. They were all in bed sound asleep at midnight, when the
clock suddenly struck _five_. The new hired girl, happening to
wake just as it began, heard it, and bounced out of bed under the
impression that morning had come. And as it is dark at 5 A.M. just at
that season, she did not perceive her mistake, but went down into the
kitchen and began to get breakfast.
[Illustration: SHOOTING A BURGLAR]
While she was bustling about in a pretty lively manner, Potts happened
to wake, and he heard the noise. He opened his room door cautiously
and crept softly to the head of the stairs to listen. He could
distinctly hear some one moving about the kitchen and dining-room and
apparently packing up the china. Accordingly, he went back to his room
and woke Mrs. Potts, and gave her orders to spring the rattle out
of the front window the moment she heard his gun go off. Then Potts
seized his fowling-piece; and going down to the dining-room door,
where he could hear the burglars at work, he cocked the gun, aimed it,
pushed the door open with the muzzle and fired. Instantly Mrs. Potts
sprang the rattle, and before Potts could pick up the lacerated hired
girl the front door was burst open by two policemen, who came into the
dining-room.
Seeing Potts with a gun, and a bleeding woman on the floor, they
imagined that murder had been committed, and one of them trotted Potts
off to the station-house, while the other remained to investigate
things. Just then the clock struck six. An explanation ensued from the
girl, who only had a few bird-shot in her leg, and the policeman left
to bring Potts home. He arrived at about three in the morning, just as
the clock was striking eight. When the situation was unfolded to him,
his first action was to jam the butt of his gun through the clock,
whereupon it immediately struck two hundred and forty-three, and then
Potts pitched it over the fence. He has a new clock now, and things
are working better.
* * * * *
The Pottses celebrated their "iron wedding" one day last winter, and
they invited about one hundred and twenty guests to the wedding. Of
course each person felt compelled to bring a present of some kind; and
each one did. When Mr. and Mrs. Smith came, they handed Potts a pair
of flatirons. When Mr. and Mrs. Jones arrived, they also had a pair of
flatirons. All hands laughed at the coincidence. And there was even
greater merriment when the Browns arrived with two pairs of flatirons.
But when Mr. and Mrs. Robinson came in with another pair of flatirons,
the laughter became perfectly convulsive.
There was, however, something less amusing about it when the Thompsons
arrived with four flatirons wrapped in brown paper. And Potts' face
actually looked grave when the three Johnson girls were ushered into
the parlor carrying a flatiron apiece. Each one of the succeeding
sixty guests brought flatirons, and there was no break in the
continuity until old Mr. Curry arrived from Philadelphia with a
cast-iron cow-bell. Now, Potts has no earthly use for a cow-bell, and
at any other time he would have treated such a present with scorn. But
now he was actually grateful to Mr. Curry, and he was about to embrace
him, when the Walsinghams came in with the new kind of-double-pointed
flatirons with wooden handles. And all the rest of the guests brought
the same articles excepting Mr. Rugby, and he had with him a patent
stand for holding flatirons. Potts got madder and madder every minute,
and by the time the company had all arrived he was nearly insane with
rage; and he went up to bed, leaving his wife to entertain the guests.
In the morning they counted up the spoils, and found that they had two
hundred and thirteen flatirons, one stand and a cow-bell. And now the
Pottses have cut the Smiths and Browns and Johnsons and Thompsons
and the rest entirely, for they are convinced that there was a
preconcerted design to play a trick upon them.
[Illustration: A FLAT-IRON WEDDING]
The fact, however, is that the hardware store in the place had an
overstock of flatirons and sold them at an absurdly low figure, and
Potts' guests unanimously went for the cheapest thing they could
find, as people always do on such occasions. Potts thinks he will not
celebrate his "silver wedding."