the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the dog under
his arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy spitzenbergs,
and other indignities had been offered him to the extent of the brush
and comb. He also had a whole jacket on....
Billy and I also obtained permission to go out together and be gone the
entire afternoon. We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old
shoe-box, and then strolled hand-in-hand across that most delightful of
New York breathing-places--Stuyvesant Square.
"Uncle Teddy," exclaimed Billy, with ardor, "I wish I could do something
to show you how much I think of you for being so good to me. I don't
know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a hymn for you,--a
smashing big hymn--six verses, long metre, and no grumbling?"
"No, Billy; you make me happy enough just by being a good boy."
"Oh, Uncle Teddy!" replied Billy, decidedly, "I'm afraid I can't do it.
I've tried so often, and I always make such an awful mess of it." ...
We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on
account of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual conflicts
of Billy's which so much interested me, amused ourselves with looking
out until just as we reached the Astor House, when he asked me where we
were going.
"Where do you guess?" said I.
He cast a glance through the front window, and his face became
irradiated. Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of
pleasing a child, to create sunshine enough for the chasing away of the
bluest adult devils.
"We're going to Barnum's!" said Billy, involuntarily clapping his hands.
So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down on the
place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class largely
represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make believe
that they only come to amuse the children, or because they've country
cousins visiting them, and never fail to refer to the vulgar set one
finds there, and the fact of the animals smelling like any thing but
Jockey Club; yet I notice that after they've been in the hall three
minutes they're as much interested as any of the people they come to
pooh-pooh, and only put on the high-bred air when they fancy some of
their own class are looking at them. I boldly acknowledge that I go
because I like it. I am especially happy, to be sure, if I have a child
along to go into ecstasies, and give me a chance, by asking questions,
for the exhibition of that fund of information which is said to be one
of my chief charms in the social circle, and on several occasions has
led that portion of the public immediately about the Happy Family into
the erroneous impression that I was Mr. Barnum, explaining his five
hundred thousand curiosities.
On the present occasion, we found several visitors of the better class
in the room devoted to the aquarium. Among these was a young lady,
apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet,
which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet
silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable
pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium; her
eyes a soft, expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair which exactly
matched their color, and, at that rat-and-miceless day fell in such
graceful abandon as to show at once that nature was the only maid who
crimped their waves into them. Her complexion was rosy with health and
sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was faultless, her nose sensitive, her
manners full of refinement, and her voice musical as a wood-robin's,
when she spoke to the little boy of six at her side, to whom she was
revealing the palace of the great show-king. Billy and I were
flattening our noses against the abode of the balloon-fish, and
determining whether he looked most like a horse-chestnut burr or a ripe
cucumber, when his eyes and my own simultaneously fell on the child and
lady, In a moment, to Billy, the balloon-fish was as though he had not
been.
"That's a pretty little boy!" said I. And then I asked Billy one of
those senseless routine questions which must make children look at us,
regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at Bushmen.
"How would you like to play with him?"
"Him!" replied Billy, scornfully, "that's his first pair of boots; see
him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to 'em! But,
crackey! isn't _she_ a smasher!"
After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the learned
seal and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room into
another, Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the pretty
girl and child were coming, too.
Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in astonishment at the
Lightning Calculator,--wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy for
him to do his sums by,--finally thought he had discovered it, and
resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic
lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how
he became so confused among the wax-works that he pinched the solemnest
showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful
Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read all about
the way they sold girls like her in his geography.
We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the
dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always
languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready
to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the sign-board at the
head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming at
all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child
following after,--a sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be
possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which whirled me down at
ten years,--a little boy's first love?
We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass,
whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when
the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster,
dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by
the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or
as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about
the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the
side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove not an inch
from one of his big tusks, then marched around the tank and presented it
to the lady with a chivalry of manner in one of his years quite
surprising.
"That's a real nice boy,--you said so, didn't you, Lottie?--and I wish
he'd come and play with me," said the little fellow by the young lady's
side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back to me with
his cheeks roseate with blushes.
As he heard this, Billy idled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
then faced about and said,--
"P'raps I will some day,--where do you live?"
"I live on East Seventeenth street with papa,--and Lottie stays there,
too, now,--she's my cousin. Where d' you live?"
"Oh, I live close by,--right on that big green square, where I guess the
nurse takes you once in a while," said Billy, patronizingly. Then,
looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, "I never saw you out
there."
"No; Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and
I've just come to visit him."
"Say, will you come and play with me some time?" chimed in the
inextinguishable Jimmy. "I've got a cooking-stove,--for real fire,--and
blocks and a ball with a string."
Billy, who belonged to a club for the practice of the great American
game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battist among
the I.G.B.B.C., or "Infant Giants," smiled from that altitude upon
Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday afternoon.
Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my room
over Pickwick with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the door told of
Daniel. I called "Come in!" and entering with a slow, dejected air, he
sat down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained silent, though
occasionally looking up as if about to speak, then dropping his head
again to ponder on the coals. Finally I laid down Dickens, and spoke
myself.
"You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?"
"I don't feel very well, uncle."
"What's the matter, my boy?"
"Oh-ah, I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you."
I studied him for a few moments with kindly curiosity, then answered,--
"Perhaps I can save you the trouble by cross-examining it out of you.
Let's try the method of elimination. I know that you're not harassed by
any economical considerations, for you've all the money you want; and I
know that ambition doesn't trouble you, for your tastes are scholarly.
This narrows down the investigation of your symptoms--listlessness,
general dejection, and all--to three causes,--dyspepsia, religious
conflicts, love. Now, is your digestion awry?"
"No, sir; good as usual. I'm not melanancholy on religion, and"--
"You don't tell me you're in love?"
"Well--yes--I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy."
I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this
unimaginable revelation, then said:
"Is your feeling returned?"
"I really don't know, uncle; I don't believe it is. I don't see how it
can be. I never did any thing to make her love me. What is there in me
to love? I've borne nothing for her,--that is, nothing that could do her
any good,--though I've endured on her account, I may say, anguish. So,
look at it any way you please, I neither am, do, nor suffer any thing
that can get a woman's love."
"Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along with
you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive, and
neuter!"
Daniel smiled faintly.
"You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you
hit the truth there; indeed you do. If she were a Greek or Latin woman,
I could talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only understood the
philosophy of the flowers as well as they do the poetry"--
"Thank God they don't, Daniel!" sighed I, devoutly.
"Never mind,--in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking
about the grounds of difference between Linnæus and Jussieu. Women like
the star business, they say,--and I could tell her where all the
constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment about
them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what earthly chance
would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have with the woman he
loved, if he depended for her favor on his ability to analyze her
bouquet or tell her when she might look out for the next occultation of
Orion? I can't talk bread-and-butter talk. I can't do any thing that
makes a man even tolerable to a woman!"
"I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread-and-butter talk is
tolerable to a woman!"
"No; but it's necessary to some extent,--at any rate the ability is,--in
order to succeed in society; and it's in society men first meet and
strike women. And oh, Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water in
society!--such a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing
gracefully as a swan swims, and feel that fellows, like little Jack
Mankyn, who 'don't know twelve times,' can dance to her perfect
admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners,--and all sorts
of men without an idea in their heads have that,--while I turn all
colors when I speak to her, and am clumsy, and abrupt, and abstracted,
and bad at repartee,--Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it seems so
ungrateful to father and mother, who have spent such pains for
me)--sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange all I've
ever learned for the power to make a good appearance before her!"
"Daniel, my boy, it's too much a matter of reflection with you! A woman
is not to be taken by laying plans. If you love the lady (whose name I
don't ask you, because I know you'll tell me as soon as you think best),
you must seek her companionship until you're well enough acquainted with
her to have her regard you as something different from the men whom she
meets merely in society, and judge your qualities by another standard
than that she applies to them. If she's a sensible girl (and God forbid
you should marry her otherwise), she knows that people can't always be
dancing, or holding fans, or running after orange-ice. If she's a girl
capable of appreciating your best points (and woe to you if you marry a
girl who can't!), she'll find them out upon closer intimacy, and, once
found, they'll a hundred times outweigh all brilliant advantages kept in
the show-case of fellows who have nothing on the shelves. When this
comes about, you will pop the question unconsciously, and, to adapt
Milton, she'll drop into your lap 'gathered--not harshly plucked.'"
"I know that's sensible, Uncle Teddy, and I'll try. Let me tell you the
sacredest of secrets,--regularly every day of my life I send her a
little poem fastened round the prettiest bouquet I can get at Hanft's."
"Does she know who sends them?'"
"She can't have any idea. The German boy that takes them knows not a
word of English except her name and address. You'll forgive me, uncle,
for not mentioning her name yet? You see she may despise or hate me some
day when she knows who it is that has paid her these attentions; and
then I'd like to be able to feel that at least I've never hurt her by
any absurd connection with myself."
"Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit,
though a little counsel with your head would show you that your only
absurdity is self-depreciation."
Daniel bid me good-night. As I put out my cigar and went to bed, my
mind reverted to the dauntless little Hotspur who had spent the
afternoon with me and reversed his mother's wish, thinking,--
"Oh, if Daniel were more like Billy!"
It was always Billy's habit to come and sit with me while I smoked my
after-breakfast cigar, but the next morning did not see him enter my
room till St. George's hands pointed to a quarter of nine.
"Well, Billy Boy Blue, come blow your horn; what haystack have you been
under till this time of day? We sha'n't have a minute to look over our
spelling together, and I know a boy who's going in for promotion next
week. Have you had your breakfast, and taken care of Crab?"
"Yes, sir; but I didn't feel like getting up this morning."
"Are you sick?"
"No-o-o--it isn't that; but you'll laugh at me if I tell you."
"Indeed I won't, Billy!"
"Well,"--his voice dropped to a whisper, and he stole close to my
side,--"I had such a nice dream about _her_ just the last thing before
the bell rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer,--so kinder good and
kinder bad,--and I wanted to see her so much, that if I hadn't been a
big boy I believe I should have blubbered. I tried ever so much to go to
sleep and see her again; but the more I tried the more I couldn't. After
all, I had to get up without it, though I didn't want any breakfast, and
only ate two buckwheat cakes, when I always eat six, you know, Uncle
Teddy. Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
upside-down like a savings-bank."
"Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell you
the secret, though,--that girl and I are going to get married. I mean to
ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!"
"My dear Billy, sha'n't you wait a little while to see if you always
like her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older."
"I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly! I'm as old as the
kings of France used to be when they got married,--I read it in Abbott's
histories. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run or I shall
get a tardy mark, and, perhaps, she'll want to see my certificate
sometimes."
So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast as
his legs could carry him. O Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither
the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on
his jacket,--omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have
failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good boy!
With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored, and myself the confidant of
both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and
distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to
overcome his bashfulness; was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant
only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told
in his slangy New-York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim,--"Oh,
I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went
by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to
her,--because it was too big to shove in a lamp-post, and she might
catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away.
Daniel wrote his own valentine; but, despite its originality, that
document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents'
worth of embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel. Finally, Billy
announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy, and got introduced
to his girl.
Shortly after this Lu gave what they call "a little company,"--not a
party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were
well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood.
There was a goodly proportion of young folk, and there was to be dancing
but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile
usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the
splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable
gayety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to
the _beau monde_,--a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird,
with a soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How
simple was the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt
somewhat discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking
leave to bring along her niece, who was making her a few weeks' visit.
As a matter of course, however, she returned answer to bring the young
lady and welcome.
Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen I invited
him to make his toilet in mine, and, indeed, wanting him to create a
favorable impression, became his valet _pro tem._, tying his cravat, and
teasing the divinity-student look out of his side-hair. My little dandy
Billy came in for another share of attention, and when I managed to
button his jacket for him so that it showed his shirt-studs "like a
man's," Count d'Orsay could not have felt a more pleasing sense of his
sufficiency for all the demands of the gay world.
When we reached the parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already
receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old
married couples, which, after paying their devoirs, fell in two like
unriveted scissors,--the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa and the
ladies in ma, where they mildly opened and shut upon such questions as
severally concerned them, such as "the way gold closed," and "how the
children were."
Besides the old married people there were several old young men of
distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect, who, having nothing in common
with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to band
themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the arch
pillars, or appeared to be considering whether, on the whole, it would
not be feasible and best to sit down on the centre-table. These
subsisted upon such crumbs of comfort as Lu could get an occasional
chance to throw them by rapid sorties of conversation,--became
galvanically active the moment they were punched up, and fell flat the
moment the punching was remitted. I did all I could for them, but,
having Daniel in tow, dared not sail too near the edge of the Doldrums,
lest he should drop into sympathetic stagnation and be taken
preternaturally bashful, with his sails all aback, just as I wanted to
carry him gallantly into action with some clipper-built cruiser of a
nice young lady. Finally, Lu bethought herself of that last plank of
drowning conversationists, the photograph album. All the dejected young
men made for it at once, some reaching it just as they were about to
sink for the last time, but all getting a grip on it somehow, and
staying there in company with other people's babies whom they didn't
know, and celebrities whom they knew to death, until, one by one, they
either stranded upon a motherly dowager by the Fire-place Shoals, or
were rescued from the Sofa Reef by some gallant wrecker of a
strong-minded young lady, with a view to taking salvage out of them in
the German.
Besides these, were already arrived a dozen nice little boys and girls,
who had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to remind him
of the fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison with the queen
of his affections, they were in danger of being despised by him as small
fry.
The younger ladies and gentlemen,--those who had fascinations to
disport, or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such,
were probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that
oracle should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
Daniel was in conversation with a perfect godsend of a girl, who
understood Latin and had begun Greek. Billy was taking a moment's
vacation from his boys and girls, busy with "Old Maid" in the
extension-room, and whispering with his hand in mine, "Oh, don't I wish
_she_ were here!" when a fresh invoice of ladies, just unpacked from the
dressing-room in all the airy elegance of evening costume, floated
through the door. I heard Lu say,--
"Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! Happy to see your niece, too. How d'ye do, Miss
Pilgrim?"
At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy of
ladies opening about sister Lu disclosed the charming face and figure of
the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
"Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wishing it! It's just
like the fairy books!" and, rushing up to the party of new-comers, "My
dear Lottie!" cried he, "if I'd only known you were coming I'd have gone
after you!"
As he caught her by the hand I was pleased to see her soft eyes brighten
with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu looked on
naturally with astonishment in every feature.
"Why, Billy!" said she, "you ought not to call a strange young lady'
_Lottie_!' Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy."
"And you must excuse my mother, Lottie," said Billy, affectionately
patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, "for calling you a strange young lady.
You are not strange at all,--you're just as nice a girl as there is."
"There are no excuses necessary," said Miss Pilgrim, with a bewitching
little laugh. "Billy and I know each other intimately well, Mrs.
Lovegrove; and I confess that when I heard the lady aunt had been
invited to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing to infringe
etiquette this evening by coming where I had no previous introduction."
"Don't you care!" said Billy, encouragingly. "I'll introduce you to
every one of our family; I know 'em if you don't."
At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and fearing lest in
his enthusiasm he might forget the canon of society which introduces a
gentleman to a lady, not the lady to him, I ventured to suggest it
delicately by saying,--
"Billy, will you grant me the favor of a presentation to Miss Pilgrim?"
"In a minute, Uncle Teddy," answered Billy, considerably lowering his
voice. "The older people first"; and after this reproof I was left to
wait in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of introducing
to the young lady his father and his mother.