know. We reminded our landlady that Mike always came running when he
heard anyone whet the carving knife on the steel, knowing that it was a
musical prelude to dainty tidbits of meat.
"Why not go to the back-door and rub the knife on the steel?" we asked,
modestly trying to appear unconscious that we were getting off something
rather dazzling. "Then when he hears it, he'll rush up and you can--"
The suggestion was so obviously sensible that, in spite of its coming
from us, our landlady adopted it at once. Other suggestions of ours had
not worked out quite according to specifications, but this one looked
good. Our landlady was even moved to say that she hadn't expected so
much wisdom from us.
She got a chance to try the ruse soon after. It was a warm dark night,
when the feet of even the wisest cat might stray from the paths of
piety, and Mike's had very evidently wandered. In fact, it seemed to us
that the strong but lyric tenor voice singing of love down the lane
might well belong to him. But we couldn't be sure. There was a good
deal of singing going on, mostly of a sentimental nature.
We cheerfully undertook to do the knife-grinding, being an adept at any
operation connected with eating. Squaring our elbows in a professional
manner, we gave three or four slashing cuts on the steel that would have
earned us a job in any packing-house. We made a noise like a duel in
romantic comedy--some of that matinee idol stuff, you know, "Have at ye,
caitiff knave!" lunging in tierce and quart, and then a quart or so in
the dressing-room after the act.
Did it work? Yes, friend reader, it worked. It brought Mike all
right--also every other cat off every other fence in that block. Before
the landlady could slam and bolt the door, about ten frenzied felines
hurled themselves into that quiet and orderly kitchen and immediately
started trying to throw one another into the stove or drown one another
in the sink.
While it lasted--and it was some minutes before the landlady's screams
brought sufficient assistance, including the Chinaman out of the laundry
across the way--it was the liveliest little scramble one could see
outside the Petrograd Soviet. In ten seconds that kitchen looked like
the plucking room of an otter-shop. Those cats just grabbed the fur in
handfuls and threw it away. We got it in our porridge for weeks after,
giving to that wholesome breakfast dish a still further resemblance to
soft mortar.
Mike finally took to staying out all night. It was about this time that
we began to entertain doubts as to his sex and morals--we were still
calling him Yvonne in moments of friendship. He also wore a bow of red
ribbon and a bell, the bell being for the purpose of tracking him around
the house when he elected to go up and sleep in someone's bed.
The bell must have been an awful nuisance to Mike. Perhaps that is why
he never could catch a mouse. We saw him tracking one in the grass one
night. Every time he got ready to spring the infernal bell would
tinkle, and Mike would sit up and moan. It was no use, and Mike
definitely gave up mouse-catching as a steady job--stone-deaf mice being
presumably rare.
His bow and bell, no doubt, made him unpopular with the other Toms. The
decoration was not particularly becoming--he was about as pretty as a
prize-fighter in a rose necklace--but his _confreres_ probably regarded
it as a sign of a vain and uppish disposition. So they used to chasten
him--three or four at a time, we should judge from Mike's mussed
appearance when he came home for breakfast.
His bandy front legs must also have been a handicap at first in these
nocturnal affrays, but he learned how to use them to good effect after a
while--they were probably all right for upper cuts and short hooks from
either side. We noticed that as time went on he used to bring more of
his fur back with him in the morning, and we judged he was working well
up towards the top of his class--welter-weight, we should say. Mike
never got beyond medium size, and he was always rather lean.
His voice, however, was superb. He was the Caruso of the block. His
range was tremendous, with great power and fine quality all the way.
His upper register especially was quite wonderful. There were tenor
notes in Mike's voice on still summer nights that could be heard for six
blocks in all directions. We have no doubt that a greater number of
useful articles, such as boots, hairbrushes, perfume bottles, and
shaving mugs, were thrown at Mike than at any other ten cats in that end
of town.
But he wasn't stuck up about it. He remained the same simple,
unassuming fellow--no professional airs whatever, and always willing to
sing. He loved his art, that's all.
Mike is gone, however. He hasn't turned up for a week, and we write
this article in the hope that if any reader sees a black Tom with a red
bow and a brass bell, the reader will please destroy him in some speedy
and sure way. Poor Mike, we may never look upon his like again--such is
our heartfelt prayer!
The last time we saw Mike was about two a.m.--we had been detained at
the office. As we neared the house, mentally debating whether or not we
would take off our boots downstairs--the last time we did so we
absent-mindedly hung them on the hat-rack--we noticed a nice grey tabby
stepping daintily across the deserted street ahead of us.
It had just occurred to us that this was no hour for a well-brought-up
cat to be strolling around, when we noticed Mike pussy-footing along
about three yards behind--no doubt with some chivalrous intention of
seeing that she got home all right. He was wearing his bell and an
expression of concentrated interest.
And right behind Mike came the biggest and dingiest tomcat we have ever
seen. With a few dabs of paint he would have made a very fair panther;
and he had much the same glare in his eye. It seemed to bode ill for
Mike, and we felt vague stirrings of pity, which a moment's reflection
caused us sternly to repress. We decided to let justice take its
course.
We have never seen Mike since.
[Illustration: DOGS]
*Dogs*
Most men like to represent themselves as being very popular with dogs.
Why any sane, self-respecting man should be proud of having dogs notice
him on the street, is a thing we have never quite been able to
understand. But they are. They seem to take it as a sign of a generous,
sporting nature on their part that dogs should wag a friendly tail at
sight of them.
A similar superstition exists as to babies. It is quite true that it is
sometimes deuced embarrassing for a man to have a baby conceive a sudden
passion for him. But even the victim is proud of it. The onlookers,
especially the parents--oh, God bless us, yes!--regard it as an absolute
certificate of character. They would hardly find it in their hearts to
blame that man if they afterwards heard he was a burglar and a
wife-beater. He might be indiscreet, but still "how Baby took to him!"
Now, personally, we get on pretty well with babies--also with
grandmothers. Up to the age of six and after the age of sixty the girls
seem to love us. Affection for us appears to be a characteristic of
childhood--first or second. It would do your heart good to see the
little dears grab for our watch and bang it on the arm of the chair or
the top of the table, or anything that is handy and hard.
Grandmothers, too, are always very nice to us, and laugh at our
jokes--especially if they are a little off color (the jokes, not the
grandmothers). But girls of sixteen, say, or twenty-six, make it clear
from their manner that they consider us a tiresome old stiff, afflicted
with a pathetic hallucination that we are funny. There is something a
little depressing about this.
As for dogs--well, frankly, we don't get on with them at all. The best
we receive from them is a cold neutrality. Of all the dogs we know not
one has a gosh-darn bit of use for us--except when we are sitting at
their master's dining-table. Then they come and fix us with a
threatening eye and black-mail us out of half our dinner. In fact, we
have a suspicion that nothing but a certain leanness and stringiness in
our lower members prevents them from eating out of our leg.
There is a house, for instance, where we dine almost every--well, as
often as our hostess will let us. We like eating there. The cooking
and the conversation are excellent. Also they don't regard the
wine-cellar as a place to keep the winter's coal and ashes in.
But they have a dog--a big, black, furry dog, with feathers on his legs,
and the ability to sit up and beg for hours at a stretch. He has also
the biggest mouth we have ever seen on a dog of his size. When he opens
it he splits himself apart right down to his hind legs. Some day in a
moment of forgetfulness or excitement he is going to take our right arm
off at the elbow. But still we go on feeding him. We don't dare stop.
In addition to getting most of our beefsteak and our lamb and our veal,
that dog has got our goat. He sits right up beside us and counts every
mouthful we take, looking all the time as if he hoped it would choke us.
If we don't "come across" promptly with what he considers his proper
"rake-off" on our food--the brute regards us as a parasite, anyway--he
howls in fury.
"My dear," says our hostess to our host with characteristic
thoughtfulness, "I think your dog is misbehaving himself--hadn't you
better put him out?"
"Oh, the dog's only a little playful," says our host, eyeing us with the
cold disapproval of a man who has his own opinion of a fellow who would
sit in front of a big plate of roast beef and trimmings and let a poor
dog suffer. "You don't want him put out, do you?" says he to us.
"Not for worlds!" we roar in counterfeit horror at the thought, and
chuck a slab of sirloin into the gap at our elbow--it's as big as a
manhole in the street. After that, whenever we catch this nice little
doggie's eyes, we give him whatever happens to be on our fork, all the
time hoping that he will go out on the street next day and eat a sausage
full of arsenic, or some ptomaine pork.
If we don't catch his eye often enough, he pats us on the arm with a paw
the size of a Virginia ham. He did that once when we were drinking a
cup of coffee, and we poured it over a new pair of striped pants. We
never cared to wear them afterwards--in fact, we didn't care to wear any
at all for several days, until the new skin formed.
Talking of clothes reminds us that we were mistaken when we said no dog
ever loved us. One did--Lord, how that dog worshipped us! He was a
brindle bull belonging to an uncle of ours, who had an undershot jaw,
one ear gone, a broken tail, and a record of seventy-odd murders--that
is, Mutt had, not uncle.
Mutt was in many respects a very tough dog, but he loved us dearly. He
dogged our footsteps, and he dogged us when we sat. In fact, when we
were visiting uncle, which was fairly often--uncle always kept a few
bottles on ice--that darn dog did nothing but dog us. He was the
doggonest dogger we have ever known.
But we had little joy of his affection. We would rather have had him
form a taste for anyone else on earth. We wouldn't have cared if he had
taken up with the niggers down around the barn. In fact, when uncle
wasn't looking, we used to punch him in the face and kick him behind the
ears--even farther behind than that. But he regarded these caresses as
proofs of affection, and would leap upon us and slobber in a riot of
emotion till we were reduced to soggy helplessness.
That was the whole trouble--the slobbering. A friendly bulldog is a
moist beast at best. If he loves you he drools on you, and the more he
loves you the more humid he gets. But this brute was the dankest,
wettest, coziest, sloppiest bulldog that ever drivelled his affection on
a fancy vest. His finer feelings were a perfect swamp. His welcome was
an inundation.
If, in a moment of forgetfulness or exhaustion, we so far relaxed our
vigilance as to sit down, Mutt would waddle up with tears of love in his
eyes and lay his head in our lap. He would gaze at us in worship as
though we were a god or a side of beef, and in two minutes we would be
soaking from the waist down. The trenches in Flanders had nothing on
Mutt for sogginess.
Once, after we had been away for some months, we were visiting uncle,
and were sitting in a nice, deep, easy chair--you know, those chairs
that are so hard to get out of in an emergency. Suddenly the door burst
open and seventy pounds of slobbering enthusiasm hurled itself upon us.
There was no escape. Mutt took us fair in the chest and knocked our
breath and all thoughts of resistance out of us in one agonized grunt.
Before they pulled him off our hair was licked into tufts, our collar
was melted, the colors had run in our new tie, and we were wet to the
skin. We couldn't go home that night for fear of catching double
pneumonia. Mutt was a grand dog in his way, but if he took a fancy to
you, you weren't safe in anything but a bathing suit or a raincoat.
Nearly all our friends have dogs--Airedales mostly. Now we have nothing
against Airedales. They are good enough dogs in their way. It is true
that they are as ugly as a moth-eaten buffalo in a zoo, as boisterous as
Billy Sunday, and as quarrelsome as a female peace-advocate. But they
are good dogs--let it go at that.
There are no less than six Airedales on the staff of the paper we work
on--that is, six dogs more or less definitely recognizable as such. In
fact, if you were to take the whole six of them--one dog's ears and
another's tail and another's legs and another's coat--you would almost
have a real Airedale, which is pretty good going with average Airedales
these days.
One of them got lost the other day. They are always getting lost.
Airedale books and salesmen will tell you that you can't lure an
Airedale away from home. The suggestion is that if you were to invite a
neighbor's Airedale out for a walk he would knock you down and bite a
piece out of your Adam's apple.
Well, all we can say is that every postman or butcher boy or grocer's
man in town is escorted on his rounds by two or three Airedales
belonging to the best families. We even used to know one that came
down-town and spent his days in the back room of a saloon. We saw him
there ourself, but he cut us dead--perhaps because we didn't treat him.
The Staff Airedale that got lost is principally distinguished by the
possession of a thoroughbred tail. So the owner claims, at any rate.
He has frequently called our attention to it, and asked us to note the
correctness of the angle at which it is held. But we could never see
much in a shaggy stub of that sort, no matter how perpendicular. Now,
if it was a nice, long curly tail--but then, of course, it wouldn't be
an Airedale. And this dog was bought for an Airedale, the price being
the principal evidence of pure breeding--that and the tail.
Well, when the dog left home, the owner immediately advertised for his
recovery. Personally, we would have moved at once to another street to
prevent him finding us again. But the owner advertised; and for the
past two or three days we have spent most of our time listening to him
answer enquiries over the 'phone. He is called up every twenty minutes
by someone who has an Airedale which he is sure must be the one wanted.
The thing begins to sound like a conspiracy. Are people trying to work
off a lot of second-hand Airedales--model 1916--for the sake of the
reward? Or do they just want to get rid of their own dogs, and are too
kind-hearted to shoot them? Anyway, this is how it sounds--his office
is near our own:
"Hello!--yes, an Airedale--where did you find him, hey?"
A long pause, during which the person at the other end of the line tries
to prove honesty of character and purity of intention.
"What sort of a tail has he, hey?--is it a good tail?--what do I call a
good tail, hey?--well, a good tail stands up straight with a little bend
in it--oh, about four or five inches long and pretty thick."
Another long pause, while the person at the other end of the line drops
the receiver, goes out to the barn to study the dog's tail, and comes
back to report.
"It isn't standing up now, hey?--well, did it stand up before?--does it
stand up most of the time, hey?"
Usually the answer is favorable. Naturally a man with a dog he doesn't
want speaks as well of its tail as he can. Thereupon our friend seizes
his hat, rushes out of the building for the nearest car line, and comes
back two hours later to expatiate on the crass stupidity of people who
find dogs.
The tail, it seems, is never the perfect tail he is looking for--thick,
shaggy and perpendicular, with a slight bend. Half the time the dogs
are not even Airedales. The last one he went to look at--seven miles
away in the suburban slums--proved to be a Scotch terrier, a
bandy-legged, little black chap.
We told him he ought to have taken it anyway. But he is a persistent
beggar, and he is still answering "ads." He is weakening, however, and
we are laying bets that he will take whatever the next person who
'phones in has to offer--A Persian cat, perhaps, or a Belgian hare.
[Illustration: ON BEING HANDY WITH TOOLS]
*On Being Handy With Tools*
We are not handy with tools. We state this with all solemnity and
knowing full well the nature of an oath. But even if we were handy with
tools we would perjure ourself rather than admit it--we know what that
admission leads to.
We have a brother, dear reader--a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome
fellow, as you might guess, with a very open face. That is the chief
cause of his troubles, his face is so very open. And in his tender youth
he used to open it regularly and widely about the things he could do
with tools.
There was nothing that boy couldn't make or mend. There was no domestic
emergency which he couldn't meet with the appropriate tools--either the
family tools or the neighbors'. Did a tap need a washer? Frank was
right there with a rubber disk in one hand and a monkey-wrench in the
other. Were the electric lights on the blink, or was the gas-stove
doing its best to suffocate the cook? Did the family dog, a descendant
of several shaggy breeds, require a hair-cut or a shampoo? Had the
horse kicked the side out of his stall?--we are not bragging, friend
reader, as you would realize if you had ever seen that ancient charger.
Or was the barn itself in need of a coat of paint? In any and all of
these cases Frank was electrician, gas-fitter, barber, carpenter,
painter, or whatever the circumstances called for.
And what was the result of all these various services so far as he was
concerned personally? Did he get any special consideration because of
them? Was he the favorite child of the family? Did anyone kill even a
lean calf for him, or clothe him in a coat of many colors? Not that the
rest of us ever noticed. About the only way we ever showed any
gratitude or any acknowledgement of his skill and energy was by saving
up jobs for him.
No matter what the emergency might be, no one else ever touched a hammer
or a saw or a paint-brush for fear of breaking in on Frank's personal
preserves and so hurting his feelings--at least, that is the way we put
it. If ever he went out of town for a few days, he had to work nights
and Sundays when he came back, so as to catch up with the chores and odd
jobs. And because he had always done them he went on doing them. He
might grouse about it, but you know how it is once you have established
a family tradition. The laws of the Medes and Persians are nothing to
it for permanence.
All this happened because he was handy with tools and fancied himself as
an amateur mechanic. The boy was clever at it, too, but this is
something one should never admit about one's self. If a job should turn
up to be done around the place and you should be asked if you can do it,
deny it utterly. Say you know not neither do you understand a darn
thing about it. If they ask you again, deny it again. Then if one come
up to you saying, lo, this is a handy man, curse and swear and say that
the only nail thou canst hit with a hammer is that which groweth upon
thy thumb. Even so wilt thou find peace.
You must be eternally watchful, if you would keep yourself clean from
the taint of handiness. There is something balefully fascinating about
tools. They are so shiny and efficient-looking, or so rusty and
inefficient-looking, that one is tempted to try them in either case,
just to see how they work. And they are always lying about within easy
reach--except perchance when you want some particular tool very badly.
Then, if so be you desire a tack-hammer, you will find many gimlets and
screw-drivers and eke a saw or two. But aye verily we say unto you, you
won't know where th'ell the tack-hammer is, but will be obliged to tack
down that bit of linoleum with a sad-iron--perhaps that is what makes
the irons so sad. If, on the other hand, thou shouldst require a gimlet
in thy business, then surely will there be tack-hammers in every drawer,
but the gimlets will have crawled off into a hole somewhere to play with
the young rats.
Even young children are inoculated with the virus of handiness. Little
boys at Christmas-time are presented by silly old uncles--generally
uncles who do not have to live in the same house--with sets of little
tools all nicely arranged in gaudy boxes. Then the little boys, having
bright and enquiring minds, proceed to saw sections out of the
piano-legs and drive nails into mother's Circassian-oak dresser. The
result is usually much pain for the little boys, though not in the parts
of their anatomy which they use for purposes of sawing and hammering.
When we were a little boy, we were even as other little boys in this
respect, though much more beautiful and clever--we state this on the
authority of our maiden aunts. Having been presented by some reckless
relative with a set of tin tools, we went right out to the family shed
and built a nice little house with a real fireplace in it made out of
two or three half-sections of brick. Then we started a fire in it, and
when it got going nicely, we ran off to tell some of the other boys in
the block about it.
There could be no question about that fire. It wasn't a big fire as
fires go nowadays, but it was a lively one. It took two hose-reels and
a chemical engine half an hour to put it out. We don't know what
grandfather told the insurance company, but even over the lapse of years
we distinctly remember what he told us. You see it was grandfather's
shed, and grandfather at that period of our life was acting towards us
_in loco parentis_--certainly there can be no doubt about the amount of
loco which he put into the role of parent on that particular occasion.
Our natural genius for mechanics was nipped in the bud by that
unfortunate occurrence. Ever since we have struggled manfully and--with
a few exceptions--successfully against any inclination to monkey with
tools. Taps have wheezed and leaked in our presence for weeks on end,
but we have carefully ignored them till such time as a plumber or
brother Frank was around. Coal-bins have broken down, but never have we
taken saw and hammer in hand to put them up again. We have sworn off
tools.
It is true that we have sometimes been compelled to run a lawn-mower.
But then a lawn-mower is not properly a tool. It is more in the nature
of a plague, something like typhoid fever or Prohibition.
We have stated that there were two or three exceptions to our abstinence
from tools. Alas, yes, we succumbed to temptation or pressing need, and
the result was in each case deplorable. Worst of all was the little
ladder we constructed so as to reach certain high book-shelves in the
room which the family calls "the study"--probably because no one would
dream of doing such a thing there. It was a pretty little ladder, a bit
of work we were proud of. But it cost us an inheritance--not actual,
you know, but prospective.
We made the ladder out of a couple of pieces of scantling and parts of
an old packing-case. We planed and fitted and nailed it, till it was
goodly to the eye and fairly sound to the feel. Then we painted it an
art-green, and put nice round knobs of leather on the ends that leaned
against the wall. It was really an ornament, the sort of thing that
people years ago used to gild and hang up with pink ribbons. But
unfortunately it was not a very reliable ladder. It would do everything
but ladd, so to speak.