do formed an evil desire for a book on the top shelf. This particular
uncle, be it understood, is regarded as a wealthy old bachelor--though
personally we can't be sure to what extent he is either single or rich.
Anyhow, he always professed a special affection for us personally, on
the curious ground that we were the image of himself at our age--a
reflection which furnished us no pleasure from the point of view of
physical pulchritude, however flattering it might be as a financial
prospect. We were regarded by the family generally as his heir--alas,
that we should have to say we "were" regarded.
Naturally Uncle, seeing this book which he shouldn't have wanted to
read--at his age, too, the old rascal!--seized that infernal ladder and
climbed up. It let him get right up to the top rung, and then it bucked
or shied or kicked or something equally effective. When they got the
splints off Uncle's leg and he was able to move around on crutches, he
sent for his lawyer. Ever since he has regarded us with ill-concealed
dislike. Whenever we see a short ladder from that fateful day to this
we get a curious "gone" feeling under the middle button of our vest.
This is the sort of luck we have had with tools, but, of course, there
are people who have had worse. We have a friend, for instance, who is
an absolute victim to them. He has a fine home and a charming wife, not
to mention the dog. But he is gradually undermining his health and
wrecking his own happiness and theirs by his insane conviction that he
is a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, a cabinet-maker, a plasterer,
and a stone-mason combined. There are three or four other trades as
well, but these will do to go on with.
When he built his house, he had a large room constructed down in the
basement adjoining the boudoir occupied by the furnace and the coal-bin.
It is a really beautiful room, a little low as to the ceiling, perhaps,
and a little dim as to the light. But there is a fine cement floor,
fine big beams in the ceiling, and splendid brick walls in all their
natural beauty of cool grey. It is his workshop. He tries to persuade
his wife that some day it will be the billiard-room. But she, poor
woman, knows better. It is his workshop now and forever, till his last
tool is rusted and his last finger busted and--well, there are "dusted"
and "crusted" left to rhyme with.
He has that place simply jammed with tools of all sorts and work-benches
and the like. He keeps a regular harem of hammers and hatchets and saws
cooped up down there, each in her own little cubicle. Not even the
Sultan himself in all his matrimonial glory was ever half so jealous of
his better halves--perhaps one should say, his better ninety-nine
one-hundredths--as our friend is of these same tools. Why, if he were
to catch anyone cutting with a chisel of his, or planing with a plane
from his seraglio, he would be liable to bowstring the poor tools and
throw them into the Bosphorus, as represented by the sewer or a
neighbor's backyard or some similar abyss of oblivion.
Sunday afternoons and any evening when his wife has company, he
disappears down into this den of hardware, and the noise of hammering
and sawing which emerges from it--the place sounds like a busy shipyard
on the Clyde--indicates that he is having much joy of his chilled-steel
darlings. Every now and then he comes up to have a piece of
court-plaster put on a new place during the temporary absence of
cuticle. Then he goes back with the solemn and determined expression of
a man who at great personal sacrifice is accomplishing a sacred duty.
What does he do down there? Generally speaking, Heaven only knows. We
have heard him talk in vague terms of the new set of storm-windows and
storm-doors he is making for the house. But that was over two years
ago, and there have been some very tidy little storms since then. But
never yet have we seen sash or panel of those doors and windows.
It is true he did make a set of window-boxes for the flowers in the
sun-room--so-called because you can sit in there and look at the
sunlight outside. But even a union carpenter could have made those
boxes in half an hour, and members of the union have never been accused
of undue and ill-considered haste in such matters.
It is when our friend comes up out of the cave, however, to do a job in
the upper regions of the house that things really happen. There was a
tap in the bath-room, rather a nice tap as taps go--a very handsome tap,
in fact. But, in the case of taps, handsome is as handsome pours. And
pouring was one thing this particular tap refused to do--thought it
vulgar, perhaps. So our friend one bright Sunday afternoon--these
things seem always to happen on Sunday--got an idea in his mind and a
big monkey-wrench in his hand, and went up to the bath-room and took a
half-nelson on the handle of that tap. He gave one twist--just one. It
was all that was needed. The tap came away with a jerk, and a solid jet
of water as thick as your wrist took him in the face.
Gurgling yells of agony brought everyone in the house to his assistance.
Naturally we had to be right there among the shock-troops, heedless of
the nice new suit we were wearing for the first time. We dashed in and
found our friend standing in front of the pipe into which he was vainly
endeavoring to stick his thumb--mindful, perhaps, of the famous exploit
of the little hero of Haarlem. We succeeded in prying him away, but our
new suit never looked the same again. If we had had any sense we would
have left him there till he was washed away. The trouble was that no
one else knew where to shut off the water, and--well, we simply had to
drag him away to do it.
The next day a battalion of plumbers, plasterers, and decorators did
what they could to repair the damage to the house. It took them about a
week. But our friend is still hopeful. He still thinks he is a
mechanical genius wasted as a mere lawyer. Only the other morning we
dropped into his office. He was laboriously trying to make a piece of
black court-plaster about the size of a war-map stick to the back of one
hand by holding it down with the bandaged thumb of the other. There was
a lump on his forehead and one of his cheeks was badly scratched. But
he was in excellent spirits.
"Tell you what, old man," he burbled in his enthusiasm, "there's nothing
like being able to do the odd-jobs around the house. Why, only last
night I went down into my workshop, and I----"
We wiped away a furtive tear. There is something very pathetic about a
fine mind falling into such decay as this.
[Illustration: BUMPS AND A BROGUE]
*Bumps and a Brogue*
As we were combing our hair somewhat hurriedly in our boudoir at 8.58
the other morning--we are supposed to be down at the office at nine--it
was suddenly borne in upon us that we had a remarkable set of bumps on
our head. We made this discovery by the simple and painful process of
running into several of them with a large, sharp comb. We thereupon
decided that a set of protuberances like ours should be measured at once
by a competent phrenologist.
We had seen the Professor's notices in the "want-ad" departments of the
local dailies; and our attention had been drawn to them by their
diagrams of extraordinarily bumpy heads, and the peculiar line of
language in which the Professor advanced his modest claims to be
regarded as a benefactor of the human race and one of the greatest
phrenologists of all time. Besides, the Professor's
protuberance-parlors were on our way down to the office. They have a
central location, so that phrenological patients can run in every now
and then and have a new bump examined, we presume.
We read the handsome and dignified brass plate on the door, and we
knocked a respectful knock. After two or three minutes of waiting we
knocked again--less respectfully. After we had knocked several more
times, with constantly diminishing respect and constantly increasing
force, the door was opened by a blond and comely young woman who
explained that the Professor's hours were from three to five in the
afternoon, and from seven to eight in the evening--to accommodate people
who might drop in on their way to the theatre, no doubt. Did we want a
chart as well as a reading?
"How much does the Professor set one back for a chart?" we inquired, as
we toyed with the forty cents left out of our weekly envelope of the
Saturday before. Two dollars for a reading and five dollars for a
chart.
We stated firmly that we would have two dollars' worth, and that we
would come for it at three o'clock in the afternoon. We were going to
see this thing through if we had to hock something. As we bowed our
adieu smilingly, the young lady pressed upon us one of the Professor's
cards, in which we were advised to "get my new great chart and be
helped--as many also numerous worried, etc., have--for life." On the
back of the card there was more of the Prof's best phrenological
English, which promised among much else that "marriage adaptions" would
be explained. Immediately we resolved that we would see him that very
day or expire in the effort.
We got there at three. The same blond and comely young woman let us in.
Would we take off our hat and coat and sit in the parlor till the
Professor got through examining the bumps on someone else's cranial
arch? We would and we did. We sat down by a table on which there was a
pile of calling cards--presumably left by grateful persons whose
protuberances had been explained--and also a bound copy of the
Professor's famous chart. We opened it and glanced through a few long
passages on amativeness and combativeness and philoprogenitiveness and
other polysyllabic characteristics, as indicated by convexities on the
skull.
While we read there floated down to us from the mysterious regions above
a rich Hibernian voice and the most superb brogue we had heard in many a
long day. It was one of those thick, mashed-potatoes-and-buttermilk
brogues which usually go with a semi-circular rim of reddish whiskers
and a prehensile upper lip. We dropped the book and listened. We
didn't pay any particular attention to what was being said--far be it
from us to display an ungentlemanly curiosity as to the meaning of
anyone else's bumps! We just listened to the voice. It made us think of
St. Patrick ordering the snakes out of Ireland.
The voice came downstairs and accompanied someone to the front door.
"Goodboy and good luck to yez both," said the voice--perhaps some
cautious young man was having his fiancee's head studied--and then we
were told that the Professor awaited us in his sanctum. We hastened out
just in time to see a pair of short, thick legs scurrying upstairs ahead
of us. We joined them in a neat little office at the top--where legs
are usually joined--and found that they and the voice belonged to the
Professor, in whose hands we had come prepared to place our head and a
two-dollar bill.
The Professor looked us over, and we in turn gazed at him with the
respectful and somewhat timid interest due to his professional insight
into human character and destiny. But we must confess to a distinct
disappointment. We had expected to see a large and impressive
personage, with the face of a seer, piercing eyes, flowing locks--also a
flowing robe, covered with cabalistic signs. We had expected him to be
a sort of cross between a medicine man and an ancient alchemist.
Instead we saw a round-faced, plump little Irishman, with close-cropped
hair, a bristling mustache, and a decided leaning towards rotundity in
the abdominal profile.
"Well, young man, and what can Oi do for ye?" asked the Professor, as
though we might have come to get a tooth filled, or be measured for a
new pair of pants.
We explained that we had come to have our head read, with a view to
finding out what business in life we were best fitted for, and also to
have our "marriage adaption" explained.
Without a word the Professor sat us in a chair in the middle of the
room. Still without a word he seized a pair of callipers that were
unpleasantly suggestive of ice-tongs. Then in ominous silence he
proceeded to pick up our head by the ends, by the sides, by the front,
by the back, under the ears, and in several other painful places where
heads are not usually picked up. We felt as though our head were a
block of ice, which was being carried up several long flights of stairs.
And each time the Professor seized it in the tongs, he carefully
scrutinized the scale at the top of them. Some measurements he took
several times, either to verify them, or to make it plain that he was
working hard on our case.
Having finished with the callipers, he drew out a tape and measured our
head in more ways than we had ever thought possible--around the rim,
over the dome, back of the ears, till we must have resembled a new
real-estate sub-division. Only he didn't drive in any stakes. Finally
he tilted our head back as far as it would go, and very solemnly
measured us over the eyes to the point of the jaw on each side. This he
did four or five times, gazing sternly at the tape each time like a
judge warning a backward witness.
Then he gave us the third round. He grasped our head firmly in his
hands, and pressed our various bumps with fingers that seemed to be
about the size and shape of chocolate-eclairs. But they were not soft.
On the contrary, they were very hard indeed. Just when we felt sure
that our last bump had given way under the pressure, he rocked our head
violently from side to side, backwards and forwards. Reducing us to a
momentary condition of coma by gouging his thumbs into us at that
sensitive point where one's spinal column joins one's cerebellum--or is
it one's medulla oblongata?--he seized us by the hands, each in turn,
wobbled our wrists, twisted our fingers, and finally did his best to
remove our thumbs completely. This, we believe, is what alienists call
the "thumb test."
The Professor sat down. All this time he had preserved an absolute and
ominous silence. Now he gazed at us with melancholy interest, and we
nerved ourself to hear the worst. Immediately he plunged into an abyss
of statistics. We can recall only a few of them, and probably these few
are not altogether correct. We never were much good at arithmetic.
Besides, the Professor reeled them off at breathless speed.
"The average head is twinty-wan to twinty-wan and a half inches in
circumference," he roared in a voice that would easily carry a block in
all directions, "and your head is twinty-three and a half. Over the
dome the average head is twilve to twilve and a half inches; yours is
fourteen. In len'th the average head is siven to siven and a half
inches; yours is eight and a half. And your head is six and
three-quarter inches woide, while the average is only foive and a half."
We asked if he had any objections to our jotting down a few of those
figures. He had.
"Niver you mind, niver you mind," said the Professor impatiently, waving
our question aside, "ye don't need them. You listen to me and to what
Oi'm tellin' ye. It doesn't matter if ye forgit thim misurements. But
here is wan Oi don't want ye to forgit. This is the most important of
thim all. Oi misured ye over the oiyes to the temporo-mandible j'int.
Well, the average woman misures there from tin and a half to ilivin
inches; and the average man from ilivin to ilivin and a half. And many
a foine, dacent, respectable man comes in to me that doesn't misure over
tin and a half. But you, me young man, you misure twilve and wan-eighth
inches."
The Professor leaned back to let it soak in. We gasped in delighted
amazement. What do you know about that?--"twilve and wan-eighth" inches
to our temporo-mandibles! Nothing cheap about our mandibles, eh, what?
"Av coorse," said the Professor deprecatingly, "Napoleon misured
fourteen inches; the Duke of Wellington misured thirteen; and Timothy
Eaton--gawd rest his soul!--misured twilve and three-quarters."
We were out-classed! There could be no doubt of it. But then who are
we that we should compete with the great immortals, with Bonaparte and
the Iron Duke and the founder of a department-store? Besides, we were
in good company with our "twilve and wan-eighth." So we plucked up
heart of grace and listened cheerfully to the Professor as he continued.
"You have a foine head," said he, "one of the foinest that has come to
me in a year or more. But it's a head that requoires special attintion.
In fact, it requoires moy thurd course, which is tin dollars. Me terms
is always the same. There is no change and no reduction. It is two
dollars for a plain readin', foive dollars for a chart, and foive
dollars extry for me thurd course of special attintion and secret
advoice. Just that, tin dollars, no more and no less!"
The Professor said it with great solemnity and impressive slowness,
especially the last phrase, presumably with a view to forestalling any
endeavor on our part to obtain this wonderful "thurd" course for nine
dollars and a half or eight-ninety-eight. We dismissed the whole
subject, and asked him what calling in life we seemed best fitted
for--if any.
"Oi'm comin' to that, Oi'm comin' to it," said the Professor in a very
testy tone of voice. "But furst Oi want ye to understand the advantages
of havin' a chart. No man can possibly remimber all the things Oi'm
goin' to tell ye, and it is quoite essintial ye should have a chart. It
will be worth thousands to ye."
Suddenly we saw the reason why he had been so very peremptory in his
refusal to let us take notes. He wanted to reduce us to helpless
amazement by the flow of his statistics. We were amazed all right, but
still firm in our resolve to spend no more than two dollars--it was all
we had been able to raise at the office.
The Professor returned to that magnificent head of ours, intimating that
it stood out like the rock of Gibraltar from amid the ordinary run of
heads that came to him for inspection. But this did not make us so
conceited as the reader might imagine. It occurred to us that the
average head that comes to a phrenologist may be rather small and thick,
possessors of such heads having naturally most reason to wonder what
they are fitted for in life.
"You have a big head," said the Professor, "a head quoite large enough
for almost anny purpose known to man. And it is a well-shaped head.
Some heads that have a big dome have a depression in the top. But
you've a ridge on yer skull that ye could balance a lead pencil on. That
shows great stren'th of character. But you have one fault. On either
soide of that ridge, where the bumps of hope ought to be, you've a
hollow. Ye lack confidence in yerself. Y're nervous and diffident. And
that is where moy chart would be worth untold wealth to ye. It would
show ye how to develop yer hopefulness, and also yer chest--the chest
havin' a great deal to do with yer hopefulness. Whoy, with a head loike
yours ye could do almost annythin'!"
Instinctively, we sat very erect, feeling that the Professor was about
to enter on a list of the splendid careers from which we had only to
choose. We were confident that he was about to proclaim the magnificent
position we would one day occupy in the literary hall of fame. After
what he had said about our peerless set of protuberances, we felt that
no forecast could be too rosy. So we straightened up in eager
expectation.
"With a head loike yours," said the Professor in his loudest and most
impressive tone, "ye'd have no difficulty in takin' a very liberal
eddication if ye'd only lay yer moind to it. Ye moight roise to be a
bookkeeper or a commercial thraveller. Ye moight even become a lawyer or
a doctor or a professional man, if ye only had confidence in yerself.
Ye could be a foine piano-player and an iligant parlor singer. Ye could
also be a fluent and graceful public speaker. Ye have a good deal of
real-estate ability and consid'rable speculatin' capacity and quoite a
bit of organizin' talent. Ye could be a furst-rate draughtsman; and ye
have a genius for inventin'. In fact, ye could be almost annythin' ye
made up yer moind to be--and there ye are!"
Yes, there we were! We could take a "liberal eddication," if only--and
all the time a big parchment with a huge red seal lay carefully rolled
up in our trunk as evidence of our scholastic attainments! It is the
only evidence we possess. We could "roise" to be a book-keeper or a
commercial "thraveller"--but never a word to the effect that we might
some day be able to write or might ever aspire to journalistic eminence.
Not that the Professor was necessarily so far astray at that. He may
have been quite right. We admit it humbly. But it was a sad blow to
have such a commonplace future outlined for us, after the way he had
raised our hopes. And real-estate ability!--it sounded like an attack
on our moral character.
"Moreover, ye could become a foine boxer," he continued, "or a beautiful
fencer. Ye have such soople movements. Ye could learn to fence in half
the toime it takes an ordinary man. And a useful thing it is, too.
Suppose ye were attacked on the street, fer instance."
All we would have to do in such a case, we presume, would be to draw our
flashing rapier, throw ourself on guard, and "have at you, varlets!" Or
perhaps the Professor intended that we should do this with our
walking-stick or rolled up umbrella. Somehow the idea did not appeal
much to us--spitting a man with your umbrella musses it up so
dreadfully.
A bright idea suddenly occurred to us to relieve our deep dejection.
Our "marriage adaptions" still remained to be explained. Timidly we
broached the subject, for ours is a tender and shrinking nature, and we
are not in the habit of speaking out in meeting about our dearest hopes.
Our voice sank to a whisper as we asked if he thought we ought to get
married.
"Would Oi advoise ye to git marrud?" roared the Professor, possibly for
the benefit of some new patients who were just being let in--he had
stopped to listen to the door-bell a few moments previously. "Av coorse
Oi would. There are physiol'gical reasons for it. Ye know what they
say, don't ye?"
Here the Professor smiled and winked in a distinctly doggish manner. We
felt that he was about to say something decidedly improper in connection
with those same "physiol'gical" reasons. We blushed violently.
"Ye know, they say that single min go insane much oftener than marrud
min. And it is explained on physiol'gical grounds. Take the Turks, fer
instance. Look at the foine, upstandin', healthy min they are, with
their harems and their Circassian slaves and all the rist of it. And Oi
remimber when Oi was in the heart of Africa forty years ago...."
"What part of Africa were you in?" we asked, expecting to be told that
he had acted as a guide for David Livingstone.
"Oi was at Cape Town--no, no, Oi was two thousand moiles north of Cape
Town, up in a country they call Nay-tawl. The whole district was filled
with magnificent fellas, great, big, deep-chested, two-fisted,
up-standin' six-footers, ivry wan of thim with their six or sivin
woives--and divil a bit of immorality in the whole country!"
Under the circumstances we could easily believe in the high moral status
of the inhabitants of Natal. But we didn't see how it helped our own
particular case. Whatever may be our personal opinions on the subject
of polygamy, police magistrates have been known to cherish prejudices
against people who carry "physiol'gy" as far as that.
Then the Professor went back to his chart. He dragged one out of a
drawer and insisted that we should gaze upon the picture of a hairless
gentleman with his head neatly divided into choice building lots, each
containing a little sketch suggestive of the characteristic represented
by a bump at that point. For instance, in the section allotted to
"amativeness"--lovely word!--there was a picture of a young man and
young woman kissing. In the section labelled "combativeness" two
prize-fighters faced one another; while in the "love of home" department
a gentleman sat under a large stump and gazed wistfully at a barn in the
distance.
We still refused to be won over, even by these allurements of graphic
art. Thereupon the Professor read out several extracts of a nature to
help us in the development of hopefulness and our chest.
"Ye must practice self-confidence and hopefulness," said he. "That's
the only way ye can develop yer faculty of hope. And the chart shows ye
how ye can do it."