HE IS DOOMED FOR WORSE ACCIDENTS.
It may seem strange for you to hear of me again, after the conclusion
of the last chapter of my blunders. But it was not I who made the last
blunder--it was the druggist. Quite by mistake the imbecile who waited
upon me put up four ounces of the aromatic syrup of rhubarb. I felt
myself gradually sinking into the death-sleep after I had taken it;
with the thought of Belle uppermost in my mind, I allowed myself to
sink--"no more catastrophes after this last and grandest one--no more
red faces--big mouth--tea-napkins--wonder--if she--will be--sorry!"
and I became unconscious.
I was awakened from a comfortable slumber by loud screams; mother
stood by my bed, with the vial labeled "laudanum" in one hand, my
letter in the other. Father rushed into the room.
"Father, John's committed suicide. Oh! bring the tartar-emetic quick!
Make some coffee as strong as lye! Oh! send for a stomach-pump. Tell
Mary to bring the things and put the coffee on; and you come here, an'
we'll walk him up and down--keep him a-going--that's his only
salvation! Oh! John, John! that ever your bashfulness should drive you
into this! Up with him, father! Oh! he's dying! He ain't able to help
himself one bit!"
They dragged me off the bed, and marched me up and down the room.
Supposing, as a matter of course, that I ought to be expiring, I felt
that I was expiring. My knees tottered under me; they only hauled me
around the more violently. They forced a spoonful of tartar-emetic
down my throat; Mary, the servant-girl, poured a quart of black coffee
down me, half outside and half in; then they jerked me about the floor
again, as if we were dancing a Virginia reel.
The doctor came and poked a long rubber tube down and converted me
into a patent pump, until the tartar-emetic, and the coffee, and the
pumpkin-pie I had eaten for dinner had all revisited this mundane
sphere.
They had no mercy on me; I promenaded up and down and across with
father, with Mary, with the doctor, until I felt that I should die if
they didn't allow me to stop promenading.
The worst of it was, the house was full of folks; they crowded about
the chamber door and looked at me, dancing up and down with the hired
girl and the doctor.
"Shut the door--they shall _not_ look at me!" I gasped, at last. The
doctor felt my pulse and said proudly to my mother:
"Madam, your son will live! Our skill and vigilance have saved him."
"Bless you, doctor!" sobbed my parents.
"I will _not_ live," I moaned, "to be the laughing stock of
Babbletown. I will buy some more."
"John," said my father, weeping, "arouse yourself! You shall leave
this place, if you desire it--only live! I will get you the position
of weather-gauger on top of Mount Washington, if you say so, but don't
commit any more suicide, my son!"
I was affected, and promised that I wouldn't, provided that I was
found a situation somewhere by myself. So the excitement subsided.
Father slept with me that night, keeping one eye open; the doctor got
the credit of saving my life, and the girls of Babbletown were scared
out of laughing at me for a whole month.
When we came to talk the matter over seriously--father and I--it was
found to be too late in the season to procure me the Mount Washington
appointment for the winter; besides, the effect of my attempt to
"shuffle off this mortal coil" was to literally overrun our store with
customers. People came from the country for fifteen miles around, in
ox teams, on horse-back, in sleighs and cutters, and bob-sleds, and
crockery-crates, to buy something, in hopes of getting a glimpse of
the bashful young man who swallowed the pizen. Now, father was too
cute a Yankee not to take advantage of the mob. He forgot his
promises, and made me stay in the store from morning till night, so
that women could say: "I bought this 'ere shirting from the young man
who committed suicide; he did it up with his own hands."
"I'll give you a fair share o' the profits, John," father would say,
slyly.
Well, things went on as it greased; the girls mostly stayed away--the
Babbletown girls, for they had guilty consciences, I suspect; and in
February there came a thaw. I stood looking out of the store window
one day; the snow had melted in the street, and right over the stones
that had been laid across the road for a walk, there was a great
puddle of muddy water about two yards wide and a foot deep. I soon saw
Hetty Slocum tripping across the street; she came to the puddle and
stood still; the soft slush was heaped up on either side--she couldn't
get around and she couldn't go through. My natural gallantry got the
better of my resentment, and I went out to help her over,
notwithstanding what she had said when I was under the counter.
Planting one foot firmly in the center of the puddle and bracing the
other against the curb-stone, I extended my hand.
"If you're good at jumping, Miss Slocum," said I, "I'll land you
safely on this side."
"Oh," said she, roguishly, "Mr. Flutter, can I trust you?" and she
reached out her little gloved hand.
All my old embarrassment rushed over me. I became nervous at the
critical moment when I should have been cool. I never could tell just
how it happened--whether her glove was slippery, or my foot slipped on
a piece of ice under slush, or what--but the next moment we were both
of us sitting down in fourteen inches of very cold, very muddy water.
[Illustration: THE NEXT MOMENT WE WERE BOTH OF US SITTING DOWN IN
FOURTEEN INCHES OF VERY COLD, VERY MUDDY WATER.]
My best beaver hat flew off and was run over by a passing sled, while
a little dog ran away with Hetty's seal-skin muff.
I floundered around in that puddle for about two minutes, and then I
got up. Hetty still sat there. She was white, she was so mad.
"I might a known better," said she. "Let me alone. I'd sit here
forever, before I'd let _you_ help me up."
The boys were coming home from school, and they began to hoot and
laugh. I ran after the little dog who was making off with the muff.
How Hetty got up, or who came to her rescue I don't know. That cur
belonged about four miles out of town, and he never let up until he
got home.
I grabbed the muff just as he was disappearing under the house with
it, and then I walked slowly back. The people who didn't know me took
me for an escaped convict--I was water-soaked and muddy, hatless, and
had a sneaking expression, like that of a convicted horse-thief. Two
or three persons attempted to arrest me. Finally, two stout farmers
succeeded, and brought me into the village in triumph, and marched me
between them to the jail.
"Why, what's Mr. Flutter been doin'?" asked the sheriff, coming out to
meet us.
"Do you mean to say you know him?" inquired one of the men.
"Yes, I know him. That's our esteemed fellow-citizen, young Flutter."
"And he ain't no horse-thief nor nuthin'!"
"Not a bit of it, I assure you."
The man eyed me from head to foot, critically and contemptuously.
"Then all I've got to say," he remarked slowly, "is this--appearances
is very deceptive."
It was getting dusk by this time, and I was thankful for it.
"I slipped down in a mud-puddle and lost my hat," I explained to the
sheriff, as I turned away, and had the satisfaction of hearing the
other one of my arresters say, behind my back:
"Oh, drunk!"
I hired a little boy, for five cents, to deliver Miss Slocum's muff at
her residence. Then I went into the house by the kitchen, bribed Mary
to clean my soiled pants without telling mother, slipped up-stairs,
and went to bed without my supper.
The next day I bought a handsome seven-dollar ring, and sent it to
Hetty as some compensation for the damage done to her dress.
That evening was singing-school evening. I went early, so as to get my
seat without attracting attention. Early as I was, I was not the
first. A group of young people was gathered about the great
black-board, on which the master illustrated his lessons. They were
having lots of fun, and did not notice me as I came in. I stole
quietly to a seat behind a pillar. Fred Hencoop was drawing something
on the board, and explaining it. As he drew back and pointed with the
long stick, I saw a splendid caricature of myself pursuing a small
dog with a muff, while a young lady sat quietly in a mud-puddle in the
corner of the black-board, and Fred was saying, with intense gravity:
"This is the man, all tattered and torn, that spattered the maiden all
forlorn. _This_ is the dog that stole the muff. _This_ is the ring he
sent the maid--"
"Muff-in ring," suggested some one, and then they laughed louder than
ever.
I felt that that singing-school was no place for me that evening, and
I stole away as noiselessly as I had entered.
I went home and packed my trunk. The next morning I said to father:
"Give me my share of the profits for the last month," and he gave me
one hundred and thirty dollars. "I am going where no one knows me,
mother, so good-bye. You'll hear from me when I'm settled," and I was
actually off on the nine o'clock New York express.
Every seat was full in every car but one--one seat beside a pretty,
fashionably-dressed young lady was vacant. I stood up against the
wood-box and looked at that seat, as a boy looks at a jar of
peppermint-drops in a candy-store window. After a while I reflected
that these people were all strangers, and, of course, unaware of my
infirmity; this gave me a certain degree of courage. I left the
support of the wood-box and made my way along the aisle until I came
to the vacant seat.
"Miss," I began, politely, but the lady purposely looked the other
way; she had her bag in the place where I wanted to sit, and she
didn't mean to move it, if she could help it. "Miss," I said again, in
a louder tone.
Two or three people looked at us. That confused me; her refusing to
look around confused me; one of my old bad spells began to come on.
"Miss," I whispered, leaning toward her, blushing and embarrassed, "I
would like to know if you are engaged--if--if you are taken, I mean?"
She looked at me then sharp enough.
"Yes, sir, I _am_," she said calmly; "and going to be married next
week."
The passengers began to laugh, and I began to back out. I didn't stop
at the wood-box, but retreated into the next car, where I stood until
my legs ached, and then sat down by an ancient lady, with a long nose,
blue spectacles, and a green veil.