THE PAMMERRAMMER.
"Auntie, what do you think a couple of standing up collars would cost?"
"A standing up collar, Charles Pitt! What do you want that for?"
"Why, we have a pammerrammer to-morrow, and I am the one to 'splain it;
that is, me or the governor."
"He is gettin' to be a man!" thought Aunt Stanshy in sorrow. "A
pammerrammer!" she inquired. "I most get into that. Do you have
spectators?"
"O, yes. It is only a cent a ticket, and that will get you a reserved
seat."
"Then I must take a reserved seat."
Aunt Stanshy told the boys she would come whenever they notified her that
the pammerrammer was ready. A lively shout of announcement soon came from
half a dozen heralds up in the barn window, and Aunt Stanshy dropped her
sewing.
"All ready, aunty! Come now," shouted Charlie.
Aunt Stanshy quickened her steps into a run.
"There goes Stanshy," said Simes Badger, watching her from Silas
Trefethen's grocery. "Runnin' t' a fire, I guess. She only needs an engine
behind her t' make the thing complete."
Flying through the yard, Aunt Stanshy rushed up the barn chamber stairs.
Passing the "sentinel" with the powerful aid of a cent, she looked around
upon the chamber. In its center there was a stout wooden post, and between
this post and a closet, at one end of the chamber, there had been
suspended a dirty, ragged sheet, which the governor's aunt had taken from
the attic and given to the club. Across this sheet stretched a panoramic
strip of paper which Aunt Stanshy at once recognized as Charlie's
handiwork. It took two boys, Sid and Wort, to stand at the two ends of the
curtain and manage the "pammerrammer." As Sid unrolled the glorious
succession of artistic beauties that Charlie had sketched, Wort at the
other end pulled them along and rolled them up. In front of the curtain
was ranged a plank. A carpenter's bench that bordered a wall of the barn
supported one end of the plank, and a barrel the other end. This elevated
roost was denominated "reserved seats," and all cent admissions secured
"one of the most eligible chances in the Hall," so Sid declared. There was
a string of sweet little beauties on the bench, girls from the
neighborhood, and among them was little May Waters, her face one of
wonderful vivacity, a kind of panorama in itself, where the most varied
emotions chased one another in rapid succession. Aunt Stanshy found a sled
to sit on, and the performance began. Gov. Grimes wished to try his hand
first at explaining the pictures. He began, grandiloquently,
"This--this--is a building, no, Faneuil Hall. The next is a picture of a
ship. That is a--"
"Don't roll her so tight, Wort," whispered a voice behind the curtain.
"Monkey!" said the governor, finishing his sentence, but unfortunately
chancing to look toward that sensitive soul, Pip Peckham.
"I aint," said Pip.
"Who said you was?" inquired Wort.
"You!" charged Pip, turning to the governor.
"I didn't."
"You looked at me."
"Silence in the audience!" shrieked Sid to the now jolly spectators.
"You've got your end all twisted up, Wort," said the governor.
"O dear!" groaned the president.
The straightening out of the last difficulty was effected after a while,
and Gov. Grimes began again: "Here are some big, black dogs in a
melon-patch."
"Bears, bears!" eagerly whispered Charlie, alarmed for the reputation of a
club that could not tell the difference between dogs and bears.
"Well, bears, then," said the governor petulantly, "and I aint going to be
it any more."
The discomfited lecturer insisted on resigning, and Charlie took the
floor. He knew his old and beloved "pammerrammer" by heart, and he began
promptly where the governor left off.
"Here are some bears in a melon-patch. There's a picture of Westminster
Abbey, and here's a boy lifting a girl over a fence, and here's a flag
from Europe, and here's one from some part of Asia or some other place."
In the midst of Charlie's glib description there was a crash. The plank,
_alias_ the reserved seats, did not have a firm support. Its weakness had
been noticed, but not remedied.
"Who's the one to fix the bench?" inquired Sid.
"The governor," replied Wort.
But the governor was not one who believed in Aunt Stanshy's motto, "Do
to-day's things to-day." She was trying to impress it on Charlie, but she
could not be expected to stamp every mind in the club with the necessity
of the injunction.
"One boy is enough for me," she would say.
The plank had remained firm as long as it could, but several wriggling
children were too much even for the patience of a plank, and--down it
went! Little May Waters dropped at the feet of Charlie as he was busily
"'splaining." He gallantly picked her up and tried to comfort her, and
various members of the club rushed to the rescue of other ladies. It was
concluded now to adjourn the "pammerrammer."
"Man down in the yard!" called out Wort, who was "sentinel" when he had
nothing else to do. Wort looked over the edge of the window-sill. About
all he could see was an old hat, and a very bad hat at that.
"Let's sprinkle him! We can say we only saw a hat," and immediately
scraping up with his foot a quantity of hay-seed, he liberally sprinkled
the seedy hat. It was like unto like.
"Now look here," said Sid, "that was mean. If your father wore an old hat,
how would you like to have a feller sprinkle hay-seed on it?"
Sid had a good deal of the gentleman about him.
"There he comes! There he comes! Put!" said Wort. A foot-step could be
plainly heard on the stairs, and Wort started for the closet, again
saying, "Put!"
"I am not going to run," said the governor, with his usual resoluteness.
"Nor I," said Sid.
"Nor I," said Charlie.
"Nor I," said Billy.
Others declared the same. They all stood their ground, or floor, rather.
The noise on the stairs was continued, and soon a seed-strewn hat appeared
in sight, and then a big head of hair, and then a man's body. The boys
clustered closely together, and when the man turned toward them, they saw
that the roughly-dressed man had a roughly featured face, but its
expression was kindly.
"He will eat uth up," whispered Pip, trying to get behind Billy Grimes.
The stranger was not a cannibal though. He took off his hat, shook it, and
said, "If that was an accident, it's all right. If any one did it, meaning
to do it, was it just the thing?"
The boys felt the appeal and shook their heads.
"We don't justify it, and I'm the president," said Sid, with a look of
importance, "and no one of us that you see did it."
"I hope not. Sometimes folks are not lucky, and if any of your fathers
went trampin' round and couldn't get work, you wouldn't like to have any
body throw hay-seed on him."
"No, that's so," said Charlie. "It's too bad!"
The man turned to go down stairs.
"I--I guess my aunt could give you a job. She wanted somebody this morning
to saw her wood."
"Did she? Where is she?"
"I'll show you," and Charlie's obliging drumsticks followed the man down
stairs. Then he went into the kitchen and made an appeal for the stranger.
"Well, I'll give him the job," replied Aunt Stanshy.
In a minute more the man was at the wood-pile driving Aunt Stanshy's saw
rapidly through a stick of pine.
The club had been looking out of the window while Charlie interceded for
the man. When he joined his clubmates some one exclaimed, "What's that?"
It was a noise from the closet into which Wort had plunged, or, rather, a
noise that started there, for it was continued down into the story below,
even as the noise of a rushing snow-slide along a roof begins at the
ridgepole, but ends on the ground beneath the eaves.
"It's Wort!" said Charlie, excitedly. "O dear! he's gone."
"Gone where?" inquired Sid. "Into the bowels of the earth?"
Charlie's answer was to rush down stairs, followed by the club in a very
hasty and undignified way. There, at the end of a long spout that
terminated eight inches from the floor, was a couple of good-sized legs
squirming to get out. Then Wort's voice was heard, coming from the
interior of the box, "Let me out! Let me out!"
"Can't you _get_ out?" asked the governor.
"No, no! Let me out! Let me out--quick!"
It was even so. Wort must be _let_ out.
"O, Aunt Stanshy, Wort--Wort--is in the fodder-box, and can't get out!"
shrieked Charlie at the open kitchen window.
"What under the sun--" And, without a word more, Aunt Stanshy left the
clothes she was washing and rushed into the yard.
"Come here, mister, and bring your saw," she said to the man at the
wood-pile, "and, Charlie, bring a hammer from the nail-box on the
entry-shelf!"
The man at the wood-pile rushed after Aunt Stanshy, saw in hand, while
Charlie hurriedly brought the hammer.
"Now saw into that box and knock away with the hammer, mister. You see,
Silas Trefethen wanted to hire my barn last winter, and thought he would
put in what he called a fodder-box running down from the closet above to
this floor, and then intended to knock the closet away when he had carried
the box down here, thinking he might save some steps that way, but he was
taken sick and the closet was left there; and that closet floor, I
suppose, wasn't left just right."
Aunt Stanshy was talking while the man was sawing and hammering away. He
plied his tools vigorously, and soon let Wort out into the full light of
day once more. The boys shouted and laughed also as Wort wriggled forward
into liberty. He looked up, but seeing that his liberator was the man he
had seeded, he dropped his head, and, refusing to look again, slunk away
with an air that indicated a strong desire to find another box where he
could shut himself up for the present.
The man concluded who his enemy was, and he said, "I guess we are even
now."