One of Thomas Jefferson’s maxims is as follows: “When angry, count ten
before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred.” I once knew a man to
square his conduct by this rule, with a most gratifying result. Jacob
Scolliver, a man prone to bad temper, one day started across the fields
to visit his father, whom he generously permitted to till a small
corner of the old homestead. He found the old gentleman behind the
barn, bending over a barrel that was canted over at an angle of seventy
degrees, and from which issued a cloud of steam. Scolliver _père_ was
evidently scalding one end of a dead pig—an operation essential to the
loosening of the hair, that the corpse may be plucked and shaven.
“Good morning, father,” said Mr. Scolliver, approaching, and displaying
a long, cheerful smile. “Got a nice roaster there?” The elder
gentleman’s head turned slowly and steadily, as upon a swivel, until
his eyes pointed backward; then he drew his arms out of the barrel, and
finally, revolving his body till it matched his head, he deliberately
mounted upon the supporting block and sat down upon the sharp edge of
the barrel in the hot steam. Then he replied, “Good mornin’ Jacob. Fine
mornin’.”
“A little warm in spots, I should imagine,” returned the son. “Do you
find that a comfortable seat?” “Why-yes-it’s good enough for an old
man,” he answered, in a slightly husky voice, and with an uneasy
gesture of the legs; “don’t make much difference in this life where we
set, if we’re good—does it? This world ain’t heaven, anyhow, I
s’spose.”
“There I do not entirely agree with you,” rejoined the young man,
composing his body upon a stump for a philosophical argument. “I don’t
neither,” added the old one, absently, screwing about on the edge of
the barrel and constructing a painful grimace. There was no argument,
but a silence instead. Suddenly the aged party sprang off that barrel
with exceeding great haste, as of one who has made up his mind to do a
thing and is impatient of delay. The seat of his trousers was steaming
grandly, the barrel upset, and there was a great wash of hot water,
leaving a deposit of spotted pig. In life that pig had belonged to Mr.
Scolliver the younger! Mr. Scolliver the younger was angry, but
remembering Jefferson’s maxim, he rattled off the number ten, finishing
up with “You—thief!” Then perceiving himself _very_ angry, he began all
over again and ran up to one hundred, as a monkey scampers up a ladder.
As the last syllable shot from his lips he planted a dreadful blow
between the old man’s eyes, with a shriek that sounded like—“You son of
a sea-cook!”
Mr. Scolliver the elder went down like a stricken beef, and his son
often afterward explained that if he had not counted a hundred, and so
given himself time to get thoroughly mad, he did not believe he could
ever have licked the old man.