I haven't been able to write anything for some time. I don't mean that
there has been anything the matter with my fingers so that I couldn't
hold a pen, but I haven't had the heart to write of my troubles.
Besides, I have been locked up for a whole week in the spare bedroom on
bread and water, and just a little hash or something like that, except
when Sue used to smuggle in cake and pie and such things, and I haven't
had any penanink. I was going to write a novel while I was locked up by
pricking my finger and writing in blood with a pin on my shirt; but you
can't write hardly anything that way, and I don't believe all those
stories of conspirators who wrote dreadful promises to do all sorts of
things in their blood. Before I could write two little words my finger
stopped bleeding, and I wasn't going to keep on pricking myself every
few minutes; besides, it won't do to use all your blood up that way.
There was once a boy who cut himself awful in the leg with a knife, and
he bled to death for five or six hours, and when he got through he
wasn't any thicker than a newspaper, and rattled when his friends picked
him up just like the morning paper does when father turns it inside out.
Mr. Travers told me about him, and said this was a warning against
bleeding to death.
Of course you'll say I must have been doing something dreadfully wrong,
but I don't think I have; and even if I had, I'll leave it to anybody if
Aunt Eliza isn't enough to provoke a whole company of saints. The truth
is, I got into trouble this time just through obeying promptly as soon
as I was spoken to. I'd like to know if that was anything wrong. Oh, I'm
not a bit sulky, and I am always ready to admit I've done wrong when I
really have; but this time I tried to do my very best and obey my dear
mother promptly, and the consequence was that I was shut up for a week,
besides other things too painful to mention. This world is a fleeting
show, as our minister says, and I sometimes feel that it isn't worth the
price of admission.
Aunt Eliza is one of those women that always know everything, and know
that nobody else knows anything, particularly us men. She was visiting
us, and finding fault with everybody, and constantly saying that men
were a nuisance in a house and why didn't mother make father mend chairs
and whitewash the ceiling and what do you let that great lazy boy waste
all his time for? There was a little spot in the roof where it leaked
when it rained, and Aunt Eliza said to father, "Why don't you have
energy enough to get up on the roof and see where that leak is I would
if I was a man thank goodness I ain't." So father said, "You'd better do
it yourself, Eliza." And she said, "I will this very day."
So after breakfast Aunt Eliza asked me to show her where the scuttle
was. We always kept it open for fresh air, except when it rained, and
she crawled up through it and got on the roof. Just then mother called
me, and said it was going to rain, and I must close the scuttle. I began
to tell her that Aunt Eliza was on the roof, but she wouldn't listen,
and said, "Do as I tell you this instant without any words why can't you
obey promptly?" So I obeyed as prompt as I could, and shut the scuttle
and fastened it, and then went down-stairs, and looked out to see the
shower come up.
It was a tremendous shower, and it struck us in about ten minutes; and
didn't it pour! The wind blew, and it lightened and thundered every
minute, and the street looked just like a river. I got tired of looking
at it after a while, and sat down to read, and in about an hour, when it
was beginning to rain a little easier, mother came where I was, and
said, "I wonder where sister Eliza is do you know, Jimmy?" And I said I
supposed she was on the roof, for I left her there when I fastened the
scuttle just before it began to rain.
Nothing was done to me until after they had got two men to bring Aunt
Eliza down and wring the water out of her, and the doctor had come, and
she had been put to bed, and the house was quiet again. By that time
father had come home, and when he heard what had happened-- But, there!
it is over now, and let us say no more about it. Aunt Eliza is as well
as ever, but nobody has said a word to me about prompt obedience since
the thunder-shower.