The Bad Boy and His Dad Visit Mount Vernon--Dad Weeps at the
Grave of the Father of Our Country.
New York City.--My Dear Uncle Ezra: I got a letter from my chum this
morning, and he says he was in the grocery the day he wrote, and you
were a sight. He says that if I am going to be away several months you
will never change your shirt till I get back, for nobody around the
grocery seems to have any influence over you. I meant to have put you
under bonds before I left, to change your shirt at least quarterly, but
you ought to change it by rights every month. The way to do is to get
an almanac and make a mark on the figures at the first of the month,
and when you are studying the almanac it will remind you of your duty to
society. People east here, that is, business men in your class, change
their shirts every week or two. Try and look out for these little
matters, insignificant as they may seem, because the public has some
rights that it is dangerous for a man to ignore.
Dad and I have been down to Mount Vernon, and had a mighty solemn
time. I think dad expected that we would be met at the trolley car by
a delegation of descendants of George Washington, by a four-horse
carriage, with postilions and things, and driven to the old house, and
received with some distinction, as dad had always been an admirer
of George Washington, and had pointed with pride to his record as a
statesman and a soldier, but all we saw was a bunch of negroes, who
told us which way to walk, and charged us ten cents apiece for the
information.
At Mount Vernon we found the old house where George lived and died,
where Martha told him to wipe his feet before he came in the house, and
saw that things were cooked properly. We saw pictures of revolutionary
scenes and men of that period, relics of the days when George was the
whole thing around there. We saw the bed on which George died, and then
we went down to the icehouse and looked through the fence and saw the
marble coffins in which George and Martha were sealed up. Say, old man,
I know you haven't got much reverence, but you couldn't look through
that fence at what remains of the father of his country without taking
off your hat and thinking good things while you were there.
[Illustration: Saw the marble coffins in which George and Martha 050]
I was surprised at dad; he cried, though he never met George Washington
in all his life. I have seen dad at funerals at home, when he was a
bearer, or a mourner, and he never acted as thought it affected him
much, but there at Mount Vernon, standing within eight feet of the
remains of George Washington, he just lost his nerve, and bellered, and
I felt solemn myself, like I had been kept in after school when all the
boys were going in swimming. If a negro had not asked dad for a quarter
I know dad would have got down on his knees and been pious, but when
he gave that negro a swift kick for butting in with a commercial
proposition, in a sacred moment, dad come to, and we went up to the
house again. Dad said what he wanted was to think of George Washington
just as a country farmer, instead of a general and a president. He said
we got nearer to George, if we thought of him getting up in the morning,
putting on his old farmer pants and shirt, and going downstairs in his
stocking feet, and going out to the kitchen by the wooden bench, dipping
a gourd full of rain water out of a barrel into an earthen wash basin
and taking some soft soap out of a dish and washing himself, his shirt
open so his great hairy breast would catch the breeze, his suspenders,
made of striped bed ticking, hanging down, his hair touseled up until
he had taken out a yellow pocket comb and combed it, and then yelling
to Martha to know about how long a workingman would have to wait for
breakfast. And then dad said he liked to think of George Washington
sitting down at the breakfast table and spearing sausages out of a
platter, and when a servant brought in a mess of these old-fashioned
buckwheat cakes, as big as a pieplate, see George, in imagination, pilot
a big one on to his plate, and cover it with sausage gravy, and eat
like he didn't have any dyspepsia, and see him help Martha to buckwheat
cakes, and finally get up from breakfast like a full Christian and go
out on the farm and count up the happy slaves to see if any of them had
got away during the night.
By ginger, dad inspired me with new thoughts about the father of his
country. I had always thought of Washington as though he was constantly
crossing the Delaware in a skiff, through floating ice, with a cocked
hat on, and his coat flaps trimmed with buff nankeen stuff, a sort of
a male Eliza in “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” getting away from the hounds that
were chasing her to chew her pants. I was always thinking of George
either chopping cherry trees, or standing on a pedestal to have his
picture taken, but here at the old farm, with dad to inspire me, I was
just mingling with Washington, the planter, the neighbor, telling the
negroes where they would get off at if they didn't pick cotton fast
enough, or breaking colts, or going to the churn and drinking a quart
of buttermilk, and getting the stomach ache, and calling upstairs to
Martha, who was at the spinning wheel, or knitting woolen socks, and
asking her to fix up a brandy smash to cure his griping pains. I thought
of the father of his country taking a severe cold, and not being able
to run into a drug store for a bottle of cough sirup, or a quinine pill,
having Martha fix a tub of hot mustard water to soak those great feet of
his, and bundle him up in a flannel blanket, give him a hot whisky, and
put him to bed with a hot brick at his feet.
Then, when I looked at a duck blind out in the Potomac, near the shore,
I thought how George used to put on an old coat and slouch hat and take
his gun and go out in the blind, and shoot canvas-back ducks for dinner,
and paddle his boat out after the dead birds, the way Grover Cleveland
did a century later. I tell you, old man, the way to appreciate our
great statesmen, soldiers and scholars is to think of them just as
plain, ordinary citizens, doing the things men do nowadays. It does dad
and I more good to think of Washington and his friends camping out down
the Potomac, on a fishing trip, sleeping on a bed of pine boughs, and
cooking their own pork, and roasting sweet potatoes in the ashes, eating
with appetites like slaves, than to think of him at a state dinner in
the white house, with a French cook disguising the food so they could
not tell what it was.
O, I had rather have a picture of George Washington and Lafayette coming
up the bank of the Potomac toward the house, loaded down with ducks, and
Martha standing on the porch of Mount Vernon asking them who they bought
the ducks of and how much they cost, than to have one of those big
paintings in the white house showing George and Lafayette looking as
though they had conquered the world. If the phonograph had been invented
then, and we could listen to the conversation of those men, just as they
said things, it would be great. Imagine George saying to Lafayette, so
you cotild hear it now: “Lafe, that last shot at that canvasback you
made was the longest shot ever made on the Potomac. It was a Jim dandy,
you old frog eater,” and imagine Lafayette replying: “You bet your life,
George, I nailed that buck canvasback with a charge of number six shot,
and he never knew what struck him.” But they didn't have any phonographs
in those days and so you have got to imagine things.
How would Washington's farewell address sound now in a phonograph,
or some of George's choice swear words at a slave that had ridden a
sore-backed mule down to Alexandria after a jug of rum. I would like to
run a phonograph show with nothing in the machine but ancient talk from
George Washington, but we can have no such luck unless George is born
again.
Old man, if you ever get a furlough from business, you go down to Mount
Vernon and revel in memories of the father of his country. If you go,
hunt up a negro with a hair lip, that is a servant there, and who used
to be Washington's body servant, unless he is a liar, and tell him I
sent you and he won't do a thing to you, for a dollar or so. I told that
negro that dad was a great general, a second Washington, and he wore
all the skin off his bald head taking off his hat to dad every time dad
looked at him, and he bowed until his back ached, but when we were going
away, and dad asked me what ailed the old monkey to act that way, the
old negro thought these new Washingtons were a pretty tough lot.
All the time at Mount Vernon I couldn't get up meanness enough to
play any trick on dad, but I picked up a sort of a horse chestnut or
something, with prickers on it as sharp as needles, and as we were
getting on the trolley I slipped it down the back of dad's pants, near
where his suspenders button on, and by the time we sat down in the car
the horse chestnut had worked down where dad is the largest, and when he
leaned back against the seat he turned pale and wiggled around and asked
me if he looked bad.
[Illustration: Slipped it down the back of dad's pants 057]
I told him he looked like a corpse, which encouraged him so he almost
fainted. He asked me if I had heard of any contagious diseases that were
prevalent in Virginia, 'cause he felt as though he had caught something.
I told him I would ask the conductor, so I went and asked the conductor
what time we got to Washington, and then I went back to dad and told
him the conductor said there was no disease of any particular account,
except smallpox and yellow fever, and that the first symptom of smallpox
was a prickling sensation in the small of the back.
Dad turned green and said he had got it all right, and I had the
darndest time getting him back to the hotel at Washington. Say, I had to
help him undress, and I took the horse chestnut and put it in the foot
of the bed, and got dad in, and I went downstairs to see a doctor, and
then I came back and told him the doctor said if the prickly sensation
went to his feet he was in no danger from smallpox, as it was an
evidence that an old vaccination of years ago had got in its work and
knocked the disease out of his system lengthwise, and when I told dad
that he raised up in bed and said he was saved, for ever since I went
out of the room he had felt that same dreaded prickling at work on his
feet, and he was all right.
I told dad it was a narrow escape and that it ought to be a warning
to him. Dad has to wear a dress suit to dinner here and cough up money
every time he turns around, 'cause I have told the bell boys dad is a
bonanza copper king, and they are not doing a thing to dad.
O, I guess I am doing just as the doctors at home ordered, in keeping
dad's mind occupied.
Well, so long, old man, I have got to go to dinner with dad, and I am
going to order the dinner myself, dad said I could, and if I don't put
him into bankruptcy, you don't know your little
Hennery.