How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose
As the train moved on after leaving Coplen, Percival fell to thinking
of the type of man his father had been.
"Uncle Peter," he said, suddenly, "they don't _all_ cut loose, do they?
Now _you_ never did?"
"Yes, I did, son. I yanked away from all the hitchin' straps of decency
when I first struck it, jest like all the rest of 'em. Oh, I was an
Indian in my time--a reg'ler measly hop-pickin' Siwash at that.
"You don't know, of course, what livin' out in the open on bacon and
beans does fur a healthy man's cravin's. He gets so he has visions day
and night of high-livin'--nice broiled steaks with plenty of fat on
'em, and 'specially cake and preserves and pies like mother used to
make--fat, juicy mince pies that would assay at least eight hundred
dollars a ton in raisins alone, say nothing of the baser metals. He
sees the crimp around the edges made with a fork, and the picture of a
leaf pricked in the middle to vent the steam, and he gets to smellin'
'em when they're pulled smokin' hot out of the oven. And frosted cake,
the layer kind--about five layers, with stratas of jelly and custard
and figs and raisins and whatever it might be. I saw 'em fur years,
with a big cuttin' out to show the cross-section.
"But a man that has to work by the day fur enough to take him through
the prospectin' season can't blow any of his dust on frivolous things
like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I
never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either.
"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to
them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a
stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into
the bake-shop windows and just gloat.--'rubber' they call it now'days.
My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed
that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest
kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin'
was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights.
"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The
bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did
torment a body so! It was kep' by a Chink, and the star play in the
window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the
place--on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it
looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that
concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with--and
a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much--showin' a
cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that
jest made a man want to give up.
"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window
and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The Chink was
standin' in the door the first day.
"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me.
"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head.
"Next day I was there again, yearnin'. The Chink see me and come out.
"'One doll' li'l piece", he says.
"I says, 'No, you slant-eyed heathen,' or some such name as that. But
when you're looking fur tests of character, son, don't let that one
hide away from you. I'd play that fur the heftiest moral courage _I've_
ever showed, anyway.
"The third day it was gone and a lemon pie was there, all with nice
kind of brownish snow on top. I was on my way out then, pushin' the
mule. I took one lingerin' last look and felt proud of myself when I
saw the hump in the pack made by my bag of beans.
"'That-like flummery food's no kind of diet to be trackin' up pay-rock
on,' I says to kind of cheer myself.
"Four weeks later I struck it. And six weeks after that I had things in
shape so't I was able to leave. I was nearer to other places 'twas
bigger, but I made fur Grand Bar, lettin' on't I wanted to see about a
claim there. I'd 'a' felt foolish to have anyone know jest why I was
makin' the trip.
"On the way I got to havin' night-mares, 'fear that Chink would be
gone. I knew if he was I'd go down to my grave with something comin' to
me because I'd never found jest that identical cake I'd been famishin'
fur.
"When I got up front of the window, you can believe it or not, but that
Chink was jest settin' down another like it. Now you know how that
Monte Cristo carried on after he'd proved up. Well, I got into his
class, all right. I walked in past a counter where the Chink had
crullers and gingerbread and a lot of low-grade stuff like that, and I
set down to a little table with this here marble oil-cloth on it.
"'Bring her back,' I says, kind of tremblin', and pointin' to the
window.
"The Chink pattered up and come back with a little slab of it on a tin
plate. I jest let it set there.
"'Bring it all,' I says; 'I want the hull ball of wax.'
"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of cautious.
"I pulled out my buckskin pouch. 'Bring her back and take it out of
that,' I says--'when I get through,' I says.
"He grinned and hurried back with it. Well, son, nothing had ever
tasted so good to me, and I ain't say'n' that wa'n't the biggest worth
of all my money't I ever got. I'd been trainin' fur that cake fur
twenty odd year, and proddin' my imagination up fur the last ten weeks.
"I et that all, and I et another one with jelly, and a bunch of little
round ones with frostin' and raisins, and a bottle of brandied peaches,
and about a dozen cream puffs, and half a lemon pie with frostin' on
top, and four or five Charlotte rushes. The Chink had learned to make
'em all in 'Frisco.
"That meal set me back $34.75. When I went out I noticed the plain
sponge cakes and fruit cakes and dried-apple pies--things that had been
out of my reach fur twenty years, and--My! but they did look common and
unappetisin'. I kind of shivered at the sight of 'em.
"I ordered another one of the big cakes and two more lemon pies fur the
next day.
"Fur four days I led a life of what they call 'unbridled
licentiousness' while that Chink pandered to me. I never was any hand
fur drink, but I cut loose in that fancy-food joint, now I tell you.
"The fifth day I begun to taper off. I begun to have a suspicion the
stuff was made of sawdust with plasty of Paris fur frostin'. The sixth
day I was sure it was sawdust, and my shameful debauch comes to an end
right there. I remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his
chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of
corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out--twelve of the
chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I
felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me
plumb nervous to ketch sight of a saw-buck.
"It took jest three weeks fur me to get right inside again. My, but
meat victuals and all like that did taste mighty scrumptious when I
could handle 'em again.
"After that when I'd been out in the hills fur a season I'd get that
hankerin' back, and when I come in I'd have a little frosted-cake orgy
now and then. But I kep' myself purty well in hand. I never overdone it
like that again, fur you see I'd learned something. First off, there
was the appetite. I soon see the gist of my fun had been the _wantin'_
the stuff, the appetite fur it, and if you nursed an appetite along and
deluded it with promises it would stay by you like one of them meachin'
yellow dogs. But as soon as you tried to do the good-fairy act by it,
and give it all it hankered fur, you killed it off, and then you
wouldn't be entertained by it no more, and kep' stirred up and busy.
"And so I layed out to nurse my appetite, and aggravate it by never
givin' it quite all it wanted. When I was in the hills after a day's
tramp I'd let it have its fling on such delicacies as I could turn out
of the fryin'-pan myself, but when I got in again I'd begin to act
bossy with it. It's _wantin'_ reasonably that keeps folks alive, I
reckon. The mis-a-blest folks I've ever saw was them that had killed
all their wants by overfeedin' 'em.
"Then again, son, in this world of human failin's there ain't anything
ever _can_ be as pure and blameless and satisfyin' as the stuff in a
bake-shop window looks like it is. Don't ever furget that. It's jest
too good to be true. And in the next place--pastry's good in its way,
but the best you can ever get is what's made fur you at home--I'm
talkin' about a lot of things now that you don't probably know any too
much about. Sometimes the boys out in the hills spends their time
dreamin' fur other things besides pies and cakes, but that system of
mine holds good all through the deal--you can play it from soda to hock
and not lose out. And that's why I'm outlastin' a lot of the boys and
still gettin' my fun out of the game.
"It's a good system fur you, son, while you're learnin' to use your
head. Your pa played it at first, then he cut loose. And you need it
worse'n ever he did, if I got you sized up right. He touched me on one
side, and touched you on the other. But you can last longer if you jest
keep the system in mind a little. Remember what I say about the window
stuff."
Percival had listened to the old man's story with proper amusement, and
to the didactics with that feeling inevitable to youth which says
secretly, as it affects to listen to one whom it does not wish to
wound, "Yes, yes, I know, but you were living in another day, long ago,
and you are not _me!_"
He went over to the desk and began to scribble a name on the pad of
paper.
"If a man really loves one woman he'll behave all right," he observed
to Uncle Peter.
"Oh, I ain't preachin' like some do. Havin' a good time is all right;
it's the only thing, I reckon, sometimes, that justifies the misery of
livin'. But cuttin' loose is bad jedgment. A man wakes up to find that
his natural promptin's has cold-decked him. If I smoked the best
see-gars now all the time, purty soon I'd get so't I wouldn't
appreciate 'em. That's why I always keep some of these out-door
free-burners on hand. One of them now and then makes the others taste
better."
The young man had become deaf to the musical old voice.
He was writing:
"MY DEAR MISS MILBREY:--I send you the first and only poem I ever
wrote. I may of course be a prejudiced critic, but it seems to me to
possess in abundance those graces of metre, rhyme, high thought in
poetic form, and perfection of finish which the critics unite in
demanding. To be honest with you--and why should I conceal that conceit
which every artist is said secretly to feel in his own production?--I
have encountered no other poem in our noble tongue which has so moved
and captivated me.
"It is but fair to warn you that this is only the first of a volume of
similar poems which I contemplate writing. And as the theme appears now
to be inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the
number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this
author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has
been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady _Lyre,_ in the hope that
he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and
ideal perfection for which the humbler bards have hitherto striven in
vain.
"Sincerely and seriously yours,
"P. PERCIVAL BINES"
Thus ran the exalted poem on a sheet of note-paper:
"AVICE MILBREY.
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey.
And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it."