WE were yet at the table when Reuben came in to announce that Mr.
Bemby’s son had come. We went out to the porch, where he was sitting,
his elbow on the railing, his chin on his elbow, his white wool hat,
without a band, hanging down like the eaves of a barn over his wheat
straw hair, his red fuzzy wrists, sticking about three inches out of
his coarse flax coat sleeves, and his broad copper riveted shoes gaping
so wide about his bony ankles that they seemed to have frightened his
speckled pants half way up his legs; his poles, lashed together with
old leather shoe strings, stood against the railing, and his bait-gourd
sat on the bench at his side. He greeted us with a “good mornin’ to
you,” and a smile, without any sound whatever. We all shook hands with
him, Frank barely tipping his fingers, then went back into the house
to get our hats and tackle. Reuben came out with our dinner in a large
basket and we were about to start, when Frank ran back up stairs, and
soon joined us, holding his coat over something against his side. As
soon as we got into the lane he took out a large black bottle of whisky
and a bundle of cigars. I said nothing, but I could see that Ned was
disturbed that Frank should attempt to do the “fast” with us, for
neither of us were yet sophisticated enough to smoke or drink. Ben,
however, smiled, and prolonged his laugh as he shook the bottle and
watched the bead.
“That’s fine as cat hair,” he said, returning the bottle to Frank.
“Licker’s purtty much like er hole in the groun’; keeps you warm in
winter and cool in summer; but less pearten er little; we got er right
smart ways to walk now, an’ it’ll be hot enough presn’ly to curl er
turckle’s shell.”
We accordingly walked on rapidly, Ned and I together, and Frank and
Ben. Frank, however, had too much of the haughty about him for Ben, who
soon fell back and gave us the benefit of his ever-going tongue.
“How far is the place where you expect to fish, Mr. Bemby?” inquired
Ned.
“None er your misters for me; jus’ call me Ben,” said he, shifting his
poles from one shoulder to another. “I’m er gwine to take you up to old
Nancy Mucket’s hole.”
“Nancy who?” I asked. “What in the world do they call it by such a
name, for?”
“‘Cause old Nancy Mucket got drownded there. I have heerd daddy tell
‘bout it er thous’n times. Old Nance was er mon’sus fisher, an’ old
Dave Mucket tole her whatever she done not to tech his ash pole. Nance
she tuck it right down an’ went to the creek. She never come back by
night, an’ next day they drug the creek, and pulled her up from the
bottom, where she was hung under er root. She had the very ash pole
in her grip, and when the corrunner sot on her, ole Dave he come up
and shuck his head mighty solemn like, and talks: ‘Nance, I tole you
so; whenever wimmin gits to doin’ men’s doos they gits into trouble.
God made ’em she folks fus, and they’ll have to stay she till the worl
busts.’ Daddy mighty offen tells mo’er ‘bout it when she wants to go
roun’ by herself or drive to town.”
“Is it a good place to fish?” asked Frank.
“Tain’t bad,” said Ben, laconically, at the same time throwing his
legs, one after the other, over a low rail fence, and saying, “Here’s
the place!”
We followed him over the fence, and through some tangled vines, and
stopped at the water’s edge; the bank covered with short, thick grass,
the shade perfectly dense, the yellow waters of the creek curdled with
clear rings and ripples from a noisy branch, that bubbled limpidly from
the coolest of springs over the whitest of pebbles.
Just where the clear and muddy water mingled, Ben affirmed the fish
would bite best. We undid our poles and baited our hooks. Ben and Frank
had a little unpleasantness, arising from Frank’s claiming a place
for his pole to the detriment of Ben’s position. His manner and words
were so insulting that Ben was about to strike him, when Ned and I
interfered, and prevented blows.
We found, as Ben had said, it was a capital place to fish, for we were
kept busily employed in attending to our poles. Ben, however, easily
beat us all. He some way had a knack of fixing his bait and spitting on
his hook, so that his line would scarcely touch the water before a fish
would seize it.
The morning waned, however, and the sun had laid the shadows of the
poles directly under them, when we all agreed that it was time for
lunch.
We carried our basket up to the spring, which bubbled out of a large
rock, and where Nature had spread us a table with a green velvet
cloth. Ham sandwiches, with just enough mustard, broiled and devilled
fowl, cold tongue, with the parsley between the slices, together with
heaps of covered fruit pies, and mother’s especial boast, biscuit
glacé, in the whitest of paper, to say nothing of a barrow full of
peaches and melons which Reuben rolled down from the house, and placed
to cool in a pond dammed up for the occasion; all were presented to
appetites sharpened by the sport of the morning. Reversing the order
of Aladdin’s feast, our viands disappeared with as wonderful celerity
as his appeared. After we had fairly choked the branch with a mound
of water-melon rinds and peach parings, we took our seats farther up
on the grass, and left Reuben to clear up the table. Frank now drew
forth his bottle of brandy and proposed that each one of us should tell
a short story, entirely his own, and that he who could tell the most
improbable, should have the bottle to himself. Ben stretched himself
out on the grass, with his arm under his head, and said, drowsily, as
he tore off with his teeth a large quid of tobacco from a twist he drew
from his pocket:
“Blaze away wi’ yer lies. I’m a biled mullen stalk ef I can’t win at
that game.”
Ned firmly declared he did not want any of the brandy, but said he
would tell his story with the rest, merely to help out the fun. By
request I was excused, that I might act as judge, and Frank, rapping
on the bottle with his knife, asked Ned to begin. Ned reclined on one
elbow, and said:
NED’S STORY.
“I will tell you what happened in the western part of the State,
for Frank’s benefit. Our family were summering at a small town near
the mountains some years ago, when a circus passed through that
section, stopping for a day at our town. Every wall of every house
that presented surface enough had for weeks been spread over with the
marvellous high colored illustrations of what were to be seen under
that mighty, mystic canvas. They were the same pictures, or I should
rather say works of art, combining the airy lightness and licensed
fancy of Correggio with the Dutch fidelity of Rembrandt, which you
have, perhaps, all seen at different times pasted, with weather-proof
adherence, to any visible portion of public places. There were
troops of monkeys, done in the blackest of colors, swinging from the
greenest of trees, across the widest and bluest of rivers, by tails
of impossible length and elasticity. There were ibexes leaping into
bottomless abysses, thereby defeating the design of the artist, who
would have them to alight upon their horns. There was the traditional
polar bear, defending her cubs and leisurely lunching on a sandwich of
two seals and a sailor. The actual bear in the circus, I have found
by long experience, invariably dies at the previous stopping place,
bequeathing, tenderly, its skin to the public of to-morrow, thereby
undergoing a constancy of death and a multitude of bequests that would
startle the profundity of a probate judge. There were pleasant side
groups of men lassoing the giraffe and zebra, tripping the rhinoceros,
and tearing off tigers from the very hams of elephants, on whose backs
were huddled not quite a full regiment of soldiers in all stages of the
manual of arms. But the chef _d’œuvre_ was the centre-piece, as large
as life, representing the clown, dressed in the American flag, with
stars left out, with a hat reaching too infinite a point with its peak
to be measured by any rule in conic sections, and cheeks too flamingly
hectic for medical aid, handing, with the utmost gravity, a dish of
boiled eggs to a sedate and diminutive mule, seated on its haunches,
with its fore feet up on a barrel as its table—the only position,
by the way, in which I think a mule could be safely approached with
anything so far from its usual bill of fare as eggs.”
“Dog gone yo circus picturs!” interrupted Ben, raising up on one elbow
to spit a stream of tobacco juice several yards behind us, “I c’n see
them might’ nigh every year stuck ‘gin the warehouse over in town; go
on wi yo yarn.”
“Well,” continued Ned, kindly taking no affront at Ben’s abrupt
interruption, “I will hasten on. I merely wished to show how public
expectation was worked up to a high pitch. After awhile the day
came, and with it the circus—wagon after wagon, with tent poles and
furniture; then the cages with the animals, all closed except the
little lattice at the top, through which could now and then be heard
the scream of a monkey or the cough of a lion, and then the gorgeous,
gilded band chariot, with its music. Negroes, and boys, of which I was
one, were almost crazy with excitement; we danced and shouted along
the sidewalk in a promiscuous throng, ever keeping up with the long
train of plumed horses drawing after them the gilded dragon, with its
backful of brazen melody. But our glee was hushed into a very silence
of admiration as we saw coming far behind the band chariot, with solemn
grandeur, the great elephant, its broad ears waving like dusky fans,
and its proboscis twisting, like a great serpent cut in two, slowly
from side to side as he came on, looming like a gigantic tower, through
the dust. As he approached and passed us, his small eyes twinkling
so knowingly on the crowd, his keeper on a dappled horse, pacing
along so fearlessly by his ponderous foreleg, and his dog trotting
carelessly under his curling trunk, the open mouths of the crowd must
have relieved him to a considerable extent of the dust he seemed to
deprecate so much by his fanning ears.
“Well, to hurry on without so much detail, the canvas was pitched, the
keeper carried the elephant to the river to cool out, and then brought
him up, and tied him to one of the posts of the market house, which was
near the pavilion, till the afternoon performance should commence. At
the hour he went round, decked in his Oriental costume, and undid the
fastening, and spoke in some unknown tongue to his mammoth charge. The
elephant started, made a step forward and stopped, with a shrill cry
of pain. The keeper looked up surprised, then uttering a few genuine
American oaths, ordered him to move. Again the elephant made a great
effort, and again stood still, with a prolonged scream. The keeper, now
furious, approached, and drove his short training spike into him again
and again. With each stab the poor creature would shriek and strain
to the uttermost its cumbrous limbs, but all in vain, it could not
move from where it stood. There was something so new in this apparent
obstinacy that the keeper commenced to examine his position. He found
one of the market house posts nearly pulled from its place, and the
elephant’s tail, stretched to its last tenacity, sticking out straight
as a poker towards the post, though not touching it by several inches,
and having no visible connection whatever with it. Again he urged the
animal forward, and again the elephant did his best to move. Just
before his tail pulled out by the roots the post gave way, and tumbling
over, hung dangling at the elephant’s heels. The keeper took the post
in his hands, and, looking closely, found that a little spider had spun
a web from the elephant’s tail to the post, and that this invisible
thread had held him stronger than a chain of steel. Such a crowd had
now gathered that the keeper found the elephant was drawing more people
than the circus proper (or improper), and ordered him to move, that he
might carry him under the canvas. The elephant obeying, moved forward,
but the motion of his body set the post to swinging like a pendulum,
which, increasing in its oscillation, at last commenced to thump him in
the side harder than he fancied was comfortable. The thumps became more
violent as he increased his speed, till, at last becoming frenzied with
the blows, and the shouts, and hootings of the crowd, he broke away
from the keeper, and ran hither and thither in the streets as fast as
his unwieldy body could move, knocking over signs and boxes, breaking
racks, frightening horses, and occasionally jostling over a clumsy man
or two. At last he plunged through the great wide door of the court
house, scraping his back against the brick arch as he did so. The
post here fortunately got across the door and checked him. He pulled
frantically, but the little web would not break; he then bent himself
around as far as an elephant might, and tried to tear it off with his
proboscis. The web, however, was so fine that it cut into even his
tough trunk, and burying itself under the skin, held his proboscis fast
to his tail. In his efforts now to disengage himself he fell, and lay
helpless on the ground, and at last had to be rolled with an immense
handspike over and over, like a very large hoop, till he got to the
tent, or canvas, under which he was rolled, and perhaps unfastened.
“The prominent gentlemen of the town obtained part of the web, and
forwarded it, with proper credentials, to several scientific societies
for analysis. They each gave a different opinion in regard to the
cause of its wonderful tenacity, but the people about the town always
believed, and with very good reason, too, that the spider which spun
it had been feeding on the beef brought to that market; and thus
accounting for it, they ceased to wonder at the toughness of the web.”
* * * * *
“Ned, that’s a jolly good yarn,” said Frank, tossing the serpentine
paring of a peach over his shoulder, and puffing out one jaw with a
large section of the luscious fruit.
“Less hear the lord juke tell his’n,” said Ben, nodding towards Frank,
and pushing himself up backwards by his hands to a large tree, against
which he leaned, and folded his arms around one doubled-up knee;
“should’n be suppris’n ef he can tell a buster, he’s in such good
practice.”
“Well,” replied I, “we will leave all discussion of the merits of each
one’s story to the umpire, and proceed. Frank, it is your time next.”
FRANK’S STORY.
“I hardly know what to tell,” he said, taking aim at Ben’s foot with
the peach stone he had been sucking. “Ned has fairly taken the wind
out of my sails. Let me see; I believe I’ll tell you what happened
to me once when I was very small. I was out one day in the mountains
bird-nesting—a wicked employment, by the way, which perhaps accounts
for my mishap—and found a very large hawk’s nest. It was in the very
top of a ragged old pine, that grew upon the edge of the most frightful
precipice in the country. It was a sheer descent of five or six hundred
feet, looking almost perpendicular, though in some places it bulged
out with rugged rocks, and in others retreated into caves. All down
the face of the cliff were little scrubby bushes, which grew straight
out for an inch or two, then suddenly turned up in their course, as if
determined to see beyond the great rocky wall that towered so far above
them. The old pine had endured the agony of fear for centuries, for
though its gnarled trunk leaned far over the abyss, the limbs had all
turned toward the firm earth, and stretched their hard, knotty hands
appealingly to the surrounding forest. Rain after rain had washed away
the soil and left the roots exposed, till half the foundation stood
over the precipice and added its weight to the leaning trunk. It was
not without much hesitation and debate with myself that I prepared to
ascend. I reasoned, however, that if it had stood that long through
wind and storm it would not take such a still, calm day to fall; and
then, even if its foundation was precarious, my weight would be so
infinitely small, compared with its own, that it would never make a
perceptible addition. The temptation, too, was a great one, for I had
seen the hawk, one of the largest kind, fly away as I approached, and
then the climbing was very easy, for a ladder-like vine wound its leafy
folds clear up to the top, like a great green serpent seeking the eggs.
I took off my jacket and commenced to ascend. With well rubbed pants
and an irritating quantity of pine bark next to my skin I reached
the first limb, where I rested; then went on to the top, like going
up stairs. At last I reached the nest, and there—rich reward for my
trouble—lay four brown splotched eggs. Before I proceeded to take them
out and tie them in my handkerchief I took a glance at my position. One
look satisfied me, and made me faint and dizzy. From my standpoint the
tree seemed to stretch out horizontally over the chasm which yawned
hungrily below, and, looking at it as I did, through the branches of
the tree, it seemed far deeper and more awful than it really was. Far
down at the bottom, where the trees and shrubs shrank to the level of a
green plush-looking surface, two or three cows were grazing, and they
appeared just the size of the toy cows in my Noah’s ark. As I had to
descend to the level of the valley on my way home, I could not resist
the boyish temptation to throw my hat out into the air and let it float
down; I accordingly balanced it nicely and let it go. It sank steadily
for a little while, then began to rock from side to side, and finally
relapsed into the regular spiral descent, twisting down and down till
my eyes could not follow the tiny speck. While gazing down to discover
it, if possible, I was startled by a sharp crack near the foot of the
tree; another and another followed, and I looked in terror at the
roots, to find that the ground was rising slowly upward in a slanting
direction from me. The tree was giving way, and gradually sinking more
and more swiftly over that hell of destruction. I heard the tearing up
of the roots and the sh—sh of the foliage through the air, and I knew
no more.
“When I awoke I was swinging delightfully, as if in a hammock. Thick
leaves were all around me, and when I parted them and looked out my
position was plain. I had caught in the net work of vines in the top
of the tree, and was now hanging by one strand of rope-like vine to
the tree, which was dangling, top downwards, about fifty feet above
me. I found, to my great comfort, that I was in a comparatively safe
bed, well padded with abundant leaves, and held by strong cords which
branched from the vine rope. This was so twined about the trunk of
the inverted tree that it could not become detached; so that my only
real danger was that the immense tree itself, hanging above me by a
few roots that had not given way, might at any moment break from its
slight support and plunge, with me beneath it, into the vast depths
below. The very hopelessness of my position made me perfectly reckless
and indifferent; and finding that the motion of my descent had given
me a considerable swing, I endeavored to augment it by the constant
change of my position, leaning first on one side, then on the other. I
succeeded so well that I was soon sweeping through an arc of an hundred
feet, with a rush through the air at every swoop that made my cheeks
tingle. With every swing I increased my speed, and there is no telling
to what extent I might have carried the wild excitement of the moment,
had I not been checked by coming in violent contact with the face of
the precipice. The blow almost stunned me, but it fortunately stopped
my swing, and, with a gradually decreasing oscillation, I lay still
in my nest of leaves. When I awoke ‘twas late in the afternoon, and I
found that I was extremely hungry. I ate two of the hawk eggs and felt
relieved. I put the other two away, resolved not to touch them till I
was absolutely compelled.
Having nothing better to do, I amused myself by swinging again, though
I took good care not to swing far enough to strike the side of the
cliff. The sun at last went down, and darkness crept over the dismal
woods. Far up above, the stars began to twinkle brightly in the
sky, and far down below, the dark void grew intensely black. With a
trembling dread of the dark grim night, and yet with a strange sense
of security—a feeling of safety from all other dangers—I tried to go
to sleep. With a faithful remembrance of the old lady’s instructions I
said my prayers as well as the distraught condition of my mind would
allow.
All through the long dreary night I was dozing off, only to dream that
I was falling from my nest, and to awake with a cold shudder of horror.
After dreary hours of these terrors I hailed with delight the faint
beams of approaching day. Brighter and brighter grew the sky, till,
with a sudden flood of gold, the sun rose upon the world. What a
bright, warm feeling of hope morning brings to the weary watcher! I
knew that friends would soon be on the search, and I lay in constant
expectation of their shouts. Nor had I long to wait; for soon the woods
were ringing with their loud halloos, as they called and listened for
my voice. At length I saw a party far below pick up my hat, and from
their anxious grouping around it, and busy search among the rocks
immediately afterwards, I knew they thought I had fallen over the
precipice and was lying, a mangled corpse, somewhere near. I called
and called in vain; they moved slowly hither and thither, and finally
passed out of sight, carrying my hat with them.
My heart sank within me, and, burying my face in the leaves of my
pillow, I sobbed and moaned most piteously. Suddenly, in the very acme
of my anguish, I heard my name called aloud, and, looking up through my
tears, saw half a score of friendly, anxious faces looking down from
the edge of the cliff. Half ashamed of my weakness, yet still crying
for joy, I shouted, and begged them for Heaven’s sake to help me out of
my terrible predicament. They had no ropes with them, and it was a long
way to town where they could be procured, so I could see there was an
animated discussion among them in reference to the best ways and means
to relief. I heard one say, in an angry tone, ‘I tell you it’s a sho’
thing. The wind hain’t never turned it, and I’ll bet my own life agin
your pus, and that’s empty, that it’ll hold him for ever. Look at them
ribs, man! Sheer! let her drap. I’ll be ‘sponsible for his life.’
The next instant an enormous blue cotton umbrella dropped down beside
me, and a rough voice shouted, ‘Put your foot in the crook of the
handle; hold her up stiff; she’ll let you down square.’
Whether the femininity of the umbrella inspired confidence, or the
desperate state of my feelings urged me on, I cannot say, but getting
on the edge of my nest, putting my foot in the strong oak curved handle
for a stirrup, and grasping the staff firmly, I slipped from the vines,
and floated slowly down, the old umbrella popping and straining as if
it was going to fly to pieces. But with the exception of rubbing the
edges on the rocks, and straightening out the ribs by the pressure of
the atmosphere, I landed safely at the foot of the precipice, where I
found the old man sobbing over my hat as if I was dead. He no sooner
found that I was really unhurt than he put up his handkerchief, and
cut a before long switch, with which he thrashed me soundly right the
assembled throng of friends. I thought then, and still think, it was a
singular way of thanking Providence for my safe delivery. This is about
all I have to tell, except that the old gent had a gold handle put on
the old cotton umbrella.
‘Go ahead, now, what’s-your-name; let us hear what you can do in the
shape of a yarn.’
Frank drew the fruit basket to him, searched through it for the largest
peach, and, hastily peeling it, threw himself back on the grass to
listen to Ben.”
Ben very deliberately rose, and tossed away his quid of tobacco, took
some water to cleanse his mouth, and walked to a bush near by, from
which he cut a large branch with an old horn-handle knife, out of which
he blew almost a pipeful of tobacco crumbs before opening the blade.
Taking his seat again, he commenced to trim up his switch and to tell
his story.
BEN’S STORY.
“Your two friends, John, has both on ’em told good yarns, but they went
mighty fur from home to get ’em. I’m a gwine to tell you what happened
right up yonder at the house. Some time along the fust of last year
mo’er took her up a house pig, to raise offen the slops and peelins.
It growed and fattened a power, and was soon ‘bout the likeliest hog
on the plantation, only it got so cussed tame twould’n never git outer
nobody’s way, and was a continuwell being stepped on, and drug outer
the house by the leg. Arter the little fool had been grown awhile, she
come up one day with eleven pigs, as lively as you ever see, and pime
blank like her, a squealin’ and runnin’ everywhere they hadn’t orter.
I heard a riddle wonst ‘bout a pig under a gate makin’ a noise, but he
ain’t a lighten-bug’s lamp to a pig when he’s hungry. The older they
got the wuss they squealed, till dad said as how he could’n stand it
no longer, the sow and pigs had to be moved; so me and him bilt a pen
‘bout two hundred yards from the house, and driv ’em down to it. There
was a free nigger, with a yard full of children, livin’ ‘bout as fur
from the pen as we did; and the fust night after we’d put ’em up, long
todes bed time, I heer a pig squeal like dyin’, but I thought perhaps
he’d got cut out of his suck, and I never thought on ’em agin till
next morning, when I went down to feed ’em; two of the pigs was bloody
behind, and, when I looked close, thare tails was gone. I knowed ‘twas
the niggers, for a fried pig’s tail is the best thing a nigger knows
how to eat. I tole the ole man ‘bout it soon’s I got back, and he said
how we’d wait till the next mornin’. When we went to the pen agin thare
was two more tails gone, and two more bloody pigs. Daddy sot on a rail
sometime a studin, then he said, sudden-like:
‘Bengermin, go to the house, and fetch me a shingle an my powder horn,
an the big gimblet.’
I ran off, a wond’rin’ what in the crashen the ole man was gwine to do
with a gimblet and a shingle. Soon as I come back he tole me to get in
the pen, and ketch one of the pigs with his tail on. When I histed one
up, he tuk him and tied his tail out straight on the shingle, so it
twould’n bend. He tuk the gimblet, and started in the tip end of the
pig’s tail, and bored it clear out. The bloody shavins come a bilin’
up round the grooves of the gimblet, and the pig squealed till the
air ‘peared to be full of hopper grasses, tryin’ to kick in my years.
When daddy pulled the gimblet out, the tail looked like a holler skin
quill, and would hold ‘bout a double load of powder. Daddy poured it
chock full, then put a fo-penny nail, with a gun cap on the eend of it,
down ‘mongst the powder, so that it’d go off if any thing totch it, and
then tied it all up with horse hair. When I put him back in the pen
that pig didn’t have nary a curl to his tail; it stuck out as straight
and stiff as if it was a handel to tote him by. We fixed two more in
the same way, and then went home. Next morning, when we went down, we
found one pig dead, with his hams ready baked, and his back bone drove
through his forehead six inches. His tail itself was split open like a
shot fire-cracker, and bent backerds like a shelled pea hull. The other
two tails had just shot straight without bustin’, but the kick of the
powder had lifted up their hind legs so high they could’n git ’em down
agin, and they was walkin’ round the pen on thare forefeet samer’n a
circus man. When we came to zamine the pen we found three niggers’
fingers blowed off, and sticking to a rail, and little kinks of wooly
hair were layin’ round as thick as if it had snowed black. Daddy and me
then went up to the nigger’s house, where we found a good size boy and
girl with their hands tied up, and thare heads burnt slick on top. When
we asked ’em ‘bout it, the boy said the girl was a nussin the baby, and
went down to the pen to keep the baby quiet, and he just went along for
company like. He said they got to the pen, and was a peepin’ through
the rails, when one of the pigs come to scratch hisself, and soon’s he
begin to rub he busted all to pieces. They were mighty badly skeered,
and, to keep ’em so, daddy tole ’em them was some thunder-tailed hogs
he got from the South. We never had another hog troubled in the least,
and when hog-killing time came daddy found it mighty hard to get the
hands to help him. That’s the end of my yarn.”
And Ben got up and walked to the spring, where a large curved handled
gourd hung on a stick cut for the purpose, and, disdaining Reuben’s
offer of a glass, took the gourd, and dipping up half the spring, drank
till the long crooked handle curled over his hat, and bent back like
an officer’s plume in a windy parade. When he had resumed his seat on
the grass all three called for my judgment, and, with an assumption of
great solemnity and dignity, I proceeded to render it.
“The object, gentlemen, of a wonderful story, or yarn, as it is
vulgarly called, is not only to excite wonder, but also to evoke a
pleasant surprise by discovering relations between dissimilar or
contrary things, which we did not think of as possibly existing.
If these dissimilars or contraries are too far apart for the mind
to recognize any possible relation, then the narration becomes
unpleasantly absurd, and we shrink from contemplating it. If, however,
apparently improbable relations are brought out in a way that renders
them possible, we are surprised and pleased with the discovery. Hence,
the most exaggerated narrations are not always the most entertaining,
and we derive most pleasure from hearing or reading those stories
where improbabilities are unexpectedly brought within the range of
possibility, or if beyond it, the fact is ingeniously concealed by
possible concomitants. Thus, Munchausen’s descent from the moon by a
rope of cut straw is not half so pleasant a story as the firing his gun
by sparks drawn from his eye with his fists. So, were you to tell an
audience that you saw a mole move a mountain no one would be pleased or
surprised, as the mind would have no effort to pronounce it entirely
false; but if you should say you saw a fly trained to play a tune by
buzzing his wings from the top to the bottom of a wine glass, the minds
of your hearers would be pleasantly occupied for a while in eliminating
the true from the false, and your story would be applauded.
Ned, to-day, in his story, erred by placing his relations too far
apart. A spider and an elephant! There is no exercise of ingenuity in
detecting the falsity of the statement, and the story, from its very
improbability, is almost out of the range of competition for the prize.
Frank has so mixed his that I scarcely know how to render an opinion
in regard to it. The impossible parts are utterly so, and the possible
are so easily probable we are not surprised. To Ben, then, I award
the prize, as having produced the most entertaining story, exciting
pleasant surprise in each development, and discovering possibilities in
the most unthought of relations.”
“Oh! blow your philosophic nonsense, John,” said Frank, handing Ben
the bottle of brandy; “you got it out of a book, and I’m the devil’s
apprentice if I didn’t earn the brandy fairly.”
Ben proffered us the bottle, but Ned and I declined. Frank, however,
took it, and, with more swagger than swallow, turned it up to his
mouth. Ben poured himself out a glassful, and the bottle was set aside
for a smoke. Frank drew forth his cigars, Ben his pipe. Strange to say,
I dreaded more to appear squeamish before Ben, whom I looked upon as
an inferior, than I did either of the others, and with a blush for my
weakness took a cigar. Ned declined again, for which Frank called him
Parson Conscience, and we proceeded to light. Oh, dire beginning of
troubles! I first bit off the end of my cigar, and could not get the
end out of my mouth. I sputtered and spit, and twisted my face into
more hideous contortions than Medusa ever wore, but I could not eject
that little crumbling fragment of tobacco. Now under my tongue, now in
the roof of my mouth, and now going down like a pill. I finally had to
take it out disgracefully with my fingers. Getting over that, I lit the
cigar—a hard black cigar—and commenced to smoke. With the exception
of the pain I experienced from crossing my eyes to look at the end
of my cigar, I got on very well for several puffs, then I found that
I could not expel all the smoke from my mouth, a little would remain
and get up my nose or go down into my lungs. I expectorated, too, very
constantly, so that my throat became so insufferably dry, I swallowed
just once to relieve it, and oh! the bitter, burning taste that went
groping down to my stomach! Clear my throat as I would I could not
get it up; more and more bitter it became with each succeeding puff.
And now a singular sensation came on; a cloud of swan’s down, or
carded tow steeped in this same nauseating bitterness, seemed slowly
ascending up into my brain, and piling up in sickening oppression just
behind my eyeballs, so that I felt a constant desire to close them and
roll them inward to see this feathery pain. I felt no interest in the
conversation and was absent in all my replies to questions addressed to
me, but I tried to look careless and at ease. I even took off my hat
and leaned back against a tree, as if in a high state of enjoyment,
and tried to flip off the ashes from my cigar with the air of an old
smoker. Not understanding this sleight-of-hand practice, my third
finger passed so slowly under the burning end that it came out the
other side loaded with ashes, and ornamented with a large white blister.
“Smith, how do you like your weed?” said Frank, blowing out a cloud of
smoke, holding his cigar daintily between his fore and middle fingers.
“Very much ‘ndeed,” I said faintly; “‘tis very fragrant.”
The tow or down now pressed so hard and bitterly upon my eyeballs that
it confused my vision. Frank, Ned and Ben were continually changing
places, and their conversation seemed to belong to a different period
of my life. Objects were still enough when I gazed steadily at them,
but when I winked and then looked, they would seem to be in different
places. I tried closing my eyes for relief, but the great downy mass
of nausea crowding my brain was almost visible, and I was glad to open
them again. Still the bitter, burning taste in my mouth kept going down
into my stomach, yet lingering with its sickening flavor on my palate.
A cold perspiration stood on my forehead and hands, and I felt that
I was looking deadly pale. I made an attempt at a yawn to conceal my
faint voice, and said:
“I believe I will take a nap. Wake me if the fish bite.”
I got up and tried to walk to a little hillock a few steps off; but at
every step the ground seemed to rise in a steep hill or sink into a
fearful declivity before my feet, and I staggered like a drunken man.
“Hello, Smith; has the cigar got you? I thought you had better pluck.”
I was too faint to answer, but fell down, with my head hid by a tree,
and with many death-like heavings sank into a drowsy unconsciousness.
When I awoke it was late in the afternoon, and all was still around me.
Staggering to my feet I heard the distant hum of voices, and taking
a deep draught of the cool spring water to slake my feverish thirst,
I walked unsteadily down to the creek, where I found my companions
fishing with fine success. My vision was not sufficiently restored to
admit of my angling, so I sat on the fence and yawningly watched the
others till it was time to go home. With well filled baskets Ben, Frank
and Ned walked along merrily, while I stalked on miserably, with a
throbbing in my temples and an awkward consciousness of being ashamed
of everybody, and especially of myself.
At supper I drank a little tea, and, pleading a headache, hurried up to
my room. As soon as the servants had been served, mother came up stairs
to look after me. She found me with some fever and symptoms of violent
cold. A kiss when she came into the room told her I had been smoking,
and she smiled as she passed her hand gently over my head, and said:
“John, you have been smoking to-day, and, from your restless, impatient
look, you expect a long lecture, but I will wait before I say what
I have to say on the subject. I want you to get to sleep now. It is
so warm I will open the window, and take out the lamp to prevent the
insects coming in, and I hope you will become composed.”
She left the room, and I began that hardest of all tasks—trying to go
to sleep. An intensely hot night! just light enough out doors to make a
checked square of the window; not a leaf quivering; not a sound without
but the incessant quavers of the katydids; down stairs the noise and
mirth of merry converse!
Tossing from side to side of the bed; now shaking up my pillow, then
reversing my position, and lying with my head at the foot board; then
stretching directly across the bed, with my hands hanging down over the
sides; in all positions I vainly sought a cool place. The very sheets,
except that they were wrinkled, seemed to have just come from under
the iron; and even the mahogany of the foot board, when I laid my cheek
against it, felt tepidly disagreeable. At last, after trying every
conceivable position on the bed, I fell asleep with my feet pressed
against the cool wall, and while watching a firefly that had gotten
into the room, and was flashing his tiny lamp hither and thither as he
flitted along the ceiling, trying to escape. My slumber was uneasy and
fitful, and I was dreaming of strange oppressions and sensations, and
continually waking, to hear the laughter and mirth down stairs.
Perhaps conscience added a thorn to my pillow; but I could remember
no definite sin I had committed. The cigar was surely not wrong, for
father, and a great many others who were good, smoked. I could not then
analyze my moral nature and detect the wrong, but years have since
shown me ‘twas in the lack of moral courage, in the yielding to what I
was ashamed of, simply because I was ashamed to refuse.
Very young men deem the cigar an important adjunct to manhood, and when
they smoke to look manly, the oath and glass are not far off. A good
rule in forming this almost national habit is to light your first cigar
before father or mother without a blush, and the harm resulting will be
solely physical.