Books: Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor
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Thomas L. Masson (Editor) >> Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor
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"What will become of him?" said Lu hopelessly; "he has no taste for
anything but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why
_isn't_ he like Daniel?" "I suppose because his maker never repeats
himself. Even twins often possess strongly marked individualities.
Don't you think it would be a good plan to learn Billy better before
you try to teach him? If you do, you'll make something as good of him
as Daniel; though it will be rather different from that model."
"Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do
Billy. But we all know the proverb about old maid's daughters and old
bachelor's sons. I wish you had Billy for a month--then you'd see."
"I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in
other directions. But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he
was a new problem, not to be worked without finding out the value of
X in his particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will
no more solve the next one than the rule of three will solve a
question in calculus--or, to rise into your sphere, than the receipt
for one-two-three-fourcake will conduct you to a successful issue
through plum pudding."
I excel in metaphysical discussion, and was about giving further
elaboration to my favorite idea, when the door burst open. Master
Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the traces
of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his
hands.
"Oh my! my!! my!!!" exclaimed his mother.
"Don't you get scared, ma!" cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of
triumph; "I smashed the nose off him! He won't sass me again for
nothing _this_ while. Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dog
fight after all? There was that nasty, good-for-nothing Joe Casey, 'n
Patsy Grogan, and a lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd
caught this poor little ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail, and
were trying to set Joe's dog on him, though he's ten times littler."
"You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to
see you playing with those ragamuffins?"
"Yes, I _played_ 'em! I polished 'em--that's the play I did! Says I,
'Put down that poor little pup; ain't you ashamed of yourself, Patsy
Grogan? 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way
they always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some
awful great fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog,
or I'll show you who I am'; and when he held on, I let him have it.
Then he dropped the pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one
on the bugle."
"_Bugle!_ Oh! Ooh! Ooh!"
"The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I
was trying to give as good as I got--only a fellow can't do it well
with only one hand, Uncle Teddy--up came a policeman, and the whole
crowd ran away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!"
With that Billy set down his "ki-oodle," bid farewell to every fear,
and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the
legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with
an expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction
of his dilapidated raiment and depraved associations. I felt such
sincere pride in this young Mazzini of the dog nation that I was
vexed at Lu for bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation;
but she was not the only conservative who fails to see a good cause
and a heroic heart under a bloody nose and torn jacket. I resolved
that if Billy was punished he should have his recompense before long
in an extra holiday at Barnum's or the Hippotheatron.
You already have some idea of my other nephew, if you have noticed
that none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities,
Billy, ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to
call Billy William. He was one of those youths who never gave their
parents a moment's uneasiness; who never had to have their wills
broken, and never forgot to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella.
In boyhood he was intended for a missionary. Had it been possible for
him to go to Greenland's icy mountains without catching cold, or
India's coral strand without getting bilious, his parents would have
carried out their pleasing dream of contributing him to the world's
evangelization. Lu and Mr. Lovegrove had no doubt that he would have
been greatly blessed if he could have stood it....
Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think
they took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener
does in getting a nice blanch on his celery, and so long as he was
not absolutely sick, the graver he was the better. He was a sensitive
plant, a violet by a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing....
At the time I introduce Billy, both Lu and her husband were much
changed. They had gained a great deal in width of view and liberality
of judgment. They read Dickens and Thackeray with avidity; went now
and then to the opera; proposed to let Billy take a quarter at
Dodworth's; had statues in their parlor without any thought of shame
at their lack of petticoats, and did multitudes of things which, in
their early married life, they would have considered shocking. . . .
They would greatly have liked to see Daniel shine in society. Of his
erudition they were proud even to worship. The young man never had
any business, and his father never seemed to think of giving him any,
knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough to "see him
through." If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed a
professorship in some college and given him the chair; but that would
have taken him away from his own room and the family physician.
Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the
world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously
forgetting that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man
to mint the small change of every-day society in the exclusive
cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots.
With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from
becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, his parents were
equally unaware of their share in the harm done him when they
ascribed to a delicate organization the fact that, at an age when
love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a Balmoral
without his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They
flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness; but
Daniel had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he
thought he should never marry at all.
About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's
convoy, the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the
dog under his arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy
Spitzenbergs, and other indignities had been offered him to the
extent of the brush and comb. He also had a whole jacket on....
Billy and I also obtained permission to go out together and be gone
the entire afternoon. We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an
old shoebox, and then strolled hand-in-hand across that most
delightful of New York breathing places--Stuyvesant Square.
"Uncle Teddy," exclaimed Billy with ardor, "I wish I could do
something to show you how much I think of you for being so good to
me. I don't know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a
hymn for you--a smashing big hymn--six verses, long metre, and no
grumbling?"
"No, Billy, you make me happy enough just by being a good boy."
"Oh, Uncle Teddy!" replied Billy decidedly. "I'm afraid I can't do
it. I've tried so often, and always make such a mess of it." ...
We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on
account of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual
conflicts of Billy's which so much interested me, amused ourselves
with looking out until just as we reached the Astor House, when he
asked me where we were going.
"Where do you guess?" said I.
He cast a glance through the front window and his face became
irradiated. Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of
pleasing a child to create sunshine enough for the chasing away of
the blues of adult devils!
"We're going to Barnum's!" said Billy, involuntarily clapping his
hands.
So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down on the
place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class
largely represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make
believe that they only come to amuse the children, or because they've
country cousins visiting them, but never fail to refer to the vulgar
set one finds there, and the fact of the animals smelling like
anything but Jockey Club; yet I notice that after they've been in the
hall three minutes they're as much interested as any of the people
they come to pooh-pooh, and only put on the high-bred air when they
fancy some of their own class are looking at them. I boldly
acknowledge that I go because I like it. I am especially happy, to be
sure, if I have a child along to go into ecstasies, and give me a
chance, by asking questions, for the exhibition of that fund of
information which is said to be one of my chief charms in the social
circle, and on several occasions has led that portion of the public
immediately about the Happy Family into the erroneous impression that
I was Mr. Barnum glibly explaining his five hundred thousand
curiosities.
On the present occasion we found several visitors of the better class
in the room devoted to the aquarium. Among these was a young lady,
apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet,
which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet
silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable
pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium;
her eyes, a soft, expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair which
exactly matched their color, and, at that rat-and-miceless day, fell
in such graceful abandon as to show at once that nature was the only
maid who crimped their waves into them. Her complexion was rosy with
health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was faultless, her nose
sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her voice as musical
as a wood-robin's when she spoke to the little boy of six at her
side, to whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king.
Billy and I were flattening our noses against the abode of the
balloon fish and determining whether he looked most like a horse-
chestnut burr or a ripe cucumber, when his eyes and my own
simultaneously fell on the child and lady. In a moment, to Billy the
balloon fish was as though he had not been.
"That's a pretty little boy," said I. And then I asked Billy one of
those senseless routine questions which must make children look at
us, regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at
Bushmen.
"How would you like to play with him?"
"Him!" replied Billy scornfully, "that's his first pair of boots; see
him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to 'em! But,
crackey! isn't _she_ a smasher?"
After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the
learned seal, and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room
into another Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the
pretty girl and child were coming too.
Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in astonishment at the
Lightning Calculator--wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy for
him to do his sums by--finally thought he had discovered it, and
resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his
arithmetic lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to
relate in full how he became so confused among the wax-works that he
pinched the solemnest showman's legs to see if he was real, and
perplexed the beautiful Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling
her he had read in his geography all about the way they sold girls
like her.
We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the
dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had
always languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I
stood ready to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the
signboard at the head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated
there, not seeming at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty
girl and the child following after--a sudden intuition flashed across
me. Could it be possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which
whirled me down at ten years--a little boy's first love?
We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous
compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco
lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising
monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the
swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand.
Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The
other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped
his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed
the glove not an inch from one of his big tusks, then marched around
the tank and presented it to the lady with a chivalry of manner in
one of his years quite surprising.
"That's a real nice boy--you said so, didn't you, Lottie?--and I wish
he'd come and play with me," said the little fellow by the young
lady's side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back
to me with his cheeks roseate with blushes.
As he heard this Billy idled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
then faced about and said:
"P'raps I will some day. Where do you live?"
"I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa--and Lottie stays there,
too, now--she's my cousin. Where d'you live?"
"Oh! I live close by--right on that big green square, where I guess
the nurse takes you once in awhile," said Billy patronizingly. Then,
looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, "I never saw you out
there."
"No; Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and
I've just come to visit him."
"Say, will you come and play with me some time?" chimed in the
inextinguishable Jimmy. "I've got a cooking-stove--for real fire--and
blocks, and a ball with a string."
Billy, who belonged to a club for the practise of the great American
game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battist among
the I. G. B. B. 0., or "Infant Giants," smiled from an altitude upon
Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday
afternoon.
Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my
room over "Pickwick" with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the
door told of Daniel. I called "Come in!" and, entering with a slow,
dejected air, he sat down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained
silent, though occasionally looking up as if about to speak, then
dropping his head again, to ponder on the coals. Finally I laid down
Dickens and spoke myself:
"You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?"
"I don't feel very well, uncle."
"What's the matter, my boy?"
"Oh-ah, I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you."
I studied him for a few minutes with kindly curiosity, then answered:
"Perhaps I can save you the trouble by cross-examining it out of you.
Let's try the method of elimination. I know that you're not harassed
by any economical considerations, for you've all the money you want;
and I know that ambition doesn't trouble you, for your tastes are
scholarly. This narrows down the investigation of your symptoms--
listlessness, general dejection, and all--to three causes--dyspepsia,
religious conflicts, love. Now, is your digestion awry?"
"No, sir; good as usual. I'm not melancholy on religion, and--"
"You don't tell me you're in love?"
"Well,--yes--I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy."
I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this
unimaginable revelation, then said: "Is your feeling returned?"
"I really don't know, uncle; I don't believe it is. I don't see how
it can be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in
me to love? I've borne nothing for her--that is, nothing that could
do her any good--though I've endured on her account, I may say,
anguish. So, look at it any way you please, I neither am, do nor
suffer anything that can get a woman's love."
"Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along
with you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive and
neuter!"
Daniel smiled faintly.
"You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you
hit the truth there; indeed, you do. If she were a Greek or Latin
woman I could talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only
understood the philosophy of the flowers as well as they do the
poetry--"
"Thank God they don't, Daniel!" sighed I devoutly.
"Never mind--in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking
about the grounds of differences between Linnaeus and Jussieu. Women
like the star business, they say--and I could tell her where all the
constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment
about them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what
earthly chance would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have
with the woman he loved if he depended for her favor on his ability
to analyze her bouquet or tell her when she might look out for the
next occultation of Orion? I can't talk bread-and-butter talk. I
can't do anything that makes a man even tolerable to a woman!"
"I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread-and-butter talk is
tolerable to a woman!"
"No; but it's necessary to some extent--at any rate, the ability is--
in order to succeed in society; and it's in society men first meet
and strike women. And, oh, Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water
in society!--such a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing
gracefully as a swan swims, and feel that fellows like little Jack
Mankyn, who 'don't know twelve times,' can dance to her perfect
admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners--and all sorts
of men without an idea in their heads have that--while I turn all
colors when I speak to her, and am clumsy, and abrupt, and
abstracted, and bad at repartee--Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it
seems so ungrateful to father and mother, who have spent such pains
for me)--sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange
all I've ever learned for the power to make a good appearance before
her!"
"Daniel, my boy, it's too much a matter of reflection with you! A
woman is not to be taken by laying plans. If you love the lady (whose
name I don't ask you, because I know you'll tell me as soon as you
think best), you must seek her companionship until you're well enough
acquainted with her to have her regard you as something different
from the men whom she meets merely in society, and judge your
qualities by another standard than that she applies to them. If she's
a sensible girl (and God forbid you should marry her otherwise), she
knows that people can't always be dancing, or holding fans, or
running after orange-ice. If she's a girl capable of appreciating
your best points (and woe to you if you marry a girl who can't!),
she'll find them out upon closer intimacy, and, once found, they'll a
hundred times outweigh all brilliant advantages kept in the show-case
of fellows who have nothing on the shelves. When this comes about,
you will pop the question unconsciously, and, to adapt Milton, she'll
drop into your lap, 'gathered--not harshly plucked.'"
"I know that's sensible, Uncle Teddy, and I'll try. Let me tell you
the sacredest of secrets--regularly every day of my life I send her a
little poem fastened round the prettiest bouquet I can get at
Hanft's."
"Does she know who sends them?"
"She can't have any idea. The German boy that takes them knows not a
word of English except her name and address. You'll forgive me,
uncle, for not mentioning her name yet? You see, she may despise or
hate me some day when she knows who it is that has paid her these
attentions; and then I'd like to be able to feel that at least I've
never hurt her by any absurd connection with myself."
"Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit,
though a little counsel with your head will show you that your only
absurdity is self-depreciation."
Daniel bid me good-night. As I put out my cigar and went to bed my
mind reverted to the dauntless little Hotspur who had spent the
afternoon with me and reversed his mother's wish, thinking:
"Oh, if Daniel were more like Billy!"
It was always Billy's habit to come and sit with me while I smoked my
after-breakfast cigar, but the next morning did not see him enter my
room until St. George's hands pointed to a quarter of nine.
"Well, Billy Boy Blue, come blow your horn; what haystack have you
been under till this time of day? We shan't have a minute to look
over our spelling together, and I know a boy who's going in for
promotion next week. Have you had your breakfast and taken care of
Orab?"
"Yes, sir; but I didn't feel like getting up this morning."
"Are you sick?"
"No-o-o--it isn't that; but you'll laugh at me if I tell you."
"Indeed I won't, Billy!"
"Well"--his voice dropped to a whisper, and he stole close to my
side--"I had such a nice dream about _her_ just the last thing
before the bell rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer--so kinder
good and kinder bad--and I wanted to see her so much that, if I
hadn't been a big boy, I believe I should have blubbered. I tried
ever so much to go to sleep and see her again; but the more I tried
the more I couldn't. After all, I had to get up without it, though I
didn't want any breakfast, and only ate two buckwheat cakes, when I
always eat six, you know, Uncle Teddy. Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
upside-down like a savings bank."
"Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell
you the secret, though--that girl and I are going to get married. I
mean to ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!"
"My dear Billy, won't you wait a little while to see if you always
like her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older."
"I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly! I'm as old as
the kings of France used to be when they got married--I read it in
Abbott's histories. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run
or I shall get a tardy mark, and, perhaps, she'll want to see my
certificate sometimes."
So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast
as his legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest
neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons
buttoning on his jacket--omnipotent Love, that, after parents and
teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a
good boy!
With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant
of both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and
distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to
overcome his bashfulness; was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant
only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news,
told in his slangy New York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim:
"Oh, I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as
I went by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a
valentine to her--because it was too big to shove in a lamp-post, and
she might catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell and ran
away. Daniel wrote his own valentine; but, despite its originality,
that document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from his twenty-
five cents' worth of embossed paper, pink cupids and doggerel.
Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and
got introduced to his girl.
Shortly after this Lu gave what they call "a little company"--not a
party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family
were well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate
neighborhood. There was a goodly proportion of young folk, and there
was to be dancing; but the music was limited to a single piano played
by the German exile usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did
not rise to the splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise
with fashionable gaiety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of
introducing Daniel to the _beau monde_--a push given the timid
eaglet by the maternal bird, with a soft tree-top between him and the
vast expanse of society. How simple was the entertainment may be
inferred from the fact that Lu felt somewhat discomposed when she got
a note from one of her guests asking leave to bring along her niece,
who was making her a few weeks' visit. As a matter of course,
however, she returned answer to bring the young lady, and welcome.
Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I
invited him to make his toilet in mine, and, indeed, wanting him to
create a favorable impression, became his valet _pro tem_, tying
his cravat and teasing the divinity student look out of his side
hair. My little dandy Billy came in for another share of attention,
and when I managed to button his jacket for him so that it showed his
shirt-studs "like a man's," Count d'Orsey could not have felt a more
pleasing sense of his sufficiency for all the demands of the gay
world.
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