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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When we reached the parlor we found Pa and and Ma Lovegrove already
receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old
married couples, which, after paying their _devoirs_, fell in
two like unriveted scissors--the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa
and the ladies in ma, where they mildly opened and shut upon such
questions as severally concerned them, such as "the way gold closed"
and "how the children were."
Besides the old married people, there were several old young men of
distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect who, having nothing in
common with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to
band themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the
arch pillars or appeared to be considering whether, on the whole, it
would not be feasible and best to sit down on the center table. These
subsisted upon such crumbs of comfort as Lu could get an occasional
chance to throw them by rapid sorties of conversation--became
galvanically active the moment they were punched up and fell flat the
moment the punching was remitted. I did all I could for them, but,
having Daniel in tow, dared not sail too near the edge of the
Doldrums, lest he should drop into sympathetic stagnation and be
taken preternaturally bashful, with his sails all aback, just as I
wanted to carry him gallantly into action with some clipper-built
cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu bethought herself of that
last plank of drowning conversationalists, the photograph album. All
the dejected young men made for it at once, some reaching it just as
they were about to sink for the last time, but all getting a grip on
it somehow, and staying there in company with other people's babies
whom they didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to death,
until, one by one, they either stranded upon a motherly dowager by
the Fireplace Shoals, or were rescued from the Soda Reef by some
gallant wrecker of a strong-minded young lady, with a view to taking
salvage out of them in the German.
Besides these were already arrived a dozen nice little boys and
girls, who had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to
remind him of the fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison
with the queen of his affections, they were in danger of being
despised by him as small fry.
The younger ladies and gentlemen--those who had fascinations to
disport or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such,
were probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that
oracle should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
Daniel was in conversation with a perfect godsend of a girl, who
understood Latin and had begun Greek. Billy was taking a moment's
vacation from his boys and girls, busy with "Old Maid" in the
extension room, and whispering with his hand in mine, "Oh, don't I
wish _she_ were here!" when a fresh invoice of ladies, just unpacked
from the dressing-room in all the airy elegance of evening costume,
floated through the door. I heard Lu say:
"Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! Happy to see your niece, too. How d'ye do, Miss
Pilgrim?"
At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy
of ladies opening about sister Lu disclosed the charming face and
figure of the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
"Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wishing it! It's
just like the fairy books!" and, rushing up to the party of
newcomers, "My dear Lottie!" cried he, "if I'd only known you were
coming I'd have gone after you!"
As he caught her by the hand I was pleased to see her soft eyes
brighten with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu
looked on naturally with astonishment in every feature.
"Why, Billy!" said she, "you ought not to call a strange young lady
'_Lottie!_' Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy."
"And you must excuse my mother, Lottie," said Billy, affectionately
patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, "for calling you a strange young
lady. You are not strange at all--you're just as nice a girl as there
is."
"There are no excuses necessary," said Miss Pilgrim, with a
bewitching little laugh. "Billy and I know each other intimately
well, Mrs. Lovegrove; and I confess that when I heard the lady aunt
had been invited to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing
to infringe etiquette this evening by coming where I had no previous
introduction."
"Don't you care!" said Billy encouragingly--"I'll introduce you to
every one of our family; I know 'em, if you don't."
At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and fearing lest
in his enthusiasm he might forget the canon of society which
introduces a gentleman to a lady, not the lady to him, I ventured to
suggest it delicately by saying:
"Billy, will you grant me the favor of a presentation to Miss
Pilgrim?"
"In a minute, Uncle Teddy," answered Billy, considerably lowering his
voice. "The older people first;" and after this reproof I was left to
wait in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of
introducing to the young lady his father and his mother.
Billy, who had now assumed entire guardianship of Miss Pilgrim, with
an air of great dignity intrusted her to my care and left us
promenading while he went in search of Daniel. I myself looked in
vain for that youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the
last comers. Miss Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in
Billy, whom she spoke of as one of the most delightfully original
boys she had ever met--in fact, altogether the most fascinating young
gentleman she had seen in New York society. You may be sure it wasn't
Billy's left ear which burned when I made my responses.
In five minutes he reappeared to announce, in a tone of
disappointment, that he could find Daniel nowhere. He could see a
light through his keyhole, but the door was locked, and he could get
no admittance. Just then Lu came up to present a certain--no, an
uncertain--young man of the fleet stranded on parlor furniture
earlier in the evening. To Lu's great astonishment Miss Pilgrim asked
Billy's permission to leave. It was granted with all the courtesy of
a _preux chevalier_, on the condition readily assented to by the
lady that she should dance one lancers with him during the evening.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior
being to assist at the childish amusement of his contemporaries,
"would anybody ever suppose that was our Billy?"
"I should, my dear sister," said I, with proud satisfaction; "but you
remember I always was just to Billy."
Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel, I found his door locked
and a light shining through the keyhole, as Billy had stated. I made
no attempt to enter by knocking, but, going to my room and opening
the window next his, leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash
with my cane, and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of
communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush.
When he saw me he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell,
and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me
enter by the normal mode.
"Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean? Are you
sick?" "Uncle Edward, I am not sick--and this means that I am a fool.
Even a little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the
very dust. I wish I'd been a missionary and got massacred by savages.
Oh, that I'd been permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or
that my mother hadn't carried me through the measles! If it weren't
wrong to take my life into my own hands, I'd open that window, and--
and--sit in a draft this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter!
Oh, oh, oh!"
And he paced the floor with strides of frenzy.
"Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly a minute. What
brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the first
ten minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long
enough to speak to the Rumbullion party, who had just come in, and
when I turned around you were gone. Now you are in this fearful
condition. What is there in the Rumbullions to start you off on such
a bender of bashfulness as this which I here behold?"
"Rumbullion indeed!" said Daniel. "A hundred Rumbullions could not
make me feel as I do. But _she_ can shake me into a whirlwind with her
little finger; and _she_ came with the Rumbullions!"
"What! D'you--Miss Pilgrim?"
"Miss Pilgrim!"
I labored with Daniel for ten minutes, using every encouragement and
argument I could think of, and finally threatened him that I would
bring up the whole Rumbullion party, Miss Pilgrim included, telling
them that he had invited them to look at his conchological cabinet,
unless he instantly shook the ice out of his manner and accompanied
me downstairs. The dreadful menace had the desired effect. He knew
that I would not scruple to fulfil it; and at the same time that it
made him surrender, it also provoked him with me to a degree which
gave his eyes and cheeks as fine a glow as I could have wished for
the purpose of a favorable impression. The stimulus of wrath was good
for him, and there was little tremor in his knees when he descended
the stairs. Well-a-day! So Daniel and Billy were rivals!
The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.
"Oh, there you are, Daniel!" he said cheerily. "I was just going to
look after you and Uncle Teddy. We've wanted you for the dances.
We've had the lancers twice, and three round dances; and I danced the
second lancers with Lottie. Now we're going to play some games--to
amuse the children, you know," he added loftily, with the adult
gesture of pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the extension
room. "Lottie's going to play, too; so will you and Daniel, won't
you, uncle? Oh, here comes Lottie now! This is my brother, Miss
Pilgrim--let me introduce him to you. I'm sure you'll like him.
There's nothing he don't know."
Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel-post of the staircase and,
when she looked into Daniel's face, blushed like the red, red rose,
losing her self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.
The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the
opposite party's falls, and Daniel made out to say in a firm tone
that it was long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss
Pilgrim.
"Not since Mrs. Cramcroud's last sociable, I think," replied Miss
Pilgrim, her cheeks and eyes still playing the telltale.
"Oho! so you don't want any introduction!" exclaimed Master Billy. "I
didn't know you knew each other, Lottie?"
"I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society. Shall we go and join the
plays?"
"To be sure we shall!" cried Billy. "You needn't mind--all the grown
people are going, too."
On entering the parlor we found it as he had said. The guests being
almost all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of
jolly little Miss Bloomingal, sister Lu had consented to make a
pleasant Christmas kind of time of it, in which everybody was
permitted to be young again and romp with the rompiest. We played
blindman's buff till we were tired of that--Daniel, to Lu's delight,
coming out splendidly as blindman, and evincing such "cheek" in the
style he hunted down and caught the ladies as satisfied me that
nothing but his eyesight stood in the way of his making an audacious
figure in the world. Then a pretty little girl, Tilly Turtelle, who
seemed quite a premature flirt, proposed "doorkeeper"--a suggestion
accepted with great _eclat_ by all the children, several grown
people assenting.
To Billy--quite as much on account of his shining prominence in the
executive faculties as of his character as host--was committed the
duty of counting out the first person to be sent into the hall. There
were so many of us that "Aina maina mona mike" would not go quite
round; but, with that promptness of expedient which belongs to
genius, Billy instantly added on, "Intery-mintery-cutery-corn," and
the last word of the cabalistic formula fell upon me--Edward Balbus.
I disappeared into the entry amidst peals of happy laughter from both
old and young, calling, when the door opened again to ask me whom I
wanted, for the pretty lisping flirt who had proposed the game. After
giving me a coquettish little chirrup of a kiss and telling me my
beard scratched, she bade me on my return, send out to her "Mithter
Billy Lovegrove." I obeyed her; my youngest nephew retired; and after
a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what she
proposed the game for, Billy being a great favorite with the little
girls, she came back, pouting and blushing, to announce that he
wanted Miss Pilgrim. That young lady showed no mock-modesty, but
arose at once and laughingly went out to her youthful admirer, who,
as I afterward learned, embraced her ardently and told her he loved
her better than any girl in the world. As he turned to go back she
told him that he might send to her one of her juvenile cousins,
Reginald Rumbullion. Now, whether because on this youthful
Rumbullion's account Billy had suffered the pangs of that most
terrible passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing
practical jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy
marched into the room, and, having shut the door behind him,
paralyzed the crowded parlor by an announcement that Mr. Daniel
Lovegrove was wanted.
I was standing at his side and could feel him tremble--see him turn
pale.
"Dear me!" he whispered in a choking voice, "can she mean me?"
"Of course she does," said I. "Who else? Do you hesitate? Surely you
can't refuse such an invitation from a lady?"
"No, I suppose not," said he mechanically. And amidst much laughter
from the disinterested while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his
mother were spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from
the room. Never in my life did I so much long for that instrument
described by Mr. Samuel Weller--a pair of patent double-million-
magnifying microscopes of hextry power, to see through a deal door.
Instead of this, I had to learn what happened only by report.
Lottie Pilgrim was standing under the hall burners with her elbow on
the newel-post, looking more vividly charming than he had ever seen
her before at Mrs. Cramcroud's sociable or elsewhere. When startled
by the apparition of Mr. Daniel Lovegrove instead of the little Rum-
bullion whom she was expecting, she had no time to exclaim or hide
her mounting color, none at all to explain to her own mind the
mistake that had occurred, before his arm was clasped around her
waist, and his lips so closely pressed to hers, that through her soft
thick hair she could feel the throbbing of his temples. As for
Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream, from which he waked to see Miss
Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter though not incensed
stupefaction--to stammer:
"Forgive me! Do forgive me! I thought you were in earnest."
"So I was," she said tremulously, as soon as she could catch her
voice, "in sending for my cousin Reginald."
"Oh, dear, what shall I do! Believe me, I was told you wanted me. Let
me go and explain it to mother--she'll tell the rest. I couldn't do
it--I'd die of mortification. Oh, that wretched boy Billy!"
On the principle already mentioned, his agitation reassured her.
"Don't try to explain it now--it may get Billy a scolding. Are there
any but intimate family friends here this evening?"
"No--I believe--no--I'm sure," replied Daniel, collecting his
faculties.
"Then I don't mind what they think. Perhaps they'll suppose we've
known each other long; but we'll arrange it by-and-by. They'll think
the more of it the longer we stay out here--hear them laugh! I must
run back now. I'll send you somebody."
A round of juvenile applause greeted her as she hurried into the
parlor, and a number of grown people smiled quite musically. Her
quick woman wit showed her how to retaliate and divide the
embarrassment of the occasion. As she passed me she said in an
undersone:
"Answer quick! Who's that fat lady on the sofa, that laughs so loud?"
"Mrs. Cromwell Crags," said I as quietly.
Miss Pilgrim made a satirically low courtsey and spoke in a modest
but distinct voice:
"I really must be excused for asking. I'm a stranger, you know; but
is there such a lady here as Mrs. Craggs--Mrs. _Cromwell_ Craggs? For
if so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs. Cromwell Craggs."
Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had
to go and get kissed like the rest of us.
Before the close of the evening Billy was made as jealous as his
parents and I was surprised to see Daniel in close conversation with
Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and fuchsias of the conservatory. "A
regular flirtation!" said Billy somewhat indignantly. The conclusion
they arrived at was, that after all no great harm had been done, and
that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun.
If I had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have
suspected that the offense Billy had led Daniel into committing was
not unlikely to be repeated on the offender's own account; but so
much as I could see showed me that the ice was broken.
--From "Little Brother, and Other Genre Pictures."
Robert Jones Burdette
RHEUMATISM MOVEMENT CURE
One day, not a great while ago, Mr. Middlerib read in his favorite
paper a paragraph stating that the sting of a bee was a sure cure for
rheumatism, and citing several remarkable instances in which people
had been perfectly cured by this abrupt remedy. Mr. Middlerib thought
of the rheumatic twinges that grappled his knees once in awhile and
made his life a burden.
He read the article several times and pondered over it. He understood
that the stinging must be done scientifically and thoroughly. The
bee, as he understood the article, was to be griped by the ears and
set down upon the rheumatic joint and held there until it stung
itself stingless. He had some misgivings about the matter. He knew it
would hurt. He hardly thought it could hurt any worse than the
rheumatism, and it had been so many years since he was stung by a bee
that he had almost forgotten what it felt like. He had, however, a
general feeling that it would hurt some. But desperate diseases
require desperate remedies, and Mr. Middlerib was willing to undergo
any amount of suffering if it would cure his rheumatism.
He contracted with Master Middlerib for a limited supply of bees;
humming and buzzing about in the summer air, Mr. Middlerib did not
know how to get them. He felt, however, that he could safely depend
upon the instincts and methods of boyhood. He knew that if there was
any way in heaven whereby the shyest bee that ever lifted a two
hundred pound man off the clover could be induced to enter a wide-
mouthed glass bottle, his son knew that way.
For the small sum of one dime Master Middlerib agreed to procure
several, to wit: six bees, sex and age not specified; but, as Mr.
Middlerib was left in uncertainty as to the race, it was made
obligatory upon the contractor to have three of them honey and three
humble, or, in the generally accepted vernacular, bumblebees. Mr. M.
did not tell his son what he wanted those bees for, and the boy went
off on his mission with his head so full of astonishment that it
fairly whirled. Evening brings all home, and the last rays of the
declining sun fell upon Master Middlerib with a short, wide-mouthed
bottle comfortably populated with hot, ill-natured bees, and Mr.
Middlerib and a dime. The dime and the bottle changed hands. Mr.
Middlerib put the bottle in his coat pocket and went into the house
eyeing everybody he met very suspiciously, as though he had made up
his mind to sting to death the first person who said "bee" to him. He
confided his guilty secret to none of his family. He hid his bees in
his bedroom, and as he looked at them just before putting them away
he half wished the experiment was safely over. He wished the
imprisoned bees did not look so hot and cross. With exquisite care he
submerged the bottle in a basin of water and let a few drops in on
the heated inmates to cool them off.
At the tea table he had a great fright. Miss Middlerib, in the
artless simplicity of her romantic nature, said:
"I smell bees. How the odor brings up---"
But her father glared at her and said, with superfluous harshness and
execrable grammar: "Hush up! You don't smell nothing."
Whereupon Mrs. Middlerib asked him if he had eaten anything that
disagreed with him, and Miss Middlerib said:
"Why, pa!" and Master Middlerib smiled as he wondered.
Bedtime at last, and the night was warm and sultry. Under various
false pretenses, Mr. Middlerib strolled about the house until
everybody else was in bed, and then he sought his room. He turned the
lamp down until its feeble ray shone dimly as a death-light.
Mr. Middlerib disrobed slowly--very slowly. When at last he was ready
to go lumbering into his peaceful couch, he heaved a profound sigh,
so full of apprehension and grief that Mrs. Middlerib, who was
awakened by it, said if it gave him so much pain to come to bed
perhaps he had better sit up all night. Mr. Middlerib choked another
sigh, but said nothing and crept into bed. After lying still a few
moments he reached out and got his bottle of bees.
It was not an easy thing to do to pick one bee out of the bottle with
his fingers and not get into trouble. The first bee Mr. Middlerib got
was a little brown honey-bee, that wouldn't weigh half an ounce if
you picked him up by the ears, but if you lifted him by the hind leg
would weigh as much as the last end of a bay mule. Mr. Middlerib
could not repress a groan.
"What's the matter with you?" sleepily asked his wife.
It was very hard for Mr. Middlerib to say he only felt hot, but he
did it. He didn't have to lie about it, either. He did feel very hot
indeed--about eighty-six all over, and one hundred and ninety-seven
on the end of his thumb. He reversed the bee and pressed the warlike
terminus of it firmly against the rheumatic knee.
It didn't hurt so badly as he thought it would.
It didn't hurt at all.
Then Mr. Middlerib remembered that when the honey-bee stabs a human
foe it generally leaves its harpoon in the wound, and the invalid
knew that the only thing this bee had to sting with was doing its
work at the end of his thumb.
He reached his arm out from under the sheets and dropped this
disabled atom of rheumatism liniment on the carpet. Then, after a
second of blank wonder, he began to feel round for the bottle, and
wished he knew what he did with it.
In the meantime strange things had been going on. When he caught hold
of the first bee, Mr. Middlerib, for reasons, drew it out in such
haste that for a time he forgot all about the bottle and its remedial
contents, and left it lying uncorked in the bed, between himself and
his innocent wife. In the darkness there had been a quiet but general
emigration from that bottle. The bees, their wings clogged with the
water Mr. Middlerib had poured upon them to cool and tranquillize
them, were crawling aimlessly over the sheet. While Mr. Middlerib was
feeling around for it, his ears were suddenly thrilled and his heart
frozen by a wild, piercing scream from his wife.
"Murder!" she screamed. "Murder! Oh Help me! Help! Help!"
Mr. Middlerib sat bolt upright in bed. His hair stood on end. The
night was warm, but he turned to ice in a minute.
"Where in thunder," he said, with pallid lips, as he felt all over
the bed in frenzied haste, "where in thunder are them infernal bees?"
And a large "bumble," with a sting as pitiless as the finger of
scorn, just then climbed up the inside of Mr. Middlerib's nightshirt,
until it got squarely between his shoulders, and then it felt for his
marrow, and he said calmly:
"Here is one of them."
And Mrs. Middlerib felt ashamed of her feeble screams when Mr.
Middlerib threw up both arms and, with a howl that made the windows
rattle, roared:
"Take him off! Oh, land of Scott, somebody take him off!"
And when the little honey-bee began tickling the sole of Mrs.
Middlerib's foot, she shrieked that the house was bewitched, and
immediately went into spasms.
The household was aroused by this time. Miss Middlerib and Master
Middlerib and the servants were pouring into the room, adding to the
general confusion by howling at random and asking irrelevant
questions, while they gazed at the figure of a man a little on in
years arrayed in a long night-shirt, pawing fiercely at the
unattainable spot in the middle of his back, while he danced an
unnatural, weird, wicked-looking jig by the dim, religious light of
the night-lamp. And while he danced and howled, and while they gazed
and shouted, a navy-blue wasp, that Master Middlerib had put in the
bottle for good measure and variety, and to keep the menagerie
stirred up, had dried his legs and wings with a corner of the sheet,
and after a preliminary circle or two around the bed to get up his
motion and settle down to a working gait, he fired himself across the
room, and to his dying day Mr. Middlerib will always believe that one
of the servants mistook him for a burglar and shot him.
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