Chapter XI: A Sisterly Scheme 181 (2)

MRS. MCINTOSH.—Oh, _Mr._ Jans! And they do say—at least Mr. Libriver says—that she hasn’t asked a man who hadn’t proposed to her.

MR. JANS (_Dutchily_).—I d’no. But I’m asked, and—

MRS. MCINTOSH.—You don’t mean to tell me that Mr. Smith is asked, too? Oh, that would be _too_ impossible. You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Smith, that you furnished one of Rhodora’s scalps ten years ago?

MR. SMITH.—You ought to know, Mrs. McIntosh. Or—no—perhaps not. You and Mac were to windward of the centre–board on Townsend’s boat when _I_ got the mitten. I suppose you couldn’t hear us. But we were to leeward, and Miss Pennington said she hoped _all_ proposals didn’t echo.

MRS. MCINTOSH.—The wretched c—— but she’s dead. Well, I’m thankful Mac—Mr. McIntosh never _could_ abide that girl. He always said she was horribly bad form—poor thing, I oughtn’t to speak so, I suppose. She’s been punished enough.

MR. SMITH.—I’m glad you think so, Mrs. McIntosh. I hope you won’t feel it necessary to advise Mac to refuse her last dying request.

MRS. MCINTOSH.—What—

MR. SMITH.—Oh, well, the fact is, Mrs. McIntosh, we only stopped in to say that as McIntosh and all the rest of us are asked to be pall–bearers at Mrs. Boyd’s funeral, you might ask Mac if it wouldn’t be just as well to postpone the fishing party for a week or so. If you remember—will you be so kind? Thank you, good afternoon.

MR. JANS.—Good afternoon, Mrs. McIntosh.

* * * * *

SCENE.—_The Linen Closet, at the end of a sunny corridor in_ MR. ALEXANDER SLOAN’S _house._ MRS. SLOAN _inspecting her sheets and pillow–cases. To her, enter_ BRIDGET, _her housemaid, with a basket full of linen, the Trega Evening Eagle on the top, folded._

MRS. SLOAN.—Why, that surely isn’t one of the new napkins!—oh, it’s the evening paper. Dear me! how near–sighted I am getting! (_Takes it and opens it._) You may put those linen sheets on the top shelf, Bridget. We’ll hardly need them again this Fall. Oh, Bridget—here’s poor Mrs. Boyd’s obituary. You used to live at Colonel Pennington’s before she was married, didn’t you?

BRIDGET.—I did that, Mum.

MRS. SLOAN (_reading_).—“Mrs. Boyd’s pall–bearers are fitly chosen from the most distinguished and prominent citizens of Trega.” I’m sure I don’t see why they should be. (_Reads._) “Those invited to render the last honors to the deceased are Mr. George Lister—“

BRIDGET.—’Tis he was foriver at the house.

MRS. SLOAN (_reads_).—“Mr. John Lang—“

BRIDGET.—And him.

MRS. SLOAN (_reads_).—“Mr Dexter Townsend—“

BRIDGET.—And him, too.

MRS. SLOAN (_reads_).—“Mr. McIntosh, Mr. William Jans, Mr. Milo Smith—“

BRIDGET.—And _thim_. Mr. Smith was her siventh.

MRS. SLOAN.—Her _what_?

BRIDGET.—Her sivinth. There was eight of thim proposed to her in the wan week.

MRS SLOAN.—Why, Bridget! How can you possibly know _that_?

BRIDGET.—Sure, what does it mean whin a gintleman calls twice in th’ wake an’ thin stops like he was shot. An’ who is the eight’ gintleman to walk wid the corpse, Mum?

MRS. SLOAN.—That is all, Bridget. And those pillow–cases look shockingly! I never _saw_ such ironing! (_Exit, hastily and sternly._)

BRIDGET (_sola_).—Only siven of thim. Saints bless us! The pore lady’ll go wan–sided to her grave!

SCENE.—_The Private Office of_ MR. PARKER HALL. MR. HALL _writing. To him, enter_ MR. ALECK SLOAN.

MR. SLOAN.—Ah, there, Parker!

MR. HALL.—Ah, there, Aleck! What brings _you_ around so late in the day?

MR. SLOAN.—I just thought you might like to hear the names of the fellows Rhodora Pennington chose for her pall–bearers. (_Produces list._)

MR. HALL (_sighs_).—Poor Rhodora! Too bad! Fire ahead.

MR. SLOAN (_reads list_).—“George Lister.”

MR. HALL.—_Ah!_

MR. SLOAN (_reads_).—“John Lang.”

MR. HALL.—Oh!

MR. SLOAN (_reads_).—“Dexter Townsend.”

MR. HALL.—Well!

MR. SLOAN (_reads_).—“McCullom McIntosh.”

MR. HALL.—Say!—

MR. SLOAN (_reads_).—“William Jans.”

MR. HALL.—The Deuce!

MR. SLOAN (_reads_).—“Milo Smith.”

MR. HALL.—Great Cæsar’s ghost! This is getting very personal!

MR. SLOAN—Yes. (_Reads, nervously._) “Alexander Sloan.”

MR. HALL.—Whoo–o–o–o–up! You too?

MR. SLOAN (_reads_).—“_Parker Hall._”

(_A long silence._)

MR. HALL (_faintly_).—Oh, lord, she rounded us up, didn’t she? Say, Parker, can’t this thing be suppressed, somehow?

MR. SLOAN.—It’s in the evening paper.

(_Another long silence._)

MR. HALL (_desperately_).—Come out and have a bottle with me?

MR. SLOAN.—I can’t. I’m going down to Bitts’s stable to buy that pony that Mrs. Sloan took such a shine to a month or so ago.

MR. HALL.—If _I_ could get out of this for a pony—Oh, lord!

THE TWO CHURCHES OF
’QUAWKET.

THE TWO CHURCHES OF ’QUAWKET.

The Reverend Colton M. Pursly, of Aquawket, (commonly pronounced ’Quawket,) looked out of his study window over a remarkably pretty New England prospect, stroked his thin, grayish side–whiskers, and sighed deeply. He was a pale, sober, ill–dressed Congregationalist minister of forty–two or three. He had eyes of willow–pattern blue, a large nose, and a large mouth, with a smile of forced amiability in the corners. He _was_ amiable, perfectly amiable and innocuous—but that smile sometimes made people with a strong sense of humor want to kill him. The smile lingered even while he sighed.

Mr. Pursly’s house was set upon a hill, although it was a modest abode. From his window he looked down one of those splendid streets that are the pride and glory of old towns in New England—a street fifty yards wide, arched with grand Gothic elms, bordered with houses of pale yellow and white, some in the homelike, simple yet dignified colonial style, some with great Doric porticos at the street end. And above the billowy green of the tree–tops rose two shapely spires, one to the right, of granite, one to the left, of sand–stone. It was the sight of these two spires that made the Reverend Mr. Pursly sigh.

With a population of four thousand five hundred, ’Quawket had an Episcopal Church, a Roman Catholic Church, a Presbyterian Church, a Methodist Church, a Universalist Church, (very small,) a Baptist Church, a Hall for the “Seventh–Day Baptists,” (used for secular purposes every day but Saturday,) a Bethel, and—“The Two Churches”—as every one called the First and Second Congregational Churches. Fifteen years before, there had been but one Congregational Church, where a prosperous and contented congregation worshiped in a plain little old–fashioned red brick church on a side–street. Then, out of this very prosperity, came the idea of building a fine new free–stone church on Main Street. And, when the new church was half–built, the congregation split on the question of putting a “rain–box” in the new organ. It is quite unnecessary to detail how this quarrel over a handful of peas grew into a church war, with ramifications and interlacements and entanglements and side–issues and under–currents and embroilments of all sorts and conditions. In three years there was a First Congregational Church, in free–stone, solid, substantial, plain, and a Second Congregational Church in granite, something gingerbready, but showy and modish—for there are fashions in architecture as there are in millinery, and we cut our houses this way this year and that way the next. And these two churches had half a congregation apiece, and a full–sized debt, and they lived together in a spirit of Christian unity, on Capulet and Montague terms. The people of the First Church called the people of the Second Church the “Sadduceeceders,” because there was no future for them, and the people of the Second Church called the people of the First Church the “Pharisee–mes”. And this went on year after year, through the Winters when the foxes hugged their holes in the ground within the woods about ’Quawket, through the Summers when the birds of the air twittered in their nests in the great elms of Main Street.

If the First Church had a revival, the Second Church had a fair. If the pastor of the First Church exchanged with a distinguished preacher from Philadelphia, the organist of the Second Church got a celebrated tenor from Boston and had a service of song. This system after a time created a class in both churches known as “the floats,” in contradistinction to the “pillars.” The floats went from one church to the other according to the attractions offered. There were, in the end, more floats than pillars.

The Reverend Mr. Pursly inherited this contest from his predecessor. He had carried it on for three years. Finally, being a man of logical and precise mental processes, he called the head men of his congregation together, and told them what in worldly language might be set down thus:

There was room for one Congregational Church in ’Quawket, and for one only. The flock must be reunited in the parent fold. To do this a master stroke was necessary. They must build a Parish House. All of which was true beyond question—and yet—the church had a debt of $20,000 and a Parish House would cost $15,000.

And now the Reverend Mr. Pursly was sitting at his study window, wondering why all the rich men _would_ join the Episcopal Church. He cast down his eyes, and saw a rich man coming up his path who could readily have given $15,000 for a Parish House, and who might safely be expected to give $1.50, if he were rightly approached. A shade of bitterness crept over Mr. Pursly’s professional smile. Then a look of puzzled wonder took possession of his face. Brother Joash Hitt was regular in his attendance at church and at prayer–meeting; but he kept office–hours in his religion, as in everything else, and never before had he called upon his pastor.

Two minutes later, the minister was nervously shaking hands with Brother Joash Hitt.

“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Hitt,” he stammered, “very glad—I’m—I’m—“

“S’prised?” suggested Mr. Hitt, grimly.

“Won’t you sit down?” asked Mr. Pursly.

Mr. Hitt sat down in the darkest corner of the room, and glared at his embarrassed host. He was a huge old man, bent, heavily–built, with grizzled dark hair, black eyes, skin tanned to a mahogany brown, a heavy square under–jaw, and big leathery dew–laps on each side of it that looked as hard as the jaw itself. Brother Joash had been all things in his long life—sea–captain, commission merchant, speculator, slave–dealer even, people said—and all things to his profit. Of late years he had turned over his capital in money–lending, and people said that his great claw–like fingers had grown crooked with holding the tails of his mortgages.

A silence ensued. The pastor looked up and saw that Brother Joash had no intention of breaking it.

“Can I do any thing for you, Mr. Hitt?” inquired Mr. Pursly.

“Ya–as,” said the old man. “Ye kin. I b’leeve you gin’lly git sump’n’ over ’n’ above your sellery when you preach a fun’l sermon?”

“Well, Mr. Hitt, it—yes—it is customary.”

“How much?”

“The usual honorarium is—h’m—ten dollars.”

“The—_whut_?”

“The—the fee.”

“Will you write me one for ten dollars?”

“Why—why—” said the minister, nervously; “I didn’t know that any one had—had died—“

“There hain’t no one died, ez I know. It’s _my_ fun’l sermon I want.”

“But, my dear Mr. Hitt, I trust you are not—that you won’t—that—“

“Life’s a rope of sand, parson—you’d ought to know that—nor we don’t none of us know when it’s goin’ to fetch loost. I’m most ninety now, ’n’ I don’t cal’late to git no younger.”

“Well,” said Mr. Pursly, faintly smiling; “when the time _does_ come—“

“No, _sir_!” interrupted Mr. Hitt, with emphasis; “when the time _doos_ come, I won’t have no use for it. Th’ ain’t no sense in the way most folks is berrid. Whut’s th’ use of puttin’ a man into a mahog’ny coffin, with a silver plate big’s a dishpan, an’ preachin’ a fun’l sermon over him, an’ costin’ his estate good money, when he’s only a poor deef, dumb, blind fool corpse, an’ don’t get no good of it? _Naow_, I’ve be’n to the undertaker’s, an’ hed my coffin made under my own sooperveesion—good wood, straight grain, no knots—nuthin’ fancy, but doorable. I’ve hed my tombstun cut, an’ chose my text to put onto it—’we brung nuthin’ into the world, an’ it is certain we can take nuthin’ out’—an’ now I want my fun’l sermon, jes’ as the other folks is goin’ to hear it who don’t pay nuthin’ for it. Kin you hev it ready for me this day week?”

“I suppose so,” said Mr. Pursly, weakly.

“I’ll call fer it,” said the old man. “Heern some talk about a Perrish House, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” began Mr. Pursly, his face lighting up.

“‘Tain’t no sech a bad _i_dee,” remarked Brother Joash. “Wal, good day.” And he walked off before the minister could say any thing more.

* * * * *

One week later, Mr. Pursly again sat in his study, looking at Brother Joash, who had a second time settled himself in the dark corner.

It had been a terrible week for Mr. Pursly. He and his conscience, and his dream of the Parish House, had been shut up together working over that sermon, and waging a war of compromises. The casualties in this war were all on the side of the conscience.

“Read it!” commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale. This was more than he had expected. He grew pale and then red and then pale again.

“Go ahead!” said Brother Joash.

“Brethren,” began Mr. Pursly, and then he stopped short. His pulpit voice sounded strange in his little study.

“Go ahead!” said Brother Joash.

“We are gathered together here to–day to pay a last tribute of respect and affection—“

“Clk!” There was a sound like the report of a small pistol. Mr. Pursly looked up. Brother Joash regarded him with stern intentness.

“—to one of the oldest and most prominent citizens of our town, a pillar of our church, and a monument of the civic virtues of probity, industry and wisdom, a man in whom we all took pride, and—“

“Clk!” Mr. Pursly looked up more quickly this time, and a faint suggestion of an expression just vanishing from Mr. Hitt’s lips awakened in his unsuspicious breast a horrible suspicion that Brother Joash had chuckled.

“—whose like we shall not soon again see in our midst. The children on the streets will miss his familiar face—“

“Say!” broke in Brother Joash, “how’d it be for a delegation of child’n to foller the remains, with flowers or sump’n’? They’d volunteer if you give ’em the hint, wouldn’t they?”

“It would be—unusual,” said the minister.

“All right,” assented Mr. Hitt, “only an _i_dee of mine. Thought they might like it. Go ahead!”

Mr. Pursly went ahead, haunted by an agonizing fear of that awful chuckle, if chuckle it was. But he got along without interruption until he reached a casual and guarded allusion to the widows and orphans without whom no funeral oration is complete. Here the metallic voice of Brother Joash rang out again.

“Say! Ef the widders and orphans send a wreath—or a Gates–Ajar—_ef_ they do, mind ye!—you’ll hev it put a–top of the coffin, where folks’ll see it, wun’t ye?”

“Certainly,” said the Reverend Mr. Pursly, hastily; “his charities were unostentatious, as was the whole tenor of his life. In these days of spendthrift extravagance, our young men may well—“

“Say!” Brother Joash broke in once more. “Ef any one wuz to git up right there, an’ say that I wuz the derndest meanest, miserly, penurious, parsimonious old hunks in ’Quawket, you wouldn’t let him talk like that, would ye?”

“Unquestionably not, Mr. Hitt!” said the minister, in horror.

“Thought not. On’y thet’s whut I heern one o’ your deacons say about me the other day. Didn’t know I heern him, but I did. I thought you wouldn’t allow no such talk as that. Go ahead!”

“I must ask you, Mr. Hitt,” Mr. Pursly said, perspiring at every pore, “to refrain from interruptions—or I—I really—can not continue.”

“All right,” returned Mr. Hitt, with perfect calmness. “Continner.”

Mr. Pursly continued to the bitter end, with no further interruption that called for remonstrance. There were soft inarticulate sounds that seemed to him to come from Brother Joash’s dark corner. But it might have been the birds in the _Ampelopsis Veitchii_ that covered the house.

Brother Joash expressed no opinion, good or ill, of the address. He paid his ten dollars, in one–dollar bills, and took his receipt. But as the anxious minister followed him to the door, he turned suddenly and said:

“You was talkin’ ’bout a Perrish House?”

“Yes—“

“Kin ye keep a secret?”

“I hope so—yes, certainly, Mr. Hitt.”

“The’ ’ll be one.”

* * * * *

“I feel,” said the Reverend Mr. Pursly to his wife, “as if I had carried every stone of that Parish House on my shoulders and put it in its place. Can you make me a cup of tea, my dear?”

* * * * *

The Summer days had begun to grow chill, and the great elms of ’Quawket were flecked with patches and spots of yellow, when, early one morning, the meagre little charity–boy whose duty it was to black Mr. Hitt’s boots every day—it was a luxury he allowed himself in his old age—rushed, pale and frightened, into a neighboring grocery, and cried:

“Mist’ Hitt’s dead!”

“Guess not,” said the grocer, doubtfully. “Brother Hitt’s gut th’ Old Nick’s agency for ’Quawket, ’n’ I ain’t heerd th’t he’s been discharged for inattention to dooty.”

“He’s layin’ there smilin’,” said the boy.

“Smilin’?” repeated the grocer. “Guess I’d better go ’n’ see.”

In very truth, Brother Joash lay there in his bed, dead and cold, with a smile on his hard old lips, the first he had ever worn. And a most sardonic and discomforting smile it was.

* * * * *

The Reverend Mr. Pursly read Mr. Hitt’s funeral address for the second time, in the First Congregational Church of ’Quawket. Every seat was filled; every ear was attentive. He stood on the platform, and below him, supported on decorously covered trestles, stood the coffin that enclosed all that was mortal of Brother Joash Hitt. Mr. Pursly read with his face immovably set on the line of the clock in the middle of the choir–gallery railing. He did not dare to look down at the sardonic smile in the coffin below him; he did not dare to let his eye wander to the dark left–hand corner of the church, remembering the dark left–hand corner of his own study. And as he repeated each complimentary, obsequious, flattering platitude, a hideous, hysterical fear grew stronger and stronger within him that suddenly he would be struck dumb by the “clk!” of that mirthless chuckle that had sounded so much like a pistol–shot. His voice was hardly audible in the benediction.

* * * * *

The streets of ’Quawket were at their gayest and brightest when the mourners drove home from the cemetery at the close of the noontide hour. The mourners were principally the deacons and elders of the First Church. The Reverend Mr. Pursly lay back in his seat with a pleasing yet fatigued consciousness of duty performed and martyrdom achieved. He was exhausted, but humbly happy. As they drove along, he looked with a speculative eye on one or two eligible sites for the Parish House. His companion in the carriage was Mr. Uriel Hankinson, Brother Joash’s lawyer, whose entire character had been aptly summed up by one of his fellow–citizens in conferring on him the designation of “a little Joash for one cent.”

“Parson,” said Mr. Hankinson, breaking a long silence, “that was a fust–rate oration you made.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so,” replied Mr. Pursly, his chronic smile broadening.

“You treated the deceased right handsome, considerin’,” went on the lawyer Hankinson.

“Considering what?” inquired Mr. Pursly, in surprise.

“Considerin’—well, _considerin’_—“ replied Mr. Hankinson, with a wave of his hand. “You must feel to be reel disapp’inted ’bout the Parish House, I sh’d s’pose.”

“The Parish House?” repeated the Reverend Mr. Pursly, with a cold chill at his heart, but with dignity in his voice. “You may not be aware, Mr. Hankinson, that I have Mr. Hitt’s promise that we should have a Parish House. And Mr. Hitt was—was—a man of his word.” This conclusion sounded to his own ears a trifle lame and impotent.

“Guess you had his promise that there _should_ be a Parish House,” corrected the lawyer, with a chuckle that might have been a faint echo of Brother Joash’s.

“Well?”

“Well—the Second Church gits it. I draw’d his will. Good day, parson, I’ll ’light here. Air’s kind o’ cold, ain’t it?”

THE LOVE–LETTERS
OF SMITH.

THE LOVE–LETTERS OF SMITH.

When the little seamstress had climbed to her room in the story over the top story of the great brick tenement house in which she lived, she was quite tired out. If you do not understand what a story over a top story is, you must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man who owned that seven–story tenement found that he could rent another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof, like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived. You could just see the top of her window from the street—the huge cornice that had capped the original front, and that served as her window–sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the story on top of the top–story.

The little seamstress was scarcely thirty years old, but she was such an old–fashioned little body in so many of her looks and ways that I had almost spelled her sempstress, after the fashion of our grandmothers. She had been a comely body, too; and would have been still, if she had not been thin and pale and anxious–eyed.

She was tired out to–night because she had been working hard all day for a lady who lived far up in the “New Wards” beyond Harlem River, and after the long journey home, she had to climb seven flights of tenement–house stairs. She was too tired, both in body and in mind, to cook the two little chops she had brought home. She would save them for breakfast, she thought. So she made herself a cup of tea on the miniature stove, and ate a slice of dry bread with it. It was too much trouble to make toast.

But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too tired for that: and the six pots of geraniums that caught the south sun on the top of the cornice did their best to repay her. Then she sat down in her rocking chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings, and she could look across some low roofs opposite, and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse Spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country girl, and although she had lived for ten years in New York, she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To–night she felt the languor of the new season as well as the heaviness of physical exhaustion. She was almost too tired to go to bed.

She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be begun after the night spent on the hard little bed. She thought of the peaceful days in the country, when she taught school in the Massachusetts village where she was born. She thought of a hundred small slights that she had to bear from people better fed than bred. She thought of the sweet green fields that she rarely saw nowadays. She thought of the long journey forth and back that must begin and end her morrow’s work, and she wondered if her employer would think to offer to pay her fare. Then she pulled herself together. She must think of more agreeable things, or she could not sleep. And as the only agreeable things she had to think about were her flowers, she looked at the garden on top of the cornice.

A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a cylindrical object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an irregular and uncertain manner toward her flower–pots. Looking closer, she saw that it was a pewter beer–mug, which somebody in the next apartment was pushing with a two–foot rule. On top of the beer–mug was a piece of paper, and on this paper was written, in a sprawling, half–formed hand:

_porter_
_pleas excuse the libberty And_
_drink it_

The seamstress started up in terror, and shut the window. She remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She had seen him on the stairs, on Sundays. He seemed a grave, decent person; but—he must be drunk. She sat down on her bed, all a–tremble. Then she reasoned with herself. The man was drunk, that was all. He probably would not annoy her further. And if he did, she had only to retreat to Mrs. Mulvaney’s apartment in the rear, and Mr. Mulvaney, who was a highly respectable man and worked in a boiler–shop, would protect her. So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse—and refuse—two or three “libberties” of like sort, she made up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see in the moonlight that the two–foot rule appeared again, with one joint bent back, hitched itself into the mug–handle, and withdrew the mug.

The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and she hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the same hour had come around again, and she sat once more by her window. Then she smiled at the remembrance. “Poor fellow,” she said in her charitable heart, “I’ve no doubt he’s _awfully_ ashamed of it now. Perhaps he was never tipsy before. Perhaps he didn’t know there was a lone woman in here to be frightened.”

Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The pewter pot was in front of her, and the two–foot rule was slowly retiring. On the pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper was:

_porter_
_good for the helth_
_it makes meet_

This time the little seamstress shut her window with a bang of indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought that she would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she remembered the seven flights of stairs; and she resolved to see the janitor in the morning. Then she went to bed and saw the mug drawn back just as it had been drawn back the night before.

The morning came, but, somehow, the seamstress did not care to complain to the janitor. She hated to make trouble—and the janitor might think—and—and—well, if the wretch did it again she would speak to him herself, and that would settle it.

And so, on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little seamstress sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And she had not sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking–chair which she had brought with her from her old home, when the pewter pot hove in sight, with a piece of paper on the top.

This time the legend read:

_Perhaps you are afrade i will_
_adress you_
_i am not that kind_

The seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to cry. But she felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned out of her window and addressed the twilight heaven.

“Mr.—Mr.—sir—I—will you _please_ put your head out of the window so that I can speak to you?”

The silence of the other room was undisturbed. The seamstress drew back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself for another attack, a piece of paper appeared on the end of the two–foot rule.

_when i Say a thing i_
_mene it_
_i have Sed i would not_
_Adress you and i_
_Will not_

What was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the window and thought hard about it. Should she complain to the janitor? But the creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he meant to be kind. He certainly was kind, to waste these pots of porter on her. She remembered the last time—and the first—that she had drunk porter. It was at home, when she was a young girl, after she had had the diphtheria. She remembered how good it was, and how it had given her back her strength. And without one thought of what she was doing, she lifted the pot of porter and took one little reminiscent sip—two little reminiscent sips—and became aware of her utter fall and defeat. She blushed now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down, closed the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.

And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the simple appeal:

_Dont be afrade of it_
_drink it all_

the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle, and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her hands.

“Now,” she said to herself, “you’ve done it! And you’re just as nasty and hard–hearted and suspicious and mean as—as pusley!”

And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. “He will never give me a chance to say I am sorry,” she thought. And, really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really mustn’t ask her to drink porter with him.

“But it’s all over and done now,” she said to herself as she sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot traveling slowly toward her.

She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper:

_porter is good for Flours_
_but better for Fokes_

and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.

She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view.

On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote in a tremulous hand—she _could_ write a very neat hand—

_Thanks._

This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two–foot–rule appeared and drew the mail–carriage home. Then she sat still, enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the Spring damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her eyes.

_fine groing weather_
_Smith_

it said.

Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced the seamstress to continue the exchange of communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her country heart. What did “_groing weather_” matter to the toilers in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like herself, a country–bred soul, longing for the new green and the upturned brown mould of the country fields. She took up the paper, and wrote under the first message:

_Fine_

But that seemed curt; _for_ she added: “_for_” what? She did not know. At last in desperation she put down _potatos_. The piece of paper was withdrawn and came back with an addition:

_Too mist for potatos._

And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact that _m–i–s–t_ represented the writer’s pronunciation of “moist,” she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind, at such a time, was seriously bent upon potatos, was not a man to be feared. She found a half–sheet of note–paper, and wrote:

_I lived in a small village before I came to New York, but I am afraid I do not know much about farming. Are you a farmer?_

The answer came:

_have ben most Every thing_
_farmed a Spel in Maine_
_Smith_

As she read this, the seamstress heard a church clock strike nine.

“Bless me, is it so late?” she cried, and she hurriedly penciled _Good Night_, thrust the paper out, and closed the window. But a few minutes later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of paper on the cornice, fluttering in the evening breeze. It said only _good nite_, and after a moment’s hesitation, the little seamstress took it in and gave it shelter.

* * * * *

After this, they were the best of friends. Every evening the pot appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her window, Mr. Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were exchanged as rapidly as Mr. Smith’s early education permitted. They told each other their histories, and Mr. Smith’s was one of travel and variety, which he seemed to consider quite a matter of course. He had followed the sea, he had farmed, he had been a logger and a hunter in the Maine woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber yard, and he was prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship–building business. All this dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence, in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections, moral and philosophical.

A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith’s style:

_i was one trip to van demens_
_land_

To which the seamstress replied:

_It must have been very interesting._

But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:

_it wornt_

Further he vouchsafed:

_i seen a chinese cook in hong kong could cook flapjacks like your
Mother_

_a mishnery that sells Rum is the menest of Gods crechers_

_a bulfite is not what it is cract up to Be_

_the dagos are wussen the brutes_

_i am 6 1¾ but my Father was 6 foot 4_

The seamstress had taught school one Winter, and she could not refrain from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith’s orthography. One evening, in answer to this communication:

_i killd a Bare in Maine 600 lbs waight_

she wrote:

_Isn’t it generally spelled Bear?_

but she gave up the attempt when he responded:

_a bare is a mene animle any way you spel him_

The Spring wore on, and the Summer came, and still the evening drink and the evening correspondence brightened the close of each day for the little seamstress. And the draught of porter put her to sleep each night, giving her a calmer rest than she had ever known during her stay in the noisy city; and it began, moreover, to make a little “_meet_” for her. And then the thought that she was going to have an hour of pleasant companionship somehow gave her courage to cook and eat her little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress’s cheeks began to blossom with the June roses.

And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken, though the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejaculations and exclamations to which he might have responded. He was silent and invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the clink of his mug as he set it down on the cornice, told her that a living, material Smith was her correspondent. They never met on the stairs, for their hours of coming and going did not coincide. Once or twice they passed each other in the street—but Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him, about a foot over her head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine–looking man, with his six feet one and three–quarters and his thick brown beard. Most people would have called him plain.

Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one Summer evening, and a gang of corner–loafers stopped her and demanded money to buy beer, as is their custom. Before she had time to be frightened, Mr. Smith appeared—whence, she knew not—scattered the gang like chaff, and, collaring two of the human hyenas, kicked them, with deliberate, ponderous, alternate kicks, until they writhed in ineffable agony. When he let them crawl away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly, looking very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on a rotund Teuton, passing by.

“Say, Dutchy!” he roared.

The German stood aghast.

“I ain’t got nothing to write with!” thundered Mr. Smith, looking him in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his way.

And so the Summer went on, and the two correspondents chatted silently from window to window, hid from sight of all the world below by the friendly cornice. And they looked out over the roof, and saw the green of Tompkins Square grow darker and dustier as the months went on.

Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and he never came back without a bunch of daisies or black–eyed Susans or, later, asters or golden–rod for the little seamstress. Sometimes, with a sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a whole plant, with fresh loam for potting.

He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had “_maid_” himself, and some coral, and a dried flying–fish, that was somewhat fearful to look upon, with its sword–like fins and its hollow eyes. At first, she could not go to sleep with that flying–fish hanging on the wall.

But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool September evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:

Respected and Honored Madam:

Having long and vainly sought an opportunity to convey to you the expression of my sentiments, I now avail myself of the privilege of epistolary communication to acquaint you with the fact that the Emotions, which you have raised in my breast, are those which should point to Connubial Love and Affection rather than to simple Friendship. In short, Madam, I have the Honor to approach you with a Proposal, the acceptance of which will fill me with ecstatic Gratitude, and enable me to extend to you those Protecting Cares, which the Matrimonial Bond makes at once the Duty and the Privilege of him, who would, at no distant date, lead to the Hymeneal Altar one whose charms and virtues should suffice to kindle its Flames, without extraneous Aid

I remain, Dear Madam,
Your Humble Servant and
Ardent Adorer, J. Smith.]

The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time. Perhaps she was wondering in what Ready Letter–Writer of the last century Mr. Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amazed at the results of his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she was thinking of something else, for there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her small mouth.

But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have grown nervous, for presently another communication came along the line where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:

_If not understood will you mary me_

The little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:

_If I say Yes, will you speak to me?_

Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the window, and their faces met.

ZENOBIA’S INFIDELITY.

ZENOBIA’S INFIDELITY.

Dr. Tibbitt stood on the porch of Mrs. Pennypepper’s boarding–house, and looked up and down the deserted Main Street of Sagawaug with a contented smile, the while he buttoned his driving–gloves. The little doctor had good cause to be content with himself and with everything else—with his growing practice, with his comfortable boarding–house, with his own good–looks, with his neat attire, and with the world in general. He could not but be content with Sagawaug, for there never was a prettier country town. The Doctor looked across the street and picked out the very house that he proposed to buy when the one remaining desire of his soul was gratified. It was a house with a hip–roof and with a long garden running down to the river.

There was no one in the house to–day, but there was no one in any of the houses. Not even a pair of round bare arms was visible among the clothes that waved in the August breeze in every back–yard. It was Circus Day in Sagawaug.

The Doctor was climbing into his gig when a yell startled him. A freckled boy with saucer eyes dashed around the corner.

“Doctor!” he gasped, “come quick! The circus got a–fire an’ the trick elephant’s most roasted!”

“Don’t be silly, Johnny,” said the Doctor, reprovingly.

“Hope to die—Honest Injun—cross my breast!” said the boy. The Doctor knew the sacredness of this juvenile oath.

“Get in here with me,” he said, “and if I find you’re trying to be funny, I’ll drop you in the river.”

As they drove toward the outskirts of the town, Johnny told his tale.

“Now,” he began, “the folks was all out of the tent after the show was over, and one of the circus men, he went to the oil–barrel in the green wagon with Dan’l in the Lion’s Den onto the outside of it, an’ he took in a candle an’ left it there, and fust thing the barrel busted, an’ he wasn’t hurted a bit, but the trick elephant she was burned awful, an’ the ring–tailed baboon, he was so scared he had a fit. Say, did you know baboons had fits?”

When they reached the circus–grounds, they found a crowd around a small side–show tent. A strong odor of burnt leather confirmed Johnny’s story. Dr. Tibbitt pushed his way through the throng, and gazed upon the huge beast, lying on her side on the grass, her broad shoulder charred and quivering. Her bulk expanded and contracted with spasms of agony, and from time to time she uttered a moaning sound. On her head was a structure of red cloth, about the size of a bushel–basket, apparently intended to look like a British soldier’s forage–cap. This was secured by a strap that went under her chin—if an elephant has a chin. This scarlet cheese–box every now and then slipped down over her eye, and the faithful animal patiently, in all her anguish, adjusted it with her prehensile trunk.

By her side stood her keeper and the proprietor of the show, a large man with a dyed moustache, a wrinkled face, and hair oiled and frizzed. These two bewailed their loss alternately.

“The boss elephant in the business!” cried the showman. “Barnum never had no trick elephant like Zenobia. And them lynes and Dan’l was painted in new before I took the road this season. Oh, there’s been a hoodoo on me since I showed ag’inst the Sunday–school picnic!”

“That there elephant’s been like my own child,” groaned the keeper, “or my own wife, I may say. I’ve slep’ alongside of her every night for fourteen damn years.”

The Doctor had been carefully examining his patient.

“If there is any analogy—” he began.

“Neuralogy!” snorted the indignant showman; “‘t ain’t neuralogy, you jay pill–box, she’s _cooked_!”

“If there is any analogy,” repeated Dr. Tibbitt, flushing a little, “between her case and that of a human being, I think I can save your elephant. Get me a barrel of linseed oil, and drive these people away.”

The Doctor’s orders were obeyed with eager submission. He took off his coat, and went to work. He had never doctored an elephant, and the job interested him. At the end of an hour, Zenobia’s sufferings were somewhat alleviated. She lay on her side, chained tightly to the ground, and swaddled in bandages. Her groans had ceased.

“I’ll call to–morrow at noon,” said the Doctor—“good gracious, what’s that?” Zenobia’s trunk was playing around his waistband.

“She wants to shake hands with you,” her keeper explained. “She’s a lady, she is, and she knows you done her good.”

“I’d rather not have any thing of the sort,” said the Doctor, decisively.

When Dr. Tibbitt called at twelve on the morrow, he found Zenobia’s tent neatly roped in, an amphitheatre of circus–benches constructed around her, and this amphitheatre packed with people.

“Got a quarter apiece from them jays,” whispered the showman, “jest to see you dress them wownds.” Subsequently the showman relieved his mind to a casual acquaintance. “He’s got a heart like a gun–flint, that doctor,” he said; “made me turn out every one of them jays and give ’em their money back before he’d lay a hand to Zenobia.”

But if the Doctor suppressed the clinic, neither he nor the showman suffered. From dawn till dusk people came from miles around to stare a quarter’s worth at the burnt elephant. Once in a while, as a rare treat, the keeper lifted a corner of her bandages, and revealed the seared flesh. The show went off in a day or two, leaving Zenobia to recover at leisure; and as it wandered westward, it did an increased business simply because it had had a burnt trick elephant. Such, dear friends, is the human mind.

The Doctor fared even better. The fame of his new case spread far and wide. People seemed to think that if he could cure an elephant he could cure any thing. He was called into consultation in neighboring towns. Women in robust health imagined ailments, so as to send for him and ask him shuddering questions about “that _wretched_ animal.” The trustees of the orphan–asylum made him staff–physician—in this case the Doctor thought he could trace a connection of ideas, in which children and a circus were naturally associated. And the local newspaper called him a _savant_.

He called every day upon Zenobia, who greeted him with trumpetings of joyful welcome. She also desired to shake hands with him, and her keeper had to sit on her head and hold her trunk to repress the familiarity. In two weeks she was cured, except for extensive and permanent scars, and she waited only for a favorable opportunity to rejoin the circus.

The Doctor had got his fee in advance.

* * * * *

Upon a sunny afternoon in the last of August, Dr. Tibbitt jogged slowly toward Sagawaug in his neat little gig. He had been to Pelion, the next town, to call upon Miss Minetta Bunker, the young lady whom he desired to install in the house with the garden running down to the river. He had found her starting out for a drive in Tom Matson’s dog–cart. Now, the Doctor feared no foe, in medicine or in love; but when a young woman is inscrutable as to the state of her affections, when the richest young man in the county is devoting himself to her, and when the young lady’s mother is backing the rich man, a young country doctor may well feel perplexed and anxious over his chance of the prize.

The Doctor was so troubled, indeed, that he paid no heed to a heavy, repeated thud behind him, on the macadamized road. His gentle little mare heard it, though, and began to curvet and prance. The Doctor was pulling her in, and calming her with a “Soo—Soo—down, girl, down!” when he interrupted himself to shout:

“Great Cæsar! get off me!”

Something like a yard of rubber hose had come in through the side of the buggy, and was rubbing itself against his face. He looked around, and the cold sweat stood out on him as he saw Zenobia, her chain dragging from her hind–foot, her red cap a–cock on her head, trotting along by the side of his vehicle, snorting with joy, and evidently bent on lavishing her pliant, serpentine, but leathery caresses upon his person.

His fear vanished in a moment. The animal’s intentions were certainly pacific, to put it mildly. He reflected that if he could keep his horse ahead of her, he could toll her around the block and back toward her tent. He had hardly guessed, as yet, the depth of the impression which he had made upon Zenobia’s heart, which must have been a large organ, if the size of her ears was any indication—according to the popular theory.

He was on the very edge of the town, and his road took him by a house where he had a new and highly valued patient, the young wife of old Deacon Burgee. Her malady being of a nature that permitted it, Mrs. Burgee was in the habit of sitting at her window when the Doctor made his rounds, and indicating the satisfactory state of her health by a bow and a smile. On this occasion she fled from the window with a shriek. Her mother, a formidable old lady under a red false–front, came to the window, shrieked likewise, and slammed down the sash.

The Doctor tolled his elephant around the block without further misadventure, and they started up the road toward Zenobia’s tent, Zenobia caressing her benefactor while shudders of antipathy ran over his frame. In a few minutes the keeper hove in sight. Zenobia saw him first, blew a shrill blast on her trumpet, close to the Doctor’s ear, bolted through a snake fence, lumbered across a turnip–field, and disappeared in a patch of woods, leaving the Doctor to quiet his excited horse and to face the keeper, who advanced with rage in his eye.

“What do you mean, you cuss,” he began, “weaning a man’s elephant’s affections away from him? You ain’t got no more morals than a Turk, you ain’t. That elephant an’ me has been side–partners for fourteen years, an’ here you come between us.”

“I don’t want your confounded elephant,” roared the Doctor; “why don’t you keep it chained up?”

“She busted her chain to git after you,” replied the keeper. “Oh, I seen you two lally–gaggin’ all along the road. I knowed you wa’n’t no good the first time I set eyes on yer, a–sayin’ hoodoo words over the poor dumb beast.”

The Doctor resolved to banish “analogy” from his vocabulary.

* * * * *

The next morning, about four o’clock, Dr. Tibbitt awoke with a troubled mind. He had driven home after midnight from a late call, and he had had an uneasy fancy that he saw a great shadowy bulk ambling along in the mist–hid fields by the roadside. He jumped out of bed and went to the window. Below him, completely covering Mrs. Pennypepper’s nasturtium bed, her prehensile trunk ravaging the early chrysanthemums, stood Zenobia, swaying to and fro, the dew glistening on her seamed sides beneath the early morning sunlight. The Doctor hastily dressed himself and slipped downstairs and out, to meet this Frankenstein’s–monster of affection.

There was but one thing to do. Zenobia would follow him wherever he went—she rushed madly through Mrs. Pennypepper’s roses to greet him—and his only course was to lead her out of the town before people began to get up, and to detain her in some remote meadow until he could get her keeper to come for her and secure her by force or stratagem. He set off by the least frequented streets, and he experienced a pang of horror as he remembered that his way led him past the house of his one professional rival in Sagawaug. Suppose Dr. Pettengill should be coming home or going out as he passed!

He did not meet Dr. Pettengill. He did meet Deacon Burgee, who stared at him with more of rage than of amazement in his wrinkled countenance. The Deacon was carrying a large bundle of embroidered linen and flannel, that must have been tied up in a hurry.

“Good morning, Deacon,” the Doctor hailed him, with as much ease of manner as he could assume. “How’s Mrs. Burgee?”

“She’s doin’ fust rate, no thanks to no circus doctors!” snorted the Deacon. “An’ if you want to know any thing further concernin’ her health, you ask Dr. Pettengill. _He_’s got more sense than to go trailin’ around the streets with a parboiled elephant behind him, a–frightening women–folks a hull month afore the’r time.”

“Why, Deacon!” cried the Doctor, “what—what is it?”

“It’s a boy,” responded the Deacon, sternly; “and it’s God’s own mercy that ’twa’n’t born with a trunk and a tail.”

* * * * *