Chapter II: Part 2

The baby stopped crying as soon as I gave him the bottle and I sat down to read. The next time I looked at him he'd got out the sponge and about half his face was jet-black. This was a nice fix, for I knew nothing could get the black off his face, and when mother came home she would say the baby was spoiled and I had done it.

Now I think an all black baby is ever so much more stylish than an all white baby, and when I saw the baby was part black I made up my mind that if I blacked it all over it would be worth more than it ever had been and perhaps mother would be ever so much pleased. So I hurried up and gave it a good coat of black. You should have seen how that baby shined! The polish dried just as soon as it was put on, and I had just time to get the baby dressed again when mother and Sue came in.

I wouldn't lower myself to repeat their unkind language. When you've been called a murdering little villain and an unnatural son it will wrinkle in your heart for ages. After what they said to me I didn't even seem to mind about father but went up-stairs with him almost as if I was going to church or something that wouldn't hurt much.

The baby is beautiful and shiny, though the doctor says it will wear off in a few years. Nobody shows any gratitude for all the trouble I took, and I can tell you it isn't easy to black a baby without getting it into his eyes and hair. I sometimes think that it is hardly worth while to live in this cold and unfeeling world.

OUR SNOW MAN.

I do love snow. There isn't anything except a bull-terrier that is as beautiful as snow. Mr. Travers says that seven hundred men once wrote a poem called "Beautiful Snow," and that even then, though they were all big strong men, they couldn't find words enough to tell how beautiful it was.

There are some people who like snow, and some who don't. It's very curious, but that's the way it is about almost everything. There are the Eskimos who live up North where there isn't anything but snow, and where there are no schools nor any errands, and they haven't anything to do but to go fishing and skating and hunting, and sliding down hill all day. Well, the Eskimos don't like it, for people who have been there and seen them say they are dreadfully dissatisfied. A nice set the Eskimos must be! I wonder what would satisfy them. I don't suppose it's any use trying to find out, for father says there's no limit to the unreasonableness of some people.

We ought always to be satisfied and contented with our condition and the things we have. I'm always contented when I have what I want, though of course nobody can expect a person to be contented when things don't satisfy him. Sue is real contented, too, for she's got the greatest amount of new clothes, and she's going to be married very soon. I think it's about time she was, and most everybody else thinks so too, for I've heard them say so; and they've said so more than ever since we made the snow man.

You see, it was the day before Christmas, and there had been a beautiful snow-storm. All of us boys were sliding down hill, when somebody said, "Let's make a snow man." Everybody seemed to think the idea was a good one, and we made up our minds to build the biggest snow man that ever was, just for Christmas. The snow was about a foot thick, and just hard enough to cut into slabs; so we got a shovel and went to work. We built the biggest snow man I ever heard of. We made him hollow, and Tom McGinnis stood inside of him and helped build while the rest of us worked on the outside. Just as fast as we got a slab of snow in the right place we poured water on it so that it would freeze right away. We made the outside of the man about three feet thick, and he was so tall that Tom McGinnis had to keep climbing up inside of him to help build.

Tom came near getting into a dreadful scrape, for we forgot to leave a hole for him to get out of, and when the man was done, and frozen as hard as a rock, Tom found that he was shut up as tight as if he was in prison. Didn't he howl, though, and beg us to let him out! I told him that he would be very foolish not to stay in the man all night, for he would be as warm as the Eskimos are in their snow huts, and there would be such fun when people couldn't find him anywhere. But Tom wasn't satisfied; he began to talk some silly nonsense about wanting his supper. The idea of anybody talking about such a little thing as supper when they had such a chance to make a big stir as that. Tom always was an obstinate sort of fellow, and he would insist upon coming out, so we got a hatchet and chopped a hole in the back of the man and let him out.

The snow man was quite handsome, and we made him have a long beak, like a bird, so that people would be astonished when they saw him. It was that beak that made me think about the Egyptian gods that had heads like hawks and other birds and animals, and must have frightened people dreadfully when they suddenly met them near graveyards or in lonesome roads.

One of those Egyptian gods was made of stone, and was about as high as the top of a house. He was called Memnon, and every morning at sunrise he used to sing out with a loud voice, just as the steam-whistle at Mr. Thompson's mill blows every morning at sunrise to wake people up. The Egyptians thought that Memnon was something wonderful, but it has been found out, since the Egyptians died, that a priest used to hide himself somewhere inside of Memnon, and made all the noise.

Looking at the snow man and thinking about the Egyptian gods, I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to hide inside of him and say things whenever people went by. It would be a new way of celebrating Christmas, too. They would be awfully astonished to hear a snow man talk. I might even make him sing a carol, and then he'd be a sort of Christian Memnon, and nobody would think I had anything to do with it.

That evening when the moon got up--it was a beautiful moonlight night--I slipped out quietly and went up to the hill where the snow man was, and hid inside of him. I knew Mr. Travers and Sue were out sleigh-riding, and they hadn't asked me to go, though there was lots of room, and I meant to say something to them when they drove by the snow man that would make Sue wish she had been a little more considerate.

Presently I heard bells and looked out and saw a sleigh coming up the hill. I was sure it was Mr. Travers and Sue; so I made ready for them. The sleigh came up the hill very slow, and when it was nearly opposite to me I said, in a solemn voice, "Susan, you ought to have been married long ago." You see, I knew that would please Mr. Travers; and it was true, too.

She gave a shriek, and said, "Oh, what's that?"

"We'll soon see," said a man's voice that didn't sound a bit like Mr. Travers's. "There's somebody round here that's spoiling for a thrashing."

The man came right up to the snow man, and saw my legs through the hole, and got hold of one of them and began to pull. I didn't know it, but the boys had undermined the snow man on one side, and as soon as the man began to pull, over went the snow man and me right into the sleigh, and the woman screamed again, and the horse ran away and pitched us out, and--

But I don't want to tell the rest of it, only father said that I must be taught not to insult respectable ladies like Miss Susan White, who is fifty years old, by telling them it is time they were married.

ART.

Our town has been very lively this winter. First we had two circuses, and then we had the small-pox, and now we've got a course of lectures. A course of lectures is six men, and you can go to sleep while they're talking, if you want to, and you'd better do it unless they are missionaries with real idols or a magic lantern. I always go to sleep before the lectures are through, but I heard a good deal of one of them that was all about art.

Art is almost as useful as history or arithmetic, and we ought all to learn it, so that we can make beautiful things and elevate our minds. Art is done with mud in the first place. The art man takes a large chunk of mud and squeezes it until it is like a beautiful man or woman, or wild bull, and then he takes a marble gravestone and cuts it with a chisel until it is exactly like the piece of mud. If you want a solid photograph of yourself made out of marble, the art man covers your face with mud, and when it gets hard he takes it off, and the inside of it is just like a mould, so that he can fill it full of melted marble which will be an exact photograph of you as soon as it gets cool.

This is what one of the men who belong to the course of lectures told us. He said he would have shown us exactly how to do art, and would have made a beautiful portrait of a friend of his, named Vee Nuss, right on the stage before our eyes, only he couldn't get the right kind of mud. I believed him then, but I don't believe him now. A man who will contrive to get an innocent boy into a terrible scrape isn't above telling what isn't true. He could have got mud if he'd wanted it, for there was mornamillion tons of it in the street, and it's my belief that he couldn't have made anything beautiful if he'd had mud a foot deep on the stage.

As I said, I believed everything the man said, and when the lecture was over, and father said, "I do hope Jimmy you've got some benefit from the lecture this time" and Sue said, "A great deal of benefit that boy will ever get unless he gets it with a good big switch don't I wish I was his father O! I'd let him know," I made up my mind that I would do some art the very next day, and show people that I could get lots of benefit if I wanted to.

I have spoken about our baby a good many times. It's no good to anybody, and I call it a failure. It's a year and three months old now, and it can't talk or walk, and as for reading or writing, you might as well expect it to play base-ball. I always knew how to read and write, and there must be something the matter with this baby, or it would know more.

Last Monday mother and Sue went out to make calls, and left me to take care of the baby. They had done that before, and the baby had got me into a scrape, so I didn't want to be exposed to its temptations; but the more I begged them not to leave me, the more they would do it, and mother said, "I know you'll stay and be a good boy while we go and make those horrid calls," and Sue said, "I'd better or I'd get what I wouldn't like."

After they'd gone I tried to think what I could do to please them, and make everybody around me better and happier. After a while I thought that it would be just the thing to do some art and make a marble photograph of the baby, for that would show everybody that I had got some benefit from the lectures, and the photograph of the baby would delight mother and Sue.

I took mother's fruit-basket and filled it with mud out of the back yard. It was nice thick mud, and it would stay in any shape that you squeezed it into, so that it was just the thing to do art with. I laid the baby on its back on the bed, and covered its face all over with the mud about two inches thick. A fellow who didn't know anything about art might have killed the baby, for if you cover a baby's mouth and nose with mud it can't breathe, which is very unhealthy, but I left its nose so it could breathe, and intended to put an extra piece of mud over that part of the mould after it was dry. Of course the baby howled all it could, and it would have kicked dreadfully, only I fastened its arms and legs with a shawl-strap so that it couldn't do itself any harm.

The mud wasn't half dry when mother and Sue and father came in, for he met them at the front gate. They all came up-stairs, and the moment they saw the baby they said the most dreadful things to me without waiting for me to explain. I did manage to explain a little through the closet door while father was looking for his rattan cane, but it didn't do the least good.

I don't want to hear any more about art or to see any more lectures. There is nothing so ungrateful as people, and if I did do what wasn't just what people wanted, they might have remembered that I meant well, and only wanted to please them and elevate their minds.

AN AWFUL SCENE.

I have the same old, old story to tell. My conduct has been such again--at any rate, that's what father says; and I've had to go up-stairs with him, and I needn't explain what that means. It seems very hard, for I'd tried to do my very best, and I'd heard Sue say, "That boy hasn't misbehaved for two days good gracious I wonder what can be the matter with him." There's a fatal litty about it, I'm sure. Poor father! I must give him an awful lot of trouble, and I know he's had to get two new bamboo canes this winter just because I've done so wrong, though I never meant to do it.

It happened on account of coasting. We've got a magnificent hill. The road runs straight down the middle of it, and all you have to do is to keep on the road. There's a fence on one side, and if you run into it something has got to break. John Kruger, who is a stupid sort of a fellow, ran into it last week head-first, and smashed three pickets, and everybody said it was a mercy he hit it with his head, or he might have broken some of his bones and hurt himself. There isn't any fence on the other side, but if you run off the road on that side you'll go down the side of a hill that's steeper than the roof of the Episcopal church, and about a mile long, with a brook full of stones down at the bottom.

The other night Mr. Travers said-- But I forgot to say that Mr. Martin is back again, and coming to our house worse than ever. He was there, and Mr. Travers and Sue, all sitting in the parlor, where I was behaving, and trying to make things pleasant, when Mr. Travers said, "It's a bright moonlight night let's all go out and coast." Sue said, "Oh that would be lovely Jimmy get your sled." I didn't encourage them, and I told father so, but he wouldn't admit that Mr. Travers or Sue or Mr. Martin or anybody could do anything wrong. What I said was, "I don't want to go coasting. It's cold and I don't feel very well, and I think we ought all to go to bed early so we can wake up real sweet and good-tempered." But Sue just said, "Don't you preach Jimmy if you're lazy just say so and Mr. Travers will take us out." Then Mr. Martin he must put in and say, "Perhaps the boy's afraid don't tease him he ought to be in bed anyhow." Now I wasn't going to stand this, so I said, "Come on. I wanted to go all the time, but I thought it would be best for old people to stay at home, and that's why I didn't encourage you." So I got out my double-ripper, and we all went out on the hill and started down.

I sat in front to steer, and Sue sat right behind me, and Mr. Travers sat behind her to hold her on, and Mr. Martin sat behind him. We went splendidly, only the dry snow flew so that I couldn't see anything, and that's why we got off the road and on to the side hill before I knew it.

The hill was just one glare of ice, and the minute we struck the ice the sled started away like a hurricane. I had just time to hear Mr. Martin say, "Boy mind what you're about or I'll get off," when she struck something--I don't know what--and everybody was pitched into the air, and began sliding on the ice without anything to help them, except me. I caught on a bare piece of rock, and stopped myself. I could see Sue sitting up straight, and sliding like a streak of lightning, and crying, "Jimmy father Charles Mr. Martin O my help me." Mr. Travers was on his stomach, about a rod behind her, and gaining a little on her, and Mr. Martin was on his back, coming down head-first, and beating them both. All of a sudden he began to go to pieces. Part of him would slide off one way, and then another part would try its luck by itself. I can tell you it was an awful and surreptitious sight. They all reached the bottom after a while, and when I saw they were not killed, I tried it myself, and landed all right. Sue was sitting still, and mourning, and saying, "My goodness gracious I shall never be able to walk again my comb is broken and that boy isn't fit to live." Mr. Travers wasn't hurt very much, and he fixed himself all right with some pins I gave him, and his handkerchief; but his overcoat looked as if he'd stolen it from a scarecrow. When he had comforted Sue a little (and I must say some people are perfectly sickening the way they go on), he and I collected Mr. Martin--all except his teeth--and helped put him together, only I got his leg on wrong side first, and then we helped him home.

This was why father said that my conduct was such, and that his friend Martin didn't seem to be able to come into his house without being insulted and injured by me. I never insulted him. It isn't my fault if he can't slide down a hill without coming apart. However, I've had my last suffering on account of him. The next time he comes apart where I am I shall not wait to be punished for it, but shall start straight for the North-pole, and if I discover it the British government will pay me mornamillion dollars. I'm able to sit down this morning, but my spirits are crushed, and I shall never enjoy life any more.

SCREW-HEADS.

I'm in an awful situation that a boy by the name of Bellew got me into. He is one of the boys that writes stories and makes pictures for HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, and I think people ought to know what kind of a boy he is. A little while ago he had a story in the YOUNG PEOPLE about imitation screw-heads, and how he used to make them, and what fun he had pasting them on his aunt's bureau. I thought it was a very nice story, and I got some tin-foil and made a whole lot of screw-heads, and last Saturday I thought I'd have some fun with them.

Father has a dreadfully ugly old chair in his study, that General Washington brought over with him in the _Mayflower_, and Mr. Travers says it is stiffer and uglier than any of the Pilgrim fathers. But father thinks everything of that chair, and never lets anybody sit in it except the minister. I took a piece of soap, just as that Bellew used to, and if his name is Billy why don't he learn how to spell it that's what I'd like to know, and made what looked like a tremendous crack in the chair. Then I pasted the screw-heads on the chair, and it looked exactly as if somebody had broken it and tried to mend it.

I couldn't help laughing all day when I thought how astonished father would be when he saw his chair all full of screws, and how he would laugh when he found out it was all a joke. As soon as he came home I asked him to please come into the study, and showed him the chair and said "Father I cannot tell a lie I did it but I won't do it any more."

Father looked as if he had seen some disgusting ghosts, and I was really frightened, so I hurried up and said, "It's all right father, it's only a joke look here they all come off," and rubbed off the screw-heads and the soap with my handkerchief, and expected to see him burst out laughing, just as Bellew's aunt used to burst, but instead of laughing he said, "My son this trifling with sacred things must be stopped," with which remark he took off his slipper, and then-- But I haven't the heart to say what he did. Mr. Travers has made some pictures about it, and perhaps people will understand what I have suffered.

I think that boy Bellew ought to be punished for getting people into scrapes. I'd just like to have him come out behind our barn with me for a few minutes. That is, I would, only I never expect to take any interest in anything any more. My heart is broken and a new chocolate cigar that was in my pocket during the awful scene.

I've got an elegant wasps' nest with young wasps in it that will hatch out in the spring, and I'll change it for a bull-terrier or a shot-gun or a rattlesnake in a cage that rattles good with any boy that will send me one.

MY MONKEY.

There never was such luck. I've always thought that I'd rather have a monkey than be a million heir. There is nothing that could be half so splendid as a real live monkey, but of course I knew that I never could have one until I should grow up and go to sea and bring home monkeys and parrots and shawls to mother just as sailors always do. But I've actually got a monkey and if you don't believe it just look at these pictures of him that Mr. Travers made for me.

It was Mr. Travers that got the monkey for me. One day there came a woman with an organ and a monkey into our yard.

She was an Italian, but she could speak a sort of English and she said that the "murderin' spalpeen of a monkey was just wearing the life of her out." So says Mr. Travers "What will you take for him?" and says she "It's five dollars I'd be after selling him for, and may good-luck go wid ye!"

What did Mr. Travers do but give her the money and hand the monkey to me, saying, "Here, Jimmy! take him and be happy." Wasn't I just happy though?

Jocko--that's the monkey's name--is the loveliest monkey that ever lived. I hadn't had him an hour when he got out of my arms and was on the supper-table before I could get him. The table was all set and Bridget was just going to ring the bell, but the monkey didn't wait for her.

To see him eating the chicken salad was just wonderful. He finished the whole dish in about two minutes, and was washing it down with the oil out of the salad-bottle when I caught him. Mother was awfully good about it and only said, "Poor little beast he must be half starved Susan how much he reminds me of your brother." A good mother is as good a thing as a boy deserves, no matter how good he is.

The salad someway did not seem to agree with Jocko for he was dreadfully sick that night. You should have seen how limp he was, just like a girl that has fainted away and her young man is trying to lift her up. Mother doctored him. She gave him castor-oil as if he was her own son, and wrapped him up in a blanket and put a mustard plaster on his stomach and soaked the end of his tail in warm water. He was all right the next day and was real grateful. I know he was grateful because he showed it by trying to do good to others, at any rate to the cat. Our cat wouldn't speak to him at first, but he coaxed her with milk, just as he had seen me do and finally caught her. It must have been dreadfully aggravoking to the cat, for instead of letting her have the milk he insisted that she was sick and must have medicine. So he took Bridget's bottle of hair-oil and a big spoon and gave the cat such a dose. When I caught him and made him let the cat go there were about six table-spoonfuls of oil missing. Mr. Travers said it was a good thing for it would improve the cat's voice and make her yowl smoother, and that he had felt for a long time that she needed to be oiled. Mother said that the monkey was cruel and it was a shame but I know that he meant to be kind. He knew the oil mother gave him had done him good, and he wanted to do the cat good. I know just how he felt, for I've been blamed many a time for trying to do good, and I can tell you it always hurt my feelings.

The monkey was in the kitchen while Bridget was getting dinner yesterday and he watched her broil the steak as if he was meaning to learn to cook and help her in her work, he's that kind and thoughtful. The cat was out-doors, but two of her kittens were in the kitchen, and they were not old enough to be afraid of the monkey. When dinner was served Bridget went up-stairs and by-and-by mother says "What's that dreadful smell sure's you're alive Susan the baby has fallen into the fire." Everybody jumped up and ran up-stairs, all but me, for I knew Jocko was in the kitchen and I was afraid it was he that was burning. When I got into the kitchen there was that lovely monkey broiling one of the kittens on the gridiron just as he had seen Bridget broil the steak. The kitten's fur was singeing and she was mewing, and the other kitten was sitting up on the floor licking her chops and enjoying it and Jocko was on his hind-legs as solemn and busy as an owl. I snatched the gridiron away from him and took the kitten off before she was burned any except her fur, and when mother and Susan came down-stairs they couldn't understand what it was that had been burning.

This is all the monkey has done since I got him day before yesterday. Father has been away for a week but is coming back in a few days, and won't he be delighted when he finds a monkey in the house?

THE END OF MY MONKEY.

I haven't any monkey now, and I don't care what becomes of me. His loss was an awful blow, and I never expect to recover from it. I am a crushed boy, and when the grown folks find what their conduct has done to me, they will wish they had done differently.

It was on a Tuesday that I got the monkey, and by Thursday everybody began to treat him coldly. It began with my littlest sister. Jocko took her doll away, and climbed up to the top of the door with it, where he sat and pulled it to pieces, and tried its clothes on, only they wouldn't fit him, while sister, who is nothing but a little girl, stood and howled as if she was being killed. This made mother begin to dislike the monkey, and she said that if his conduct was such, he couldn't stay in her house. I call this unkind, for the monkey was invited into the house, and I've been told we must bear with visitors.

A little while afterwards, while mother was talking to Susan on the front piazza, she heard the sewing-machine up-stairs, and said, "Well I never that cook has the impudence to be sewing on my machine without ever asking leave." So she ran up-stairs, and found that Jocko was working the machine like mad. He'd taken Sue's gown and father's black coat and a lot of stockings, and shoved them all under the needle, and was sewing them all together. Mother boxed his ears and then she and Sue sat down and worked all the morning trying to unsew the things with the scissors.

They had to give it up after a while, and the things are sewed together yet, like a man and wife, which no man can put asunder. All this made my mother more cool towards the monkey than ever, and I heard her call him a nasty little beast.

The next day was Sunday, and as Sue was sitting in the hall waiting for mother to go to church with her, Jocko gets up on her chair, and pulls the feathers out of her bonnet. He thought he was doing right, for he had seen the cook pulling the feathers off of the chickens, but Sue called him dreadful names, and either she or that monkey would leave the house.

Father came home early Monday, and seemed quite pleased with the monkey. He said it was an interesting study, and he told Susan that he hoped that she would be contented with fewer beaux, now that there was a monkey constantly in the house. In a little while father caught Jocko lathering himself with the mucilage brush, and with a kitchen knife all ready to shave himself. He just laughed at the monkey, and told me to take good care of him, and not let him hurt himself. Of course I was dreadfully pleased to find that father liked Jocko, and I knew it was because he was a man, and had more sense than girls. But I was only deceiving myself and leaning on a broken weed. That very evening when father went into his study after supper he found Jocko on his desk. He had torn all his papers to pieces, except a splendid new map, and that he was covering with ink, and making believe that he was writing a President's Message about the Panama Canal. Father was just raging. He took Jocko by the scruff of the neck, locked him in the closet, and sent him away by express the next morning to a man in the city, with orders to sell him.

The expressman afterwards told Mr. Travers that the monkey pretty nearly killed everybody on the train, for he got hold of the signal-cord and pulled it, and the engineer thought it was the conductor, and stopped the train, and another train just behind it came within an inch of running into it and smashing it to pieces. Jocko did the same thing three times before they found out what was the matter, and tied him up so that he couldn't reach the cord. Oh, he was just beautiful! But I shall never see him again, and Mr. Travers says that it's all right, and that I'm monkey enough for one house. That's because Sue has been saying things against the monkey to him; but never mind.

First my dog went, and now my monkey has gone. It seems as if everything that is beautiful must disappear. Very likely I shall go next, and when I am gone, let them find the dog and the monkey, and bury us together.

THE OLD, OLD STORY.

We've had a most awful time in our house. There have been ever so many robberies in town, and everybody has been almost afraid to go to bed.

The robbers broke into old Dr. Smith's house one night. Dr. Smith is one of those doctors that don't give any medicine except cold water, and he heard the robbers, and came down-stairs in his nigown, with a big umbrella in his hand, and said, "If you don't leave this minute, I'll shoot you." And the robbers they said, "Oh no! that umbrella isn't loaded" and they took him and tied his hands and feet, and put a mustard-plaster over his mouth, so that he couldn't yell, and then they filled the wash-tub with water, and made him sit down in it, and told him that now he'd know how it was himself, and went away and left him, and he nearly froze to death before morning.

Father wasn't a bit afraid of the robbers, but he said he'd fix something so that he would wake up if they got in the house. So he put a coal-scuttle full of coal about half-way up the stairs, and tied a string across the upper hall just at the head of the stairs. He said that if a robber tried to come up-stairs he would upset the coal-scuttle, and make a tremendous noise, and that if he did happen not to upset it, he would certainly fall over the string at the top of the stairs. He told us that if we heard the coal-scuttle go off in the night, Sue and mother and I were to open the windows and scream, while he got up and shot the robber.

The first night, after father had fixed everything nicely for the robbers, he went to bed, and then mother told him that she had forgotten to lock the back door. So father he said, "Why can't women sometimes remember something," and he got up and started to go down-stairs in the dark. He forgot all about the string, and fell over it with an awful crash, and then began to fall down-stairs. When he got half-way down he met the coal-scuttle, and that went down the rest of the way with him, and you never in your life heard anything like the noise the two of them made. We opened our windows, and cried murder and fire and thieves, and some men that were going by rushed in and picked father up, and would have taken him off to jail, he was that dreadfully black, if I hadn't told them who he was.

But this was not the awful time that I mentioned when I began to write, and if I don't begin to tell you about it, I sha'n't have any room left on my paper. Mother gave a dinner-party last Thursday. There were ten ladies and twelve gentlemen, and one of them was that dreadful Mr. Martin with the cork leg, and other improvements, as Mr. Travers calls them. Mother told me not to let her see me in the dining-room, or she'd let me know; and I meant to mind, only I forgot, and went into the dining-room, just to look at the table, a few minutes before dinner.

I was looking at the raw oysters, when Jane--that's the girl that waits on the table--said, "Run, Master Jimmy; here's your mother coming." Now I hadn't time enough to run, so I just dived under the table, and thought I'd stay there for a minute or two, until mother went out of the room again.

It wasn't only mother that came in, but the whole company, and they sat down to dinner without giving me any chance to get out. I tell you, it was a dreadful situation. I had only room enough to sit still, and nearly every time I moved I hit somebody's foot. Once I tried to turn around, and while I was doing it I hit my head against the table so hard that I thought I had upset something, and was sure that people would know I was there. But fortunately everybody thought that somebody else had joggled, so I escaped for that time.

It was awfully tiresome waiting for those people to get through dinner. It seemed as if they could never eat enough, and when they were not eating, they were all talking at once. It taught me a lesson against gluttony, and nobody will ever find me sitting for hours and hours at the dinner-table. Finally I made up my mind that I must have some amusement, and as Mr. Martin's cork-leg was close by me, I thought I would have some fun with that.

There was a big darning-needle in my pocket, that I kept there in case I should want to use it for anything. I happened to think that Mr. Martin couldn't feel anything that was done to his cork-leg, and that it would be great fun to drive the darning-needle into it, and leave the end sticking out, so that people who didn't know that his leg was cork would see it, and think that he was suffering dreadfully, only he didn't know it. So I got out the needle, and jammed it into his leg with both hands, so that it would go in good and deep.

Mr. Martin gave a yell that made my hair run cold, and sprang up, and nearly upset the table, and fell over his chair backward, and wasn't there a circus in that dining-room! I had made a mistake about the leg, and run the needle into his real one.

I was dragged out from under the table, and-- But I needn't say what happened to me after that. It was "the old, old story," as Sue says when she sings a foolish song about getting up at five o'clock in the morning--as if she'd ever been awake at that time in her whole life!

BEE-HUNTING.

The more I see of this world the hollower I find everybody. I don't mean that people haven't got their insides in them, but they are so dreadfully ungrateful. No matter how kind and thoughtful any one may be, they never give him any credit for it. They will pretend to love you and call you "Dear Jimmy what a fine manly boy come here and kiss me," and then half an hour afterwards they'll say "Where's that little wretch let me just get hold of him O! I'll let him know." Deceit and ingratitude are the monster vices of the age and they are rolling over our beloved land like the flood. (I got part of that elegant language from the temperance lecturer last week, but I improved it a good deal.)

There is Aunt Eliza. The uncle that belonged to her died two years ago, and she's awfully rich. She comes to see us sometimes with Harry--that's her boy, a little fellow six years old--and you ought to see how mother and Sue wait on her and how pleasant father is when she's in the room. Now she always said that she loved me like her own son. She'd say to father, "How I envy you that noble boy what a comfort he must be to you," and father would say "Yes he has some charming qualities" and look as if he hadn't laid onto me with his cane that very morning and told me that my conduct was such. You'll hardly believe that just because I did the very best I could and saved her precious Harry from an apple grave, Aunt Eliza says I'm a young Cain and knows I'll come to the gallows.

She came to see us last Friday, and on Saturday I was going bee-hunting. I read all about it in a book. You take an axe and go out-doors and follow a bee, and after a while the bee takes you to a hollow tree full of honey and you cut the tree down and carry the honey home in thirty pails and sell it for ever so much. I and Tom McGinnis were going and Aunt Eliza says "O take Harry with you the dear child would enjoy it so much." Of course no fellow that's twelve years old wants a little chap like that tagging after him but mother spoke up and said that I'd be delighted to take Harry, and so I couldn't help myself.

We stopped in the wood-shed and borrowed father's axe and then we found a bee. The bee wouldn't fly on before us in a straight line but kept lighting on everything, and once he lit on Tom's hand and stung him good. However we chased the bee lively and by-and-by he started for his tree and we ran after him. We had just got to the old dead apple-tree in the pasture when we lost the bee and we all agreed that his nest must be in the tree. It's an awfully big old tree, and it's all rotted away on one side so that it stands as if it was ready to fall over any minute.

Nothing would satisfy Harry but to climb that tree. We told him he'd better let a bigger fellow do it but he wouldn't listen to reason. So we gave him a boost and he climbed up to where the tree forked and then he stood up and began to say something when he disappeared. We thought he had fallen out of the tree and we ran round to the other side to pick him up but he wasn't there. Tom said it was witches but I knew he must be somewhere so I climbed up the tree and looked.

He had slipped down into the hollow of the tree and was wedged in tight. I could just reach his hair but it was so short that I couldn't get a good hold so as to pull him out. Wasn't he scared though! He howled and said "O take me out I shall die," and Tom wanted to run for the doctor.

I told Harry to be patient and I'd get him out. So I slid down the tree and told Tom that the only thing to do was to cut the tree down and then open it and take Harry out. It was such a rotten tree I knew it would come down easy. So we took turns chopping, and the fellow who wasn't chopping kept encouraging Harry by telling him that the tree was 'most ready to fall. After working an hour the tree began to stagger and presently down she came with an awful crush and burst into a million pieces.

Tom and I said Hurray! and then we poked round in the dust till we found Harry. He was all over red dust and was almost choked, but he was awfully mad. Just because some of his ribs were broke--so the doctor said--he forget all Tom and I had done for him. I shouldn't have minded that much, because you don't expect much from little boys, but I did think his mother would have been grateful when we brought him home and told her what we had done. Then I found what all her professions were worth. She called father and told him that I and the other miscurrent had murdered her boy. Tom was so frightened at the awful name she called him that he ran home, and father told me I could come right up-stairs with him.

They couldn't have treated me worse if I'd let Harry stay in the tree and starve to death. I almost wish I had done it. It does seem as if the more good a boy does the more the grown folks pitch into him. The moment Sue is married to Mr. Travers I mean to go and live with him. He never scolds, and always says that Susan's brother is as dear to him as his own, though he hasn't got any.

PROMPT OBEDIENCE.

I haven't been able to write anything for some time. I don't mean that there has been anything the matter with my fingers so that I couldn't hold a pen, but I haven't had the heart to write of my troubles. Besides, I have been locked up for a whole week in the spare bedroom on bread and water, and just a little hash or something like that, except when Sue used to smuggle in cake and pie and such things, and I haven't had any penanink. I was going to write a novel while I was locked up by pricking my finger and writing in blood with a pin on my shirt; but you can't write hardly anything that way, and I don't believe all those stories of conspirators who wrote dreadful promises to do all sorts of things in their blood. Before I could write two little words my finger stopped bleeding, and I wasn't going to keep on pricking myself every few minutes; besides, it won't do to use all your blood up that way. There was once a boy who cut himself awful in the leg with a knife, and he bled to death for five or six hours, and when he got through he wasn't any thicker than a newspaper, and rattled when his friends picked him up just like the morning paper does when father turns it inside out. Mr. Travers told me about him, and said this was a warning against bleeding to death.

Of course you'll say I must have been doing something dreadfully wrong, but I don't think I have; and even if I had, I'll leave it to anybody if Aunt Eliza isn't enough to provoke a whole company of saints. The truth is, I got into trouble this time just through obeying promptly as soon as I was spoken to. I'd like to know if that was anything wrong. Oh, I'm not a bit sulky, and I am always ready to admit I've done wrong when I really have; but this time I tried to do my very best and obey my dear mother promptly, and the consequence was that I was shut up for a week, besides other things too painful to mention. This world is a fleeting show, as our minister says, and I sometimes feel that it isn't worth the price of admission.

Aunt Eliza is one of those women that always know everything, and know that nobody else knows anything, particularly us men. She was visiting us, and finding fault with everybody, and constantly saying that men were a nuisance in a house and why didn't mother make father mend chairs and whitewash the ceiling and what do you let that great lazy boy waste all his time for? There was a little spot in the roof where it leaked when it rained, and Aunt Eliza said to father, "Why don't you have energy enough to get up on the roof and see where that leak is I would if I was a man thank goodness I ain't." So father said, "You'd better do it yourself, Eliza." And she said, "I will this very day."

So after breakfast Aunt Eliza asked me to show her where the scuttle was. We always kept it open for fresh air, except when it rained, and she crawled up through it and got on the roof. Just then mother called me, and said it was going to rain, and I must close the scuttle. I began to tell her that Aunt Eliza was on the roof, but she wouldn't listen, and said, "Do as I tell you this instant without any words why can't you obey promptly?" So I obeyed as prompt as I could, and shut the scuttle and fastened it, and then went down-stairs, and looked out to see the shower come up.

It was a tremendous shower, and it struck us in about ten minutes; and didn't it pour! The wind blew, and it lightened and thundered every minute, and the street looked just like a river. I got tired of looking at it after a while, and sat down to read, and in about an hour, when it was beginning to rain a little easier, mother came where I was, and said, "I wonder where sister Eliza is do you know, Jimmy?" And I said I supposed she was on the roof, for I left her there when I fastened the scuttle just before it began to rain.

Nothing was done to me until after they had got two men to bring Aunt Eliza down and wring the water out of her, and the doctor had come, and she had been put to bed, and the house was quiet again. By that time father had come home, and when he heard what had happened-- But, there! it is over now, and let us say no more about it. Aunt Eliza is as well as ever, but nobody has said a word to me about prompt obedience since the thunder-shower.

OUR ICE-CREAM.

After that trouble with Aunt Eliza--the time she stayed up on the roof and was rained on--I had no misfortunes for nearly a week. Aunt Eliza went home as soon as she was well dried, and father said that he was glad she was gone, for she talked so much all the time that he couldn't hear himself think, though I don't believe he ever did hear himself think. I tried it once. I sat down where it was real still, and thought just as regular and steady as I could; but I couldn't hear the least sound. I suppose our brains are so well oiled that they don't creak at all when we use them. However, Mr. Travers told me of a boy he knew when he was a boy. His name was Ananias G. Smith, and he would run round all day without any hat on, and his hair cut very short, and the sun kept beating on his head all day, and gradually his brains dried so that whenever he tried to think, they would rattle and creak like a wheelbarrow-wheel when it hasn't any grease on it. Of course his parents felt dreadfully, for he couldn't go to school without disturbing everybody as soon as he began to think about his lessons, and he couldn't stay home and think without keeping the baby awake.

As I was saying, there was pretty nearly a whole week that I kept out of trouble; but it didn't last. Boys are born to fly upward like the sparks that trouble, and yesterday I was "up to mischief again," as Sue said, though I never had the least idea of doing any mischief. How should an innocent boy, who might easily have been an orphan had things happened in that way, know all about cooking and chemistry and such, I should like to know.

It was really Sue's fault. Nothing would do but she must give a party, and of course she must have ice-cream. Now the ice-cream that our cake-shop man makes isn't good enough for her, so she got father to buy an ice-cream freezer, and said she would make the ice-cream herself. I was to help her, and she sent me to the store to order some salt. I asked her what she wanted of salt, and she said that you couldn't freeze ice-cream without plenty of salt, and that it was almost as necessary as ice.