Chapter V: Part 5

Last week it was finally agreed that Sue and Mr. Travers should be married without waiting any longer. You should have seen what a state of mind she and mother were in. They did nothing but buy new clothes, and sew, and talk about the wedding all day long. Sue was determined to be married in church, and to have six bridesmaids and six bridegrooms, and flowers and music and things till you couldn't rest. The only thing that troubled her was making up her mind who to invite. Mother wanted her to invite Mr. and Mrs. McFadden and the seven McFadden girls, but Sue said they had insulted her, and she couldn't bear the idea of asking the McFadden tribe. Everybody agreed that old Mr. Wilkinson, who once came to a party at our house with one boot and one slipper, couldn't be invited; but it was decided that every one else that was on good terms with our family should have an invitation.

Sue counted up all the people she meant to invite, and there was nearly three hundred of them. You would hardly believe it, but she told me that I must carry around all the invitations and deliver them myself. Of course I couldn't do this without neglecting my studies and losing time, which is always precious, so I thought of a plan which would save Sue the trouble of directing three hundred invitations and save me from wasting time in delivering them.

I got to work with my printing-press, and printed a dozen splendid big bills about the wedding. When they were printed I cut a lot of small pictures of animals and ladies riding on horses out of some old circus bills and pasted them on the wedding bills. They were perfectly gorgeous, and you could see them four or five rods off. When they were all done I made some paste in a tin pail, and went out after dark and pasted them in good places all over the village. I put one on Mr. Wilkinson's front-door, and one on the fence opposite the McFaddens' house, so they would be sure to see it.

The next afternoon father came into the house looking very stern, and carrying one of the wedding bills in his hand. He handed it to Sue and said, "Susan, what does this mean? These bills are pasted all over the village, and there are crowds of people reading them." Sue read the bill, and then she gave an awful shriek, and fainted away, and I hurried down to the post-office to see if the mail had come in. This is what was on the wedding bills, and I am sure it was spelled all right:

Miss Susan Brown announces that she will marry

Mr. James Travers

at the Church next Thursday at half past seven, sharp.

All the Friends of the Family

With the exception of

the McFadden tribe and old Mr. Wilkinson

are invited.

Come early and bring

Lots of Flowers.

Now what was there to find fault with in that? It was printed beautifully, and every word was spelled right, with the exception of the name of the church, and I didn't put that in because I wasn't quite sure how to spell it. The bill saved Sue all the trouble of sending out invitations, and it said everything that anybody could want to know about the wedding. Any other girl but Sue would have been pleased, and would have thanked me for all my trouble, but she was as angry as if I had done something real bad. Mr. Travers was almost as angry as Sue, and it was the first time he was ever angry with me. I am afraid now that he won't let me ever come and live with him. He hasn't said a word about my coming since the wedding bills were put up. As for the wedding, it has been put off, and Sue says she will go to New York to be married, for she would perfectly die if she were to have a wedding at home after that boy's dreadful conduct. What is worse, I am to be sent away to boarding-school, and all because I made a mistake in printing the wedding bills without first asking Sue how she would like to have them printed.

OUR NEW DOG.

I've had another dog. That makes three dogs that I've had, and I haven't been allowed to keep any of them. Grown-up folks don't seem to care how much a boy wants society. Perhaps if they were better acquainted with dogs they'd understand boys better than they do.

About a month ago there were lots of burglars in our town, and father said he believed he'd have to get a dog. Mr. Withers told father he'd get a dog for him, and the next day he brought the most beautiful Siberian blood-hound you ever saw.

The first night we had him we chained him up in the yard, and the neighbors threw things at him all night. Nobody in our house got a wink of sleep, for the dog never stopped barking except just long enough to yell when something hit him. There was mornascuttleful of big lumps of coal in the yard in the morning, besides seven old boots, two chunks of wood, and a bushel of broken crockery.

Father said that the house was the proper place for the dog at night; so the next night we left him in the front hall. He didn't bark any all night, but he got tired of staying in the front hall, and wandered all over the house. I suppose he felt lonesome, for he came into my room, and got on to the bed, and nearly suffocated me. I woke up dreaming that I was in a melon patch, and had to eat three hundred green watermelons or be sent to jail, and it was a great comfort when I woke up and found it was only the dog. He knocked the water-pitcher over with his tail in the morning, and then thought he saw a cat under my bed, and made such an awful noise that father came up, and told me I ought to be ashamed to disturb the whole family so early in the morning. After that the dog was locked up in the kitchen at night, and father had to come down early and let him out, because the cook didn't dare to go into the kitchen.

We let him run loose in the yard in the daytime, until he had an accident with Mr. Martin. We'd all been out to take tea and spend the evening with the Wilkinsons, and when we got home about nine o'clock, there was Mr. Martin standing on the piazza, with the dog holding on to his cork-leg. Mr. Martin had come to the house to make a call at about seven o'clock, and as soon as he stepped on the piazza the dog caught him by the leg without saying a word. Every once in a while the dog would let go just long enough to spit out a few pieces of cork and take a fresh hold, but Mr. Martin didn't dare to stir for fear he would take hold of the other leg, which of course would have hurt more than the cork one. Mr. Martin was a good deal tired and discouraged, and couldn't be made to understand that the dog thought he was a burglar, and tried to do his duty, as we should all try to do.

The way I came to lose the dog was this: Aunt Eliza came to see us last week, and brought her little boy Harry, who once went bee-hunting with me. Harry, as I told you, is six years old, and he isn't so bad as he might be considering his age. The second day after they came, Harry and I were in Tom McGinnis's yard, when Tom said he knew where there was a woodchuck down in the pasture, and suppose we go and hunt him. So I told Harry to go home and get the dog, and bring him down to the pasture where Tom said the woodchuck lived. I told him to untie the dog--for we had kept him tied up since his accident with Mr. Martin--and to keep tight hold of the rope, so that the dog couldn't get away from him. Harry said he'd tie the rope around his waist, and then the dog couldn't possibly pull it away from him, and Tom and I both said it was a good plan.

Well, we waited for that boy and the dog till six o'clock, and they never came. When I got home everybody wanted to know what had become of Harry. He was gone and the dog was gone, and nobody knew where they were, and Aunt Eliza was crying, and said she knew that horrid dog had eaten her boy up. Father and I and Mr. Travers had to go and hunt for Harry. We hunted all over the town, and at last a man told us that he had seen a boy and a dog going on a run across Deacon Smith's corn-field. So we went through the corn-field and found their track, for they had broken down the corn just as if a wagon had driven through it. When we came to the fence on the other side of the field we found Harry on one side of the fence and the dog on the other. Harry had tied the dog's rope round his waist, and couldn't untie it again, and the dog had run away with him. When they came to the fence the dog had squeezed through a hole that was too small for Harry, and wouldn't come back again. So they were both caught in a trap. How that dog did pull! Harry was almost cut in two, for the dog kept pulling at the rope all the time with all his might.

When we got home Aunt Eliza said that either she or that brute must leave, and father gave the dog away to the butcher. He was the most elegant dog I ever had, and I don't suppose I shall ever have another.

LIGHTNING.

Mr. Franklin was one of the greatest men that ever lived. He could carry a loaf of bread in each hand and eat another, all at the same time, and he could invent anything that anybody wanted, without hurting himself or cutting his fingers. His greatest invention was lightning, and he invented it with a kite. He made a kite with sticks made out of telegraph wire, and sent it up in a thunder-storm till it reached where the lightning is. The lightning ran down the string, and Franklin collected it in a bottle, and sold it for ever so much money. So he got very rich after a while, and could buy the most beautiful and expensive kites that any fellow ever had.

I read about Mr. Franklin in a book that father gave me. He said I was reading too many stories, and just you take this book and read it through carefully and I hope it will do you some good anyway it will keep you out of mischief.

I thought that it would please father if I should get some lightning just as Franklin did. I told Tom McGinnis about it, and he said he would help if I would give him half of all I made by selling the lightning. I wouldn't do this, of course, but finally Tom said he'd help me anyhow, and trust me to pay him a fair price; so we went to work.

We made a tremendously big kite, and the first time there came a thunder-storm we put it up; but the paper got wet, and it came down before it got up to the lightning. So we made another, and covered it with white cloth that used to be one of Mrs. McGinnis's sheets, only Tom said he knew she didn't want it any more.

We sent up this kite the next time there was a thunder-storm, and tied the string to the second-story window where the blinds hook on, and let the end of the string hang down into a bottle. It only thundered once or twice, but the lightning ran down the string pretty fast, and filled the bottle half full.

It looked like water, only it was a little green, and when it stopped running into the bottle we took the lightning down-stairs to try it. I gave a little of it to the cat to drink, but it didn't hurt her a bit, and she just purred. At last Tom said he didn't believe it would hurt anything; so he tasted some of it, but it didn't hurt him at all.

The trouble was that the lightning was too weak to do any harm. The thunder-shower had been such a little one that it didn't have any strong lightning in it; so we threw away what was in the bottle, and agreed to try to get some good strong lightning whenever we could get a chance.

It didn't rain for a long time after that, and I nearly forgot all about Franklin and lightning, until one day I heard Mr. Travers read in the newspaper about a man who was found lying dead on the road with a bottle of Jersey lightning, and that, of course, explains what was the matter with him my dear Susan. I understood more about it than Susan did, for she does not know anything about Franklin being a girl, though I will admit it isn't her fault. You see, the cork must have come out of the man's bottle, and the lightning had leaked out and burned him to death.

The very next day we had a tremendous thunder-shower, and I told Tom that now was the time to get some lightning that would be stronger than anything they could make in New Jersey. So we got the kite up, and got ourselves soaked through with water. We tied it to the window-ledge just as we did the first time, and put the end of the string in a tin pail, so that we could collect more lightning than one bottle would hold. It was so cold standing by the window in our wet clothes that we thought we'd go to my room and change them.

All at once there was the most awful flash of lightning and the most tremendous clap of thunder that was ever heard. Father and mother and Sue were down-stairs, and they rushed up-stairs crying the darling boy is killed. That meant me. But I wasn't killed, neither was Tom, and we hurried into the room where we were collecting lightning to see what was the matter. There we found the tin pail knocked into splinters and the lightning spilled all over the floor. It had set fire to the carpet, and burned a hole right through the floor into the kitchen, and pretty much broke up the whole kitchen stove.

Father cut the kite-string and let the kite go, and told me that it was as much as my life was worth to send up a kite in a thunder-storm. You see, so much lightning will come down the string that it will kill anybody that stands near it. I know this is true, because father says so, but I'd like to know how Franklin managed. I forgot to say that father wasn't a bit pleased.

MY CAMERA.

I had a birthday last week. When I woke up in the morning I found right by the side of my bed a mahogany box, with a round hole on one side of it and a ground-glass door on the other side. I thought it was a new kind of rat-trap; and so I got out of bed and got a piece of cheese, and set the trap in the garret, which is about half full of rats. But it turned out that the box wasn't a rat-trap. Mr. Travers gave it to me, and when he came to dinner he explained that it was a camera for taking photographs, and that it would improve my mind tremendously if I would learn to use it.

I soon found out that there isn't anything much better than a camera, except, of course, a big dog, which I can't have, because mother says a dog tracks dirt all over the house, and father says a dog is dangerous, and Sue says a dog jumps all over you and tears your dresses a great good-for-nothing ugly beast. It's very hard to be kept apart from dogs; but our parents always know what is best for us, though we may not see it at the time; and I don't believe father really knows how it feels when your trousers are thin and you haven't any boots on, so it stings your legs every time.

But I was going to write about the camera. You take photographs with the camera--people and things. There's a lens on one end of it, and when you point it at anything, you see a picture of it upside down on the little glass door at the back of the camera. Then you put a dry plate, which is a piece of glass with chemicals on it, in the camera, and then you take it out and put it in some more chemicals, the right name of which is a developer, and then you see a picture on the dry plate, only it is right side up, and not like the one on the ground-glass door.

It's the best fun in the world taking pictures; and I can't see that it improves your mind a bit--at least not enough to worry you. You have to practise a great deal before you can take a picture, and everybody who knows anything about it tells you to do something different. There are five men in our town who take photographs, and each one tells me to use a different kind of dry plate and a different kind of developer, and that all the other men may mean well, and they hope they do, but people ought not to tell a boy to use bad plates and poor developers; and don't you pay any attention to them, Jimmy, but do as I tell you.

I've got so now that I make beautiful pictures. I took a photograph of Sue the other day, and another of old Deacon Brewster, and you can tell which is which just as easy as anything, if you look at them in the right way, and remember that Deacon Brewster, being a man, is smoking a pipe, and that, of course, a picture of Sue wouldn't have a pipe in it. Sue don't like to have me take pictures, but that's because she is a girl, and girls haven't the kind of minds that can understand art. Mr. McGinnis--Tom's father--don't like my camera either; but that's because he is near-sighted, and thought it was a gun when I pointed it at him, and he yelled, "Don't shoot, for mercy's sake!" and went out of our front yard and over the fence in lessenasecond. When he found out what it was he said he never dreamed of being frightened, but had business down-town, and he didn't think boys ought to be trusted with such things, anyway.

I made a great discovery last week. You know I said that when you look through the camera at anything you see it upside down on the ground glass. This doesn't look right, and unless you stand on your head when you take a photograph, which is very hard work, you can't help feeling that the picture is all wrong. I was going to take a photograph of a big engraving that belongs to father, when I thought of turning it upside down. This made it look all right on the ground glass. This is my discovery; and if men who take photographs could only get the people they photograph to stand on their heads, they would get beautiful pictures. Mr. Travers says that I ought to get a patent for this discovery, but so far it has only got me into trouble.

Saturday afternoon everybody was out of the house except me and the baby and the nurse, and she was down in the kitchen, and the baby was asleep. So I thought I would take a picture of the baby. Of course it wouldn't sit still for me; so I thought of the way the Indians strap their babies to a flat board, which keeps them from getting round-shouldered, and is very convenient besides. I got a nice flat piece of board and tied the baby to it, and put him on a table, and leaned him up against the wall. Then I remembered my discovery, and just stood the baby on his head so as to get a good picture of him.

I did get a beautiful picture. At least I am sure it would have been if I hadn't been interrupted while I was developing it. I forgot to put the baby right side up, and in about ten minutes mother came in and found it, and then she came up into my room and interrupted me. Father came home a little later and interrupted me some more. So the picture was spoiled, and so was father's new rattan. Of course I deserved it for forgetting the baby; but it didn't hurt it any to stand on its head a little while, for babies haven't any brains like boys and grown-up people, and, besides, it's the solemn truth that I meant to turn the baby right side up, only I forgot it.

FRECKLES.

After the time I tried to photograph the baby, my camera was taken away from me and locked up for ever so long. Sue said I wasn't to be trusted with it and it would go off some day when you think it isn't loaded and hurt somebody worse than you hurt the baby you good-for-nothing little nuisance.

Father kept the camera locked up for about a month, and said when I see some real reformation in you James you shall have it back again. But I shall never have it back again now, and if I did, it wouldn't be of any use, for I'm never to be allowed to have any more chemicals. Father is going to give the camera to the missionaries, so that they can photograph heathen and things, and all the chemicals I had have been thrown away, just because I made a mistake in using them. I don't say it didn't serve me right, but I can't help wishing that father would change his mind.

I have never said much about my other sister, Lizzie, because she is nothing but a girl. She is twelve years old, and of course she plays with dolls, and doesn't know enough to play base-ball or do anything really useful. She scarcely ever gets me into scrapes, though, and that's where Sue might follow her example. However, it was Lizzie who got me into the scrape about my chemicals, though she didn't mean to, poor girl.

One night Mr. Travers came to tea, and everybody was talking about freckles. Mr. Travers said that they were real fashionable, and that all the ladies were trying to get them. I am sure I don't see why. I've mornamillion freckles, and I'd be glad to let anybody have them who would agree to take them away. Sue said she thought freckles were perfectly lovely, and it's a good thing she thinks so, for she has about as many as she can use; and Lizzie said she'd give anything if she only had a few nice freckles on her cheeks.

Mother asked what made freckles, and Mr. Travers said the sun made them just as it makes photographs. "Jimmy will understand it," said Mr. Travers. "He knows how the sun makes a picture when it shines on a photograph plate, and all his freckles were made just in the same way. Without the sun there wouldn't be any freckles."

This sounded reasonable, but then Mr. Travers forgot all about chemicals. As I said, the last time I wrote, chemicals is something in a bottle like medicine, and you have to put it on a photograph plate so as to make the picture that the sun has made show itself. Now if chemicals will do this with a photograph plate, it ought to do it with a girl's cheek. You take a girl and let the sun shine on her cheek, and put chemicals on her, and it ought to bring out splendid freckles.

I'm very fond of Lizzie, though she is a girl, because she minds her own business, and don't meddle with my things and get me into scrapes. I'd have given her all my freckles if I could, as soon as I knew she wanted them, and as soon as Mr. Travers said that freckles were made just like photographs, I made up my mind I would make some for her. So I told her she should have the best freckles in town if she'd come up to my room the next morning, and let me expose her to the sun and then put chemicals on her.

Lizzie has confidence in me, which is one of her best qualities, and shows that she is a good girl. She was so pleased when I promised to make freckles for her; and as soon as the sun got up high enough to shine into my window she came up to my room all ready to be freckled.

I exposed her to the sun for six seconds. I only exposed my photograph plates three seconds, but I thought that Lizzie might not be quite as sensitive, and so I exposed her longer. Then I took her into the dark closet where I kept the chemicals, and poured chemicals on her cheeks. I made her hold her handkerchief on her face so that the chemicals couldn't get into her eyes and run down her neck, for she wanted freckles only on her cheeks.

I watched her very carefully, but the freckles didn't come out. I put more chemicals on her, and rubbed it in with a cloth; but it was no use, the freckles wouldn't come. I don't know what the reason was. Perhaps I hadn't exposed her long enough, or perhaps the chemicals was weak. Anyway, not a single freckle could I make.

So after a while I gave it up, and told her it was no use, and she could go and wash her face. She cried a little because she was disappointed, but she cried more afterwards. You see, the chemicals made her cheek almost black, and she couldn't wash it off. Mother and Sue made a dreadful fuss about it, and sent for the doctor, who said he thought it would wear off in a year or so, and wouldn't kill the child or do her very much harm.

This is the reason why they took my chemicals away, and promised to give my camera to the missionaries. All I meant was to please Lizzie, and I never knew the chemicals would turn her black. But it isn't the first time I have tried to be kind and have been made to suffer for it.

SANTA CLAUS.

The other day I was at Tom McGinnis's house, and he had some company. He was a big boy, and something like a cousin of Tom's. Would you believe it, that fellow said there wasn't any Santa Claus?

Now that boy distinctly did tell--but I won't mention it. We should never reveal the wickedness of other people, and ought always to be thankful that we are worse than anybody else. Otherwise we should be like the Pharisee, and he was very bad. I knew for certain that it was a fib Tom McGinnis's cousin told. But all the same, the more I thought about it the more I got worried.

If there is a Santa Claus--and of course there is--how could he get up on the top of the house, so he could come down the chimney, unless he carried a big ladder with him; and if he did this, how could he carry presents enough to fill mornahundred stockings? And then how could he help getting the things all over soot from the chimney, and how does he manage when the chimney is all full of smoke and fire, as it always is at Christmas! But then, as the preacher says, he may be supernatural--I had to look that word up in the dictionary.

The story Tom McGinnis's cousin told kept on worrying me, and finally I began to think how perfectly awful it would be if there was any truth in it. How the children would feel! There's going to be no end of children at our house this Christmas, and Aunt Eliza and her two small boys are here already. I heard mother and Aunt Eliza talking about Christmas the other day, and they agreed that all the children should sleep on cot bedsteads in the back parlor, so that they could open their stockings together, and mother said, "You know, Eliza, there's a big fireplace in that room, and the children can hang their stockings around the chimney."

Now I know I did wrong, but it was only because I did not want the children to be disappointed. We should always do to others and so on, and I know I should have been grateful if anybody had tried to get up a Santa Claus for me in case of the real one being out of repair. Neither do I blame mother, though if she hadn't spoken about the fireplace in the way she did, it would never have happened. But I do think that they ought to have made a little allowance for me, since I was only trying to help make the Christmas business successful.

It all happened yesterday. Tom McGinnis had come to see me, and all the folks had gone out to ride except Aunt Eliza's little boy Harry. We were talking about Christmas, and I was telling Tom how all the children were to sleep in the back parlor, and how there was a chimney there that was just the thing for Santa Claus. We went and looked at the chimney, and then I said to Tom what fun it would be to dress up and come down the chimney and pretend to be Santa Claus, and how it would amuse the children, and how pleased the grown-up folks would be, for they are always wanting us to amuse them.

Tom agreed with me that it would be splendid fun, and said we ought to practise coming down the chimney, so that we could do it easily on Christmas-eve. He said he thought I ought to do it, because it was our house; but I said no, he was a visitor, and it would be mean and selfish in me to deprive him of any pleasure. But Tom wouldn't do it. He said that he wasn't feeling very well, and that he didn't like to take liberties with our chimney, and, besides, he was afraid that he was so big that he wouldn't fit the chimney. Then we thought of Harry, and agreed that he was just the right size. Of course Harry said he'd do it when we asked him, for he isn't afraid of anything, and is so proud to be allowed to play with Tom and me that he would do anything we asked him to do.

Well, Harry took off his coat and shoes, and we all went up to the roof, and Tom and I boosted Harry till he got on the top of the chimney and put his legs in it and slid down. He went down like a flash, for he didn't know enough to brace himself the way the chimney-sweeps do. Tom and I we hurried down to the back parlor to meet him; but he had not arrived yet, though the fireplace was full of ashes and soot.

We supposed he had stopped on the way to rest; but after a while we thought we heard a noise, like somebody calling, that was a great way off. We went up on the roof, thinking Harry might have climbed back up the chimney, but he wasn't there. When we got on the top of the chimney we could hear him plain enough. He was crying and yelling for help, for he was stuck about half-way down the chimney, and couldn't get either up or down.

We talked it over for some time, and decided that the best thing to do was to get a rope and let it down to him, and pull him out. So I got the clothes-line and let it down, but Harry's arms were jammed close to his sides, so he couldn't get hold of it. Tom said we ought to make a slippernoose, catch it over Harry's head, and pull him out that way, but I knew that Harry wasn't very strong, and I was afraid if we did that he might come apart.

Then I proposed that we should get a long pole and push Harry down the rest of the chimney, but after hunting all over the yard we couldn't find a pole that was long enough, so we had to give that plan up. All this time Harry was crying in the most discontented way, although we were doing all we could for him. That's the way with little boys. They never have any gratitude, and are always discontented.

As we couldn't poke Harry down, Tom said let's try to poke him up. So we told Harry to be patient and considerate, and we went down-stairs again, and took the longest pole we could find and pushed it up the chimney. Bushels of soot came down, and flew over everything, but we couldn't reach Harry with the pole. By this time we began to feel discouraged. We were awfully sorry for Harry, because, if we couldn't get him out before the folks came home, Tom and I would be in a dreadful scrape.

Then I thought that if we were to build a little fire the draught might draw Harry out. Tom thought it was an excellent plan. So I started a fire, but it didn't loosen Harry a bit, and when we went on the roof to meet him we heard him crying louder than ever, and saying that something was on fire in the chimney and was choking him. I knew what to do, though Tom didn't, and, to tell the truth, he was terribly frightened.

We ran down and got two pails of water, and poured them down the chimney. That put the fire out, but you would hardly believe that Harry was more unreasonable than ever, and said we were trying to drown him. There is no comfort in wearing yourself out in trying to please little boys. You can't satisfy them, no matter how much trouble you take, and for my part I am tired of trying to please Harry, and shall let him amuse himself the rest of the time he is at our house.

We had tried every plan we could think of to get Harry out of the chimney, but none of them succeeded. Tom said that if we were to pour a whole lot of oil down the chimney it would make it so slippery that Harry would slide right down into the back parlor, but I wouldn't do it, because I knew the oil would spoil Harry's clothes, and that would make Aunt Eliza angry. All of a sudden I heard a carriage stop at our gate, and there were the grown folks, who had come home earlier than I had supposed they would. Tom said that he thought he would go home before his own folks began to get uneasy about him, so he went out of the back gate, and left me to explain things. They had to send for some men to come and cut a hole through the wall. But they got Harry out all safe; and after they found that he wasn't a bit hurt, instead of thanking me for all Tom and I had done for him, they seemed to think that I deserved the worst punishment I ever had, and I got it.

I shall never make another attempt to amuse children on Christmas-eve.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Adventures of Jimmy Brown, by W. L. Alden