Chapter I: WUZ onto my way to Columbus to attend the annooal gatherin uv the

fatheful at that city, a dooty I hev religusly performed fer over 30 yeres. Ther wuz but wun seet vakent in the car, and onto that I sot down. Presently a gentleman carryin uv a karpit bag, sot down beside me, and we towunst commenst conversashen. After discussin the crops, the wether, et settry, I askt wher he resided.

“In Oberlin,” sez he.

“Oberlin!” shreekt I. “Oberlin! wher Ablishnism runs rampant—wher a nigger is 100 per cent. better ner a white man—wher a mulatto is a obgik uv pitty on account uv hevin white blood. Oberlin! that stonest the Dimekratik prophets, and woodent be gathered under Vallandygum’s wings as a hen hawk gathereth chickens, at no price—Oberlin, that gives all the profits uv her college to the support uv the underground ralerode——”

“But,” sez he.

“Oberlin,” continyood I, “that reskoos niggers, and sets at defians the benifisent laws fer takin on em back to their kind and hevenly-minded masters—Oberlin——”

“My jentle frend,” sez he, “Oberlin don’t do nuthin uv the kind. Yoo’ve bin misinformed. Oberlin respex the laws, and hez now a body uv her galyent sons in the feeld a fightin to manetane the Constooshn.”

“A fightin to manetane the Constooshn,” retordid I. “My frend” (and I spoke impressively), “no Oberlin man is a doin any sich thing. Oberlin never fit for no Constooshn. Oberlin commenst this war, Oberlin wuz the prime cause uv all the trubble. Wat wuz the beginnin uv it. Our Suthrin brethrin wantid the territories—Oberlin objectid. They wantid Kansas fer ther blessid instooshn—Oberlin agin objecks. They sent colonies with muskits and sich, to hold the terrytory—Oberlin sent 2 thowsand armed with Bibles and Sharp’s rifles—two instooshns Dimocrisy cood never stand afore—and druv em out. They wantid Breckinridge fer President—Oberlin refused and elektid Linkin. Then they seceded, and why is it that they still hold out?”

He made no anser.

“Becoz,” continyood I, transfixin him with my penetratin gaze, “Oberlin won’t submit. We mite 2-day hev peese, ef Oberlin wood say to Linkin, ‘Resine!’ and to Geff Davis, ‘Come up higher!’ When I say Oberlin, understand it ez figgerative fer the entire Ablishn party, uv wich Oberlin is the fountin hed. There’s wher the trubble is. Our Suthern brethren wuz reasonable. So long ez the dimocrisy controld things, and they got all they wanted, they wuz peeceable. Oberlin ariz—the dimocrisy wuz beet down, and they riz up agin it.”

Jest eggsactly 80-six yeres ago, akordin to Jayneses almanac, a work wich I perooz annually with grate delite, the Amerykin Eagle (whose portrate any wun who possessis a 5 cent peece kin behold) wuz born, the Goddis uv Liberty bein its muther, the Spirit uv Freedom its sire, Tomas Gefferson actin ez physician on the occasion. The proud bird growd ez tho it slept on guano—its left wing dipt into the Pasific, its rite into the Atlantic, its beek thretened Kanady, while his magestik tale cast a shadder ore the Gulf. Sich wuz the Eagle up to March, ’61. Wat is his condishn now? His hed hangs, his tale droops, ther’s no strength in his talons. Wat’s the trubble? Oberlin. He hed bin fed on nigger fer yeres, and hed thrived on the diet. Oberlin got the keepin uv him—she withholds his nateral food—and onless Oberlin is whaled this fall, down goes the Eagle.

_Petroleum V. Nasby._

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_AN ECONOMICAL PROJECT._

_To the Authors of the Journal of Paris._

MESSIEURS,—You often entertain us with accounts of new discoveries. Permit me to communicate to the public, through your paper, one that has lately been made by myself, and which I conceive may be of great utility.

I was the other evening in a grand company, where the new lamp of Messrs. Quinquet and Lange was introduced and much admired for its splendour; but a general inquiry was made, whether the oil it consumed was not in proportion to the light it afforded, in which case there would be no saving in the use of it. No one present could satisfy us in that point, which all agreed ought to be known, it being a very desirable thing to lessen, if possible, the expense of lighting our apartments, when every other article of family expense was so much augmented.

I was pleased to see this general concern for economy, for I love economy exceedingly.

I went home, and to bed, three or four hours after midnight, with my head full of the subject. An accidental sudden noise waked me about six in the morning, when I was surprised to find my room filled with light; and I imagined at first that a number of those lamps had been brought into it; but, rubbing my eyes, I perceived the light came in at the windows. I got up and looked out to see what might be the occasion of it, when I saw the sun just rising above the horizon, from whence he poured his rays plentifully into my chamber, my domestic having negligently omitted, the preceding evening, to close the shutters.

I looked at my watch, which goes very well, and found that it was but six o’clock; and still thinking it something extraordinary that the sun should rise so early, I looked into the almanac, where I found it to be the hour given for his rising on that day. I looked forward, too, and found he was to rise still earlier every day till towards the end of June; and that at no time in the year he retarded his rising so long as till eight o’clock. Your readers who, with me, have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regarded the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early, and especially when I assure them, _that he gives light as soon as he rises_. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes. And, having repeated this observation the three following mornings, I found always precisely the same result.

Yet so it happens that when I speak of this discovery to others, I can easily perceive by their countenances, though they forbear expressing it in words, that they do not quite believe me. One, indeed, who is a learned natural philosopher, has assured me that I must certainly be mistaken as to the circumstance of the light coming into my room; for it being well known, as he says, that there could be no light abroad at that hour, it follows that none could enter from without, and that of consequence, my windows being accidentally left open, instead of letting in the light, had only served to let out the darkness; and he used many ingenious arguments to show me how I might, by that means, have been deceived. I owned that he puzzled me a little, but he did not satisfy me; and the subsequent observations I made, as above mentioned, confirmed me in my first opinion.

This event has given rise in my mind to several serious and important reflections. I consider that if I had not been awakened so early in the morning I should have slept six hours longer by the light of the sun, and in exchange have lived six hours the following night by candle-light; and the latter being a much more expensive light than the former, my love of economy induced me to muster up what little arithmetic I was master of, and to make some calculations, which I shall give you, after observing that utility is, in my opinion, the test of value in matters of invention, and that a discovery which can be applied to no use, or is not good for something, is good for nothing.

I took for the basis of my calculation the supposition that there are 100,000 families in Paris, and that these families consume in the night half a pound of _bougies_, or candles, per hour. I think this is a moderate allowance, taking one family with another; for though I believe some consume less, I know that many consume a great deal more. Then estimating seven hours per day, as the medium quantity between the time of the sun’s rising and ours, he rising during the six following months from six to eight hours before noon, and there being seven hours of course per night in which we burn candles, the account will stand thus:—

In the six months between the 20th of March and the 20th of
September there are—

Nights 183

Hours of each night in which we burn candles 7

——

Multiplication gives for the total number of hours 1281

These 1281 hours multiplied by 100,000, the
number of inhabitants, give 128,100,000

One hundred twenty-eight millions and one
hundred thousand hours, spent at Paris by
candle-light, which, at half a pound of wax 64,050,000
and tallow per hour, gives the weight of

Sixty-four millions and fifty thousand of pounds,
which, estimating the whole at the medium
price of thirty sols the pound, makes the sum
of ninety-six millions and seventy-five thousand 96,075,000
_livres tournois_

An immense sum! that the city of Paris might save every year, by the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.

If it should be said that people are apt to be obstinately attached to old customs, and that it will be difficult to induce them to rise before noon, consequently my discovery can be of little use; I answer, _Nil desperandum_. I believe all who have common sense, as soon as they have learned from this paper that it is daylight when the sun rises, will contrive to rise with him; and to compel the rest, I would propose the following regulations:—

First. Let a tax be laid of a louis per window on every window that is provided with shutters to keep out the light of the sun.

Second. Let the same salutary operation of police be made use of, to prevent our burning candles, that inclined us last winter to be more economical in burning wood; that is, let guards be placed in the shops of the wax and tallow chandlers, and no family be permitted to be supplied with more than one pound of candles per week.

Third. Let guards also be posted to stop all the coaches, etc., that would pass the street after sunset, except those of physicians, surgeons, and midwives.

Fourth. Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing; and if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest.

All the difficulty will be in the first two or three days, after which the reformation will be as natural and easy as the present irregularity, for _ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte_. Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, and it is more than probable he will go willingly to bed at eight in the evening; and, having had eight hours sleep, he will rise more willingly at four in the morning following. But this sum of ninety-six millions and seventy-five thousand livres is not the whole of what may be saved by my economical project. You may observe that I have calculated upon only one-half of the year, and much may be saved in the other, though the days are shorter. Besides, the immense stock of wax and tallow left unconsumed during the summer will probably make candles much cheaper for the ensuing winter, and continue them cheaper as long as the proposed reformation shall be supported.

For the great benefit of this discovery, thus freely communicated and bestowed by me on the public, I demand neither place, pension, exclusive privilege, nor any other reward whatever. I expect only to have the honour of it. And yet I know there are little envious minds who will, as usual, deny me this, and say that my invention was known to the ancients, and perhaps they may bring passages out of old books in proof of it. I will not dispute with these people that the ancients knew not the sun would rise at certain hours—they possibly had, as we have, almanacs that predicted it—but it does not follow thence that they knew _he gave light as soon as he rose_. This is what I claim as my discovery. If the ancients knew it, it might have been long since forgotten, for it certainly was unknown to the moderns, at least to the Parisians, which to prove I need use but one plain, simple argument. They are as well instructed, judicious, and prudent a people as exist anywhere in the world, all professing, like myself, to be lovers of economy; and, from the many heavy taxes required from them by the necessities of the state, have surely an abundant reason to be economical. I say it is impossible that so sensible a people, under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.

_Benjamin Franklin._

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_MISS MEHETABEL’S SON._

A MAN with a passion for _bric-à-brac_ is always stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mosaics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. My own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them. It was plain I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bayley’s Four Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively recognising in him an unfamiliar species.

My professional work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I purposed to employ in studying and classifying my fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a preliminary step, to learn something of his previous history, and to this end I addressed myself to Mr. Sewell that same night.

“I do not want to seem inquisitive,” I said to the landlord, as he was fastening up the bar, which, by the way, was the _salle à manger_ and general sitting-room. “I do not want to seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark this morning at breakfast which—which was not altogether clear to me.”

“About Mehetabel?” asked Mr. Sewell uneasily.

“Yes.”

“Well, I wish he wouldn’t!”

“He was friendly enough in the course of conversation to hint to me that he had not married the young woman, and seemed to regret it.”

“No, he didn’t marry Mehetabel.”

“May I inquire _why_ he didn’t marry Mehetabel?”

“Never asked her. Might have married the girl forty times. Old Elkin’s daughter over at K——, she’d have had him quick enough. Seven years off and on, he kept company with Mehetabel, and then she died.”

“And he never asked her?”

“He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he didn’t think of it. When she was dead and gone, then Silas was struck all of a heap,—and that’s all about it.”

Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me anything more, and obviously there was more to tell. The topic was plainly disagreeable to him for some reason or other, and that unknown reason of course piqued my curiosity.

As I had been absent from dinner and supper that day, I did not meet Mr. Jaffrey again until the following morning at breakfast. He had recovered his bird-like manner, and was full of a mysterious assassination that had just taken place in New York, all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers’ ends. It was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman, with his naïve, benevolent countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in a semicircle like the foot-lights at a theatre, revelling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed.

“You come up to my room to-night,” he cried with horrid glee, “and I’ll give you my theory of the murder. I’ll make it as clear as day to you that it was the detective himself who fired the three pistol-shots.”

It was not so much the desire to have this point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr. Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation.

Mr. Jaffrey’s bedroom was in an L of the building, and was in no way noticeable except for the numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge pile of old magazines which stood in one corner, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threatening each instant to topple over like the Leaning Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades at the windows, some faded chintz valances about the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered with chintz. On a black walnut shelf between the windows lay a choice collection of meerschaum and brierwood pipes.

Filling one of the chocolate-coloured bowls for me, and another for himself, Mr. Jaffrey began prattling; but not about the murder, which appeared to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I do not remember that the topic was even touched upon, either then or afterwards.

“Cosy nest this,” said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing complacently over the apartment. “What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring. In summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit trees under the window; so I have singing birds all the year round. I take it very easy here, I can tell you, summer and winter. Not much society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would term a great intellectual force, but he means well. He’s a realist, believes in coming down to what he calls ‘the hard pan;’ but his heart is in the right place, and he’s very kind to me. The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell out my grain business over at K——, thirteen years ago, and settle down at the Corners. When a man has made a competency, what does he want more? Besides, at that time an event occurred which destroyed any ambition I may have had,—Mehetabel died.”

“The lady you were engaged to?”

“N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was quite understood between us, though nothing had been said on the subject. Typhoid,” added Mr. Jaffrey, in a low tone.

For several minutes he smoked in silence, a vague, troubled look playing over his countenance. Presently this passed away, and he fixed his grey eyes speculatively upon my face.

“If I had married Mehetabel,” said Mr. Jaffrey, slowly, and then he hesitated.

I blew a ring of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my knee, dropped into an attitude of attention.

“If I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should have had—ahem!—a family.”

“Very likely,” I assented, vastly amused at this unexpected turn.

“A boy!” exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively.

“By all means, certainly, a son.”

“Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehetabel’s family want him named Elkanah Elkins, after her grandfather; I want him named Andrew Jackson. We compromise by christening him Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey. Rather a long name for such a short little fellow,” said Mr. Jaffrey, musingly.

“Andy isn’t a bad nickname,” I suggested.

“Not at all. We call him Andy in the family. Somewhat fractious at first,—colic and things. I suppose it is right, or it wouldn’t be so; but the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough, scarlatina, and fits is not visible to the naked eye. I wish Andy would be a model infant, and dodge the whole lot.”

This supposititious child, born within the last few minutes, was clearly assuming the proportions of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel a little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a civil engineer, and it is not strictly in my line to assist at the births of infants, imaginary or otherwise. I pulled away vigorously at the pipe and said nothing.

“What large blue eyes he has,” resumed Mr. Jaffrey, after a pause; “just like Hetty’s; and the fair hair, too, like hers. How oddly certain distinctive features are handed down in families! sometimes a mouth, sometimes a turn of the eyebrow. Wicked little boys, over at K——, have now and then derisively advised me to follow my nose. It would be an interesting thing to do. I should find my nose flying about the world, turning up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this branch of the family and reappearing in that, now jumping over one great-grandchild to fasten itself upon another, and never losing its individuality. Look at Andy. There’s Elkanah Elkin’s chin to the life. Andy’s chin is probably older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing,” he cried, with a sudden, indescribable tenderness, “to lose his mother so early!”

And Mr. Jaffrey’s head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders slanted forward, as if he were actually bending over the cradle of the child.

The whole gesture and attitude was so natural that it startled me. The pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.

“Hush!” whispered Mr. Jaffrey, with a deprecating motion of his hand. “Andy’s asleep!”

He rose softly from the chair, and, walking across the room on tiptoe, drew down the shade at the window through which the moonlight was streaming. Then he returned to his seat, and remained gazing with half-closed eyes into the drooping embers.

I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound silence, wondering what would come next. But nothing came next. Mr. Jaffrey had fallen into so brown a study, that, a quarter of an hour afterwards, when I wished him good-night and withdrew, I do not think he noticed my departure. I am not what is called a man of imagination; it is my habit to exclude most things not capable of mathematical demonstration; but I am not without a certain psychological insight, and I think I understood Mr. Jaffrey’s case.

I could easily understand how a man with an unhealthy, sensitive nature, overwhelmed by sudden calamity, might take refuge in some forlorn place like this old tavern, and dream his life away. To such a man—brooding for ever on what might have been, and dwelling only in the realm of his fancies—the actual world might indeed become as a dream, and nothing seem real but his illusions.

I daresay that thirteen years of Bayley’s Four Corners would have its effect upon me; though instead of conjuring up golden-haired children of the Madonna, I should probably see gnomes and kobolds and goblins engaged in hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for midnight express trains.

“No doubt,” I said to myself that night, as I lay in bed, thinking over the matter, “this once possible but now impossible child is a great comfort to the old gentleman,—a greater comfort, perhaps, than a real son would be. Maybe Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of night, he’s such an unsubstantial infant; but if he doesn’t, and Mr. Jaffrey finds pleasure in talking to me about his son, I shall humour the old fellow. It wouldn’t be a Christian act to knock over his harmless fancy.”

I was very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey’s illusion would stand the test of daylight. It did. Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was, so to speak, alive and kicking the next morning. On taking his seat at the breakfast-table, Mr. Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had had a comfortable night.

“Silas!” said Mr. Sewell, sharply, “what are you whispering about?”

Mr. Sewell was in an ill humour; perhaps he was jealous because I had passed the evening in Mr. Jaffrey’s room; but surely Mr. Sewell could not expect his boarders to go to bed at eight o’clock every night, as he did. From time to time during the meal Mr. Sewell regarded me unkindly out of the corner of his eye, and in helping me to the parsnips he poniarded them with quite a suggestive air. All this, however, did not prevent me from repairing to the door of Mr. Jaffrey’s snuggery when night came.

“Well, Mr. Jaffrey, how’s Andy this evening?”

“Got a tooth!” cried Mr. Jaffrey, vivaciously.

“No!”

“Yes, he has! Just through. Gave the nurse a silver dollar. Standing reward for first tooth.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to express surprise that an infant a day old should cut a tooth, when I suddenly recollected that Richard III. was born with teeth.

Feeling myself to be on unfamiliar ground, I suppressed my criticism. It was well I did so, for in the next breath I was advised that half a year had elapsed since the previous evening.

“Andy’s had a hard six months of it,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with the well-known narrative air of fathers. “We’ve brought him up by hand. His grandfather, by the way, was brought up by the bottle”—and brought down by it, too, I added mentally, recalling Mr. Sewell’s account of the old gentleman’s tragic end.

Mr. Jaffrey then went on to give me a history of Andy’s first six months, omitting no detail however insignificant or irrelevant. This history I would in turn inflict upon the reader, if I were only certain that he is one of those dreadful parents who, under the ægis of friendship, bore you at a street-corner with that remarkable thing which Freddy said the other day, and insist on singing to you at an evening party the Iliad of Tommy’s woes.

But to inflict this _enfantillage_ upon the unmarried reader would be an act of wanton cruelty. So I pass over that part of Andy’s biography, and, for the same reason, make no record of the next four or five interviews I had with Mr. Jaffrey. It will be sufficient to state that Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth with astonishing celerity,—at the rate of one year per night, if I remember correctly; and—must I confess it?—before the week came to an end, this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was only little less of a reality to me than to Mr. Jaffrey.

At first I had lent myself to the old dreamer’s whim with a keen perception of the humour of the thing; but by-and-by I found I was talking and thinking of Miss Mehetabel’s son as though he were a veritable personage. Mr. Jaffrey spoke of the child with such an air of conviction!—as if Andy were playing among his toys in the next room, or making mud-pies down in the yard. In these conversations, it should be observed, the child was never supposed to be present, except on that single occasion when Mr. Jaffrey leaned over the cradle. After one of our séances I would lie awake until the small hours, thinking of the boy, and then fall asleep only to have indigestible dreams about him. Through the day, and sometimes in the midst of complicated calculations, I would catch myself wondering what Andy was up to now! There was no shaking him off; he became an inseparable nightmare to me; and I felt that if I remained much longer at Bayley’s Four Corners I should turn into just such another bald-headed, mild-eyed visionary as Silas Jaffrey.

Then the tavern was a gruesome old shell anyway, full of unaccountable noises after dark,—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises.

Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. Clem Jaffrey. Sometimes,

“In the dead vast and middle of the night,”

I used to hear sounds as if some one were turning that rusty crank on the sly. This occurred only on particularly cold nights, and I conceived the uncomfortable idea that it was the thin family ghosts, from the neglected graveyard in the cornfield, keeping themselves warm by running each other through the mangle. There was a haunted air about the whole place that made it easy for me to believe in the existence of a phantasm like Miss Mehetabel’s son, who, after all, was less unearthly than Mr. Jaffrey himself, and seemed more properly an inhabitant of this globe than the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to mention the silent witch of Endor that cooked our meals for us over the bar-room fire.

In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed upon me by Mr. Sewell, who let slip no opportunity to testify his disapprobation of the intimacy, Mr. Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings together—those long autumnal evenings, through the length of which he talked about the boy, laying out his path in life, and hedging the path with roses. He should be sent to the High School at Portsmouth, and then to college; he should be educated like a gentleman, Andy.

“When the old man dies,” said Mr. Jaffrey, rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great joke, “Andy will find that the old man has left him a pretty plum.”

“What do you think of having Andy enter West Point when he’s old enough?” said Mr. Jaffrey, on another occasion. “He needn’t necessarily go into the army when he graduates; he can become a civil engineer.”

This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and indirect, that I could accept it without immodesty.

There had lately sprung up on the corner of Mr. Jaffrey’s bureau a small tin house, Gothic in architecture, and pink in colour, with a slit in the roof, and the word “Bank” painted on one façade. Several times in the course of an evening Mr. Jaffrey would rise from his chair, without interrupting the conversation, and gravely drop a nickel through the scuttle of the bank. It was pleasant to observe the solemnity of his countenance as he approached the edifice, and the air of triumph with which he resumed his seat by the fireplace. One night I missed the tin bank. It had disappeared, deposits and all. Evidently there had been a defalcation on rather a large scale. I strongly suspected that Mr. Sewell was at the bottom of it; but my suspicion was not shared by Mr. Jaffrey, who, remarking my glance at the bureau, became suddenly depressed. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I have failed to instil into Andrew those principles of integrity—which—which——” And the old gentleman quite broke down.

Andy was now eight or nine years old, and for some time past, if the truth must be told, had given Mr. Jaffrey no inconsiderable trouble. What with his impishness and his illnesses, the boy led the pair of us a lively dance. I shall not soon forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night Andy had the scarlet fever,—an anxiety which so affected me that I actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual, dreading to hear the little spectre was dead, and greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey on the door-step with his face wreathed in smiles. When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet fever that had occurred the year before!

It was at this time, towards the end of my second week at Greenton, that I noticed what was probably not a new trait,—Mr. Jaffrey’s curious sensitiveness to atmospherical changes. He was as sensitive as a barometer. The approach of a storm sent his mercury down instantly. When the weather was fair he was hopeful and sunny, and Andy’s prospects were brilliant. When the weather was overcast and threatening he grew restless and despondent, and was afraid the boy wasn’t going to turn out well.

On the Saturday previous to my departure, which had been fixed for Monday, it had rained heavily all the afternoon, and that night Mr. Jaffrey was in an unusually excitable and unhappy frame of mind. His mercury was very low indeed.

“That boy is going to the dogs just as fast as he can go,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with a woful face. “I can’t do anything with him.”

“He’ll come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey. Boys will be boys. I wouldn’t give a snap for a lad without animal spirits.”

“But animal spirits,” said Mr. Jaffrey, sententiously, “shouldn’t saw off the legs of the piano in Tobias’s best parlour. I don’t know what Tobias will say when he finds it out.”

“What, has Andy sawed off the legs of the old spinet?” I returned, laughing.

“Worse than that.”

“Played upon it, then?”

“No, sir. He has lied to me!”

“I can’t believe that of Andy.”

“Lied to me, sir,” repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severely. “He pledged me his word of honour that he would give over his climbing. The way that boy climbs sends a chill down my spine. This morning, notwithstanding his solemn promise, he shinned up the lightning-rod attached to the extension, and sat astride the ridge-pole. I saw him, and he denied it! When a boy you have caressed and indulged and lavished pocket-money on lies to you, and _will_ climb, then there’s nothing more to be said. He’s a lost child.”

“You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey. Training and education are bound to tell in the end, and he has been well brought up.”

“But I didn’t bring him up on a lightning-rod, did I? If he is ever going to know how to behave, he ought to know now. To-morrow he will be eleven years old.”

The reflection came to me that if Andy had not been brought up by the rod, he had certainly been brought up by the lightning. He was eleven years old in two weeks!

I essayed to tranquillise Mr. Jaffrey’s mind, and to give him some practical hints on the management of youth, with that perspicacious wisdom which seems to be the peculiar property of bachelors and elderly maiden ladies.

“Spank him,” I suggested, at length.

“I will!” said the old gentleman.

“And you’d better do it at once!” I added, as it flashed upon me that in six months Andy would be a hundred and forty-three years old!—an age at which parental discipline would have to be relaxed.

The next morning, Sunday, the rain came down as if determined to drive the quicksilver entirely out of my poor friend. Mr. Jaffrey sat bolt upright at the breakfast-table, looking as woe-begone as a bust of Dante, and retired to his chamber the moment the meal was finished. As the day advanced, the wind veered round to the north-east, and settled itself down to work. It was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to think, what Mr. Jaffrey’s condition would be if the weather did not mend its manners by noon; but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm increased in violence, and as night set in the wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key, and the rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky horse that refused to move on. The windows rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors of remote rooms, where nobody ever went, slammed-to in the maddest way. Now and then the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount Agamenticus, bowled across the open country and struck the ancient hostelry point-blank.

Mr. Jaffrey did not appear at supper. I knew he was expecting me to come to his room as usual, and I turned over in my mind a dozen plans to evade seeing him that night.

The landlord sat at the opposite side of the chimney-place, with his eye upon me. I fancy he was aware of the effect of this storm on his other boarder; for at intervals, as the wind hurled itself against the exposed gable, threatening to burst in the windows, Mr. Sewell tipped me an atrocious wink, and displayed his gums in a way he had not done since the morning after my arrival at Greenton. I wondered if he suspected anything about Andy. There had been odd times during the past week when I felt convinced that the existence of Miss Mehetabel’s son was no secret to Mr. Sewell.

In deference to the gale, the landlord sat up half-an-hour later than was his custom. At half-past eight he went to bed, remarking that he thought the old pile would stand till morning.

He had been absent only a few minutes when I heard a rustling at the door. I looked up and beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold, with his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying, and the wildest expression on his face.

“He’s gone!” cried Mr. Jaffrey.

“Who? Sewell! Yes, he just went to bed.”

“No, not Tobias,—the boy!”

“What, run away?”

“No,—he is dead! He has fallen off a step-ladder in the red chamber and broken his neck!”

Mr. Jaffrey threw up his hands with a gesture of despair and disappeared. I followed him through the hall, saw him go into his own apartment, and heard the bolt of the door drawn to. Then I returned to the bar-room and sat for an hour or two in the ruddy glow of the fire, brooding over the strange experience of the last fortnight.

On my way to bed I paused at Mr. Jaffrey’s door, and, in a lull of the storm, the measured respiration within told me that the old gentleman was sleeping peacefully.

Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay listening to the soughing of the wind and thinking of Mr. Jaffrey’s illusion. It had amused me at first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor little phantom was dead. I was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it all along. Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, coming and going fainter and fainter, floating around the eaves of the tavern with a gentle, murmurous sound, as if it were turning itself into soft wings to bear away the spirit of a little child.

* * * * *

Perhaps nothing that happened during my stay at Bayley’s Four Corners took me so completely by surprise as Mr. Jaffrey’s radiant countenance the next morning. The morning itself was not fresher or sunnier. His round face literally shone with geniality and happiness. His eyes twinkled like diamonds, and the magnetic light of his hair was turned on full. He came into my room while I was packing my valise. He chirped and prattled and carolled, and was sorry I was going away,—but never a word about Andy. However, the boy had probably been dead several years then!

The open waggon that was to carry me to the station stood at the door; Mr. Sewell was placing my case of instruments under the seat, and Mr. Jaffrey had gone up to his room to get me a certain newspaper containing an account of a remarkable shipwreck on the Auckland Islands. I took the opportunity to thank Mr. Sewell for his courtesies to me, and to express my regret at leaving him and Mr. Jaffrey.

“I have become very much attached to Mr. Jaffrey,” I said; “he is a most interesting person; but that hypothetical boy of his, that son of Miss Mehetabel’s——”

“Yes, I know!” interrupted Mr. Sewell, testily, “fell off a step-ladder and broke his dratted neck. Eleven year old, wasn’t he? Always does, jest at that point. Next week Silas will begin the whole thing over again if he can get anybody to listen to him.”

“I see; our amiable friend is a little queer on that subject.”

Mr. Sewell glanced cautiously over his shoulder, and, tapping himself significantly on the forehead, said in a low voice—

“Room to let. Unfurnished!”

_Thomas Bailey Aldrich._

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PECK’S BAD BOY.

“SAY, are you a Mason, or a Nodfellow, or anything?” asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as he went to the cinnamon bag on the shelf and took out a long stick of cinnamon bark to chew.

“Why, yes, of course I am; but what set you to thinking of that?” asked the grocery man, as he went to the desk and charged the boy’s father with a half-pound of cinnamon.

“Well, do the goats bunt when you nishiate a fresh candidate?”

“No, of course not. The goats are cheap ones, that have no life, and we muzzle them, and put pillows over their heads, so they can’t hurt anybody,” says the grocery man, as he winked at a brother Oddfellow who was seated on a sugar barrel, looking mysterious. “But why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothin’, only I wish me and my chum had muzzled our goat with a pillow. Pa would have enjoyed his becoming a member of our lodge better. You see, Pa had been telling us how much good the Masons and Oddfellers did, and said we ought to try and grow up good so we could jine the lodges when we got big; and I asked Pa if it would do any hurt for us to have a play lodge in my room, and purtend to nishiate, and Pa said it wouldn’t do any hurt. He said it would improve our minds and learn us to be men. So my chum and me borried a goat that lives in a livery stable. Say, did you know they keep a goat in a livery stable so the horses won’t get sick? They get used to the smell of the goat, and after that nothing can make them sick but a glue factory. You see my chum and me had to carry the goat up to my room when Ma and Pa was out riding, and he blatted so we had to tie a handkerchief around his nose, and his feet made such a noise on the floor that we put some baby’s socks on his hoofs.

“Well, my chum and me practised with that goat until he could bunt the picture of a goat every time. We borried a bock beer sign from a saloon man and hung it on the back of a chair, and the goat would hit it every time. That night Pa wanted to know what we were doing up in my room, and I told him we were playing lodge, and improving our minds; and Pa said that was right, there was nothing that did boys of our age half so much good as to imitate men, and store by useful nollidge. Then my chum asked Pa if he didn’t want to come up and take the grand bumper degree, and Pa laffed and said he didn’t care if he did, just to encourage us boys in innocent pastime that was so improving to our intellex. We had shut the goat up in a closet in my room, and he had got over blatting; so we took off the handkerchief, and he was eating some of my paper collars and skate straps. We went upstairs, and told Pa to come up pretty soon and give three distinct raps, and when we asked him who comes there he must say, ‘A pilgrim, who wants to join your ancient order and ride the goat.’ Ma wanted to come up, too, but we told her if she come in it would break up the lodge, cause a woman couldn’t keep a secret, and we didn’t have any side-saddle for the goat. Say, if you never tried it, the next time you nishiate a man in your Mason’s lodge you sprinkle a little kyan pepper on the goat’s beard just afore you turn him loose. You can get three times as much fun to the square inch of goat. You wouldn’t think it was the same goat. Well, we got all fixed and Pa rapped, and we let him in and told him he must be blindfolded, and he got on his knees a laffing, and I tied a towel around his eyes, and then I turned him around and made him get down on his hands also, and then his back was right towards the closet sign, and I put the bock beer sign right against Pa’s clothes. He was a laffing all the time, and said we boys were as full of fun as they made ’em, and we told him it was a solemn occasion, and we wouldn’t permit no levity, and if he didn’t stop laffing we couldn’t give him the grand bumper degree. Then everything was ready, and my chum had his hand on the closet door, and some kyan pepper in his other hand, and I asked Pa in low bass tones if he felt as though he wanted to turn back, or if he had nerve enough to go ahead and take the degree. I warned him that it was full of dangers, as the goat was loaded for bear, and told him he yet had time to retrace his steps if he wanted to. He said he wanted the whole bizness, and we could go ahead with the menagerie. Then I said to Pa that if he had decided to go ahead, and not blame us for the consequences, to repeat after me the following: ‘Bring forth the Royal Bumper and let him Bump.’

“Pa repeated the words, and my chum sprinkled the kyan pepper on the goat’s moustache, and he sneezed once and looked sassy, and then he see the lager beer goat rearing up, and he started for it just like a crow-catcher, and blatted. Pa is real fat, but he knew he got hit, and he grunted and said, ‘What you boys doin’?’ and then the goat gave him another degree, and Pa pulled off the towel and got up and started for the stairs, and so did the goat; and Ma was at the bottom of the stairs listening, and when I looked over the banisters Pa and Ma and the goat were all in a heap, and Pa was yelling murder, and Ma was screaming fire, and the goat was blatting, and sneezing, and bunting, and the hired girl came into the hall and the goat took after her, and she crossed herself just as the goat struck her and said, ‘Howly mother, protect me!’ and went down stairs the way we boys slide down hill, with both hands on herself, and the goat reared up and blatted, and Pa and Ma went into their room and shut the door, and then my chum and me opened the front door and drove the goat out. The minister, who comes to see Ma every three times a week, was just ringing the bell, and the goat thought he wanted to be nishiated too, and gave him one for luck, and then went down the side walk, blatting, and sneezing, and the minister came in the parlour and said he was stabbed, and then Pa came out of his room with his suspenders hanging down, and he didn’t know the minister was there, and he said cuss words, and Ma cried and told Pa he would go to the bad place sure, and Pa said he didn’t care, he would kill that kussid goat afore he went, and I told Pa the minister was in the parlour, and he and Ma went down and said the weather was propitious for a revival, and it seemed as though an outpouring of the spirit was about to be vouchsafed, and none of them sot down but Ma, cause the goat didn’t hit her, and while they were talking relidgin with their mouths, and kussin’ the goat inwardly, my chum and me adjourned the lodge, and I went and stayed with him all night, and I haven’t been home since. But I don’t believe Pa will lick me, ’cause he said he would not hold us responsible for the consequences. He ordered the goat hisself, and we filled the order, don’t you see? Well, I guess I will go and sneak in the back way, and find out from the hired girl how the land lays. She won’t go back on me, ’cause the goat was not loaded for hired girls. She just happened to get in at the wrong time. Good-bye, sir. Remember and give your goat kyan pepper in your lodge.”

_George W. Peck._

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LONDON, _October 30, 1802_.