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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Story of a Bad Boy, by Aldrich
+#7 in our series by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+The Story of a Bad Boy
+
+by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+November, 1999  [Etext #1948]
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Story of a Bad Boy, by Aldrich
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+
+
+
+
+
+The Story
+of a Bad Boy
+
+by
+
+Thomas
+Bailey
+Aldrich
+
+
+
+
+Chapter One
+
+In Which I Introduce Myself
+
+
+
+This is the story of a bad boy. Well, not such a very bad, but a pretty bad
+boy; and I ought to know, for I am, or rather I was, that boy myself.
+
+Lest the title should mislead the reader, I hasten to assure him here that I
+have no dark confessions to make. I call my story the story of a bad boy,
+partly to distinguish myself from those faultless young gentlemen who
+generally figure in narratives of this kind, and partly because I really
+was not a cherub. I may truthfully say I was an amiable, impulsive lad,
+blessed with fine digestive powers, and no hypocrite. I didn't want to be
+an angel and with the angels stand; I didn't think the missionary tracts
+presented to me by the Rev. Wibird Hawkins were half so nice as Robinson
+Crusoe; and I didn't send my little pocket-money to the natives of the
+Feejee Islands, but spent it royally in peppermint-drops and taffy candy.
+In short, I was a real human boy, such as you may meet anywhere in New
+England, and no more like the impossible boy in a storybook than a sound
+orange is like one that has been sucked dry. But let us begin at the
+beginning.
+
+Whenever a new scholar came to our school, I used to confront him at recess
+with the following words: "My name's Tom Bailey; what's your name?" If the
+name struck me favorably, I shook hands with the new pupil cordially; but
+if it didn't, I would turn on my heel, for I was particular on this point.
+Such names as Higgins, Wiggins, and Spriggins were deadly affronts to my
+ear; while Langdon, Wallace, Blake, and the like, were passwords to my
+confidence and esteem.
+
+Ah me! some of those dear fellows are rather elderly boys by this
+time-lawyers, merchants, sea-captains, soldiers, authors, what not? Phil
+Adams (a special good name that Adams) is consul at Shanghai, where I
+picture him to myself with his head closely shaved-he never had too much
+hair-and a long pigtail banging down behind. He is married, I hear; and I
+hope he and she that was Miss Wang Wang are very happy together, sitting
+cross-legged over their diminutive cups of tea in a skyblue tower hung with
+bells. It is so I think of him; to me he is henceforth a jewelled mandarin,
+talking nothing but broken China. Whitcomb is a judge, sedate and wise,
+with spectacles balanced on the bridge of that remarkable nose which, in
+former days, was so plentifully sprinkled with freckles that the boys
+christened him Pepper Whitcomb. just to think of little Pepper Whitcomb
+being a judge! What would be do to me now, I wonder, if I were to sing out
+"Pepper!" some day in court? Fred Langdon is in California, in the
+native-wine business-he used to make the best licorice-water I ever tasted!
+Binny Wallace sleeps in the Old South Burying-Ground; and Jack Harris, too,
+is dead-Harris, who commanded us boys, of old, in the famous snow-ball
+battles of Slatter's Hill. Was it yesterday I saw him at the head of his
+regiment on its way to join the shattered Army of the Potomac? Not
+yesterday, but six years ago. It was at the battle of the Seven Pines.
+Gallant Jack Harris, that never drew rein until he had dashed into the
+Rebel battery! So they found him-lying across the enemy's guns.
+
+How we have parted, and wandered, and married, and died! I wonder what has
+become of all the boys who went to the Temple Grammar School at Rivermouth
+when I was a youngster? "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces!"
+
+It is with no ungentle hand I summon them back, for a moment, from that Past
+which has closed upon them and upon me. How pleasantly they live again in
+my memory! Happy, magical Past, in whose fairy atmosphere even Conway, mine
+ancient foe, stands forth transfigured, with a sort of dreamy glory
+encircling his bright red hair!
+
+With the old school formula I commence these sketches of my boyhood. My name
+is Tom Bailey; what is yours, gentle reader? I take for granted it is
+neither Wiggins nor Spriggins, and that we shall get on famously together,
+and be capital friends forever.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Two
+
+In Which I Entertain Peculiar Views
+
+
+
+I was born at Rivermouth, but, before I had a chance to become very well
+acquainted with that pretty New England town, my parents removed to New
+Orleans, where my father invested his money so securely in the banking
+business that be was never able to get any of it out again. But of this
+hereafter.
+
+I was only eighteen months old at the time of the removal, and it didn't
+make much difference to me where I was, because I was so small; but several
+years later, when my father proposed to take me North to be educated, I had
+my own peculiar views on the subject. I instantly kicked over the little
+Negro boy who happened to be standing by me at the moment, and, stamping my
+foot violently on the floor of the piazza, declared that I would not be
+taken away to live among a lot of Yankees!
+
+You see I was what is called "a Northern man with Southern principles." I
+had no recollection of New England: my earliest memories were connected
+with the South, with Aunt Chloe, my old Negro nurse, and with the great
+ill-kept garden in the centre of which stood our house-a whitewashed stone
+house it was, with wide verandas-shut out from the street by lines of
+orange, fig, and magnolia trees. I knew I was born at the North, but hoped
+nobody would find it out. I looked upon the misfortune as something so
+shrouded by time and distance that maybe nobody remembered it. I never told
+my schoolmates I was a Yankee, because they talked about the Yankees in
+such a scornful way it made me feel that it was quite a disgrace not to be
+born in Louisiana, or at least in one of the Border States. And this
+impression was strengthened by Aunt Chloe, who said, "dar wasn't no
+gentl'men in the Norf no way," and on one occasion terrified me beyond
+measure by declaring that, "if any of dem mean whites tried to git her away
+from marster, she was jes'gwine to knock 'em on de head wid a gourd!"
+
+The way this poor creature's eyes flashed, and the tragic air with which she
+struck at an imaginary "mean white," are among the most vivid things in my
+memory of those days.
+
+To be frank, my idea of the North was about as accurate as that entertained
+by the well-educated Englishmen of the present day concerning America. I
+supposed the inhabitants were divided into two classes-Indians and white
+people; that the Indians occasionally dashed down on New York, and scalped
+any woman or child (giving the preference to children) whom they caught
+lingering in the outskirts after nightfall; that the white men were either
+hunters or schoolmasters, and that it was winter pretty much all the year
+round. The prevailing style of architecture I took to be log-cabins.
+
+With this delightful picture of Northern civilization in my eye, the reader
+will easily understand my terror at the bare thought of being transported
+to Rivermouth to school, and possibly will forgive me for kicking over
+little black Sam, and otherwise misconducting myself, when my father
+announced his determination to me. As for kicking little Sam-I always did
+that, more or less gently, when anything went wrong with me.
+
+My father was greatly perplexed and troubled by this unusually violent
+outbreak, and especially by the real consternation which be saw written in
+every line of my countenance. As little black Sam picked himself up, my
+father took my hand in his and led me thoughtfully to the library.
+
+I can see him now as he leaned back in the bamboo chair and questioned me.
+He appeared strangely agitated on learning the nature of my objections to
+going North, and proceeded at once to knock down all my pine log houses,
+and scatter all the Indian tribes with which I had populated the greater
+portion of the Eastern and Middle States.
+
+"Who on earth, Tom, has filled your brain with such silly stories?" asked my
+father, wiping the tears from his eyes.
+
+"Aunt Chloe, sir; she told me."
+
+"And you really thought your grandfather wore a blanket embroidered with
+beads, and ornamented his leggins with the scalps of his enemies?"
+
+"Well, sir, I didn't think that exactly."
+
+"Didn't think that exactly? Tom, you will be the death of me."
+
+He hid his face in his handkerchief, and, when he looked up, he seemed to
+have been suffering acutely. I was deeply moved myself, though I did not
+clearly understand what I had said or done to cause him to feel so badly.
+Perhaps I had hurt his feelings by thinking it even possible that
+Grandfather Nutter was an Indian warrior.
+
+My father devoted that evening and several subsequent evenings to giving me
+a clear and succinct account of New England; its early struggles, its
+progress, and its present condition-faint and confused glimmerings of all
+which I had obtained at school, where history had never been a favorite
+pursuit of mine.
+
+I was no longer unwilling to go North; on the contrary, the proposed journey
+to a new world full of wonders kept me awake nights. I promised myself all
+sorts of fun and adventures, though I was not entirely at rest in my mind
+touching the savages, and secretly resolved to go on board the ship-the
+journey was to be made by sea-with a certain little brass pistol in my
+trousers-pocket, in case of any difficulty with the tribes when we landed
+at Boston.
+
+I couldn't get the Indian out of my head. Only a short time previously the
+Cherokees-or was it the Camanches?-had been removed from their
+hunting-grounds in Arkansas; and in the wilds of the Southwest the red men
+were still a source of terror to the border settlers. "Trouble with the
+Indians" was the staple news from Florida published in the New Orleans
+papers. We were constantly hearing of travellers being attacked and
+murdered in the interior of that State. If these things were done in
+Florida, why not in Massachusetts?
+
+Yet long before the sailing day arrived I was eager to be off. My impatience
+was increased by the fact that my father had purchased for me a fine little
+Mustang pony, 20and shipped it to Rivermouth a fortnight previous to the
+date set for our own departure-for both my parents were to accompany me.
+The pony (which nearly kicked me out of bed one night in a dream), and my
+father's promise that he and my mother would come to Rivermouth every other
+summer, completely resigned me to the situation. The pony's name was
+Gitana, which is the Spanish for gypsy; so I always called her-she was a
+lady pony-Gypsy.
+
+At length the time came to leave the vine-covered mansion among the
+orange-trees, to say goodby to little black Sam (I am convinced he was
+heartily glad to get rid of me), and to part with simple Aunt Chloe, who,
+in the confusion of her grief, kissed an eyelash into my eye, and then
+buried her face in the bright bandana turban which she had mounted that
+morning in honor of our departure.
+
+I fancy them standing by the open garden gate; the tears are rolling down
+Aunt Chloe's cheeks; Sam's six front teeth are glistening like pearls; I
+wave my hand to him manfully. then I call out "goodby" in a muffled voice
+to Aunt Chloe; they and the old home fade away. I am never to see them
+again!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Three
+
+On Board the Typhoon
+
+
+
+I do not remember much about the voyage to Boston, for after the first few
+hours at sea I was dreadfully unwell.
+
+The name of our ship was the "A No. 1, fast-sailing packet Typhoon." I
+learned afterwards that she sailed fast only in the newspaper
+advertisements. My father owned one quarter of the Typhoon, and that is why
+we happened to go in her. I tried to guess which quarter of the ship he
+owned, and finally concluded it must be the hind quarter-the cabin, in
+which we had the cosiest of state-rooms, with one round window in the roof,
+and two shelves or boxes nailed up against the wall to sleep in.
+
+There was a good deal of confusion on deck while we were getting under way.
+The captain shouted orders (to which nobody seemed to pay any attention)
+through a battered tin trumpet, and grew so red in the face that he
+reminded me of a scooped-out pumpkin with a lighted candle inside. He swore
+right and left at the sailors without the slightest regard for their
+feelings. They didn't mind it a bit, however, but went on singing-
+
+
+
+"Heave ho!
+
+With the rum below,
+
+And hurrah for the Spanish Main O!"
+
+
+
+I will not be positive about "the Spanish Main," but it was hurrah for
+something O. I considered them very jolly fellows, and so indeed they were.
+One weather-beaten tar in particular struck my fancy-a thick-set, jovial
+man, about fifty years of age, with twinkling blue eyes and a fringe of
+gray hair circling his head like a crown. As he took off his tarpaulin I
+observed that the top of his head was quite smooth and flat, as if somebody
+had sat down on him when he was very young.
+
+There was something noticeably hearty in this man's bronzed face, a
+heartiness that seemed to extend to his loosely knotted neckerchief. But
+what completely won my good-will was a picture of enviable loveliness
+painted on his left arm. It was the head of a woman with the body of a
+fish. Her flowing hair was of livid green, and she held a pink comb in one
+hand. I never saw anything so beautiful. I determined to know that man. I
+think I would have given my brass pistol to have had such a picture painted
+on my arm.
+
+While I stood admiring this work of art, a fat wheezy steamtug, with the
+word AJAX in staring black letters on the paddlebox, came puffing up
+alongside the Typhoon. It was ridiculously small and conceited, compared
+with our stately ship. I speculated as to what it was going to do. In a few
+minutes we were lashed to the little monster, which gave a snort and a
+shriek, and commenced backing us out from the levee (wharf) with the
+greatest ease.
+
+I once saw an ant running away with a piece of cheese eight or ten times
+larger than itself. I could not help thinking of it, when I found the
+chubby, smoky-nosed tug-boat towing the Typhoon out into the Mississippi
+River.
+
+In the middle of the stream we swung round, the current caught us, and away
+we flew like a great winged bird. Only it didn't seem as if we were moving.
+The shore, with the countless steamboats, the tangled rigging of the ships,
+and the long lines of warehouses, appeared to be gliding away from us.
+
+It was grand sport to stand on the quarter-deck and watch all this. Before
+long there was nothing to be seen on other side but stretches of low swampy
+land, covered with stunted cypress trees, from which drooped delicate
+streamers of Spanish moss-a fine place for alligators and Congo snakes.
+Here and there we passed a yellow sand-bar, and here and there a snag
+lifted its nose out of the water like a shark.
+
+"This is your last chance to see the city, To see the city, Tom," said my
+father, as we swept round a bend of the river.
+
+I turned and looked. New Orleans was just a colorless mass of something in
+the distance, and the dome of the St. Charles Hotel, upon which the sun
+shimmered for a moment, was no bigger than the top of old Aunt Chloe's
+thimble.
+
+What do I remember next? The gray sky and the fretful blue waters of the
+Gulf. The steam-tug had long since let slip her hawsers and gone panting
+away with a derisive scream, as much as to say, "I've done my duty, now
+look out for yourself, old Typhoon!"
+
+The ship seemed quite proud of being left to take care of itself, and, with
+its huge white sails bulged out, strutted off like a vain turkey. I had
+been standing by my father near the wheel-house all this while, observing
+things with that nicety of perception which belongs only to children; but
+now the dew began falling, and we went below to have supper.
+
+The fresh fruit and milk, and the slices of cold chicken, looked very nice;
+yet somehow I had no appetite There was a general smell of tar about
+everything. Then the ship gave sudden lurches that made it a matter of
+uncertainty whether one was going to put his fork to his mouth or into his
+eye. The tumblers and wineglasses, stuck in a rack over the table, kept
+clinking and clinking; and the cabin lamp, suspended by four gilt chains
+from the ceiling, swayed to and fro crazily. Now the floor seemed to rise,
+and now it seemed to sink under one's feet like a feather-bed.
+
+There were not more than a dozen passengers on board, including ourselves;
+and all of these, excepting a bald-headed old gentleman-a retired
+sea-captain-disappeared into their staterooms at an early hour of the
+evening.
+
+After supper was cleared away, my father and the elderly gentleman, whose
+name was Captain Truck, played at checkers; and I amused myself for a while
+by watching the trouble they had in keeping the men in the proper places.
+just at the most exciting point of the game, the ship would careen, and
+down would go the white checkers pell-mell among the black. Then my father
+laughed, but Captain Truck would grow very angry, and vow that he would
+have won the game in a move or two more, if the confounded old
+chicken-coop-that's what he called the ship-hadn't lurched.
+
+"I-I think I will go to bed now, please," I said, laying my band on my
+father's knee, and feeling exceedingly queer.
+
+It was high time, for the Typhoon was plunging about in the most alarming
+fashion. I was speedily tucked away in the upper berth, where I felt a
+trifle more easy at first. My clothes were placed on a narrow shelf at my
+feet, and it was a great comfort to me to know that my pistol was so handy,
+for I made no doubt we should fall in with Pirates before many hours. This
+is the last thing I remember with any distinctness. At midnight, as I was
+afterwards told, we were struck by a gale which never left us until we came
+in sight of the Massachusetts coast.
+
+For days and days I had no sensible idea of what was going on around me.
+That we were being hurled somewhere upside-down, and that I didn't like it,
+was about all I knew. I have, indeed, a vague impression that my father
+used to climb up to the berth and call me his "Ancient Mariner," bidding me
+cheer up. But the Ancient Mariner was far from cheering up, if I recollect
+rightly; and I don't believe that venerable navigator would have cared much
+if it had been announced to him, through a speaking-trumpet, that "a low,
+black, suspicious craft, with raking masts, was rapidly bearing down upon
+us!"
+
+In fact, one morning, I thought that such was the case, for bang! went the
+big cannon I had noticed in the bow of the ship when we came on board, and
+which had suggested to me the idea of Pirates. Bang! went the gun again in
+a few seconds. I made a feeble effort to get at my trousers-pocket! But the
+Typhoon was only saluting Cape Cod-the first land sighted by vessels
+approaching the coast from a southerly direction.
+
+The vessel had ceased to roll, and my sea-sickness passed away as rapidly as
+it came. I was all right now, "only a little shaky in my timbers and a
+little blue about the gills," as Captain Truck remarked to my mother, who,
+like myself, had been confined to the state-room during the passage.
+
+At Cape Cod the wind parted company with us without saying as much as
+"Excuse me"; so we were nearly two days in making the run which in
+favorable weather is usually accomplished in seven hours. That's what the
+pilot said.
+
+I was able to go about the ship now, and I lost no time in cultivating the
+acquaintance of the sailor with the green-haired lady on his arm. I found
+him in the forecastle-a sort of cellar in the front part of the vessel. He
+was an agreeable sailor, as I had expected, and we became the best of
+friends in five minutes.
+
+He had been all over the world two or three times, and knew no end of
+stories. According to his own account, he must have been shipwrecked at
+least twice a year ever since his birth. He had served under Decatur when
+that gallant officer peppered the Algerines and made them promise not to
+sell their prisoners of war into slavery; he had worked a gun at the
+bombardment of Vera Cruz in the Mexican War, and he had been on Alexander
+Selkirk's Island more than once. There were very few things he hadn't done
+in a seafaring way.
+
+"I suppose, sir," I remarked, "that your name isn't Typhoon?"
+
+"Why, Lord love ye, lad, my name's Benjamin Watson, of Nantucket. But I'm a
+true blue Typhooner," he added, which increased my respect for him; I don't
+know why, and I didn't know then whether Typhoon was the name of a
+vegetable or a profession.
+
+Not wishing to be outdone in frankness, I disclosed to him that my name was
+Tom Bailey, upon which he said be was very glad to hear it.
+
+When we got more intimate, I discovered that Sailor Ben, as he wished me to
+call him, was a perfect walking picturebook. He had two anchors, a star,
+and a frigate in full sail on his right arm; a pair of lovely blue hands
+clasped on his breast, and I've no doubt that other parts of his body were
+illustrated in the same agreeable manner. I imagine he was fond of
+drawings, and took this means of gratifying his artistic taste. It was
+certainly very ingenious and convenient. A portfolio might be misplaced, or
+dropped overboard; but Sailor Ben bad his pictures wherever he went, just
+as that eminent person in the poem,
+
+
+
+"With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes" -
+
+
+
+was accompanied by music on all occasions.
+
+The two bands on his breast, he informed me, were a tribute to the memory of
+a dead messmate from whom he had parted years ago-and surely a more
+touching tribute was never engraved on a tombstone. This caused me to think
+of my parting with old Aunt Chloe, and I told him I should take it as a
+great favor indeed if he would paint a pink hand and a black hand on my
+chest. He said the colors were pricked into the skin with needles, and that
+the operation was somewhat painful. I assured him, in an off-hand manner,
+that I didn't mind pain, and begged him to set to work at once.
+
+The simple-hearted fellow, who was probably not a little vain of his skill,
+took me into the forecastle, and was on the point of complying with my
+request, when my father happened to own the gangway-a circumstance that
+rather interfered with the decorative art.
+
+I didn't have another opportunity of conferring alone with Sailor Ben, for
+the next morning, bright and early, we came in sight of the cupola of the
+Boston State House.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Four
+
+Rivermouth
+
+
+
+It was a beautiful May morning when the Typhoon hauled up at Long Wharf.
+Whether the Indians were not early risers, or whether they were away just
+then on a war-path, I couldn't determine; but they did not appear in any
+great force-in fact, did not appear at all.
+
+In the remarkable geography which I never hurt myself with studying at New
+Orleans, was a picture representing the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at
+Plymouth. The Pilgrim Fathers, in rather odd hats and coats, are seen
+approaching the savages; the savages, in no coats or hats to speak of, are
+evidently undecided whether to shake hands with the Pilgrim Fathers or to
+make one grand rush and scalp the entire party. Now this scene had so
+stamped itself on my mind, that, in spite of all my father had said, I was
+prepared for some such greeting from the aborigines. Nevertheless, I was
+not sorry to have my expectations unfulfilled. By the way, speaking of the
+Pilgrim Fathers, I often used to wonder why there was no mention made of
+the Pilgrim Mothers.
+
+While our trunks were being hoisted from the hold of the ship, I mounted on
+the roof of the cabin, and took a critical view of Boston. As we came up
+the harbor, I had noticed that the houses were huddled together on an
+immense bill, at the top of which was a large building, the State House,
+towering proudly above the rest, like an amiable mother-hen surrounded by
+her brood of many-colored chickens. A closer inspection did not impress me
+very favorably. The city was not nearly so imposing as New Orleans, which
+stretches out for miles and miles, in the shape of a crescent, along the
+banks of the majestic river.
+
+I soon grew tired of looking at the masses of houses, rising above one
+another in irregular tiers, and was glad my father did not propose to
+remain long in Boston. As I leaned over the rail in this mood, a
+measly-looking little boy with no shoes said that if I would come down on
+the wharf he'd lick me for two cents-not an exorbitant price. But I didn't
+go down. I climbed into the rigging, and stared at him. This, as I was
+rejoiced to observe, so exasperated him that he stood on his head on a pile
+of boards, in order to pacify himself.
+
+The first train for Rivermouth left at noon. After a late breakfast on board
+the Typhoon, our trunks were piled upon a baggage-wagon, and ourselves
+stowed away in a coach, which must have turned at least one hundred corners
+before it set us down at the railway station.
+
+In less time than it takes to tell it, we were shooting across the country
+at a fearful rate-now clattering over a bridge, now screaming through a
+tunnel; here we cut a flourishing village in two, like a knife, and here we
+dived into the shadow of a pine forest. Sometimes we glided along the edge
+of the ocean, and could see the sails of ships twinkling like bits of
+silver against the horizon; sometimes we dashed across rocky pasture4ands
+where stupid-eyed cattle were loafing. It was fun to scare lazy-looking
+cows that lay round in groups under the newly budded trees near the
+railroad track.
+
+We did not pause at any of the little brown stations on the route (they
+looked just like overgrown black-walnut clocks), though at every one of
+them a man popped out as if he were worked by machinery, and waved a red
+flag, and appeared as though he would like to have us stop. But we were an
+express train, and made no stoppages, excepting once or twice to give the
+engine a drink.
+It is strange how the memory clings to some things. It is over twenty years
+since I took that first ride to Rivermouth, and yet, oddly enough, I
+remember as if it were yesterday, that, as we passed slowly through the
+village of Hampton, we saw two boys fighting behind a red barn. There was
+also a shaggy yellow dog, who looked as if he had commenced to unravel,
+barking himself all up into a knot with excitement. We had only a hurried
+glimpse of the battle-long enough, however, to see that the combatants were
+equally matched and very much in earnest. I am ashamed to say how many
+times since I have speculated as to which boy got licked. Maybe both the
+small rascals are dead now (not in consequence of the set-to, let us hope),
+or maybe they are married, and have pugnacious urchins of their own; yet to
+this day I sometimes find myself wondering how that fight turned out.
+
+We had been riding perhaps two hours and a half, when we shot by a tall
+factory with a chimney resembling a church steeple; then the locomotive
+gave a scream, the engineer rang his bell, and we plunged into the twilight
+of a long wooden building, open at both ends. Here we stopped, and the
+conductor, thrusting his head in at the car door, cried out, "Passengers
+for Rivermouth!"
+
+At last we had reached our journey's end. On the platform my father shook
+hands with a straight, brisk old gentleman whose face was very serene and
+rosy. He had on a white hat and a long swallow-tailed coat, the collar of
+which came clear up above his cars. He didn't look unlike a Pilgrim Father.
+This, of course, was Grandfather Nutter, at whose house I was born. My
+mother kissed him a great many times; and I was glad to see him myself,
+though I naturally did not feel very intimate with a person whom I had not
+seen since I was eighteen months old.
+
+While we were getting into the double-seated wagon which Grandfather Nutter
+had provided, I took the opportunity of asking after the health of the
+pony. The pony had arrived all right ten days before, and was in the stable
+at home, quite anxious to see me. 20
+
+As we drove through the quiet old town, I thought Rivermouth the prettiest
+place in the world; and I think so still. The streets are long and wide,
+shaded by gigantic American elms, whose drooping branches, interlacing here
+and there, span the avenues with arches graceful enough to be the handiwork
+of fairies. Many of the houses have small flower-gardens in front, gay in
+the season with china-asters, and are substantially built, with massive
+chimney-stacks and protruding eaves. A beautiful river goes rippling by the
+town, and, after turning and twisting among a lot of tiny islands, empties
+itself into the sea. 20
+
+The harbor is so fine that the largest ships can sail directly up to the
+wharves and drop anchor. Only they don't. Years ago it was a famous
+seaport. Princely fortunes were made in the West India trade; and in 1812,
+when we were at war with Great Britain, any number of privateers were
+fitted out at Rivermouth to prey upon the merchant vessels of the enemy.
+Certain people grew suddenly and mysteriously rich. A great many of "the
+first families" of today do not care to trace their pedigree back to the
+time when their grandsires owned shares in the Matilda Jane, twenty-four
+guns. Well, well!
+
+Few ships come to Rivermouth now. Commerce drifted into other ports. The
+phantom fleet sailed off one day, and never came back again. The crazy old
+warehouses are empty; and barnacles and eel-grass cling to the piles of the
+crumbling wharves, where the sunshine lies lovingly, bringing out the faint
+spicy odor that haunts the place-the ghost of the old dead West India
+trade!
+During our ride from the station, I was struck, of course, only by the
+general neatness of the houses and the beauty of the elm-trees lining the
+streets. I describe Rivermouth now as I came to know it afterwards.
+
+Rivermouth is a very ancient town. In my day there existed a tradition among
+the boys that it was here Christopher Columbus made his first landing on
+this continent. I remember having the exact spot pointed out to me by
+Pepper Whitcomb! One thing is certain, Captain John Smith, who afterwards,
+according to the legend, married Pocahontas-whereby he got Powhatan for a
+father-in-law-explored the river in 1614, and was much charmed by the
+beauty of Rivermouth, which at that time was covered with wild
+strawberry-vines.
+
+Rivermouth figures prominently in all the colonial histories. Every other
+house in the place has its tradition more or less grim and entertaining. If
+ghosts could flourish anywhere, there are certain streets in Rivermouth
+that would be full of them. I don't know of a town with so many old houses.
+Let us linger, for a moment, in front of the one which the Oldest
+Inhabitant is always sure to point out to the curious stranger.
+
+It is a square wooden edifice, with gambrel roof and deep-set window-frames.
+Over the windows and doors there used to be heavy carvings-oak-leaves and
+acorns, and angels' heads with wings spreading from the ears, oddly jumbled
+together; but these ornaments and other outward signs of grandeur have long
+since disappeared. A peculiar interest attaches itself to this house, not
+because of its age, for it has not been standing quite a century; nor on
+account of its architecture, which is not striking - but because of the
+illustrious men who at various periods have occupied its spacious chambers.
+
+In 1770 it was an aristocratic hotel. At the left side of the entrance stood
+a high post, from which swung the sign of the Earl of Halifax. The landlord
+was a stanch loyalist-that is to say, be believed in the king, and when the
+overtaxed colonies determined to throw off the British yoke, the adherents
+to the Crown held private meetings in one of the back rooms of the tavern.
+This irritated the rebels, as they were called; and one night they made an
+attack on the Earl of Halifax, tore down the signboard, broke in the
+window-sashes, and gave the landlord hardly time to make himself invisible
+over a fence in the rear.
+
+For several months the shattered tavern remained deserted. At last the
+exiled innkeeper, on promising to do better, was allowed to return; a new
+sign, bearing the name of William Pitt, the friend of America, swung
+proudly from the door-post, and the patriots were appeased. Here it was
+that the mail-coach from Boston twice a week, for many a year, set down its
+load of travelers and gossip. For some of the details in this sketch, I am
+indebted to a recently published chronicle of those times.
+
+It is 1782.The French fleet is lying in the harbor of Rivermouth, and eight
+of the principal officers, in white uniforms trimmed with gold lace, have
+taken up their quarters at the sign of the William Pitt. Who is this young
+and handsome officer now entering the door of the tavern? It is no less a
+personage than the Marquis Lafayette, who has come all the way from
+Providence to visit the French gentlemen boarding there. What a
+gallant-looking cavalier he is, with his quick eyes and coal black hair!
+Forty years later he visited the spot again; his locks were gray and his
+step was feeble, but his heart held its young love for Liberty.
+
+Who is this finely dressed traveler alighting from his coach and-four,
+attended by servants in livery? Do you know that sounding name, written in
+big valorous letters on the Declaration of Independence-written as if by
+the hand of a giant? Can you not see it now? JOHN HANCOCK. This is he.
+
+Three young men, with their valet, are standing on the doorstep of the
+William Pitt, bowing politely, and inquiring in the most courteous terms in
+the world if they can be accommodated. It is the time of the French
+Revolution, and these are three sons of the Duke of Orleans-Louis Philippe
+and his two brothers. Louis Philippe never forgot his visit to Rivermouth.
+Years afterwards, when he was seated on the throne of France, he asked an
+American lady, who chanced to be at his court, if the pleasant old mansion
+were still standing.
+
+But a greater and a better man than the king of the French has honored this
+roof. Here, in 1789, came George Washington, the President of the United
+States, to pay his final complimentary visit to the State dignitaries. The
+wainscoted chamber where he slept, and the dining-hall where he entertained
+his guests, have a certain dignity and sanctity which even the present
+Irish tenants cannot wholly destroy.
+
+During the period of my reign at Rivermouth, an ancient lady, Dame Jocelyn
+by name, lived in one of the upper rooms of this notable building. She was
+a dashing young belle at the time of Washington's first visit to the town,
+and must have been exceedingly coquettish and pretty, judging from a
+certain portrait on ivory still in the possession of the family. According
+to Dame Jocelyn, George Washington flirted with her just a little bit-in
+what a stately and highly finished manner can be imagined.
+
+There was a mirror with a deep filigreed frame hanging over the mantel-piece
+in this room. The glass was cracked and the quicksilver rubbed off or
+discolored in many places. When it reflected your face you had the singular
+pleasure of not recognizing yourself. It gave your features the appearance
+of having been run through a mince-meat machine. But what rendered the
+looking-glass a thing of enchantment to me was a faded green feather,
+tipped with scarlet, which drooped from the top of the tarnished gilt
+mouldings. This feather Washington took from the plume of his
+three-cornered hat, and presented with his own hand to the worshipful
+Mistress Jocelyn the day he left Rivermouth forever. I wish I could
+describe the mincing genteel air, and the ill-concealed self-complacency,
+with which the dear old lady related the incident.
+
+Many a Saturday afternoon have I climbed up the rickety staircase to that
+dingy room, which always had a flavor of snuff about it, to sit on a
+stiff-backed chair and listen for hours together to Dame Jocelyn's stories
+of the olden time. How she would prattle! She was bedridden-poor
+creature!-and had not been out of the chamber for fourteen years. Meanwhile
+the world had shot ahead of Dame Jocelyn. The changes that had taken place
+under her very nose were unknown to this faded, crooning old gentlewoman,
+whom the eighteenth century had neglected to take away with the rest of its
+odd traps. She had no patience with newfangled notions. The old ways and
+the old times were good enough for her. She had never seen a steam engine,
+though she had heard "the dratted thing" screech in the distance. In her
+day, when gentlefolk traveled, they went in their own coaches. She didn't
+see how respectable people could bring themselves down to "riding in a car
+with rag-tag and bobtail and Lord-knows-who." Poor old aristocrat The
+landlord charged her no rent for the room, and the neighbors took turns in
+supplying her with meals. Towards the close of her life-she lived to be
+ninety-nine-she grew very fretful and capricious about her food. If she
+didn't chance to fancy what was sent her, she had no hesitation in sending
+it back to the giver with "Miss Jocelyn's respectful compliments."
+
+But I have been gossiping too long-and yet not too long if I have impressed
+upon the reader an idea of what a rusty, delightful old town it was to
+which I had come to spend the next three or four years of my boyhood.
+
+A drive of twenty minutes from the station brought us to the door-step of
+Grandfather Nutter's house. What kind of house it was, and what sort of
+people lived in it, shall be told in another chapter.
+
+
+
+Chapter Five
+
+The Nutter House and the Nutter Family
+
+
+
+The Nutter House-all the more prominent dwellings in Rivermouth are named
+after somebody; for instance, there is the Walford House, the Venner House,
+the Trefethen House, etc., though it by no means follows that they are
+inhabited by the people whose names they bear-the Nutter House, to resume,
+has been in our family nearly a hundred years, and is an honor to the
+builder (an ancestor of ours, I believe), supposing durability to be a
+merit. If our ancestor was a carpenter, he knew his trade. I wish I knew
+mine as well. Such timber and such workmanship don't often come together in
+houses built nowadays.
+
+Imagine a low-studded structure, with a wide hall running through the
+middle. At your right band, as you enter, stands a tall black mahogany
+clock, looking like an Egyptian mummy set up on end. On each side of the
+hall are doors (whose knobs, it must be confessed, do not turn very
+easily), opening into large rooms wainscoted and rich in wood-carvings
+about the mantel-pieces and cornices. The walls are covered with pictured
+paper, representing landscapes and sea-views. In the parlor, for example,
+this enlivening figure is repeated all over the room. A group of English
+peasants, wearing Italian hats, are dancing on a lawn that abruptly
+resolves itself into a sea-beach, upon which stands a flabby fisherman
+(nationality unknown), quietly hauling in what appears to be a small whale,
+and totally regardless of the dreadful naval combat going on just beyond
+the end of his fishing-rod. On the other side of the ships is the main-land
+again, with the same peasants dancing. Our ancestors were very worthy
+people, but their wall-papers were abominable.
+
+There are neither grates nor stoves in these quaint chambers, but splendid
+open chimney-places, with room enough for the corpulent back-log to turn
+over comfortably on the polished andirons. A wide staircase leads from the
+hall to the second story, which is arranged much like the first. Over this
+is the garret. I needn't tell a New England boy what-a museum of
+curiosities is the garret of a well-regulated New England house of fifty or
+sixty years' standing. Here meet together, as if by some preconcerted
+arrangement, all the broken-down chairs of the household, all the spavined
+tables, all the seedy hats, all the intoxicated-looking boots, all the
+split walking-sticks that have retired from business, "weary with the march
+of life." The pots, the pans, the trunks, the bottles-who may hope to make
+an inventory of the numberless odds and ends collected in this bewildering
+lumber-room? But what a place it is to sit of an afternoon with the rain
+pattering on the roof! 20What a place in which to read Gulliver's Travels,
+or the famous adventures of Rinaldo Rinaldini!
+
+My grandfather's house stood a little back from the main street, in the
+shadow of two handsome elms, whose overgrown boughs would dash themselves
+against the gables whenever the wind blew hard. In the rear was a pleasant
+garden, covering perhaps a quarter of an acre, full of plum-trees and
+gooseberry bushes. These trees were old settlers, and are all dead now,
+excepting one, which bears a purple plum as big as an egg. This tree, as I
+remark, is still standing, and a more beautiful tree to tumble out of never
+grew anywhere. In the northwestern comer of the garden were the stables and
+carriage-house opening upon a narrow lane. You may imagine that I made an
+early visit to that locality to inspect Gypsy. Indeed, I paid her a visit
+every half-hour during the first day of my arrival. At the twenty-fourth
+visit she trod on my foot rather heavily, as a reminder, probably, that I
+was wearing out my welcome. She was a knowing little pony, that Gypsy, and
+I shall have much to say of her in the course of these pages.
+
+Gypsy's quarters were all that could be wished, but nothing among my new
+surroundings gave me more satisfaction than the cosey sleeping apartment
+that had been prepared for myself. It was the hall room over the front
+door.
+
+I had never had a chamber all to myself before, and this one, about twice
+the size of our state-room on board the Typhoon, was a marvel of neatness
+and comfort. Pretty chintz curtains hung at the window, and a patch quilt
+of more colors than were in Joseph's coat covered the little truckle-bed.
+The pattern of the wall-paper left nothing to be desired in that line. On a
+gray background were small bunches of leaves, unlike any that ever grew in
+this world; and on every other bunch perched a yellow-bird, pitted with
+crimson spots, as if it had just recovered from a severe attack of the
+small-pox. That no such bird ever existed did not detract from my
+admiration of each one. There were two hundred and sixty-eight of these
+birds in all, not counting those split in two where the paper was badly
+joined. I counted them once when I was laid up with a fine black eye, and
+falling asleep immediately dreamed that the whole flock suddenly took wing
+and flew out of the window. From that time I was never able to regard them
+as merely inanimate objects.
+
+A wash-stand in the corner, a chest of carved mahogany drawers, a
+looking-glass in a filigreed frame, and a high-backed chair studded with
+brass nails like a coffin, constituted the furniture. Over the head of the
+bed were two oak shelves, holding perhaps a dozen books-among which were
+Theodore, or The Peruvians; Robinson Crusoe; an odd volume of Tristram
+Shandy; Baxter's Saints' Rest, and a fine English edition of the Arabian
+Nights, with six hundred wood-cuts by Harvey.
+
+Shall I ever forget the hour when I first overhauled these books? I do not
+allude especially to Baxter's Saints' Rest, which is far from being a
+lively work for the young, but to the Arabian Nights, and particularly
+Robinson Crusoe. The thrill that ran into my fingers' ends then has not run
+out yet. Many a time did I steal up to this nest of a room, and, taking the
+dog's-eared volume from its shelf, glide off into an enchanted realm, where
+there were no lessons to get and no boys to smash my kite. In a lidless
+trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of
+novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack
+Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Charlotte Temple-all of which I fed
+upon like a bookworm.
+
+I never come across a copy of any of those works without feeling a certain
+tenderness for the yellow-haired little rascal who used to lean above the
+magic pages hour after hour, religiously believing every word he read, and
+no more doubting the reality of Sindbad the Sailor, or the Knight of the
+Sorrowful Countenance, than he did the existence of his own grandfather.
+
+Against the wall at the foot of the bed hung a single-barrel shot-gun-placed
+there by Grandfather Nutter, who knew what a boy loved, if ever a
+grandfather did. As the trigger of the gun had been accidentally twisted
+off, it was not, perhaps, the most dangerous weapon that could be placed in
+the hands of youth. In this maimed condition its "bump of destructiveness"
+was much less than that of my small brass pocket-pistol, which I at once
+proceeded to suspend from one of the nails supporting the fowling-piece,
+for my vagaries concerning the red man had been entirely dispelled.
+
+Having introduced the reader to the Nutter House, a presentation to the
+Nutter family naturally follows. The family consisted of my grandfather;
+his sister, Miss Abigail Nutter; and Kitty Collins, the maid-of-all-work.
+
+Grandfather Nutter was a hale, cheery old gentleman, as straight and as bald
+as an arrow. He had been a sailor in early life; that is to say, at the age
+of ten years he fled from the multiplication-table, and ran away to sea. A
+single voyage satisfied him. There never was but one of our family who
+didn't run away to sea, and this one died at his birth. My grandfather had
+also been a soldier-a captain of militia in 1812. If I owe the British
+nation anything, I owe thanks to that particular British soldier who put a
+musket-ball into the fleshy part of Captain Nutter's leg, causing that
+noble warrior a slight permanent limp, but offsetting the injury by
+furnishing him with the material for a story which the old gentleman was
+never weary of telling and I never weary of listening to. The story, in
+brief, was as follows.
+
+At the breaking out of the war, an English frigate lay for several days off
+the coast near Rivermouth. A strong fort defended the harbor, and a
+regiment of minute-men, scattered at various points along-shore, stood
+ready to repel the boats, should the enemy try to effect a landing. Captain
+Nutter had charge of a slight earthwork just outside the mouth of the
+river. Late one thick night the sound of oars was heard; the sentinel tried
+to fire off his gun at half-cock, and couldn't, when Captain Nutter sprung
+upon the parapet in the pitch darkness, and shouted, "Boat ahoyl" A
+musket-shot immediately embedded itself in the calf of his leg. The Captain
+tumbled into the fort and the boat, which had probably come in search of
+water, pulled back to the frigate.
+
+This was my grandfather's only exploit during the war. That his prompt and
+bold conduct was instrumental in teaching the enemy the hopelessness of
+attempting to conquer such a people was among the firm beliefs of my
+boyhood.
+
+At the time I came to Rivermouth my grandfather had retired from active
+pursuits, and was living at ease on his money, invested principally in
+shipping. He bad been a widower many years; a maiden sister, the aforesaid
+Miss Abigail, managing his household. Miss Abigail also managed her
+brother, and her brother's servant, and the visitor at her brother's
+gate-not in a tyrannical spirit, but from a philanthropic desire to be
+useful to everybody. In person she was tall and angular; she had a gray
+complexion, gray eyes, gray eyebrows, and generally wore a gray dress. Her
+strongest weak point was a belief in the efficacy of "hot-drops" as a cure
+for all known diseases.
+
+If there were ever two people who seemed to dislike each other, Miss Abigail
+and Kitty Collins were those people. If ever two people really loved each
+other, Miss Abigail and Kitty Collins were those people also. They were
+always either skirmishing or having a cup of tea lovingly together.
+
+Miss Abigail was very fond of me, and so was Kitty; and in the course of
+their disagreements each let me into the private history of the other.
+
+According to Kitty, it was not originally my grandfather's intention to have
+Miss Abigail at the head of his domestic establishment. She had swooped
+down on him (Kitty's own words), with a band-box in one hand and a faded
+blue cotton umbrella, still in existence, in the other. Clad in this
+singular garb-I do not remember that Kitty alluded to-any additional
+peculiarity of dress-Miss Abigail bad made her appearance at the door of
+the Nutter House on the morning of my grandmother's funeral. The small
+amount of baggage which the lady brought with her would have led the
+superficial observer to infer that Miss Abigail's visit was limited to a
+few days. I run ahead of my story in saying she remained seventeen years!
+How much longer she would have remained can never be definitely known now,
+as she died at the expiration of that period.
+
+Whether or not my grandfather was quite pleased by this unlooked-for
+addition to his family is a problem. He was very kind always to Miss
+Abigail, and seldom opposed her; though I think she must have tried his
+patience sometimes, especially when she interfered with Kitty.
+
+Kitty Collins, or Mrs. Catherine, as she preferred to be called, was
+descended in a direct line from an extensive family of kings who formerly
+ruled over Ireland. In consequence of various calamities, among which the
+failure of the potato-crop may be mentioned, Miss Kitty Collins, in company
+with several hundred of her countrymen and countrywomen-also descended from
+kings-came over to America in an emigrant ship, in the year eighteen
+hundred and something.
+
+I don't know what freak of fortune caused the royal exile to turn up at
+Rivermouth; but turn up she did, a few months after arriving in this
+country, and was hired by my grandmother to do "general housework" for the
+sum of four shillings and six-pence a week.
+
+Kitty had been living about seven years in my grandfather's family when she
+unburdened her heart of a secret which had been weighing upon it all that
+time. It may be said of people, as it is said of nations,  "Happy are they
+that have no history." Kitty had a history, and a pathetic one, I think.
+
+On board the emigrant ship that brought her to America, she became
+acquainted with a sailor, who, being touched by Kitty's forlorn condition,
+was very good to her. Long before the end of the voyage, which had been
+tedious and perilous, she was heartbroken at the thought of separating from
+her kindly protector; but they were not to part just yet, for the sailor
+returned Kitty's affection, and the two were married on their arrival at
+port. Kitty's husband-she would never mention his name, but kept it locked
+in her bosom like some precious relic-had a considerable sum of money when
+the crew were paid off; and the young couple-for Kitty was young then-lived
+very happily in a lodging-house on South Street, near the docks. This was
+in New York.
+
+The days flew by like hours, and the stocking in which the little bride kept
+the funds shrunk and shrunk, until at last there were only three or four
+dollars left in the toe of it. Then Kitty was troubled; for she knew her
+sailor would have to go to sea again unless he could get employment on
+shore. This he endeavored to do, but not with much success. One morning as
+usual he kissed her good day, and set out in search of work.
+
+"Kissed me goodby, and called me his little Irish lass," sobbed Kitty,
+telling the story, "kissed me goodby, and, Heaven help me, I niver set oi
+on him nor on the likes of him again!"
+
+He never came back. Day after day dragged on, night after night, and then
+the weary weeks. What had become of him? Had be been murdered? Had be
+fallen into the docks? Had he-deserted her? No! She could not believe that;
+he was too brave and tender and true. She couldn't believe that. He was
+dead, dead, or he'd come back to her.
+
+Meanwhile the landlord of the lodging-house turned Kitty into the streets,
+now that "her man" was gone, and the payment of the rent doubtful. She got
+a place as a servant. The family she lived with shortly moved to Boston,
+and she accompanied them; then they went abroad, but Kitty would not leave
+America. Somehow she drifted to Rivermouth, and for seven long years never
+gave speech to her sorrow, until the kindness of strangers, who had become
+friends to her, unsealed the heroic lips.
+
+Kitty's story, you may be sure, made my grandparents treat her more kindly
+than ever. In time she grew to be regarded less as a servant than as a
+friend in the home circle, sharing its joys and sorrows-a faithful nurse, a
+willing slave, a happy spirit in spite of all. I fancy I hear her singing
+over her work in the kitchen, pausing from time to time to make some witty
+reply to Miss Abigail-for Kitty, like all her race, had a vein of
+unconscious humor. Her bright honest face comes to me out from the past,
+the light and life of the Nutter House when I was a boy at Rivermouth.
+
+
+
+Chapter Six
+
+Lights and Shadows
+
+
+
+The first shadow that fell upon me in my new home was caused by the return
+of my parents to New Orleans. Their visit was cut short by business which
+required my father's presence in Natchez, where he was establishing a
+branch of the bankinghouse. When they had gone, a sense of loneliness such
+as I had never dreamed of filled my young breast. I crept away to the
+stable, and, throwing my arms about Gypsy's neck, sobbed aloud. She too had
+come from the sunny South, and was now a stranger in a strange land.
+
+The little mare seemed to realize our situation, and gave me all the
+sympathy I could ask, repeatedly rubbing her soft nose over my face and
+lapping up my salt tears with evident relish.
+
+When night came, I felt still more lonesome. My grandfather sat in his
+arm-chair the greater part of the evening, reading the Rivermouth Bamacle,
+the local newspaper. There was no gas in those days, and the Captain read
+by the aid of a small block-tin lamp, which he held in one hand. I observed
+that he had a habit of dropping off into a doze every three or four
+minutes, and I forgot my homesickness at intervals in watching him. Two or
+three times, to my vast amusement, he scorched the edges of the newspaper
+with the wick of the lamp; and at about half past eight o'clock I had the
+satisfactions am sorry to confess it was a satisfaction-of seeing the
+Rivermouth Barnacle in flames.
+
+My grandfather leisurely extinguished the fire with his hands, and Miss
+Abigail, who sat near a low table, knitting by the light of an astral lamp,
+did not even look up. She was quite used to this catastrophe.
+
+There was little or no conversation during the evening. In fact, I do not
+remember that anyone spoke at all, excepting once, when the Captain
+remarked, in a meditative manner, that my parents "must have reached New
+York by this time"; at which supposition I nearly strangled myself in
+attempting to intercept a sob.
+
+The monotonous "click click" of Miss Abigail's needles made me nervous after
+a while, and finally drove me out of the sitting-room into the kitchen,
+where Kitty caused me to laugh by saying Miss Abigail thought that what I
+needed was "a good dose of hot-drops," a remedy she was forever ready to
+administer in all emergencies. If a boy broke his leg, or lost his mother,
+I believe Miss Abigail would have given him hot-drops.
+
+Kitty laid herself out to be entertaining. She told me several funny Irish
+stories, and described some of the odd people living in the town; but, in
+the midst of her comicalities, the tears would involuntarily ooze out of my
+eyes, though I was not a lad much addicted to weeping. Then Kitty would put
+her arms around me, and tell me not to mind it-that it wasn't as if I had
+been left alone in a foreign land with no one to care for me, like a poor
+girl whom she had once known. I brightened up before long, and told Kitty
+all about the Typhoon and the old seaman, whose name I tried in vain to
+recall, and was obliged to fall back on plain Sailor Ben.
+
+I was glad when ten o'clock came, the bedtime for young folks, and old folks
+too, at the Nutter House. Alone in the hallchamber I had my cry out, once
+for all, moistening the pillow to such an extent that I was obliged to turn
+it over to find a dry spot to go to sleep on.
+
+My grandfather wisely concluded to put me to school at once. If I had been
+permitted to go mooning about the house and stables, I should have kept my
+discontent alive for months. The next morning, accordingly, he took me by
+the hand, and we set forth for the academy, which was located at the
+farther end of the town.
+
+The Temple School was a two-story brick building, standing in the centre of
+a great square piece of land, surrounded by a high picket fence. There were
+three or four sickly trees, but no grass, in this enclosure, which had been
+worn smooth and hard by the tread of multitudinous feet. I noticed here and
+there small holes scooped in the ground, indicating that it was the season
+for marbles. A better playground for baseball couldn't have been devised.
+
+On reaching the schoolhouse door, the Captain inquired for Mr. Grimshaw. The
+boy who answered our knock ushered us into a side-room, and in a few
+minutes-during which my eye took in forty-two caps hung on forty-two wooden
+pegs-Mr. Grimshaw made his appearance. He was a slender man, with white,
+fragile hands, and eyes that glanced half a dozen different ways at once-a
+habit probably acquired from watching the boys.
+
+After a brief consultation, my grandfather patted me on the head and left me
+in charge of this gentleman, who seated himself in front of me and
+proceeded to sound the depth, or, more properly speaking, the shallowness,
+of my attainments. I suspect my historical information rather startled him.
+I recollect I gave him to understand that Richard III was the last king of
+England.
+
+This ordeal over, Mr. Grimshaw rose and bade me follow him. A door opened,
+and I stood in the blaze of forty-two pairs of upturned eyes. I was a cool
+hand for my age, but I lacked the boldness to face this battery without
+wincing. In a sort of dazed way I stumbled after Mr. Grimshaw down a narrow
+aisle between two rows of desks, and shyly took the seat pointed out to me.
+
+The faint buzz that had floated over the school-room at our entrance died
+away, and the interrupted lessons were resumed. By degrees I recovered my
+coolness, and ventured to look around me.
+
+The owners of the forty-two caps were seated at small green desks like the
+one assigned to me. The desks were arranged in six rows, with spaces
+between just wide enough to prevent the boys' whispering. A blackboard set
+into the wall extended clear across the end of the room; on a raised
+platform near the door stood the master's table; and directly in front of
+this was a recitation-bench capable of seating fifteen or twenty pupils. A
+pair of globes, tattooed with dragons and winged horses, occupied a shelf
+between two windows, which were so high from the floor that nothing but a
+giraffe could have looked out of them.
+
+Having possessed myself of these details, I scrutinized my new acquaintances
+with unconcealed curiosity, instinctively selecting my friends and picking
+out my enemies-and in only two cases did I mistake my man.
+
+A sallow boy with bright red hair, sitting in the fourth row, shook his fist
+at me furtively several times during the morning. I had a presentiment I
+should have trouble with that boy some day-a presentiment subsequently
+realized.
+
+On my left was a chubby little fellow with a great many freckles (this was
+Pepper Whitcomb), who made some mysterious motions to me. I didn't
+understand them, but, as they were clearly of a pacific nature, I winked my
+eye at him. This appeared to be satisfactory, for he then went on with his
+studies. At recess he gave me the core of his apple, though there were
+several applicants for it.
+
+Presently a boy in a loose olive-green jacket with two rows of brass buttons
+held up a folded paper behind his slate, intimating that it was intended
+for me. The paper was passed skillfully from desk to desk until it reached
+my hands. On opening the scrap, I found that it contained a small piece of
+molasses candy in an extremely humid state. This was certainly kind. I
+nodded my acknowledgments and hastily slipped the delicacy into my mouth.
+In a second I felt my tongue grow red-hot with cayenne pepper.
+
+My face must have assumed a comical expression, for the boy in the
+olive-green jacket gave an hysterical laugh, for which he was instantly
+punished by Mr. Grimshaw. I swallowed the fiery candy, though it brought
+the water to my eyes, and managed to look so unconcerned that I was the
+only pupil in the form who escaped questioning as to the cause of Marden's
+misdemeanor. C. Marden was his name.
+
+Nothing else occurred that morning to interrupt the exercises, excepting
+that a boy in the reading class threw us all into convulsions by calling
+Absalom A-bol'-som "Abolsom, O my son Abolsom!" I laughed as loud as
+anyone, but I am not so sure that I shouldn't have pronounced it Abolsom
+myself.
+
+At recess several of the scholars came to my desk and shook hands with me,
+Mr. Grimshaw having previously introduced me to Phil Adams, charging him to
+see that I got into no trouble. My new acquaintances suggested that we
+should go to the playground. We were no sooner out-of-doors than the boy
+with the red hair thrust his way through the crowd and placed himself at my
+side.
+
+'I say, youngster, if you're comin' to this school you've got to toe the
+mark."
+
+I didn't see any mark to toe, and didn't understand what be meant; but I
+replied politely, that, if it was the custom of the school, I should be
+happy to toe the mark, if he would point it out to me.
+
+"I don't want any of your sarse," said the boy, scowling.
+
+"Look here, Conwayl" cried a clear voice from the other side of the
+playground. "You let young Bailey alone. He's a stranger here, and might be
+afraid of you, and thrash you. Why do you always throw yourself in the way
+of getting thrashed?"
+
+I turned to the speaker, who by this time had reached the spot where we
+stood. Conway slunk off, favoring me with a parting scowl of defiance. I
+gave my hand to the boy who had befriended me - his name was Jack
+Harris-and thanked him for his good-will.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Bailey," he said, returning my pressure
+good-naturedly, "you'll have to fight Conway before the quarter ends, or
+you'll have no rest. That fellow is always hankering after a licking, and
+of course you'll give him one by and by; but what's the use of hurrying up
+an unpleasant job? Let's have some baseball. By the way, Bailey, you were a
+good kid not to let on to Grimshaw about the candy. Charley Marden would
+have caught it twice as heavy. He's sorry he played the joke on you, and
+told me to tell you so. Hallo, Blake! Where are the bats?"
+
+This was addressed to a handsome, frank-looking lad of about my own age, who
+was engaged just then in cutting his initials on the bark of a tree near
+the schoolhouse. Blake shut up his penknife and went off to get the bats.
+
+During the game which ensued I made the acquaintance of Charley Marden,
+Binny Wallace, Pepper Whitcomb, Harry Blake, and Fred Langdon. These boys,
+none of them more than a year or two older than I (Binny Wallace was
+younger), were ever after my chosen comrades. Phil Adams and Jack Harris
+were considerably our seniors, and, though they always treated us "kids"
+very kindly, they generally went with another set. Of course, before long I
+knew all the Temple boys more or less intimately, but the five I have named
+were my constant companions.
+
+My first day at the Temple Grammar School was on the whole satisfactory. I
+had made several warm friends and only two permanent enemies-Conway and his
+echo, Seth Rodgers; for these two always went together like a deranged
+stomach and a headache.
+
+Before the end of the week I had my studies well in hand. I was a little
+ashamed at finding myself at the foot of the various classes, and secretly
+determined to deserve promotion. The school was an admirable one. I might
+make this part of my story more entertaining by picturing Mr. Grimshaw as a
+tyrant with a red nose and a large stick; but unfortunately for the
+purposes of sensational narrative, Mr. Grimshaw was a quiet, kindhearted
+gentleman. Though a rigid disciplinarian, he had a keen sense of justice,
+was a good reader of character, and the boys respected him. There were two
+other teachers-a French tutor and a writing-master, who visited the school
+twice a week. On Wednesdays and Saturdays we were dismissed at noon, and
+these half-holidays were the brightest epochs of my existence.
+
+Daily contact with boys who had not been brought up as gently as I worked an
+immediate, and, in some respects, a beneficial change in my character. I
+had the nonsense taken out of me, as the saying is-some of the nonsense, at
+least. I became more manly and self-reliant. I discovered that the world
+was not created exclusively on my account. In New Orleans I labored under
+the delusion that it was. Having neither brother nor sister to give up to
+at home, and being, moreover, the largest pupil at school there, my will
+had seldom been opposed. At Rivermouth matters were different, and I was
+not long in adapting myself to the altered circumstances. Of course I got
+many severe rubs, often unconsciously given; but I bad the sense to see
+that I was all the better for them.
+
+My social relations with my new schoolfellows were the pleasantest possible.
+There was always some exciting excursion on foot-a ramble through the pine
+woods, a visit to the Devil's Pulpit, a high cliff in the neighborhood-or a
+surreptitious low on the river, involving an exploration of a group of
+diminutive islands, upon one of which we pitched a tent and played we were
+the Spanish sailors who got wrecked there years ago. But the endless pine
+forest that skirted the town was our favorite haunt. There was a great
+green pond hidden somewhere in its depths, inhabited by a monstrous colony
+of turtles. Harry Blake, who had an eccentric passion for carving his name
+on everything, never let a captured turtle slip through his fingers without
+leaving his mark engraved on its shell. He must have lettered about two
+thousand from first to last. We used to call them Harry Blake's sheep.
+
+These turtles were of a discontented and migratory turn of mind, and we
+frequently encountered two or three of them on the cross-roads several
+miles from their ancestral mud. Unspeakable was our delight whenever we
+discovered one soberly walking off with Harry Blake's initials! I've no
+doubt there are, at this moment, fat ancient turtles wandering about that
+gummy woodland with H.B. neatly cut on their venerable backs.
+
+It soon became a custom among my playmates to make our barn their
+rendezvous. Gypsy proved a strong attraction. Captain Nutter bought me a
+little two-wheeled cart, which she drew quite nicely, after kicking out the
+dasher and breaking the shafts once or twice. With our lunch-baskets and
+fishing-tackle stowed away under the seat, we used to start off early in
+the afternoon for the sea-shore, where there were countless marvels in the
+shape of shells, mosses, and kelp. Gypsy enjoyed the sport as keenly as any
+of us, even going so far, one day, as to trot down the beach into the sea
+where we were bathing. As she took the cart with her, our provisions were
+not much improved. I shall never forget how squash-pie tastes after being
+soused in the Atlantic Ocean. Soda-crackers dipped in salt water are
+palatable, but not squash-pie.
+
+There was a good deal of wet weather during those first six weeks at
+Rivermouth, and we set ourselves at work to find some indoor amusement for
+our half-holidays. It was all very well for Amadis de Gaul and Don Quixote
+not to mind the rain; they had iron overcoats, and were not, from all we
+can learn, subject to croup and the guidance of their grandfathers. Our
+case was different.
+
+"Now, boys, what shall we do?" I asked, addressing a thoughtful conclave of
+seven, assembled in our barn one dismal rainy afternoon.
+
+"Let's have a theatre," suggested Binny Wallace.
+
+The very thing! But where? The loft of the stable was ready to burst with
+hay provided for Gypsy, but the long room over the carriage-house was
+unoccupied. The place of all places! My managerial eye saw at a glance its
+capabilities for a theatre. I had been to the play a great many times in
+New Orleans, and was wise in matters pertaining to the drama. So here, in
+due time, was set up some extraordinary scenery of my own painting. The
+curtain, I recollect, though it worked smoothly enough on other occasions,
+invariably hitched during the performances; and it often required the
+united energies of the Prince of Denmark, the King, and the Grave-digger,
+with an occasional band from "the fair Ophelia" (Pepper Whitcomb in a
+low-necked dress), to hoist that bit of green cambric.
+
+The theatre, however, was a success, as far as it went. I retired from the
+business with no fewer than fifteen hundred pins, after deducting the
+headless, the pointless, and the crooked pins with which our doorkeeper
+frequently got "stuck." From first to last we took in a great deal of this
+counterfeit money. The price of admission to the "Rivermouth Theatre" was
+twenty pins. I played all the principal parts myself-not that I was a finer
+actor than the other boys, but because I owned the establishment.
+
+At the tenth representation, my dramatic career was brought to a close by an
+unfortunate circumstance. We were playing the drama of "William Tell, the
+Hero of Switzerland." Of course I was William Tell, in spite of Fred
+Langdon, who wanted to act that character himself. I wouldn't let him, so
+he withdrew from the company, taking the only bow and arrow we had. I made
+a cross-bow out of a piece of whalebone, and did very well without him. We
+had reached that exciting scene where Gessler, the Austrian tyrant,
+commands Tell to shoot the apple from his son's head. Pepper Whitcomb, who
+played all the juvenile and women parts, was my son. To guard against
+mischance, a piece of pasteboard was fastened by a handkerchief over the
+upper portion of Whitcomb's face, while. the arrow to be used was sewed up
+in a strip of flannel. I was a capital marksman, and the big apple, only
+two yards distant, turned its russet cheek fairly towards me.
+
+I can see poor little Pepper now, as he stood without flinching, waiting for
+me to perform my great feat. I raised the crossbow amid the breathless
+silence of the crowded audience consisting of seven boys and three girls,
+exclusive of Kitty Collins, who insisted on paying her way in with a
+clothes-pin. I raised the cross-bow, I repeat. Twang! went the whipcord;
+but, alas! instead of hitting the apple, the arrow flew right into Pepper
+Whitcomb's mouth, which happened to be open at the time, and destroyed my
+aim.
+
+I shall never be able to banish that awful moment from my memory. Pepper's
+roar, expressive of astonishment, indignation, and pain, is still ringing
+in my cars. I looked upon him as a corpse, and, glancing not far into the
+dreary future, pictured myself led forth to execution in the presence of
+the very same spectators then assembled.
+
+Luckily poor Pepper was not seriously hurt; but Grandfather Nutter,
+appearing in the midst of the confusion (attracted by the howls of young
+Tell), issued an injunction against all theatricals thereafter, and the
+place was closed; not, however, without a farewell speech from me, in which
+I said that this would have been the proudest moment of my life if I hadn't
+hit Pepper Whitcomb in the mouth. Whereupon the audience (assisted, I am
+glad to state, by Pepper) cried "Hear! Hear!" I then attributed the
+accident to Pepper himself, whose mouth, being open at the instant I fired,
+acted upon the arrow much after the fashion of a whirlpool, and drew in the
+fatal shaft. I was about to explain bow a comparatively small maelstrom
+could suck in the largest ship, when the curtain fell of its own accord,
+amid the shouts of the audience.
+
+This was my last appearance on any stage. It was some time, though, before I
+heard the end of the William Tell business. Malicious little boys who had
+not been allowed to buy tickets to my theatre used to cry out after me in
+the street,
+
+
+
+"'Who killed Cock Robin?'
+
+'I,' said the sparrer,
+
+'With my bow and arrer,
+
+I killed Cock Robini"'
+
+
+
+The sarcasm of this verse was more than I could stand. And it made Pepper
+Whitcomb pretty mad to be called Cock Robin, I can tell you!
+
+So the days glided on, with fewer clouds and more sunshine than fall to the
+lot of most boys. Conway was certainly a cloud. Within school-bounds he
+seldom ventured to be aggressive; but whenever we met about town he never
+failed to brush against me, or pull my cap over my eyes, or drive me
+distracted by inquiring after my family in New Orleans, always alluding to
+them as highly respectable colored people.
+
+Jack Harris was right when he said Conway would give me no rest until I
+fought him. I felt it was ordained ages before our birth that we should
+meet on this planet and fight. With the view of not running counter to
+destiny, I quietly prepared myself for the impending conflict. The scene of
+my dramatic triumphs was turned into a gymnasium for this purpose, though I
+did not openly avow the fact to the boys. By persistently standing on my
+head, raising heavy weights, and going hand over hand up a ladder, I
+developed my muscle until my little body was as tough as a hickory knot and
+as supple as tripe. I also took occasional lessons in the noble art of
+self-defence, under the tuition of Phil Adams.
+
+I brooded over the matter until the idea of fighting Conway became a part of
+me. I fought him in imagination during school-hours; I dreamed of fighting
+with him at night, when he would suddenly expand into a giant twelve feet
+high, and then as suddenly shrink into a pygmy so small that I couldn't hit
+him. In this latter shape he would get into my hair, or pop into my
+waistcoat-pocket, treating me with as little ceremony as the Liliputians
+showed Captain Lemuel Gulliver - all of which was not pleasant, to be sure.
+On the whole, Conway was a cloud.
+
+And then I had a cloud at home. It was not Grandfather Nutter, nor Miss
+Abigail, nor Kitty Collins, though they all helped to compose it. It was a
+vague, funereal, impalpable something which no amount of gymnastic training
+would enable me to knock over. It was Sunday. If ever I have a boy to bring
+up in the way he should go, I intend to make Sunday a cheerful day to him.
+Sunday was not a cheerful day at the Nutter House. You shall judge for
+yourself.
+
+It is Sunday morning. I should premise by saying that the deep gloom which
+has settled over everything set in like a heavy fog early on Saturday
+evening.
+
+At seven o'clock my grandfather comes smilelessly downstairs. He is dressed
+in black, and looks as if be had lost all his friends during the night.
+Miss Abigail, also in black, looks as if she were prepared to bury them,
+and not indisposed to enjoy the ceremony. Even Kitty Collins has caught the
+contagious gloom, as I perceive when she brings in the coffee-um-a solemn
+and sculpturesque urn at any time, but monumental now-and sets it down in
+front of Miss Abigail. Miss Abigail gazes at the urn as if it held the
+ashes of her ancestors, instead of a generous quantity of fine old Java
+coffee. The meal progresses in silence.
+
+Our parlor is by no means thrown open every day. It is open this June
+morning, and is pervaded by a strong smell of centretable. The furniture of
+the room, and the little China ornaments on the mantel-piece, have a
+constrained, unfamiliar look. My grandfather sits in a mahogany chair,
+reading a large Bible covered with green baize. Miss Abigail occupies one
+end of the sofa, and has her hands crossed stiffly in her lap. I sit in the
+comer, crushed. Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas are in close confinement.
+Baron Trenck, who managed to escape from the fortress of Clatz, can't for
+the life of him get out of our sittingroom closet. Even the Rivermouth
+Barnacle is suppressed until Monday. Genial converse, harmless books,
+smiles, lightsome hearts, all are banished. If I want to read anything, I
+can read Baxter's Saints' Rest. I would die first. So I sit there kicking
+my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly
+that attempts to commit suicide by butting his head against the
+window-pane. Listen!-no, yes-it is-it is the robins singing in the
+garden-the grateful, joyous robins singing away like mad, just as if it
+wasn't Sunday. Their audacity tickles me.
+
+My grandfather looks up, and inquires in a sepulchral voice if I am ready
+for Sabbath school. It is time to go. I like the Sabbath school; there are
+bright young faces there, at all events. When I get out into the sunshine
+alone, I draw a long breath; I would turn a somersault up against Neighbor
+Penhallow's newly painted fence if I hadn't my best trousers on, so glad am
+I to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of the Nutter House.
+
+Sabbath school over, I go to meeting, joining my grandfather, who doesn't
+appear to be any relation to me this day, and Miss Abigail, in the porch.
+Our minister holds out very little hope to any of us of being saved.
+Convinced that I am a lost creature, in common with the human family, I
+return home behind my guardians at a snail's pace. We have a dead cold
+dinner. I saw it laid out yesterday.
+
+There is a long interval between this repast and the second service, and a
+still longer interval between the beginning and the end of that service;
+for the Rev. Wibird Hawkins's sermons are none of the shortest, whatever
+else they may be.
+
+After meeting, my grandfather and I take a walk. We visit appropriately
+enough-a neighboring graveyard. I am by this time in a condition of mind to
+become a willing inmate of the place. The usual evening prayer-meeting is
+postponed for some reason. At half past eight I go to bed.
+
+This is the way Sunday was observed in the Nutter House, and pretty
+generally throughout the town, twenty years ago.1 People who were
+prosperous and natural and happy on Saturday became the most rueful of
+human beings in the brief space of twelve hours. I don't think there was
+any hypocrisy in this. It was merely the old Puritan austerity cropping out
+once a week. Many of these people were pure Christians every day in the
+seven-excepting the seventh. Then they were decorous and solemn to the
+verge of moroseness. I should not like to be misunderstood on this point.
+Sunday is a blessed day, and therefore it should not be made a gloomy one.
+It is the Lord's day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are
+not unpleasant in His sight.
+
+
+
+"O day of rest! How beautiful, how fair,
+
+How welcome to the weary and the old!
+
+Day of the Lord! and truce to earthly cares!
+
+Day of the Lord, as all our days should be!
+
+Ah, why will man by his austerities
+
+Shut out the blessed sunshine and the light,
+
+And make of thee a dungeon of despair!"
+
+
+
+1 About 1850.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seven
+
+One Memorable Night
+
+
+
+Two months had elapsed since my arrival at Rivermouth, when the approach of
+an important celebration produced the greatest excitement among the
+juvenile population of the town.
+
+There was very little hard study done in the Temple Grammar School the week
+preceding the Fourth of July. For my part, my heart and brain were so full
+of fire-crackers, Roman candles, rockets, pin-wheels, squibs, and gunpowder
+in various seductive forms, that I wonder I didn't explode under Mr.
+Grimshaw's very nose. I couldn't do a sum to save me; I couldn't tell, for
+love or money, whether Tallahassee was the capital of Tennessee or of
+Florida; the present and the pluperfect tenses were inextricably mixed in
+my memory, and I didn't know a verb from an adjective when I met one. This
+was not alone my condition, but that of every boy in the school.
+
+Mr. Grimshaw considerately made allowances for our temporary distraction,
+and sought to fix our interest on the lessons by connecting them directly
+or indirectly with the coming Event. The class in arithmetic, for instance,
+was requested to state how many boxes of fire-crackers, each box measuring
+sixteen inches square, could be stored in a room of such and such
+dimensions. He gave us the Declaration of Independence for a parsing
+exercise, and in geography confined his questions almost exclusively to
+localities rendered famous in the Revolutionary War.
+
+"What did the people of Boston do with the tea on board the English
+vessels?" asked our wily instructor.
+
+"Threw it into the river!" shrieked the smaller boys, with an impetuosity
+that made Mr. Grimshaw smile in spite of himself. One luckless urchin said,
+"Chucked it," for which happy expression he was kept in at recess.
+
+Notwithstanding these clever stratagems, there was not much solid work done
+by anybody. The trail of the serpent (an inexpensive but dangerous
+fire-toy) was over us all. We went round deformed by quantities of Chinese
+crackers artlessly concealed in our trousers-pockets; and if a boy whipped
+out his handkerchief without proper precaution, he was sure to let off two
+or three torpedoes.
+
+Even Mr. Grimshaw was made a sort of accessory to the universal
+demoralization. In calling the school to order, he always rapped on the
+table with a heavy ruler. Under the green baize table-cloth, on the exact
+spot where he usually struck, certain boy, whose name I withhold, placed a
+fat torpedo. The result was a loud explosion, which caused Mr. Grimshaw to
+look queer. Charley Marden was at the water-pail, at the time, and directed
+general attention to himself by strangling for several seconds and then
+squirting a slender thread of water over the blackboard.
+
+Mr. Grimshaw fixed his eyes reproachfully on Charley, but said nothing. The
+real culprit (it wasn't Charley Marden, but the boy whose name I withhold)
+instantly regretted his badness, and after school confessed the whole thing
+to Mr. Grimshaw, who heaped coals of fire upon the nameless boy's head
+giving him five cents for the Fourth of July. If Mr. Grimshaw had caned
+this unknown youth, the punishment would not have been half so severe.
+
+On the last day of June the Captain received a letter from my father,
+enclosing five dollars "for my son Tom," which enabled that young gentleman
+to make regal preparations for the celebration of our national
+independence. A portion of this money, two dollars, I hastened to invest in
+fireworks; the balance I put by for contingencies. In placing the fund in
+my possession, the Captain imposed one condition that dampened my ardor
+considerably-I was to buy no gunpowder. I might have all the
+snapping-crackers and torpedoes I wanted; but gunpowder was out of the
+question.
+
+I thought this rather hard, for all my young friends were provided with
+pistols of various sizes. Pepper Whitcomb had a horse-pistol nearly as
+large as himself, and Jack Harris, though he, to be sure, was a big boy,
+was going to have a real oldfashioned flintlock musket. However, I didn't
+mean to let this drawback destroy my happiness. I had one charge of powder
+stowed away in the little brass pistol which I brought from New Orleans,
+and was bound to make a noise in the world once, if I never did again.
+
+It was a custom observed from time immemorial for the towns-boys to have a
+bonfire on the Square on the midnight before the Fourth. I didn't ask the
+Captain's leave to attend this ceremony, for I had a general idea that he
+wouldn't give it. If the Captain, I reasoned, doesn't forbid me, I break no
+orders by going. Now this was a specious line of argument, and the mishaps
+that befell me in consequence of adopting it were richly deserved.
+
+On the evening of the 3d I retired to bed very early, in order to disarm
+suspicion. I didn't sleep a wink, waiting for eleven o'clock to come round;
+and I thought it never would come round, as I lay counting from time to
+time the slow strokes of the ponderous bell in the steeple of the Old North
+Church. At length the laggard hour arrived. While the clock was striking I
+jumped out of bed and began dressing.
+
+My grandfather and Miss Abigail were heavy sleepers, and I might have stolen
+downstairs and out at the front door undetected; but such a commonplace
+proceeding did not suit my adventurous disposition. I fastened one end of a
+rope (it was a few yards cut from Kitty Collins's clothes-line) to the
+bedpost nearest the window, and cautiously climbed out on the wide pediment
+over the hall door. I had neglected to knot the rope; the result was, that,
+the moment I swung clear of the pediment, I descended like a flash of
+lightning, and warmed both my hands smartly. The rope, moreover, was four
+or five feet too short; so I got a fall that would have proved serious had
+I not tumbled into the middle of one of the big rose-bushes growing on
+either side of the steps.
+
+I scrambled out of that without delay, and was congratulating myself on my
+good luck, when I saw by the light of the setting moon the form of a man
+leaning over the garden gate. It was one of the town watch, who had
+probably been observing my operations with curiosity. Seeing no chance of
+escape, I put a bold face on the matter and walked directly up to him.
+
+'What on airth air you a doin'?" asked the man, grasping the collar of my
+jacket.
+
+"I live here, sir, if you please," I replied, "and am going to the bonfire.
+I didn't want to wake up the old folks, that's all."
+
+The man cocked his eye at me in the most amiable manner, and released his
+hold.
+
+"Boys is boys," he muttered. He didn't attempt to stop me as I slipped
+through the gate.
+
+Once beyond his clutches, I took to my heels and soon reached the Square,
+where I found forty or fifty fellows assembled, engaged in building a
+pyramid of tar-barrels. The palms of my hands still tingled so that I
+couldn't join in the sport. I stood in the doorway of the Nautilus Bank,
+watching the workers, among whom I recognized lots of my schoolmates. They
+looked like a legion of imps, coming and going in the twilight, busy in
+raising some infernal edifice. What a Babel of voices it was, everybody
+directing everybody else, and everybody doing everything wrong!
+
+When all was prepared, someone applied a match to the sombre pile. A fiery
+tongue thrust itself out here and there, then suddenly the whole fabric
+burst into flames, blazing and crackling beautifully. This was a signal for
+the boys to join hands and dance around the burning barrels, which they did
+shouting like mad creatures. When the fire had burnt down a little, fresh
+staves were brought and heaped on the pyre. In the excitement of the moment
+I forgot my tingling palms, and found myself in the thick of the carousal.
+
+Before we were half ready, our combustible material was expended, and a
+disheartening kind of darkness settled down upon us. The boys collected
+together here and there in knots, consulting as to what should be done. It
+yet lacked four or five hours of daybreak, and none of us were in the humor
+to return to bed. I approached one of the groups standing near the town
+pump, and discovered in the uncertain light of the dying brands the figures
+of Jack Harris, Phil Adams, Harry Blake, and Pepper Whitcomb, their faces
+streaked with perspiration and tar, and, their whole appearance suggestive
+of New Zealand chiefs.
+
+"Hullo! Here's Tom Bailey!" shouted Pepper Whitcomb. "He'll join in!"
+
+Of course he would. The sting had gone out of my hands, and I was ripe for
+anything-none the less ripe for not knowing what was on the tapis. After
+whispering together for a moment the boys motioned me to follow them.
+
+We glided out from the crowd and silently wended our way through a
+neighboring alley, at the head of which stood a tumble-down old barn, owned
+by one Ezra Wingate. In former days this was the stable of the mail-coach
+that ran between Rivermouth and Boston. When the railroad superseded that
+primitive mode of travel, the lumbering vehicle was rolled in the barn, and
+there it stayed. The stage-driver, after prophesying the immediate downfall
+of the nation, died of grief and apoplexy, and the old coach followed in
+his wake as fast as could by quietly dropping to pieces. The barn had the
+reputation of being haunted, and I think we all kept very close together
+when we found ourselves standing in the black shadow cast by the tall
+gable. Here, in a low voice, Jack Harris laid bare his plan, which was to
+burn the ancient stage-coach.
+
+"The old trundle-cart isn't worth twenty-five cents," said Jack Harris, "and
+Ezra Wingate ought to thank us for getting the rubbish out of the way. But
+if any fellow here doesn't want to have a hand in it, let him cut and run,
+and keep a quiet tongue in his head ever after."
+
+With this he pulled out the staples that held the lock, and the big barn
+door swung slowly open. The interior of the stable was pitch-dark, of
+course. As we made a movement to enter, a sudden scrambling, and the sound
+of heavy bodies leaping in all directions, caused us to start back in
+terror.
+
+"Rats!" cried Phil Adams.
+
+"Bats!" exclaimed Harry Blake.
+
+'Cats!" suggested Jack Harris. "Who's afraid?"
+
+Well, the truth is, we were all afraid; and if the pole of the stage had not
+been lying close to the threshold, I don't believe anything on earth would
+have induced us to cross it. We seized hold of the pole-straps and
+succeeded with great trouble in dragging the coach out. The two fore wheels
+had rusted to the axle-tree, and refused to revolve. It was the merest
+skeleton of a coach. The cushions had long since been removed, and the
+leather hangings, where they had not crumbled away, dangled in shreds from
+the worm-eaten frame. A load of ghosts and a span of phantom horses to drag
+them would have made the ghastly thing complete.
+
+Luckily for our undertaking, the stable stood at the top of a very steep
+hill. With three boys to push behind, and two in front to steer, we started
+the old coach on its last trip with. little or no difficulty. Our speed
+increased every moment, and, the fore wheels becoming unlocked as we
+arrived at the foot of the declivity, we charged upon the crowd like a
+regiment of cavalry, scattering the people right and left. Before reaching
+the bonfire, to which someone had added several bushels of shavings, Jack
+Harris and Phil Adams, who were steering, dropped on the ground, and
+allowed the vehicle to pass over them, which it did without injuring them;
+but the boys who were clinging for dear life to the trunk-rack behind fell
+over the prostrate steersman, and there we all lay in a heap, two or three
+of us quite picturesque with the nose-bleed.
+
+The coach, with an intuitive perception of what was expected of it, plunged
+into the centre of the kindling shavings, and stopped. The flames sprung up
+and clung to the rotten woodwork, which burned like tinder. At this moment
+a figure was seen leaping wildly from the inside of the blazing coach. The
+figure made three bounds towards us, and tripped over Harry Blake. It was
+Pepper Whitcomb, with his hair somewhat singed, and his eyebrows completely
+scorched off !
+
+Pepper had slyly ensconced himself on the back seat before we started,
+intending to have a neat little ride down hill, and a laugh at us
+afterwards. But the laugh, as it happened, was on our side, or would have
+been, if half a dozen watchmen had not suddenly pounced down upon us, as we
+lay scrambling on the ground, weak with mirth over Pepper's misfortune. We
+were collared and marched off before we well knew what had happened.
+
+The abrupt transition from the noise and light of the Square to the silent,
+gloomy brick room in the rear of the Meat Market seemed like the work of
+enchantment. We stared at each other, aghast.
+
+"Well," remarked Jack Harris, with a sickly smile, "this is a go!"
+
+"No go, I should say," whimpered Harry Blake, glancing at the bare brick
+walls and the heavy ironplated door.
+
+"Never say die," muttered Phil Adams, dolefully.
+
+The bridewell was a small low-studded chamber built up against the rear end
+of the Meat Market, and approached from the Square by a narrow passage-way.
+A portion of the rooms partitioned off into eight cells, numbered, each
+capable of holding two persons. The cells were full at the time, as we
+presently discovered by seeing several hideous faces leering out at us
+through the gratings of the doors.
+
+A smoky oil-lamp in a lantern suspended from the ceiling threw a flickering
+light over the apartment, which contained no furniture excepting a couple
+of stout wooden benches. It was a dismal place by night, and only little
+less dismal by day, tall houses surrounding "the lock-up" prevented the
+faintest ray of sunshine from penetrating the ventilator over the door-long
+narrow window opening inward and propped up by a piece of lath.
+
+As we seated ourselves in a row on one of the benches, I imagine that our
+aspect was anything but cheerful. Adams and Harris looked very anxious, and
+Harry Blake, whose nose had just stopped bleeding, was mournfully carving
+his name, by sheer force of habit, on the prison bench. I don't think I
+ever saw a more "wrecked" expression on any human countenance than Pepper
+Whitcomb's presented. His look of natural astonishment at finding himself
+incarcerated in a jail was considerably heightened by his lack of eyebrows.
+
+As for me, it was only by thinking how the late Baron Trenck would have
+conducted himself under similar circumstances that I was able to restrain
+my tears.
+
+None of us were inclined to conversation. A deep silence, broken now and
+then by a startling snore from the cells, reigned throughout the chamber.
+By and by Pepper Whitcomb glanced nervously towards Phil Adams and said,
+"Phil, do you think they will-hang us?"
+
+"Hang your grandmother!" returned Adams, impatiently. "What I'm afraid of is
+that they'll keep us locked up until the Fourth is over."
+
+"You ain't smart ef they do!" cried a voice from one of the cells. It was a
+deep bass voice that sent a chill through me.
+
+"Who are you?" said Jack Harris, addressing the cells in general; for the
+echoing qualities of the room made it difficult to locate the voice.
+
+"That don't matter," replied the speaker, putting his face close up to the
+gratings of No. 3, "but ef I was a youngster like you, free an' easy
+outside there, this spot wouldn't hold me long."
+
+"That's so I" chimed several of the prison-birds, wagging their heads behind
+the iron lattices.
+
+"Hush!" whispered Jack Harris, rising from his seat and walking on tip-toe
+to the door of  cell No. 3. "What would you do?"
+
+"Do? Why, I'd pile them 'ere benches up agin that 'ere door, an' crawl out
+of that 'erc winder in no time. That's my adwice."
+
+"And werry good adwice it is, Jim," said the occupant of No. 5, approvingly.
+
+Jack Harris seemed to be of the same opinion, for he hastily placed the
+benches one on the top of another under the ventilator, and, climbing up on
+the highest bench, peeped out into the passage-way.
+
+"If any gent happens to have a ninepence about him," said the man in cell
+No. 3, "there's a sufferin' family here as could make use of it. Smallest
+favors gratefully received, an' no questions axed."
+
+This appeal touched a new silver quarter of a dollar in my trousers-pocket;
+I fished out the coin from a mass of fireworks, and gave it to the
+prisoner. He appeared to be so good-natured a fellow that I ventured to ask
+what he had done to get into jail.
+
+"Intirely innocent. I was clapped in here by a rascally nevew as wishes to
+enjoy my wealth afore I'm dead.'
+
+"Your name, Sir?' I inquired, with a view of reporting the outrage to my
+grandfather and having the injured person re instated in society.
+
+"Git out, you insolent young reptyle!" shouted the man, in a passion.
+
+I retreated precipitately, amid a roar of laughter from the other cells.
+
+'Can't you keep still?" exclaimed Harris, withdrawing his head from the
+window.
+
+A portly watchman usually sat on a stool outside the door day and night; but
+on this particular occasion, his services being required elsewhere, the
+bridewell had been left to guard itself.
+
+"All clear," whispered Jack Harris, as he vanished through the aperture and
+dropped softly on the ground outside. We all followed him
+expeditiously-Pepper Whitcomb and myself getting stuck in the window for a
+moment in our frantic efforts not to be last.
+
+"Now, boys, everybody for himself !"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eight
+
+The Adventures of a Fourth
+
+
+
+The sun cast a broad column of quivering gold across the river at the foot
+of our street, just as I reached the doorstep of the Nutter House. Kitty
+Collins, with her dress tucked about her so that she looked as if she had
+on a pair of calico trousers, was washing off the sidewalk.
+
+"Arrah you bad boy!" cried Kitty, leaning on the mop. handle. "The Capen has
+jist been askin' for you. He's gone up town, now. It's a nate thing you
+done with my clothes-line, and, it's me you may thank for gettin' it out of
+the way before the Capen come down."
+
+The kind creature had hauled in the rope, and my escapade had not been
+discovered by the family; but I knew very well that the burning of the
+stage-coach, and the arrest of the boys concerned in the mischief, were
+sure to reach my grandfathers ears sooner or later.
+
+"Well, Thomas," said the old gentleman, an hour or so afterwards, beaming
+upon me benevolently across the breakfast table, "you didn't wait to be
+called this morning."
+
+'No, sir," I replied, growing very warm, "I took a little run up town to see
+what was going on."
+
+I didn't say anything about the little run I took home again! "They had
+quite a time on the Square last night," remarked Captain Nutter, looking up
+from the Rivermouth Bamacle, which was always placed beside his coffee-cup
+at breakfast.
+
+I felt that my hair was preparing to stand on end.
+
+"Quite a time," continued my grandfather. "Some boys broke into Ezra
+Wingate's barn and carried off the old stagecoach. The young rascals! I do
+believe they'd burn up the whole town if they had their way."
+
+With this he resumed the paper. After a long silence he exclaimed, "Hullo!"
+upon which I nearly fell off the chair.
+
+"'Miscreants unknown,"' read my grandfather, following the paragraph with
+his forefinger; "'escaped from the bridewell, leaving no clew to their
+identity, except the letter H, cut on one of the benches.' 'Five dollars
+reward offered for the apprehension of the perpetrators.' Sho! I hope
+Wingate will catch them."
+
+I don't see how I continued to live, for on hearing this the breath went
+entirely out of my body. I beat a retreat from the room as soon as I could,
+and flew to the stable with a misty intention of mounting Gypsy and
+escaping from the place. I was pondering what steps to take, when Jack
+Harris and Charley Marden entered the yard.
+
+"I say," said Harris, as blithe as a lark, "has old Wingate been here?"
+
+"Been here?" I cried, "I should hope not!"
+
+"The whole thing's out, you know," said Harris, pulling Gypsy's forelock
+over her eyes and blowing playfully into her nostrils.
+
+"You don't mean it!" I gasped.
+
+"Yes, I do, and we are to pay Wingate three dollars apiece. He'll make
+rather a good spec out of it."
+
+"But how did he discover that we were the-the miscreants?" I asked, quoting
+mechanically from the Rivermouth Bamacle.
+
+"Why, he saw us take the old ark, confound him! He's been trying to sell it
+any time these ten years. Now he has sold it to us. When he found that we
+had slipped out of the Meat Market, he went right off and wrote the
+advertisement offering five dollars reward; though he knew well enough who
+had taken the coach, for he came round to my father's house before the
+paper was printed to talk the matter over. Wasn't the governor mad, though!
+But it's all settled, I tell you. We're to pay Wingate fifteen dollars for
+the old go-cart, which he wanted to sell the other day for seventy-five
+cents, and couldn't. It's a downright swindle. But the funny part of it is
+to come."
+
+O, there's a funny part to it, is there?" I remarked bitterly.
+
+"Yes. The moment Bill Conway saw the advertisement, he knew it was Harry
+Blake who cut that letter H on the bench; so off he rushes up to
+Wingate-kind of him, wasn't it?-and claims the reward. 'Too late, young
+man,' says old Wingate, 'the culprits has been discovered.' You see
+Sly-boots hadn't any intention of paying that five dollars."
+
+Jack Harris's statement lifted a weight from my bosom. The article in the
+Rivermouth Barnacle bad placed the affair before me in a new light. I had
+thoughtlessly committed a grave offence. Though the property in question
+was valueless, we were clearly wrong in destroying it. At the same time Mr.
+Wingate had tacitly sanctioned the act by not preventing it when he might
+easily have done so. He had allowed his property to be destroyed in order
+that be might realize a large profit.
+
+Without waiting to hear more, I went straight to Captain Nutter, and, laying
+my remaining three dollars on his knee, confessed my share in the previous
+night's transaction.
+
+The Captain heard me through in profound silence, pocketed the bank-notes,
+and walked off without speaking a word. He had punished me in his own
+whimsical fashion at the breakfast table, for, at the very moment be was
+harrowing up my soul by reading the extracts from the Rivermouth Barnacle,
+he not only knew all about the bonfire, but had paid Ezra Wingate his three
+dollars. Such was the duplicity of that aged impostor
+
+I think Captain Nutter was justified in retaining my pocketmoney, as
+additional punishment, though the possession of it later in the day would
+have got me out of a difficult position, as the reader will see further on.
+I returned with a light heart and a large piece of punk to my friends in
+the stable-yard, where we celebrated the termination of our trouble by
+setting off two packs of fire-crackers in an empty wine-cask. They made a
+prodigious racket, but failed somehow to fully express my feelings. The
+little brass pistol in my bedroom suddenly occurred to me. It had been
+loaded I don't know how many months, long before I left New Orleans, and
+now was the time, if ever, to fire it off. Muskets, blunderbusses, and
+pistols were banging away lively all over town, and the smell of gunpowder,
+floating on the air, set me wild to add something respectable to the
+universal din.
+
+When the pistol was produced, Jack Harris examined the rusty cap and
+prophesied that it would not explode.
+
+"Never mind," said I, "let's try it."
+
+I had fired the pistol once, secretly, in New Orleans, and, remembering the
+noise it gave birth to on that occasion, I shut both eyes tight as I pulled
+the trigger. The hammer clicked on the cap with a dull, dead sound. Then
+Harris tried it; then Charley Marden; then I took it again, and after three
+or four trials was on the point of giving it up as a bad job, when the
+obstinate thing went off with a tremendous explosion, nearly jerking my arm
+from the socket. The smoke cleared away, and there I stood with the stock
+of the pistol clutched convulsively in my hand-the barrel, lock, trigger,
+and ramrod having vanished into thin air.
+
+"Are you hurt?" cried the boys, in one breath.
+
+"N-no," I replied, dubiously, for the concussion had bewildered me a little.
+
+When I realized the nature of the calamity, my grief was excessive. I can't
+imagine what led me to do so ridiculous a thing, but I gravely buried the
+remains of my beloved pistol in our back garden, and erected over the mound
+a slate tablet to the effect that "Mr. Barker formerly of new Orleans, was
+killed accidentally on the Fourth of July, 18-- in the 2nd year of his
+Age."1 Binny Wallace, arriving on the spot just after the disaster, and
+Charley Marden (who enjoyed the obsequies immensely), acted with me as
+chief mourners. I, for my part, was a very sincere one.
+
+As I turned away in a disconsolate mood from the garden, Charley Marden
+remarked that he shouldn't be surprised if the pistol-butt took root and
+grew into a mahogany-tree or something. He said he once planted an old
+musket-stock, and shortly afterwards a lot of shoots sprung up! Jack Harris
+laughed; but neither I nor Binny Wallace saw Charley's wicked joke.
+
+We were now joined by Pepper Whitcomb, Fred Langdon, and several other
+desperate characters, on their way to the Square, which was always a busy
+place when public festivities were going on. Feeling that I was still in
+disgrace with the Captain, I thought it politic to ask his consent before
+accompanying the boys.
+
+He gave it with some hesitation, advising me to be careful not to get in
+front of the firearms. Once he put his fingers mechanically into his
+vest-pocket and half drew forth some dollar bills, then slowly thrust them
+back again as his sense of justice overcame his genial disposition. I guess
+it cut the old gentleman to the heart to be obliged to keep me out of my
+pocket-money. I know it did me. However, as I was passing through the hall,
+Miss Abigail, with a very severe cast of countenance, slipped a brand-new
+quarter into my hand. We had silver currency in those days, thank Heaven!
+
+Great were the bustle and confusion on the Square. By the way, I don't know
+why they called this large open space a square, unless because it was an
+oval-an oval formed by the confluence of half a dozen streets, now thronged
+by crowds of smartly dressed towns-people and country folks; for Rivermouth
+on the Fourth was the centre of attraction to the inhabitants of the
+neighboring villages.
+
+On one side of the Square were twenty or thirty booths arranged in a
+semi-circle, gay with little flags and seductive with lemonade,
+ginger-beer, and seedcakes. Here and there were tables at which could be
+purchased the smaller sort of fireworks, such as pin-wheels, serpents,
+double-headers, and punk warranted not to go out. Many of the adjacent
+houses made a pretty display of bunting, and across each of the streets
+opening on the Square was an arch of spruce and evergreen, blossoming all
+over with patriotic mottoes and paper roses.
+
+It was a noisy, merry, bewildering scene as we came upon the ground. The
+incessant rattle of small arms, the booming of the twelve-pounder firing on
+the Mill Dam, and the silvery clangor of the church-bells ringing
+simultaneously-not to mention an ambitious brass-band that was blowing
+itself to pieces on a balcony-were enough to drive one distracted. We
+amused ourselves for an hour or two, darting in and out among the crowd and
+setting off our crackers. At one o'clock the Hon. Hezekiah Elkins mounted a
+platform in the middle of the Square and delivered an oration, to which his
+"feller-citizens" didn't pay much attention, having all they could do to
+dodge the squibs that were set loose upon them by mischievous boys
+stationed on the surrounding housetops.
+
+Our little party which had picked up recruits here and there, not being
+swayed by eloquence, withdrew to a booth on the outskirts of the crowd,
+where we regaled ourselves with root beer at two cents a glass. I recollect
+being much struck by the placard surmounting this tent:
+
+
+
+ROOT BEER
+
+SOLD HERE
+
+
+
+It seemed to me the perfection of pith and poetry. What could be more terse?
+Not a word to spare, and yet everything fully expressed. Rhyme and rhythm
+faultless. It was a delightful poet who made those verses. As for the beer
+itself-that, I think, must have been made from the root of all evil! A
+single glass of it insured an uninterrupted pain for twenty-four hours.
+
+The influence of my liberality working on Charley Marden-for it was I who
+paid for the beer-he presently invited us all to take an ice-cream with him
+at Pettingil's saloon. Pettingil was the Delmonico of Rivermouth. He
+furnished ices and confectionery for aristocratic balls and parties, and
+didn't disdain to officiate as leader of the orchestra at the same; for
+Pettingil played on the violin, as Pepper Whitcomb described it, "like Old
+Scratch."
+
+Pettingil's confectionery store was on the corner of Willow and High
+Streets. The saloon, separated from the shop by a flight of three steps
+leading to a door hung with faded red drapery, had about it an air of
+mystery and seclusion quite delightful. Four windows, also draped, faced
+the side-street, affording an unobstructed view of Marm Hatch's back yard,
+where a number of inexplicable garments on a clothes-line were always to be
+seen careering in the wind.
+
+There was a lull just then in the ice-cream business, it being dinner-time,
+and we found the saloon unoccupied. When we had seated ourselves around the
+largest marble-topped table, Charley Marden in a manly voice ordered twelve
+sixpenny icecreams, "strawberry and verneller mixed."
+
+It was a magnificent sight, those twelve chilly glasses entering the room on
+a waiter, the red and white custard rising from each glass like a
+church-steeple, and the spoon-handle shooting up from the apex like a
+spire. I doubt if a person of the nicest palate could have distinguished,
+with his eyes shut, which was the vanilla and which the strawberry; but if
+I could at this moment obtain a cream tasting as that did, I would give
+five dollars for a very small quantity.
+
+We fell to with a will, and so evenly balanced were our capabilities that we
+finished our creams together, the spoons clinking in the glasses like one
+spoon.
+
+"Let's have some more!" cried Charley Marden, with the air of Aladdin
+ordering up a fresh hogshead of pearls and rubies. "Tom Bailey, tell
+Pettingil to send in another round."
+
+Could I credit my ears? I looked at him to see if he were in earnest. He
+meant it. In a moment more I was leaning over the counter giving directions
+for a second supply. Thinking it would make no difference to such a
+gorgeous young sybarite as Marden, I took the liberty of ordering ninepenny
+creams this time.
+
+On returning to the saloon, what was my horror at finding it empty!
+
+There were the twelve cloudy glasses, standing in a circle on the sticky
+marble slab, and not a boy to be seen. A pair of hands letting go their
+hold on the window-sill outside explained matters. I had been made a
+victim.
+
+I couldn't stay and face Pettingil, whose peppery temper was well known
+among the boys. I hadn't a cent in the world to appease him. What should I
+do? I heard the clink of approaching glasses-the ninepenny creams. I rushed
+to the nearest window. It was only five feet to the ground. I threw myself
+out as if I had been an old hat.
+
+Landing on my feet, I fled breathlessly down High Street, through Willow,
+and was turning into Brierwood Place when the sound of several voices,
+calling to me in distress, stopped my progress.
+
+"Look out, you fool! The mine! The mine!" yelled the warning voices.
+
+Several men and boys were standing at the head of the street, making insane
+gestures to me to avoid something. But I saw no mine, only in the middle of
+the road in front of me was a common flour-barrel, which, as I gazed at it,
+suddenly rose into the air with a terrific explosion. I felt myself thrown
+violently off my feet. I remember nothing else, excepting that, as I went
+up, I caught a momentary glimpse of Ezra Wingate leering through is shop
+window like an avenging spirit.
+
+The mine that had wrought me woe was not properly a mine at all, but merely
+a few ounces of powder placed under an empty keg or barrel and fired with a
+slow-match. Boys who didn't happen to have pistols or cannon generally
+burnt their powder in this fashion.
+
+For an account of what followed I am indebted to hearsay, for I was
+insensible when the people picked me up and carried me home on a shutter
+borrowed from the proprietor of Pettingil's saloon. I was supposed to be
+killed, but happily (happily for me at least) I was merely stunned. I lay
+in a semi-unconscious state until eight o'clock that night, when I
+attempted to speak. Miss Abigail, who watched by the bedside, put her ear
+down to my lips and was saluted with these remarkable words: "Strawberry
+and verneller mixed!"
+
+"Mercy on us! What is the boy saying?" cried Miss Abigail.
+
+"ROOTBEERSOLDHERE!"
+
+
+
+1 This inscription is copied from a triangular-shaped piece of slate, still
+preserved in the garret of the Nutter House, together with the pistol butt
+itself, which was subsequently dug up for a postmortem examination.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nine
+
+I Become an R. M. C.
+
+
+
+In the course of ten days I recovered sufficiently from my injuries to
+attend school, where, for a little while, I was looked upon as a hero, on
+account of having been blown up. What don't we make a hero of? The
+distraction which prevailed in the classes the week preceding the Fourth
+bad subsided, and nothing remained to indicate the recent festivities,
+excepting a noticeable want of eyebrows on the part of Pepper Whitcomb and
+myself.
+
+In August we had two weeks' vacation. It was about this time that I became a
+member of the Rivermouth Centipedes, a secret society composed of twelve of
+the Temple Grammar School boys. This was an honor to which I had long
+aspired, but, being a new boy, I was not admitted to the fraternity until
+my character had fully developed itself.
+
+It was a very select society, the object of which I never fathomed, though I
+was an active member of the body during the remainder of my residence at
+Rivermouth, and at one time held the onerous position of F. C., First
+Centipede. Each of the elect wore a copper cent (some occult association
+being established between a cent apiece and a centipedes suspended by a
+string round his neck. The medals were worn next the skin, and it was while
+bathing one day at Grave Point, with Jack Harris and Fred Langdon, that I
+had my curiosity roused to the highest pitch by a sight of these singular
+emblems. As soon as I ascertained the existence of a boys' club, of course
+I was ready to die to join it. And eventually I was allowed to join.
+
+The initiation ceremony took place in Fred Langdon's barn, where I was
+submitted to a series of trials not calculated to soothe the nerves of a
+timorous boy. Before being led to the Grotto of Enchantment-such was the
+modest title given to the loft over my friend's wood-house-my hands were
+securely pinioned, and my eyes covered with a thick silk handkerchief. At
+the head of the stairs I was told in an unrecognizable, husky voice, that
+it was not yet too late to retreat if I felt myself physically too weak to
+undergo the necessary tortures. I replied that I was not too weak, in a
+tone which I intended to be resolute, but which, in spite of me, seemed to
+come from the pit of my stomach.
+
+"It is well!" said the husky voice.
+
+I did not feel so sure about that; but, having made up my mind to be a
+Centipede, a Centipede I was bound to be. Other boys had passed through the
+ordeal and lived, why should not I?
+
+A prolonged silence followed this preliminary examination and I was
+wondering what would come next, when a pistol fired off close by my car
+deafened me for a moment. The unknown voice then directed me to take ten
+steps forward and stop at the word halt. I took ten steps, and halted.
+
+"Stricken mortal," said a second husky voice, more husky, if possible, than
+the first, "if you had advanced another inch, you would have disappeared
+down an abyss three thousand feet deep!"
+
+I naturally shrunk back at this friendly piece of information. A prick from
+some two-pronged instrument, evidently a pitchfork, gently checked my
+retreat. I was then conducted to the brink of several other precipices, and
+ordered to step over many dangerous chasms, where the result would have
+been instant death if I had committed the least mistake. I have neglected
+to say that my movements were accompanied by dismal groans from different
+parts of the grotto.
+
+Finally, I was led up a steep plank to what appeared to me an incalculable
+height. Here I stood breathless while the bylaws were read aloud. A more
+extraordinary code of laws never came from the brain of man. The penalties
+attached to the abject being who should reveal any of the secrets of the
+society were enough to make the blood run cold. A second pistol-shot was
+heard, the something I stood on sunk with a crash beneath my feet and I
+fell two miles, as nearly as I could compute it. At the same instant the
+handkerchief was whisked from my eyes, and I found myself standing in an
+empty hogshead surrounded by twelve masked figures fantastically dressed.
+One of the conspirators was really appalling with a tin sauce-pan on his
+head, and a tiger-skin sleigh-robe thrown over his shoulders. I scarcely
+need say that there were no vestiges to be seen of the fearful gulfs over
+which I had passed so cautiously. My ascent had been to the top of the
+hogshead, and my descent to the bottom thereof. Holding one another by the
+hand, and chanting a low dirge, the Mystic Twelve revolved about me. This
+concluded the ceremony. With a merry shout the boys threw off their masks,
+and I was declared a regularly installed member of the R. M. C.
+
+I afterwards had a good deal of sport out of the club, for these
+initiations, as you may imagine, were sometimes very comical spectacles,
+especially when the aspirant for centipedal honors happened to be of a
+timid disposition. If he showed the slightest terror, he was certain to be
+tricked unmercifully. One of our subsequent devices-a humble invention of
+my own-was to request the blindfolded candidate to put out his tongue,
+whereupon the First Centipede would say, in a low tone, as if not intended
+for the ear of the victim, "Diabolus, fetch me the red-hot iron!" The
+expedition with which that tongue would disappear was simply ridiculous.
+
+Our meetings were held in various barns, at no stated periods, but as
+circumstances suggested. Any member had a right to call a meeting. Each boy
+who failed to report himself was fined one cent. Whenever a member had
+reasons for thinking that another member would be unable to attend, he
+called a meeting. For instance, immediately on learning the death of Harry
+Blake's great-grandfather, I issued a call. By these simple and ingenious
+measures we kept our treasury in a flourishing condition, sometimes having
+on hand as much as a dollar and a quarter.
+
+I have said that the society had no special object. It is true, there was a
+tacit understanding among us that the Centipedes were to stand by one
+another on all occasions, though I don't remember that they did; but
+further than this we had no purpose, unless it was to accomplish as a body
+the same amount of mischief which we were sure to do as individuals. To
+mystify the staid and slow-going Rivermouthians was our frequent pleasure.
+Several of our pranks won us such a reputation among the townsfolk, that we
+were credited with having a large finger in whatever went amiss in the
+place.
+
+One morning, about a week after my admission into the secret order, the
+quiet citizens awoke to find that the signboards of all the principal
+streets had changed places during the night. People who went trustfully to
+sleep in Currant Square opened their eyes in Honeysuckle Terrace. Jones's
+Avenue at the north end had suddenly become Walnut Street, and Peanut
+Street was nowhere to be found. Confusion reigned. The town authorities
+took the matter in hand without delay, and six of the Temple Grammar School
+boys were summoned to appear before justice Clapbam.
+
+Having tearfully disclaimed to my grandfather all knowledge of the
+transaction, I disappeared from the family circle, and was not apprehended
+until late in the afternoon, when the Captain dragged me ignominiously from
+the haymow and conducted me, more dead than alive, to the office of justice
+Clapham. Here I encountered five other pallid culprits, who had been fished
+out of divers coal-bins, garrets, and chicken-coops, to answer the demands
+of the outraged laws. (Charley Marden had hidden himself in a pile of
+gravel behind his father's house, and looked like a recently exhumed
+mummy.)
+
+There was not the least evidence against us; and, indeed, we were wholly
+innocent of the offence. The trick, as was afterwards proved, had been
+played by a party of soldiers stationed at the fort in the harbor. We were
+indebted for our arrest to Master Conway, who had slyly dropped a hint,
+within the hearing of Selectman Mudge, to the effect that "young Bailey and
+his five cronies could tell something about 20them signs." When he was
+called upon to make good his assertion, he was considerably more terrified
+than the Centipedes, though they were ready to sink into their shoes.
+
+At our next meeting it was unanimously resolved that Conway's animosity
+should not be quietly submitted to. He had sought to inform against us in
+the stagecoach business; he had volunteered to carry Pettingil's "little
+bill" for twenty-four icecreams to Charley Marden's father; and now he had
+caused us to be arraigned before justice Clapham on a charge equally
+groundless and painful. After much noisy discussion, a plan of retaliation
+was agreed upon.
+
+There was a certain slim, mild apothecary in the town, by the name of Meeks.
+It was generally given out that Mr. Meeks had a vague desire to get
+married, but, being a shy and timorous youth, lacked the moral courage to
+do so. It was also well known that the Widow Conway had not buried her
+heart with the late lamented. As to her shyness, that was not so clear.
+Indeed, her attentions to Mr. Meeks, whose mother she might have been, were
+of a nature not to be misunderstood, and were not misunderstood by anyone
+but Mr. Meeks himself.
+
+The widow carried on a dress-making establishment at her residence on the
+comer opposite Meeks's drug-store, and kept a wary eye on all the young
+ladies from Miss Dorothy Gibbs's Female Institute who patronized the shop
+for soda-water, aciddrops, and slate-pencils. In the afternoon the widow
+was usually seen seated, smartly dressed, at her window upstairs, casting
+destructive glances across the street-the artificial roses in her cap and
+her whole languishing manner saying as plainly as a label on a
+prescription, "To be Taken Immediately!" But Mr. Meeks didn't take.
+
+The lady's fondness, and the gentleman's blindness, were topics ably handled
+at every sewing-circle in the town. It was through these two luckless
+individuals that we proposed to strike a blow at the common enemy. To kill
+less than three birds with one stone did not suit our sanguinary purpose.
+We disliked the widow not so much for her sentimentality as for being the
+mother of Bill Conway; we disliked Mr. Meeks, not because he was insipid,
+like his own syrups, but because the widow loved him. Bill Conway we hated
+for himself.
+
+Late one dark Saturday night in September we carried our plan into effect.
+On the following morning, as the orderly citizens wended their way to
+church past the widow's abode, their sober faces relaxed at beholding over
+her front door the well known gilt Mortar and Pestle which usually stood on
+the top of a pole on the opposite corner; while the passers on that side of
+the street were equally amused and scandalized at seeing a placard bearing
+the following announcement tacked to the druggist's window-shutters:
+
+Wanted, a Sempstress!
+
+The naughty cleverness of the joke (which I should be sorry to defend) was
+recognized at once. It spread like wildfire over the town, and, though the
+mortar and the placard were speedily removed, our triumph was complete. The
+whole community was on the broad grin, and our participation in the affair
+seemingly unsuspected.
+
+It was those wicked soldiers at the fort!
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Ten
+
+I Fight Conway
+
+
+
+There was one person, however, who cherished a strong suspicion that the
+Centipedes had had a hand in the business; and that person was Conway. His
+red hair seemed to change to a livelier red, and his sallow cheeks to a
+deeper sallow, as we glanced at him stealthily over the tops of our slates
+the next day in school. He knew we were watching him, and made sundry
+mouths and scowled in the most threatening way over his sums.
+
+Conway had an accomplishment peculiarly his own-that of throwing his thumbs
+out of joint at will. Sometimes while absorbed in study, or on becoming
+nervous at recitation, he performed the feat unconsciously. Throughout this
+entire morning his thumbs were observed to be in a chronic state of
+dislocation, indicating great mental agitation on the part of the owner. We
+fully expected an outbreak from him at recess; but the intermission passed
+off tranquilly, somewhat to our disappointment.
+
+At the close of the afternoon session it happened that Binny Wallace and
+myself, having got swamped in our Latin exercise, were detained in school
+for the purpose of refreshing our memories with a page of Mr. Andrews's
+perplexing irregular verbs. Binny Wallace finishing his task first, was
+dismissed. I followed shortly after, and, on stepping into the playground,
+saw my little friend plastered, as it were, up against the fence, and
+Conway standing in front of him ready to deliver a blow on the upturned,
+unprotected face, whose gentleness would have stayed any arm but a
+coward's.
+
+Seth Rodgers, with both hands in his pockets, was leaning against the pump
+lazily enjoying the sport; but on seeing me sweep across the yard, whirling
+my strap of books in the air like a sling, he called out lustily, "Lay low,
+Conwayl Here's young Baileyl"
+
+Conway turned just in time to catch on his shoulder the blow intended for
+his head. He reached forward one of his long arms-he had arms like a
+windmill, that boy-and, grasping me by the hair, tore out quite a
+respectable handful. The tears flew to my eyes, but they were not the tears
+of defeat; they were merely the involuntary tribute which nature paid to
+the departed tresses.
+
+In a second my little jacket lay on the ground, and I stood on guard,
+resting lightly on my right leg and keeping my eye fixed steadily on
+Conway's-in all of which I was faithfully following the instructions of
+Phil Adams, whose father subscribed to a sporting journal.
+
+Conway also threw himself into a defensive attitude, and there we were,
+glaring at each other motionless, neither of us disposed to risk an attack,
+but both on the alert to resist one. There is no telling how long we might
+have remained in that absurd position, had we not been interrupted.
+
+It was a custom with the larger pupils to return to the play-ground after
+school, and play baseball until sundown. The town authorities had
+prohibited ball-playing on the Square, and, there being no other available
+place, the boys fell back perforce on the school-yard. just at this crisis
+a dozen or so of the Templars entered the gate, and, seeing at a glance the
+belligerent status of Conway and myself, dropped bat and ball, and rushed
+to the spot where we stood.
+
+"Is it a fight?" asked Phil Adams, who saw by our freshness that we had not
+yet got to work.
+
+"Yes, it's a fight," I answered, "unless Conway will ask Wallace's pardon,
+promise never to hector me in future-and put back my hair!"
+
+This last condition was rather a staggerer.
+
+"I sha'n't do nothing of the sort," said Conway, sulkily.
+
+"Then the thing must go on," said Adams, with dignity. "Rodgers, as I
+understand it, is your second, Conway? Bailey, come here. What's the row
+about?"
+
+"He was thrashing Binny Wallace."
+
+"No, I wasn't," interrupted Conway; "but I was going to because he knows who
+put Meeks's mortar over our door. And I know well enough who did it; it was
+that sneaking little mulatter!" pointing at me.
+
+"O, by George!" I cried, reddening at the insult.
+
+"Cool is the word," said Adams, as he bound a handkerchief round my head,
+and carefully tucked away the long straggling locks that offered a tempting
+advantage to the enemy. "Who ever heard of a fellow with such a head of
+hair going into action!" muttered Phil, twitching the handkerchief to
+ascertain if it were securely tied. He then loosened my gallowses (braces),
+and buckled them tightly above my hips. "Now, then, bantam, never say die!"
+
+Conway regarded these business-like preparations with evident misgiving, for
+he called Rodgers to his side, and had himself arrayed in a similar manner,
+though his hair was cropped so close that you couldn't have taken hold of
+it with a pair of tweezers.
+
+"Is your man ready?" asked Phil Adams, addressing Rodgers.
+
+"Ready!"
+
+"Keep your back to the gate, Tom," whispered Phil in my car, "and you'll
+have the sun in his eyes."
+
+Behold us once more face to face, like David and the Philistine. Look at us
+as long as you may; for this is all you shall see of the combat. According
+to my thinking, the hospital teaches a better lesson than the battle-field.
+I will tell you about my black eye, and my swollen lip, if you will; but
+not a word of the fight.
+
+You'll get no description of it from me, simply because I think it would
+prove very poor reading, and not because I consider my revolt against
+Conway's tyranny unjustifiable.
+
+I had borne Conway's persecutions for many months with lamb-like patience. I
+might have shielded myself by appealing to Mr. Grimshaw; but no boy in the
+Temple Grammar School could do that without losing caste. Whether this was
+just or not doesn't matter a pin, since it was so-a traditionary law of the
+place. The personal inconvenience I suffered from my tormentor was nothing
+to the pain he inflicted on me indirectly by his persistent cruelty to
+little Binny Wallace. I should have lacked the spirit of a hen if I had not
+resented it finally. I am glad that I faced Conway, and asked no favors,
+and got rid of him forever. I am glad that Phil Adams taught me to box, and
+I say to all youngsters: Learn to box, to ride, to pull an oar, and to
+swim. The occasion may come round, when a decent proficiency in one or the
+rest of these accomplishments will be of service to you.
+
+In one of the best books1 ever written for boys are these words:
+
+"Learn to box, then, as you learn to play cricket and football. Not one of
+you will be the worse, but very much the better, for learning to box well.
+Should you never have to use it in earnest there's no exercise in the world
+so good for the temper, and for the muscles of the back and legs.
+
+"As for fighting, keep out of it, if you can, by all means. When the time
+comes, if ever it should, that you have to say 'Yes' or 'No' to a challenge
+to fight, say 'No' if you can-only take care you make it plain to yourself
+why you say 'No.' It's a proof of the highest courage, if done from true
+Christian motives. It's quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple
+aversion to physical pain and danger. But don't say 'No' because you fear a
+licking and say or think it's because you fear God, for that's neither
+Christian nor honest. And if you do fight, fight it out; and don't give in
+while you can stand and see."
+
+And don't give in when you can't! say 1. For I could stand very little, and
+see not at all (having pommelled the school pump for the last twenty
+seconds), when Conway retired from the field. As Phil Adams stepped up to
+shake hands with me, he received a telling blow in the stomach; for all the
+fight was not out of me yet, and I mistook him for a new adversary.
+
+Convinced of my error, I accepted his congratulations, with those of the
+other boys, blandly and blindly. I remember that Binny Wallace wanted to
+give me his silver pencil-case. The gentle soul had stood throughout the
+contest with his face turned to the fence, suffering untold agony.
+
+A good wash at the pump, and a cold key applied to my eye, refreshed me
+amazingly. Escorted by two or three of the schoolfellows, I walked home
+through the pleasant autumn twilight, battered but triumphant. As I went
+along, my cap cocked on one side to keep the chilly air from my eye, I felt
+that I was not only following my nose, but following it so closely, that I
+was in some danger of treading on it. I seemed to have nose enough for the
+whole party. My left cheek, also, was puffed out like a dumpling. I
+couldn't help saying to myself, "If this is victory, how about that other
+fellow?"
+
+"Tom," said Harry Blake, hesitating.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Did you see Mr. Grimshaw looking out of the recitation-room window just as
+we left the yard?"
+
+"No was he, though?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+"Then he must have seen all the row."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder."
+
+"No, he didn't," broke in Adams, "or he would have stopped it short metre;
+but I guess be saw you pitching into the pump which you did uncommonly
+strong-and of course be smelt mischief directly."
+
+"Well, it can't be helped now," I reflected.
+
+"-As the monkey said when he fell out of the cocoanut tree," added Charley
+Marden, trying to make me laugh.
+
+It was early candle-light when we reached the house. Miss Abigail, opening
+the front door, started back at my hilarious appearance. I tried to smile
+upon her sweetly, but the smile, rippling over my swollen cheek, and dying
+away like a spent wave on my nose, produced an expression of which Miss
+Abigail declared she had never seen the like excepting on the face of a
+Chinese idol.
+
+She hustled me unceremoniously into the presence of my grandfather in the
+sitting-room. Captain Nutter, as the recognized professional warrior of our
+family, could not consistently take me to task for fighting Conway; nor was
+he disposed to do so; for the Captain was well aware of the long-continued
+provocation I had endured.
+
+"Ah, you rascal!" cried the old gentleman, after hearing my story. "Just
+like me when I was young-always in one kind of trouble or another. I
+believe it runs in the family."
+
+"I think," said Miss Abigail, without the faintest expression) on her
+countenance, "that a table-spoonful of hot-dro-" The Captain interrupted
+Miss Abigail peremptorily, directing her to make a shade out of cardboard
+and black silk to tie over my eye. Miss Abigail must have been possessed
+with the idea that I had taken up pugilism as a profession, for she turned
+out no fewer than six of these blinders.
+
+"They'll be handy to have in the house," says Miss Abigail, grimly.
+
+Of course, so great a breach of discipline was not to be passed over by Mr.
+Grimshaw. He had, as we suspected, witnessed the closing scene of the fight
+from the school-room window, and the next morning, after prayers, I was not
+wholly unprepared when Master Conway and myself were called up to the desk
+for examination. Conway, with a piece of court-plaster in the shape of a
+Maltese cross on his right cheek, and I with the silk patch over my left
+eye, caused a general titter through the room.
+
+"Silence!" said Mr. Grimshaw, sharply.
+
+As the reader is already familiar with the leading points in the case of
+Bailey versus Conway, I shall not report the trial further than to say that
+Adams, Marden, and several other pupils testified to the fact that Conway
+had imposed on me ever since my first day at the Temple School. Their
+evidence also went to show that Conway was a quarrelsome character
+generally. Bad for Conway. Seth Rodgers, on the part of his friend, proved
+that I had struck the first blow. That was bad for me.
+
+"If you please, sir," said Binny Wallace, holding up his hand for permission
+to speak, "Bailey didn't fight on his own account; he fought on my account,
+and, if you please, sir, I am the boy to be blamed, for I was the cause of
+the trouble."
+
+This drew out the story of Conway's harsh treatment of the smaller boys. As
+Binny related the wrongs of his playfellows, saying very little of his own
+grievances, I noticed that Mr. Grimshaw's hand, unknown to himself perhaps,
+rested lightly from time to time on Wallace's sunny hair. The examination
+finished, Mr. Grimshaw leaned on the desk thoughtfully for a moment and
+then said:
+
+"Every boy in this school knows that it is against the rules to fight. If
+one boy maltreats another, within school-bounds, or within school-hours,
+that is a matter for me to settle. The case should be laid before me. I
+disapprove of tale-bearing, I never encourage it in the slightest degree;
+but when one pupil systematically persecutes a schoolmate, it is the duty
+of some head-boy to inform me. No pupil has a right to take the law into
+his own hands. If there is any fighting to be done, I am the person to be
+consulted. I disapprove of boys' fighting; it is unnecessary and
+unchristian. In the present instance, I consider every large boy in this
+school at fault, but as the offence is one of omission rather than
+commission, my punishment must rest only on the two boys convicted of
+misdemeanor. Conway loses his recess for a month, and Bailey has a page
+added to his Latin lessons for the next four recitations. I now request
+Bailey and Conway to shake hands in the presence of the school, and
+acknowledge their regret at what has occurred."
+
+Conway and I approached each other slowly and cautiously, as if we were bent
+upon another hostile collision. We clasped hands in the tamest manner
+imaginable, and Conway mumbled, "I'm sorry I fought with you.'
+
+"I think you are,' I replied, drily, "and I'm sorry I had to thrash you."
+
+"You can go to your seats," said Mr. Grimshaw, turning his face aside to
+hide a smile. I am sure my apology was a very good one.
+
+I never had any more trouble with Conway. He and his shadow, Seth Rodgers,
+gave me a wide berth for many months. Nor was Binny Wallace subjected to
+further molestation. Miss Abigail's sanitary stores, including a bottle of
+opodeldoc, were never called into requisition. The six black silk patches,
+with their elastic strings, are still dangling from a beam in the garret of
+the Nutter House, waiting for me to get into fresh difficulties.
+
+
+
+1 "Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eleven
+
+All About Gypsy
+
+
+
+This record of my life at Rivermouth would be strangely incomplete did I not
+devote an entire chapter to Gypsy. I had other pets, of course; for what
+healthy boy could long exist without numerous friends in the animal
+kingdom? I had two white mice that were forever gnawing their way out of a
+pasteboard chateau, and crawling over my face when I lay asleep. I used to
+keep the pink-eyed little beggars in my bedroom, greatly to the annoyance
+of Miss Abigail, who was constantly fancying that one of the mice had
+secreted itself somewhere about her person.
+
+I also owned a dog, a terrier, who managed in some inscrutable way to pick a
+quarrel with the moon, and on bright nights kept up such a ki-yi-ing in our
+back garden, that we were finally forced to dispose of him at private sale.
+He was purchased by Mr. Oxford, the butcher. I protested against the
+arrangement and ever afterwards, when we had sausages from Mr. Oxford-s
+shop, I made believe I detected in them certain evidences that Cato had
+been foully dealt with.
+
+Of birds I had no end-robins, purple-martins, wrens, bulfinches, bobolinks,
+ringdoves, and pigeons. At one time I took solid comfort in the iniquitous
+society of a dissipated old parrot, who talked so terribly, that the Rev.
+Wibird Hawkins, happening to get a sample of Poll's vituperative powers,
+pronounced him "a benighted heathen," and advised the Captain to get rid of
+him. A brace of turtles supplanted the parrot in my affections; the turtles
+gave way to rabbits; and the rabbits in turn yielded to the superior charms
+of a small monkey, which the Captain bought of a sailor lately from the
+coast of Africa.
+
+But Gypsy was the prime favorite, in spite of many rivals. I never grew
+weary of her. She was the most knowing little thing in the world. Her
+proper sphere in life-and the one to which she ultimately attained-was the
+saw-dust arena of a travelling circus. There was nothing short of the three
+R's, reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic, that Gypsy couldn't be taught. The
+gift of speech was not hers, but the faculty of thought was.
+
+My little friend, to be sure, was not exempt from certain graceful
+weaknesses, inseparable, perhaps, from the female character. She was very
+pretty, and she knew it. She was also passionately fond of dress-by which I
+mean her best harness. When she had this on, her curvetings and prancings
+were laughable, though in ordinary tackle she went along demurely enough.
+There was something in the enamelled leather and the silver-washed
+mountings that chimed with her artistic sense. To have her mane braided,
+and a rose or a pansy stuck into her forelock, was to make her too
+conceited for anything.
+
+She had another trait not rare among her sex. She liked the attentions of
+young gentlemen, while the society of girls bored her. She would drag them,
+sulkily, in the cart; but as for permitting one of them in the saddle, the
+idea was preposterous. Once when Pepper Whitcomb's sister, in spite of our
+remonstrances, ventured to mount her, Gypsy gave a little indignant neigh,
+and tossed the gentle Emma heels over head in no time. But with any of the
+boys the mare was as docile as a lamb.
+
+Her treatment of the several members of the family was comical. For the
+Captain she entertained a wholesome respect, and was always on her good
+behavior when he was around. As to Miss Abigail, Gypsy simply laughed at
+her-literally laughed, contracting her upper lip and displaying all her
+snow-white teeth, as if something about Miss Abigail struck her, Gypsy, as
+being extremely ridiculous.
+
+Kitty Collins, for some reason or another, was afraid of the pony, or
+pretended to be. The sagacious little animal knew it, of course, and
+frequently, when Kitty was banging out clothes near the stable, the mare
+being loose in the yard, would make short plunges at her. Once Gypsy seized
+the basket of clothespins with her teeth, and rising on her hind legs,
+pawing the air with her fore feet followed Kitty clear up to the scullery
+steps.
+
+That part of the yard was shut off from the rest by a gate; but no gate was
+proof against Gypsy's ingenuity. She could let down bars, lift up latches,
+draw bolts, and turn all sorts of buttons. This accomplishment rendered it
+hazardous for Miss Abigail or Kitty to leave any eatables on the kitchen
+table near the window. On one occasion Gypsy put in her head and lapped up
+six custard pies that had been placed by the casement to cool.
+
+An account of my young lady's various pranks would fill a thick volume. A
+favorite trick of hers, on being requested to "walk like Miss Abigail," was
+to assume a little skittish gait so true to nature that Miss Abigail
+herself was obliged to admit the cleverness of the imitation.
+
+The idea of putting Gypsy through a systematic course of instruction was
+suggested to me by a visit to the circus which gave an annual performance
+in Rivermouth. This show embraced among its attractions a number of trained
+Shetland ponies, and I determined that Gypsy should likewise have the
+benefit of a liberal education. I succeeded in teaching her to waltz, to
+fire a pistol by tugging at a string tied to the trigger, to lie down dead,
+to wink one eye, and to execute many other feats of a difficult nature. She
+took to her studies admirably, and enjoyed the whole thing as much as
+anyone.
+
+The monkey was a perpetual marvel to Gypsy. They became bosom-friends in an
+incredibly brief period, and were never easy out of each other's sight.
+Prince Zany-that's what Pepper Whitcomb and I christened him one day, much
+to the disgust of the monkey, who bit a piece out of Pepper's nose-resided
+in the stable, and went to roost every night on the pony's back, where I
+usually found him in the morning. Whenever I rode out, I was obliged to
+secure his Highness the Prince with a stout cord to the fence, he
+chattering all the time like a madman.
+
+One afternoon as I was cantering through the crowded part of the town, I
+noticed that the people in the street stopped, stared at me, and fell to
+laughing. I turned round in the saddle, and there was Zany, with a great
+burdock leaf in his paw, perched up behind me on the crupper, as solemn as
+a judge.
+
+After a few months, poor Zany sickened mysteriously, and died. The dark
+thought occurred to me then, and comes back to me now with redoubled force,
+that Miss Abigail must have given him some hot-drops. Zany left a large
+circle of sorrowing friends, if not relatives. Gypsy, I think, never
+entirely recovered from the shock occasioned by his early demise. She
+became fonder of me, though; and one of her cunningest demonstrations was
+to escape from the stable-yard, and trot up to the door of the Temple
+Grammar School, where I would discover her at recess patiently waiting for
+me, with her fore feet on the second step, and wisps of straw standing out
+all over her, like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
+
+I should fail if I tried to tell you how dear the pony was to me. Even hard,
+unloving men become attached to the horses they take care of; so I, who was
+neither unloving nor hard, grew to love every glossy hair of the pretty
+little creature that depended on me for her soft straw bed and her daily
+modicum of oats. In my prayer at night I never forgot to mention Gypsy with
+the rest of the family-generally setting forth her claims first.
+
+Whatever relates to Gypsy belongs properly to this narrative; therefore I
+offer no apology for rescuing from oblivion, and boldly printing here a
+short composition which I wrote in the early part of my first quarter at
+the Temple Grammar School. It is my maiden effort in a difficult art, and
+is, perhaps, lacking in those graces of thought and style which are reached
+only after the severest practice.
+
+Every Wednesday morning, on entering school, each pupil was expected to lay
+his exercise on Mr. Grimshaw's desk; the subject was usually selected by
+Mr. Grimshaw himself, the Monday previous. With a humor characteristic of
+him, our teacher had instituted two prizes, one for the best and the other
+for the worst composition of the month. The first prize consisted of a
+penknife, or a pencil-case, or some such article dear to the heart of
+youth; the second prize entitled the winner to wear for an hour or two a
+sort of conical paper cap, on the front of which was written, in tall
+letters, this modest admission: I AM A DUNCE! The competitor who took prize
+No. 2. wasn't generally an object of envy.
+
+My pulse beat high with pride and expectation that Wednesday morning, as I
+laid my essay, neatly folded, on the master's table. I firmly decline to
+say which prize I won; but here's the composition to speak for itself.
+
+It is no small-author vanity that induces me to publish this stray leaf of
+natural history. I lay it before our young folks, not for their admiration,
+but for their criticism. Let each reader take his lead-pencil and
+remorselessly correct the orthography, the capitalization, and the
+punctuation of the essay. I shall not feel hurt at seeing my treatise cut
+all to pieces; though I think highly of the production, not on account of
+its literary excellence, which I candidly admit is not overpowering, but
+because it was written years and years ago about Gypsy, by a little fellow
+who, when I strive to recall him, appears to me like a reduced ghost of my
+present self.
+
+I am confident that any reader who has ever had pets, birds or animals, will
+forgive me for this brief digression.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twelve
+
+Winter at Rivermouth
+
+
+
+"I guess we're going to have a regular old-fashioned snowstorm," said
+Captain Nutter, one bleak December morning, casting a peculiarly nautical
+glance skyward.
+
+The Captain was always hazarding prophecies about the weather, which somehow
+never turned out according to his prediction. The vanes on the
+church-steeples seemed to take fiendish pleasure in humiliating the dear
+old gentleman. If he said it was going to be a clear day, a dense sea-fog
+was pretty certain to set in before noon. Once he caused a protracted
+drought by assuring us every morning, for six consecutive weeks, that it
+would rain in a few hours. But, sure enough, that afternoon it began
+snowing.
+
+Now I had not seen a snow-storm since I was eighteen months old, and of
+course remembered nothing about it. A boy familiar from his infancy with
+the rigors of our New England winters can form no idea of the impression
+made on me by this natural phenomenon. My delight and surprise were as
+boundless as if the heavy gray sky had let down a shower of pond lilies and
+white roses, instead of snow-flakes. It happened to be a half-holiday, so I
+had nothing to do but watch the feathery crystals whirling hither and
+thither through the air. I stood by the sitting-room window gazing at the
+wonder until twilight shut out the novel scene.
+
+We had had several slight flurries of hail and snow before, but this was a
+regular nor'easter.
+
+Several inches of snow had already fallen. The rose-bushes at the door
+drooped with the weight of their magical blossoms, and the two posts that
+held the garden gate were transformed into stately Turks, with white
+turbans, guarding the entrance to the Nutter House.
+
+The storm increased at sundown, and continued with unabated violence through
+the night. The next morning, when I jumped out of bed, the sun was shining
+brightly, the cloudless heavens wore the tender azure of June, and the
+whole earth lay muffled up to the eyes, as it were, in a thick mantle of
+milk-white down.
+
+It was a very deep snow. The Oldest Inhabitant (what would become of a New
+England town or village without its oldest Inhabitant?) overhauled his
+almanacs, and pronounced it the deepest snow we had bad for twenty years.
+It couldn't have been much deeper without smothering us all. Our street was
+a sight to be seen, or, rather, it was a sight not to be seen; for very
+little street was visible. One huge drift completely banked up our front
+door and half covered my bedroom window.
+
+There was no school that day, for all the thoroughfares were impassable. By
+twelve o'clock, however, the great snowploughs, each drawn by four yokes of
+oxen, broke a wagon-path through the principal streets; but the
+foot-passengers had a hard time of it floundering in the arctic drifts.
+
+The Captain and I cut a tunnel, three feet wide and six feet high, from our
+front door to the sidewalk opposite. It was a beautiful cavern, with its
+walls and roof inlaid with mother-of-pearl and diamonds. I am sure the ice
+palace of the Russian Empress, in Cowper's poem, was not a more superb
+piece of architecture.
+
+The thermometer began falling shortly before sunset and we had the bitterest
+cold night I ever experienced. This brought out the Oldest Inhabitant again
+the next day-and what a gay old boy he was for deciding everything! Our
+tunnel was turned into solid ice. A crust thick enough to bear men and
+horses had formed over the snow everywhere, and the air was alive with
+merry sleigh-bells. Icy stalactites, a yard long, bung from the eaves of
+the house, and the Turkish sentinels at the gate looked as if they had
+given up all hopes of ever being relieved from duty.
+
+So the winter set in cold and glittering. Everything out-of-doors was
+sheathed in silver mail. To quote from Charley Marden, it was "cold enough
+to freeze the tail off a brass monkey,"-an observation which seemed to me
+extremely happy, though I knew little or nothing concerning the endurance
+of brass monkeys, having never seen one.
+
+I had looked forward to the advent of the season with grave apprehensions,
+nerving myself to meet dreary nights and monotonous days; but summer itself
+was not more jolly than winter at Rivermouth. Snow-balling at school,
+skating on the Mill Pond, coasting by moonlight, long rides behind Gypsy in
+a brand-new little sleigh built expressly for her, were sports no less
+exhilarating than those which belonged to the sunny months. And then
+Thanksgiving! The nose of Memory-why shouldn't Memory have a nose?-dilates
+with pleasure over the rich perfume of Miss Abigail's forty mince-pies,
+each one more delightful than the other, like the Sultan's forty wives.
+Christmas was another red-letter day, though it was not so generally
+observed in New England as it is now.
+
+The great wood-fire in the tiled chimney-place made our sitting-room very
+cheerful of winter nights. When the north-wind howled about the eaves, and
+the sharp fingers of the sleet tapped against the window-panes, it was nice
+to be so warmly sheltered from the storm. A dish of apples and a pitcher of
+chilly cider were always served during the evening. The Captain had a funny
+way of leaning back in the chair, and eating his apple with his eyes
+closed. Sometimes I played dominos with him, and sometimes Miss Abigail
+read aloud to us, pronouncing "to" toe, and sounding all the eds.
+
+In a former chapter I alluded to Miss Abigail's managing propensities. She
+had affected many changes in the Nutter House before I came there to live;
+but there was one thing against which she bad long contended without being
+able to overcome. This was the Captain's pipe. On first taking command of
+the household, she prohibited smoking in the sitting-room, where it had
+been the old gentleman's custom to take a whiff or two of the fragrant weed
+after meals. The edict went forth-and so did the pipe. An excellent move,
+no doubt; but then the house was his, and if he saw fit to keep a tub of
+tobacco burning in the middle of the parlor floor, he had a perfect right
+to do so. However, be humored her in this as in other matters, and smoked
+by stealth, like a guilty creature, in the barn, or about the gardens. That
+was practicable in summer, but in winter the Captain was hard put to it.
+When he couldn't stand it longer, he retreated to his bedroom and
+barricaded the door. Such was the position of affairs at the time of which
+I write.
+
+One morning, a few days after the great snow, as Miss Abigail was dusting
+the chronometer in the ball, she beheld Captain Nutter slowly descending
+the staircase, with a long clay pipe in his mouth. Miss Abigail could
+hardly credit her own eyes.
+
+"Dan'el!" she gasped, retiring heavily on the hat-rack.
+
+The tone of reproach with which this word was uttered failed to produce the
+slightest effect on the Captain, who merely removed the pipe from his lips
+for an instant, and blew a cloud into the chilly air. The thermometer stood
+at two degrees below zero in our hall.
+
+"Dan'el!" cried Miss Abigail, hysterically-"Dan'el, don't come near me!"
+Whereupon she fainted away; for the smell of tobacco-smoke always made her
+deadly sick.
+
+Kitty Collins rushed from the kitchen with a basin of water, and set to work
+bathing Miss Abigail's temples and chafing her hands. I thought my
+grandfather rather cruel, as be stood there with a half-smile on his
+countenance, complacently watching Miss Abigail's sufferings. When she was
+"brought to," the Captain sat down beside her, and, with a lovely twinkle
+in his eye, said softly:
+
+"Abigail, my dear, there wasn't any tobacco in that Pipe! It was a new pipe.
+I fetched it down for Tom to blow soap-bubbles with."
+
+At these words Kitty Collins hurried away, her features-working strangely.
+Several minutes later I came upon her in the scullery with the greater
+portion of a crash towel stuffed into her mouth. "Miss Abygil smelt the
+terbacca with her oi!" cried Kitty, partially removing the cloth, and then
+immediately stopping herself up again.
+
+The Captain's joke furnished us-that is, Kitty and me-with mirth for many a
+day; as to Miss Abigail, I think she never wholly pardoned him. After this,
+Captain Nutter gradually gave up smoking, which is an untidy, injurious,
+disgraceful, and highly pleasant habit.
+
+A boy's life in a secluded New England town in winter does not afford many
+points for illustration. Of course he gets his ears or toes frost-bitten;
+of course he smashes his sled against another boy's; of course be bangs his
+bead on the ice; and he's a lad of no enterprise whatever, if be doesn't
+manage to skate into an eel-hole, and be brought home half drowned. All
+these things happened to me; but, as they lack novelty, I pass them over,
+to tell you about the famous snow-fort which we built on Slatter's Hill.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirteen
+
+The Snow Fort on Slatter's Hill
+
+
+
+The memory of man, even that of the Oldest Inhabitant, runneth not back to
+the time when there did not exist a feud between the North End and the
+South End boys of Rivermouth.
+
+The origin of the feud is involved in mystery; it is impossible to say which
+party was the first aggressor in the far-off anterevolutionary ages; but
+the fact remains that the youngsters of those antipodal sections
+entertained a mortal hatred for each other, and that this hatred had been
+handed down from generation to generation, like Miles Standish's
+punch-bowl.
+
+I know not what laws, natural or unnatural, regulated the warmth of the
+quarrel; but at some seasons it raged more violently than at others. This
+winter both parties were unusually lively and antagonistic. Great was the
+wrath of the South-Enders, when they discovered that the North-Enders bad
+thrown up a fort on the crown of Slatter's Hill.
+
+Slatter's Hill, or No-man's-land, as it was generally called, was a rise of
+ground covering, perhaps, an acre and a quarter, situated on an imaginary
+line, marking the boundary between the two districts. An immense stratum of
+granite, which here and there thrust out a wrinkled boulder, prevented the
+site from being used for building purposes. The street ran on either side
+of the hill, from one part of which a quantity of rock had been removed to
+form the underpinning of the new jail. This excavation made the approach
+from that point all but impossible, especially when the ragged ledges were
+a-glitter with ice. You see what a spot it was for a snow-fort.
+
+One evening twenty or thirty of the North-Enders quietly took possession of
+Slatter's Hill, and threw up a strong line of breastworks, something after
+this shape:
+
+
+
+Ft Slatter graphic
+
+
+
+The rear of the entrenchment, being protected by the quarry, was left open.
+The walls were four feet high, and twenty-two inches thick, strengthened at
+the angles by stakes driven firmly into the ground.
+
+Fancy the rage of the South-Enders the next day, when they spied our snowy
+citadel, with Jack Harris's red silk pocket handkerchief floating defiantly
+from the flag-staff.
+
+In less than an hour it was known all over town, in military circles at
+least, that the "Puddle-dockers" and the "River-rats' (these were the
+derisive sub-titles bestowed on our South-End foes) intended to attack the
+fort that Saturday afternoon.
+
+At two o'clock all the fighting boys of the Temple Grammar School, and as
+many recruits as we could muster, lay behind the walls of Fort Slatter,
+with three hundred compact snowballs piled up in pyramids, awaiting the
+approach of the enemy. The enemy was not slow in making his approach-fifty
+strong, headed by one Mat Ames. Our forces were under the command of
+General J. Harris.
+
+Before the action commenced, a meeting was arranged between the rival
+commanders, who drew up and signed certain rules and regulations respecting
+the conduct of the battle. As it was impossible for the North-Enders to
+occupy the fort permanently, it was stipulated that the South-Enders should
+assault it only on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons between the hours of
+two and six. For them to take possession of the place at any other time was
+not to constitute a capture, but on the contrary was to be considered a
+dishonorable and cowardly act.
+
+The North-Enders, on the other hand, agreed to give up the fort whenever ten
+of the storming party succeeded in obtaining at one time a footing on the
+parapet, and were able to hold the same for the space of two minutes. Both
+sides were to abstain from putting pebbles into their snow-balls, nor was
+it permissible to use frozen ammunition. A snow-ball soaked in water and
+left out to cool was a projectile which in previous years had been resorted
+to with disastrous results.
+
+These preliminaries settled, the commanders retired to their respective
+corps. The interview had taken place on the hillside between the opposing
+lines.
+
+General Harris divided his men into two bodies; the first comprised the most
+skilful marksmen, or gunners; the second, the reserve force, was composed
+of the strongest boys, whose duty it was to repel the scaling parties, and
+to make occasional sallies for the purpose of capturing prisoners, who were
+bound by the articles of treaty to faithfully serve under our flag until
+they were exchanged at the close of the day.
+
+The repellers were called light infantry; but when they carried on
+operations beyond the fort they became cavalry. It was also their duty, 20w
+
+hen not otherwise engaged, to manufacture snow-balls. The General's staff
+consisted of five Templars (I among the number, with the rank of Major),
+who carried the General's orders and looked after the wounded.
+
+General Mat Ames, a veteran commander, was no less wide-awake in the
+disposition of his army. Five companies, each numbering but six men, in
+order not to present too big a target to our sharpshooters, were to charge
+the fort from different points, their advance being covered by a heavy fire
+from the gunners posted in the rear. Each scaler was provided with only two
+rounds of ammunition, which were not to be used until he had mounted the
+breastwork and could deliver his shots on our heads.
+
+The drawing below represents the interior of the fort just previous to the
+assault. Nothing on earth could represent the state of things after the
+first volley.
+
+
+
+Fort Slatter detail graphic
+
+
+
+The thrilling moment had now arrived. If I had been going into a real
+engagement I could not have been more deeply impressed by the importance of
+the occasion.
+
+The fort opened fire first-a single ball from the dexterous band of General
+Harris taking General Ames in the very pit of his stomach. A cheer went up
+from Fort Slatter. In an instant the air was thick with flying missiles, in
+the midst of which we dimly descried the storming parties sweeping up the
+hill, shoulder to shoulder. The shouts of the leaders, and the snowballs
+bursting like shells about our ears, made it very lively.
+
+Not more than a dozen of the enemy succeeded in reaching the crest of the
+hill; five of these clambered upon the icy walls, where they were instantly
+grabbed by the legs and jerked into the fort. The rest retired confused and
+blinded by our well-directed fire.
+
+When General Harris (with his right eye bunged up) said, 'Soldiers, I am
+proud of you!" my heart swelled in my bosom.
+
+The victory, however, had not been without its price. Six North-Enders,
+having rushed out to harass the discomfited enemy, were gallantly cut off
+by General Ames and captured. Among these were Lieutenant P. Whitcomb (who
+had no business to join in the charge, being weak in the knees), and
+Captain Fred Langdon, of General Harris's staff. Whitcomb was one of the
+most notable shots on our side, though he was not much to boast of in a
+rough-and-tumble fight, owing to the weakness before mentioned. General
+Ames put him among the gunners, and we were quickly made aware of the loss
+we had sustained, by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light
+with unerring instinct on any nose that was the least bit exposed. I have
+known one of Pepper's snow-balls, fired pointblank, to turn a comer and hit
+a boy who considered himself absolutely safe.
+
+But we had no time for vain regrets. The battle raged. Already there were
+two bad cases of black eye, and one of nosebleed, in the hospital.
+
+It was glorious excitement, those pell-mell onslaughts and hand-to-hand
+struggles. Twice we were within an ace of being driven from our stronghold,
+when General Harris and his staff leaped recklessly upon the ramparts and
+hurled the besiegers heels over head down hill.
+
+At sunset, the garrison of Fort Slatter was still unconquered, and the
+South-Enders, in a solid phalanx, marched off whistling "Yankee Doodle,"
+while we cheered and jeered them until they were out of hearing.
+
+General Ames remained behind to effect an exchange of prisoners. We held
+thirteen of his men, and he eleven of ours. General Ames proposed to call
+it an even thing, since many of his eleven prisoners were officers, while
+nearly all our thirteen captives were privates. A dispute arising on this
+point, the two noble generals came to fisticuffs, and in the-fracas our
+brave commander got his remaining well eye badly damaged. This didn't
+prevent him from writing a general order the next day, on a slate, in which
+he complimented the troops on their heroic behavior.
+
+On the following Wednesday the siege was renewed. I forget whether it was on
+that afternoon or the next that we lost Fort Slatter; but lose it we did,
+with much valuable ammunition and several men. After a series of desperate
+assaults, we forced General Ames to capitulate; and he, in turn, made the
+place too hot to hold us. So from day to day the tide of battle surged to
+and fro, sometimes favoring our arms, and sometimes those of the enemy.
+
+General Ames handled his men with great skill; his deadliest foe could not
+deny that. Once he outgeneralled our commander in the following manner: He
+massed his gunners on our left and opened a brisk fire, under cover of
+which a single company (six men) advanced on that angle of the fort. Our
+reserves on the right rushed over to defend the threatened point.
+Meanwhile, four companies of the enemy's scalers made a detour round the
+foot of the hill, and dashed into Fort Slatter without opposition. At the
+same moment General Ames's gunners closed in on our left, and there we were
+between two fires. Of course we had to vacate the fort. A cloud rested on
+General Harris's military reputation until his superior tactics enabled him
+to dispossess the enemy.
+
+As the winter wore on, the war-spirit waxed fiercer and fiercer. At length
+the provision against using heavy substances in the snow-balls was
+disregarded. A ball stuck full of sand-bird shot came tearing into Fort
+Slatter. In retaliation, General Harris ordered a broadside of shells; i.
+e. snow-balls containing marbles. After this, both sides never failed to
+freeze their ammunition.
+
+It was no longer child's play to march up to the walls of Fort Slatter, nor
+was the position of the besieged less perilous. At every assault three or
+four boys on each side were disabled. It was not an infrequent occurrence
+for the combatants to hold up a flag of truce while they removed some
+insensible comrade.
+
+Matters grew worse and worse. Seven North-Enders had been seriously wounded,
+and a dozen South-Enders were reported on the sick list. The selectmen of
+the town awoke to the fact of what was going on, and detailed a posse of
+police to prevent further disturbance. The boys at the foot of the hill,
+South-Enders as it happened, finding themselves assailed in the rear and on
+the flank, turned round and attempted to beat off the watchmen. In this
+they were sustained by numerous volunteers from the fort, who looked upon
+the interference as tyrannical.
+
+The watch were determined fellows, and charged the boys valiantly, driving
+them all into the fort, where we made common cause, fighting side by side
+like the best of friends. In vain the four guardians of the peace rushed up
+the hill, flourishing their clubs and calling upon us to surrender. They
+could not get within ten yards of the fort, our fire was so destructive. In
+one of the onsets a man named Mugridge, more valorous than his peers, threw
+himself upon the parapet, when he was seized by twenty pairs of hands, and
+dragged inside the breastwork, where fifteen boys sat down on him to keep
+him quiet.
+
+Perceiving that it was impossible with their small number to dislodge us,
+the watch sent for reinforcements. Their call was responded to, not only by
+the whole constabulary force (eight men), but by a numerous body of
+citizens, who had become alarmed at the prospect of a riot. This formidable
+array brought us to our senses: we began to think that maybe discretion was
+the better part of valor. General Harris and General Ames, with their
+respective staffs, held a council of war in the hospital, and a backward
+movement was decided on. So, after one grand farewell volley, we fled,
+sliding, jumping, rolling, tumbling down the quarry at the rear of the
+fort, and escaped without losing a man.
+
+But we lost Fort Slatter forever. Those battle-scarred ramparts were razed
+to the ground, and humiliating ashes sprinkled over the historic spot, near
+which a solitary lynx-eyed policeman was seen prowling from time to time
+during the rest of the winter.
+
+The event passed into a legend, and afterwards, when later instances of
+pluck and endurance were spoken of, the boys would say, "By golly! You
+ought to have been at the fights on Slatter's Hill!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fourteen
+
+The Cruise of the Dolphin
+
+
+
+It was spring again. The snow had faded away like a dream, and we were
+awakened, so to speak, by the sudden chirping of robins in our back garden.
+Marvellous transformation of snowdrifts into lilacs, wondrous miracle of
+the unfolding leaf! We read in the Holy Book how our Saviour, at the
+marriage-feast, changed the water into wine; we pause and wonder; but every
+hour a greater miracle is wrought at our very feet, if we have but eyes to
+see it.
+
+I had now been a year at Rivermouth. If you do not know what sort of boy I
+was, it is not because I haven't been frank with you. Of my progress at
+school I say little; for this is a story, pure and simple, and not a
+treatise on education. Behold me, however, well up in most of the classes.
+I have worn my Latin grammar into tatters, and am in the first book of
+Virgil. I interlard my conversation at home with easy quotations from that
+poet, and impress Captain Nutter with a lofty notion of my learning. I am
+likewise translating Les Aventures de Telemaque from the French, and shall
+tackle Blair's Lectures the next term. I am ashamed of my crude composition
+about The Horse, and can do better now. Sometimes my head almost aches with
+the variety of my knowledge. I consider Mr. Grimshaw the greatest scholar
+that ever lived, and I don't know which I would rather be-a learned man
+like him, or a circus rider.
+
+My thoughts revert to this particular spring more frequently than to any
+other period of my boyhood, for it was marked by an event that left an
+indelible impression on my memory. As I pen these pages, I feel that I am
+writing of something which happened yesterday, so vividly it all comes back
+to me.
+
+Every Rivermouth boy looks upon the sea as being in some way mixed up with
+his destiny. While he is yet a baby lying in his cradle, he hears the dull,
+far-off boom of the breakers; when be is older, he wanders by the sandy
+shore, watching the waves that come plunging up the beach like white-maned
+seahorses, as Thoreau calls them; his eye follows the lessening sail as it
+fades into the blue horizon, and he burns for the time when he shall stand
+on the quarter-deck of his own ship, and go sailing proudly across that
+mysterious waste of waters.
+
+Then the town itself is full of hints and flavors of the sea. The gables and
+roofs of the houses facing eastward are covered with red rust, like the
+flukes of old anchors; a salty smell pervades the air, and dense gray fogs,
+the very breath of Ocean, periodically creep up into the quiet streets and
+envelop everything. The terrific storms that lash the coast; the kelp and
+spars, and sometimes the bodies of drowned men, tossed on shore by the
+scornful waves; the shipyards, the wharves, and the tawny fleet of
+fishing-smacks yearly fitted out at Rivermouth-these things, and a hundred
+other, feed the imagination and fill the brain of every healthy boy with
+dreams of adventure. He learns to swim almost as soon as he can walk; he
+draws in with his mother's milk the art of handling an oar: he is born a
+sailor, whatever he may turn out to be afterwards.
+
+To own the whole or a portion of a row-boat is his earliest ambition. No
+wonder that I, born to this life, and coming back to it with freshest
+sympathies, should have caught the prevailing infection. No wonder I longed
+to buy a part of the trim little sailboat Dolphin, which chanced just then
+to be in the market. This was in the latter part of May.
+
+Three shares, at five or six dollars each, I forget which, had already been
+taken by Phil Adams, Fred Langdon, and Binny Wallace. The fourth and
+remaining share hung fire. Unless a purchaser could be found for this, the
+bargain was to fall through.
+
+I am afraid I required but slight urging to join in the investment. I had
+four dollars and fifty cents on hand, and the treasurer of the Centipedes
+advanced me the balance, receiving my silver pencil-case as ample security.
+It was a proud moment when I stood on the wharf with my partners,
+inspecting the Dolphin, moored at the foot of a very slippery flight of
+steps. She was painted white with a green stripe outside, and on the stern
+a yellow dolphin, with its scarlet mouth wide open, stared with a surprised
+expression at its own reflection in the water. The boat was a great
+bargain.
+
+I whirled my cap in the air, and ran to the stairs leading down from the
+wharf, when a hand was laid gently on my shoulder. I turned and faced
+Captain Nutter. I never saw such an old sharp-eye as he was in those days.
+
+I knew he wouldn't be angry with me for buying a rowboat; but I also knew
+that the little bowsprit suggesting a jib, and the tapering mast ready for
+its few square feet of canvas, were trifles not likely to meet his
+approval. As far as rowing on the river, among the wharves, was concerned,
+the Captain had long since withdrawn his decided objections, having
+convinced him-self, by going out with me several times, that I could manage
+a pair of sculls as well as anybody.
+
+I was right in my surmises. He commanded me, in the most emphatic terms,
+never to go out in the Dolphin without leaving the mast in the boat-house.
+This curtailed my anticipated sport, but the pleasure of having a pull
+whenever I wanted it remained. I never disobeyed the Captain's orders
+touching the sail, though I sometimes extended my row beyond the points he
+had indicated.
+
+The river was dangerous for sailboats. Squalls, without the slightest
+warning, were of frequent occurrence; scarcely a year passed that six or
+seven persons were not drowned under the very windows of the town, and
+these, oddly enough, were generally sea-captains, who either did not
+understand the river, or lacked the skill to handle a small craft.
+
+A knowledge of such disasters, one of which I witnessed, consoled me
+somewhat when I saw Phil Adams skimming over the water in a spanking breeze
+with every stitch of canvas set. There were few better yachtsmen than Phil
+Adams. He usually went sailing alone, for both Fred Langdon and Binny
+Wallace were under the same restrictions I was.
+
+Not long after the purchase of the boat, we planned an excursion to Sandpeep
+Island, the last of the islands in the harbor. We proposed to start early
+in the morning, and return with the tide in the moonlight. Our only
+difficulty was to obtain a whole day's exemption from school, the customary
+half-holiday not being long enough for our picnic. Somehow, we couldn't
+work it; but fortune arranged it for us. I may say here, that, whatever
+else I did, I never played truant ("hookey" we called it) in my life.
+
+One afternoon the four owners of the Dolphin exchanged significant glances
+when Mr. Grimshaw announced from the desk that there would be no school the
+following day, he having just received intelligence of the death of his
+uncle in Boston I was sincerely attached to Mr. Grimshaw, but I am afraid
+that the death of his uncle did not affect me as it ought to have done.
+
+We were up before sunrise the next morning, in order to take advantage of
+the flood tide, which waits for no man. Our preparations for the cruise
+were made the previous evening. In the way of eatables and drinkables, we
+had stored in the stem of the Dolphin a generous bag of hard-tack (for the
+chowder), a piece of pork to fry the cunners in, three gigantic apple-pies
+(bought at Pettingil's), half a dozen lemons, and a keg of spring-water-the
+last-named article we slung over the side, to keep it cool, as soon as we
+got under way. The crockery and the bricks for our camp-stove we placed in
+the bows, with the groceries, which included sugar, pepper, salt, and a
+bottle of pickles. Phil Adams contributed to the outfit a small tent of
+unbleached cotton cloth, under which we intended to take our nooning.
+
+We unshipped the mast, threw in an extra oar, and were ready to embark. I do
+not believe that Christopher Columbus, when he started on his rather
+successful voyage of discovery, felt half the responsibility and importance
+that weighed upon me as I sat on the middle seat of the Dolphin, with my
+oar resting in the row-lock. I wonder if Christopher Columbus quietly
+slipped out of the house without letting his estimable family know what he
+was up to?
+
+Charley Marden, whose father had promised to cane him if he ever stepped
+foot on sail or rowboat, came down to the wharf in a sour-grape humor, to
+see us off. Nothing would tempt him to go out on the river in such a crazy
+clam-shell of a boat. He pretended that he did not expect to behold us
+alive again, and tried to throw a wet blanket over the expedition.
+
+"Guess you'll have a squally time of it," said Charley, casting off the
+painter. "I'll drop in at old Newbury's" (Newbury was the parish
+undertaker) "and leave word, as I go along!"
+
+'Bosh!" muttered Phil Adams, sticking the boat-hook into the string-piece of
+the wharf, and sending the Dolphin half a dozen yards towards the current.
+
+How calm and lovely the river was! Not a ripple stirred on the glassy
+surface, broken only by the sharp cutwater of our tiny craft. The sun, as
+round and red as an August moon, was by this time peering above the
+water-line.
+
+The town had drifted behind us, and we were entering among the group of
+islands. Sometimes we could almost touch with our boat-hook the shelving
+banks on either side. As we neared the mouth of the harbor a little breeze
+now and then wrinkled the blue water, shook the spangles from the foliage,
+and gently lifted the spiral mist-wreaths that still clung along shore. The
+measured dip of our oars and the drowsy twitterings of the birds seemed to
+mingle with, rather than break, the enchanted silence that reigned about
+us.
+
+The scent of the new clover comes back to me now, as I recall that delicious
+morning when we floated away in a fairy boat down a river like a dream!
+
+The sun was well up when the nose of the Dolphin nestled against the
+snow-white bosom of Sandpeep Island. This island, as I have said before,
+was the last of the cluster, one side of it being washed by the sea. We
+landed on the river-side, the sloping sands and quiet water affording us a
+good place to moor the boat.
+
+It took us an hour or two to transport our stores to the spot selected for
+the encampment. Having pitched our tent, using the five oars to support the
+canvas, we got out our lines, and went down the rocks seaward to fish. It
+was early for cunners, but we were lucky enough to catch as nice a mess as
+ever you saw. A cod for the chowder was not so easily secured. At last
+Binny Wallace hauled in a plump little fellow crusted all over with flaky
+silver.
+
+To skin the fish, build our fireplace, and cook the chowder kept us busy the
+next two hours. The fresh air and the exercise had given us the appetites
+of wolves, and we were about famished by the time the savory mixture was
+ready for our clamshell saucers.
+
+I shall not insult the rising generation on the seaboard by telling them how
+delectable is a chowder compounded and eaten in this Robinson Crusoe
+fashion. As for the boys who live inland, and know naught of such marine
+feasts, my heart is full of pity for them. What wasted lives! Not to know
+the delights of a clam-bake, not to love chowder, to be ignorant of
+lob-scouse!
+
+How happy we were, we four, sitting crosslegged in the crisp salt grass,
+with the invigorating sea-breeze blowing gratefully through our hair! What
+a joyous thing was life, and how far off seemed death-death, that lurks in
+all pleasant places, and was so near!
+
+The banquet finished, Phil Adams drew from his pocket a handful of
+sweet-fern cigars; but as none of the party could indulge without imminent
+risk of becoming sick, we all, on one pretext or another, declined, and
+Phil smoked by himself.
+
+The wind had freshened by this, and we found it comfortable to put on the
+jackets which had been thrown aside in the heat of the day. We strolled
+along the beach and gathered large quantities of the fairy-woven Iceland
+moss, which, at certain seasons, is washed to these shores; then we played
+at ducks and drakes, and then, the sun being sufficiently low, we went in
+bathing.
+
+Before our bath was ended a slight change had come over the sky and sea;
+fleecy-white clouds scudded here and there, and a muffled moan from the
+breakers caught our ears from time to time. While we were dressing, a few
+hurried drops of rain came lisping down, and we adjourned to the tent to
+await the passing of the squall.
+
+"We're all right, anyhow," said Phil Adams. "It won't be much of a blow, and
+we'll be as snug as a bug in a rug, here in the tent, particularly if we
+have that lemonade which some of you fellows were going to make."
+
+By an oversight, the lemons had been left in the boat. Binny Wallace
+volunteered to go for them.
+
+"Put an extra stone on the painter, Binny," said Adams, calling after him;
+"it would be awkward to have the Dolphin give us the slip and return to
+port minus her passengers."
+
+"That it would," answered Binny, scrambling down the rocks.
+
+Sandpeep Island is diamond-shaped-one point running out into the sea, and
+the other looking towards the town. Our tent was on the river-side. Though
+the Dolphin was also on the same side, it lay out of sight by the beach at
+the farther extremity of the island.
+
+Binny Wallace had been absent five or six minutes, when we heard him calling
+our several names in tones that indicated distress or surprise, we could
+not tell which. Our first thought was, "The boat has broken adrift I"
+
+We sprung to our feet and hastened down to the beach. On turning the bluff
+which hid the mooring-place from our view, we found the conjecture correct.
+Not only was the Dolphin afloat, but poor little Binny Wallace was standing
+in the bows with his arms stretched helplessly towards us-drifting out to
+sea!
+
+"Head the boat in shore!" shouted Phil Adams.
+
+Wallace ran to the tiller; but the slight cockle-shell merely swung round
+and drifted broadside on. O, if we bad but left a single scull in the
+Dolphin!
+
+"Can you swim it?" cried Adams, desperately, using his hand as a
+speaking-trumpet, for the distance between the boat and the island widened
+momentarily.
+
+Binny Wallace looked down at the sea, which was covered with white caps, and
+made a despairing gesture. He knew, and we knew, that the stoutest swimmer
+could not live forty seconds in those angry waters.
+
+A wild, insane light came into Phil Adams's eyes, as he stood knee-deep in
+the boiling surf, and for an instant I think he meditated plunging into the
+ocean after the receding boat.
+
+The sky darkened, and an ugly look stole rapidly over the broken surface of
+the sea.
+
+Binny Wallace half rose from his seat in the stem, and waved his hand to us
+in token of farewell. In spite of the distance, increasing every instant we
+could see his face plainly. The anxious expression it wore at first bad
+passed. It was pale and meek now, and I love to think there was a kind of
+halo about it, like that which painters place around the forehead of a
+saint. So he drifted away.
+
+The sky grew darker and darker. It was only by straining our eyes through
+the unnatural twilight that we could keep the Dolphin in sight. The figure
+of Binny Wallace was no longer visible, for the boat itself had dwindled to
+a mere white dot on the black water. Now we lost it, and our hearts stopped
+throbbing; and now the speck appeared again, for an instant, on the crest
+of a high wave.
+
+Finally, it went out like a spark, and we saw it no more. Then we gazed at
+each other, and dared not speak.
+
+Absorbed in following the course of the boat, we had scarcely noticed the
+huddled inky clouds that sagged down all around us. From these threatening
+masses, seamed at intervals with pale lightning, there now burst a heavy
+peal of thunder that shook the ground under our feet. A sudden squall
+struck the sea, ploughing deep white furrows into it, and at the same
+instant a single piercing shriek rose above the tempest-the frightened cry
+of a gull swooping over the island. How it startled us!
+
+It was impossible any longer to keep our footing on the beach. The wind and
+the breakers would have swept us into the ocean if we had not clung to each
+other with the desperation of drowning men. Taking advantage of a momentary
+lull, we crawled up the sands on our hands and knees, and, pausing in the
+lee of the granite ledge to gain breath, returned to the camp, where we
+found that the gale had snapped all the fastenings of the tent but one.
+Held by this, the puffed-out canvas swayed in the wind like a balloon. It
+was a task of some difficulty to secure it, which we did by beating down
+the canvas with the oars.
+
+After several trials, we succeeded in setting up the tent on the leeward
+side of the ledge. Blinded by the vivid flashes of lightning, and drenched
+by the rain, which fell in torrents, we crept, half dead with fear and
+anguish, under our flimsy shelter. Neither the anguish nor the fear was on
+our own account, for we were comparatively safe, but for poor little Binny
+Wallace, driven out to sea in the merciless gale. We shuddered to think of
+him in that frail shell, drifting on and on to his grave, the sky rent with
+lightning over his head, and the green abysses yawning beneath him. We fell
+to crying, the three of us, and cried I know not how long.
+
+Meanwhile the storm raged with augmented fury. We were obliged to hold on to
+the ropes of the tent to prevent it blowing away. The spray from the river
+leaped several yards up the rocks and clutched at us malignantly. The very
+island trembled with the concussions of the sea beating upon it, and at
+times I fancied that it had broken loose from its foundation, and was
+floating off with us. The breakers, streaked with angry phosphorus, were
+fearful to look at.
+
+The wind rose higher and higher, cutting long slits in the tent, through
+which the rain poured incessantly. To complete the sum of our miseries, the
+night was at hand. It came down suddenly, at last, like a curtain, shutting
+in Sandpeep island from all the world.
+
+It was a dirty night, as the sailors say. The darkness was something that
+could be felt as well as seen-it pressed down upon one with a cold, clammy
+touch. Gazing into the hollow blackness, all sorts of imaginable shapes
+seemed to start forth from vacancy-brilliant colors, stars, prisms, and
+dancing lights. What boy, lying awake at night, has not amused or terrified
+himself by peopling the spaces around his bed with these phenomena of his
+own eyes?
+
+"I say," whispered Fred Langdon, at length, clutching my hand, "don't you
+see things-out there-in the dark?' 20
+
+"Yes, yes-Binny Wallace's face!"
+
+I added to my own nervousness by making this avowal; though for the last ten
+minutes I had seen little besides that star-pale face with its angelic hair
+and brows. First a slim yellow circle, like the nimbus round the moon, took
+shape and grew sharp against the darkness; then this faded gradually, and
+there was the Face, wearing the same sad, sweet look it wore when he waved
+his hand to us across the awful water. This optical illusion kept repeating
+itself.
+
+"And I too," said Adams. "I see it every now and then, outside there. What
+wouldn't I give if it really was poor little Wallace looking in at us! O
+boys, how shall we dare to go back to the town without him? I've wished a
+hundred times, since we've been sitting here, that I was in his place,
+alive or dead!"
+
+We dreaded the approach of morning as much as we longed for it. The morning
+would tell us all. Was it possible for the Dolphin to outride such a storm?
+There was a light-house on Mackerel Reef, which lay directly in the course
+the boat bad taken, when it disappeared. If the Dolphin had caught on this
+reef, perhaps Binny Wallace was safe. Perhaps his cries had been heard by
+the keeper of the light. The man owned a lifeboat, and had rescued several
+people. Who could tell?
+
+Such were the questions we asked ourselves again and again, as we lay in
+each other's arms waiting for daybreak. What an endless night it was! I
+have known months that did not seem so long.
+
+Our position was irksome rather than perilous; for the day was certain to
+bring us relief from the town, where our prolonged absence, together with
+the storm, had no doubt excited the liveliest alarm for our safety. But the
+cold, the darkness, and the suspense were hard to bear.
+
+Our soaked jackets bad chilled us to the bone. To keep warm, we lay huddled
+together so closely that we could bear our hearts beat above the tumult of
+sea and sky.
+
+After a while we grew very hungry, not having broken our fast since early in
+the day. The rain had turned the hard-tack into a sort of dough; but it was
+better than nothing.
+
+We used to laugh at Fred Langdon for always carrying in his pocket a small
+vial of essence of peppermint or sassafras, a few drops of which, sprinkled
+on a lump of loaf-sugar, he seemed to consider a great luxury. I don't know
+what would have become of us at this crisis, if it hadn't been for that
+omnipresent bottle of hot stuff. We poured the stinging liquid over our
+sugar, which bad kept dry in a sardine-box, and warmed ourselves with
+frequent doses.
+
+After four or five hours the rain ceased, the wind died away to a moan, and
+the sea-no longer raging like a maniac-sobbed and sobbed with a piteous
+human voice all along the coast. And well it might, after that night's
+work. Twelve sail of the Gloucester fishing fleet had gone down with every
+soul on board, just outside of Whale's-back Light. Think of the wide grief
+that follows in the wake of one wreck; then think of the despairing women
+who wrung their hands and wept, the next morning, in the streets of
+Gloucester, Marblehead, and Newcastle!
+
+Though our strength was nearly spent, we were too cold to sleep. Once I sunk
+into a troubled doze, when I seemed to bear Charley Marden's parting words,
+only it was the Sea that said them. After that I threw off the drowsiness
+whenever it threatened to overcome me.
+
+Fred Langdon was the earliest to discover a filmy, luminous streak in the
+sky, the first glimmering of sunrise.
+
+"Look, it is nearly daybreak!"
+
+While we were following the direction of his finger, a sound of distant oars
+fell on our ears.
+
+We listened breathlessly, and as the dip of the blades became more audible,
+we discerned two foggy lights, like will-o'the-wisps, floating on the
+river.
+
+Running down to the water's edge, we hailed the boats with all our might.
+The call was heard, for the oars rested a moment in the row-locks, and then
+pulled in towards the island.
+
+It was two boats from the town, in the foremost of which we could now make
+out the figures of Captain Nutter and Binny Wallace's father. We shrunk
+back on seeing him.
+
+'Thank God!" cried Mr. Wallace, fervently, as he leaped from the wherry
+without waiting for the bow to touch the beach.
+
+But when he saw only three boys standing on the sands, his eye wandered
+restlessly about in quest of the fourth; then a deadly pallor overspread
+his features.
+
+Our story was soon told. A solemn silence fell upon the crowd of rough
+boatmen gathered round, interrupted only by a stifled sob from one poor old
+man, who stood apart from the rest.
+
+The sea was still running too high for any small boat to venture out; so it
+was arranged that the wherry should take us back to town, leaving the yawl,
+with a picked crew, to hug the island until daybreak, and then set forth in
+search of the Dolphin.
+
+Though it was barely sunrise when we reached town, there were a great many
+people assembled at the landing eager for intelligence from missing boats.
+Two picnic parties had started down river the day before, just previous to
+the gale, and nothing had been beard of them. It turned out that the
+pleasure-seekers saw their danger in time, and ran ashore on one of the
+least exposed islands, where they passed the night. Shortly after our own
+arrival they appeared off Rivermouth, much to the joy of their friends, in
+two shattered, dismasted boats.
+
+The excitement over, I was in a forlorn state, physically and mentally.
+Captain Nutter put me to bed between hot blankets, and sent Kitty Collins
+for the doctor. I was wandering in my mind, and fancied myself still on
+Sandpeep Island: now we were building our brick-stove to cook the chowder,
+and, in my delirium, I laughed aloud and shouted to my comrades; now the
+sky darkened, and the squall struck the island: now I gave orders to
+Wallace how to manage the boat, and now I cried because the rain was
+pouring in on me through the holes in the tent. Towards evening a high
+fever set in, and it was many days before my grandfather deemed it prudent
+to tell me that the Dolphin had been found, floating keel upwards, four
+miles southeast of Mackerel Reef.
+
+Poor little Binny Wallace! How strange it seemed, when I went to school
+again, to see that empty seat in the fifth row! How gloomy the playground
+was, lacking the sunshine of his gentle, sensitive face! One day a folded
+sheet slipped from my algebra; it was the last note he ever wrote me. I
+couldn't read it for the tears.
+
+What a pang shot across my heart the afternoon it was whispered through the
+town that a body had been washed ashore at Grave Point-the place where we
+bathed. We bathed there no more! How well I remember the funeral, and what
+a piteous sight it was afterwards to see his familiar name on a small
+headstone in the Old South Burying Ground!
+
+Poor little Binny Wallace! Always the same to me. The rest of us have grown
+up into hard, worldly men, fighting the fight of life; but you are forever
+young, and gentle, and pure; a part of my own childhood that time cannot
+wither; always a little boy, always poor little Binny Wallace!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fifteen
+
+An Old Acquaintance Turns Up
+
+
+
+A year had stolen by since the death of Binny Wallace-a year of which I have
+nothing important to record.
+
+The loss of our little playmate threw a shadow over our young lives for many
+and many a month. The Dolphin rose and fell with the tide at the foot of
+the slippery steps, unused, the rest of the summer. At the close of
+November we hauled her sadly into the boat-house for the winter; but when
+spring came round we launched the Dolphin again, and often went down to the
+wharf and looked at her lying in the tangled eel-grass, without much
+inclination to take a row. The associations connected with the boat were
+too painful as yet; but time, which wears the sharp edge from everything,
+softened this feeling, and one afternoon we brought out the cobwebbed oars.
+
+The ice once broken, brief trips along the wharves-we seldom cared to go out
+into the river now-became one of our chief amusements. Meanwhile Gypsy was
+not forgotten. Every clear morning I was in the saddle before breakfast,
+and there are few roads or lanes within ten miles of Rivermouth that have
+not borne the print of her vagrant hoof.
+
+I studied like a good fellow this quarter, carrying off a couple of first
+prizes. The Captain expressed his gratification by presenting me with a new
+silver dollar. If a dollar in his eyes was smaller than a cart-wheel, it
+wasn't so very much smaller. I redeemed my pencil-case from the treasurer
+of the Centipedes, and felt that I was getting on in the world.
+
+It was at this time I was greatly cast down by a letter from my father
+saying that he should be unable to visit Rivermouth until the following
+year. With that letter came another to Captain Nutter, which he did not
+read aloud to the family, as usual. It was on business, he said, folding it
+up in his wallet. He received several of these business letters from time
+to time, and I noticed that they always made him silent and moody.
+
+The fact is, my father's banking-house was not thriving. The unlooked-for
+failure of a firm largely indebted to him had crippled "the house." When
+the Captain imparted this information to me I didn't trouble myself over
+the matter. I supposed-if I supposed anything-that all grown-up people had
+more or less money, when they wanted it. Whether they inherited it, or
+whether government supplied them, was not clear to me. A loose idea that my
+father had a private gold-mine somewhere or other relieved me of all
+uneasiness.
+
+I was not far from right. Every man has within himself a gold-mine whose
+riches are limited only by his own industry. It is true, it sometimes
+happens that industry does not avail, if a man lacks that something which,
+for want of a better name, we call Luck. My father was a person of untiring
+energy and ability; but he had no luck. To use a Rivermouth saying, he was
+always catching sculpins when everyone else with the same bait was catching
+mackerel.
+
+It was more than two years since I had seen my parents. I felt that I could
+not bear a longer separation. Every letter from New Orleans-we got two or
+three a month-gave me a fit of homesickness; and when it was definitely
+settled that my father and mother were to remain in the South another
+twelvemonth, I resolved to go to them.
+
+Since Binny Wallace's death, Pepper Whitcomb had been my fidus Achates; we
+occupied desks near each other at school, and were always together in play
+hours. We rigged a twine telegraph from his garret window to the scuttle of
+the Nutter House, and sent messages to each other in a match-box. We shared
+our pocket-money and our secrets-those amazing secrets which boys have. We
+met in lonely places by stealth, and parted like conspirators; we couldn't
+buy a jackknife or build a kite without throwing an air of mystery and
+guilt over the transaction.
+
+I naturally hastened to lay my New Orleans project before Pepper Whitcomb,
+having dragged him for that purpose to a secluded spot in the dark pine
+woods outside the town. Pepper listened to me with a gravity which he will
+not be able to surpass when he becomes Chief Justice, and strongly advised
+me to go.
+
+"The summer vacation," said Pepper, "lasts six weeks; that will give you a
+fortnight to spend in New Orleans, allowing two weeks each way for the
+journey."
+
+I wrung his hand and begged him to accompany me, offering to defray all the
+expenses. I wasn't anything if I wasn't princely in those days. After
+considerable urging, he consented to go on terms so liberal. The whole
+thing was arranged; there was nothing to do now but to advise Captain
+Nutter of my plan, which I did the next day.
+
+The possibility that he might oppose the tour never entered my head. I was
+therefore totally unprepared for the vigorous negative which met my
+proposal. I was deeply mortified, moreover, for there was Pepper Whitcomb
+on the wharf, at the foot of the street, waiting for me to come and let him
+know what day we were to start.
+
+"Go to New Orleans? Go to Jericho I" exclaimed Captain Nutter. "You'd look
+pretty, you two, philandering off, like the babes in the wood, twenty-five
+hundred miles, 'with all the world before-you where to choose!'"
+
+And the Captain's features, which had worn an indignant air as he began the
+sentence, relaxed into a broad smile. Whether it was at the felicity of his
+own quotation, or at the mental picture he drew of Pepper and myself on our
+travels
+
+I couldn't tell, and I didn't care. I was heart-broken. How could I face my
+chum after all the dazzling inducements I had held out to him?
+
+My grandfather, seeing that I took the matter seriously, pointed out the
+difficulties of such a journey and the great expense involved. He entered
+into the details of my father's money troubles, and succeeded in making it
+plain to me that my wishes, under the circumstances, were somewhat
+unreasonable. It was in no cheerful mood that I joined Pepper at the end of
+the wharf.
+
+I found that young gentleman leaning against the bulkhead gazing intently
+towards the islands in the harbor. He had formed a telescope of his hands,
+and was so occupied with his observations as to be oblivious of my
+approach.
+
+"Hullo!" cried Pepper, dropping his hands. "Look there! Isn't that a bark
+coming up the Narrows?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Just at the left of Fishcrate Island. Don't you see the foremast peeping
+above the old derrick?"
+
+Sure enough it was a vessel of considerable size, slowly beating up to town.
+In a few moments more the other two masts were visible above the green
+hillocks.
+
+"Fore-topmasts blown away," said Pepper. "Putting in for repairs, I guess."
+
+As the bark lazily crept from behind the last of the islands, she let go her
+anchors and swung round with the tide. Then the gleeful chant of the
+sailors at the capstan came to us pleasantly across the water. The vessel
+lay within three quarters of a mile of us, and we could plainly see the men
+at the davits lowering the starboard long-boat. It no sooner touched the
+stream than a dozen of the crew scrambled like mice over the side of the
+merchantman.
+
+In a neglected seaport like Rivermouth the arrival of a large ship is an
+event of moment. The prospect of having twenty or thirty jolly tars let
+loose on the peaceful town excites divers emotions among the inhabitants.
+The small shopkeepers along the wharves anticipate a thriving trade; the
+proprietors of the two rival boarding-houses-the "Wee Drop" and the
+"Mariner's Home"-hasten down to the landing to secure lodgers; and the
+female population of Anchor Lane turn out to a woman, for a ship fresh from
+sea is always full of possible husbands and long-lost prodigal sons.
+
+But aside from this there is scant welcome given to a ship's crew in
+Rivermouth. The toil-worn mariner is a sad fellow ashore, judging him by a
+severe moral standard.
+
+Once, I remember, a United States frigate came into port for repairs after a
+storm. She lay in the river a fortnight or more, and every day sent us a
+gang of sixty or seventy of our country's gallant defenders, who spread
+themselves over the town, doing all sorts of mad things. They were
+good-natured enough, but full of old Sancho. The "Wee Drop" proved a drop
+too much for many of them. They went singing through the streets at
+midnight, wringing off door-knockers, shinning up water-spouts, and
+frightening the Oldest Inhabitant nearly to death by popping their heads
+into his second-story window, and shouting "Fire!" One morning a
+blue-jacket was discovered in a perilous plight, half-way up the steeple of
+the South Church, clinging to the lightning-rod. How he got there nobody
+could tell, not even blue-jacket himself. All he knew was, that the leg of
+his trousers had caught on a nail, and there he stuck, unable to move
+either way. It cost the town twenty dollars to get him down again. He
+directed the workmen how to splice the ladders brought to his assistance,
+and called his rescuers "butter-fingered land-lubbers" with delicious
+coolness.
+
+But those were man-of-war's men: The sedate-looking craft now lying off
+Fishcrate Island wasn't likely to carry any such cargo. Nevertheless, we
+watched the coming in of the long-boat with considerable interest.
+
+As it drew near, the figure of the man pulling the bow-oar seemed oddly
+familiar to me. Where could I have seen him before? When and where? His
+back was towards me, but there was something about that closely cropped
+head that I recognized instantly.
+
+"Way enough!" cried the steersman, and all the oars stood upright in the
+air. The man in the bow seized the boat-hook, and, turning round quickly,
+showed me the honest face of Sailor Ben of the Typhoon.
+
+"It's Sailor Ben!" I cried, nearly pushing Pepper Whitcomb overboard in my
+excitement.
+
+Sailor Ben, with the wonderful pink lady on his arm, and the ships and stars
+and anchors tattooed all over him, was a well-known hero among my
+playmates. And there he was, like something in a dream come true!
+
+I didn't wait for my old acquaintance to get firmly on the wharf, before I
+grasped his hand in both of mine.
+
+"Sailor Ben, don't you remember me?"
+
+He evidently did not. He shifted his quid from one cheek to the other, and
+looked at me meditatively.
+
+"Lord love ye, lad, I don't know you. I was never here afore in my life."
+
+"What!" I cried, enjoying his perplexity. "Have you forgotten the voyage
+from New Orleans in the Typhoon, two years ago, you lovely old
+picture-book?"
+
+Ah! then he knew me, and in token of the recollection gave my hand such a
+squeeze that I am sure an unpleasant change came over my countenance.
+
+"Bless my eyes, but you have growed so. I shouldn't have knowed you if I had
+met you in Singapore!"
+
+Without stopping to inquire, as I was tempted to do, why he was more likely
+to recognize me in Singapore than anywhere else, I invited him to come at
+once up to the Nutter House, where I insured him a warm welcome from the
+Captain.
+
+"Hold steady, Master Tom," said Sailor Ben, slipping the painter through the
+ringbolt and tying the loveliest knot you ever saw; "hold steady till I see
+if the mate can let me off. If you please, sir," he continued, addressing
+the steersman, a very red-faced, bow-legged person, "this here is a little
+shipmate o' mine as wants to talk over back times along of me, if so it's
+convenient."
+
+"All right, Ben," returned the mate; "sha'n't want you for an hour."
+
+Leaving one man in charge of the boat, the mate and the rest of the crew
+went off together. In the meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb had got out his
+cunner-line, and was quietly fishing at the end of the wharf, as if to give
+me the idea that he wasn't so very much impressed by my intimacy with so
+renowned a character as Sailor Ben. Perhaps Pepper was a little jealous. At
+any rate, he refused to go with us to the house.
+
+Captain Nutter was at home reading the Rivennouth Barnacle. He was a reader
+to do an editor's heart good; he never skipped over an advertisement, even
+if he had read it fifty times before. Then the paper went the rounds of the
+neighborhood, among the poor people, like the single portable eye which the
+three blind crones passed to each other in the legend of King Acrisius. The
+Captain, I repeat, was wandering in the labyrinths of the Rivermouth
+Barnacle when I led Sailor Ben into the sitting-room.
+
+My grandfather, whose inborn courtesy knew no distinctions, received my
+nautical friend as if he had been an admiral instead of a common
+forecastle-hand. Sailor Ben pulled an imaginary tuft of hair on his
+forehead, and bowed clumsily. Sailors have a way of using their forelock as
+a sort of handle to bow with.
+
+The old tar had probably never been in so handsome an apartment in all his
+days, and nothing could induce him to take the inviting mahogany chair
+which the Captain wheeled out from the corner.
+
+The abashed mariner stood up against the wall, twirling his tarpaulin in his
+two hands and looking extremely silly. He made a poor show in a gentleman's
+drawing-room, but what a fellow he had been in his day, when the gale blew
+great guns and the topsails wanted reefing! I thought of him with the
+Mexican squadron off Vera Cruz, where,
+
+'The rushing battle-bolt sung from the three-decker out of the
+
+foam,"
+
+and he didn't seem awkward or ignoble to me, for all his shyness.
+
+As Sailor Ben declined to sit down, the Captain did not resume his seat; so
+we three stood in a constrained manner until my grandfather went to the
+door and called to Kitty to bring in a decanter of Madeira and two glasses.
+
+"My grandson, here, has talked so much about you," said the Captain,
+pleasantly, "that you seem quite like an old acquaintance to me."
+
+"Thankee, sir, thankee," returned Sailor Ben, looking as guilty as if he had
+been detected in picking a pocket.
+
+"And I'm very glad to see you, Mr.-Mr.-"
+
+"Sailor Ben," suggested that worthy.
+
+"Mr. Sailor Ben," added the Captain, smiling. "Tom, open the door, there's
+Kitty with the glasses."
+
+I opened the door, and Kitty entered the room bringing the things on a
+waiter, which she was about to set on the table, when suddenly she uttered
+a loud shriek; the decanter and glasses fell with a crash to the floor, and
+Kitty, as white as a sheet, was seen flying through the hall.
+
+"It's his wraith! It's his wraith!"' we heard Kitty shrieking in the
+kitchen.
+
+My grandfather and I turned with amazement to Sailor Ben. His eyes were
+standing out of his head like a lobster's.
+
+"It's my own little Irish lass!" shouted the sailor, and he darted into the
+hall after her.
+
+Even then we scarcely caught the meaning of his words, but when we saw
+Sailor Ben and Kitty sobbing on each other's shoulder in the kitchen, we
+understood it all.
+
+"I begs your honor's parden, sir," said Sailor Ben, lifting his tear-stained
+face above Kitty's tumbled hair; "I begs your honor's parden for kicking up
+a rumpus in the house, but it's my own little Irish lass as I lost so long
+ago!"
+
+"Heaven preserve us!" cried the Captain, blowing his nose violently-a
+transparent ruse to hide his emotion.
+
+Miss Abigail was in an upper chamber, sweeping; but on hearing the unusual
+racket below, she scented an accident and came ambling downstairs with a
+bottle of the infallible hot-drops in her hand. Nothing but the firmness of
+my grandfather prevented her from giving Sailor Ben a table-spoonful on the
+spot. But when she learned what had come about-that this was Kitty's
+husband, that Kitty Collins wasn't Kitty Collins now, but Mrs. Benjamin
+Watson of Nantucket-the good soul sat down on the meal-chest and sobbed as
+if-to quote from Captain Nutter-as if a husband of her own had turned up!
+
+A happier set of people than we were never met together in a dingy kitchen
+or anywhere else. The Captain ordered a fresh decanter of Madeira, and made
+all hands, excepting myself, drink a cup to the return of "the prodigal
+sea-son," as he persisted in calling Sailor Ben.
+
+After the first flush of joy and surprise was over Kitty grew silent and
+constrained. Now and then she fixed her eyes thoughtfully on her husband.
+Why had he deserted her all these years? What right had he to look for a
+welcome from one he had treated so cruelly? She had been true to him, but
+had he been true to her? Sailor Ben must have guessed what was passing in
+her mind, for presently he took her hand and said- "Well, lass, it's a long
+yarn, but you shall have it all in good time. It was my hard luck as made
+us part company, an' no will of mine, for I loved you dear."
+
+Kitty brightened up immediately, needing no other assurance of Sailor Ben's
+faithfulness.
+
+When his hour had expired, we walked with him down to the wharf, where the
+Captain held a consultation with the mate, which resulted in an extension
+of Mr. Watson's leave of absence, and afterwards in his discharge from his
+ship. We then went to the "Mariner's Home" to engage a room for him, as he
+wouldn't hear of accepting the hospitalities of the Nutter House.
+
+"You see, I'm only an uneddicated man," he remarked to my grandfather, by
+way of explanation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Sixteen
+
+In Which Sailor Ben Spins a Yarn
+
+
+
+Of course we were all very curious to learn what had befallen Sailor Ben
+that morning long ago, when he bade his little bride goodby and disappeared
+so mysteriously.
+
+After tea, that same evening, we assembled around the table in the
+kitchen-the only place where Sailor Ben felt at home3/4to hear what he had
+to say for himself.
+
+The candles were snuffed, and a pitcher of foaming nut-brown ale was set at
+the elbow of the speaker, who was evidently embarrassed by the
+respectability of his audience, consisting of Captain Nutter, Miss Abigail,
+myself, and Kitty, whose face shone with happiness like one of the polished
+tin platters on the dresser.
+
+"Well, my hearties," commenced Sailor Ben-then he stopped short and turned
+very red, as it struck him that maybe this was not quite the proper way to
+address a dignitary like the Captain and a severe elderly lady like Miss
+Abigail Nutter, who sat bolt upright staring at him as she would have
+stared at the Tycoon of Japan himself.
+
+"I ain't much of a hand at spinnin' a yarn," remarked Sailor Ben,
+apologetically, "'specially when the yarn is all about a man as has made a
+fool of hisself, an' 'specially when that man's name is Benjamin Watson."
+
+"Bravo!" cried Captain Nutter, rapping on the table encouragingly.
+
+"Thankee, sir, thankee. I go back to the time when Kitty an' me was livin'
+in lodgin's by the dock in New York. We was as happy, sir, as two
+porpusses, which they toil not neither do they spin. But when I seed the
+money gittin' low in the locker-Kitty's starboard stockin', savin' your
+presence, marm-I got down-hearted like, seem' as I should be obleeged to
+ship agin, for it didn't seem as I could do much ashore. An' then the sea
+was my nat'ral spear of action. I wasn't exactly born on it, look you, but
+I fell into it the fust time I was let out arter my birth. My mother
+slipped her cable for a heavenly port afore I was old enough to hail her;
+so I larnt to look on the ocean for a sort of step-mother-an' a precious
+hard one she has been to me.
+
+"The idee of leavin' Kitty so soon arter our marriage went agin my grain
+considerable. I cruised along the docks for some-thin' to do in the way of
+stevedore: an' though I picked up a stray job here and there, I didn't am
+enough to buy ship-bisket for a rat; let alone feedin' two human mouths.
+There wasn't nothin' honest I wouldn't have turned a hand to; but the
+'longshoremen gobbled up all the work, an' a outsider like me didn't stand
+a show.
+
+"Things got from bad to worse; the month's rent took all our cash except a
+dollar or so, an' the sky looked kind o' squally fore an' aft. Well, I set
+out one mornin'-that identical unlucky mornin'-determined to come back an'
+toss some pay into Kitty's lap, if I had to sell my jacket for it. I spied
+a brig unloadin' coal at pier No. 47-how well I remembers it! I hailed the
+mate, an' offered myself for a coal-heaver. But I wasn't wanted, as he told
+me civilly enough, which was better treatment than usual. As I turned off
+rather glum I was signalled by one of them sleek, smooth-spoken rascals
+with a white hat an' a weed on it, as is always goin' about the piers
+a-seekin' who they may devower.
+
+"We sailors know 'em for rascals from stem to starn, but somehow every fresh
+one fleeces us jest as his mate did afore him. We don't lam nothin' by
+exper'ence; we're jest no better than a lot of babys with no brains.
+
+"'Good mornin', my man,' sez the chap, as iley as you please.
+
+"'Mornin', sir,' sez I.
+
+"'Lookin' for a job?' sez he.
+
+"'Through the big end of a telescope,' sez 1-meanin' that the chances for a
+job looked very small from my pint of view.
+
+"'You're the man for my money,' sez the sharper, smilin' as innocent as a
+cherubim; 'jest step in here, till we talk it over.'
+
+"So I goes with him like a nat'ral-born idiot, into a little grocery-shop
+near by, where we sets down at a table with a bottle atween us. Then it
+comes out as there is a New Bedford whaler about to start for the fishin'
+grounds, an' jest one able-bodied sailor like me is wanted to make up the
+crew. Would I go? Yes, I wouldn't on no terms.
+
+"'I'll bet you fifty dollars,' sez he, 'that you'll come back fust mate.'
+
+"'I'll bet you a hundred,' sez I, 'that I don't, for I've signed papers as
+keeps me ashore, an' the parson has witnessed the deed.'
+
+"So we sat there, he urgin' me to ship, an' I chaffin' him cheerful over the
+bottle.
+
+"Arter a while I begun to feel a little queer; things got foggy in my upper
+works, an' I remembers, faint-like, of signin' a paper; then I remembers
+bein' in a small boat; an' then I remembers nothin' until I heard the
+mate's whistle pipin' all hands on deck. I tumbled up with the rest; an'
+there I was-on board of a whaler outward bound for a three years' cruise,
+an' my dear little lass ashore awaitin' for me."
+
+"Miserable wretch!" said Miss Abigail, in a voice that vibrated among the
+tin platters on the dresser. This was Miss Abigail's way of testifying her
+sympathy.
+
+"Thankee, marm," returned Sailor Ben, doubtfully.
+
+"No talking to the man at the wheel," cried the Captain. Upon which we all
+laughed. "Spin!" added my grandfather.
+
+Sailor Ben resumed:
+
+"I leave you to guess the wretchedness as fell upon me, for I've not got the
+gift to tell you. There I was down on the ship's books for a three years'
+viage, an' no help for it. I feel nigh to six hundred years old when I
+think how long that viage was. There isn't no hour-glass as runs slow
+enough to keep a tally of the slowness of them fust hours. But I done my
+duty like a man, seem' there wasn't no way of gettin' out of it. I told my
+shipmates of the trick as had been played on me, an they tried to cheer me
+up a bit; but I was sore sorrowful for a long spell. Many a night on watch
+I put my face in my hands and sobbed for thinkin' of the little woman left
+among the land-sharks, an' no man to have an eye on her, God bless her!"
+
+Here Kitty softly drew her chair nearer to Sailor Ben, and rested one hand
+on his arm.
+
+"Our adventures among the whales, I take it, doesn't consarn the present
+company here assembled. So I give that the go by. There's an end to
+everythin', even to a whalin' viage. My heart all but choked me the day we
+put into New Bedford with our cargo of ile. I got my three years' pay in a
+lump, an' made for New York like a flash of lightuin'. The people hove to
+and looked at me, as I rushed through the streets like a madman, until I
+came to the spot where the lodgin'-house stood on West Street. But, Lord
+love ye, there wasn't no sech lodgin'-house there, but a great new brick
+shop.
+
+"I made bold to go in an' ask arter the old place, but nobody knowed nothin'
+about it, save as it had been torn down two years or more. I was adrift
+now, for I had reckoned all them days and nights on gittin' word of Kitty
+from Dan Shackford, the man as kept the lodgin'.
+
+"As I stood there with all the wind knocked out of my sails, the idee of
+runnin' alongside the perlice-station popped into my head. The perlice was
+likely to know the latitude of a man like Dan Shackford, who wasn't over
+an' above respecktible. They did know-he had died in the Tombs jail that
+day twelvemonth. A coincydunce, wasn't it? I was ready to drop when they
+told me this; howsomever, I bore up an' give the chief a notion of the fix
+I was in. He writ a notice which I put into the newspapers every day for
+three months; but nothin' come of it. I cruised over the city week in and
+week out I went to every sort of place where they hired women hands; I
+didn't leave a think undone that a uneddicated man could do. But nothin'
+come of it. I don't believe there was a wretcheder soul in that big city of
+wretchedness than me. Sometimes I wanted to lay down in the sheets and die.
+
+"Drif tin' disconsolate one day among the shippin', who should I overhaul
+but the identical smooth-spoken chap with a white hat an' a weed on it! I
+didn't know if there was any spent left in me, till I clapped eye on his
+very onpleasant countenance. 'You villain!' sez I, 'where's my little Irish
+lass as you dragged me away from?' an' I lighted on him, hat and all, like
+that!"
+
+Here Sailor Ben brought his fist down on the deal table with the force of a
+sledge-hammer. Miss Abigail gave a start, and the ale leaped up in the
+pitcher like a miniature fountain.
+
+"I begs your parden, ladies and gentlemen all; but the thought of that
+feller with his ring an' his watch-chain an' his walrus face, is alus too
+many for me. I was for pitchin' him into the North River, when a perliceman
+prevented me from benefitin' the human family. I had to pay five dollars
+for hittin' the chap (they said it was salt and buttery), an' that's what I
+call a neat, genteel luxury. It was worth double the money jest to see that
+white hat, with a weed on it, layin' on the wharf like a busted accordiun.
+
+"Arter months of useless sarch, I went to sea agin. I never got into a foren
+port but I kept a watch out for Kitty. Once I thought I seed her in
+Liverpool, but it was only a gal as looked like her. The numbers of women
+in different parts of the world as looked like her was amazin'. So a good
+many years crawled by, an' I wandered from place to place, never givin' up
+the sarch. I might have been chief mate scores of times, maybe master; but
+I hadn't no ambition. I seed many strange things in them years-outlandish
+people an' cities, storms, shipwracks, an' battles. I seed many a true mate
+go down, an' sometimes I envied them what went to their rest. But these
+things is neither here nor there.
+
+"About a year ago I shipped on board the Belphcebe yonder, an' of all the
+strange winds as ever blowed, the strangest an' the best was the wind as
+blowed me to this here blessed spot. I can't be too thankful. That I'm as
+thankful as it is possible for an uneddicated man to be, He knows as reads
+the heart of all."
+
+Here ended Sailor Ben's yarn, which I have written down in his own homely
+words as nearly as I can recall them. After he had finished, the Captain
+shook hands with him and served out the ale.
+
+As Kitty was about to drink, she paused, rested the cup on her knee, and
+asked what day of the month it was.
+
+"The twenty-seventh," said the Captain, wondering what she was driving at.
+
+"Then," cried Kitty, "it's ten years this night sence-"
+
+"Since what?" asked my grandfather.
+
+"Sence the little lass and I got spliced!" roared Sailor Ben. "There's
+another coincydunce for you!"
+
+On hearing this we all clapped hands, and the Captain, with a degree of
+ceremony that was almost painful, drank a bumper to the health and
+happiness of the bride and bridegroom.
+
+It was a pleasant sight to see the two old lovers sitting side by side, in
+spite of all, drinking from the same little cup-a battered zinc dipper
+which Sailor Ben had unslung from a strap round his waist. I think I never
+saw him without this dipper and a sheath-knife suspended just back of his
+hip, ready for any convivial occasion.
+
+We had a merry time of it. The Captain was in great force this evening, and
+not only related his famous exploit in the War of 1812, but regaled the
+company with a dashing sea-song from Mr. Shakespeare's play of The Tempest.
+He had a mellow tenor voice (not Shakespeare, but the Captain), and rolled
+out the verse with a will:
+
+
+
+"The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,
+
+The gunner, and his mate,
+
+Lov'd Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,
+
+But none of us car'd for Kate."
+
+
+
+"A very good song, and very well sung," says Sailor Ben; "but some of us
+does care for Kate. Is this Mr. Shawkspear a seafarm' man, sir?"
+"Not at present," replied the Captain, with a monstrous twinkle in his eye.
+
+The clock was striking ten when the party broke up. The Captain walked to
+the "Mariner's Home" with his guest, in order to question him regarding his
+future movements.
+
+"Well, sir," said he, "I ain't as young as I was, an' I don't cal'ulate to
+go to sea no more. I proposes to drop anchor here, an' hug the land until
+the old hulk goes to pieces. I've got two or three thousand dollars in the
+locker, an' expects to get on uncommon comfortable without askin' no odds
+from the Assylum for Decayed Mariners."
+
+My grandfather indorsed the plan warmly, and Sailor Ben did drop anchor in
+Rivermouth, where he speedily became one of the institutions of the town.
+
+His first step was to buy a small one-story cottage located at the head of
+the wharf, within gun-shot of the Nutter House. To the great amusement of
+my grandfather, Sailor Ben painted the cottage a light sky-blue, and ran a
+broad black stripe around it just under the eaves. In this stripe he
+painted white port-holes, at regular distances, making his residence look
+as much like a man-of-war as possible. With a short flag-staff projecting
+over the door like a bowsprit, the effect was quite magical. My description
+of the exterior of this palatial residence is complete when I add that the
+proprietor nailed a horseshoe against the front door to keep off the
+witches-a very necessary precaution in these latitudes.
+
+The inside of Sailor Ben's abode was not less striking than the outside. The
+cottage contained two rooms; the one opening on the wharf he called his
+cabin; here he ate and slept. His few tumblers and a frugal collection of
+crockery were set in a rack suspended over the table, which had a cleat of
+wood nailed round the edge to prevent the dishes from sliding off in case
+of a heavy sea. Hanging against the walls were three or four highly colored
+prints of celebrated frigates, and a lithograph picture of a rosy young
+woman insufficiently clad in the American flag. This was labelled "Kitty,"
+though I'm sure it looked no more like her than I did. A walrus-tooth with
+an Esquimaux engraved on it, a shark's jaw, and the blade of a sword-fish
+were among the enviable decorations of this apartment. In one corner stood
+his bunk, or bed, and in the other his well-worn sea-chest, a perfect
+Pandora's box of mysteries. You would have thought yourself in the cabin of
+a real ship.
+
+The little room aft, separated from the cabin by a sliding door, was the
+caboose. It held a cooking-stove, pots, pans, and groceries; also a lot of
+fishing-lines and coils of tarred twine, which made the place smell like a
+forecastle, and a delightful smell it is-to those who fancy it.
+
+Kitty didn't leave our service, but played housekeeper for both
+establishments, returning at night to Sailor Ben's. He shortly added a
+wherry to his worldly goods, and in the fishing season made a very handsome
+income. During the winter he employed himself manufacturing crab-nets, for
+which he found no lack of customers.
+
+His popularity among the boys was immense. A jackknife in his expert hand
+was a whole chest of tools. He could whittle out anything from a wooden
+chain to a Chinese pagoda, or a full-rigged seventy-four a foot long. To
+own a ship of Sailor Ben's building was to be exalted above your
+fellow-creatures. He didn't carve many, and those he refused to sell,
+choosing to present them to his young friends, of whom Tom Bailey, you may
+be sure, was one.
+
+How delightful it was of winter nights to sit in his cosey cabin, close to
+the ship's stove (he wouldn't hear of having a fireplace), and listen to
+Sailor Ben's yarns! In the early summer twilights, when he sat on the
+door-step splicing a rope or mending a net, he always had a bevy of
+blooming young faces alongside.
+
+The dear old fellow! How tenderly the years touched him after this-all the
+more tenderly, it seemed, for having roughed him so cruelly in other days!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seventeen
+
+How We Astonished the Rivermouthians
+
+
+
+Sailor Ben's arrival partly drove the New Orleans project from my brain.
+Besides, there was just then a certain movement on foot by the Centipede
+Club which helped to engross my attention.
+
+Pepper Whitcomb took the Captain's veto philosophically, observing that he
+thought from the first the governor wouldn't let me go. I don't think
+Pepper was quite honest in that.
+
+But to the subject in hand.
+
+Among the few changes that have taken place in Rivermouth during the past
+twenty years there is one which I regret. I lament the removal of all those
+varnished iron cannon which used to do duty as posts at the corners of
+streets leading from the river. They were quaintly ornamental, each set
+upon end with a solid shot soldered into its mouth, and gave to that part
+of the town a picturesqueness very poorly atoned for by the conventional
+wooden stakes that have deposed them.
+
+These guns ("old sogers" the boys called them) had their story, like
+everything else in Rivermouth. When that everlasting last war-the War of
+1812, I mean-came to an end, all the brigs, schooners, and barks fitted out
+at this port as privateers were as eager to get rid of their useless
+twelve-pounders and swivels as they had previously been to obtain them.
+Many of the pieces had cost large sums, and now they were little better
+than so much crude iron-not so good, in fact, for they were clumsy things
+to break up and melt over. The government didn't want them; private
+citizens didn't want them; they were a drug in the market.
+
+But there was one man, ridiculous beyond his generation, who got it into his
+head that a fortune was to be made out of these same guns. To buy them all,
+to hold on to them until war was declared again (as he had no doubt it
+would be in a few months), and then sell out at fabulous prices-this was
+the daring idea that addled the pate of Silas Trefethen, "Dealer in E. & W.
+I. Goods and Groceries," as the faded sign over his shop-door informed the
+public.
+
+Silas went shrewdly to work, buying up every old cannon he could lay hands
+on. His back-yard was soon crowded with broken-down gun-carriages, and his
+barn with guns, like an arsenal. When Silas's purpose got wind it was
+astonishing how valuable that thing became which just now was worth nothing
+at all.
+
+"Ha, ha!" thought Silas. "Somebody else is tryin' hi git control of the
+market. But I guess I've got the start of him."
+
+So he went on buying and buying, oftentimes paying double the original price
+of the article. People in the neighboring towns collected all the worthless
+ordnance they could find, and sent it by the cart-load to Rivermouth.
+
+When his barn was full, Silas began piling the rubbish in his cellar, then
+in his parlor. He mortgaged the stock of his grocery store, mortgaged his
+house, his barn, his horse, and would have mortgaged himself, if anyone
+would have taken him as security, in order to carry on the grand
+speculation. He was a ruined man, and as happy as a lark.
+
+Surely poor Silas was cracked, like the majority of his own cannon. More or
+less crazy he must have been always. Years before this he purchased an
+elegant rosewood coffin, and kept it in one of the spare rooms in his
+residence. He even had his name engraved on the silver-plate, leaving a
+blank after the word "Died."
+
+The blank was filled up in due time, and well it was for Silas that he
+secured so stylish a coffin in his opulent days, for when he died his
+worldly wealth would not have bought him a pine box, to say nothing of
+rosewood. He never gave up expecting a war with Great Britain. Hopeful and
+radiant to the last, his dying words were, England-war - few days-great
+profits!
+
+It was that sweet old lady, Dame Jocelyn, who told me the story of Silas
+Trefethen; for these things happened long before my day. Silas died in
+1817.
+
+At Trefethen's death his unique collection came under the auctioneer's
+hammer. Some of the larger guns were sold to the town, and planted at the
+corners of divers streets; others went off to the iron-foundry; the
+balance, numbering twelve, were dumped down on a deserted wharf at the foot
+of Anchor Lane, where, summer after summer, they rested at their ease in
+the grass and fungi, pelted in autumn by the rain and annually buried by
+the winter snow. It is with these twelve guns that our story has to deal.
+
+The wharf where they reposed was shut off from the street by a high fence-a
+silent dreamy old wharf, covered with strange weeds and mosses. On account
+of its seclusion and the good fishing it afforded, it was much frequented
+by us boys.
+
+There we met many an afternoon to throw out .our lines, or play leap-frog
+among the rusty cannon. They were famous fellows in our eyes. What a racket
+they had made in the heyday of their unchastened youth! What stories they
+might tell now, if their puffy metallic lips could only speak! Once they
+were lively talkers enough; but there the grim sea-dogs lay, silent and
+forlorn in spite of all their former growlings.
+
+They always seemed to me like a lot of venerable disabled tars, stretched
+out on a lawn in front of a hospital, gazing seaward, and mutely lamenting
+their lost youth.
+
+But once more they were destined to lift up their dolorous voices-once more
+ere they keeled over and lay speechless for all time. And this is how it
+befell.
+
+Jack Harris, Charley Marden, Harry Blake, and myself were fishing off the
+wharf one afternoon, when a thought flashed upon me like an inspiration.
+
+"I say, boys!" I cried, hauling in my line hand over hand, "I've got
+something!"
+
+"What does it pull like, youngster?" asked Harris, looking down at the taut
+line and expecting to see a big perch at least.
+
+"O, nothing in the fish way," I returned, laughing; "it's about the old
+guns."
+
+"What about them?"
+
+"I was thinking what jolly fun it would be to set one of the old sogers on
+his legs and serve him out a ration of gunpowder."
+
+Up came the three lines in a jiffy. An enterprise better suited to the
+disposition of my companions could not have been proposed.
+
+In a short time we had one of the smaller cannon over on its back and were
+busy scraping the green rust from the touch-hole. The mould had spiked the
+gun so effectually, that for a while we fancied we should have to give up
+our attempt to resuscitate the old soger.
+
+"A long gimlet would clear it out," said Charley Marden, "if we only had
+one."
+
+I looked to see if Sailor Ben's flag was flying at the cabin door, for he
+always took in the colors when he went off fishing.
+
+"When you want to know if the Admiral's aboard, jest cast an eye to the
+buntin', my hearties," says Sailor Ben.
+
+Sometimes in a jocose mood he called himself the Admiral, and I am sure he
+deserved to be one. The Admiral's flag was flying, and I soon procured a
+gimlet from his carefully kept tool-chest.
+
+Before long we had the gun in working order. A newspaper lashed to the end
+of a lath served as a swab to dust out the bore. Jack Harris blew through
+the touch-hole and pronounced all clear.
+
+Seeing our task accomplished so easily, we turned our attention to the other
+guns, which lay in all sorts of postures in the rank grass. Borrowing a
+rope from Sailor Ben, we managed with immense labor to drag the heavy
+pieces into position and place a brick under each muzzle to give it the
+proper elevation. When we beheld them all in a row, like a regular battery,
+we simultaneously conceived an idea, the magnitude of which struck us dumb
+for a moment.
+
+Our first intention was to load and fire a single gun. How feeble and
+insignificant was such a plan compared to that which now sent the light
+dancing into our eyes!
+
+"What could we have been thinking of?" cried Jack Harris. "We'll give 'em a
+broadside, to be sure, if we die for it!"
+
+We turned to with a will, and before nightfall had nearly half the battery
+overhauled and ready for service. To keep the artillery dry we stuffed wads
+of loose hemp into the muzzles, and fitted wooden pegs to the touch-holes.
+
+At recess the next noon the Centipedes met in a corner of the school-yard to
+talk over the proposed lark. The original projectors, though they would
+have liked to keep the thing secret, were obliged to make a club matter of
+it, inasmuch as funds were required for ammunition. There had been no
+recent drain on the treasury, and the society could well afford to spend a
+few dollars in so notable an undertaking.
+
+It was unanimously agreed that the plan should be carried out in the
+handsomest manner, and a subscription to that end was taken on the spot.
+Several of the Centipedes hadn't a cent, excepting the one strung around
+their necks; others, however, were richer. I chanced to have a dollar, and
+it went into the cap quicker than lightning. When the club, in view of my
+munificence, voted to name the guns Bailey's Battery I was prouder than I
+have ever been since over anything.
+
+The money thus raised, added to that already in the treasury, amounted to
+nine dollars-a fortune in those days; but not more than we had use for.
+This sum was divided into twelve parts, for it would not do for one boy to
+buy all the powder, nor even for us all to make our purchases at the same
+place. That would excite suspicion at any time, particularly at a period so
+remote from the Fourth of July.
+
+There were only three stores in town licensed to sell powder; that gave each
+store four customers. Not to run the slightest risk of remark, one boy
+bought his powder on Monday, the next boy on Tuesday, and so on until the
+requisite quantity was in our possession. This we put into a keg and
+carefully hid in a dry spot on the wharf.
+
+Our next step was to finish cleaning the guns, which occupied two
+afternoons, for several of the old sogers were in a very congested state
+indeed. Having completed the task, we came upon a difficulty. To set off
+the battery by daylight was out of the question; it must be done at night;
+it must be done with fuses, for no doubt the neighbors would turn out after
+the first two or three shots, and it would not pay to be caught in the
+vicinity.
+
+Who knew anything about fuses? Who could arrange it so the guns would go off
+one after the other, with an interval of a minute or so between?
+
+Theoretically we knew that a minute fuse lasted a minute; double the
+quantity, two minutes; but practically we were at a stand-still. There was
+but one person who could help us in this extremity-Sailor Ben. To me was
+assigned the duty of obtaining what information I could from the ex-gunner,
+it being left to my discretion whether or not to intrust him with our
+secret.
+
+So one evening I dropped into the cabin and artfully turned the conversation
+to fuses in general, and then to particular fuses, but without getting much
+out of the old boy, who was busy making a twine hammock. Finally, I was
+forced to divulge the whole plot.
+
+The Admiral had a sailor's love for a joke, and entered at once and heartily
+into our scheme. He volunteered to prepare the fuses himself, and I left
+the labor in his hands, having bound him by several extraordinary
+oaths-such as "Hope-Imay-die" and "Shiver-my-timbers"-not to betray us,
+come what would.
+
+This was Monday evening. On Wednesday the fuses were ready. That night we
+were to unmuzzle Bailey's Battery. Mr. Grimshaw saw that something was
+wrong somewhere, for we were restless and absent-minded in the classes, and
+the best of us came to grief before the morning session was over. When Mr.
+Grimshaw announced "Guy Fawkes" as the subject for our next composition,
+you might have knocked down the Mystic Twelve with a feather.
+
+The coincidence was certainly curious, but when a man has committed, or is
+about to commit an offence, a hundred trifles, which would pass unnoticed
+at another time, seem to point at him with convicting fingers. No doubt Guy
+Fawkes himself received many a start after he had got his wicked kegs of
+gunpowder neatly piled up under the House of Lords.
+
+Wednesday, as I have mentioned, was a half-holiday, and the Centipedes
+assembled in my barn to decide on the final arrangements. These were as
+simple as could be. As the fuses were connected, it needed but one person
+to fire the train. Hereupon arose a discussion as to who was the proper
+person. Some argued that I ought to apply the match, the battery being
+christened after me, and the main idea, moreover, being mine. Others
+advocated the claim of Phil Adams as the oldest boy. At last we drew lots
+for the post of honor.
+
+Twelve slips of folded paper, upon one of which was written "Thou art the
+man," were placed in a quart measure, and thoroughly shaken; then each
+member stepped up and lifted out his destiny. At a given signal we opened
+our billets. "Thou art the man," said the slip of paper trembling in my
+fingers. The sweets and anxieties of a leader were mine the rest of the
+afternoon.
+
+Directly after twilight set in Phil Adams stole down to the wharf and fixed
+the fuses to the guns, laying a train of powder from the principal fuse to
+the fence, through a chink of which I was to drop the match at midnight.
+
+At ten o'clock Rivermouth goes to bed. At eleven o'clock Rivermouth is as
+quiet as a country churchyard. At twelve o'clock there is nothing left with
+which to compare the stillness that broods over the little seaport.
+
+In the midst of this stillness I arose and glided out of the house like a
+phantom bent on an evil errand; like a phantom. I flitted through the
+silent street, hardly drawing breath until I knelt down beside the fence at
+the appointed place.
+
+Pausing a moment for my heart to stop thumping, I lighted the match and
+shielded it with both hands until it was well under way, and then dropped
+the blazing splinter on the slender thread of gunpowder.
+
+A noiseless flash instantly followed, and all was dark again. I peeped
+through the crevice in the fence, and saw the main fuse spitting out sparks
+like a conjurer. Assured that the train had not failed, I took to my heels,
+fearful lest the fuse might burn more rapidly than we calculated, and cause
+an explosion before I could get home. This, luckily, did not happen.
+There's a special Providence that watches over idiots, drunken men, and
+boys.
+
+I dodged the ceremony of undressing by plunging into bed, jacket, boots, and
+all. I am not sure I took off my cap; but I know that I had hardly pulled
+the coverlid over me, when "BOOM!" sounded the first gun of Bailey's
+Battery.
+
+I lay as still as a mouse. In less than two minutes there was another burst
+of thunder, and then another. The third gun was a tremendous fellow and
+fairly shook the house.
+
+The town was waking up. Windows were thrown open here and there and people
+called to each other across the streets asking what that firing was for.
+
+"BOOM!" went gun number four.
+
+I sprung out of bed and tore off my jacket, for I heard the Captain feeling
+his way along the wall to my chamber. I was half undressed by the time he
+found the knob of the door.
+
+"I say, sir," I cried, "do you hear those guns?"
+
+"Not being deaf, I do," said the Captain, a little tartly-any reflection on
+his hearing always nettled him; "but what on earth they are for I can't
+conceive. You had better get up and dress yourself."
+"I'm nearly dressed, sir."
+
+"BOOM! BOOM!"-two of the guns had gone off together.
+
+The door of Miss Abigail's bedroom opened hastily, and that pink of maidenly
+propriety stepped out into the hail in her night-gown-the only indecorous
+thing I ever knew her to do. She held a lighted candle in her hand and
+looked like a very aged Lady Macbeth.
+
+"O Dan'el, this is dreadful! What do you suppose it means?"
+
+"I really can't suppose," said the Captain, rubbing his ear; "but I guess
+it's over now."
+
+"BOOM!" said Bailey's Battery.
+
+Rivermouth was wide awake now, and half the male population were in the
+streets, running different ways, for the firing seemed to proceed from
+opposite points of the town. Everybody waylaid everybody else with
+questions; but as no one knew what was the occasion of the tumult, people
+who were not usually nervous began to be oppressed by the mystery.
+
+Some thought the town was being bombarded; some thought the world was coming
+to an end, as the pious and ingenious Mr. Miller had predicted it would;
+but those who couldn't form any theory whatever were the most perplexed.
+
+In the meanwhile Bailey's Battery bellowed away at regular intervals. The
+greatest confusion reigned everywhere by this time. People with lanterns
+rushed hither and thither. The town watch had turned out to a man, and
+marched off, in admirable order, in the wrong direction. Discovering their
+mistake, they retraced their steps, and got down to the wharf just as the
+last cannon belched forth its lightning.
+
+A dense cloud of sulphurous smoke floated over Anchor Lane, obscuring the
+starlight. Two or three hundred people, in various stages of excitement,
+crowded about the upper end of the wharf, not liking to advance farther
+until they were satisfied that the explosions were over. A board was here
+and there blown from the fence, and through the openings thus afforded a
+few of the more daring spirits at length ventured to crawl.
+
+The cause of the racket soon transpired. A suspicion that they had been sold
+gradually dawned on the Rivermouthians. Many were exceedingly indignant,
+and declared that no penalty was severe enough for those concerned in such
+a prank; others-and these were the very people who had been terrified
+nearly out of their wits-had the assurance to laugh, saying that they knew
+all along it was only a trick.
+
+The town watch boldly took possession of the ground, and the crowd began to
+disperse. Knots of gossips lingered here and there near the place,
+indulging in vain surmises as to who the invisible gunners could be.
+
+There was no more noise that night, but many a timid person lay awake
+expecting a renewal of the mysterious cannonading. The Oldest Inhabitant
+refused to go to bed on any terms, but persisted in sitting up in a
+rocking-chair, with his hat and mittens on, until daybreak.
+
+I thought I should never get to sleep. The moment I drifted off in a doze I
+fell to laughing and woke myself up. But towards morning slumber overtook
+me, and I had a series of disagreeable dreams, in one of which I was waited
+upon by the ghost of Silas Trefethen with an exorbitant bill for the use of
+his guns. In another, I was dragged before a court-martial and sentenced by
+Sailor Ben, in a frizzled wig and three-cornered cocked hat, to be shot to
+death by Bailey's Battery-a sentence which Sailor Ben was about to execute
+with his own hand, when I suddenly opened my eyes and found the sunshine
+lying pleasantly across my face. I tell you I was glad!
+
+That unaccountable fascination which leads the guilty to hover about the
+spot where his crime was committed drew me down to the wharf as soon as I
+was dressed. Phil Adams, Jack Harris, and others of the conspirators were
+already there, examining with a mingled feeling of curiosity and
+apprehension the havoc accomplished by the battery.
+
+The fence was badly shattered and the ground ploughed up for several yards
+round the place where the guns formerly lay-formerly lay, for now they were
+scattered every which way. There was scarcely a gun that hadn't burst. Here
+was one ripped open from muzzle to breech, and there was another with its
+mouth blown into the shape of a trumpet. Three of the guns had disappeared
+bodily, but on looking over the edge of the wharf we saw them standing on
+end in the tide-mud. They had popped overboard in their excitement.
+
+"I tell you what, fellows," whispered Phil Adams, "it is lucky we didn't try
+to touch 'em off with punk. They'd have blown us all to finders."
+
+The destruction of Bailey's Battery was not, unfortunately, the only
+catastrophe. A fragment of one of the cannon had earned away the chimney of
+Sailor Ben's cabin. He was very mad at first, but having prepared the fuse
+himself he didn't dare complain openly.
+
+"I'd have taken a reef in the blessed stove-pipe," said the Admiral, gazing
+ruefully at the smashed chimney, "if I had known as how the Flagship was
+agoin' to be under fire."
+
+The next day he rigged out an iron funnel, which, being in sections, could
+be detached and taken in at a moment's notice. On the whole, I think he was
+resigned to the demolition of his brick chimney. The stove-pipe was a great
+deal more shipshape.
+
+The town was not so easily appeased. The selectmen determined to make an
+example of the guilty parties, and offered a reward for their arrest,
+holding out a promise of pardon to anyone of the offenders who would
+furnish information against the rest. But there were no faint hearts among
+the Centipedes. Suspicion rested for a while on several persons-on the
+soldiers at the fort; on a crazy fellow, known about town as "BottleNose";
+and at last on Sailor Ben.
+
+"Shiver my timbers!" cries that deeply injured individual. "Do you suppose,
+sir, as I have lived to sixty year, an' ain't got no more sense than to go
+for to blaze away at my own upper riggin'? It doesn't stand to reason."
+
+It certainly did not seem probable that Mr. Watson would maliciously knock
+over his own chimney, and Lawyer Hackett, who had the case in hand, 'bowed
+himself out of the Admiral's cabin convinced that the right man had not
+been discovered.
+
+People living by the sea are always more or less superstitious. Stories of
+spectre ships and mysterious beacons, that lure vessels out of their course
+and wreck them on unknown reefs, were among the stock legends of
+Rivermouth; and not a few people in the town were ready to attribute the
+firing of those guns to some supernatural agency. The Oldest Inhabitant
+remembered that when he was a boy a dim-looking sort of schooner hove to in
+the offing one foggy afternoon, fired off a single gun that didn't make any
+report, and then crumbled to nothing, spar, mast, and hulk, like a piece of
+burnt paper.
+
+The authorities, however, were of the opinion that human hands had something
+to do with the explosions, and they resorted to deep-laid stratagems to get
+hold of the said hands. One of their traps came very near catching us. They
+artfully caused an old brass fieldpiece to be left on a wharf near the
+scene of our late operations. Nothing in the world but the lack of money to
+buy powder saved us from falling into the clutches of the two watchmen who
+lay secreted for a week in a neighboring sail-loft.
+
+It was many a day before the midnight bombardment ceased to be the
+town-talk. The trick was so audacious and on so grand a scale that nobody
+thought for an instant of connecting us lads with it. Suspicion at length
+grew weary of lighting on the wrong person, and as conjecture-like the
+physicians in the epitaph-was in vain, the Rivermouthians gave up the idea
+of finding out who had astonished them.
+
+They never did find out, and never will, unless they read this veracious
+history. If the selectmen are still disposed to punish the malefactors, I
+can supply Lawyer Hackett with evidence enough to convict Pepper Whitcomb,
+Phil Adams, Charley Marden, and the other honorable members of the
+Centipede Club. But really I don't think it would pay now.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 18
+
+A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go
+
+
+
+If the reader supposes that I lived all this while in Rivermouth without
+falling a victim to one or more of the young ladies attending Miss Dorothy
+Gibbs's Female Institute, why, then, all I have to say is the reader
+exhibits his ignorance of human nature.
+
+Miss Gibbs's seminary was located within a few minutes' walk of the Temple
+Grammar School, and numbered about thirty-five pupils, the majority of whom
+boarded at the Hall-Primrose Hall, as Miss Dorothy prettily 20called it.
+The Prim-roses, as we called them, ranged from seven years of age to sweet
+seventeen, and a prettier group of sirens never got together even in
+Rivermouth, for Rivermouth, you should know, is famous for its pretty
+girls.
+
+There were tall girls and short girls, rosy girls and pale girls, and girls
+as brown as berries; girls like Amazons, slender girls, weird and winning
+like Undine, girls with black tresses, girls with auburn ringlets, girls
+with every tinge of golden hair. To behold Miss Dorothy's young ladies of a
+Sunday morning walking to church two by two, the smallest toddling at the
+end of the procession, like the bobs at the tail of a kite, was a spectacle
+to fill with tender emotion the least susceptible heart. To see Miss
+Dorothy marching grimly at the head of her light infantry, was to feel the
+hopelessness of making an attack on any part of the column.
+
+She was a perfect dragon of watchfulness. The most unguarded lifting of an
+eyelash in the fluttering battalion was sufficient to put her on the
+lookout. She had had experiences with the male sex, this Miss Dorothy so
+prim and grim. It was whispered that her heart was a tattered album
+scrawled over with love-lines, but that she had shut up the volume long
+ago.
+
+There was a tradition that she had been crossed in love; but it was the
+faintest of traditions. A gay young lieutenant of marines had flirted with
+her at a country ball (A.D. 1811), and then marched carelessly away at the
+head of his company to the shrill music of the fife, without so much as a
+sigh for the girl he left behind him. The years rolled on, the gallant gay
+Lothario-which wasn't his name-married, became a father, and then a
+grandfather; and at the period of which I am speaking his grandchild was
+actually one of Miss Dorothy's young ladies. So, at least, ran the story.
+
+The lieutenant himself was dead these many years; but Miss Dorothy never got
+over his duplicity. She was convinced that the sole aim of mankind was to
+win the unguarded affection of maidens, and then march off treacherously
+with flying colors to the heartless music of the drum and fife. To shield
+the inmates of Primrose Hall from the bitter influences that had blighted
+her own early affections was Miss Dorothy's mission in life.
+
+"No wolves prowling about my lambs, if you please," said
+
+Miss Dorothy. "I will not allow it."
+
+She was as good as her word. I don't think the boy lives who ever set foot
+within the limits of Primrose Hall while the seminary was under her charge.
+Perhaps if Miss Dorothy had given her young ladies a little more liberty,
+they would not have thought it "such fun" to make eyes over the white
+lattice fence at the young gentlemen of the Temple Grammar School. I say
+perhaps; for it is one thing to manage thirty-five young ladies and quite
+another thing to talk about it.
+
+But all Miss Dorothy's vigilance could not prevent the young folks from
+meeting in the town now and then, nor could her utmost ingenuity interrupt
+postal arrangements. There was no end of notes passing between the students
+and the Primroses. Notes tied to the heads of arrows were shot into
+dormitory windows; notes were tucked under fences, and hidden in the trunks
+of decayed trees. Every thick place in the boxwood hedge that surrounded
+the seminary was a possible post-office.
+
+It was a terrible shock to Miss Dorothy the day she unearthed a nest of
+letters in one of the huge wooden urns surmounting the gateway that led to
+her dovecot. It was a bitter moment to Miss Phoebe and Miss Candace and
+Miss Hesba, when they had their locks of hair grimly handed back to them by
+Miss Gibbs in the presence of the whole school. Girls whose locks of hair
+had run the blockade in safety were particularly severe on the offenders.
+But it didn't stop other notes and other tresses, and I would like to know
+what can stop them while the earth holds together.
+
+Now when I first came to Rivermouth I looked upon girls as rather tame
+company; I hadn't a spark of sentiment concerning them; but seeing my
+comrades sending and receiving mysterious epistles, wearing bits of ribbon
+in their button-holes and leaving packages of confectionery (generally
+lemon-drops) in the hollow trunks of trees-why, I felt that this was the
+proper thing to do. I resolved, as a matter of duty, to fall in love with
+somebody, and I didn't care in the least who it was. In much the same mood
+that Don Quixote selected the Dulcinea del Toboso for his lady-love, I
+singled out one of Miss Dorothy's incomparable young ladies for mine.
+
+I debated a long while whether I should not select two, but at last settled
+down on one-a pale little girl with blue eyes, named Alice. I shall not
+make a long story of this, for Alice made short work of me. She was
+secretly in love with Pepper Whitcomb. This occasioned a temporary coolness
+between Pepper and myself.
+
+Not disheartened, however, I placed Laura Rice-I believe it was Laura
+Rice-in the vacant niche. The new idol was more cruel than the old. The
+former frankly sent me to the right about, but the latter was a deceitful
+lot. She wore my nosegay in her dress at the evening service (the Primroses
+were marched to church three times every Sunday), she penned me the
+daintiest of notes, she sent me the glossiest of ringlets (cut, as I
+afterwards found out, from the stupid head of Miss Gibbs's chamber-maid),
+and at the same time was holding me and my pony up to ridicule in a series
+of letters written to Jack Harris. It was Harris himself who kindly opened
+my eyes.
+
+"I tell you what, Bailey," said that young gentleman, "Laura is an old
+veteran, and carries too many guns for a youngster. She can't resist a
+flirtation; I believe she'd flirt with an infant in arms. There's hardly a
+fellow in the school that hasn't worn her colors and some of her hair. She
+doesn't give out any more of her own hair now. It's been pretty well used
+up. The demand was greater than the supply, you see. It's all very well to
+correspond with Laura, but as to looking for anything serious from her, the
+knowing ones don't. Hope I haven't hurt your feelings, old boy," (that was
+a soothing stroke of flattery to call me "old boy,") "but it was my duty as
+a friend and a Centipede to let you know who you were dealing with."
+
+Such was the advice given me by that time-stricken, careworn, and embittered
+man of the world, who was sixteen years old if he was a day.
+
+I dropped Laura. In the course of the next twelve months I had perhaps three
+or four similar experiences, and the conclusion was forced upon me that I
+was not a boy likely to distinguish myself in this branch of business.
+
+I fought shy of Primrose Hall from that moment. Smiles were smiled over the
+boxwood hedge, and little hands were occasionally kissed to me; but I only
+winked my eye patronizingly, and passed on. I never renewed tender
+relations with Miss Gibbs's young ladies. All this occurred during my first
+year and a half at Rivermouth.
+
+Between my studies at school, my out-door recreations, and the hurts my
+vanity received, I managed to escape for the time being any very serious
+attack of that love fever which, like the measles, is almost certain to
+seize upon a boy sooner or later. I was not to be an exception. I was
+merely biding my time. The incidents I have now to relate took place
+shortly after the events described in the last chapter.
+
+
+
+In a life so tranquil and circumscribed as ours in the Nutter House, a
+visitor was a novelty of no little importance. The whole household awoke
+from its quietude one morning when the Captain announced that a young niece
+of his from New York was to spend a few weeks with us.
+
+The blue-chintz room, into which a ray of sun was never allowed to
+penetrate, was thrown open and dusted, and its mouldy air made sweet with a
+bouquet of pot-roses placed on the old-fashioned bureau. Kitty was busy all
+the forenoon washing off the sidewalk and sand-papering the great brass
+knocker on our front-door; and Miss Abigail was up to her elbows in a
+pigeon-pie.
+
+I felt sure it was for no ordinary person that all these preparations were
+in progress; and I was right. Miss Nelly Glentworth was no ordinary person.
+I shall never believe she was. There may have been lovelier women, though I
+have never seen them; there may have been more brilliant women, though it
+has not been my fortune to meet them; but that there was ever a more
+charming one than Nelly Glentworth is a proposition against which I
+contend.
+
+I don't love her now. I don't think of her once in five years; and yet it
+would give me a turn if in the course of my daily walk I should suddenly
+come upon her eldest boy. I may say that her eldest boy was not playing a
+prominent part in this life when I first made her acquaintance.
+
+It was a drizzling, cheerless afternoon towards the end of summer that a
+hack drew up at the door of the Nutter House. The Captain and Miss Abigail
+hastened into the hall on hearing the carriage stop. In a moment more Miss
+Nelly Glentworth was seated in our sitting-room undergoing a critical
+examination at the hands of a small boy who lounged uncomfortably on a
+settee between the windows.
+
+The small boy considered himself a judge of girls, and he rapidly came to
+the following conclusions: That Miss Nelly was about nineteen; that she had
+not given away much of her back hair, which hung in two massive chestnut
+braids over her shoulders; that she was a shade too pale and a trifle too
+tall; that her hands were nicely shaped and her feet much too diminutive
+for daily use. He furthermore observed that her voice was musical, and that
+her face lighted up with an indescribable brightness when she smiled.
+
+On the whole, the small boy liked her well enough; and, satisfied that she
+was not a person to be afraid of, but, on the contrary, one who might be
+made quite agreeable, he departed to keep an appointment with his friend
+Sir Pepper Whitcomb.
+
+But the next morning when Miss Glentworth came down to breakfast in a purple
+dress, her face 20as fresh as one of the moss-roses on the bureau upstairs,
+and her laugh as contagious as the merriment of a robin, the small boy
+experienced a strange sensation, and mentally compared her with the
+loveliest of Miss Gibbs's young ladies, and found those young ladies
+wanting in the balance.
+
+A night's rest had wrought a wonderful change in Miss Nelly. The pallor and
+weariness of the journey had passed away. I looked at her through the
+toast-rack and thought I had never seen anything more winning than her
+smile.
+
+After breakfast she went out with me to the stable to see Gypsy, and the
+three of us became friends then and there. Nelly was the only girl that
+Gypsy ever took the slightest notice of.
+
+It chanced to be a half-holiday, and a baseball match of unusual interest
+was to come off on the school ground that afternoon; but, somehow, I didn't
+go. I hung about the house abstractedly. The Captain went up town, and Miss
+Abigail was busy in the kitchen making immortal gingerbread. I drifted into
+the sitting-room, and had our guest all to myself for I don't know how many
+hours. It was twilight, I recollect, when the Captain returned with letters
+for Miss Nelly.
+
+Many a time after that I sat with her through the dreamy September
+afternoons. If I had played baseball it would have been much better for me.
+
+Those first days of Miss Nelly's visit are very misty in my remembrance. I
+try in vain to remember just when I began to fall in love with her.
+'Whether the spell worked upon me gradually or fell upon me all at once, I
+don't know. I only know that it seemed to me as if I had always loved her.
+Things that took place before she came were dim to me, like events that had
+occurred in the Middle Ages.
+
+Nelly was at least five years my senior. But what of that? Adam is the only
+man I ever heard of who didn't in early youth fall in love with a woman
+older than himself, and I am convinced that he would have done so if he had
+had the opportunity.
+
+I wonder if girls from fifteen to twenty are aware of the glamour they cast
+over the straggling, awkward boys whom they regard and treat as mere
+children? I wonder, now. Young women are so keen in such matters. I wonder
+if Miss Nelly Glentworth never suspected until the very last night of her
+visit at Rivermouth that I was over ears in love with her pretty self, and
+was suffering pangs as poignant as if I had been ten feet high and as old
+as Methuselah? For, indeed, I was miserable throughout all those five
+weeks. I went down in the Latin class at the rate of three boys a day. Her
+fresh young eyes came between me and my book, and there was an end of
+Virgil.
+
+
+
+"O love, love, love!
+
+Love is like a dizziness,
+
+It winna let a body
+
+Gang aboot his business."
+
+
+
+I was wretched away from her, and only less wretched in her presence. The
+special cause of my woe was this: I was simply a little boy to Miss
+Glentworth. I knew it. I bewailed it. I ground my teeth and wept in secret
+over the fact. If I had been aught else in her eyes would she have smoothed
+my hair so carelessly, sending an electric shock through my whole system?
+Would she have walked with me, hand in hand, for hours in the old garden,
+and once when I lay on the sofa, my head aching with love and
+mortification, would she have stooped down and kissed me if I hadn't been a
+little boy? How I despised little boys! How I hated one particular little
+boy-too little to be loved!
+
+I smile over this very grimly even now. My sorrow was genuine and bitter. It
+is a great mistake on the part of elderly people, male and female, to tell
+a child that he is seeing his happiest days. Don't you believe a word of
+it, my little friend. The burdens of childhood are as hard to bear as the
+crosses that weigh us down later in life, while the happinesses of
+childhood are tame compared with those of our maturer years. And even if
+this were not so, it is rank cruelty to throw shadows over the young heart
+by croaking, "Be merry, for to-morrow you die!"
+
+As the last days of Nelly's visit drew near, I fell into a very unhealthy
+state of mind. To have her so frank and unconsciously coquettish with me
+was a daily torment; to be looked upon and treated as a child was bitter
+almonds; but the thought of losing her altogether was distraction.
+
+The summer was at an end. The days were perceptibly shorter, and now and
+then came an evening when it was chilly enough to have a wood-fire in our
+sitting-room. The leaves were beginning to take hectic tints, and the wind
+was practising the minor pathetic notes of its autumnal dirge. Nature and
+myself appeared to be approaching our dissolution simultaneously-
+
+One evening, the evening previous to the day set for Nelly's departure-how
+well I remember it-I found her sitting alone by the wide chimney-piece
+looking musingly at the crackling back log. There were no candles in the
+room. On her face and hands, and on the small golden cross at her throat,
+fell the flickering firelight-that ruddy, mellow firelight in which one's
+grandmother would look poetical.
+
+I drew a low stool from the corner and placed it by the side of her chair.
+She reached out her hand to me, as was her pretty fashion, and so we sat
+for several moments silently in the changing glow of the burning logs. At
+length I moved back the stool so that I could see her face in profile
+without being seen by her. I lost her hand by this movement, but I couldn't
+have spoken with the listless touch of her fingers on mine. After two or
+three attempts I said "Nelly" a good deal louder than I intended.
+
+Perhaps the effort it cost me was evident in my voice. She raised herself
+quickly in the chair and half turned towards me.
+
+"W'ell, Tom?"
+
+"I-I am very sorry you are going away."
+
+"So am I. I have enjoyed every hour of my visit."
+
+"Do you think you will ever come back here?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Nelly, and her eyes wandered off into the fitful firelight.
+
+"I suppose you will forget us all very quickly."
+
+"Indeed I shall not. I shall always have the pleasantest memories of
+Rivermouth."
+
+Here the conversation died a natural death. Nelly sank into a sort of dream,
+and I meditated. Fearing every moment to be interrupted by some member of
+the family, I nerved myself to make a bold dash.
+
+"Nelly."
+
+"Well."
+
+"Do you-" I hesitated.
+
+"Do I what?"
+
+"Love anyone very much?"
+
+"Why, of course I do," said Nelly, scattering her revery with a merry laugh.
+"I love Uncle Nutter, and Aunt Nutter, and you-and Towser."
+
+Towser, our new dog! I couldn't stand that. I pushed back the stool
+impatiently and stood in front of her.
+
+"That's not what I mean," I said angrily.
+
+"Well, what do you mean?"
+
+"Do you love anyone to marry him?"
+
+"The idea of it," cried Nelly, laughing.
+
+"But you must tell me."
+
+"Must, Tom?"
+
+"Indeed you must, Nelly."
+
+She had risen from the chair with an amused, perplexed look in her eyes. I
+held her an instant by the dress.
+
+"Please tell me."
+
+"O you silly boy!" cried Nelly. Then she rumpled my hair all over my
+forehead and ran laughing out of the room.
+
+Suppose Cinderella had rumpled the prince's hair all over his forehead, how
+would he have liked it? Suppose the Sleeping Beauty, when the king's son
+with a kiss set her and all the old clocks agoing in the spell-bound
+castle-suppose the young minx had looked up and coolly laughed in his eye,
+I guess the king's son wouldn't have been greatly pleased.
+
+I hesitated a second or two and then rushed after Nelly just in time to run
+against Miss Abigail, who entered the room with a couple of lighted
+candles.
+
+"Goodness gracious, Tom!" exclaimed Miss Abigail. "Are you possessed?"
+
+I left her scraping the warm spermaceti from one of her thumbs.
+
+Nelly was in the kitchen talking quite unconcernedly with Kitty Collins.
+There she remained until supper-time. Supper over, we all adjourned to the
+sitting-room. I planned and plotted, but could manage in no way to get
+Nelly alone. She and the Captain played cribbage all the evening.
+
+The next morning my lady did not make her appearance until we were seated at
+the breakfast-table. I had got up at daylight myself. Immediately after
+breakfast the carriage arrived to take her to the railway station. A
+gentleman stepped from this carriage, and greatly to my surprise was warmly
+welcomed by the Captain and Miss Abigail, and by Miss Nelly herself, who
+seemed unnecessarily glad to see him. From the hasty conversation that
+followed I learned that the gentleman had come somewhat unexpectedly to
+conduct Miss Nelly to Boston. But how did he know that she was to leave
+that morning? Nelly bade farewell to the Captain and Miss Abigail, made a
+little rush and kissed me on the nose, and was gone.
+
+As the wheels of the hack rolled up the street and over my finer feelings, I
+turned to the Captain.
+
+"Who was that gentleman, sir?"
+
+"That was Mr. Waldron."
+
+"A relation of yours, sir?" I asked craftily.
+
+"No relation of mine-a relation of Nelly's," said the Captain, smiling.
+
+"A cousin," I suggested, feeling a strange hatred spring up in my bosom for
+the unknown.
+
+"Well, I suppose you might call him a cousin for the present. He's going to
+marry little Nelly next summer."
+
+In one of Peter Parley's valuable historical works is a description of an
+earthquake at Lisbon. "At the first shock the inhabitants rushed into the
+streets; the earth yawned at their feet and the houses tottered and fell on
+every side." I staggered past the Captain into the street; a giddiness came
+over me; the earth yawned at my feet, and the houses threatened to fall in
+on every side of me. How distinctly I remember that momentary sense of
+confusion when everything in the world seemed toppling over into ruins.
+
+As I have remarked, my love for Nelly is a thing of the past. I had not
+thought of her for years until I sat down to write this chapter, and yet,
+now that all is said and done, I shouldn't care particularly to come across
+Mrs. Waldron's eldest boy in my afternoon's walk. He must be fourteen or
+fifteen years old by this time-the young villain!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nineteen
+
+I Become A Blighted Being
+
+
+
+When a young boy gets to be an old boy, when the hair is growing rather thin
+on the top of the old boy's head, and he has been tamed sufficiently to
+take a sort of chastened pleasure in allowing the baby to play with his
+watch-seals-when, I say, an old boy has reached this stage in the journey
+of life, he is sometimes apt to indulge in sportive remarks concerning his
+first love.
+
+Now, though I bless my stars that it wasn't in my power to marry Miss Nelly,
+I am not going to deny my boyish regard for her nor laugh at it. As long as
+it lasted it was a very sincere and unselfish love, and rendered me
+proportionately wretched. I say as long as it lasted, for one's first love
+doesn't last forever.
+
+I am ready, however, to laugh at the amusing figure I cut after I had really
+ceased to have any deep feeling in the matter. It was then I took it into
+my head to be a Blighted Being. This was about two weeks after the spectral
+appearance of Mr. Waldron.
+
+For a boy of a naturally vivacious disposition the part of a blighted being
+presented difficulties. I had an excellent appetite, I liked society, I
+liked out-of-door sports, I was fond of handsome clothes. Now all these
+things were incompatible with the doleful character I was to assume, and I
+proceeded to cast them from me. I neglected my hair. I avoided my
+playmates. I frowned abstractedly. I didn't eat as much as was good for me.
+I took lonely walks. 1 brooded in solitude. I not only committed to memory
+the more turgid poems of the late Lord Byron-"Fare thee well, and if
+forever," &c.-but I became a despondent poet on my own account, and
+composed a string of "Stanzas to One who will understand them." 1 think I
+was a trifle too hopeful on that point; for I came across the verses
+several years afterwards, and was quite unable to understand them myself.
+
+It was a great comfort to be so perfectly miserable and yet not suffer any.
+I used to look in the glass and gloat over the amount and variety of
+mournful expression I could throw into my features. If I caught myself
+smiling at anything, I cut the smile short with a sigh. The oddest thing
+about all this is, I never once suspected that I was not unhappy. No one,
+not even Pepper Whitcomb, was more deceived than I.
+
+Among the minor pleasures of being blighted were the interest and perplexity
+I excited in the simple souls that were thrown in daily contact with me.
+Pepper especially. I nearly drove him into a corresponding state of mind.
+
+I had from time to time given Pepper slight but impressive hints of my
+admiration for Some One (this was in the early part of Miss Glentworth's
+visit); I had also led him to infer that my admiration was not altogether
+in vain. He was therefore unable to explain the cause of my strange
+behavior, for I had carefully refrained from mentioning to Pepper the fact
+that Some One had turned out to be Another's.
+
+I treated Pepper shabbily. I couldn't resist playing on his tenderer
+feelings. He was a boy bubbling over with sympathy for anyone in any kind
+of trouble. Our intimacy since Binny Wallace's death had been
+uninterrupted; but now I moved in a sphere apart, not to be profaned by the
+step of an outsider.
+
+I no longer joined the boys on the playground at recess. I stayed at my desk
+reading some lugubrious volume-usually The Mysteries of Udolpho, by the
+amiable Mrs. Radcliffe. A translation of The Sorrows of Werter fell into my
+hands at this period, and if I could have committed suicide without killing
+myself, I should certainly have done so.
+
+On half-holidays, instead of fraternizing with Pepper and the rest of our
+clique, I would wander off alone to Grave Point.
+
+Grave Point-the place where Binny Wallace's body came ashore-was a narrow
+strip of land running out into the river. A line of Lombardy poplars, stiff
+and severe, like a row of grenadiers, mounted guard on the water-side. On
+the extreme end of the peninsula was an old disused graveyard, tenanted
+principally by the early settlers who had been scalped by the Indians. In a
+remote corner of the cemetery, set apart from the other mounds, was the
+grave of a woman who had been hanged in the old colonial times for the
+murder of her infant. Goodwife Polly Haines had denied the crime to the
+last, and after her death there had arisen strong doubts as to her actual
+guilt. It was a belief current among the lads of the town, that if you went
+to this grave at nightfall on the 10th of November-the anniversary of her
+execution-and asked, "For what did the magistrates hang you?" a voice would
+reply, "Nothing."
+
+Many a Rivermouth boy has tremblingly put this question in the dark, and,
+sure enough, Polly Haines invariably answered nothing!
+
+A low red-brick wall, broken down in many places and frosted over with
+silvery moss, surrounded this burial-ground of our Pilgrim Fathers and
+their immediate descendants. The latest date on any of the headstones was
+1780. A crop of very funny epitaphs sprung up here and there among the
+overgrown thistles and burdocks, and almost every tablet had a death's-head
+with cross-bones engraved upon it, or else a puffy round face with a pair
+of wings stretching out from the ears, like this:
+
+
+
+Cherub Graphic
+
+
+
+These mortuary emblems furnished me with congenial food for reflection. I
+used to lie in the long grass, and speculate on the advantages and
+disadvantages of being a cherub.
+
+I forget what I thought the advantages were, but I remember distinctly of
+getting into an inextricable tangle on two points: How could a cherub,
+being all head and wings, manage to sit down when he was tired? To have to
+sit down on the back of his head struck me as an awkward alternative.
+Again: Where did a cherub carry those indispensable articles (such as
+jack-knives, marbles, and pieces of twine) which boys in an earthly state
+of existence usually stow away in their trousers-pockets?
+
+These were knotty questions, and I was never able to dispose of them
+satisfactorily.
+
+Meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb would scour the whole town in search of me. He
+finally discovered my retreat, and dropped in on me abruptly one afternoon,
+while I was deep in the cherub problem.
+
+"Look here, Tom Bailey!" said Pepper, shying a piece of clam-shell
+indignantly at the file jacet on a neighboring gravestone. "You are just
+going to the dogs! Can't you tell a fellow what in thunder ails you,
+instead of prowling round among the tombs like a jolly old vampire?"
+
+"Pepper," I replied, solemnly, "don't ask me. All is not well here"-touching
+my breast mysteriously. If I had touched my head instead, I should have
+been nearer the mark.
+
+Pepper stared at me.
+
+"Earthly happiness," I continued, "is a delusion and a snare. You will never
+be happy, Pepper, until you are a cherub."
+
+Pepper, by the by, would have made an excellent cherub, he was so chubby.
+Having delivered myself of these gloomy remarks, I arose languidly from the
+grass and moved away, leaving Pepper staring after me in mute astonishment.
+I was Hamlet and Werter and the late Lord Byron all in one.
+
+You will ask what my purpose was in cultivating this factitious despondency.
+None whatever. Blighted beings never have any purpose in life excepting to
+be as blighted as possible.
+
+Of course my present line of business could not long escape the eye of
+Captain Nutter. I don't know if the Captain suspected my attachment for
+Miss Glentworth. He never alluded to it; but he watched me. Miss Abigail
+watched me, Kitty Collins watched me, and Sailor Ben watched me.
+
+"I can't make out his signals," I overheard the Admiral remark to my
+grandfather one day. "I hope he ain't got no kind of sickness aboard."
+
+There was something singularly agreeable in being an object of so great
+interest. Sometimes I had all I could do to preserve my dejected aspect, it
+was so pleasant to be miserable. I incline to the opinion that people who
+are melancholy without any particular reason, such as poets, artists, and
+young musicians with long hair, have rather an enviable time of it. In a
+quiet way I never enjoyed myself better in my life than when I was a
+Blighted Being.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty
+
+In Which I Prove Myself
+To Be the Grandson of My Grandfather
+
+
+
+It was not possible for a boy of my temperament to be a blighted being
+longer than three consecutive weeks.
+
+I was gradually emerging from my self-imposed cloud when events took place
+that greatly assisted in restoring me to a more natural frame of mind. I
+awoke from an imaginary trouble to face a real one.
+
+I suppose you don't know what a financial crisis is? I will give you an
+illustration.
+
+You are deeply in debt-say to the amount of a quarter of a dollar-to the
+little knicknack shop round the corner, where they sell picture-papers,
+spruce-gum, needles, and Malaga raisins. A boy owes you a quarter of a
+dollar, which he promises to pay at a certain time. You are depending on
+this quarter to settle accounts with the small shop-keeper. The time
+arrives-and the quarter doesn't. That's a financial crisis, in one
+sense-twenty-five senses, if I may say so.
+
+When this same thing happens, on a grander scale, in the mercantile world,
+it produces what is called a panic. One man's inability to pay his debts
+ruins another man, who, in turn, ruins someone else, and so on, until
+failure after failure makes even the richest capitalists tremble. Public
+confidence is suspended, and the smaller fry of merchants are knocked over
+like tenpins.
+
+These commercial panics occur periodically, after the fashion of comets and
+earthquakes and other disagreeable things.
+
+Such a panic took place in New Orleans in the year 18-, and my father's
+banking-house went to pieces in the crash.
+
+Of a comparatively large fortune nothing remained after paying his debts
+excepting a few thousand dollars, with which he proposed to return North
+and embark in some less hazardous enterprise. In the meantime it was
+necessary for him to stay in New Orleans to wind up the business.
+
+My grandfather was in some way involved in this failure, and lost, I fancy,
+a considerable sum of money; but he never talked much on the subject. He
+was an unflinching believer in the spilt-milk proverb.
+
+"It can't be gathered up," he would say, "and it's no use crying over it.
+Pitch into the cow and get some more milk, is my motto."
+
+The suspension of the banking-house was bad enough, but there was an
+attending circumstance that gave us, at Rivermouth, a great deal more
+anxiety. The cholera, which someone predicted would visit the country that
+year, and which, indeed, had made its appearance in a mild form at several
+points along the Mississippi River, had broken out with much violence at
+New Orleans.
+
+The report that first reached us through the newspapers was meagre and
+contradictory; many people discredited it; but a letter from my mother left
+us no room for doubt. The sickness was in the city. The hospitals were
+filling up, and hundreds of the citizens were flying from the stricken
+place by every steamboat. The unsettled state of my father's affairs made
+it imperative for him to remain at his post; his desertion at that moment
+would have been at the sacrifice of all he had saved from the general
+wreck.
+
+As he would be detained in New Orleans at least three months, my mother
+declined to come North without him.
+
+After this we awaited with feverish impatience the weekly news that came to
+us from the South. The next letter advised us that my parents were well,
+and that the sickness, so far, had not penetrated to the faubourg, or
+district, where they lived. The following week brought less cheering
+tidings. My father's business, in consequence of the flight of the other
+partners, would keep him in the city beyond the period he had mentioned.
+The family had moved to Pass Christian, a favorite watering-place on Lake
+Pontchartrain, near New Orleans, where he was able to spend part of each
+week. So the return North was postponed indefinitely.
+
+It was now that the old longing to see my parents came back to me with
+irresistible force. I knew my grandfather would not listen to the idea of
+my going to New Orleans at such a dangerous time, since he had opposed the
+journey so strongly when the same objection did not exist. But I determined
+to go nevertheless.
+
+I think I have mentioned the fact that all the male members of our family,
+on my father's side-as far back as the Middle Ages-have exhibited in early
+youth a decided talent for running away. It was an hereditary talent. It
+ran in the blood to run away. I do not pretend to explain the peculiarity.
+I simply admit it.
+
+It was not my fate to change the prescribed order of things. I, too, was to
+run away, thereby proving, if any proof were needed, that I was the
+grandson of my grandfather. I do not hold myself responsible for the step
+any more than I do for the shape of my nose, which is said to be a
+facsimile of Captain Nutter's.
+
+I have frequently noticed how circumstances conspire to help a man, or a
+boy, when he has thoroughly resolved on doing a thing. That very week the
+Rivermouth Barnacle printed an advertisement that seemed to have been
+written on purpose for me. It read as follows:
+
+WANTED. A Few Able-bodied Seamen and a Cabin-Boy, for the ship Rawlings, now
+loading for New Orleans at Johnson's Wharf, Boston. Apply in person, within
+four days, at the office of Messrs.- & Co., or on board the Ship.
+
+How I was to get to New Orleans with only $4.62 was a question that had been
+bothering me. This advertisement made it as clear as day. I would go as
+cabin-boy.
+
+I had taken Pepper into my confidence again; I had told him the story of my
+love for Miss Glentworth, with all its harrowing details; and now conceived
+it judicious to confide in him the change about to take place in my life,
+so that, if the Rawlings went down in a gale, my friends might have the
+limited satisfaction of knowing what had become of me.
+
+Pepper shook his head discouragingly, and sought in every way to dissuade me
+from the step. He drew a disenchanting picture of the existence of a
+cabin-boy, whose constant duty (according to Pepper) was to have dishes
+broken over his head whenever the captain or the mate chanced to be out of
+humor, which was mostly all the time. But nothing Pepper said could turn me
+a hair's-breadth from my purpose.
+
+I had little time to spare, for the advertisement stated explicitly that
+applications were to be made in person within four days. I trembled to
+think of the bare possibility of some other boy snapping up that desirable
+situation.
+
+It was on Monday that I stumbled upon the advertisement. On Tuesday my
+preparations were completed. My baggage-consisting of four shirts, half a
+dozen collars, a piece of shoemaker's wax, (Heaven knows what for!) and
+seven stockings, wrapped in a silk handkerchief-lay hidden under a loose
+plank of the stable floor. This was my point of departure.
+
+My plan was to take the last train for Boston, in order to prevent the
+possibility of immediate pursuit, if any should be attempted. The train
+left at 4 P.M.
+
+I ate no breakfast and little dinner that day. I avoided the Captain's eye,
+and wouldn't have looked Miss Abigail or Kitty in the face for the wealth
+of the Indies.
+
+When it was time to start for the station I retired quietly to the stable
+and uncovered my bundle. I lingered a moment to kiss the white star on
+Gypsy's forehead, and was nearly unmanned when the little animal returned
+the caress by lapping my cheek. Twice I went back and patted her.
+
+On reaching the station I purchased my ticket with a bravado air that ought
+to have aroused the suspicion of the ticket-master, and hurried to the car,
+where I sat fidgeting until the train shot out into the broad daylight.
+
+Then I drew a long breath and looked about me. The first object that saluted
+my sight was Sailor Ben, four or five seats behind me, reading the
+Rivermouth Barnacle!
+
+Reading was not an easy art to Sailor Ben; he grappled with the sense of a
+paragraph as if it were a polar-bear, and generally got the worst of it. On
+the present occasion he was having a hard struggle, judging by the way he
+worked his mouth and rolled his eyes. He had evidently not seen me. But
+what was he doing on the Boston train?
+
+Without lingering to solve the question, I stole gently from my seat and
+passed into the forward car.
+
+This was very awkward, having the Admiral on board. I couldn't understand it
+at all. Could it be possible that the old boy had got tired of land and was
+running away to sea himself? That was too absurd. I glanced nervously
+towards the car door now and then, half expecting to see him come after me.
+
+We had passed one or two way-stations, and I had quieted down a good deal,
+when I began to feel as if somebody was looking steadily at the back of my
+head. I turned round involuntarily, and there was Sailor Ben again, at the
+farther end of the car, wrestling with the Rivermouth Barnacle as before.
+
+I began to grow very uncomfortable indeed. Was it by design or chance that
+he thus dogged my steps? If he was aware of my presence, why didn't he
+speak to me at once? 'Why did he steal round, making no sign, like a
+particularly unpleasant phantom? Maybe it wasn't Sailor Ben. I peeped at
+him slyly. There was no mistaking that tanned, genial phiz of his. Very odd
+he didn't see me!
+
+Literature, even in the mild form of a country newspaper, always had the
+effect of poppies on the Admiral. 'When I stole another glance in his
+direction his hat was tilted over his right eye in the most dissolute
+style, and the Rivermouth Barnacle lay in a confused heap beside him. He
+had succumbed. He was fast asleep. If he would only keep asleep until we
+reached our destination!
+
+By and by I discovered that the rear car had been detached from the train at
+the last stopping-place. This accounted satisfactorily for Sailor Ben's
+singular movements, and considerably calmed my fears. Nevertheless, I did
+not like the aspect of things.
+
+The Admiral continued to snooze like a good fellow, and was snoring
+melodiously as we glided at a slackened pace over a bridge and into Boston.
+
+I grasped my pilgrim's bundle, and, hurrying out of the car, dashed up the
+first street that presented itself.
+
+It was a narrow, noisy, zigzag street, crowded with trucks and obstructed
+with bales and boxes of merchandise. I didn't pause to breathe until I had
+placed a respectable distance between me and the railway station. By this
+time it was nearly twilight.
+
+I had got into the region of dwelling-houses, and was about to seat myself
+on a doorstep to rest, when, lo! there was the Admiral trundling along on
+the opposite sidewalk, under a full spread of canvas, as he would have
+expressed it.
+
+I was off again in an instant at a rapid pace; but in spite of all I could
+do he held his own without any perceptible exertion. He had a very ugly
+gait to get away from, the Admiral. I didn't dare to run, for fear of being
+mistaken for a thief, a suspicion which my bundle would naturally lend
+color to.
+
+I pushed ahead, however, at a brisk trot, and must have got over one or two
+miles-my pursuer neither gaining nor losing ground-when I concluded to
+surrender at discretion. I saw that Sailor Ben was determined to have me,
+and, knowing my man, I knew that escape was highly improbable.
+
+So I turned round and waited for him to catch up with me, which he did in a
+few seconds, looking rather sheepish at first.
+
+"Sailor Ben," said I, severely, "do I understand that you are dogging my
+steps?"
+
+"'Well, little mess-mate," replied the Admiral, rubbing his nose, which he
+always did when he was disconcerted, "I am kind o' followin' in your wake."
+
+"Under orders?"
+
+"Under orders."
+
+"Under the Captain's orders?"
+
+"Sure-ly."
+
+"In other words, my grandfather has sent you to fetch me back to
+Rivermouth?"
+
+"That's about it," said the Admiral, with a burst of frankness.
+
+"And I must go with you whether I want to or not?"
+
+"The Capen's very identical words!"
+
+There was nothing to be done. I bit my lips with suppressed anger, and
+signified that I was at his disposal, since I couldn't help it. The
+impression was very strong in my mind that the Admiral wouldn't hesitate to
+put me in irons if I showed signs of mutiny.
+
+It was too late to return to Rivermouth that night-a fact which I
+communicated to the old boy sullenly, inquiring at the same time what he
+proposed to do about it.
+
+He said we would cruise about for some rations, and then make a night of it.
+I didn't condescend to reply, though I hailed the suggestion of something
+to eat with inward enthusiasm, for I had not taken enough food that day to
+keep life in a canary.
+
+'We wandered back to the railway station, in the waiting room of which was a
+kind of restaurant presided over by a severe-looking young lady. Here we
+had a cup of coffee apiece, several tough doughnuts, and some blocks of
+venerable spongecake. The young lady who attended on us, whatever her age
+was then, must have been a mere child when that sponge-cake was made.
+
+The Admiral's acquaintance with Boston hotels was slight; but he knew of a
+quiet lodging-house near by, much patronized by sea-captains, arid kept by
+a former friend of his.
+
+In this house, which had seen its best days, we were accommodated with a
+mouldy chamber containing two cot-beds, two chairs, and a cracked pitcher
+on a washstand. The mantel-shelf was ornamented with three big pink
+conch-shells, resembling pieces of petrified liver; and over these hung a
+cheap lurid print, in which a United States sloop-of-war was giving a
+British frigate particular fits. It is very strange how our own ships never
+seem to suffer any in these terrible engagements. It shows what a nation we
+are.
+
+An oil-lamp on a deal-table cast a dismal glare over the apartment, which
+was cheerless in the extreme. I thought of our sitting-room at home, with
+its flowery wall-paper and gay curtains and soft lounges; I saw Major
+Elkanah Nutter (my grandfather's father) in powdered wig and Federal
+uniform, looking down benevolently from his gilt frame between the
+bookcases; I pictured the Captain and Miss Abigail sitting at the cosey
+round table in the moon-like glow of the astral lamp; and then I fell to
+wondering how they would receive me when 1 came back. I wondered if the
+Prodigal Son had any idea that his father was going to kill the fatted calf
+for him, and how he felt about it, on the whole.
+
+Though I was very low in spirits, I put on a bold front to Sailor Ben, you
+will understand. To be caught and caged in this manner was a frightful
+shock to my vanity. He tried to draw me into conversation; but I answered
+in icy monosyllables. He again suggested we should make a night of it, and
+hinted broadly that he was game for any amount of riotous dissipation, even
+to the extent of going to see a play if I wanted to. I declined haughtily.
+I was dying to go.
+
+He then threw out a feeler on the subject of dominos and checkers, and
+observed in a general way that "seven up" was a capital game; but I
+repulsed him at every point.
+
+I saw that the Admiral was beginning to feel hurt by my systematic coldness.
+'We had always been such hearty friends until now. It was too bad of me to
+fret that tender, honest old heart even for an hour. I really did love the
+ancient boy, and when, in a disconsolate way, he ordered up a pitcher of
+beer, I unbent so far as to partake of some in a teacup. He recovered his
+spirits instantly, and took out his cuddy clay pipe for a smoke.
+
+Between the beer and the soothing fragrance of the navy-plug, I fell into a
+pleasanter mood myself, and, it being too late now to go to the theatre, I
+condescended to say-addressing the northwest corner of the ceiling-that
+"seven up" was a capital game. Upon this hint the Admiral disappeared, and
+returned shortly with a very dirty pack of cards.
+
+As we played, with varying fortunes, by the flickering flame of the lamp, he
+sipped his beer and became communicative. He seemed immensely tickled by
+the fact that I had come to Boston. It leaked out presently that he and the
+Captain had had a wager on the subject.
+
+The discovery of my plans and who had discovered them were points on which
+the Admiral refused to throw any light. They had been discovered, however,
+and the Captain had laughed at the idea of my running away. Sailor Ben, on
+the contrary, had stoutly contended that I meant to slip cable and be off.
+Whereupon the Captain offered to bet him a dollar that I wouldn't go. And
+it was partly on account of this wager that Sailor Ben refrained from
+capturing me when he might have done so at the start.
+
+Now, as the fare to and from Boston, with the lodging expenses, would cost
+him at least five dollars, I didn't see what he gained by winning the
+wager. The Admiral rubbed his nose violently when this view of the case
+presented itself.
+
+I asked him why he didn't take me from the train at the first stopping-place
+and return to Rivermouth by the down train at 4.30. He explained having
+purchased a ticket for Boston, he considered himself bound to the owners
+(the stockholders of the road) to fulfil his part of the contract! To use
+his own words, he had "shipped for the viage."
+
+This struck me as being so deliciously funny, that after I was in bed and
+the light was out, I couldn't help laughing aloud once or twice. I suppose
+the Admiral must have thought I was meditating another escape, for he made
+periodical visits to my bed throughout the night, satisfying himself by
+kneading me all over that I hadn't evaporated.
+
+I was all there the next morning, when Sailor Ben half awakened me by
+shouting merrily, "All hands on deck!" The words rang in my ears like a
+part of my own dream, for I was at that instant climbing up the side of the
+Rawlings to offer myself as cabin-boy.
+
+The Admiral was obliged to shake me roughly two or three times before he
+could detach me from the dream. I opened my eyes with effort, and stared
+stupidly round the room. Bit by bit my real situation dawned on me. 'What a
+sickening sensation that is, when one is in trouble, to wake up feeling
+free for a moment, and then to find yesterday's sorrow all ready to go on
+again!
+
+"'Well, little messmate, how fares it?"
+
+I was too much depressed to reply. The thought of returning to Rivermouth
+chilled me. How could I face Captain Nutter, to say nothing of Miss Abigail
+and Kitty? How the Temple Grammar School boys would look at me! How Conway
+and Seth Rodgers would exult over my mortification! And what if the Rev.
+'Wibird Hawkins should allude to me in his next Sunday's sermon?
+
+Sailor Ben was wise in keeping an eye on me, for after these thoughts took
+possession of my mind, I wanted only the opportunity to give him the slip.
+
+The keeper of the lodgings did not supply meals to his guests; so we
+breakfasted at a small chophouse in a crooked street on our way to the
+cars. The city was not astir yet, and looked glum and careworn in the damp
+morning atmosphere.
+
+Here and there as we passed along was a sharp-faced shop-boy taking down
+shutters; and now and then we met a seedy man who had evidently spent the
+night in a doorway. Such early birds and a few laborers with their tin
+kettles were the only signs of life to be seen until we came to the
+station, where I insisted on paying for my own ticket. I didn't relish
+being conveyed from place to place, like a felon changing prisons, at
+somebody else's expense.
+
+On entering the car I sunk into a seat next the window, and Sailor Ben
+deposited himself beside me, cutting off all chance of escape.
+
+The car filled up soon after this, and I wondered if there was anything in
+my mien that would lead the other passengers to suspect I was a boy who had
+run away and was being brought back.
+
+A man in front of us-he was near-sighted, as I discovered later by his
+reading a guide-book with his nose-brought the blood to my cheeks by
+turning round and peering at me steadily. I rubbed a clear spot on the
+cloudy window-glass at my elbow, and looked out to avoid him.
+
+There, in the travellers' room, was the severe-looking young lady piling up
+her blocks of sponge-cake in alluring pyramids and industriously
+intrenching herself behind a breastwork of squash-pie. I saw with cynical
+pleasure numerous victims walk up to the counter and recklessly sow the
+seeds of death in their constitutions by eating her doughnuts. I had got
+quite interested in her, when the whistle sounded and the train began to
+move.
+
+The Admiral and I did not talk much on the journey. I stared out of the
+window most of the time, speculating as to the probable nature of the
+reception in store for me at the terminus of the road.
+
+'What would the Captain say? and Mr. Grimshaw, what would he do about it?
+Then I thought of Pepper Whitcomb. Dire was the vengeance I meant to wreak
+on Pepper, for who but he had betrayed me? Pepper alone had been the
+repository of my secret-perfidious Pepper!
+
+As we left station after station behind us, I felt less and less like
+encountering the members of our family. Sailor Ben fathomed what was
+passing in my mind, for he leaned over and said:
+
+"I don't think as the Capen will bear down very hard on you."
+
+But it wasn't that. It wasn't the fear of any physical punishment that might
+be inflicted; it was a sense of my own folly that was creeping over me; for
+during the long, silent ride I had examined my conduct from every
+stand-point, and there was no view I could take of myself in which I did
+not look like a very foolish person indeed.
+
+As we came within sight of the spires of Rivermouth, I wouldn't have cared
+if the up train, which met us outside the town, had run into us and ended
+me.
+
+Contrary to my expectation and dread, the Captain was not visible when we
+stepped from the cars. Sailor Ben glanced among the crowd of faces,
+apparently looking for him too. Conway was there-he was always hanging
+about the station-and if he had intimated in any way that he knew of my
+disgrace and enjoyed it, I should have walked into him, I am certain.
+
+But this defiant feeling entirely deserted me by the time we reached the
+Nutter House. The Captain himself opened the door.
+
+"Come on board, sir," said Sailor Ben, scraping his left foot and touching
+his hat sea-fashion.
+
+My grandfather nodded to Sailor Ben, somewhat coldly I thought, and much to
+my astonishment kindly took me by the hand.
+
+I was unprepared for this, and the tears, which no amount of severity would
+have wrung from me, welled up to my eyes.
+
+The expression of my grandfather's face, as I glanced at it hastily, was
+grave and gentle; there was nothing in it of anger or reproof. I followed
+him into the sitting-room, and, obeying a motion of his hand, seated myself
+on the sofa. He remained standing by the round table for a moment, lost in
+thought, then leaned over and picked up a letter.
+
+It was a letter with a great black seal.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-One
+
+In Which I Leave Rivermouth
+
+
+
+A letter with a great black seal!
+
+I knew then what had happened as well as I know it now. But which was it,
+father or mother? I do not like to look back to the agony and suspense of
+that moment.
+
+My father had died at New Orleans during one of his weekly visits to the
+city. The letter bearing these tidings had reached Rivermouth the evening
+of my flight-had passed me on the road by the down train.
+
+I must turn back for a moment to that eventful evening. When I failed to
+make my appearance at supper, the Captain began to suspect that I had
+really started on my wild tour southward-a conjecture which Sailor Ben's
+absence helped to confirm. I had evidently got off by the train and Sailor
+Ben had followed me.
+
+There was no telegraphic communication between Boston and Rivermouth in
+those days; so my grandfather could do nothing but await the result. Even
+if there had been another mail to Boston, he could not have availed himself
+of it, not knowing how to address a message to the fugitives. The
+post-office was naturally the last place either I or the Admiral would
+think of visiting.
+
+My grandfather, however, was too full of trouble to allow this to add to his
+distress. He knew that the faithful old sailor would not let me come to any
+harm, and even if I had managed for the time being to elude him, was sure
+to bring me back sooner or later.
+
+Our return, therefore, by the first train on the following day did not
+surprise him.
+
+I was greatly puzzled, as I have said, by the gentle manner of his
+reception; but when we were alone together in the sitting-room, and he
+began slowly to unfold the letter, I understood it all. I caught a sight of
+my mother's handwriting in the superscription, and there was nothing left
+to tell me.
+
+My grandfather held the letter a few seconds irresolutely, and then
+commenced reading it aloud; but he could get no further than the date.
+
+"I can't read it, Tom," said the old gentleman, breaking down. "I thought I
+could."
+
+He handed it to me. I took the letter mechanically, and hurried away with it
+to my little room, where I had passed so many happy hours.
+
+The week that followed the receipt of this letter is nearly a blank in my
+memory. I remember that the days appeared endless; that at times I could
+not realize the misfortune that had befallen us, and my heart upbraided me
+for not feeling a deeper grief; that a full sense of my loss would now and
+then sweep over me like an inspiration, and I would steal away to my
+chamber or wander forlornly about the gardens. I remember this, but little
+more.
+
+As the days went by my first grief subsided, and in its place grew up a want
+which I have experienced at every step in life from boyhood to manhood.
+Often, even now, after all these years, when I see a lad of twelve or
+fourteen walking by his father's side, and glancing merrily up at his face,
+I turn and look after them, and am conscious that I have missed
+companionship most sweet and sacred.
+
+I shall not dwell on this portion of my story. There were many tranquil,
+pleasant hours in store for me at that period, and I prefer to turn to
+them.
+
+
+
+One evening the Captain came smiling into the sitting-room with an open
+letter in his hand. My mother had arrived at New York, and would be with us
+the next day. For the first time in weeks-years, it seemed to me-something
+of the old cheerfulness mingled with our conversation round the evening
+lamp. I was to go to Boston with the Captain to meet her and bring her
+home. I need not describe that meeting. With my mother's hand in mine once
+more, all the long years we had been parted appeared like a dream. Very
+dear to me was the sight of that slender, pale woman passing from room to
+room, and lending a patient grace and beauty to the saddened life of the
+old house.
+
+Everything was changed with us now. There were consultations with lawyers,
+and signing of papers, and correspondence; for my father's affairs had been
+left in great confusion. And when these were settled, the evenings were not
+long enough for us to hear all my mother had to tell of the scenes she had
+passed through in the ill-fated city.
+
+Then there were old times to talk over, full of reminiscences of Aunt Chloe
+and little Black Sam. Little Black Sam, by the by, had been taken by his
+master from my father's service ten months previously, and put on a
+sugar-plantation near Baton Rouge. Not relishing the change, Sam had run
+away, and by some mysterious agency got into Canada, from which place he
+had sent back several indecorous messages to his late owner. Aunt Chloe was
+still in New Orleans, employed as nurse in one of the cholera hospital
+wards, and the Desmoulins, near neighbors of ours, had purchased the pretty
+stone house among the orange-trees.
+
+How all these simple details interested me will be readily understood by any
+boy who has been long absent from home.
+
+I was sorry when it became necessary to discuss questions more nearly
+affecting myself. I had been removed from school temporarily, but it was
+decided, after much consideration, that I should not return, the decision
+being left, in a manner, in my own hands.
+
+The Captain wished to carry out his son's intention and send me to college,
+for which I was nearly fitted; but our means did not admit of this. The
+Captain, too, could ill afford to bear the expense, for his losses by the
+failure of the New Orleans business had been heavy. Yet he insisted on the
+plan, not seeing clearly what other disposal to make of me.
+
+In the midst of our discussions a letter came from my Uncle Snow, a merchant
+in New York, generously offering me a place in his counting-house. The case
+resolved itself into this: If I went to college, I should have to be
+dependent on Captain Nutter for several years, and at the end of the
+collegiate course would have no settled profession. If I accepted my
+uncle's offer, I might hope to work my way to independence without loss of
+time. It was hard to give up the long-cherished dream of being a Harvard
+boy; but I gave it up.
+
+The decision once made, it was Uncle Snow's wish that I should enter his
+counting-house immediately. The cause of my good uncle's haste was this-he
+was afraid that I would turn out to be a poet before he could make a
+merchant of me. His fears were based upon the fact that I had published in
+the Rivermouth Barnacle some verses addressed in a familiar manner "To the
+Moon." Now, the idea of a boy, with his living to get, placing himself in
+communication with the Moon, struck the mercantile mind as monstrous. It
+was not only a bad investment, it was lunacy.
+
+'We adopted Uncle Snow's views so far as to accede to his proposition
+forthwith. My mother, I neglected to say, was also to reside in New York.
+
+I shall not draw a picture of Pepper Whitcomb's disgust when the news was
+imparted to him, nor attempt to paint Sailor Ben's distress at the prospect
+of losing his little messmate.
+
+In the excitement of preparing for the journey I didn't feel any very deep
+regret myself. But when the moment came for leaving, and I saw my small
+trunk lashed up behind the carriage, then the pleasantness of the old life
+and a vague dread of the new came over me, and a mist filled my eyes,
+shutting out the group of schoolfellows, including all the members of the
+Centipede Club, who had come down to the house to see me off.
+
+As the carriage swept round the corner, I leaned out of the window to take a
+last look at Sailor Ben's cottage, and there was the Admiral's flag flying
+at half-mast.
+
+So I left Rivermouth, little dreaming that I was not to see the old place
+again for many and many a year.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Two
+
+Exeunt Omnes
+
+With the close of my school-days at Rivermouth this modest chronicle ends.
+
+The new life upon which I entered, the new friends and foes I encountered on
+the road, and what I did and what I did not, are matters that do not come
+within the scope of these pages. But before I write Finis to the record as
+it stands, before I leave it-feeling as if I were once more going away from
+my boyhood-I have a word or two to say concerning a few of the personages
+who have figured in the story, if you will allow me to call Gypsy a
+personage.
+
+I am sure that the reader who has followed me thus far will be willing to
+hear what became of her, and Sailor Ben and Miss Abigail and the Captain.
+
+First about Gypsy. A month after my departure from Rivemouth the Captain
+informed me by letter that he had parted with the little mare, according to
+agreement. She had been sold to the ring-master of a travelling circus (I
+had stipulated on this disposal of her), and was about to set out on her
+travels. She did not disappoint my glowing anticipations, but became quite
+a celebrity in her way-by dancing the polka to slow music on a pine-board
+ball-room constructed for the purpose.
+
+I chanced once, a long while afterwards, to be in a country town where her
+troupe was giving exhibitions; I even read the gaudily illumined show-bill,
+setting forth the accomplishments of Zuleika, the famed Arabian Trick
+Pony-but I failed to recognize my dear little Mustang girl behind those
+high-sounding titles, and so, alas, did not attend the performance! I hope
+all the praises she received and all the spangled trappings she wore did
+not spoil her; but I am afraid they did, for she was always over much given
+to the vanities of this world!
+
+Miss Abigail regulated the domestic destinies of my grandfather's household
+until the day of her death, which Dr. Theophilus Tredick solemnly averred
+was hastened by the inveterate habit she had contracted of swallowing
+unknown quantities of hot-drops whenever she fancied herself out of sorts.
+Eighty-seven empty phials were found in a bonnet-box on a shelf in her
+bedroom closet.
+
+The old house became very lonely when the family got reduced to Captain
+Nutter and Kitty; and when Kitty passed away, my grandfather divided his
+time between Rivermouth and New York.
+
+Sailor Ben did not long survive his little Irish lass, as he always fondly
+called her. At his demise, which took place about six years since, he left
+his property in trust to the managers of a "Home for Aged Mariners." In his
+will, which was a very whimsical document-written by himself, and worded
+with much shrewdness, too-he warned the Trustees that when he got "aloft"
+he intended to keep his "weather eye" on them, and should send "a speritual
+shot across their bows" and bring them to, if they didn't treat the Aged
+Mariners handsomely.
+
+He also expressed a wish to have his body stitched up in a shotted hammock
+and dropped into the harbor; but as he did not strenuously insist on this,
+and as it was not in accordance with my grandfather's preconceived notions
+of Christian burial, the Admiral was laid to rest beside Kitty, in the Old
+South Burying Ground, with an anchor that would have delighted him neatly
+carved on his headstone.
+
+I am sorry the fire has gone out in the old ship's stove in that sky-blue
+cottage at the head of the wharf; I am sorry they have taken down the
+flag-staff and painted over the funny port-holes; for I loved the old cabin
+as it was. They might have let it alone!
+
+For several months after leaving Rivermouth I carried on a voluminous
+correspondence with Pepper Whitcomb; but it gradually dwindled down to a
+single letter a month, and then to none at all. But while he remained at
+the Temple Grammar School he kept me advised of the current gossip of the
+town and the doings of the Centipedes.
+
+As one by one the boys left the academy-Adams, Harris, Marden, Blake, and
+Langdon-to seek their fortunes elsewhere, there was less to interest me in
+the old seaport; and when Pepper himself went to Philadelphia to read law,
+I had no one to give me an inkling of what was going on.
+
+There wasn't much to go on, to be sure. Great events no longer considered it
+worth their while to honor so quiet a place.
+
+One Fourth of July the Temple Grammar School burnt down-set on fire, it was
+supposed, by an eccentric squib that was seen to bolt into an upper
+window-and Mr. Grimshaw retired from public life, married, "and lived
+happily ever after," as the story-books say.
+
+The Widow Conway, I am able to state, did not succeed in enslaving Mr.
+Meeks, the apothecary, who united himself clandestinely to one of Miss
+Dorothy Gibbs's young ladies, and lost the patronage of Primrose Hall in
+consequence.
+
+Young Conway went into the grocery business with his ancient chum,
+Rodgers-RODGERS & CONWAY! I read the sign only last summer when I was down
+in Rivermouth, and had half a mind to pop into the shop and shake hands
+with him, and ask him if he wanted to fight. I contented myself, however,
+with flattening my nose against his dingy shop-window, and beheld Conway,
+in red whiskers and blue overalls, weighing out sugar for a customer-giving
+him short weight, I'll bet anything!
+
+I have reserved my pleasantest word for the last. It is touching the
+Captain. The Captain is still hale and rosy, and if he doesn't relate his
+exploit in the War of 1812 as spiritedly as he used to, he makes up by
+relating it more frequently and telling it differently every time! He
+passes his winters in New York and his summers in the Nutter House, which
+threatens to prove a hard nut for the destructive gentleman with the scythe
+and the hour-glass, for the seaward gable has not yielded a clapboard to
+the eastwind these twenty years. The Captain has now become the Oldest
+Inhabitant in Rivermouth, and so I don't laugh at the Oldest Inhabitant any
+more, but pray in my heart that he may occupy the post of honor for half a
+century to come!
+
+So ends the Story of a Bad Boy-but not such a very bad boy, as I told you to
+begin with.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Story of a Bad Boy, by Aldrich
+
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