A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs Part 2

This entertainment came to an end, like everything else, when the gardener chained the roller to the tool-house, after Bob Stuart fell under the machine and was rolled so flat that he had to be carried home on a stretcher, made of overcoats tied together by the sleeves. That is the only recorded instance in which the boys, particularly Bob, left the Park without climbing over. And the bells sounded a "general alarm." The dent made in the path by Bob's body was on exhibition until the next snow-storm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHIEF ENGINEER]

The favorite amus.e.m.e.nts in the Park were shinny, baseball, one-old-cat, and fires. The Columbia Baseball Club was organized in 1853 or 1854. It had nine members, and The Boy was secretary and treasurer. The uniform consisted chiefly of a black leather belt with the initials [reversed C]B[reversed B]C in white letters, hand-painted, and generally turned the wrong way. The first base was an ailantus-tree; the second base was another ailantus-tree; the third base was a b.u.t.ton-ball-tree; the home base was a marble head-stone, brought for that purpose from an old burying-ground not far away; and "over the fence" was a home-run. A player was caught out on the second bounce, and he was "out" if hit by a ball thrown at him as he ran. The Boy was put out once by a crack on the ear, which put The Boy out very much.

"The Hounds" and "The Rovers" challenged "The Columbias" repeatedly. But that was looked upon simply as an excuse to get into the Park, and the challenges were never accepted. The challengers were forced to content themselves with running off with the b.a.l.l.s which went over the fence; an action on their part which made home-runs through that medium very unpopular and very expensive. In the whole history of "The Hounds" and "The Rovers," nothing that they pirated was ever returned but The Boy's sled.

Contemporary with the Columbia Baseball Club was a so-called "Mind-cultivating Society," organized by the undergraduates of McElligott's School, in Greene Street. The Boy, as usual, was secretary when he was not treasurer. The object was "Debates," but all the debating was done at the business meetings, and no mind ever became sufficiently cultivated to master the intricacies of parliamentary law.

The members called it a Secret Society, and on their jackets they wore, as conspicuously as possible, a badge-pin consisting of a blue enamelled circlet containing Greek letters in gold. In a very short time the badge-pin was all that was left of the Society; but to this day the secret of the Society has never been disclosed. No one ever knew, or will ever know, what the Greek letters stood for--not even the members themselves.

The Boy was never a regular member of any fire-company, but almost as long as the old Volunteer Fire Department existed, he was what was known as a "Runner." He was attached, in a sort of brevet way, to "Pearl Hose No. 28," and, later, to "11 Hook and Ladder." He knew all the fire districts into which the city was then divided; his ear was always alert, even in the St. John's Park days, for the sound of the alarm-bell, and he ran to every fire at any hour of the day or night, up to ten o'clock P.M. He did not do much when he got to the fire but stand around and "holler." But once--a proud moment--he helped steer the hook-and-ladder truck to a false alarm in Macdougal Street--and once--a very proud moment, indeed--he went into a tenement-house, near Dr.

Thompson's church, in Grand Street, and carried two negro babies down-stairs in his arms. There was no earthly reason why the babies should not have been left in their beds; and the colored family did not like it, because the babies caught cold! But The Boy, for once in his life, tasted the delights of self-conscious heroism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MRS. ROBERTSON DESCENDED IN FORCE UPON THE DEVOTED BAND"]

When The Boy, as a bigger boy, was not running to fires he was going to theatres, the greater part of his allowance being spent in the box-offices of Burton's Chambers Street house, of Brougham's Lyceum, corner of Broome Street and Broadway, of Niblo's, and of Castle Garden.

There were no afternoon performances in those days, except now and then when the Ravels were at Castle Garden; and the admission to pit and galleries was usually two shillings--otherwise, twenty-five cents. His first play, so far as he remembers, was "The Stranger," a play dismal enough to destroy any taste for the drama, one would suppose, in any juvenile mind. He never cared very much to see "The Stranger" again, but nothing that was a play was too deep or too heavy for him. He never saw the end of any of the more elaborate productions, unless his father took him to the theatre (as once in a while he did), for it was a strict rule of the house, until The Boy was well up in his teens, that he must be in by ten o'clock. His father did not ask him where he was going, or where he had been; but the curfew in Hubert Street tolled at ten. The Boy calculated carefully and exactly how many minutes it took him to run to Hubert Street from Brougham's or from Burton's; and by the middle of the second act his watch--a small silver affair with a hunting-case, in which he could not keep an uncracked crystal--was always in his hand. He never disobeyed his father, and for years he never knew what became of Claude Melnotte after he went to the wars; or if Damon got back in time to save Pythias before the curtain fell. The Boy, naturally, had a most meagre notion as to what all these plays were about, but he enjoyed his fragments of them as he rarely enjoys plays now. Sometimes, in these days, when the air is bad, and plays are worse, and big hats are worse than either, he wishes that he were forced to leave the modern play-house at nine-forty-five, on pain of no supper that night, or twenty lines of "Virgil" the next day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOY AS VIRGINIUS]

On very stormy afternoons the boys played theatre in the large garret of The Boy's Hubert Street house; a convenient closet, with a door and a window, serving for the Castle of Elsinore in "Hamlet," for the gunroom of the ship in "Black-eyed Susan," or for the studio of Phidias in "The Marble Heart," as the case might be. "The Brazilian Ape," as requiring more action than words, was a favorite entertainment, only they all wanted to play Jocko the Ape; and they would have made no little success out of the "Lady of Lyons" if any of them had been willing to play Pauline. Their costumes and properties were slight and not always accurate, but they could "launch the curse of Rome," and describe "two hearts beating as one," in a manner rarely equalled on the regular stage. The only thing they really lacked was an audience, neither Lizzie Gustin nor Ann Hughes ever being able to sit through more than one act at a time. When The Boy, as Virginius, with his uncle Aleck's sword-cane, stabbed all the feathers out of the pillow which represented the martyred Virginia; and when Joe Stuart, as Falstaff, broke the bottom out of Ann Hughes's clothes-basket, the license was revoked, and the season came to an untimely end.

Until the beginning of the weekly, or the fortnightly, sailings of the Collins line of steamers from the foot of Ca.n.a.l Street (a spectacle which they never missed in any weather), Joe Stuart, Johnny Robertson, and The Boy played "The Deerslayer" every Sat.u.r.day in the back-yard of The Boy's house. The area-way was Glimmer-gla.s.s, in which they fished, and on which they canoed; the back-stoop was Muskrat Castle; the rabbits were all the wild beasts of the Forest; Johnny was Hawk-Eye, The Boy was Hurry Harry, and Joe Stuart was Chingachgook. Their only food was half-baked potatoes--sweet potatoes if possible--which they cooked themselves and ate ravenously, with b.u.t.ter and salt, if Ann Hughes was amiable, and entirely unseasoned if Ann was disposed to be disobliging.

They talked what they fondly believed was the dialect of the Delaware tribe, and they were constantly on the lookout for the approaches of Rivenoak, or the Panther, who were represented by any member of the family who chanced to stray into the enclosure. They carefully turned their toes in when they walked, making so much effort in this matter that it took a great deal of dancing-school to get their feet back to the "first position" again; and they even painted their faces when they were on the war-path. The rabbits had the worst of it!

The campaign came to a sudden and disastrous conclusion when the hostile tribes, headed by Mrs. Robertson, descended in force upon the devoted band, because Chingachgook broke one of Hawk-Eye's front teeth with an arrow, aimed at the biggest of the rabbits, which was crouching by the side of the roots of the grape-vine, and playing that he was a panther of enormous size.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHNNY ROBERTSON]

Johnny Robertson and The Boy had one great superst.i.tion--to wit, Cracks!

For some now inexplicable reason they thought it unlucky to step on cracks; and they made daily and hourly spectacles of themselves in the streets by the eccentric irregularity of their gait. Now they would take long strides, like a pair of ostriches, and now short, quick steps, like a couple of robins; now they would hop on both feet, like a brace of sparrows; now they would walk on their heels, now on their toes; now with their toes turned in, now with their toes turned out--at right angles, in a splay-footed way; now they would walk with their feet crossed, after the manner of the hands of very fancy, old-fashioned piano-players, skipping from base to treble--over cracks. The whole performance would have driven a sensitive drill-sergeant or ballet-master to distraction. And when they came to a brick sidewalk they would go all around the block to avoid it. They could cross Hudson Street on the cobblestones with great effort, and in great danger of being run over; but they could not possibly travel upon a brick pavement, and avoid the cracks. What would have happened to them if they _did_ step on a crack they did not exactly know. But, for all that, they never stepped on cracks--of their own free will!

The Boy's earliest attempts at versification were found, the other day, in an old desk, and at the end of almost half a century. The copy is in his own boyish, ill-spelled print; and it bears no date. The present owner, his aunt Henrietta, well remembers the circ.u.mstances and the occasion, however, having been an active partic.i.p.ant in the acts the poem describes, although she avers that she had no hand in its composition. The original, it seems, was transcribed by The Boy upon the cover of a soap-box, which served as a head-stone to one of the graves in his family burying-ground, situated in the back-yard of the Hudson Street house, from which he was taken before he was nine years of age. The monument stood against the fence, and this is the legend it bore--rhyme, rhythm, metre, and orthography being carefully preserved:

"Three little kitens of our old cat Were berrid this day in this gra.s.splat.

They came to there deth in an old slop pale, And after loosing their breth They were pulled out by the tale.

These three little kitens have returned to their maker, And were put in the grave by The Boy, Undertaker."

At about this period The Boy officiated at the funeral of another cat, but in a somewhat more exalted capacity. It was the Cranes' cat, at Red Hook--a Maltese lady, who always had yellow kittens. The Boy does not remember the cause of the cat's death, but he thinks that Uncle Andrew Knox ran over her, with the "dyspepsia-wagon"--so called because it had no springs. Anyway, the cat died, and had to be buried. The grave was dug in the garden of the tavern, near the swinging-gate to the stable, and the whole family attended the services. Jane Purdy, in a deep c.r.a.pe veil, was the chief mourner; The Boy's aunts were pall-bearers, in white scarves; The Boy was the clergyman; while the kittens--who did not look at all like their mother--were on hand in a funeral basket, with black shoestrings tied around their necks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JANE PURDY]

Jane was supposed to be the disconsolate widow. She certainly looked the part to perfection; and it never occurred to any of them that a cat, with kittens, could not possibly have left a widow behind her.

The ceremony was most impressive; the bereaved kittens were loud in their grief; when, suddenly, the village-bell tolled for the death of an old gentleman whom everybody loved, and the comedy became a tragedy. The older children were conscience-stricken at the mummery, and they ran, demoralized and shocked, into the house, leaving The Boy and the kittens behind them. Jane Purdy tripped over her veil, and one of the kittens was stepped on in the crush. But The Boy proceeded with the funeral.

When The Boy got as far as a room of his own, papered with scenes from circus-posters, and peopled by tin soldiers, he used to play that his bed was the barge _Mayflower_, running from Barrytown to the foot of Jay Street, North River, and that he was her captain and crew. She made nightly trips between the two ports; and by day, when she was not tied up to the door-k.n.o.b--which was Barrytown--she was moored to the handle of the wash-stand drawer--which was the dock at New York. She never was wrecked, and she never ran aground; but great was the excitement of The Boy when, as not infrequently was the case, on occasions of sweeping, Hannah, the up-stairs girl, set her adrift.

The _Mayflower_ was seriously damaged by fire once, owing to the careless use, by a deck-hand, of a piece of punk on the night before the Fourth of July; this same deck-hand being nearly blown up early the very next morning by a bunch of fire-crackers which went off--by themselves--in his lap. He did not know, for a second or two, whether the barge had burst her boiler or had been struck by lightning!

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOE STUART]

Barrytown is the river port of Red Hook--a charming Dutchess County hamlet in which The Boy spent the first summer of his life, and in which he spent the better part of every succeeding summer for a quarter of a century; and he sometimes goes there yet, although many of the names he knows were carved, in the long-agoes, on the tomb. He always went up and down, in those days, on the _Mayflower_, the real boat of that name, which was hardly more real to him than was the trundle-bed of his vivid, nightly imagination. They sailed from New York at five o'clock P.M., an hour looked for, and longed for, by The Boy, as the very beginning of summer, with all its delightful young charms; and they arrived at their destination about five of the clock the next morning, by which time The Boy was wide awake, and on the lookout for Lasher's Stage, in which he was to travel the intervening three miles. And eagerly he recognized, and loved, every landmark on the road.

Barringer's Corner; the half-way tree; the road to the creek and to Madame Knox's; and, at last, the village itself, and the tavern, and the tobacco-factory, and Ma.s.soneau's store, over the way; and then, when Jane Purdy had shown him the new kittens and the little chickens, and he had talked to "Fido" and "f.a.n.n.y," or to Fido alone after f.a.n.n.y was stolen by gypsies--f.a.n.n.y was Fido's wife, and a poodle--he rushed off to see Bob Hendricks, who was just his own age, barring a week, and who has been his warm friend for more than half a century; and then what good times The Boy had!

Bob was possessed of a grandfather who could make kites, and swings, and parallel-bars, and things which The Boy liked; and Bob had a mother--and he has her yet, happy Bob!--who made the most wonderful of cookies, perfectly round, with sparkling globules of sugar on them, and little round holes in the middle; and Bob and The Boy for days, and weeks, and months together hen's-egged, and rode in the hay-carts, and went for the mail every noon, and boosted each other up into the best pound-sweet-tree in the neighborhood; and pelted each other with little green apples, which weighed about a pound to the peck; and gathered currants and chestnuts in season; and with long straws they sucked new cider out of bung-holes; and learned to swim; and caught their first fish; and did all the pleasant things that all boys do.

At Red Hook they smoked their first cigar--half a cigar, left by uncle Phil--and they wished they hadn't! And at Red Hook they disobeyed their mothers once, and were found out. They were told not to go wading in the creek upon pain of not going to the creek at all; and for weeks they were deprived of the delights of the society of the Faure boys, through whose domain the creek ran, because, when they went to bed on that disastrous night, it was discovered that Bob had on The Boy's stockings, and that The Boy was wearing Bob's socks; a piece of circ.u.mstantial evidence which convicted them both. When the embargo was raised and they next went to the creek, it is remembered that Bob tore his trousers in climbing over a log, and that The Boy fell in altogether.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOB HENDRICKS]

The Boy usually kept his promises, however, and he was known even to keep a candy-cane--twenty-eight inches long, red and white striped like a barber's pole--for a fortnight, because his mother limited him to the consumption of two inches a day. But he could not keep any knees to his trousers; and when The Boy's mother threatened to sew b.u.t.tons--bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, with sharp and penetrating eyes--on to that particular portion of the garment in question, he wanted to know, in all innocence, how they expected him to say his prayers!

One of Bob's earliest recollections of The Boy is connected with a toy express-wagon on four wheels, which could almost turn around on its own axis. The Boy imported this vehicle into Red Hook one summer, and they used it for the transportation of their chestnuts and their currants and their apples, green and ripe, and the mail, and most of the dust of the road; and Bob thinks, to this day, that nothing in all these after years has given him so much profound satisfaction and enjoyment as did that little cart.

Bob remembers, too--what The Boy tries to forget--The Boy's daily practice of half an hour on the piano borrowed by The Boy's mother from Mrs. Bates for that dire purpose. Mrs. Bates's piano is almost the only unpleasant thing a.s.sociated with Red Hook in all The Boy's experience of that happy village. It was pretty hard on The Boy, because, in The Boy's mind, Red Hook should have been a place of unbroken delights. But The Boy's mother wanted to make an all-round man of him, and when his mother said so, of course it had to be done or tried. Bob used to go with The Boy as far as Dr. Bates's house, and then hang about on the gate until The Boy was released; and he a.s.serts that the music which came out of the window in response to The Boy's inharmonic touch had no power whatever to soothe his own savage young breast. He attributes all his later disinclination to music to those dreary thirty minutes of impatient waiting.

The piano and its effect upon The Boy's uncertain temper _may_ have been the innocent cause of the first, and only, approach to a quarrel which The Boy and Bob ever had. The prime cause, however, was, of course, a girl! They were playing, that afternoon, at Cholwell Knox's, when Cholwell said something about Julia Booth which Bob resented, and there was a fight, The Boy taking Cholwell's part; why, he cannot say, unless it was because of his jealousy of Bob's affection and admiration for that charming young teacher, who won all hearts in the village, The Boy's among the number. Anyway, Bob was driven from the field by the hard little green apples of the Knox orchard; more hurt, he declares, by the desertion of his ally than by all the blows he received.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MUSIC LESSONS]

It never happened again, dear Bob, and, please G.o.d, it never will!

Another trouble The Boy had in Red Hook was Dr. McNamee, a resident dentist, who operated upon The Boy, now and then. He was a little more gentle than was The Boy's city dentist, Dr. Castle; but he hurt, for all that. Dr. Castle lived in Fourth Street, opposite Washington Parade Ground, and on the same block with Clarke and Fanning's school. And to this day The Boy would go miles out of his way rather than pa.s.s Dr.

Castle's house. Personally Dr. Castle was a delightful man, who told The Boy amusing stories, which The Boy could not laugh at while his mouth was wide open. But professionally Dr. Castle was to The Boy an awful horror, of whom he always dreamed when his dreams were particularly bad.

As he looks back upon his boyhood, with its frequent toothache and its long hours in the dentists' chairs, The Boy sometimes thinks that if he had his life to live over again, and could not go through it without teeth, he would prefer not to be born at all!

It has rather amused The Boy, in his middle age, to learn of the impressions he made upon Red Hook in his extreme youth. Bob, as has been shown, a.s.sociates him with a little cart, and with a good deal of the concord of sweet sounds. One old friend remembers nothing but his phenomenal capacity for the consumption of chicken pot-pie. Another old friend can recall the scrupulously clean white duck suits which he wore of afternoons, and also the blue-checked long ap.r.o.n which he was forced to wear in the mornings; both of them exceedingly distasteful to The Boy, because the ap.r.o.n was a girl's garment, and because the duck suit meant "dress-up," and only the mildest of genteel play; while Bob's sister dwells chiefly now upon the wonderful valentine The Boy sent once to Zillah Crane. It was so large that it had to have an especial envelope made to fit it; and it was so magnificent, and so delicate, that, notwithstanding the envelope, it came in a box of its own. It had actual lace, and pinkish Cupids reclining on light-blue clouds; and in the centre of all was a compressible bird-cage, which, when it was pulled out, like an accordion, displayed not a dove merely, but a plain gold ring--a real ring, made of real gold. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in all Dutchess County; and it was seen and envied by every girl of Zillah's age between Rhinebeck and Tivoli, between Barrytown and Pine Plains.

The Boy did an extensive business in the valentine line, in the days when February Fourteenth meant much more to boys than it does now. He sent sentimental valentines to Phoebe Hawkins and comic valentines to Ann Hughes, both of them written anonymously, and both directed in a disguised hand. But both recipients always knew from whom they came; and, in all probability, neither of them was much affected by the receipt. The Boy, as he has put on record elsewhere, never really, in his inmost heart, thought that comic valentines were so very comic, because those that came to him usually reflected upon his nose, or were illuminated with portraits of gentlemen of all ages adorned with supernaturally red hair.

In later years, when Bob and The Boy could swim--a little--and had learned to take care of themselves in water over their heads, the mill-pond at Red Hook played an important part in their daily life there. They sailed it, and fished it, and camped out on its banks, with Ed Curtis--before Ed went to West Point--and with d.i.c.k Hawley, Josie Briggs, and Frank Rodgers, all first-rate fellows. But that is another story.

The Boy was asked, a year or two ago, to write a paper upon "The Books of his Boyhood." And when he came to think the matter over he discovered, to his surprise, that the Books of his Boyhood consisted of but one book! It was bound in two twelvemo green cloth volumes; it bore the date of 1850, and it was filled with pictorial ill.u.s.trations of "The Personal History and Experiences of David Copperfield, the Younger." It was the first book The Boy ever read, and he thought then, and sometimes he thinks now, that it was the greatest book ever written.

The traditional books of the childhood of other children came later to The Boy: "Robinson Crusoe," and the celebrated "Swiss Family" of the same name; "The Desert Home," of Mayne Reid; Marryat's "Peter Simple"; "The Leather Stocking Tales"; "Rob Roy"; and "The Three Guardsmen" were well thumbed and well liked; but they were not The Boy's first love in fiction, and they never usurped, in his affections, the place of the true account of David Copperfield. It was a queer book to have absorbed the time and attention of a boy of eight or nine, who had to skip the big words, who did not understand it all, but who cried, as he has cried but once since, whenever he came to that dreadful chapter which tells the story of the taking away of David's mother, and of David's utter, hopeless desolation over his loss.

How the book came into The Boy's possession he cannot now remember, nor is he sure that his parents realized how much, or how often, he was engrossed in its contents. It cheered him in the measles, it comforted him in the mumps. He took it to school with him, and he took it to bed with him; and he read it, over and over again, especially the early chapters; for he did not care so much for David after David became Trotwood, and fell in love.

When, in 1852, after his grandfather's death, The Boy first saw London, it was not the London of the Romans, the Saxons, or the Normans, or the London of the Plantagenets or the Tudors, but the London of the Micawbers and the Traddleses, the London of Murdstone and Grinby, the London of Dora's Aunt and of Jip. On his arrival at Euston Station the first object upon which his eyes fell was a donkey-cart, a large wooden tray on wheels, driven, at a rapid pace, by a long-legged young man, and followed, at a pace hardly so rapid, by a boy of about his own age, who seemed in great mental distress. This was the opening scene. And London, from that moment, became to him, and still remains, a great moving panorama of David Copperfield.

He saw the Orfling, that first evening, snorting along Tottenham Court Road; he saw Mealy Potatoes, in a ragged ap.r.o.n and a paper cap, lounging along Broad Street; he saw Martha disappear swiftly and silently into one of the dirty streets leading from Seven Dials; he saw innumerable public-houses--the Lion, or the Lion and something else--in anyone of which David might have consumed that memorable gla.s.s of Genuine Stunning ale with a good head on it. As they drove through St. Martin's Lane, and past a court at the back of the church, he even got a glimpse of the exterior of the shop where was sold a special pudding, made of currants, but dear; a two-pennyworth being no larger than a pennyworth of more ordinary pudding at any other establishment in the neighborhood. And, to crown all, when he looked out of his back bedroom window, at Morley's Hotel, he discovered that he was looking at the actual bedroom windows of the Golden Cross on the Strand, in which Steerforth and little Copperfield had that disastrous meeting which indirectly brought so much sorrow to so many innocent men and women.

This was but the beginning of countless similar experiences, and the beginning of a love for Landmarks of a more important but hardly of a more delightful character. Hungerford Market and Hungerford Stairs, with the blacking-warehouse ab.u.t.ting on the water when the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, still stood near Morley's in 1852; and very close to them stood then, and still stands to-day, the old house in Buckingham Street, Adelphi, where, with Mrs. Crupp, Trotwood Copperfield found his lodgings when he began his new life with Spenlow and Jorkins.

These chambers, once the home of Clarkson Stanfield, and since of Mr.

William Black and of Dr. B. E. Martin, became, in later days, very familiar to The Boy, and still are haunted by the great crowd of the ghosts of the past. The Boy has seen there, within a few years, and with his eyes wide open, the spirits of Traddles, of Micawber, of Steerforth, of Mr. d.i.c.k, of Clara Peggotty and Daniel, of Uriah Heep--the last slept one evening on the sofa pillows before the fire, you may remember--and of Aunt Betsy herself. But in 1852 he could only look at the outside of the house, and, now and then, when the door was open, get a glimpse of the stairs down which some one fell and rolled, one evening, when somebody else said it was Copperfield!

The Boy never walked along the streets of London by his father's side during that memorable summer without meeting, in fancy, some friend of David's, without pa.s.sing some spot that David knew, and loved, or hated.

And he recognized St. Paul's Cathedral at the first glance, because it had figured as an ill.u.s.tration on the cover of Peggotty's work-box!