Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Volume II Part 20

"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell glance of contempt.

"Dear, dear! Where does the boy learn such horrid words?"

"Why, ma, don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one," said Billy, drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. "And don't I wish I had lots of 'em!"

"Oh!" sighed his mother, "to think I should have a child so addicted to slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!"

"Well, mother," replied Billy, "if you wanted two boys just alike you'd oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like Daniel now, when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a dog-fight; hear 'em! It's Joe Casey's dog,--I know his bark!"

With these words my nephew s.n.a.t.c.hed his Glengarry bonnet from the table and bolted downstairs to see the fun.

"What will become of him?" said Lu, hopelessly; "he has no taste for any thing but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why _isn't_ he like Daniel?"

"I suppose because his Maker never repeats himself. Even twins often possess strongly marked individualities. Don't you think it would be a good plan to learn Billy better before you try to teach him? If you do, you'll make something as good of him as Daniel though it will be rather different from that model."

"Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do Billy.

But we all know the proverb about old maid's daughters and old bachelor's sons. I wish you had Billy for a month,--then you'd see."

"I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in other directions But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he was a new problem, not to be worked without finding out the value of X in his particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will no more solve the next one than the rule-of-three will solve a question in calculus,--or, to rise into your sphere, than the receipt for one-two-three-four cake will conduct you to a successful issue through plum-pudding."

I excel in metaphysical discussion, and was about giving further elaboration to my favorite idea, when the door burst open. Master Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a b.l.o.o.d.y nose, the trace of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his hands.

"Oh my! my!! my!!!" exclaimed his mother.

"Don't you get scared, ma!" cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of triumph; "I smashed the nose off him! He wont sa.s.s me again for nothing _this_ while! Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dog-fight, after all?

There was that nasty, good-for-nothing Joe Casey, 'n Patsy Grogan, and a lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd caught this poor little ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail, and were trying to set Joe's dog on him, though he's ten times littler."

"You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to see you playing with those ragam.u.f.fins?"

"Yes, I _played_ 'em! I polished 'em,--that's the play I did! Says I, 'Put down that poor little pup; ain't you ashamed of yourself, Patsy Grogan?' 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way they always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some awful great fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog, or I'll show you who I am'; and when he held on, I let him have. Then he dropped the pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one on the bugle."

"_Bugle_! Oh! oh! oh!"

"The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I was trying to give as good as I got,--only a fellow can't do it well with only one hand, Uncle Teddy,--up came a policeman, and the whole crowd ran away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!"

With that Billy set down his "ki-oodle," bid farewell to every fear, and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with an expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction of his dilapidated raiment and depraved a.s.sociations. I felt such sincere pride in this young Mazzini of the dog-nation, that I was vexed at Lu for bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation; but she was not the only conservative who fails to see a good cause and a heroic heart under a b.l.o.o.d.y nose and torn jacket. I resolved that if Billy was punished he should have his recompense before long in an extra holiday at Barnum's or the Hippotheatron.

You already have some idea of my other nephew, if you have noticed that none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities, Billy, ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to call Billy William. He was one of those youths who never gave their parents a moment's uneasiness; who never had to have their wills broken, and never forget to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella. In boyhood he was intended for a missionary. Had it been possible for him to go to Greenland's icy mountains without catching cold, or India's coral strand, without getting bilious, his parents would have carried out their pleasing dream of contributing him to the world's evangelization.

Lu and Mr. Lovegrove had no doubt that he would have been greatly blessed if he could have stood it....

Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think they took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener does in getting a nice blanch on his celery, and so long as he was not absolutely sick, the graver he was the better. He was a sensitive plant, a violet by a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing....

At the time I introduce Billy, both Lu and her husband were much changed. They had gained a great deal in width of view and liberality of judgment. They read d.i.c.kens, and Thackeray with avidity; went now and then to the opera; proposed to let Billy take a quarter at Dodworth's; had statues in their parlor without any thought of shame at their lack of petticoats, and did mult.i.tudes of things which, in their early married life, they would have considered shocking.... They would greatly have liked to see Daniel shine in society. Of his erudition they were proud even to worship. The young man never had any business, and his father never seemed to think of giving him any, knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough to "see him through." If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed a professorship in some college and given him the chair; but that would have taken him away from his own room and the family physician.

Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the small change of every-day society, in the exclusive cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm done him, when they ascribed to a delicate organization the fact that, at an age when love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a Balmoral without his cheeks rivalling the most vivid stripe in it. They flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness; but Daniel had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he thought he should never marry at all.

About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's convoy, the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the dog under his arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy spitzenbergs, and other indignities had been offered him to the extent of the brush and comb. He also had a whole jacket on....

Billy and I also obtained permission to go out together and be gone the entire afternoon. We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoe-box, and then strolled hand-in-hand across that most delightful of New York breathing-places--Stuyvesant Square.

"Uncle Teddy," exclaimed Billy, with ardor, "I wish I could do something to show you how much I think of you for being so good to me. I don't know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a hymn for you,--a smashing big hymn--six verses, long metre, and no grumbling?"

"No, Billy; you make me happy enough just by being a good boy."

"Oh, Uncle Teddy!" replied Billy, decidedly, "I'm afraid I can't do it.

I've tried so often, and I always make such an awful mess of it." ...

We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on account of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual conflicts of Billy's which so much interested me, amused ourselves with looking out until just as we reached the Astor House, when he asked me where we were going.

"Where do you guess?" said I.

He cast a glance through the front window, and his face became irradiated. Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of pleasing a child, to create sunshine enough for the chasing away of the bluest adult devils.

"We're going to Barnum's!" said Billy, involuntarily clapping his hands.

So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down on the place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that cla.s.s largely represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make believe that they only come to amuse the children, or because they've country cousins visiting them, and never fail to refer to the vulgar set one finds there, and the fact of the animals smelling like any thing but Jockey Club; yet I notice that after they've been in the hall three minutes they're as much interested as any of the people they come to pooh-pooh, and only put on the high-bred air when they fancy some of their own cla.s.s are looking at them. I boldly acknowledge that I go because I like it. I am especially happy, to be sure, if I have a child along to go into ecstasies, and give me a chance, by asking questions, for the exhibition of that fund of information which is said to be one of my chief charms in the social circle, and on several occasions has led that portion of the public immediately about the Happy Family into the erroneous impression that I was Mr. Barnum, explaining his five hundred thousand curiosities.

On the present occasion, we found several visitors of the better cla.s.s in the room devoted to the aquarium. Among these was a young lady, apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet, which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium; her eyes a soft, expressive brown, shaded by ma.s.ses of hair which exactly matched their color, and, at that rat-and-miceless day fell in such graceful abandon as to show at once that nature was the only maid who crimped their waves into them. Her complexion was rosy with health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was faultless, her nose sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her voice musical as a wood-robin's, when she spoke to the little boy of six at her side, to whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king. Billy and I were flattening our noses against the abode of the balloon-fish, and determining whether he looked most like a horse-chestnut burr or a ripe cuc.u.mber, when his eyes and my own simultaneously fell on the child and lady, In a moment, to Billy, the balloon-fish was as though he had not been.

"That's a pretty little boy!" said I. And then I asked Billy one of those senseless routine questions which must make children look at us, regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at Bushmen.

"How would you like to play with him?"

"Him!" replied Billy, scornfully, "that's his first pair of boots; see him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to 'em! But, crackey! isn't _she_ a smasher!"

After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the learned seal and the gla.s.s-blowers. Whenever we pa.s.sed from one room into another, Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the pretty girl and child were coming, too.

Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in astonishment at the Lightning Calculator,--wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy for him to do his sums by,--finally thought he had discovered it, and resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how he became so confused among the wax-works that he pinched the solemnest showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful Circa.s.sian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read all about the way they sold girls like her in his geography.

We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the sign-board at the head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child following after,--a sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which whirled me down at ten years,--a little boy's first love?

We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compa.s.s, whose k.n.o.bby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he b.u.mped his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove not an inch from one of his big tusks, then marched around the tank and presented it to the lady with a chivalry of manner in one of his years quite surprising.

"That's a real nice boy,--you said so, didn't you, Lottie?--and I wish he'd come and play with me," said the little fellow by the young lady's side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back to me with his cheeks roseate with blushes.

As he heard this, Billy idled along the edge of the tank for a moment, then faced about and said,--

"P'raps I will some day,--where do you live?"

"I live on East Seventeenth street with papa,--and Lottie stays there, too, now,--she's my cousin. Where d' you live?"

"Oh, I live close by,--right on that big green square, where I guess the nurse takes you once in a while," said Billy, patronizingly. Then, looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, "I never saw you out there."

"No; Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and I've just come to visit him."

"Say, will you come and play with me some time?" chimed in the inextinguishable Jimmy. "I've got a cooking-stove,--for real fire,--and blocks and a ball with a string."

Billy, who belonged to a club for the practice of the great American game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battist among the I.G.B.B.C., or "Infant Giants," smiled from that alt.i.tude upon Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Sat.u.r.day afternoon.