Round the Block Part 32

Mr. Boolpin broke out with a laugh, which made the building reverberate.

"It's the village idiot," said he. "He goes by the name of Stoop, which is short for Stupid. Ha! ha! Come, now, clear out, Stupid, and don't be bothering the gentleman."

The boy-man began to whimper, when Tiffles, recollecting an allusion to a semi-idiot in one of the postmaster's letters, said:

"Stay, my lad; I believe I owe you something."

"For pastin' up two hundred posters, fifty cents; and distributin' five hundred bills, twenty-five cents. Totale, seventy-five cents." The idiot did not hold out his hand for the pay, and Tiffles conceived an instant esteem for him. An idea came to Tiffles. This idiot, as he was called, had shown intelligence in reckoning. He might have a deal of good sense under that dull exterior. Tiffles had observed, in his travels, that _the_ idiot which Providence a.s.signs to every town and village, is not always the biggest fool in it. This idiot might have sufficient intellect to turn the crank of the panorama, and render muscular aid in other respects. At any rate, he was able-bodied enough.

"My lad," said Tiffles.

"Stoop, if you please, sir."

"Very good. Stoop, I think I can find some work for you behind the scenes to-night. Can you turn a crank?"

"I've done it to grindstones, sir."

"It's the same principle," said Tiffles, laughing. "I'll engage you."

The idiot took off his greasy cap, and swung it in the air with joy. A smile irradiated his great, coa.r.s.e face, and his small eyes twinkled.

"Gosh golly!" he cried; "I'm goin' to be one of the performers. I'm so glad!"

He said this, in a spirit of juvenile exultation, to the dozen boys who stood gaping in at the doorway. This innocent bit of boasting provoked their derisive laughter, and a quant.i.ty of playful epithets and nicknames, which the idiot endured with marvellous patience, until one dirty little boy put the thumb of his left hand to his nose, twirled the fingers, and said, "Boo! boo! boo!" This act had the same effect on poor Stoop as the shaking of a red handkerchief at a bull. It enraged him. He sprang at the youth, and, but for the sudden closing of the door by the offender, who had judiciously kept a hand on the k.n.o.b, would have chastised him on the spot.

The door not only arrested his progress, but suddenly checked his wrath.

"I'm very sorry, indeed, Professor," said he; "but Gorrifus! it makes me so mad!"

Messrs. Boolpin and Persimmon laughed heartily. "He's a perfect idiot, you see," remarked the former. "Coming the nose system at him always makes him mad."

Tiffles did not understand how that was any proof of idiocy; but, to prevent the recurrence of any difficulty between his new a.s.sistant and the populace of small boys, he thought it best to take possession of the hall, and lock the door. He therefore signified to Mr. Boolpin that they would at once proceed to put up the panorama. Tiffles threw off his coat, thereby intimating that he would go to work at once.

Messrs. Boolpin and Persimmon inquired, as a matter of form, whether their further a.s.sistance was needed, and were answered in the negative.

Whereupon they retired--Mr. Boolpin uttering a farewell caution against driving more nails in the wall than were necessary, and not to cut the floor under any circ.u.mstances--and the panorama and its adherents were left alone.

Mr. Boolpin had driven the uproarious boys before him with his pestle, administering smart taps to the reluctant ones. Tiffles suffered no further annoyance from them that day, save an occasional "Boo! boo!"

shouted through the keyhole, and followed by an immediate scampering of the perpetrators down stairs. This well-known sound always roused the idiot to fury; and the peaceable persuasions, and even the gentle violence of Tiffles, were needed to keep him from relinquishing his work and springing to the door.

He was a most intelligent and useful idiot. He could measure distances more accurately than either of the three, and could ply the saw, hammer, plane, or hatchet (Tiffles brought all these tools with him) like a carpenter. His strength and skill were so great, that Tiffles found himself gratefully relieved from the necessity of lifting, or directing.

Marcus Wilkeson, who had also thrown off his coat with a manful determination to do a hard day's work, in the hope of tiring out and driving away the sadness that possessed him, put on the garment again, and sat on a front bench, vacantly staring like an idiot at the idiot, and all the while thinking, gloomily, of New York. Patching stalked about the hall, and criticized the work as it progressed, from numerous angles of observation; but even he confessed that he could make no improvement on Stoop's highly artistic disposition of things.

The idiot worked on steadily and swiftly, and only two things interrupted him. The first was the "Boo!" yelled through the keyhole, as heretofore described. The second was the unrolling of portions of the panorama as they were taken out of the boxes, fastened together, and attached to the rollers.

As the canvas was unwound, Stoop would drop his saw, or hammer, or other tool, and gaze, with his large mouth and small eyes wide open, at the pictorial marvels successively disclosed. "Blame it!" said he; "a'n't that splendid?" or, "By jingo! look at that!" or, "Thunder! don't that beat all?" The tigers' tails and the elephants' trunks, the alligators'

snouts and the boa constrictor's convolutions, he recognized at once. He had "read all about 'em in Olney's Jogriffy."

"He is an idiot of taste," thought Patching. "I wonder what they call him an idiot for?" thought Tiffles. "It's a pity all the people aren't idiots," said Marcus Wilkeson to Tiffles. "Your panorama would be patronized and appreciated then." It was Marcus's first approach to a joke that day.

By four o'clock in the afternoon the Panorama of Africa was all up, the rollers and the curtain in good working order, and everything ready for the eventful night. Stoop had taken a lesson at the wheel, and turned it beautifully. Tiffles had arranged a system of signals with him. One cough was "Stop;" two coughs were "Go on;" one stamp was "Slower;" two, stamps were "Faster." Tiffles and Stoop rehea.r.s.ed the system several times, the one being before the curtain, in the position of the lecturer, and the other behind it, at the crank. Nothing could be more satisfactory.

"Only one thing puzzles me," said Tiffles to his friends. "Why do they call this smart fellow an idiot?"

CHAPTER V.

AN AUDIENCE a.n.a.lYZED.

The eventful night came on. Tiffles and friends fortified themselves with a poor supper, including numerous cups of weak black tea, at the hotel, and repaired, full of anxiety and misgivings, to the hall. The idiotic but intelligent Stoop had remained in charge of the panorama, and feasted himself, intellectually, upon the splendors of that work of Art, as disclosed by a single candle in front.

All the candles in the hall and the entry were then lighted up, and produced quite a gorgeous illumination of the four windows fronting on the main street. This having been done, Marcus (who, having a more extensive acquaintance with the faces of bank bills than either of his friends, had kindly consented to act as money taker and cashier) took his seat in a little box with a pigeon hole in it, and his entire stock of loose change, amounting to seventy-five cents in silver, spread before him. Tiffles stood within the door of the hall, to see that n.o.body came in (especially small boys) who had not paid. Stoop remained behind the scenes, and was positively instructed to stay there. Patching wandered up and down the hall, as if he were an early comer, and had paid his quarter, and had no personal knowledge of or interest in the panorama.

Performance was to commence at 8 o'clock. Doors were open at 61/2. Some time previous to that hour, the stairs leading from the street door to the hall were lined with the lads of the village, who amused themselves with making jocular remarks about "the man in the cage there" (meaning Marcus), and "t'other man at the door, whose shirt was out of jail"

(meaning Tiffles). Marcus smiled grimly at his a.s.sailants through the small pigeon hole; and Tiffles, who felt reckless in the sure view of a failure, laughed heartily at them, returned jokes as bad as they sent, but, in the height of his humor, begged them distinctly to understand that they could not get In without paying. At which the juvenile chorus sarcastically replied, "P'r'aps not;" "Mebbe you're right," "You'll have to stop up the keyhole, Mister;" "Mind I don't get down the chimbley," &c., &c.

At precisely forty-seven minutes past six, the first man made his appearance. He was a thick-set, pompous individual, with a gold-headed cane and gold spectacles, and climbed up the stairs with dignity and difficulty. He was followed by a pale little woman, four small children, and a stout, red-haired nurse, bearing in her arms a baby, which was laboring under an attack of the intermittent squalls. Marcus reconnoitred the party through his pigeon hole, and nervously jingled the seventy-five cents in his hand. Tiffles stepped forward to the head of the stairs, in order that he might not be wanting in personal respect to his first patron.

As this thick-set man ascended the stairs, the boys hushed their voices; but Tiffles distinctly heard several of them say, "It's the Square."

Though apparently awestruck in his presence, the boys did not forget to play a few practical jokes on "the Square's" children, such as slapping them, and pinching their legs as they clambered wearily up. A peal of cries from his tortured offspring, particularly the baby, who received a pin in a sensitive part of its little person, so enraged "the Square,"

that he would have beaten all the boys with his gold-headed cane, had they not jumped away, laughing, and got safely out of the building, only to be back again the next minute.

"You should not allow these boys to hang around the stairs, sir," said the pompous man, planting his foot on the topmost step, and bringing down his cane on the floor with the ring of a watchman's club. "It's trouble enough to come to your panorama, without being annoyed by all the young vagabonds in the village."

"I'm sorry, sir," replied Tiffles, inwardly laughing, "but it would take six strong men to regulate the little rascals."

"Then you ought to employ six strong men, sir. It's your business to see that your patrons are not insulted."

Tiffles could only smile deprecatingly.

"Every exhibition in this hall, for a year past," continued the man, "has been a humbug--an outrage on the common sense of mankind. Perhaps yours is an exception, though, to be candid, I have my doubts of it. Do I understand, sir, that you have travelled in Africa?"

Tiffles indulged in the unjustifiable deception of nodding his head.

"And you mean to say that the sketches for this panorama were taken on the spot?"

"Yes, sir; on the spot--in a horn."

"In a horn! What's that?"

"A technical phrase, sir, which it is hardly worth while to explain at length. Briefly, however, I may say, that no more ingenious or satisfactory mode of taking sketches has been invented."

"Oh! never mind the details. I hate the jargon of Art. I only wished to a.s.sure myself that I am not to be imposed on. Well, I think I will risk it, and go in. You can put us on a front seat, I suppose?"

"First come, first served," said Tiffles, amiably, for he had reckoned up, and found that this party brought him a dollar and a quarter, counting the children as half prices, and the baby free.

"Under these circ.u.mstances we will go in, though I must confess I expect to be disappointed. You will excuse my plain speaking." The thick-set gentleman thereupon thrust a hand into a pocket, and produced--not a huge roll of bank bills, or a half pint of silver, as Marcus, who eyed him sharply through the pigeon hole, had expected, but--a card, which he poked at Tiffles.

Tiffles recognized it at the first glance. It was one of thirty complimentary tickets that he had caused to be distributed among the leading men of the village that morning, by advice of the landlord; and it bore the name of "C. Skimmerhorn, Esq."

"Welcome, sir, welcome!" said Tiffles, as he observed the dollar and a quarter disappear from his mental horizon, and felt that, but for his indomitable good nature, he would like to kick C. Skimmerhorn, Esq., down stairs. And Tiffles, n.o.bly concealing his disappointment, showed C.