Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Part 2

I am a bachelor uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody; but I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially, just as I am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human race; and if, through untoward circ.u.mstances--which heaven forbid--I should lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw me out in the _Herald_ under "Situations Wanted--Males." Thanks to a marrying tendency in the rest of my family, I have now little need to advertise, all the business being thrown into my way which a single member of my profession can attend to.

I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am, through the flowery mead of several nurseries, but I am detained longest among the children of my sister Lu.

Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired with a fortune ama.s.sed by the old-fas.h.i.+oned, slow processes of trade, and regards the mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling Christianly baptized.... Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an unusually good article of brother-in-law; and I cannot say that any of my nieces and nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and Billy, who are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart in point of years; Daniel is twenty-two, Bill eleven. I was reminded of this fact the other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling at his book of sums.

"'A boy has eighty-five turnips and gives his sister thirty'--pretty present for a girl, isn't it?" said Billy, with an air of supreme contempt, "Could _you_ stand such stuff--say?"

I put on my instructive face and answered:

"Well, my dear Billy, you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if you mean to be an industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose your parents were to lose all their property, what would become of them without a little son who could make money and keep accounts?"

"Oh," said Billy, with surprise, "hasn't father got enough stamps to see him through?"

"He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they should go by some accident, when your father was too old to make any more stamps for himself?"

"You haven't thought of Brother Daniel--"

True; for n.o.body ever had in connection with the active employments of life.

"No, Billy," I replied, "I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is more of a student than a business man, and--"

"Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I mean he'd support them? I meant I'd have to take care of father and mother and him, too, when they'd all got to be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven, and he's twenty-two; so he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?"

"Forty, Billy, last August."

"Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you, Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that, and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed, and wheels him round in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, I bet! Well, I tell you how I'll keep my accounts: I'll have a stick like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll gouge a piece out of the other."

"Spend a _what?_" said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu, who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.

"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Oolburn 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 anything 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-fourcake 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 traces 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 won't 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 it.

Then he dropped the pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one on the bugle."

"_Bugle!_ Oh! Ooh! Ooh!"

"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 forgot 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 s.h.i.+ne in society. Of his erudition they were proud even to wors.h.i.+p. 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 professors.h.i.+p 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 rivaling 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 s...o...b..x, 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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 always make such a 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 suns.h.i.+ne enough for the chasing away of the blues of 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, but never fail to refer to the vulgar set one finds there, and the fact of the animals smelling like anything 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 glibly 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 as 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.