Nature and Human Nature Part 21

"'What does moose mean, my man?'

"Would you believe it, Sir, he didn't like that word 'my man,'

partikelarly coming from a soldier, for they are so hignorant here they affect to look down upon soldiers, and call 'em 'thirteen pences.'

"'Mean,' said he, 'it means that,' a-pointin' to the carca.s.s. 'Do you want to buy it?'

"'Hem!' said Mac. 'Well now, my good fellow--'

"Oh, Sir, if you had a seen the countryman when he heard them words, it would a been as good as a play. He eyed him all over, very scornful, as if he was taking his measure and weight for throwing him over the sled by his cape and his trousers, and then he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, and took out a large black fig of coa.r.s.e tobacco, and bit a piece out of it, as if it was an apple, and fell too a chewing of it, as if to vent his wrath on it, but said nothing.

"'Well, my good fellow,' said Mac, 'when there are more than one, or they are in the plural number, what do you call them?'

"'Mice,' said the fellow.

"'Mice!' said M'Clure, 'I must look into that; it's very odd. Still, it can't be mooses either.'

"He didn't know what to make of it; he had been puzzled with mouse before, and found he was wrong, so he thought it was possible 'mice'

might be the right word after all.

"'Well,' said he, 'what do you call the female moose?'

"'Why,' sais the man, 'I guess,' a-talkin' through his nose instead of his mouth--how I hate that Yankee way, don't you, Sir? 'Why,' sais he, 'I guess we call the he-moose M, and the other N, as the case may be.'

"'Who gave them that name?' said M'Clure.

"'Why, I reckon,' said the other, 'their G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers at their baptism, but I can't say, for I warn't there.'

"'I say, my man,' said M'Clure, 'you had better keep a civil tongue in your head.'

"'Ask me no questions, then,' said the countryman, 'and I'll tell you no lies; but if you think to run a rig on me, you have made a mistake in the child, and barked up the wrong tree, that's all. P'raps I ain't so old as you be, but I warn't born yesterday. So slope, if you please, for I want to sneeze, and if I do, it will blow your cap over the market-house, and you'll be lucky if your head don't go along with it."

"'Come away,' said I, 'Mac, that fellow has no more manners than a heathen.'

"'He's an hignorant beast,' said he, 'he is beneath notice.'

"The man eard that, and called after him, 'Hofficer, hofficer,' said he.

"That made M'Clure stop, for he was expectin' to be one every day, and the word sounded good, and Scotchmen, Sir, ain't like other people, pride is as natural as oatmeal to them. The man came up to us limpin'.

"'Hofficer,' said he, 'I ax your pardon if I offended you, I thought you was a pokin' fun at me, for I am nothing but a poor hignorant farmer, from the country, and these townspeople are always making game of us. I'll tell you all about that are moose and how I killed him. He urt my feelins, Sir, or I never would have mislested him, for Zack Wilc.o.x is as good-natured a chap, it's generally allowed, as ever lived. Yes, he trod on my toes, I don't feel right yet, and when any fellow does that to me, why there ain't no mistake about it, his time is out and the sentence is come to pa.s.s. He begged for his life, oh, it was piteous to see him. I don't mean to say the dumb beast spoke, but his looks were so beseeching just the way if you was tied up to the halbert to be whipped, you'd look at the general.'

"'Me?' said M'Clure.

"'Yes, you or anybody else,' said the man. 'Well,' said he, 'I told him I wouldn't shoot him, I'de give him one chance for his life, but if he escaped he'd be deaf for ever afterwards. Poor feller, I didn't intend to come it quite so strong, but he couldn't stand the shock I gave him, and it killed him--frightened him to death.'

"'How?' said M'Clure.

"'Why,' sais he, 'I'll tell you,' and he looked cautiously all round, as if he didn't want any one to know the secret. 'I gave him a most an almighty hambler that fairly keeled him over.'

"'What?' said M'Clure.

"'Why,' sais he, 'I gave him,' and he bent forward towards his hear as if to whisper the word, 'I gave him a most thunderin' everlastin'

loud--' and he gave a yell into his hear that was eard clean across the harbour, and at the ospital beyond the dockyard, and t'other way as far as Fresh-water Bridge. Nothin' was hever eard like it before.

"M'Clure sprang backwards the matter of four or five feet, and placed his hand on his side arms, while the countryman brayed out a horse laugh that nearly took away one's earing. The truck-men gate him a cheer, for they are all Irishmen, and they don't like soldiers commonly on account of their making them keep the peace at ome at their meetin' of monsters, and there was a general commotion in the market. We beat a retreat, and when we got out of the crowd, sais I, 'M'Clure, that comes of arguing with every one you meet. It's a bad habit.'

"'I wasn't arguing,' sais he, quite short, 'I was only asking questions, and how can you ever learn if you don't inquire?'

"Well, when he got to the barrack, he got a book wrote by a Frenchman, called Buffoon."

"A capital name," sais I, "for a Frenchman," but he didn't take, for there is no more fun in an Englishman than a dough pudding, and went on without stopping.

"Sais he, 'this author is all wrong. He calls it han 'horiginal,' but he ain't a native animal, it's half English and half Yankee. Some British cattle at a remote period have been wrecked here, strayed into the woods, and erded with the Carriboo. It has the ugly carca.s.s and ide of the ox, and has taken the orns, short tail, and its speed from the deer. That accounts for its being larger than the native stags.' I think he was right, Sir, what is your opinion?"

The doctor and the rest of the party coming up just put an end to Jackson's dissertation on the origin of the moose. The former said,

"Come, Mr Slick, suppose we try the experiment of the bow," and Jessie, seeing us preparing for shooting, asked the doctor for smaller ones for her sister and herself. The targets were accordingly prepared, and placing myself near one of them, I discharged the gun and removed a few paces on one side, and commenced as rapidly as I could to reload, but the doctor had sent three arrows through mine before I had finished. It required almost as little time as a revolver. He repeated the trial again with the same result.

"What do you think of the bow now?" said he in triumph. "Come, Captain, do you and Mr Slick try your luck, and see what sort of shots you can make." The captain, who was an experienced hand with the gun, after a few attempts to ascertain the power and practice necessary, made capital play with the bow, and his muscular arm rendered easy to him that which required of me the utmost exertion of my strength.

Jessie and her sister now stept forward, and measuring off a shorter distance, took their stations. Their shooting, in which they were quite at home, was truly wonderful. Instead of using the bow as we did, so as to bring the arrow in a line with the eye, they held it lower down, in a way to return the elbow to the right side, much in the same manner that a skilful sportsman shoots from the hip. It seemed to be no sort of exertion whatever to them, and every arrow was lodged in the inner circle. It seemed to awaken them to a new existence, and in their excitement I observed they used their mother tongue.

"Beg your pardon, Sir," said Jackson to the doctor, putting his hand to his forehead, "if our sharp-shooters in Spain ad ad bows like yours, in their scrimmages with the French light troops, they would ave done more service and made less noise about it than they did." And saluting me in the same manner, he said in an under-tone,

"If I ad ad one of them at Badajoz, Sir, I think I'd a put a pen in that trooper's mouth to write the account of the way he lost his elmet. A shower of them, Sir, among a troop of cavalry would have sent riders flying, and horses kicking, as bad as a shower of grape. There is no danger of shooting your fingers off with them, Sir, or firing away your ramrod. No, there ain't, is there, Sir?"

"Tom, do'ee put on your hat now, that's a good soul," said his attentive wife, who had followed him out a third time to remind him of his danger. "Oh, Sir," said she, again addressing me, "what signifies a armless thing like an harrow; that's nothin but a little wooden rod to the stroke of the sun, as they calls it. See what a dreadful cut it's given him."

Tom looked very impatient at this, but curbed in his vexation, and said "Thankee, Betty," though his face expressed anything but thanks.

"Thankee, Betty. There, the doctor is calling you. She is as good a creature, Sir, as ever lived," he continued; "and has seen a deal of service in her day. But she bothers me to death about that stroke of the sun. Sometimes I think I'll tell her all about it; but I don't like to demean myself to her. She wouldn't think nothin' of me, Sir, if she thought I could have been floored that way; and women, when they begin to cry, throw up sometime what's disagreeable. They ain't safe. She would perhaps have heaved up in my face that that dragoon had slapped my chops for me, with his elmet. I am blowed, Sir, if I can take a gla.s.s of grog out of my canteen, but she says, 'Tom, mind that stroke of the sun.' And when I ave a big D marked agin my name in the pension book, she'll swear, to her dying day, I was killed by that are stroke."

"Why don't you put it on then," I said, "just to please her."

"Well, Sir, if I was at head-quarters, or even at han hout-post, where there was a detachment, I would put it hon; because it wouldn't seem decent to go bare-headed. But Lord bless you, Sir, what's the use of a hat in the woods, where there is no one to see you?"

Poor fellow, he didn't know what a touch of human nature there was in that expression, "what's the use of a hat in the woods, where there is no one to see you?"

The same idea, though differently expressed, occurs to so many. "Yes,"

said I to myself, "put on your hat for your wife's sake, and your own too; for though you may fail to get a stroke of the sun, you may get not an inflammation of the brain, for there ain't enough of it for that complaint to feed on, but rheumatism in the head; and that will cause a plaguey sight more pain than the dragoon's helmet ever did, by a long chalk."

But, to get back to my story, for the way I travel through a tale is like the way a child goes to school. He leaves the path to chase a b.u.t.terfly, or to pick wild strawberries, or to run after his hat that has blown off, or to take a shy at a bird, or throw off his shoes, roll up his trousers, and wade about the edge of a pond to catch polly-wogs; but he gets to school in the eend, though somewhat of the latest, so I have got back at last, you see.

Mother used to say, "Sam, your head is always a woolgathering."

"I am glad of it," says I, "marm."

"Why, Sam," she'd say, "why, what on earth do you mean?"

"Because, marm," I'd reply, "a head that's alway a gathering will get well stored at last."