Chapter 3

In the "Fifties," and long before, it was a private park, to which only the property owners in its immediate neighborhood had access. It possessed fine old trees, winding gravel-walks, and meadows of grass. In the centre was a fountain, whereupon, in the proper season, the children were allowed to skate on both feet, which was a great improvement over the one-foot gutter-slides outside. The Park was surrounded by a high iron railing, broken here and there by massive gates, to which The Boy had a key. But he always climbed over. It was a point of etiquette, in The Boy's set, to climb over on all occasions, whether the gates were unlocked or not. And The Boy, many a time, has been known to climb over a gate, although it stood wide open! He not infrequently tore his clothes on the sharp spikes by which the gates were surmounted; but that made no difference to The Boy--until he went home!

The Boy once had a fight in the Park, with Bill Rice, about a certain lignum-vitæ peg-top, of which The Boy was very fond, and which Bill Rice kicked into the fountain. The Boy got mad, which was wrong and foolish of The Boy; and The Boy, also, got licked. And The Boy never could make his mother understand why he was silly and careless enough to cut his under-lip by knocking it against Bill Rice's knuckles. Bill subsequently apologized by saying that he did not mean to kick the top into the fountain. He merely meant to kick the top. And it was all made up.

The Boy did not fight much. His nose was too long. It seemed that he could not reach the end of it with his fists when he fought; and that the other fellows could always reach it with theirs, no matter how far out, or how scientifically, his left arm was extended. It was "One, two, three--and recover"--on The Boy's nose! The Boy was a good runner. His legs were the only part of his anatomy which seemed to him as long as his nose. And his legs saved his nose in many a fierce encounter.

The Boy first had daily admission to St. John's Park after the family moved to Hubert Street, when The Boy was about ten years old; and for half a decade or more it was his happy hunting-ground--when he was not kept in school! It was a particularly pleasant place in the autumn and winter months; for he could then gather "smoking-beans" and horse-chestnuts; and he could roam at will all over the grounds without any hateful warning to "Keep Off the Grass."

The old gardener, generally a savage defender of the place, who had no sense of humor as it was exhibited in boy nature, sometimes let the boys rake the dead leaves into great heaps and make bonfires of them, if the wind happened to be in the right direction. And then what larks! The bonfire was a house on fire, and the great garden-roller, a very heavy affair, was "Engine No. 42," with which the boys ran to put the fire out. They all shouted as loudly and as unnecessarily as real firemen did, in those days; the foreman gave his orders through a real trumpet, and one boy had a real fireman's hat with "Engine No. 42" on it. He was chief engineer, but he did not run with the machine: not because he was chief engineer, but because while in active motion he could not keep his hat on. It was his father's hat, and its extraordinary weight was considerably increased by the wads of newspaper packed in the lining to make it fit. The chief engineer held the position for life on the strength of the hat, which he would not lend to anybody else. The rest of the officers of the company were elected, _viva voce_, every time there was a fire.

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.

The favorite amusements 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 button-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 balls 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.

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.

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 Canal Street (a spectacle which they never missed in any weather), Joe Stuart, Johnny Robertson, and The Boy played "The Deerslayer" every Saturday in the back-yard of The Boy's house. The area-way was Glimmer-glass, 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 butter 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.

Johnny Robertson and The Boy had one great superstition--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 circumstances and the occasion, however, having been an active participant 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 grassplat. 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 crape 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.

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-knob--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!

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 Massoneau'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 "Fanny," or to Fido alone after Fanny was stolen by gypsies--Fanny 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 circumstantial 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.

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 buttons--brass buttons, 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 associated 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 asserts 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.

It never happened again, dear Bob, and, please God, it never will!