Chapter 10

But no sooner were we all gay and happy in the house again, running out as we pleased, beginning to think of parties and drives and theatres and all enjoyment--and rather unobservant, as young folks are apt to be unobservant of Aunt Pen's slight habitual pensiveness in the absence of guests or excitement, and of her ways generally--than Aunt Pen would challenge some lobster-salad to mortal combat, and, of course, come out floored by the colic. A little whiskey then; and as a little gave so much ease, she would try a great deal. The result always was a precipitate retreat up-stairs, a howling hysteric, bilious cramps, the doctor, a subcutaneous injection of morphine in her arm; then chattering like a magpie, relapsed into awful silence, and, convinced that the morphine had been carried straight to her heart, a composing of her hands and feet, an injured dismissal of every soul from the room, with the assurance that we should find her straight and stiff and stone-dead in the morning.

We never did. For, as we seldom had opportunity of an undisturbed night's rest, we usually took her at her word if any access of ill temper, or despair, or drowsiness occasioned banishment from the presence. Not that we had always been so calm about it; there was a time when we were excited with every alarm, thrown into flurries and panics quite to Aunt Pen's mind, running after the doctor at two o'clock of the morning, building a fire in the range ourselves at midnight to make gruel for her, rubbing her till we rubbed the skin off our hands, combing her hair till we went to sleep standing; but Aunt Pen had cried wolf so long, and the doctors had all declared so stoutly that there was no wolf, that our once soft hearts had become quite hard and concrete.

When at last Aunt Pen had had an alarm from nearly every illness for which the pharmacopoeia prescribes, and she knew that neither we nor the doctors would listen to the probability of their recurrence; she had an attack of "sinking." No, there was no particular disease, she used to say, only sinking; she had been pulled down to an extent from which she had no strength to recuperate; she was only sinking, a little weaker to-day than she was yesterday--only sinking. But Aunt Pen ate a very good breakfast of broiled birds and toast and coffee; a very good lunch of cold meats and dainties, and a great goblet of thick cream; a very good dinner of soup and roast and vegetables and dessert, and perhaps a chicken bone at eleven o'clock in the evening. And when the saucy little Israel, who carried up her tray, heard her say she was sinking, he remarked that it was because of the load on her stomach.

One day, I remember, Aunt Pen was very much worse than usual. We were all in her room, a sunshiny place which she had connected with the adjoining one by sliding-doors, so that it might be big enough for us all to bring our work on occasion, and make it lively for her. She had on a white-cashmere dressing-gown trimmed with swan's-down, and she lay among the luxurious cushions of a blue lounge, with a paler blue blanket, which she had had one of us tricot for her, lying over her feet, and altogether she looked very ideal and ethereal; for Aunt Pen always did have such an eye to picturesque effect that I don't know how she could ever consent to the idea of mouldering away into dust like common clay.

She had sent Maria down for Mel and me to come up-stairs with whatever occupied us, for she was convinced that she was failing fast, and knew we should regret it if we did not have the last of her. As we had received the same message nearly every other day during the last three or four weeks, we did not feel extraordinarily alarmed, but composedly took our baskets and scissors, and trudged along after Maria.

"I am sure I ought to be glad that I've succeeded in training my nieces into such industrious habits," said Aunt Pen, after a little while, looking at Mel; "but I should think that when a near relative approached the point of death, the fact might throw needle and thread into the background for a time." Then she paused for Maria to fan a little more breath into her. "It's different with Helen," soon she said; "the white silk shawl she is netting for me may be needed at any moment to lay me out in."

"Dear me, Aunt Pen!" cried Mel; "what a picture you'd be, laid out in a white net shawl!" For the doctor had told us to laugh at these whims all we might.

"Oh, you heartless girl!" said Aunt Pen. "To think of pictures at such a time!" And she closed her eyes as if weary of the world.

"I never saw anybody who liked to revel in the ghastly the way you do, Aunt Pen."

"Mel!" said Aunt Pen, with quite a show of color in her cheek; "I shall send you down stairs."

"Do," said Mel; "where I can cut out my gown in peace."

"Cutting a gown at the bedside of the dying! Are you cold-blooded, or are you insensible?"

"Aunt Pen," said Mel, leaning on the point of her scissors, "you know very well that I have to make my own dresses or go without them. And you have kept me running your idle errands, up and down two flights of stairs, to the doctor's and the druggist's, and goodness knows where and all, till I haven't a thread of any thing that is fit to be seen. You've been posturing this grand finale of yours, too, all the last three weeks, and it's time you had it perfect now; and you must let me alone till I get my gown done."

"It will do to wear at my funeral," said Aunt Pen bitterly, as she concluded.

"No, it won't," said Mel, doggedly; "it's red."

"Red!" cried Aunt Pen, suddenly opening her eyes, and half raising on one hand. "What in wonder have you bought a red dress for? You are quite aware that I can't bear the least intimation of the color. My nerves are in such a state that a shred of red makes me--"

"You won't see it, you know," said Mel in what did seem to me an unfeeling manner.

"No," said Aunt Pen. "Very true. I sha'n't see it. But what," added she presently snapping open her eyes, "considered as a mere piece of economy, you bought a red dress for when you are immediately going into black, passes common-sense to conjecture! You had better send it down and have it dyed at once before you cut it, for the shrinkage will spoil it forever if you don't."

"Much black I shall go into," said Mel.

Maria laughed. Aunt Pen cried.

"Aunt Pen," said the cruel Mel, "if you were going to die you wouldn't be crying. Dying people have no tears to shed, the doctors say."

"Somebody ought to cry," said poor Aunt Pen, witheringly. "Don't talk to me about doctors," she continued, after a silence interrupted only by the snipping of the scissors. "They are a set of quacks. They know nothing. I will have all the doctors in town at my funeral for pall-bearers. It will be a satire too delicate for them to appreciate, though. Speaking of that occasion, Helen," she went on, turning to me as a possible ally, "I have so many friends that I suppose the house will be full."

"Wouldn't you enjoy it more from church, auntie?" said I.

"Oh, you hard and wicked girls!" she cried. "You're all alike. Listen to me! If you won't hear my wishes, you must take my commands. Now, in the first place, I want the parlors to be overflowing with flowers, literally lined with flowers. I don't care how much money it takes; there'll be enough left for you--more than you deserve. And I want you to be very sure that I'm not to be exposed unless I look exactly as I'd like to look. You're to put on my white silk that I was to have been married in, and my veil, and the false orange blossoms. They're all in the third drawer of the press, and the key's on my chatelaine. And if--if--well," said Aunt Pen, more to herself than us, "if he comes, he'll understand. The Bride of Death."

After that she did not say any more for some minutes, and we were all silent and sorry, and Mel was fidgeting in a riot of repentance; we had never, either of us, heard a word of any romance of Aunt Pen's before. We began to imagine that there might be some excuse for the overthrow of Aunt Pen's nervous system, some reality in the overthrow. "You will leave this ring on my finger;" said she; by-and-by. "If Chauncey Read comes, and wants it, he will take it off. It will fit his finger as well now, I suppose, as it did when he wore it before he gave it to me." Then Aunt Pen bit her lip and shut her eyes, and seemed to be slipping off into a gentle sleep.

"By-the-way!" said she, suddenly, sitting upright on the lounge, "I won't have the horses from Brown's livery--

"The what, auntie?"

"The horses for the cortége. You know Brown puts that magnificent span of his in the hearse on account of their handsome action. I'm sure Mrs. Gaylard would have been frightened to death if she could only have seen the way they pranced at her funeral last fall. I was determined then that they should never draw me;" and Aunt Pen shivered for herself beforehand. "And I can't have them from Timlin's, for the same reason," said she. "All his animals are skittish; and you remember when a pair of them took fright and dashed away from the procession and ran straight to the river, and there'd have been four other funerals if the schooner at the wharf hadn't stopped the runaways. And Timlins has a way, too, of letting white horses follow the hearse with the first mourning-coach, and it's very bad luck, very--an ill omen; a prophecy of Death and the Pale Horse again, you know. And I won't have them from Shust's, either," said Aunt Pen, "for he is simply the greatest extortioner since old Isaac the Jew."

"Well, auntie," said Mel, forgetful of her late repentance, "I don't see but you'll have to go with Shank's mare."

Even Aunt Pen laughed then. "Don't you really think you are going to lose me, girls?" asked she.

"No, auntie," replied Maria. "We all think you are a hypo."

"A hypo?"

"Not a hypocrite," said Mel, "but a hypochondriac."

"I wish I were," sighed Aunt Pen; "I wish I were. I should have some hope of myself then," said the poor inconsistent innocent. "Oh no, no; I feel it only too well; I am going fast. You will all regret your disbelief when I am gone;" and she lay back among her pillows. "That reminds me," she murmured, presently. "About my monument."

"Oh, Aunt Pen, do be still," said Mel.

"No," said Aunt Pen, firmly; "it may be a disagreeable duty, but that is all the better reason for me to bring my mind to it. And if I don't attend to it now, it never will be attended to. I know what relatives are. They put down a slab of slate with a skull and cross-bones scratched on it, and think they've done their duty. Not that I mean any reflections on you; you're all well-meaning, but you're giddy. I shall haunt you if you do any thing of the kind! No; you may send Mr. Mason up here this afternoon, and I will go over his designs with him. I am going to have carved Carrara marble, set in a base of polished Scotch granite, and the inscription is--Girls!" cried Aunt Pen, rising and clasping her knees with unexpected energy, "I expressly forbid my age being printed in the paper, or on the lid, or on the stone! I won't gratify every gossip in town, that I won't! I shall take real pleasure in baffling their curiosity. And another thing, while I am about it, don't you ask Tom Maltby to my funeral, or let him come in, if he comes himself, on any account whatever. I should rise in my shroud if he approached me. Yes, I should! Tom Maltby may be all very well; I dare say he is; and I hope I die at peace with him and all mankind, as a good Christian should. I forgive him; yes, certainly, I forgive him; but it doesn't follow that I need forget him; and, so long as I remember him, the way he conducted in buying the pew over my head I can't get over, dead or alive. And if I only do get well we shall have a reckoning that will make his hair stand on end--that he may rely on!" And here Aunt Pen took the fan from Maria, and moved it actively, till she remembered herself, when she resigned it. "One thing more," she said. "Whatever happens, Helen, don't let me be kept over Sunday. There'll certainly be another death in the family within the year if you do. If I die on Saturday, there's no help for it. Common decency won't let you shove me into the ground at once, and so you will have to make up your minds for a second summons." And Aunt Pen, contemplating the suttee of some one of us with great philosophy, lay down and closed her eyes again. "You might have it by torchlight on Sunday night, though," said she, half opening them. "That would be very pretty." And then she dropped off to sleep with such a satisfied expression of countenance that we judged her to be welcoming in imagination the guests at her last rites herself.

Whatever the dream was, she was rudely roused from it by the wreched little Israel, who came bounding up the stairs, and, without word or warning, burst into the room, almost white with horror. Why Israel was afraid I can't conjecture, but, at any rate, a permanent fright would have been of great personal advantage to him. "Oh, ma'am! oh, miss! dere's a pusson down stairs, a cullud woman, wid der small-pox!" he almost whistled in his alarm.

"With the small-pox!" cried Aunt Pen, springing into the middle of the floor, regardless of her late repose _in articulo mortis_. "Go away, Israel! Have you been near her? Put her out immediately! How on earth did she get there?"

"You allus telled me to let everybody in," chattered Israel.

"Put her out! put her out!" cried Aunt Pen, half dancing with impatience.

"We can't get her out. She's right acrost der door-step. We's feared ter tech her."

But Aunt Pen's head was out of the window, and she was shouting: "Police! fire! murder! thieves!" possibly in the order of importance of the four calamities, but quite as if she had a plenty of breath left; and, for a wonder, the police came to the rescue, and directly afterward an ambulance took the poor victim of the frightful epidemic to the hospital. I believe it turned out to be only measles after all, though.

"Run, Israel!" screamed Aunt Pen then; "run instantly and bring home a couple of pounds of roll-brimstone, and tell the maids to riddle the furnace fire and make it as bright and hot as possible, and to light fires in the parlor grates, and in the old Latrobe, and in every room in the house, without losing a minute. We'll make this house too warm for it!"

And, to our amazement, as soon as Israel came darting back with the impish material, Aunt Pen took a piece in each hand, directed us to do the same, and wrapping the blue afghan round her shoulders, descended to the lower rooms three steps at a time, sent for the doctor to come and vaccinate us, and having set a chair precisely over the register where a red-hot stream of air was pouring up, she placed herself upon it and issued her orders.

Every window was closed, every grate from basement to attic had a fire lighted in it, and little pans of brimstone were burning in every room and hall in the house, while we, astonished, indignant, frightened, and amused, sat enduring the torments of vapor and sulphur baths to the point of suffocation.

"I can't bear this another moment," wheezed Mel.

"It's the only way," replied Aunt Pen, serenely, with a rivulet trickling down her nose. "You kill the germs by heat, and since we can't bake ourselves quite to death, we make sure of the work by the fumes."

And as she sat there, her face rubicund, her swan's-down straight, drops on her cheeks, her chin, her forehead, and wherever drops could cling, her eyes watering, her curls limp, and an atmosphere of unbearable odor enveloping her in its cloud, the front door opened, and a footstep rung on the tiles.

"Jess you keep out o' yer!" yelled Israel to the intruder, seeing it wasn't the doctor. "We's got der small-pox, and am a-killing de gemmens--"

"Pen!" cried a man's voice through the smoke--a deep, melodious voice.

"What!" exclaimed Aunt Pen, starting up, and then pausing as if she fancied the horrid fumes might have befogged her brain.

"Pen!" the voice cried again.

"Chauncey! Chauncey Read!" she shrieked. "Where do you come from? Am I dreaming?"

"From the North Pacific," answered the voice; and we dimly discerned its owner groping his way forward. "From the five years' whaling voyage into which I was gagged and dragged--shanghaied, they call it. O, Pen, I didn't dare to hope I should find--"

"Oh, Chauncey, is it you?" she cried, and fell fainting at his feet.

The draught from the open door after him was blowing away the smoke, and we saw what a great, sunburned, handsome fellow it was that had caught her in his arms, and was bearing her out to the back balcony and the fresh air there, used in the course of his whaling voyage, perhaps, to odors no more belonging to Araby the Blest than those of burning brimstone do; and, seeing the movement, we divined that he knew as much about the resources of the house as we did, and so we discreetly withdrew, Israel's head being twisted behind him as he went to such extent that you might have supposed he had had his neck wrung.

Well, we put the white silk and the tulle on Aunt Pen after all; yellow as it was, she would have no other--only fresh, natural orange blossoms in place of the false wreath. And if we had not so often had her word for it in past times, we never should have taken her for any thing but the gayest bride, the most alive and happy woman in the world. They returned to the old house from their wedding journey, and we all live together in great peace and pleasantness. But though three years are passed and gone since Chauncey Read came home and brought a new atmosphere with him into our lives, Aunt Pen has never had a sick day yet; and we find that any allusion to her funeral gives her such a superstitious trembling that we are pleased to believe it indefinitely postponed, and by tacit and mutual consent we never say any thing about it.--_Harper's Magazine_, June, 1872.

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS.

("MARK TWAIN.")

(BORN, 1835.)

* * * * *

THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY.

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, _Leonidas W._ Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that _Leonidas W._ Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous _Jim_ Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless for me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named _Leonidas W._ Smiley--_Rev. Leonidas W._ Smiley--a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in _finesse_. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:

There was a feller here once by the name of _Jim_ Smiley, in the winter of '49--or may be it was the spring of '50--I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp; but any way he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him--any way just so's he got a bet, _he_ was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solitry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush, or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds sitting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to _him_--he would bet on _any_ thing--the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerable better--thank the Lord for his inf'nit mercy--and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Prov'dence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, "Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half that she don't, any way."

This-yer Smiley had a mare--the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that--and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose--and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.