Part 15

If, in a moment of forgetfulness or exhaustion, we so far relaxed our vigilance as to sit down, Mutt would waddle up with tears of love in his eyes and lay his head in our lap. He would gaze at us in worship as though we were a god or a side of beef, and in two minutes we would be soaking from the waist down. The trenches in Flanders had nothing on Mutt for sogginess.

Once, after we had been away for some months, we were visiting uncle, and were sitting in a nice, deep, easy chair--you know, those chairs that are so hard to get out of in an emergency. Suddenly the door burst open and seventy pounds of slobbering enthusiasm hurled itself upon us. There was no escape. Mutt took us fair in the chest and knocked our breath and all thoughts of resistance out of us in one agonized grunt.

Before they pulled him off our hair was licked into tufts, our collar was melted, the colors had run in our new tie, and we were wet to the skin. We couldn't go home that night for fear of catching double pneumonia. Mutt was a grand dog in his way, but if he took a fancy to you, you weren't safe in anything but a bathing suit or a raincoat.

Nearly all our friends have dogs--Airedales mostly. Now we have nothing against Airedales. They are good enough dogs in their way. It is true that they are as ugly as a moth-eaten buffalo in a zoo, as boisterous as Billy Sunday, and as quarrelsome as a female peace-advocate. But they are good dogs--let it go at that.

There are no less than six Airedales on the staff of the paper we work on--that is, six dogs more or less definitely recognizable as such. In fact, if you were to take the whole six of them--one dog's ears and another's tail and another's legs and another's coat--you would almost have a real Airedale, which is pretty good going with average Airedales these days.

One of them got lost the other day. They are always getting lost. Airedale books and salesmen will tell you that you can't lure an Airedale away from home. The suggestion is that if you were to invite a neighbor's Airedale out for a walk he would knock you down and bite a piece out of your Adam's apple.

Well, all we can say is that every postman or butcher boy or grocer's man in town is escorted on his rounds by two or three Airedales belonging to the best families. We even used to know one that came down-town and spent his days in the back room of a saloon. We saw him there ourself, but he cut us dead--perhaps because we didn't treat him.

The Staff Airedale that got lost is principally distinguished by the possession of a thoroughbred tail. So the owner claims, at any rate. He has frequently called our attention to it, and asked us to note the correctness of the angle at which it is held. But we could never see much in a shaggy stub of that sort, no matter how perpendicular. Now, if it was a nice, long curly tail--but then, of course, it wouldn't be an Airedale. And this dog was bought for an Airedale, the price being the principal evidence of pure breeding--that and the tail.

Well, when the dog left home, the owner immediately advertised for his recovery. Personally, we would have moved at once to another street to prevent him finding us again. But the owner advertised; and for the past two or three days we have spent most of our time listening to him answer enquiries over the 'phone. He is called up every twenty minutes by someone who has an Airedale which he is sure must be the one wanted.

The thing begins to sound like a conspiracy. Are people trying to work off a lot of second-hand Airedales--model 1916--for the sake of the reward? Or do they just want to get rid of their own dogs, and are too kind-hearted to shoot them? Anyway, this is how it sounds--his office is near our own:

"Hello!--yes, an Airedale--where did you find him, hey?"

A long pause, during which the person at the other end of the line tries to prove honesty of character and purity of intention.

"What sort of a tail has he, hey?--is it a good tail?--what do I call a good tail, hey?--well, a good tail stands up straight with a little bend in it--oh, about four or five inches long and pretty thick."

Another long pause, while the person at the other end of the line drops the receiver, goes out to the barn to study the dog's tail, and comes back to report.

"It isn't standing up now, hey?--well, did it stand up before?--does it stand up most of the time, hey?"

Usually the answer is favorable. Naturally a man with a dog he doesn't want speaks as well of its tail as he can. Thereupon our friend seizes his hat, rushes out of the building for the nearest car line, and comes back two hours later to expatiate on the crass stupidity of people who find dogs.

The tail, it seems, is never the perfect tail he is looking for--thick, shaggy and perpendicular, with a slight bend. Half the time the dogs are not even Airedales. The last one he went to look at--seven miles away in the suburban slums--proved to be a Scotch terrier, a bandy-legged, little black chap.

We told him he ought to have taken it anyway. But he is a persistent beggar, and he is still answering "ads." He is weakening, however, and we are laying bets that he will take whatever the next person who 'phones in has to offer--A Persian cat, perhaps, or a Belgian hare.

*On Being Handy With Tools*

We are not handy with tools. We state this with all solemnity and knowing full well the nature of an oath. But even if we were handy with tools we would perjure ourself rather than admit it--we know what that admission leads to.

We have a brother, dear reader--a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome fellow, as you might guess, with a very open face. That is the chief cause of his troubles, his face is so very open. And in his tender youth he used to open it regularly and widely about the things he could do with tools.

There was nothing that boy couldn't make or mend. There was no domestic emergency which he couldn't meet with the appropriate tools--either the family tools or the neighbors'. Did a tap need a washer? Frank was right there with a rubber disk in one hand and a monkey-wrench in the other. Were the electric lights on the blink, or was the gas-stove doing its best to suffocate the cook? Did the family dog, a descendant of several shaggy breeds, require a hair-cut or a shampoo? Had the horse kicked the side out of his stall?--we are not bragging, friend reader, as you would realize if you had ever seen that ancient charger. Or was the barn itself in need of a coat of paint? In any and all of these cases Frank was electrician, gas-fitter, barber, carpenter, painter, or whatever the circumstances called for.

And what was the result of all these various services so far as he was concerned personally? Did he get any special consideration because of them? Was he the favorite child of the family? Did anyone kill even a lean calf for him, or clothe him in a coat of many colors? Not that the rest of us ever noticed. About the only way we ever showed any gratitude or any acknowledgement of his skill and energy was by saving up jobs for him.

No matter what the emergency might be, no one else ever touched a hammer or a saw or a paint-brush for fear of breaking in on Frank's personal preserves and so hurting his feelings--at least, that is the way we put it. If ever he went out of town for a few days, he had to work nights and Sundays when he came back, so as to catch up with the chores and odd jobs. And because he had always done them he went on doing them. He might grouse about it, but you know how it is once you have established a family tradition. The laws of the Medes and Persians are nothing to it for permanence.

All this happened because he was handy with tools and fancied himself as an amateur mechanic. The boy was clever at it, too, but this is something one should never admit about one's self. If a job should turn up to be done around the place and you should be asked if you can do it, deny it utterly. Say you know not neither do you understand a darn thing about it. If they ask you again, deny it again. Then if one come up to you saying, lo, this is a handy man, curse and swear and say that the only nail thou canst hit with a hammer is that which groweth upon thy thumb. Even so wilt thou find peace.

You must be eternally watchful, if you would keep yourself clean from the taint of handiness. There is something balefully fascinating about tools. They are so shiny and efficient-looking, or so rusty and inefficient-looking, that one is tempted to try them in either case, just to see how they work. And they are always lying about within easy reach--except perchance when you want some particular tool very badly. Then, if so be you desire a tack-hammer, you will find many gimlets and screw-drivers and eke a saw or two. But aye verily we say unto you, you won't know where th'ell the tack-hammer is, but will be obliged to tack down that bit of linoleum with a sad-iron--perhaps that is what makes the irons so sad. If, on the other hand, thou shouldst require a gimlet in thy business, then surely will there be tack-hammers in every drawer, but the gimlets will have crawled off into a hole somewhere to play with the young rats.

Even young children are inoculated with the virus of handiness. Little boys at Christmas-time are presented by silly old uncles--generally uncles who do not have to live in the same house--with sets of little tools all nicely arranged in gaudy boxes. Then the little boys, having bright and enquiring minds, proceed to saw sections out of the piano-legs and drive nails into mother's Circassian-oak dresser. The result is usually much pain for the little boys, though not in the parts of their anatomy which they use for purposes of sawing and hammering.

When we were a little boy, we were even as other little boys in this respect, though much more beautiful and clever--we state this on the authority of our maiden aunts. Having been presented by some reckless relative with a set of tin tools, we went right out to the family shed and built a nice little house with a real fireplace in it made out of two or three half-sections of brick. Then we started a fire in it, and when it got going nicely, we ran off to tell some of the other boys in the block about it.

There could be no question about that fire. It wasn't a big fire as fires go nowadays, but it was a lively one. It took two hose-reels and a chemical engine half an hour to put it out. We don't know what grandfather told the insurance company, but even over the lapse of years we distinctly remember what he told us. You see it was grandfather's shed, and grandfather at that period of our life was acting towards us _in loco parentis_--certainly there can be no doubt about the amount of loco which he put into the role of parent on that particular occasion.

Our natural genius for mechanics was nipped in the bud by that unfortunate occurrence. Ever since we have struggled manfully and--with a few exceptions--successfully against any inclination to monkey with tools. Taps have wheezed and leaked in our presence for weeks on end, but we have carefully ignored them till such time as a plumber or brother Frank was around. Coal-bins have broken down, but never have we taken saw and hammer in hand to put them up again. We have sworn off tools.

It is true that we have sometimes been compelled to run a lawn-mower. But then a lawn-mower is not properly a tool. It is more in the nature of a plague, something like typhoid fever or Prohibition.

We have stated that there were two or three exceptions to our abstinence from tools. Alas, yes, we succumbed to temptation or pressing need, and the result was in each case deplorable. Worst of all was the little ladder we constructed so as to reach certain high book-shelves in the room which the family calls "the study"--probably because no one would dream of doing such a thing there. It was a pretty little ladder, a bit of work we were proud of. But it cost us an inheritance--not actual, you know, but prospective.

We made the ladder out of a couple of pieces of scantling and parts of an old packing-case. We planed and fitted and nailed it, till it was goodly to the eye and fairly sound to the feel. Then we painted it an art-green, and put nice round knobs of leather on the ends that leaned against the wall. It was really an ornament, the sort of thing that people years ago used to gild and hang up with pink ribbons. But unfortunately it was not a very reliable ladder. It would do everything but ladd, so to speak.

Uncle Aleck was in the house one day, and having nothing particular to do formed an evil desire for a book on the top shelf. This particular uncle, be it understood, is regarded as a wealthy old bachelor--though personally we can't be sure to what extent he is either single or rich. Anyhow, he always professed a special affection for us personally, on the curious ground that we were the image of himself at our age--a reflection which furnished us no pleasure from the point of view of physical pulchritude, however flattering it might be as a financial prospect. We were regarded by the family generally as his heir--alas, that we should have to say we "were" regarded.

Naturally Uncle, seeing this book which he shouldn't have wanted to read--at his age, too, the old rascal!--seized that infernal ladder and climbed up. It let him get right up to the top rung, and then it bucked or shied or kicked or something equally effective. When they got the splints off Uncle's leg and he was able to move around on crutches, he sent for his lawyer. Ever since he has regarded us with ill-concealed dislike. Whenever we see a short ladder from that fateful day to this we get a curious "gone" feeling under the middle button of our vest.

This is the sort of luck we have had with tools, but, of course, there are people who have had worse. We have a friend, for instance, who is an absolute victim to them. He has a fine home and a charming wife, not to mention the dog. But he is gradually undermining his health and wrecking his own happiness and theirs by his insane conviction that he is a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, a cabinet-maker, a plasterer, and a stone-mason combined. There are three or four other trades as well, but these will do to go on with.

When he built his house, he had a large room constructed down in the basement adjoining the boudoir occupied by the furnace and the coal-bin. It is a really beautiful room, a little low as to the ceiling, perhaps, and a little dim as to the light. But there is a fine cement floor, fine big beams in the ceiling, and splendid brick walls in all their natural beauty of cool grey. It is his workshop. He tries to persuade his wife that some day it will be the billiard-room. But she, poor woman, knows better. It is his workshop now and forever, till his last tool is rusted and his last finger busted and--well, there are "dusted" and "crusted" left to rhyme with.

He has that place simply jammed with tools of all sorts and work-benches and the like. He keeps a regular harem of hammers and hatchets and saws cooped up down there, each in her own little cubicle. Not even the Sultan himself in all his matrimonial glory was ever half so jealous of his better halves--perhaps one should say, his better ninety-nine one-hundredths--as our friend is of these same tools. Why, if he were to catch anyone cutting with a chisel of his, or planing with a plane from his seraglio, he would be liable to bowstring the poor tools and throw them into the Bosphorus, as represented by the sewer or a neighbor's backyard or some similar abyss of oblivion.

Sunday afternoons and any evening when his wife has company, he disappears down into this den of hardware, and the noise of hammering and sawing which emerges from it--the place sounds like a busy shipyard on the Clyde--indicates that he is having much joy of his chilled-steel darlings. Every now and then he comes up to have a piece of court-plaster put on a new place during the temporary absence of cuticle. Then he goes back with the solemn and determined expression of a man who at great personal sacrifice is accomplishing a sacred duty.

What does he do down there? Generally speaking, Heaven only knows. We have heard him talk in vague terms of the new set of storm-windows and storm-doors he is making for the house. But that was over two years ago, and there have been some very tidy little storms since then. But never yet have we seen sash or panel of those doors and windows.

It is true he did make a set of window-boxes for the flowers in the sun-room--so-called because you can sit in there and look at the sunlight outside. But even a union carpenter could have made those boxes in half an hour, and members of the union have never been accused of undue and ill-considered haste in such matters.

It is when our friend comes up out of the cave, however, to do a job in the upper regions of the house that things really happen. There was a tap in the bath-room, rather a nice tap as taps go--a very handsome tap, in fact. But, in the case of taps, handsome is as handsome pours. And pouring was one thing this particular tap refused to do--thought it vulgar, perhaps. So our friend one bright Sunday afternoon--these things seem always to happen on Sunday--got an idea in his mind and a big monkey-wrench in his hand, and went up to the bath-room and took a half-nelson on the handle of that tap. He gave one twist--just one. It was all that was needed. The tap came away with a jerk, and a solid jet of water as thick as your wrist took him in the face.

Gurgling yells of agony brought everyone in the house to his assistance. Naturally we had to be right there among the shock-troops, heedless of the nice new suit we were wearing for the first time. We dashed in and found our friend standing in front of the pipe into which he was vainly endeavoring to stick his thumb--mindful, perhaps, of the famous exploit of the little hero of Haarlem. We succeeded in prying him away, but our new suit never looked the same again. If we had had any sense we would have left him there till he was washed away. The trouble was that no one else knew where to shut off the water, and--well, we simply had to drag him away to do it.

The next day a battalion of plumbers, plasterers, and decorators did what they could to repair the damage to the house. It took them about a week. But our friend is still hopeful. He still thinks he is a mechanical genius wasted as a mere lawyer. Only the other morning we dropped into his office. He was laboriously trying to make a piece of black court-plaster about the size of a war-map stick to the back of one hand by holding it down with the bandaged thumb of the other. There was a lump on his forehead and one of his cheeks was badly scratched. But he was in excellent spirits.

"Tell you what, old man," he burbled in his enthusiasm, "there's nothing like being able to do the odd-jobs around the house. Why, only last night I went down into my workshop, and I----"

We wiped away a furtive tear. There is something very pathetic about a fine mind falling into such decay as this.

*Bumps and a Brogue*

As we were combing our hair somewhat hurriedly in our boudoir at 8.58 the other morning--we are supposed to be down at the office at nine--it was suddenly borne in upon us that we had a remarkable set of bumps on our head. We made this discovery by the simple and painful process of running into several of them with a large, sharp comb. We thereupon decided that a set of protuberances like ours should be measured at once by a competent phrenologist.

We had seen the Professor's notices in the "want-ad" departments of the local dailies; and our attention had been drawn to them by their diagrams of extraordinarily bumpy heads, and the peculiar line of language in which the Professor advanced his modest claims to be regarded as a benefactor of the human race and one of the greatest phrenologists of all time. Besides, the Professor's protuberance-parlors were on our way down to the office. They have a central location, so that phrenological patients can run in every now and then and have a new bump examined, we presume.

We read the handsome and dignified brass plate on the door, and we knocked a respectful knock. After two or three minutes of waiting we knocked again--less respectfully. After we had knocked several more times, with constantly diminishing respect and constantly increasing force, the door was opened by a blond and comely young woman who explained that the Professor's hours were from three to five in the afternoon, and from seven to eight in the evening--to accommodate people who might drop in on their way to the theatre, no doubt. Did we want a chart as well as a reading?

"How much does the Professor set one back for a chart?" we inquired, as we toyed with the forty cents left out of our weekly envelope of the Saturday before. Two dollars for a reading and five dollars for a chart.

We stated firmly that we would have two dollars' worth, and that we would come for it at three o'clock in the afternoon. We were going to see this thing through if we had to hock something. As we bowed our adieu smilingly, the young lady pressed upon us one of the Professor's cards, in which we were advised to "get my new great chart and be helped--as many also numerous worried, etc., have--for life." On the back of the card there was more of the Prof's best phrenological English, which promised among much else that "marriage adaptions" would be explained. Immediately we resolved that we would see him that very day or expire in the effort.

We got there at three. The same blond and comely young woman let us in. Would we take off our hat and coat and sit in the parlor till the Professor got through examining the bumps on someone else's cranial arch? We would and we did. We sat down by a table on which there was a pile of calling cards--presumably left by grateful persons whose protuberances had been explained--and also a bound copy of the Professor's famous chart. We opened it and glanced through a few long passages on amativeness and combativeness and philoprogenitiveness and other polysyllabic characteristics, as indicated by convexities on the skull.

While we read there floated down to us from the mysterious regions above a rich Hibernian voice and the most superb brogue we had heard in many a long day. It was one of those thick, mashed-potatoes-and-buttermilk brogues which usually go with a semi-circular rim of reddish whiskers and a prehensile upper lip. We dropped the book and listened. We didn't pay any particular attention to what was being said--far be it from us to display an ungentlemanly curiosity as to the meaning of anyone else's bumps! We just listened to the voice. It made us think of St. Patrick ordering the snakes out of Ireland.

The voice came downstairs and accompanied someone to the front door. "Goodboy and good luck to yez both," said the voice--perhaps some cautious young man was having his fiancee's head studied--and then we were told that the Professor awaited us in his sanctum. We hastened out just in time to see a pair of short, thick legs scurrying upstairs ahead of us. We joined them in a neat little office at the top--where legs are usually joined--and found that they and the voice belonged to the Professor, in whose hands we had come prepared to place our head and a two-dollar bill.