Part 2
There was a ghost one time who used to go around, up-stairs and down-stairs, in an old castle, carrying his head in his hand, and stopping in front of everybody he met, but never saying a word. This frightened all the people dreadfully, and they couldn't get a servant to stay in the house unless she had the policeman to sit up in the kitchen with her all night. One day a young doctor came to stay at the castle, and said he didn't believe in ghosts, and that nobody ever saw a ghost, unless they had been making beasts of themselves with mince-pie and wedding-cake. So the old lord of the castle he smiled very savage, and said, "You'll believe in ghosts before you've been in this castle twenty-four hours, and don't you forget it." Well, that very night the ghost came into the young doctor's room and woke him up. The doctor looked at him, and said, "Ah, I perceive: painful case of imputation of the neck. Want it cured, old boy?" The ghost nodded; though how he could nod when his head was off I don't know. Then the doctor got up and got a thread and needle, and sewed the ghost's head on, and pushed him gently out of the door, and told him never to show himself again. Nobody ever saw that ghost again, for the doctor had sewed his head on wrong side first, and he couldn't walk without running into the furniture, and of course he felt too much ashamed to show himself. This doctor was Mr. Travers's own grandfather, and Mr. Travers knows the story is true.
But I meant to tell you about the last time Mr. Martin came to our house. It was a week after I had scalped him; but I don't believe he would ever have come if father hadn't gone to see him, and urged him to overlook the rudeness of that unfortunate and thoughtless boy. When he did come, he was as smiling as anything; and he shook hands with me, and said, "Never mind, Bub, only don't do it again."
By-and-by, when Mr. Martin and Sue and Mr. Travers were sitting on the piazza, and I was playing with my new base-ball in the yard, Mr. Martin called out, "Pitch it over here; give us a catch." So I tossed it over gently, and he pitched it back again, and said why didn't I throw it like a man, and not toss it like a girl. So I just sent him a swift ball--a regular daisy-cutter. I knew he couldn't catch it, but I expected he would dodge. He did try to dodge, but it hit him along-side of one eye, and knocked it out. You may think I am exaggelying, but I'm not. I saw that eye fly up against the side of the house, and then roll down the front steps to the front walk, where it stopped, and winked at me.
I turned, and ran out of the gate and down the street as hard as ever I could. I made up my mind that Mr. Martin was spoiled forever, and that the only thing for me to do was to make straight for the Spanish Main and be a pirate. I had often thought I would be a pirate, but now there was no help for it; for a boy that had knocked out a gentleman's eye could never be let to live in a Christian country. After a while I stopped to rest, and then I remembered that I wanted to take some provisions in a bundle, and a big knife to kill wolves. So I went back as soon as it was dark, and stole round to the back of the house, so I could get in the window and find the carving-knife and some cake. I was just getting in the window, when somebody put their arms around me, and said, "Dear little soul! was he almost frightened to death?" It was Sue, and I told her that I was going to be a pirate and wanted the carving-knife and some cake and she mustn't tell father and was Mr. Martin dead yet? So she told me that Mr. Martin's eye wasn't injured at all, and that he had put it in again, and gone home; and nobody would hurt me, and I needn't be a pirate if I didn't want to be.
It's perfectly dreadful for a man to be made like Mr. Martin, and I'll never come near him again. Sue says that he won't come back to the house, and if he does she'll send him away with something--I forget what it was--in his ear. Father hasn't heard about the eye yet, but if he does hear about it, there will be a dreadful scene, for he bought a new rattan cane yesterday. There ought to be a law to punish men that sell rattan canes to fathers, unless they haven't any children.
PLAYING CIRCUS.
The circus came through our town three weeks ago, and me and Tom McGinnis went to it. We didn't go together, for I went with father, and Tom helped the circus men water their horses, and they let him in for nothing. Father said that circuses were dreadfully demoralizing, unless they were mixed with wild animals, and that the reason why he took me to this particular circus was that there were elephants in it, and the elephant is a Scripture animal, Jimmy, and it cannot help but improve your mind to see him. I agreed with father. If my mind had to be improved, I thought going to the circus would be a good way to do it.
We had just an elegant time. I rode on the elephant, but it wasn't much fun for they wouldn't let me drive him. The trapeze was better than anything else, though the Central African Chariot Races and the Queen of the Arena, who rode on one foot, were gorgeous. The trapeze performances were done by the Patagonian Brothers, and you'd think every minute they were going to break their necks. Father said it was a most revolting sight and do sit down and keep still Jimmy or I can't see what's going on. I think father had a pretty good time, and improved his mind a good deal, for he was just as nice as he could be, and gave me a whole pint of pea-nuts.
Mr. Travers says that the Patagonian Brothers live on their trapezes, and never come down to the ground except when a performance is going to begin. They hook their legs around it at night, and sleep hanging with their heads down, just like the bats, and they take their meals and study their lessons sitting on the bar, without anything to lean against. I don't believe it; for how could they get their food brought up to them? and it's ridiculous to suppose that they have to study lessons. It grieves me very much to say so, but I am beginning to think that Mr. Travers doesn't always tell the truth. What did he mean by telling Sue the other night that he loved cats, and that her cat was perfectly beautiful, and then when she went into the other room he slung the cat out of the window, clear over into the asparagus bed, and said get out you brute? We cannot be too careful about always telling the truth, and never doing anything wrong.
Tom and I talked about the circus all the next day, and we agreed we'd have a circus of our own, and travel all over the country, and make heaps of money. We said we wouldn't let any of the other boys belong to it, but we would do everything ourselves, except the elephants. So we began to practise in Mr. McGinnis's barn every afternoon after school. I was the Queen of the Arena, and dressed up in one of Sue's skirts, and won't she be mad when she finds that I cut the bottom off of it!--only I certainly meant to get her a new one with the very first money I made. I wore an old umbrella under the skirt, which made it stick out beautifully, and I know I should have looked splendid standing on Mr. McGinnis's old horse, only he was so slippery that I couldn't stand on him without falling off and sticking all the umbrella ribs into me.
Tom and I were the Madagascar Brothers, and we were going to do everything that the Patagonian Brothers did. We practised standing on each other's head hours at a time, and I did it pretty well, only Tom he slipped once when he was standing on my head, and sat down on it so hard that I don't much believe that my hair will ever grow any more.
The barn floor was most too hard to practise on, so last Saturday Tom said we'd go into the parlor, where there was a soft carpet, and we'd put some pillows on the floor besides. All Tom's folks had gone out, and there wasn't anybody in the house except the girl in the kitchen. So we went into the parlor, and put about a dozen pillows and a feather-bed on the floor. It was elegant fun turning somersaults backward from the top of the table; but I say it ought to be spelled summersets, though Sue says the other way is right.
We tried balancing things on our feet while we laid on our backs on the floor. Tom balanced the musical box for ever so long before it fell; but I don't think it was hurt much, for nothing except two or three little wheels were smashed. And I balanced the water-pitcher, and I shouldn't have broken it if Tom hadn't spoken to me at the wrong minute.
We were getting tired, when I thought how nice it would be to do the trapeze performance on the chandeliers. There was one in the front parlor and one in the back parlor, and I meant to swing on one of them, and let go and catch the other. I swung beautifully on the front parlor chandelier, when, just as I was going to let go of it, down it came with an awful crash, and that parlor was just filled with broken glass, and the gas began to smell dreadfully.
As it was about supper-time, and Tom's folks were expected home, I thought I would say good-bye to Tom, and not practise any more that day. So we shut the parlor doors, and I went home, wondering what would become of Tom, and whether I had done altogether right in practising with him in his parlor. There was an awful smell of gas in the house that night, and when Mr. McGinnis opened the parlor door he found what was the matter. He found the cat too. She was lying on the floor, just as dead as she could be.
I'm going to see Mr. McGinnis to-day and tell him I broke the chandelier. I suppose he will tell father, and then I shall wish that everybody had never been born; but I did break that chandelier, though I didn't mean to, and I've got to tell about it.
MR. MARTIN'S LEG.
I had a dreadful time after that accident with Mr. Martin's eye. He wrote a letter to father and said that "the conduct of that atrocious young ruffian was such," and that he hoped he would never have a son like me. As soon as father said, "My son I want to see you up-stairs bring me my new rattan cane," I knew what was going to happen. I will draw some veils over the terrible scene, and will only say that for the next week I did not feel able to hold a pen unless I stood up all the time.
Last week I got a beautiful dog. Father had gone away for a few days and I heard mother say that she wished she had a nice little dog to stay in the house and drive robbers away. The very next day a lovely dog that didn't belong to anybody came into our yard and I made a dog-house for him out of a barrel, and got some beefsteak out of the closet for him, and got a cat for him to chase, and made him comfortable. He is part bull-dog, and his ears and tail are gone and he hasn't but one eye and he's lame in one of his hind-legs and the hair has been scalded off part of him, and he's just lovely. If you saw him after a cat you'd say he was a perfect beauty. Mother won't let me bring him into the house, and says she never saw such a horrid brute, but women haven't any taste about dogs anyway.
His name is Sitting Bull, though most of the time when he isn't chasing cats he's lying down. He knows pretty near everything. Some dogs know more than folks. Mr. Travers had a dog once that knew Chinese. Every time that dog heard a man speak Chinese he would lie down and howl and then he would get up and bite the man. You might talk English or French or Latin or German to him and he wouldn't pay any attention to it, but just say three words in Chinese and he'd take a piece out of you. Mr. Travers says that once when he was a puppy a Chinaman tried to catch him for a stew; so whenever he heard anybody speak Chinese he remembered that time and went and bit the man to let him know that he didn't approve of the way Chinamen treated puppies. The dog never made a mistake but once. A man came to the house who had lost his pilate and couldn't speak plain, and the dog thought he was speaking Chinese and so he had his regular fit and bit the man worse than he had ever bit anybody before.
Sitting Bull don't know Chinese, but Mr. Travers says he's a "specialist in cats," which means that he knows the whole science of cats. The very first night I let him loose he chased a cat up the pear-tree and he sat under that tree and danced around it and howled all night. The neighbors next door threw most all their things at him but they couldn't discourage him. I had to tie him up after breakfast and let the cat get down and run away before I let him loose again, or he'd have barked all summer.
The only trouble with him is that he can't see very well and keeps running against things. If he starts to run out of the gate he is just as likely to run head first into the fence, and when he chases a cat round a corner he will sometimes mistake a stick of wood, or the lawn-mower for the cat and try to shake it to death. This was the way he came to get me into trouble with Mr. Martin.
He hadn't been at our house for so long (Mr. Martin I mean) that we all thought he never would come again. Father sometimes said that his friend Martin had been driven out of the house because my conduct was such and he expected I would separate him from all his friends. Of course I was sorry that father felt bad about it, but if I was his age I would have friends that were made more substantial than Mr. Martin is.
Night before last I was out in the back yard with Sitting Bull looking for a stray cat that sometimes comes around the house after dark and steals the strawberries and takes the apples out of the cellar. At least I suppose it is this particular cat that steals the apples, for the cook says a cat does it and we haven't any private cat of our own. After a while I saw the cat coming along by the side of the fence, looking wicked enough to steal anything and to tell stories about it afterwards. I was sitting on the ground holding Sitting Bull's head in my lap and telling him that I did wish he'd take to rat-hunting like Tom McGinnis's terrier, but no sooner had I seen the cat and whispered to Sitting Bull that she was in sight than he jumped up and went for her.
He chased her along the fence into the front yard where she made a dive under the front piazza. Sitting Bull came round the corner of the house just flying, and I close after him. It happened that Mr. Martin was at that identicular moment going up the steps of the piazza, and Sitting Bull mistaking one of his legs for the cat jumped for it and had it in his teeth before I could say a word.
When that dog once gets hold of a thing there is no use in reasoning with him, for he won't listen to anything. Mr. Martin howled and said, "Take him off my gracious the dog's mad" and I said, "Come here sir. Good dog. Leave him alone" but Sitting Bull hung on to the leg as if he was deaf and Mr. Martin hung on to the railing of the piazza and made twice as much noise as the dog. I didn't know whether I'd better run for the doctor or the police, but after shaking the leg for about a minute Sitting Bull gave it an awful pull and pulled it off just at the knee joint. When I saw the dog rushing round the yard with the leg in his mouth I ran into the house and told Sue and begged her to cut a hole in the wall and hide me behind the plastering where the police couldn't find me. When she went down to help Mr. Martin she saw him just going out of the yard on a wheelbarrow with a man wheeling him on a broad grin.
If he ever comes to this house again I'm going to run away. It turns out that his leg was made of cork and I suppose the rest of him is either cork or glass. Some day he'll drop apart on our piazza then the whole blame will be put on me.
OUR CONCERT.
There is one good thing about Sue, if she is a girl: she is real charitable, and is all the time getting people to give money to missionaries and things. She collected mornahundred dollars from ever so many people last year, and sent it to a society, and her name was in all the papers as "Miss Susan Brown," the young lady that gave a hundred dollars to a noble cause and may others go and do likewise.
About a month ago she began to get up a concert for a noble object. I forget what the object was, for Sue didn't make up her mind about it until a day or two before the concert; but whatever it was, it didn't get much money.
Sue was to sing in the concert, and Mr. Travers was to sing, and father was to read something, and the Sunday-school was to sing, and the brass band was to play lots of things. Mr. Travers was real good about it, and attended to engaging the brass band, and getting the tickets printed.
We've got a first-rate band. You just ought to hear it once. I'm going to join it some day, and play on the drum; that is, if they don't find out about the mistake I made with the music.
When Mr. Travers went to see the leader of the band to settle what music was to be played at the concert he let me go with him. The man was awfully polite, and he showed Mr. Travers great stacks of music for him to select from. After a while he proposed to go and see a man somewheres who played in the band, and they left me to wait until they came back.
I had nothing to do, so I looked at the music. The notes were all made with a pen and ink, and pretty bad they were. I should have been ashamed if I had made them. Just to prove that I could have done it better than the man who did do it, I took a pen and ink and tried it. I made beautiful notes, and as a great many of the pieces of music weren't half full of notes, I just filled in the places where there weren't any notes. I don't know how long Mr. Travers and the leader of the band were gone, but I was so busy that I did not miss them, and when I heard them coming I sat up as quiet as possible, and never said anything about what I had done, because we never should praise ourselves or seem to be proud of our own work.
Now I solemnly say that I never meant to do any harm. All I meant to do was to improve the music that the man who wrote it had been too lazy to finish. Why, in some of those pieces of music there were places three or four inches long without a single note, and you can't tell me that was right. But I sometimes think there is no use in trying to help people as I tried to help our brass band. People are never grateful, and they always manage to blame a boy, no matter how good he is. I shall try, however, not to give way to these feelings, but to keep on doing right no matter what happens.
The next night we had the concert, or at any rate we tried to have it. The Town-hall was full of people, and Sue said it did seem hard that so much money as the people had paid to come to the concert should all have to go to charity when she really needed a new seal-skin coat. The performance was to begin with a song by Sue, and the band was to play just like a piano while she was singing. The song was all about being so weary and longing so hard to die, and Sue was singing it like anything, when all of a sudden the man with the big drum hit it a most awful bang, and nearly frightened everybody to death.
People laughed out loud, and Sue could hardly go on with her song. But she took a fresh start, and got along pretty well till the big drum broke out again, and the man hammered away at it till the leader went and took his drum-stick away from him. The people just howled and yelled, and Sue burst out crying and went right off the stage and longed to die in real earnest.
When things got a little bit quiet, and the man who played the drum had made it up with the leader, the band began to play something on its own account. It began all right, but it didn't finish the way it was meant to finish. First one player and then another would blow a loud note in the wrong place, and the leader would hammer on his music-stand, and the people would laugh themselves 'most sick. After a while the band came to a place where the trombones seemed to get crazy, and the leader just jumped up and knocked the trombone-player down with a big horn that he snatched from another man. Then somebody hit the leader with a cornet and knocked him into the big drum, and there was the awfullest fight you ever saw till somebody turned out the gas.
There wasn't any more concert that night, and the people all got their money back, and now Mr. Travers and the leader of the band have offered a reward for "the person who maliciously altered the music"--that's what the notice says. But I wasn't malicious, and I do hope nobody will find out I did it, though I mean to tell father about it as soon as he gets over having his nose pretty near broke by trying to interfere between the trombone-player and the man with the French horn.
OUR BABY.
Mr. Martin has gone away. He's gone to Europe or Hartford or some such place. Anyway I hope we'll never see him again. The expressman says that part of him went in the stage and part of him was sent in a box by express, but I don't know whether it is true or not.
I never could see the use of babies. We have one at our house that belongs to mother and she thinks everything of it. I can't see anything wonderful about it. All it can do is to cry and pull hair and kick. It hasn't half the sense of my dog, and it can't even chase a cat. Mother and Sue wouldn't have a dog in the house, but they are always going on about the baby and saying "ain't it perfectly sweet!" Why, I wouldn't change Sitting Bull for a dozen babies, or at least I wouldn't change him if I had him. After the time he bit Mr. Martin's leg father said "that brute sha'n't stay here another day." I don't know what became of him, but the next morning he was gone and I have never seen him since. I have had great sorrows though people think I'm only a boy.
The worst thing about a baby is that you're expected to take care of him and then you get scolded afterwards. Folks say, "Here, Jimmy! just hold the baby a minute, that's a good boy," and then as soon as you have got it they say, "Don't do that my goodness gracious the boy will kill the child hold it up straight you good-for-nothing little wretch." It is pretty hard to do your best and then be scolded for it, but that's the way boys are treated. Perhaps after I'm dead folks will wish they had done differently.
Last Saturday mother and Sue went out to make calls and told me to stay home and take care of the baby. There was a base-ball match but what did they care? They didn't want to go to it and so it made no difference whether I went to it or not. They said they would be gone only a little while, and that if the baby waked up I was to play with it and keep it from crying and be sure you don't let it swallow any pins. Of course I had to do it. The baby was sound asleep when they went out, so I left it just for a few minutes while I went to see if there was any pie in the pantry. If I was a woman I wouldn't be so dreadfully suspicious as to keep everything locked up. When I got back up-stairs again the baby was awake and was howling like he was full of pins; so I gave him the first thing that came handy to keep him quiet. It happened to be a bottle of French polish with a sponge in it on the end of a wire that Sue uses to black her shoes, because girls are too lazy to use a regular blacking-brush.
The baby stopped crying as soon as I gave him the bottle and I sat down to read. The next time I looked at him he'd got out the sponge and about half his face was jet-black. This was a nice fix, for I knew nothing could get the black off his face, and when mother came home she would say the baby was spoiled and I had done it.