Part 4

The monkey was in the kitchen while Bridget was getting dinner yesterday and he watched her broil the steak as if he was meaning to learn to cook and help her in her work, he's that kind and thoughtful. The cat was out-doors, but two of her kittens were in the kitchen, and they were not old enough to be afraid of the monkey. When dinner was served Bridget went up-stairs and by-and-by mother says "What's that dreadful smell sure's you're alive Susan the baby has fallen into the fire." Everybody jumped up and ran up-stairs, all but me, for I knew Jocko was in the kitchen and I was afraid it was he that was burning. When I got into the kitchen there was that lovely monkey broiling one of the kittens on the gridiron just as he had seen Bridget broil the steak. The kitten's fur was singeing and she was mewing, and the other kitten was sitting up on the floor licking her chops and enjoying it and Jocko was on his hind-legs as solemn and busy as an owl. I snatched the gridiron away from him and took the kitten off before she was burned any except her fur, and when mother and Susan came down-stairs they couldn't understand what it was that had been burning.

This is all the monkey has done since I got him day before yesterday. Father has been away for a week but is coming back in a few days, and won't he be delighted when he finds a monkey in the house?

THE END OF MY MONKEY.

I haven't any monkey now, and I don't care what becomes of me. His loss was an awful blow, and I never expect to recover from it. I am a crushed boy, and when the grown folks find what their conduct has done to me, they will wish they had done differently.

It was on a Tuesday that I got the monkey, and by Thursday everybody began to treat him coldly. It began with my littlest sister. Jocko took her doll away, and climbed up to the top of the door with it, where he sat and pulled it to pieces, and tried its clothes on, only they wouldn't fit him, while sister, who is nothing but a little girl, stood and howled as if she was being killed. This made mother begin to dislike the monkey, and she said that if his conduct was such, he couldn't stay in her house. I call this unkind, for the monkey was invited into the house, and I've been told we must bear with visitors.

A little while afterwards, while mother was talking to Susan on the front piazza, she heard the sewing-machine up-stairs, and said, "Well I never that cook has the impudence to be sewing on my machine without ever asking leave." So she ran up-stairs, and found that Jocko was working the machine like mad. He'd taken Sue's gown and father's black coat and a lot of stockings, and shoved them all under the needle, and was sewing them all together. Mother boxed his ears and then she and Sue sat down and worked all the morning trying to unsew the things with the scissors.

They had to give it up after a while, and the things are sewed together yet, like a man and wife, which no man can put asunder. All this made my mother more cool towards the monkey than ever, and I heard her call him a nasty little beast.

The next day was Sunday, and as Sue was sitting in the hall waiting for mother to go to church with her, Jocko gets up on her chair, and pulls the feathers out of her bonnet. He thought he was doing right, for he had seen the cook pulling the feathers off of the chickens, but Sue called him dreadful names, and either she or that monkey would leave the house.

Father came home early Monday, and seemed quite pleased with the monkey. He said it was an interesting study, and he told Susan that he hoped that she would be contented with fewer beaux, now that there was a monkey constantly in the house. In a little while father caught Jocko lathering himself with the mucilage brush, and with a kitchen knife all ready to shave himself. He just laughed at the monkey, and told me to take good care of him, and not let him hurt himself. Of course I was dreadfully pleased to find that father liked Jocko, and I knew it was because he was a man, and had more sense than girls. But I was only deceiving myself and leaning on a broken weed. That very evening when father went into his study after supper he found Jocko on his desk. He had torn all his papers to pieces, except a splendid new map, and that he was covering with ink, and making believe that he was writing a President's Message about the Panama Canal. Father was just raging. He took Jocko by the scruff of the neck, locked him in the closet, and sent him away by express the next morning to a man in the city, with orders to sell him.

The expressman afterwards told Mr. Travers that the monkey pretty nearly killed everybody on the train, for he got hold of the signal-cord and pulled it, and the engineer thought it was the conductor, and stopped the train, and another train just behind it came within an inch of running into it and smashing it to pieces. Jocko did the same thing three times before they found out what was the matter, and tied him up so that he couldn't reach the cord. Oh, he was just beautiful! But I shall never see him again, and Mr. Travers says that it's all right, and that I'm monkey enough for one house. That's because Sue has been saying things against the monkey to him; but never mind.

First my dog went, and now my monkey has gone. It seems as if everything that is beautiful must disappear. Very likely I shall go next, and when I am gone, let them find the dog and the monkey, and bury us together.

THE OLD, OLD STORY.

We've had a most awful time in our house. There have been ever so many robberies in town, and everybody has been almost afraid to go to bed.

The robbers broke into old Dr. Smith's house one night. Dr. Smith is one of those doctors that don't give any medicine except cold water, and he heard the robbers, and came down-stairs in his nigown, with a big umbrella in his hand, and said, "If you don't leave this minute, I'll shoot you." And the robbers they said, "Oh no! that umbrella isn't loaded" and they took him and tied his hands and feet, and put a mustard-plaster over his mouth, so that he couldn't yell, and then they filled the wash-tub with water, and made him sit down in it, and told him that now he'd know how it was himself, and went away and left him, and he nearly froze to death before morning.

Father wasn't a bit afraid of the robbers, but he said he'd fix something so that he would wake up if they got in the house. So he put a coal-scuttle full of coal about half-way up the stairs, and tied a string across the upper hall just at the head of the stairs. He said that if a robber tried to come up-stairs he would upset the coal-scuttle, and make a tremendous noise, and that if he did happen not to upset it, he would certainly fall over the string at the top of the stairs. He told us that if we heard the coal-scuttle go off in the night, Sue and mother and I were to open the windows and scream, while he got up and shot the robber.

The first night, after father had fixed everything nicely for the robbers, he went to bed, and then mother told him that she had forgotten to lock the back door. So father he said, "Why can't women sometimes remember something," and he got up and started to go down-stairs in the dark. He forgot all about the string, and fell over it with an awful crash, and then began to fall down-stairs. When he got half-way down he met the coal-scuttle, and that went down the rest of the way with him, and you never in your life heard anything like the noise the two of them made. We opened our windows, and cried murder and fire and thieves, and some men that were going by rushed in and picked father up, and would have taken him off to jail, he was that dreadfully black, if I hadn't told them who he was.

But this was not the awful time that I mentioned when I began to write, and if I don't begin to tell you about it, I sha'n't have any room left on my paper. Mother gave a dinner-party last Thursday. There were ten ladies and twelve gentlemen, and one of them was that dreadful Mr. Martin with the cork leg, and other improvements, as Mr. Travers calls them. Mother told me not to let her see me in the dining-room, or she'd let me know; and I meant to mind, only I forgot, and went into the dining-room, just to look at the table, a few minutes before dinner.

I was looking at the raw oysters, when Jane--that's the girl that waits on the table--said, "Run, Master Jimmy; here's your mother coming." Now I hadn't time enough to run, so I just dived under the table, and thought I'd stay there for a minute or two, until mother went out of the room again.

It wasn't only mother that came in, but the whole company, and they sat down to dinner without giving me any chance to get out. I tell you, it was a dreadful situation. I had only room enough to sit still, and nearly every time I moved I hit somebody's foot. Once I tried to turn around, and while I was doing it I hit my head against the table so hard that I thought I had upset something, and was sure that people would know I was there. But fortunately everybody thought that somebody else had joggled, so I escaped for that time.

It was awfully tiresome waiting for those people to get through dinner. It seemed as if they could never eat enough, and when they were not eating, they were all talking at once. It taught me a lesson against gluttony, and nobody will ever find me sitting for hours and hours at the dinner-table. Finally I made up my mind that I must have some amusement, and as Mr. Martin's cork-leg was close by me, I thought I would have some fun with that.

There was a big darning-needle in my pocket, that I kept there in case I should want to use it for anything. I happened to think that Mr. Martin couldn't feel anything that was done to his cork-leg, and that it would be great fun to drive the darning-needle into it, and leave the end sticking out, so that people who didn't know that his leg was cork would see it, and think that he was suffering dreadfully, only he didn't know it. So I got out the needle, and jammed it into his leg with both hands, so that it would go in good and deep.

Mr. Martin gave a yell that made my hair run cold, and sprang up, and nearly upset the table, and fell over his chair backward, and wasn't there a circus in that dining-room! I had made a mistake about the leg, and run the needle into his real one.

I was dragged out from under the table, and-- But I needn't say what happened to me after that. It was "the old, old story," as Sue says when she sings a foolish song about getting up at five o'clock in the morning--as if she'd ever been awake at that time in her whole life!

BEE-HUNTING.

The more I see of this world the hollower I find everybody. I don't mean that people haven't got their insides in them, but they are so dreadfully ungrateful. No matter how kind and thoughtful any one may be, they never give him any credit for it. They will pretend to love you and call you "Dear Jimmy what a fine manly boy come here and kiss me," and then half an hour afterwards they'll say "Where's that little wretch let me just get hold of him O! I'll let him know." Deceit and ingratitude are the monster vices of the age and they are rolling over our beloved land like the flood. (I got part of that elegant language from the temperance lecturer last week, but I improved it a good deal.)

There is Aunt Eliza. The uncle that belonged to her died two years ago, and she's awfully rich. She comes to see us sometimes with Harry--that's her boy, a little fellow six years old--and you ought to see how mother and Sue wait on her and how pleasant father is when she's in the room. Now she always said that she loved me like her own son. She'd say to father, "How I envy you that noble boy what a comfort he must be to you," and father would say "Yes he has some charming qualities" and look as if he hadn't laid onto me with his cane that very morning and told me that my conduct was such. You'll hardly believe that just because I did the very best I could and saved her precious Harry from an apple grave, Aunt Eliza says I'm a young Cain and knows I'll come to the gallows.

She came to see us last Friday, and on Saturday I was going bee-hunting. I read all about it in a book. You take an axe and go out-doors and follow a bee, and after a while the bee takes you to a hollow tree full of honey and you cut the tree down and carry the honey home in thirty pails and sell it for ever so much. I and Tom McGinnis were going and Aunt Eliza says "O take Harry with you the dear child would enjoy it so much." Of course no fellow that's twelve years old wants a little chap like that tagging after him but mother spoke up and said that I'd be delighted to take Harry, and so I couldn't help myself.

We stopped in the wood-shed and borrowed father's axe and then we found a bee. The bee wouldn't fly on before us in a straight line but kept lighting on everything, and once he lit on Tom's hand and stung him good. However we chased the bee lively and by-and-by he started for his tree and we ran after him. We had just got to the old dead apple-tree in the pasture when we lost the bee and we all agreed that his nest must be in the tree. It's an awfully big old tree, and it's all rotted away on one side so that it stands as if it was ready to fall over any minute.

Nothing would satisfy Harry but to climb that tree. We told him he'd better let a bigger fellow do it but he wouldn't listen to reason. So we gave him a boost and he climbed up to where the tree forked and then he stood up and began to say something when he disappeared. We thought he had fallen out of the tree and we ran round to the other side to pick him up but he wasn't there. Tom said it was witches but I knew he must be somewhere so I climbed up the tree and looked.

He had slipped down into the hollow of the tree and was wedged in tight. I could just reach his hair but it was so short that I couldn't get a good hold so as to pull him out. Wasn't he scared though! He howled and said "O take me out I shall die," and Tom wanted to run for the doctor.

I told Harry to be patient and I'd get him out. So I slid down the tree and told Tom that the only thing to do was to cut the tree down and then open it and take Harry out. It was such a rotten tree I knew it would come down easy. So we took turns chopping, and the fellow who wasn't chopping kept encouraging Harry by telling him that the tree was 'most ready to fall. After working an hour the tree began to stagger and presently down she came with an awful crush and burst into a million pieces.

Tom and I said Hurray! and then we poked round in the dust till we found Harry. He was all over red dust and was almost choked, but he was awfully mad. Just because some of his ribs were broke--so the doctor said--he forget all Tom and I had done for him. I shouldn't have minded that much, because you don't expect much from little boys, but I did think his mother would have been grateful when we brought him home and told her what we had done. Then I found what all her professions were worth. She called father and told him that I and the other miscurrent had murdered her boy. Tom was so frightened at the awful name she called him that he ran home, and father told me I could come right up-stairs with him.

They couldn't have treated me worse if I'd let Harry stay in the tree and starve to death. I almost wish I had done it. It does seem as if the more good a boy does the more the grown folks pitch into him. The moment Sue is married to Mr. Travers I mean to go and live with him. He never scolds, and always says that Susan's brother is as dear to him as his own, though he hasn't got any.

PROMPT OBEDIENCE.

I haven't been able to write anything for some time. I don't mean that there has been anything the matter with my fingers so that I couldn't hold a pen, but I haven't had the heart to write of my troubles. Besides, I have been locked up for a whole week in the spare bedroom on bread and water, and just a little hash or something like that, except when Sue used to smuggle in cake and pie and such things, and I haven't had any penanink. I was going to write a novel while I was locked up by pricking my finger and writing in blood with a pin on my shirt; but you can't write hardly anything that way, and I don't believe all those stories of conspirators who wrote dreadful promises to do all sorts of things in their blood. Before I could write two little words my finger stopped bleeding, and I wasn't going to keep on pricking myself every few minutes; besides, it won't do to use all your blood up that way. There was once a boy who cut himself awful in the leg with a knife, and he bled to death for five or six hours, and when he got through he wasn't any thicker than a newspaper, and rattled when his friends picked him up just like the morning paper does when father turns it inside out. Mr. Travers told me about him, and said this was a warning against bleeding to death.

Of course you'll say I must have been doing something dreadfully wrong, but I don't think I have; and even if I had, I'll leave it to anybody if Aunt Eliza isn't enough to provoke a whole company of saints. The truth is, I got into trouble this time just through obeying promptly as soon as I was spoken to. I'd like to know if that was anything wrong. Oh, I'm not a bit sulky, and I am always ready to admit I've done wrong when I really have; but this time I tried to do my very best and obey my dear mother promptly, and the consequence was that I was shut up for a week, besides other things too painful to mention. This world is a fleeting show, as our minister says, and I sometimes feel that it isn't worth the price of admission.

Aunt Eliza is one of those women that always know everything, and know that nobody else knows anything, particularly us men. She was visiting us, and finding fault with everybody, and constantly saying that men were a nuisance in a house and why didn't mother make father mend chairs and whitewash the ceiling and what do you let that great lazy boy waste all his time for? There was a little spot in the roof where it leaked when it rained, and Aunt Eliza said to father, "Why don't you have energy enough to get up on the roof and see where that leak is I would if I was a man thank goodness I ain't." So father said, "You'd better do it yourself, Eliza." And she said, "I will this very day."

So after breakfast Aunt Eliza asked me to show her where the scuttle was. We always kept it open for fresh air, except when it rained, and she crawled up through it and got on the roof. Just then mother called me, and said it was going to rain, and I must close the scuttle. I began to tell her that Aunt Eliza was on the roof, but she wouldn't listen, and said, "Do as I tell you this instant without any words why can't you obey promptly?" So I obeyed as prompt as I could, and shut the scuttle and fastened it, and then went down-stairs, and looked out to see the shower come up.

It was a tremendous shower, and it struck us in about ten minutes; and didn't it pour! The wind blew, and it lightened and thundered every minute, and the street looked just like a river. I got tired of looking at it after a while, and sat down to read, and in about an hour, when it was beginning to rain a little easier, mother came where I was, and said, "I wonder where sister Eliza is do you know, Jimmy?" And I said I supposed she was on the roof, for I left her there when I fastened the scuttle just before it began to rain.

Nothing was done to me until after they had got two men to bring Aunt Eliza down and wring the water out of her, and the doctor had come, and she had been put to bed, and the house was quiet again. By that time father had come home, and when he heard what had happened-- But, there! it is over now, and let us say no more about it. Aunt Eliza is as well as ever, but nobody has said a word to me about prompt obedience since the thunder-shower.

OUR ICE-CREAM.

After that trouble with Aunt Eliza--the time she stayed up on the roof and was rained on--I had no misfortunes for nearly a week. Aunt Eliza went home as soon as she was well dried, and father said that he was glad she was gone, for she talked so much all the time that he couldn't hear himself think, though I don't believe he ever did hear himself think. I tried it once. I sat down where it was real still, and thought just as regular and steady as I could; but I couldn't hear the least sound. I suppose our brains are so well oiled that they don't creak at all when we use them. However, Mr. Travers told me of a boy he knew when he was a boy. His name was Ananias G. Smith, and he would run round all day without any hat on, and his hair cut very short, and the sun kept beating on his head all day, and gradually his brains dried so that whenever he tried to think, they would rattle and creak like a wheelbarrow-wheel when it hasn't any grease on it. Of course his parents felt dreadfully, for he couldn't go to school without disturbing everybody as soon as he began to think about his lessons, and he couldn't stay home and think without keeping the baby awake.

As I was saying, there was pretty nearly a whole week that I kept out of trouble; but it didn't last. Boys are born to fly upward like the sparks that trouble, and yesterday I was "up to mischief again," as Sue said, though I never had the least idea of doing any mischief. How should an innocent boy, who might easily have been an orphan had things happened in that way, know all about cooking and chemistry and such, I should like to know.

It was really Sue's fault. Nothing would do but she must give a party, and of course she must have ice-cream. Now the ice-cream that our cake-shop man makes isn't good enough for her, so she got father to buy an ice-cream freezer, and said she would make the ice-cream herself. I was to help her, and she sent me to the store to order some salt. I asked her what she wanted of salt, and she said that you couldn't freeze ice-cream without plenty of salt, and that it was almost as necessary as ice.

I went to the store and ordered the salt, and then had a game or two of ball with the boys, and didn't get home till late in the afternoon. There was Sue freezing the ice-cream, and suffering dreadfully, so she said. She had to go and dress right away, and told me to keep turning the ice-cream freezer till it froze and don't run off and leave me to do everything again you good-for-nothing boy I wonder how you can do it.

I turned that freezer for ever so long, but nothing would freeze; so I made up my mind that it wanted more salt. I didn't want to disturb anybody, so I quietly went into the kitchen and got the salt-cellar, and emptied it into the ice-cream. It began to freeze right away; but I tasted it, and it was awfully salt, so I got the jug of golden sirup and poured about a pint into the ice-cream, and when it was done it was a beautiful straw-color.