Part 9

Father said that the house was the proper place for the dog at night; so the next night we left him in the front hall. He didn't bark any all night, but he got tired of staying in the front hall, and wandered all over the house. I suppose he felt lonesome, for he came into my room, and got on to the bed, and nearly suffocated me. I woke up dreaming that I was in a melon patch, and had to eat three hundred green watermelons or be sent to jail, and it was a great comfort when I woke up and found it was only the dog. He knocked the water-pitcher over with his tail in the morning, and then thought he saw a cat under my bed, and made such an awful noise that father came up, and told me I ought to be ashamed to disturb the whole family so early in the morning. After that the dog was locked up in the kitchen at night, and father had to come down early and let him out, because the cook didn't dare to go into the kitchen.

We let him run loose in the yard in the daytime, until he had an accident with Mr. Martin. We'd all been out to take tea and spend the evening with the Wilkinsons, and when we got home about nine o'clock, there was Mr. Martin standing on the piazza, with the dog holding on to his cork-leg. Mr. Martin had come to the house to make a call at about seven o'clock, and as soon as he stepped on the piazza the dog caught him by the leg without saying a word. Every once in a while the dog would let go just long enough to spit out a few pieces of cork and take a fresh hold, but Mr. Martin didn't dare to stir for fear he would take hold of the other leg, which of course would have hurt more than the cork one. Mr. Martin was a good deal tired and discouraged, and couldn't be made to understand that the dog thought he was a burglar, and tried to do his duty, as we should all try to do.

The way I came to lose the dog was this: Aunt Eliza came to see us last week, and brought her little boy Harry, who once went bee-hunting with me. Harry, as I told you, is six years old, and he isn't so bad as he might be considering his age. The second day after they came, Harry and I were in Tom McGinnis's yard, when Tom said he knew where there was a woodchuck down in the pasture, and suppose we go and hunt him. So I told Harry to go home and get the dog, and bring him down to the pasture where Tom said the woodchuck lived. I told him to untie the dog--for we had kept him tied up since his accident with Mr. Martin--and to keep tight hold of the rope, so that the dog couldn't get away from him. Harry said he'd tie the rope around his waist, and then the dog couldn't possibly pull it away from him, and Tom and I both said it was a good plan.

Well, we waited for that boy and the dog till six o'clock, and they never came. When I got home everybody wanted to know what had become of Harry. He was gone and the dog was gone, and nobody knew where they were, and Aunt Eliza was crying, and said she knew that horrid dog had eaten her boy up. Father and I and Mr. Travers had to go and hunt for Harry. We hunted all over the town, and at last a man told us that he had seen a boy and a dog going on a run across Deacon Smith's corn-field. So we went through the corn-field and found their track, for they had broken down the corn just as if a wagon had driven through it. When we came to the fence on the other side of the field we found Harry on one side of the fence and the dog on the other. Harry had tied the dog's rope round his waist, and couldn't untie it again, and the dog had run away with him. When they came to the fence the dog had squeezed through a hole that was too small for Harry, and wouldn't come back again. So they were both caught in a trap. How that dog did pull! Harry was almost cut in two, for the dog kept pulling at the rope all the time with all his might.

When we got home Aunt Eliza said that either she or that brute must leave, and father gave the dog away to the butcher. He was the most elegant dog I ever had, and I don't suppose I shall ever have another.

LIGHTNING.

Mr. Franklin was one of the greatest men that ever lived. He could carry a loaf of bread in each hand and eat another, all at the same time, and he could invent anything that anybody wanted, without hurting himself or cutting his fingers. His greatest invention was lightning, and he invented it with a kite. He made a kite with sticks made out of telegraph wire, and sent it up in a thunder-storm till it reached where the lightning is. The lightning ran down the string, and Franklin collected it in a bottle, and sold it for ever so much money. So he got very rich after a while, and could buy the most beautiful and expensive kites that any fellow ever had.

I read about Mr. Franklin in a book that father gave me. He said I was reading too many stories, and just you take this book and read it through carefully and I hope it will do you some good anyway it will keep you out of mischief.

I thought that it would please father if I should get some lightning just as Franklin did. I told Tom McGinnis about it, and he said he would help if I would give him half of all I made by selling the lightning. I wouldn't do this, of course, but finally Tom said he'd help me anyhow, and trust me to pay him a fair price; so we went to work.

We made a tremendously big kite, and the first time there came a thunder-storm we put it up; but the paper got wet, and it came down before it got up to the lightning. So we made another, and covered it with white cloth that used to be one of Mrs. McGinnis's sheets, only Tom said he knew she didn't want it any more.

We sent up this kite the next time there was a thunder-storm, and tied the string to the second-story window where the blinds hook on, and let the end of the string hang down into a bottle. It only thundered once or twice, but the lightning ran down the string pretty fast, and filled the bottle half full.

It looked like water, only it was a little green, and when it stopped running into the bottle we took the lightning down-stairs to try it. I gave a little of it to the cat to drink, but it didn't hurt her a bit, and she just purred. At last Tom said he didn't believe it would hurt anything; so he tasted some of it, but it didn't hurt him at all.

The trouble was that the lightning was too weak to do any harm. The thunder-shower had been such a little one that it didn't have any strong lightning in it; so we threw away what was in the bottle, and agreed to try to get some good strong lightning whenever we could get a chance.

It didn't rain for a long time after that, and I nearly forgot all about Franklin and lightning, until one day I heard Mr. Travers read in the newspaper about a man who was found lying dead on the road with a bottle of Jersey lightning, and that, of course, explains what was the matter with him my dear Susan. I understood more about it than Susan did, for she does not know anything about Franklin being a girl, though I will admit it isn't her fault. You see, the cork must have come out of the man's bottle, and the lightning had leaked out and burned him to death.

The very next day we had a tremendous thunder-shower, and I told Tom that now was the time to get some lightning that would be stronger than anything they could make in New Jersey. So we got the kite up, and got ourselves soaked through with water. We tied it to the window-ledge just as we did the first time, and put the end of the string in a tin pail, so that we could collect more lightning than one bottle would hold. It was so cold standing by the window in our wet clothes that we thought we'd go to my room and change them.

All at once there was the most awful flash of lightning and the most tremendous clap of thunder that was ever heard. Father and mother and Sue were down-stairs, and they rushed up-stairs crying the darling boy is killed. That meant me. But I wasn't killed, neither was Tom, and we hurried into the room where we were collecting lightning to see what was the matter. There we found the tin pail knocked into splinters and the lightning spilled all over the floor. It had set fire to the carpet, and burned a hole right through the floor into the kitchen, and pretty much broke up the whole kitchen stove.

Father cut the kite-string and let the kite go, and told me that it was as much as my life was worth to send up a kite in a thunder-storm. You see, so much lightning will come down the string that it will kill anybody that stands near it. I know this is true, because father says so, but I'd like to know how Franklin managed. I forgot to say that father wasn't a bit pleased.

MY CAMERA.

I had a birthday last week. When I woke up in the morning I found right by the side of my bed a mahogany box, with a round hole on one side of it and a ground-glass door on the other side. I thought it was a new kind of rat-trap; and so I got out of bed and got a piece of cheese, and set the trap in the garret, which is about half full of rats. But it turned out that the box wasn't a rat-trap. Mr. Travers gave it to me, and when he came to dinner he explained that it was a camera for taking photographs, and that it would improve my mind tremendously if I would learn to use it.

I soon found out that there isn't anything much better than a camera, except, of course, a big dog, which I can't have, because mother says a dog tracks dirt all over the house, and father says a dog is dangerous, and Sue says a dog jumps all over you and tears your dresses a great good-for-nothing ugly beast. It's very hard to be kept apart from dogs; but our parents always know what is best for us, though we may not see it at the time; and I don't believe father really knows how it feels when your trousers are thin and you haven't any boots on, so it stings your legs every time.

But I was going to write about the camera. You take photographs with the camera--people and things. There's a lens on one end of it, and when you point it at anything, you see a picture of it upside down on the little glass door at the back of the camera. Then you put a dry plate, which is a piece of glass with chemicals on it, in the camera, and then you take it out and put it in some more chemicals, the right name of which is a developer, and then you see a picture on the dry plate, only it is right side up, and not like the one on the ground-glass door.

It's the best fun in the world taking pictures; and I can't see that it improves your mind a bit--at least not enough to worry you. You have to practise a great deal before you can take a picture, and everybody who knows anything about it tells you to do something different. There are five men in our town who take photographs, and each one tells me to use a different kind of dry plate and a different kind of developer, and that all the other men may mean well, and they hope they do, but people ought not to tell a boy to use bad plates and poor developers; and don't you pay any attention to them, Jimmy, but do as I tell you.

I've got so now that I make beautiful pictures. I took a photograph of Sue the other day, and another of old Deacon Brewster, and you can tell which is which just as easy as anything, if you look at them in the right way, and remember that Deacon Brewster, being a man, is smoking a pipe, and that, of course, a picture of Sue wouldn't have a pipe in it. Sue don't like to have me take pictures, but that's because she is a girl, and girls haven't the kind of minds that can understand art. Mr. McGinnis--Tom's father--don't like my camera either; but that's because he is near-sighted, and thought it was a gun when I pointed it at him, and he yelled, "Don't shoot, for mercy's sake!" and went out of our front yard and over the fence in lessenasecond. When he found out what it was he said he never dreamed of being frightened, but had business down-town, and he didn't think boys ought to be trusted with such things, anyway.

I made a great discovery last week. You know I said that when you look through the camera at anything you see it upside down on the ground glass. This doesn't look right, and unless you stand on your head when you take a photograph, which is very hard work, you can't help feeling that the picture is all wrong. I was going to take a photograph of a big engraving that belongs to father, when I thought of turning it upside down. This made it look all right on the ground glass. This is my discovery; and if men who take photographs could only get the people they photograph to stand on their heads, they would get beautiful pictures. Mr. Travers says that I ought to get a patent for this discovery, but so far it has only got me into trouble.

Saturday afternoon everybody was out of the house except me and the baby and the nurse, and she was down in the kitchen, and the baby was asleep. So I thought I would take a picture of the baby. Of course it wouldn't sit still for me; so I thought of the way the Indians strap their babies to a flat board, which keeps them from getting round-shouldered, and is very convenient besides. I got a nice flat piece of board and tied the baby to it, and put him on a table, and leaned him up against the wall. Then I remembered my discovery, and just stood the baby on his head so as to get a good picture of him.

I did get a beautiful picture. At least I am sure it would have been if I hadn't been interrupted while I was developing it. I forgot to put the baby right side up, and in about ten minutes mother came in and found it, and then she came up into my room and interrupted me. Father came home a little later and interrupted me some more. So the picture was spoiled, and so was father's new rattan. Of course I deserved it for forgetting the baby; but it didn't hurt it any to stand on its head a little while, for babies haven't any brains like boys and grown-up people, and, besides, it's the solemn truth that I meant to turn the baby right side up, only I forgot it.

FRECKLES.

After the time I tried to photograph the baby, my camera was taken away from me and locked up for ever so long. Sue said I wasn't to be trusted with it and it would go off some day when you think it isn't loaded and hurt somebody worse than you hurt the baby you good-for-nothing little nuisance.

Father kept the camera locked up for about a month, and said when I see some real reformation in you James you shall have it back again. But I shall never have it back again now, and if I did, it wouldn't be of any use, for I'm never to be allowed to have any more chemicals. Father is going to give the camera to the missionaries, so that they can photograph heathen and things, and all the chemicals I had have been thrown away, just because I made a mistake in using them. I don't say it didn't serve me right, but I can't help wishing that father would change his mind.

I have never said much about my other sister, Lizzie, because she is nothing but a girl. She is twelve years old, and of course she plays with dolls, and doesn't know enough to play base-ball or do anything really useful. She scarcely ever gets me into scrapes, though, and that's where Sue might follow her example. However, it was Lizzie who got me into the scrape about my chemicals, though she didn't mean to, poor girl.

One night Mr. Travers came to tea, and everybody was talking about freckles. Mr. Travers said that they were real fashionable, and that all the ladies were trying to get them. I am sure I don't see why. I've mornamillion freckles, and I'd be glad to let anybody have them who would agree to take them away. Sue said she thought freckles were perfectly lovely, and it's a good thing she thinks so, for she has about as many as she can use; and Lizzie said she'd give anything if she only had a few nice freckles on her cheeks.

Mother asked what made freckles, and Mr. Travers said the sun made them just as it makes photographs. "Jimmy will understand it," said Mr. Travers. "He knows how the sun makes a picture when it shines on a photograph plate, and all his freckles were made just in the same way. Without the sun there wouldn't be any freckles."

This sounded reasonable, but then Mr. Travers forgot all about chemicals. As I said, the last time I wrote, chemicals is something in a bottle like medicine, and you have to put it on a photograph plate so as to make the picture that the sun has made show itself. Now if chemicals will do this with a photograph plate, it ought to do it with a girl's cheek. You take a girl and let the sun shine on her cheek, and put chemicals on her, and it ought to bring out splendid freckles.

I'm very fond of Lizzie, though she is a girl, because she minds her own business, and don't meddle with my things and get me into scrapes. I'd have given her all my freckles if I could, as soon as I knew she wanted them, and as soon as Mr. Travers said that freckles were made just like photographs, I made up my mind I would make some for her. So I told her she should have the best freckles in town if she'd come up to my room the next morning, and let me expose her to the sun and then put chemicals on her.

Lizzie has confidence in me, which is one of her best qualities, and shows that she is a good girl. She was so pleased when I promised to make freckles for her; and as soon as the sun got up high enough to shine into my window she came up to my room all ready to be freckled.

I exposed her to the sun for six seconds. I only exposed my photograph plates three seconds, but I thought that Lizzie might not be quite as sensitive, and so I exposed her longer. Then I took her into the dark closet where I kept the chemicals, and poured chemicals on her cheeks. I made her hold her handkerchief on her face so that the chemicals couldn't get into her eyes and run down her neck, for she wanted freckles only on her cheeks.

I watched her very carefully, but the freckles didn't come out. I put more chemicals on her, and rubbed it in with a cloth; but it was no use, the freckles wouldn't come. I don't know what the reason was. Perhaps I hadn't exposed her long enough, or perhaps the chemicals was weak. Anyway, not a single freckle could I make.

So after a while I gave it up, and told her it was no use, and she could go and wash her face. She cried a little because she was disappointed, but she cried more afterwards. You see, the chemicals made her cheek almost black, and she couldn't wash it off. Mother and Sue made a dreadful fuss about it, and sent for the doctor, who said he thought it would wear off in a year or so, and wouldn't kill the child or do her very much harm.

This is the reason why they took my chemicals away, and promised to give my camera to the missionaries. All I meant was to please Lizzie, and I never knew the chemicals would turn her black. But it isn't the first time I have tried to be kind and have been made to suffer for it.

SANTA CLAUS.

The other day I was at Tom McGinnis's house, and he had some company. He was a big boy, and something like a cousin of Tom's. Would you believe it, that fellow said there wasn't any Santa Claus?

Now that boy distinctly did tell--but I won't mention it. We should never reveal the wickedness of other people, and ought always to be thankful that we are worse than anybody else. Otherwise we should be like the Pharisee, and he was very bad. I knew for certain that it was a fib Tom McGinnis's cousin told. But all the same, the more I thought about it the more I got worried.

If there is a Santa Claus--and of course there is--how could he get up on the top of the house, so he could come down the chimney, unless he carried a big ladder with him; and if he did this, how could he carry presents enough to fill mornahundred stockings? And then how could he help getting the things all over soot from the chimney, and how does he manage when the chimney is all full of smoke and fire, as it always is at Christmas! But then, as the preacher says, he may be supernatural--I had to look that word up in the dictionary.

The story Tom McGinnis's cousin told kept on worrying me, and finally I began to think how perfectly awful it would be if there was any truth in it. How the children would feel! There's going to be no end of children at our house this Christmas, and Aunt Eliza and her two small boys are here already. I heard mother and Aunt Eliza talking about Christmas the other day, and they agreed that all the children should sleep on cot bedsteads in the back parlor, so that they could open their stockings together, and mother said, "You know, Eliza, there's a big fireplace in that room, and the children can hang their stockings around the chimney."

Now I know I did wrong, but it was only because I did not want the children to be disappointed. We should always do to others and so on, and I know I should have been grateful if anybody had tried to get up a Santa Claus for me in case of the real one being out of repair. Neither do I blame mother, though if she hadn't spoken about the fireplace in the way she did, it would never have happened. But I do think that they ought to have made a little allowance for me, since I was only trying to help make the Christmas business successful.

It all happened yesterday. Tom McGinnis had come to see me, and all the folks had gone out to ride except Aunt Eliza's little boy Harry. We were talking about Christmas, and I was telling Tom how all the children were to sleep in the back parlor, and how there was a chimney there that was just the thing for Santa Claus. We went and looked at the chimney, and then I said to Tom what fun it would be to dress up and come down the chimney and pretend to be Santa Claus, and how it would amuse the children, and how pleased the grown-up folks would be, for they are always wanting us to amuse them.

Tom agreed with me that it would be splendid fun, and said we ought to practise coming down the chimney, so that we could do it easily on Christmas-eve. He said he thought I ought to do it, because it was our house; but I said no, he was a visitor, and it would be mean and selfish in me to deprive him of any pleasure. But Tom wouldn't do it. He said that he wasn't feeling very well, and that he didn't like to take liberties with our chimney, and, besides, he was afraid that he was so big that he wouldn't fit the chimney. Then we thought of Harry, and agreed that he was just the right size. Of course Harry said he'd do it when we asked him, for he isn't afraid of anything, and is so proud to be allowed to play with Tom and me that he would do anything we asked him to do.

Well, Harry took off his coat and shoes, and we all went up to the roof, and Tom and I boosted Harry till he got on the top of the chimney and put his legs in it and slid down. He went down like a flash, for he didn't know enough to brace himself the way the chimney-sweeps do. Tom and I we hurried down to the back parlor to meet him; but he had not arrived yet, though the fireplace was full of ashes and soot.

We supposed he had stopped on the way to rest; but after a while we thought we heard a noise, like somebody calling, that was a great way off. We went up on the roof, thinking Harry might have climbed back up the chimney, but he wasn't there. When we got on the top of the chimney we could hear him plain enough. He was crying and yelling for help, for he was stuck about half-way down the chimney, and couldn't get either up or down.