Chapter 8

I admit that I knew not what to say. I had never before suspected any of these dangers which, according to my friends, now seemed imminent. On the one hand our cherished new house was threatened by fire; on the other hand that same dear edifice seemed to be doomed to a watery grave. Under these conflicting threatenings what was an inexperienced man to do? Heaven be praised, my presence of mind did not desert me. I referred Mr. Macleod to Alice, as I had referred the others. It was her house, and she would have to be responsible for it against the devouring elements.

That night I dreamed that the awful suggestions of Messrs. Teddy, Jeems, Doller, and Macleod had been realized. I dreamed that the new house was confronted upon one side by a wall of flame, and upon the other by a wall of water. Destruction and death seemed imminent. I dreamed that, trusting rather the mercy of the waves than the ferocity of the flames, I leaped into the billows and struggled like a Titan with them. I awoke, screaming with affright.

XVI

NEIGHBOR ROBBINS' PLATYPUS

I wish you knew Burr Robbins. It is quite likely, however, that you _do_ know him, for he has been conspicuously before the public for a number of years. Mr. Robbins lives just across the way from the old Schmittheimer place, and he has surrounded himself with comforts and luxuries of a most extraordinary character. He is a retired circus proprietor, and he has taken with him into retirement many of the most startling features of the menagerie which used to figure as one of the most delectable component parts of the "absolutely greatest agglomeration of marvels exhibiting under one canvas."

In his front yard Mr. Robbins pastures two trained buffalo, a sacred cow, a gnu (or horned horse), two musk deer, a giraffe, a woolly horse, a five-legged calf and a moose. In the back yard there are two white bear cubs, a baby elephant, a nest of pythons, half a dozen ostriches, a learned pig, several alligators and crocodiles, and a giant sloth from South America. The stable is well stocked with monkeys, parrots, eagles, lizards, tortoises and other curiosities, and in the watering trough are a sea serpent and a mermaid (said to be the only specimens of these marvels in a domesticated state).

Alice expressed some anxiety at first that the proximity of the strange creatures might prove unpleasant to us, and she strictly forbade little Erasmus associating with the pythons or pulling the crocodiles' tails. Mr. Robbins has assured us, however, that his pets are docile and trustworthy, and it is his custom to invite the little children of the neighborhood to visit and play with the most tractable of them.

I got acquainted with neighbor Robbins in a rather curious manner. His platypus escaped from its cage in the stable and sought refuge in our front yard. I discovered that it had made a nest in one of our lilac bushes and had laid an egg in it. With eggs at twenty cents a dozen and our family fond of custard, an industrious platypus is by no means an unwelcome visitor. When Mr. Robbins came looking for his vagrant pet I suggested that a flock of platypuses would be a decided improvement upon the poultry with which the average farmer stocks his farm. I was considerably surprised to learn from Mr. Robbins that the market price of platypuses is eight hundred dollars apiece, and I at once foresaw that this strange creature was not likely to become the dreaded competitor of the hen in the midst of us.

Erasmus and little Josephine became deeply interested in Mr. Robbins, and they are now spending a large share of their time in the society either of that fascinating gentleman or of his equally fascinating wild beasts. Erasmus has learned to throw a back-somersault with surprising ease and grace and to sing a comic song with electrical effect. These accomplishments he has acquired under the careful tutelage of Rufe Botts, formerly known to fame as Professor Botts, manager of the Nonpareil Congress of Trained Dogs and Trick Ponies. I understand that he also served Mr. Robbins in "the palmy days" as a clown in the ring during the regular performance and as a serio-comic vocalist at the concert immediately after the show under the great canvas. Relentless time, however, rings in wondrous changes, and the whilom Professor Rufus Botts, pride alike of the amphitheatre and of the concert stage, is now plain Rufe Botts on a salary of four dollars a week (and found) as Mr. Robbins' man of all work.

Alice and I have feared that Rufe's influence might not be beneficial to the children. It pains us to observe that Josephine has learned to ride a padded horse and to leap with surprising certainty through a hoop and over a banner. Erasmus does not disguise his intention of joining a circus when he reaches the age of maturity, and I happened to overhear Rufe remark the other day that our daughter Fanny, with just a leetle more practice, would make a ne plus ultra snake-charmer and knife-thrower. Mr. Robbins has laughed at our solicitude; he tells us that these are the vagarious fancies and exuberant whims of youth and that they will duly die out. This is really very consoling to me, for I can conceive of nothing else more humiliating than the spectacle of our beloved Josephine flaunting around a circus ring upon the back of a fat horse and attired in shockingly scanty raiment. It would break his mother's heart if Erasmus were to diverge from that course in theology which she has mapped out and were to embark in the picturesque profession of turning somersaults in public. Our family reputation would surely be irreparably damaged if our Fanny were to be beguiled into the fascinating but hazardous arts of a snake-charmer and a knife-thrower! Heaven send that our fears be dissipated by future events!

And yet, full of temptations and of misery as I believe the career of a circus performer to be, I am entertained and instructed by neighbor Robbins' recital of his exploits and experiences, and I am deeply stirred by his narrative of the adventures he had in the capture of those same wild beasts which now embellish his expansive estate in Clarendon Avenue. Indeed, a peculiar interest is now attached by me to each particular beast, for I have heard Mr. Robbins tell how in their native jungles or on their native pampas or in their native lagoons or among their native rocky fastnesses he sought and found and comprehended the lemurs, the bisons, the alligators, the rackaboars, and the other marvels of zoölogy.

It is very pleasant, I can assure you, to listen to tales of adventure while one is engaged at the somewhat prosaic task of trimming a lilac bush or of weeding the pansy bed. Whenever he discovers me at this kind of toil neighbor Robbins comes over and leans up against a tree and beguiles the tedium of labor with a bit of personal experience. I can't begin to tell you how attached I have already become to Mr. Robbins. I have already made up my mind that when his own front lawn gets pretty well cleaned out I shall ask neighbor Robbins to pasture his sacred cow, horned horse, and five-legged calf in our front yard for a spell.

I shall never forget the shock I had one afternoon while Mr. Robbins and I were visiting on our front lawn. I had been pruning one of the poplars and Mr. Robbins was telling me of the difficulty Professor Rufus Botts and he had once had trying to teach the wild man of Borneo to eat olives and anchovy paste. Suddenly I saw a strange object pass up the street on a bicycle. I had never seen the like before. My acquaintance with Burr Robbins' menagerie had made me familiar with most of the curious forms of animal life, but never before had I seen so remarkable an object as I beheld upon that bicycle.

"Look there! Look quick!" said I to neighbor Robbins. "It is going up the street and it has wheels under it!"

"Where?" asked Mr. Robbins; "I don't see anything."

"Yes, you do," said I; "I mean the queer thing on the bicycle--can it be one of your trained animals that has got away?"

"Bless your soul, man," answered Mr. Robbins, "that's not an animal! That's a woman!"

"Oh, no, it is n't," said I. "No woman ever dressed like that."

"No woman ever dressed like that?" echoed Mr. Robbins, with a mocking laugh; "why, neighbor Baker, where have you been hiding so long that you 're so behind the times?"

"I 've not been hiding at all," said I, indignantly. "I 've been living in Evanston Avenue, and a very worthy locality it is, too!"

"And do you mean to tell me," asked Mr. Robbins, "that women don't ride the bicycle in Evanston Avenue?"

"Of course they do," said I, "but they don't look like _that_! The women that ride in Evanston Avenue wear dresses, the same as other women wear. This strange object (which you declare is a woman) wears pants!"

"Those ain't pants," said Mr. Robbins; "those are bloomers."

"I don't care what you call them," said I, "they 're pants just the same, and, what is more, very ill-fitting pants at that!"

"That," said Mr. Robbins, "is the new style of bicycle attire for the feminine sex. Shocking as it may appear to you, it is much more ample than the costume which I found to be popular among the female bicyclists of France during my visit to that country last summer."

"But you don't mean to tell me," said I, "that women make a practice of riding up and down Clarendon Avenue in pants!"

"Certainly, I do," said Mr. Robbins. "We do things in style over this way. Evanston Avenue is a century behind the times. Oh, you 'll learn a lot of things when you get moved over here into your new house."

"But I 'll not stand it!" I cried. "I 'll inform the police and I 'll have the law on these brazen creatures. What would Alice say! And what would become of Fanny and of little Josephine if they were brought up under the demoralizing influences of spectacles like that! Do you suppose I 'm going to have Galileo and Herschel corrupted? And little Erasmus--shall his pure, innocent mind be contaminated? Never, neighbor Robbins, never!"

But Mr. Robbins did not seem to view the matter at all as I did. It was evident that his long connection with the circus had calloused the sensibility of his perceptive faculties. He was inclined to jeer at what he termed my prudishness. I was glad to be back in Evanston Avenue once more, secure in an atmosphere of propriety. It was several hours, however, before I could get my mind away from thoughts of that woman in pants, so profoundly had her appearance in that strangely abbreviated costume shocked me.

XVII

OUR DEVICES FOR ECONOMIZING

Unless you want to render yourself liable to an attack of nervous prostration you should never watch a skilful workman nailing on lath. It is the most bewildering spectacle you can conceive of. I watched it for twenty minutes one day--it was when they were lathing the big front room downstairs, the library, and my brain began to reel as if I were intoxicated. I actually believe that if Uncle Si had not led me away and set me down under one of the willow-trees in the front yard I should have had a spell of sickness, and may be even now had been confined in the incurable ward of a lunatic asylum. I can't understand how they do it so accurately and so fast and with such apparent ease. The whole proceeding is so fascinating that I really believe that, next to proficiency in the science of astronomy, I should like to be an expert at nailing lath. In every line of mechanics my education has been grievously neglected.

Alice says that I am not practical enough to make a successful carpenter; she gets this unfair opinion of me from an incident in our early wedded life which she delights in recalling in the presence of people upon whom I am particularly desirous of making a favorable impression. It seems that when Galileo and Herschel were little tots I undertook to construct a playhouse for them in the back yard. This was at a time when I was exceptionally busied with my professional studies; Mars was rapidly approaching perihelion, and I had been commissioned by the Blue Island Society of the Arts and Sciences to prepare a chart of the bottle-neck seas. It would have been surprising indeed had I not been preoccupied--too absorbed in intellectual pursuits to cope successfully with any such worldly and prosaic thing as a playhouse in the back yard. Yet Alice insists that it is most amusing that I should have neglected to provide that structure with windows and a door, and that, as a natural consequence, I should have nailed myself up securely in that affair.

On another occasion I painted myself gradually into a corner while attempting to paint the floor of the spare chamber. Alice reproached me bitterly for this; she said she supposed everybody knew that a floor should always be painted toward, and not away from the door. Alice seems never to consider that few other people are gifted with such intuitions as she has, but are compelled to drag along through life learning by experience.

I do not wish to be understood as complaining or railing against fate because I am not skilled in mechanics; I recognize as a distinct boon the fact that I am awkward in the use of tools, and the further fact that I have no ambition in the direction of mechanical endeavor has doubtless saved me many a bruised thumb and a vast amount of hard labor. When I see my neighbors tinkering away at their storm windows and garbage boxes and grape vine trellises and dog kennels and window screens and front gates, I do not neglect to thank heaven that Alice has the best of reasons for not asking me to engage in similar odd jobs about our house.

Still, I am sure that, if I ever do engage in any avocation, it will be that of nailing lath, an employment requiring an exercise of patience, of intelligence, and of skill to the highest degree.

Until we bought the new place I had no idea that the expense of conducting an establishment of one's own was so large. It seems, however, that when one has once become a property-owner there is no end to the things one must have and cannot get along without. It is impossible to say how or where the venders of patent arrangements find out about you, but no sooner do you buy a place of your own than you are run to death by people who actually prove to you that you _must_ have what they have to sell.

Alice and I are very happy in the confidence that we have secured a simple device which is going to reduce our coal bill by at least fifty per cent.; it is a fuel-saving machine which is to be attached to our new steam-heating apparatus, and if it accomplishes anything like what the agent said it would, why, it is worth five dollars ten times over! And we are expecting wonders, too, of the gas-saving apparatus for which we have paid three dollars and which is to be attached to the meter with such pleasing results that we shall have five times more light at a saving of at least sixty per cent in cost.

I find upon consulting my expense account for May that during that month alone Alice and I purchased no fewer than thirty devices of an economical character. We have three different kinds of smoke-consumers, an automatic carpet-sweeper, a bottle of lightning polish for plate-glass, a dish-washing machine, a knife-scourer, a potato-parer, two automatic lawn-hose reels, a sewer-gas consumer, a patent ashes-sifter, etc., etc. It has required a considerable outlay of money to get stocked up with these things, but we regard them as a very wise investment. It is wholly consistent with our policy of economy to provide ourselves with the means of making a marked reduction in our expenses. We flatter ourselves that before we have been in our house six months we shall have demonstrated that we are not upon earth for the purpose of enriching gas companies and other soulless corporations.

But I think the wisest investment we have made is the insurance policy which we have taken out on Alice's life. The incident came about so curiously that I feel inclined to tell it in detail. I was one evening sitting out in front of our house--the rented one, I mean--watching the stars gradually making their appearance in the cerulean vault, and I was marvelling at the endless wonders of the heavenly expanse, when I became aware that somebody was approaching. I saw that this somebody was my Sheridan Road friend and neighbor, Treese Smith. He was whistling softly to himself an air which I did not recognize, but which my daughter Fanny (who is a music connoisseur) identified as "My Pearl Is a Bowery Girl." Presuming that he was coming to pay me a neighborly call, I arose to meet him. Fancy my amazement when upon beholding me Mr. Smith burst into tears. I do not remember ever to have been more astounded than by this sudden transition from gayety to grief. I could hardly find words to ask my friend what trouble had befallen him.

"I was hoping to meet no one," he sobbed, "for I am in no condition of mind to associate with my fellow-beings."

"It is evident," I interposed, "that some great sorrow has come upon you; surely you would not hesitate to come to me for sympathy."

"You are right," said Mr. Smith, making a heroic effort to gather himself together. "It would be selfish of me not to give so dear a neighbor as you a chance to share my misery. Read this."

He handed me a bit of printed stuff which he had evidently cut from a newspaper. I stood under the street lamp and read it in this wise:

KANSAS CITY, May 23.--During the thunder-storm to-day Mrs. Bolivar Bowers, wife of the well-known scientist, was struck and destroyed by lightning. Deceased leaves a husband and five children; no insurance.

"Ah, I see," said I in my gentlest tone; "she was a dear friend--perhaps a relative of yours."

"No, not that," said Mr. Smith, still sobbing; "you misinterpret my grief. This party was in no way akin to me except under that common descent from the old Adam which makes all humanity brothers and sisters. I did not know deceased, nor did I ever see her."

"Then why," I asked, in some astonishment, "why are you so moved by the news of her death?"

"To one of my nature," exclaimed Mr. Smith, "the circumstances detailed in this item are most painful to contemplate. We find here recorded the sudden demise of the sole support of a husband and five children--a wife and mother snatched away by death, leaving a helpless family without any visible means of support."

"But why without any means of support?" I asked.

"It says so," answered Mr. Smith. "The husband is a scientist and is therefore by nature and by occupation disqualified for earning a livelihood."

"Surely enough," said I, "that is quite true."

"Can you picture a more distressing scene," continued Mr. Smith, still in tears, "than that of this helpless father and his five little ones standing above that lifeless lady and wondering where their food and raiment will come from now? It is sad, it is agonizing, it is awful! And yet it all might have been averted--all this solicitude about the future. Had Mrs. Bolivar Bowers taken out a policy in my company, the International Mutual Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw, Indiana, the aspect to-day would have been different, and Bolivar Bowers and his callow brood of little Bowerses would have reason to bless the rod that smote them. Ah, friend Baker, the International Mutual Tontine has done a glorious work toward mitigating the wrath of the grim destroyer; under the grace of its soothing balm bereavement becomes an actual pleasure, death loses its sting, and the grave its victory."

From this small, casual beginning followed that train of explanation and argument upon Mr. Smith's part which led to Alice's taking out a life policy in the Indiana company. Mr. Smith is a man of broad and deep human sympathies. Had he not happened upon that newspaper item, had his heart not gone out in passionate sympathy toward the bereaved Bolivar Bowers and his little ones, had he not wandered in an irresponsible paroxysm of grief in the direction of my house that evening, and had he not confided his sorrow to me--why, then we should not have known of the greatest of human benefactors, and Alice would not now be safe (so to speak) in the bosom of the International Mutual Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw.

I do not regard these things as accidental; they are special providences.

XVIII

I STATE MY VIEWS ON TAXATION

Of the many friends who hastened to congratulate us when they heard that we had acquired a home, none was more delighted than Gamlin Harland. I take it for granted that you have read Mr. Harland's numerous books, and that you know all about Mr. Harland himself. Not to know of him is to argue one's self unknown.

My first meeting with Mr. Harland was at a single-tax convention six years ago; he was a delegate to that convention from Wisconsin, and I was a delegate from Illinois. I was a delegate because the manager of the party, who lives in New York, could n't find anybody else to serve as the delegate from the congressional district in which I lived. I thought that rather than have that district unrepresented I ought to serve, and so I did. The acquaintance I then made with Gamlin Harland soon ripened into friendship, and this intimacy has lasted ever since. Mr. Harland insists that I am a single-tax man, and it may be that I am in theory, although I certainly am not in practice; for I never have paid any tax of any kind, be it single or double.

As soon as he heard of our purchase Mr. Harland came out to inspect the premises, and of course he was delighted.

"This will make a new man of you," said he to me. "It will take your mind off your impracticable star-gazing and moonshining, and divert your attention into the channels of realism. These premises are so spacious as to admit of your engaging to a considerable extent in agriculture; you can now lay aside the telescope and the spectrum for the spade and the hoe; the field of speculation can be abandoned for this noble acre which I hope soon to see smiling into an abundant harvest."

"Yes," said I, "it is my purpose to engage largely in the cultivation of flowers."

"Pshaw!" cried Mr. Harland, "there you go again! Don't you know that flowers are wholly worthless except in so far as they pander to the gratification of a sensuous appetite? It would be a crime to surrender these opportunities to ignoble uses. You must raise vegetables here, or perhaps some of the small fruits would thrive better in this rich sandy soil."

Investigation satisfied Mr. Harland that blackberries were _the_ particular kind of small fruit to which the soil seemed adapted. I was not surprised at this, for I knew that the blackberry was a favorite with Mr. Harland--in fact, Mr. Harland is the only author I know of who has written a novel whose plot hinges (so to speak) upon a blackberry. So passionately fond of this fruit is he that he devotes a part of the year to cultivating blackberries on his Wisconsin farm. There are invidious persons who intimate that his only reason for cultivating the blackberry is to be found in the fact that nothing else will grow on his farm, and presumably you have heard the epigram which the romanticists have perpetrated at Mr. Harland's expense, and which represents that ambitious and aggressive gentleman as raising blackberries in summer and ---- in winter.