Chapter 2

"Once in awhile some farmer Would come a-drivin' past; And he'd hear my cry, And stop and sigh-- Till I jest laid back, at last, And I hollered rain till I thought my th'oat Would bust right open at ever' note!

"But I _fetched_ her! O _I fetched_ her!-- 'Cause a little while ago, As I kindo' set, With one eye shet, And a-singin' soft and low, A voice drapped down on my fevered brain, Sayin',--'Ef you'll jest hush I'll rain!'"

THE HIRED HAND AND "HA'NTS"

BY E.O. LAUGHLIN

The Hired Hand was Johnnie's oracle. His auguries were infallible; from his decisions there was no appeal. The wisdom of experienced age was his, and he always stood willing to impart it to the youngest. No question was too trivial for him to consider, and none too abstruse for him to answer. He did not tell Johnnie to "never mind" or wait until he grew older, but was ever willing to pause in his work to explain things. And his oracular qualifications were genuine. He had traveled--had even been as far as the State Fair; he had read--from _Robinson Crusoe_ to _Dick the Dead Shot_, and, more than all, he had meditated deeply.

The Hired Hand's name was Eph. Perhaps he had another name, too, but if so it had become obsolete. Far and wide he was known simply as Eph.

Eph was generally termed "a cur'ous feller," and this characterization applied equally well to his peculiar appearance and his inquiring disposition. In his confirmation nature had evidently sacrificed her love of beauty to a temporary passion for elongation. Length seemed to have been the central thought, the theme, as it were, upon which he had been composed. This effect was heightened by generously broad hands and feet and a contrastingly abbreviated chin. The latter feature caused his countenance to wear in repose a decidedly vacant look, but it was seldom caught reposing, usually having to bear a smirk of some sort.

Eph's position in the Winkle household was as peculiar as his personality. Nominally he was a hired servant, but, in fact, from his own point of view at least, he was Mr. Winkle's private secretary and confidential adviser. He had been on the place "ever sence old Fan was a yearlin'," which was a long while, indeed; and had come to regard himself as indispensable. The Winkles treated him as one of the family, and he reciprocated in truly familiar ways. He sat at the table with them, helped entertain their guests, and often accompanied them to church. In regulating matters on the farm Mr. Winkle proposed, but Eph invariably disposed, in a diplomatic way, of course; and, although his judgment might be based on false logic, the result was generally successful and satisfactory.

With all his good qualities and her attachment to him, however, Mrs. Winkle was not sure that Eph's moral status was quite sound, and she was inclined to discourage Johnnie's association with him. As a matter of fact she had overheard Johnnie utter several bad words, of which Eph was certainly the prime source. But a mother's solicitude was of little avail when compared with Eph's Delphian wisdom. Johnnie would steal away to join Eph in the field at every chance, and the information he acquired at these secret séances, was varied and valuable.

It was Eph who taught him how to tell the time of day by the sun; how to insert a "dutchman" in the place of a lost suspender button; how to make bird-traps; and how to "skin the cat." Eph initiated him into the mysteries of magic and witchcraft, and showed him how to locate a subterranean vein of water by means of a twig of witch-hazel. Eph also confided to Johnnie that he himself could stanch the flow of blood or stop a toothache instantly by force of a certain charm, but he could not tell how to do this because the secret could be imparted only from man to woman, or vice versa. Even the shadowy domain of spirits had not been exempt from Eph's investigations, and he related many a terrifying experience with "ha'nts."

Johnnie was first introduced to the ghost world one summer night, when he and Eph had gone fishing together.

"If ye want to ketch the big uns, always go at night in the dark o' the moon," said Eph, and his piscatorial knowledge was absolute.

They had fished in silence for some time, and Johnnie was nodding, when Eph suddenly whispered:

"Let's go home, sonny, I think I see a ha'nt down yander."

Johnnie had no idea what a "ha'nt" might be, but Eph's constrained manner betokened something dreadful.

It was not until they had come within sight of home that Johnnie ventured to inquire:

"Say, Eph, what is a ha'nt?"

"Huh! What is ha'nts? Why, sonny, you mean to tell me you don't know what ha'nts is?"

"Not exactly; sompin' like wildcats, ain't they?"

"Well, I'll be confounded! Wildcats! Not by a long shot;" and Eph broke into the soft chuckle which always preceded his explanations. They reached the orchard fence, and, seating himself squarely on the topmost rail, Eph began impressively:

"Ha'nts is the remains of dead folks--more 'specially them that's been assinated, er, that is, kilt--understan'? They're kind o' like sperrits, ye know. After so long a time they take to comin' back to yarth an' ha'ntin' the precise spot where they wuz murdered. They always come after dark, an' the diffrunt shapes they take on is supprisin'. I have seed ha'nts that looked like sheep, an' ha'nts that looked like human persons; but lots of 'em ye cain't see a-tall, bein' invisible, as the sayin' is. Now, fer all we know, they may be a ha'nt settin' right here betwixt us, this minute!"

With this solemn declaration Johnnie shivered and began edging closer to Eph, until restrained and appalled by the thought that he might actually sit on the unseen spirit by such movement.

"But do they hurt people, Eph?" he asked anxiously.

Eph gave vent to another chuckle.

"Not if ye understan' the'r ways," he observed sagely. "If ye let 'em alone an' don't go foolin' aroun' the'r ha'ntin'-groun' they'll never harm ye. But don't ye never trifle with no ha'nt, sonny. I knowed a feller't thought 'twuz smart to hector 'em an' said he wuzn't feared. Onct he throwed a rock at one--"

Here Eph paused.

"What h-happened?" gasped Johnnie.

"In one year from that time," replied Eph gruesomely, "that there feller's cow wuz hit by lightnin'; in three year his hoss kicked him an' busted a rib; an' in seven year he wuz a corpse!"

The power of this horrible example was too much for Johnnie.

"Don't you reckon it's bedtime?" he suggested tremblingly.

Thenceforth for many months Johnnie led a haunted life. Ghosts glowered at him from cellar and garret. Specters slunk at his heels, phantoms flitted through the barn. Twilight teemed with horrors, and midnight, when he awoke at that hour, made of his bedroom a veritable Brocken.

It was vain for his parents to expostulate with him. Was one not bound to believe one's own eyes? And how about the testimony of the Hired Hand?

The story in his reader--told in verse and graphically illustrated--of the boy named Walter, who, being alone on a lonesome highway one dark night, beheld a sight that made his blood run cold, acquired an abnormal interest for Johnnie. Walter, with courage resembling madness, marched straight up to the alleged ghost and laughed gleefully to find, "It was a friendly guide-post, his wand'ring steps to guide."

This was all very well, as it turned out, but what if it had been a sure-enough ghost, reflected Johnnie. What if it had reached down with its long, snaky arms and snatched Walter up--and run off with him in the dark--and no telling what? Or it might have swooped straight up in the air with him, for ghosts could do that. Johnnie resolved he would not take any chances with friendly guide-posts which might turn out to be hostile spirits.

Then there was the similar tale of the lame goose, and the one concerning the pillow in the swing--each intended, no doubt, to allay foolish fears on the part of children, but exercising an opposite and harrowing influence upon Johnnie.

MAXIOMS

BY CAROLYN WELLS

Reward is its own virtue. The wages of sin is alimony. Money makes the mayor go. A penny saved spoils the broth. Of two evils, choose the prettier. There's no fool like an old maid. Make love while the moon shines. Where there's a won't there's a way. Nonsense makes the heart grow fonder. A word to the wise is a dangerous thing. A living gale is better than a dead calm. A fool and his money corrupt good manners. A word in the hand is worth two in the ear. A man is known by the love-letters he keeps. A guilty conscience is the mother of invention. Whosoever thy hands find to do, do with thy might. It's a wise child who knows less than his own father. Never put off till to-morrow what you can wear to-night. He who loves and runs away, may live to love another day.

GARDEN ETHICS

BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable total depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it. It is the bunch-, or joint-, or snake-grass,--whatever it is called. As I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as Adam did in his garden,--name things as I find them. This grass has a slender, beautiful stalk: and when you cut it down, or pull up a long root of it, you fancy it is got rid of; but in a day or two it will come up in the same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades. Cutting down and pulling up is what it thrives on. Extermination rather helps it. If you follow a slender white root, it will be found to run under the ground until it meets another slender white root; and you will soon unearth a network of them, with a knot somewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, every joint prepared to be an independent life and plant. The only way to deal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers, and carefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere. It will take a little time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small patch; but if you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have no further trouble.

I have said it was total depravity. Here it is. If you attempt to pull up and root out sin in you, which shows on the surface,--if it does not show, you do not care for it,--you may have noticed how it runs into an interior network of sins, and an ever-sprouting branch of these roots somewhere; and that you can not pull out one without making a general internal disturbance, and rooting up your whole being. I suppose it is less trouble to quietly cut them off at the top--say once a week, on Sunday, when you put on your religious clothes and face,--so that no one will see them, and not try to eradicate the network within.

_Remark._--This moral vegetable figure is at the service of any clergyman who will have the manliness to come forward and help me at a day's hoeing on my potatoes. None but the orthodox need apply.

I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not the moral, qualities of vegetables, and especially weeds. There was a worthless vine that (or who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row of bean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer the trellis. When it came out of the ground, it looked around to see what it should do. The trellis was already occupied. The bean-pole was empty. There was evidently a little the best chance of light, air, and sole proprietorship on the pole. And the vine started for the pole, and began to climb it with determination. Here was as distinct an act of choice, of reason, as a boy exercises when he goes into a forest, and, looking about, decides which tree he will climb. And, besides, how did the vine know enough to travel in exactly the right direction, three feet, to find what it wanted? This is intellect. The weeds, on the other hand, have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral action. I feel as if I were destroying a sin. My hoe becomes an instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of nature. This view of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and the weeds lengthen.

_Observation._--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.

The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He burrows in the ground so that you can not find him, and he flies away so that you can not catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. I find him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and we shall not want any), the squashes (small loss), and the melons (which never ripen). The best way to deal with the striped bug is to sit down by the hills, and patiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can annoy him. This, however, takes time. It takes all day and part of the night. For he flieth in the darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get up before the dew is off the plants,--it goes off very early,--you can sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is my panacea: if I can get the disease of a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am all right); and soot is unpleasant to the bug. But the best thing to do is set a toad to catch the bugs. The toad at once establishes the most intimate relations with the bug. It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower animals. The difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill. If you know your toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build a tight fence round the plants, which the toad can not jump over. This, however, introduces a new element. I find that I have a zoölogical garden. It is an unexpected result of my little enterprise, which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris "Jardin des Plantes."

A TRAVELED DONKEY

BY BERT LESTON TAYLOR

But Buddie got no farther. The sound of music came to her ears, and she stopped to listen. The music was faint and sweet, with the sighful quality of an Æolian harp. Now it seemed near, now far.

"What can it be?" said Buddie.

"Wait here and I'll find out," said Snowfeathers. He darted away and returned before you could count fifty.

"A traveling musician," he reported. "Come along. It's only a little way."

Back he flew, with Buddie scrambling after. A few yards brought her to a little open place, and here was the queerest sight she had yet seen in this queer wood.

On a bank of reindeer moss, at the foot of a great white birch, a mouse-colored donkey sat playing a lute. Over his head, hanging from a bit of bark, was the sign:

WHILE YOU WAIT OLD SAWS RESET

After the many strange things that Buddie had come upon in Queerwood, nothing could surprise her very much. Besides, as she never before had seen a donkey, or a lute, or the combination of donkey and lute, it did not strike her as especially remarkable that the musician should be holding his instrument upside down, and sweeping the strings with one of his long ears, which he was able to wave without moving his head a jot. And this it was that gave to the music its soft and furry-purry quality.

The Donkey greeted Buddie with a careless nod, and remarked, as if anticipating a comment he had heard many times:

"Oh, yes; I play everything _by ear_."

"Please keep on playing," said Buddie, taking a seat on another clump of reindeer moss.

"I intended to," said the Donkey; and the random chords changed to a crooning melody which wonderfully pleased Buddie, whose opportunities to hear music were sadly few. As for the White Blackbird, he tucked his little head under his wing and went fast asleep.

"Well, what do you think of it?" asked the Donkey, putting down the lute.

"Very nice, sir," answered Buddie, enthusiastically; though she added to herself: The idea of saying sir to an animal! "Would you please tell me your name?" she requested.

The Donkey pawed open a saddle-bag, drew forth with his teeth a card, and presented it to Buddie, who spelled out the following:

PROFESSOR BRAY TENORE BARITONALE TEACHER OF SINGING ALL METHODS CONCERTS AND RECITALS

While Buddie was reading this the Donkey again picked up his instrument and thrummed the strings.

"Did you ever see a donkey play a lute?" said he. "That's an old saw," he added.

"I never saw a donkey before," said Buddie.

"You haven't traveled much," said the other. "The world is full of them."

"This is the farthest I've ever been from home," confessed Buddie, feeling very insignificant indeed.

"And how far may that be?"

Buddie couldn't tell exactly.

"But it can't be a great way," she said. "I live in the log house by the lake."

"Pooh!" said the Donkey. "That's no distance at all." Buddie shrank another inch or two. "I'm a great traveler myself. All donkeys travel that can. If a donkey travels, you know, he _may_ come home a horse; and to become a horse is, of course, the ambition of every donkey!"

"Is it?" was all Buddie could think of to remark. What could she say that would interest a globe-trotter?

"Perhaps you have an old saw you'd like reset," suggested the Donkey, still thrumming the lute-strings.

Buddie thought a moment.

"There's an old saw hanging up in our woodshed," she began, but got no farther.

"Hee-haw! hee-haw!" laughed the Donkey. "Thistles and cactus, but that's rich!" And he hee-hawed until the tears ran down his nose. Poor Buddie, who knew she was being laughed at but didn't know why, began to feel very much like crying and wished she might run away.

"Excuse these tears," the Donkey said at last, recovering his family gravity. "Didn't you ever hear the saying, A burnt child dreads the fire?"

Buddie nodded, and plucked up her spirits.

"Well, that's an old saw. And you must have heard that other very old saw, No use crying over spilt milk."

Another nod from Buddie.

"Here's my setting of that," said the Donkey; and after a few introductory chords, he sang:

"'Oh, why do you cry, my pretty little maid, With a Boo-hoo-hoo and a Heigho?' 'I've spilled my milk, kind sir,' she said, And the Cat said, 'Me-oh! my-oh!'

'No use to cry, my pretty little maid, With a Boo-hoo-hoo and a Heigho.' 'But what shall I do, kind sir?' she said, And the Cat said, 'Me-oh! my-oh!'

'Why, dry your eyes, my pretty little maid, With a Boo-hoo-hoo and a Heigho.' 'Oh, thank you, thank you, sir,' she said, And the Cat said, 'Me-oh! my-oh!'"

"How do you like my voice?" asked the Donkey, in a tone that said very plainly: "If you don't like it you're no judge of singing."

Buddie did not at once reply. A professional critic would have said, and enjoyed saying, that the voice was of the hit-or-miss variety; that it was pitched too high (all donkeys make that mistake); that it was harsh, rasping and unsympathetic, and that altogether the performance was "not convincing."

Now, Little One, although Buddie was not a professional critic, and neither knew how to wound nor enjoyed wounding, even _she_ found the Donkey's voice harsh; but she did not wish to hurt his feelings--for donkeys _have_ feelings, in spite of a popular opinion to the contrary. And, after all, it was pretty good singing for a donkey. Critics should not, as they sometimes do, apply to donkeys the standards by which nightingales are judged. So Buddie was able to say, truthfully and kindly:

"I think you do very well; very well, indeed."

It was a small tribute, but the Donkey was so blinded by conceit that he accepted it as the greatest compliment.

"I _ought_ to sing well," he said. "I've studied methods enough. The more methods you try, you know, the more of a donkey you are."

"Oh, yes," murmured Buddie, not understanding in the least.

"Yes," went on the Donkey; "I've taken the Donkesi Method, the Sobraylia Method, the Thistlefixu Method--"

"I'm afraid I don't quite know what you mean by 'methods,'" ventured Buddie.

The Donkey regarded her with a pitying smile.

"A method," he explained, "is a way of singing 'Ah!' For example, in the Thistlefixu Method, which I am at present using, I fill my mouth full of thistles, stand on one leg, take in a breath three yards long, and sing 'Ah!' The only trouble with this method is that the thistles tickle your throat and make you cough, and you have to spray the vocal cords twice a day, which is considerable trouble, especially when traveling, as _I_ always am."

"I should think it _would_ be," said Buddie. "Won't you sing something else?"

"I'm a little hoarse," apologized the singer.

"That's what you want to be, isn't it?" said Buddie, misunderstanding him.

"Hee-haw!" laughed the Donkey. "Is that a joke? I mean my _throat_ is hoarse."

"And the rest of you is donkey!" cried Buddie, who could see a point as quickly as any one of her age.

"There's something to that," said the other, thoughtfully. "Now, if the _hoarseness_ should spread--"

"And you became _horse_ all over--"

"Why, then--"

"Why, then--"

"Think of another old saw," said the Donkey, picking up his lute.

"No; I don't believe I can remember any more old saws," said Buddie, after racking her small brain for a minute or two.

"Pooh!" said the Donkey. "They're as common as, Pass the butter, or, Some more tea, please. Ever hear, Fair words butter no parsnips?"

Buddie shook her head.

"The wolf does something every day that keeps him from church on Sunday--?"

Again Buddy shook her head.

"It is hard to shave an egg--?"

Still another shake.

"A miss is as good as a mile? You can not drive a windmill with a pair of bellows? Help the lame dog over the stile? A hand-saw is a good thing, but not to shave with? Nothing venture, nothing have? Well, you haven't heard much, for a fact," said the Donkey, contemptuously, as Buddie shook her head after each proverb. "I'll try a few more; there's no end to them. Ever hear, When the sky falls we shall all catch larks? Too many cooks spoil the broth?"

"I've heard _that_," said Buddie, eagerly.

"It's a wonder," returned the Donkey. "Well, I have a very nice setting of that." And he sang:

"Some said, 'Stir it fast,' Some said, 'Slow'; Some said, 'Skim it off,' Some said, 'No'; Some said, 'Pepper,' Some said, 'Salt';-- All gave good advice, All found fault.

Poor little Tommy Trottett! Couldn't eat it when he got it."

"I like that," said Buddie. "Oh, and I've just thought of another old ax--I mean saw, if it _is_ one--Don't count your chickens before they are hatched. Do you sing that?"

"One of my best," replied the Donkey. And again he sang:

"'Thirteen eggs,' said Sammy Patch, 'Are thirteen chickens when they hatch.' The hen gave a cluck, but said no more; For the hen had heard such things before.

The eggs fall out from tilted pail And leave behind a yellow trail; But Sammy,--counting, as he goes, Upon his fingers,--never knows.

Oh, Sammy Patch, your 'rithmetic Won't hatch a solitary chick."

"I like that the best," said Buddie, who knew what it was to tip over a pail of eggs, and felt as sorry for Sammy Patch as if he really existed.

"It's one of my best," said the Donkey. "I don't call it my very best. Personally I prefer, Look before you leap. You've heard that old saw, I dare say."

"No; but that doesn't matter. I shall like it just as well," replied Buddie.

"_That_ doesn't follow, but _this_ does," said the Donkey, and once more he sang: