Chapter V (3)

He ceased speaking at this point, for his voice had long been drowned in the uproar of shrieks, and breaking furniture, and crashing glass, as the seance broke up along with the tables and chairs, and the anxious seekers after truth emerged into the night with window sashes hanging round their necks. Foreseeing that there would be trouble if he did not emigrate in order to permit the wanderers to return and resurrect the overturned stove, the messenger from the realm of shadows departed and once more sought his station on the hill. And again he whistled. “Down Among the Dead Men” through his teeth, while he smiled pensively, and communed with his own pleasant thoughts.

“It’s just as I said,” he mused; “had I been that young man’s uncle, whom he so earnestly desired to see, his terror would have been just as great. They rap and call for us, they implore us to come, and when we come they go. And they go very abruptly. Some of those people to-night got out of that room by edging through fissures that would squeeze the very breath out of the leanest ghost I ever saw. Believer or skeptic, it makes no difference. Saul was not more terrified at Samuel’s ghost, which he was so anxious to see, than was the witch who accidentally raised the apparition. But these broken, interrupted interviews with terrified mortals are growing monotonous. I will stay out all night, because it is Christmas Eve and my night out, but I will spend the remaining silent hours in meditation, and let the wicked old world sleep in peace, unless, mayhap, some belated wayfarer should stray this way, when I will revenge myself upon him for the shabby treatment I have received at mortal hands to-night. I will frighten him so that he will not be through screaming when I come here again next Christmas Eve. I have tried to be agreeable to everybody to-night, and everybody has refused to be sociable, and has repulsed my courteous advances with the most hideous shrieks and uproar. And to the next hapless mortal who shall cross my haunt, I will be terrible.”

He ceased speaking, and knotted his face with a series of horrible contortions and hideous grimaces, which he practiced until he acquired one which appeared to satisfy his fastidious taste. This one he exercised several times in order to fix it firmly in his memory, and then, folding his arms, he leaned against the railing and gloomily waited for a customer, as ill-natured and unhappy a ghost as could be found in all the haunts of men or specters.

His ghostship did not have long to wait for a subject, standing there in the gloomy street, with the cold, glittering stars occasionally peeping timidly through the rifted clouds sailing overhead. Before long a heavy footfall was heard ascending the lower part of the hill, and then, as it came nearer, the dismal one could hear the frosty earth creaking under the passenger’s feet at every step he took. A voice which was marked by that peculiar intonation which we so frequently notice in close proximity to a pick or a hod, uttered, in sentences so profusely vaccinated with trilled r’s that it sounded like a high school commencement, a wrathful objurgation upon the wind, as the winter zephyr well nigh lifted the speaker from his feet.

“Growl about that, will you?” muttered the ghost, with savage gleefulness, “I’ll make you wish the wind had blown you into the moon before you get to the top of the hill. I wish he would walk more slowly,” the specter went on, rubbing his fleshless hands in delighted anticipation; “I should like to have a few moments’ quiet enjoyment in contemplating the possible and probable actions of the worst frightened man in America. I have been accused of frightening people before now, but those vile slanders against my considerate and pacific disposition and my reassuring physiognomy will all be retracted and atoned for after to-night. After this man’s experience no man, no living mortal will dare stand up and say that any one was ever frightened prior to this date. Why, there won’t be as much hair left on this individual’s head, in about three minutes, as would make me a switch. All the doctors in America won’t be able to get his eyes back into their proper places. He will howl and yell and shriek and pray to the day of his death. Scared? It isn’t the word. It’s too weak. Whistle, will you?” he continued, apostrophizing the approaching figure, “I’ll make you wish you had a French horn fifteen feet long, with all the keys open and the mouth-piece cracked, to express your feelings through. Why,” he said, arranging his robe and twisting his face into such a blood-curdling awful contortion that it raised a blister on the frozen ground and the very wind turned and blew up hill for dear life; “why, my unsuspicious republican, you’ll be the worst demoralized community in about fifteen seconds that ever disturbed the holy quiet of midnight.”

Stretching out his gaunt arm in a weird, ghostly gesture, the white drapery falling away from it in conventional folds, the specter stepped out to the middle of the sidewalk to confront the coming man. A man of medium size, the new-comer, with bluff square shoulders, twinkling eyes, a nose that had been made of a remnant so that the unfinished end retreated toward the eyes, a mouth puckered up in a melodious whistle, the head covered with an abundance of closely-cut hair of the shade of St. Louis pressed brick; a ragged coat was buttoned close and the wearer carried under his arm a walking-stick of most benevolent aspect, the bulge on the end of which reminded one of an invitation to join the innumerable caravan. His whistle ceased as the ghost loomed up before him, not suddenly cutting off his tune in the middle of the note, but in a long-drawn diminuendo passage, commonly expressive of inexpressible astonishment.

The ghost slowly and impressively waved his extended arm in the direction of the gloomy ravine. The mortal shuffled uneasily toward the middle of the street in an effort to get round the unpleasant obstruction. The specter noiselessly glided before him and still confronted him with outstretched arm and hideous countenance, and both figures regarded each other in silence. The mortal was the first to open the conversation, who, after muttering under his breath, “The saints betune us and har-rum, an’ phwat is he makin’ thim faces at me for?” remarked in a brisk tone:

“Cool avenin’!”

Motionless as a statue, the ghastly figure glowered upon him in its frozen attitude and terrifying gesture.

“Is it Tim Moriarity, as died the year before I kim’ over, I don’ know?”

No reply and no change of posture on the part of the specter.

“Is it the Feenicks boys ye are thin, as kilt aich other the night ov the ball at the creek three years ago come nixt September an’ jist two months lackin’ six weeks after O’Flaherty’s sisther dhrove the cow off the wagon bridge?”

Still the specter maintained its silence and its position.

“Ye’ve a mighty familiar countenince, onyhow,” continued the mortal, who kept up his cautious maneuvering for the weather gauge, in which he was steadily baffled by the ghost. “It seems to me I’ve seen the face av yez somewhare on a tombstone. Yer not livin’ fur around here, mebbe?”

In hollow tones the ghost replied, “I am dead.”

“Did, is it? Oh, the saints rist yer ristless sowl. An’ phwat are ye doin’ out here? Whaire do ye live--I mane, whaire are ye buried?”

“At the top of this hill,” came in the same hollow tones.

“An’ a mighty agreeable place that same is, to be sure,” replied the mortal, in a conciliatory intonation, “shlapin’ undher the grass, wid the cows and pigs browsin’ and rootin’ around all day long an’ kapen’ ye company nights. Born divil that ye air,” he added, in a lower tone, “I wisht wan or the other of us wur thayre now, fur it’s a onpleasant company ye air, anyhow. Well,” he added, aloud and with great cheerfulness, “good night till ye. Be good to yerself.”

“Stay,” uttered the terrible monotone; “come thou with me.”

“Oh-h, the dev--I beg yer par-r-don. I mane I can’t think of it. Luk at the time it is, an’ see the murdherin’ cowld I have in me head already, along ov being out till midnight. The wife and childher’ll be did intirely wid sittin’ up fur me, an’----”

“Follow me!” said the hollow tones of the ghost.

“Oh-h, tundher an’ turf--I mane--I beg yer par-r-don, don’t shpake of it; it’s a married man I am. I can’t sthay; besides, there’s no use--ivery place in town is shut up, and sorra the wan ov me dhrinks av they wasn’t. I wouldn’t taste a dhrop av I lived in lashins ov it; I’m a whole Father Mathew society by myself.”

“Come! Come!! Come!!!” The sepulchral tones boomed out like a bass drum solo.

“Aw-w-w! Millia murther! Go aisy now! Phwat du ye mane, divilin’ the tin sinses out of me to come, whin ye see I want to go? By the mortial gob,” he added, under his breath, “av I thought I cud find anything in yer head to feel it, avick, I’d make ye raisonable wid a welt ov this splinther av a sthick. Whist! ye bloody-minded villin!” he roared, with suddenly increasing courage, as some wakeful Brahma in a neighboring coop startled the night with a stentorian crow, which was shrilly echoed by a bantam and a dozen or more obscure roosters of no particular strain, like the birds that crow at election times, “Do ye hear that? An’ that? An’ that agin? An’ the wan afther that? Scat! ye bloody-minded Banshee, or we’ll crow the rags aff o’ yer beggarly back!”

The ghost gave a hollow laugh, that sounded like water pouring out of a jug.

“You may crow,” he said, more in his easy conversational style and tone than he had been using, “till you split your throats; this is an anniversary night with me, and I won’t go home till morning.”

His uneasy companion’s face fell at this announcement, and he looked like a man who felt that he had prematurely committed himself. But he rallied again.

“A anniver-sary, is it? Do ye have it often?”

“About once a year.”

“Is that all? An’ just think ov yer makin’ so much fuss about that! Kape on yer hat, or what iver ye call it, or ye’ll have a cowld in the head. Good avenin’, agin.”

The ghost mildly protested against his haste. It was Christmas Eve, he said, a season devoted to sociability and good fellowship----

“An’ a foine idee ye have of bein’ sociable, too,” interrupted his auditor; “Christmas is a nice enough saison, but a frayzin’ hillside at midnight, wid the wind blowin’ a jimmycane an’ the thermomether twinty-sivin degrays ferninst Cairo, isn’t the way I’m thinking to be sociable about it, jist.”

“I am delighted to have met you under such----”

“Faix, thin, thayre’s only wan of us that’s feeling so delighted about it.”

“----Favorable and pleasant circumstances. I should never have forgiven myself had I permitted you to pass by without speaking. I must insist----”

“Begorra, thin, it’s too har-r-d ye wad be on yersilf intirely. It’s me that wad give mesilf absolution fur a week av I had gone around the other way an’ never heard ov ye in me life.”

“----On your further acquaintance.”

“Thrue for you, avick, an’ the furdther it is the betther it wud shuit me. An’ the quicker we star-r-t, don’t ye see, the furdther we can make it before mornin’. I know I’ll think betther ov ye whin I can’t see ye. _Good_ avenin’.”

“Stay,” said the specter, detaining him as he sought to hurry by, “I have that to tell you, and that to show you, to-night, which will make you a rich man, and send me back to my narrow resting place----”

“Oh-h-h! hear ’im talk about it!”

“----Never to leave it again until the last dread trump shall summon me.”

“Don’t mintion it, don’t; don’t shpake ov it at all, at all.”

“My tale is brief and sad.”

“An’ have ye a tail, thin?”

“Listen!”

“Shpake!”

“In early life----”

“Phwat’s that?”

“----I plowed the raging main.”

“An’ was ye a Granger, thin?”

“Nay, I was a pirate!”

“Same thing; kape on; it’s frazin’ I am.”

“I steeped my wicked hands in human gore for many years. When my atrocious crimes had amassed me a princely fortune, I repented me of my evil ways.”

“Musha, thin, it war you for knowin’ whin to repint.”

“I bade adieu to my evil companions, and taking my share----”

“Ah, did ye, though? An’ it was a cautious ould reformer ye was, all the same.”

“----of our ill-gotten spoils, I fled west--far to the inland--pursued by the stings of an avenging conscience and a sheriff’s posse.”

“It was thim as stirred up yer conshince.”

“I reached this city in safety and hid my gold, stained with human lives, in yonder deep ravine. Oft as I needed money, I came here by night and got what I wished.”

“Can ye get any ov it now, do ye think?”

“One winter night--a cold, bleak Christmas Eve--returning from such a visit to my hoard, I was waylaid by two men, who suspected my secret, on this very spot----”

“GOOD avenin’!”

“Stay yet one moment. They seized me, hurled me to the ground----”

“Here?”

“On this very spot where now we stand. They----”

“Let’s walk furdther down the hill.”

“Listen. They hurled me to the ground, and, as I struggled for my gold, they--slew me!”

“Phwat!”

“They cut my throat from ear to ear!”

“M-i-l-l-i-a m-u-r-d-t-h-e-r! An’ did it hurt?”

“It haggled some, but----”

“An’ did yez niver git over it?”

“I died!”

“Oh-h-h-h! Bones of the martyrs! GOOD avenin’!”

“Stop a moment. I----”

“Ah yes, shtop a minit. It’s yerself is the pleasant man to be shtoppin’ wid, on a hillside at midnight. Go on, thin, for it’s starvin’ wid the cold I am.”

“I died where I fell; and a coroner’s jury, after due deliberation, returned a verdict, on my lifeless remains, that ‘the alleged deceased came to his probable death in a fit of temporary inanition, induced by the administering of narcotic drug or drugs, by some visitation of Providence to the jury unknown.’”

“Wur that all, alanna? I thought ye said they cut the throat ov ye.”

“They did. But the intelligent citizens who composed the coroner’s jury could not see that that had anything to do with it. Since that time, once a year, on every anniversary of my untimely death, I am forced to leave my grave----”

“Oh, mortial man! don’t shpake ov it at all, an’ us out here in the dark an’ could, and niver a dhrop ov anything to rise the cockles ov me heart wid nearer than town. But kape on.”

“----and haunt this hill. My spirit can not rest in peace until the money which I left concealed from human gaze shall be given into hands fit to be entrusted with wealth.”

“An’ is that all, acushla? Go back to yer den, and dhraw yer stool in to the fire, an’ be comfortable. Show me whare to dig jist, and sorrow light upon me av ye’ll ever have any more nade to wake up an’ worry about another cint as long as ye live--I mane, as long as ye don’t live. Whare’s yer bank? Divil be in me but thare’ll be such a run on it in about ten minits they’ll think thare’s an ould-fashioned American panic broke loose in ghostland, for a truth. Can’t shlape because ye can’t give yer money away! Musha, thin, it’s meself can’t shlape often enough because I haven’t ony to give away, or to kape, ayther. Show me yer threasury, avick; I’m yer oysther.”

“Years ago I might have given it away, had men but known my secret. But the spell laid upon me----”

“A spell ov what?”

“----forbade me to reveal my hidden wealth until I should meet a man going home sober, on Christmas Eve, who would not be afraid of me. The condition was a hard one, for although in my annual hauntings I have met many men plodding up this hill too drunk to be frightened, you are the first sober man I have met on Christmas Eve since the city was an Indian trading post.”

“Ah well then, it’s small blame to them, for it’s gettin’ ready to shwear off New Year’s day they are, the whole jing-bang ov thim. Troth, they do that every year.”

“You did not manifest any fear at my sudden appearance. You were not, apparently, afraid of me; you----”

“Afraid, is it?”

“I merely remarked that you were not afraid of me.”

“Is it me?”

“I said, my quick-tempered friend, that----”

“Is it you?”

“Calm yourself, my bellicose mortal, I simply----”

“Listen to ’im! Hear ’im talk about ony body bein ashkared ov an ould bag o’ bones sthandin’ in the dark makin’ faces! Why, ye consaited old skeleton, is it comin’ to Ameriky to be shkared wid you I’d be, whin we had a ghosht ov our own in the Ould Sod for more nor twinty years? A ghosht that wur worth bein’ shkared ov, too.”

“You surprise me,” said the ghost. “Are you quite certain that your own family was favored with the permanent society of a ghost? You will pardon me for intimating that your appearance and dress do not indicate a station in life that calls for such a condition of things. For I am decidedly under the impression that we are permitted to haunt only aristocratic families, who inhabit large rambling houses, with long gloomy corridors and magnificent bay windows and lofty mansard roofs and heavy mortgages; full of dark corners and convenient hiding places for ghosts, and frequently so uncomfortable and dreary, especially on the occasion of a poor relation’s visit, that no one but a ghost can enjoy living in them. I once knew a most respectable ghost, a specter of a most extraordinarily rugged constitution, who haunted one of these houses, and went to sleep in the spare room one night and was so laid up with the rheumatism that he was unable to get out of his grave----”

“The saints betune us! Don’t mintion it!”

“----for nearly six weeks. I took his place at the mansion during his indisposition. A dreary, frosty place enough, fitted up elegantly with a thousand-dollar piano, a costly mechanic’s lien, Brussels carpets, a chattel mortgage or two, French plate windows, a tax title, and a few similar expensive luxuries. I did not wish to be laid up with the rheumatism, so I took preventives instead of cures. From being frosty and chilly, I made that house the warmest place this side of----”

“Don’t say it, alanna! Skip that!”

“----the equator,” pursued the ghost, quietly. “It soon became the most hospitable mansion on the street. It was full of company all the time, and poor relations came and got square meals and slept in the best beds and were made welcome. You can not imagine how I softened that old fellow’s proud heart. And you must excuse me if I say that you do not appear to belong to that favored class which is honored with hereditary ghosts. A ghost, my unsophisticated friend, is an expensive luxury.”

“Thrue for you, it is, thin. The wan we had was the most expinsive thing we wur ever throubled wid. He kim till the house in me father’s time an’ I dunno how long befoar.”

“Did he look like me?”

“Sorra the wan ov him. He’d ate a rigimint ov yez in a minit. Shouldhers like a sailor an’ a head set on ’im like a bull dog’s. He wur a ghosht now that cud talk to ye about bein’ ashkared ov him.”

“Does he ever annoy--that is, entertain you now?”

“Faix, thin he doesn’t. It isn’t here he cud live at all, at all. It wur in the ould counthry he did be vexin’ us an’ teasin’ the life out ov us from mornin’ till night.”

“Why, did he appear in the daytime, then?”

“It wur grace fur his bones that he did. Be the holy poker, alanna, it wur waitin’ fur him in the dark twinty times a month we was. Catch an Irish ghosht comin’ in the dark. He knowed whin to come.”

“Did you ever try to lay the ghost?”

“Wanst. The byes laid him wid a blackthorn stick, an’ sorra the wan of him throubled us agin fur six weeks afther.”

“I don’t understand. Why did he haunt you? What was----”

“Why did he? For the rint, av coorse. It was the thavin’ ould landlord, bloody end to him. Talk about ghosts! The ould _boddagh Sassenagh_ gev us more throuble in wan day than the whole jing-bang ov such thin-legged spooks as yerself cud make us in a week. Thare was wan time the ould swaddler kim down to Muldoonery’s shebeen--ye knew the Muldoonery’s?”

“The name is familiar, but I can not say that I ever had the honor of the family’s acquaintance.”

“The betther for you thin, for ye died wid a whole head----”

“But my neck was spoiled.”

“Oh-h, by this an’ by that, listen to him! Don’t sphake ov it. The Muldoonerys was me father’s own family. Ould Malachi Muldoonery, wan of the Killatalicks, thim as was own cousins to the O’Slaughtery’s of Killgobbin--ah, thim was the high-toned wans fur ye; when it come to ould families, they lifted the pins, jist. They had a ghosht ov thare own, a rale wan, sphooky enough to frighten a horse from his oats, that wore a long night-shirt like yer own, an’ carried his head undher his arm. Oh, Gog’s blakey, but he wur the boss ghosht. He wur beheaded fur headin’ a rebellyun three hundhred years ago. Ah, tare-an-ouns, the tussle me own uncle, who was an O’Slaughtery, had wid this same ghosht wanst. We heard the sphook thramplin’ up an’ down the hall, fur he always wore a shurt of armor undher his white dhress, an’ me uncle got up an’ wint out, an’ peerin’ down the dark hall, sees him.

“‘Arrah!’ sez me uncle.

“‘Sorra the word’ sez the ghosht.

“‘Are ye thaire?’ sez me uncle.

“The ghosht stopped walkin’ and screwed on his head like the head ov a cane.

“‘An’ phwat av I am?’ sez he.

“‘Come out o’ that, thin, ye bladdherhang,’ sez me uncle.

“‘I won’t, thin,’ sez the ghosht.

“‘Ye’d betther,’ sez me uncle.

“‘I hadn’t thin,’ sez the ghosht.

“‘Do ye know what this is, ye omadhawn?’ sez me uncle, balancin’ his blackthorn.

“‘None o’ yer chaff,’ sez the ghosht.

“‘I wont lave a whole bone in yer carkidge,’ says he.

“‘I hwat!’ sez the ghosht.

“‘I wont!’ sez he.

“‘Yer a liar!’ sez he.

“‘Is it me?’ sez he.

“‘Show me yer head!’ sez he.

“‘Whoop!’ sez he.

“‘Hurroo!’ sez he.

“Whack! wint the blackthorn, and wid that the whole house was roused wid a bellerin’ an’ roarin’ that wud shame the bulls ov Bashan. It was me uncle, an’ they found him out dures tied to the gate-posht wid a bed-cord half a mile long and knotted up that way that it tuk thim till after daylight to ontie him, for sorra the knot cud they cut. Oh, heavy heart go wid the ghosht that tied him out in the cowld that a-way. An’ afther they got him untied he died.”

“Immediately?” asked the specter.

“Och, the divil, no; about twenty-sivin years afther. But this isn’t tellin’ me about that famous bank ov yours?”

“True,” said the specter “we are losing time. To you, who have kept sober Christmas Eve, and have scorned to desecrate and profane the sacred memories of the season----”

“Tower ov ivory!” whispered the exile of Killatalick, “av that isn’t purty good for an ould cut-throat ov a pirate!”

“----and have shown the integrity of your moral being----”

“An phwat’s thim, I wondher?”

“----in that you feel no fear of visitants from the spirit world, to you I commit gold won by dishonest means, but which at last reaches honest hands that will devote it to worthy purposes. Come with me, and do as I tell you.”

Crossing himself with an energy and rapidity that indicated a slight lack of confidence in the moral standing of his guide, the descendant of the Muldoonerys of Killgobbin followed his ghostly leader down the hillside into the hollow and along the course of the bewildered and frozen brook, until they paused before an irregular wall of rock, long ago cut down by the action of the water. As they stood before this rude wall, the specter turned to his companion.

“If,” he said solemnly, “you do not feel as though you could maintain the strictest silence, and not utter a word or an exclamation, no matter what wonders you may see, do not follow me farther. The charm which opens the care of my hidden wealth to your eyes, closes it in destruction on any violation of the spell under which I am held. Are you ready? On your life now, do not utter a sound.”

The ghost touched the rock with his bony hand. It yawned like a door, and in the cavern behind the gloomy entrance they crept, crouching, along a narrow passage until the roof arched and they stood erect. An open chest lay at their feet; glittering jewels sparkled like stars in the gloom; precious stones in the mysterious coffer gleamed till their rays pierced the shadowy pall of the cavern with a pale, tremulous light. At a silent motion from the specter, the mortal, trembling with excitement and eagerness, bent down and seized the chest. Once, twice, thrice, he strained every muscle, and tugged until it seemed as though his eyes were bursting from their sockets, but the glittering fortune seemed immovable. He set every nerve for one tremendous effort; he braced his feet firmly and once more grasped the handles of the coffer. It moves! The ransom of an empire is his!

“’S’matter ’ith you fellers? Hic! Watchu doin’? Hey?”

The blinding light, and the deafening crash that followed lasted scarce the duration of the lightning’s flash, and all was darkness and silence. When the gray light of morning quenched the beams of the paling stars, the exile woke to consciousness to find himself lying outside the spell-bound cavern, with the unbroken rock looming cold and pitiless beside him, and his dream of wealth was gone. A faint odor of stale whisky kissed the wintry zephyrs, and a shattered bottle in the near distance lay like a mournful memory of his happy dreams. When the unhappy man’s friends discovered him, they took in all the conditions of the cheerless bivouac, and when in the cozy surroundings of his home he told his marvelous narrative, they were skeptical enough to declare that they believed all the story about the ghost and the cavern and the money chest was only the inspiration of that bottle before it was broken, and that the exile of Killgobbin saw the light and heard the crash when he staggered over the edge of the wall and broke his head. But he still believes that if the young fellow who went into camp on the hillside at the opening of this story had not finished his sleep and broke in upon them in such an untimely manner, he would never again have done a harder day’s work than cutting off coupons from government bonds.

The rest of us know that this is true. And if any young man doubts the truth of this veracious chronicle, he can easily verify its statements by keeping sober next Christmas Eve, and patrolling the quiet streets until he meets the ghost. And if he doesn’t see the specter, he will at least enjoy the singular sensation of going home sober Christmas Eve, a thing of much greater rarity and wonder to most of “the boys” than an interview with a Moneyed Ghost.

MIDDLERIB’S PICNIC.

“It isn’t age that makes people grow old,” Mr. Middlerib remarked to his family as they were gathered at the breakfast table. “It is incessant application; it is unending, incessant work and worry. The mind, the body, all the faculties, mental and physical, are kept on the alert without rest or recreation, until outraged nature rises in rebellion against the slavery to which it is subjected, and deluded man, with all the aches and tremor of senility in his young joints, awakes to find that he has lived his three score years and ten in half his allotted number of days.” And with this sage remark Mr. Middlerib leaned back in his chair and regarded his family with the air of a man who has just imparted a volume of information that would stagger the average comprehension.

“That’s what ailed these spring chickens, I reckon,” suggested Master Middlerib, struggling with a wing that was supplied with the latest improved fish-plate joints; “wore themselves out trying to lay ten years’ eggs in five.”

Mr. Middlerib gazed at the boy in a meaning manner, and the young gentleman immediately elevated one of his elbows until it was as high as his head, and held his guard up while he warily regarded his parent’s disengaged hand. But the usual consequences did not follow, and Mr. Middlerib proceeded to announce that he would shake off the sordid cares of business, and free himself from the shackles of commercial servitude, and enjoy a picnic with his family and a few chosen friends. And immediately upon this, the family loosed their tongues and talked all together, and as loud and fast as possible for twenty-five minutes. Then, Mr. Middlerib, smiling benignly upon the scene of pleasure which his announcement had created, went off to his office. When he returned, Miss Middlerib had a list made out of the people they would invite. It embraced one hundred and fifteen names, not including alternates, and Mr. Middlerib’s jaw fell as he gazed at the catalogue.

“Daughter, dear,” he remarked, as soon as he could command his feelings, “do you take me for Calvary Mission Sunday-school, that you have included the census of this city in our picnic?”

Then explanations were demanded, and it appeared that Mr. Middlerib’s idea had been to take a couple of big wagons, furnished with temporary seats, and have a decidedly rustic, old-fashioned picnic, of an exclusively family nature. And Miss Middlerib sat down and blotted out an even hundred names with tears, after which Mr. Middlerib gazed upon the revised and corrected list, expunged edition, and pronounced it good. Then they fixed upon the day, which was settled after much wrangling and profound discussion. Mr. M. went out and looked at the sky, and noted the direction of the wind, and watched the movements of the chimney swallows with a critical and scientific eye, and came in and announced that it would not rain for five days, and they would have the picnic just two days before the rain. And from the hour of that announcement the Middlerib family and their invited relations did nothing but bake, and roast, and stew, and iron clothes, and declare they were tired to death and would be glad when it was all over and done with. It is a somewhat remarkable fact that all people who make up their minds to go to a picnic, always do say that they will be glad when it is over, and act as though they were going merely as an act of self-denial and a mortification of the flesh.

But when the day finally rolled around, as days will roll, the excitement was at its height. The sun struggled to his place at the usual hour, as soon as he was called, and his broad, red face had a terribly wild and dissipated look as he glared through the bank of clouds that curtained his getting up place, as though he had been tearing around all night, and had never had his boots off, and had only got up to collar the water pitcher. No wonder the whole party lost confidence in such a sun the moment they looked at him. He looked too much like a prodigal sun, just before he got starved into reform, rather than a smiling, cheery picnic sun. And the Middleribs took turns going out singly and in small groups to look at him, and revile his unpromising appearance, and after each observation they would return to the house and ask each other in tones somewhat tinged with a tender melancholy, “Well, what do you think of it?” And the questioned one would stifle a sigh and reply “I don’t know, do you?”

There is no scene in all this wide world of pathos more pathetic than a group of anxious mortals, on the morn of a picnic, trying to delude each other into the belief that when the sky is covered with heavy black clouds, 800 feet thick, and a damp scud is driving through the air, and the sun is only half visible occasionally through a thin cloud that is waiting to be patched up to the standard thickness and density, it is going to be a very fine day indeed. So the Middleribs looked at the coppery old sun, and the dismal clouds, and tried to look cheerful, and said encouragingly that “Oh, it never rained when the clouds came up that way;” and, “See, it is all clear over in the east;” and, “It often rains very heavily in town when there doesn’t a drop of water fall at Prospect Hill.” And thus, with many encouraging remarks of similar import, they awaited the gathering of the party, and the human beings finally climbed into one wagon, put the baskets and the boys in the other, and drove away, giggling and howling with well dissembled glee.

The happy party, although they well knew that it would not rain, had taken the precaution nevertheless to take a large assortment of shawls and umbrellas. They were a quarter of a mile from town when it began to thunder some, but as it didn’t thunder in the direction of Prospect Hill, distant some three miles, they went on, confident that it wasn’t raining, and wouldn’t, and couldn’t rain at Prospect Hill. They were half a mile from town when the cloud that all the rest of the clouds had been waiting for came up and remorselessly sat down on the last, solitary lingering patch of blue that broke the monotony of the leaden sky, but the party pressed on, confident that they would find blue sky when they got to Prospect Hill. They were a mile from town when old Aquarius pulled the bottom out of the rain wagon and began the entertainment. It was a grand success. The curtain hadn’t been up ten minutes before all the standing room in the house was taken up and the box office was closed. The Middlerib party having gone early, and secured front seats, were able to see everything. They expressed their pleasure by loud shrieks, and howls, and wails. They tore umbrellas, that had been furtively placed in the wagon, out of their lurking places, and shot them up with such abruptness that the hats in the wagon were knocked out into the road. Then the wagon stopped and people crawled out and waded around after hats, and came piling back into the wagon, with their feet loaded with mud. The umbrellas got into each other’s way, and from the points of the ribs streams of dirty water trickled down shuddering backs, and stained immaculate dresses, and took the independence out of glossy shirt fronts. And the picnic party turned homeward, but still the Middleribs did not lose heart. They smiled through their tears, and Miss Middlerib, beautiful in her grief, still advocated going on and having the picnic in a barn, and wept when they refused her. It rained harder every rod of the way back. Then when they got everybody and every thing into the house, the heart-rending discovery was made that the boys had taken the rubber blanket which was to have covered the baskets in case of rain, and spread it over themselves when the moisture gathered, and consequently the edibles were in a state of dampness.

Then the clouds broke, and the sun came out, and smiling nature stood around looking as pleasant as though it had never played a mean trick on a happy picnic party in its life; and the Middleribs hung themselves out in the sun to dry, and tried to play croquet in the wet grass, and kept up their spirits as well as they knew how, and were not cross if they did get wet. If smiling nature had only given them a show, or even half a chance, they would have got along all right. They were bound to have the picnic party anyhow, so they kept all the relations at the house, and when dinner time came, the grass was dry and they set the table out under the trees and made it look as picnicky as possible. It clouded up a little when they were setting the table, but nobody thought it looked very threatening. The soaked things had been dried as carefully as possible, and the table looked beautiful when they gathered around it. And just about the time they got their plates filled and declared that they were glad they came back, and that this was ever so much better than Prospect Hill, a forty acre cloud came and stood right over the table, and then and there went all to pieces.

That was what spoiled the picnic.

The pleasure-seekers grabbed whatever they could reach and broke for the house, uttering wild shrieks of dismay. They crowded into the hall, which wasn’t half big enough, and there they stood on each other’s trains, and trod on each other’s corns, and poured coffee down each other’s backs, and jabbed forks into one another’s arms. When one frantic looking woman would rush in and set a plate of cake down on the floor while she dived out into the rain with a woman’s anxiety to recover some more provisions from the dripping wreck, a forlorn looking man would immediately step on that plate of cake, and stand there gazing wonderingly and apprehensively at the shrieking crowd around him, pointing their forks and fingers at him and at his feet, and yelling, in a deafening chorus, something as utterly unintelligible as “shouting proverbs.” And when the man, in a vain effort to do something in compliance with the shrieking which was evidently intended for him, stepped off the cake and stood in a huge dish of baked beans for a change, the wail of consternation that went up from the congregation fairly rent the bending skies. And when Uncle Steve, who had found Aunt Carrie’s baby out under the deserted table, maintaining an unequal struggle with half of a huckleberry pie and a whole thunder-storm, came tearing in with the hapless infant, and, dashing through the crowd, deposited it on top of a pile of hard-boiled eggs, Miss Middlerib fainted, and the youngest gentleman cousin was driven into a spasm of jealousy because he couldn’t walk over a row of cold meats and lobster salad to get to her, and had to endure the misery of seeing the oldest and ugliest bachelor uncle carry her drooping form to a sofa, and lay her down tenderly, with her classic head in a nest of cream tarts and her dainty feet on Sadie’s Jenny Lind cake. And when Mrs. Middlerib looked out of the window, and saw the dog Heedle with his fore paws in the lemonade bucket, growling at Cousin John, who was trying to drive him out of it, she expressed a willingness to die right there. And when they were startled by some unearthly sounds and muffled shrieks, that even rose above the human babel in the hall, and found that the cat had got its poor head jammed tighter than wax in the mouth of the jar that contained the cream, everybody just sat on the plate of things nearest him, and gasped, “What next?” while Cousin David lifted cat and jar by the tail of the former, and carried them out to be broken apart. And when old Mr. Rubelkins lost his teeth in the coffee pot, half the people in the hall began to lose heart, and one discouraged young cousin said he half wished that they had put the picnic off a day. And finally, when the uproar was at its height, the door-bell rang, and the aunt nearest the door opened it, and there stood the Hon. Mrs. J. C. P. R. Le Von Blatheringford and her daughter, the richest and most stylish people in the neighborhood, arrayed like fashion-plates, making their first formal call. While they stood gazing in mute bewilderment at the scene of ruin and devastation and chaos before them, Mrs. Middlerib just got behind the door and pounded her head against the wall; while Miss Middlerib, springing from her sofa, ran to her room, leaving a trail of Jenny Lind cake and cream tarts behind her, as the fragments dropped from her back hair and heels. And the rest of the company, staring at the guests with their mouths full of assorted provisions, and their hearts full of bitter disappointment, mumbled, in hospitable chorus, “Wup pin,” which, had their mouths been empty, would have been rendered, “Walk in.”

This blow settled the picnic. Gloom hung over the house the rest of the day. Mr. Middlerib decided, after the company had departed, that the easiest and cheapest way to clean the hall would be to turn the river through it. And that night, when they were assembled at a comfortless tea-table--Master Middlerib having been sent to bed so sick that they didn’t think his toe-nails would be able to hold down till morning--Mr. Middlerib said:

“It isn’t the steady, honest, ambitious devotion to business that makes men old. Labor is a law of our nature. We are happiest and most content when we are busiest. It is the healthful labor of the day that brings the sweet, refreshing repose of the night. Pleasure flies us when we seek her; she comes to us when we least regard her calls. Remember what I have always said, and find your pleasure in your daily work--in the regular routine of daily life, and its duties and useful avocations--and age will only come upon you slowly, and youth will linger in your hearts and on your faces long years after the allotted days of youth are past. The next time you want to have a picnic, remember how often I have warned you against them.”

MASTER BILDERBACK’S POULTRY YARD.

If there was anything she abominated more than one thing, Mrs. Bilderback used to say with some warmth, it was another, and that was chickens. And she resolutely protested against keeping any of them about the place. She wanted to keep a few flowers this year, and she wasn’t going to be mortified again as she was last Summer, by having every woman who called at that house smile at the forest of bare stalks and scraggy branches that stood for the collection of house plants that she and her daughter tried to raise for ornaments to the place, but which were really of no use except to fill the crops of a lot of long-legged, hungry chickens. And for a long time the good lady held out stoutly against the chicken proposition, but was at last over-argued and over-persuaded and gave her unwilling consent for Master Bilderback to keep three dozen chickens, the party of the second part binding himself to keep the table supplied with fresh eggs and spring chickens, and to keep all hens, roosters, and all young chickens of unknown sex, but of sufficient physical development to scratch, out of the front yard and away from the flower beds. This contract Master Bilderback placed himself under heavy bonds to carry out, by saying, “honest injun,” “’pon nonnor,” and “’cross my heart,” and having solemnly repeated this awful and impressive formula, he went sedately out of the room and immediately threw himself down on a verbena bed, where he pounded the ground with his heels in the ecstasy of his joy. In due time the new hen-house was completed, and Mr. Bilderback, breathing maledictions on the wretches who pulled the pickets off his front fence for kindling wood, had that important boundary repaired before he noticed that the apertures in the fence corresponded to certain neat looking improvements on the hennery. The house was stocked rather slowly, for it was part of the contract which Mrs. Bilderback had drawn that the party of the second part should purchase his own stock. It was noticeable that Master Bilderback’s taste ran greatly toward gamey looking roosters, and as the perches in the hennery became more and more populated, the outlook for fresh eggs and spring chickens became very discouraging indeed. The first fowl the poulterer brought home was a gaunt Hamburg with one eye and a game leg, but beautifully spangled, which interesting bird, Master Bilderback informed his sister, was the worst pill in the box and had lost his eye while fighting a cow. The next day he traded a pocketful of marbles for a little bantam that crowed twenty-four hours a day, could slip through a season crack in a warped board, and could dig a hole in the middle of a flower bed that you could bury a calf in. There wasn’t a moment’s silence about the house after the bantam’s arrival, for when he was not fighting the Hamburg, which was only when that valiant but prudent bird got up on top of the house and hid behind a chimney, he was wandering through the house trying his voice in the different rooms, or standing on the front porch issuing proclamations of defiance to all roosters to whom these presents might come, greeting. A day or two after the bantam’s arrival Master Bilderback traded his knife for a Black Spanish rooster with a broken wing. The Spaniard when put in the coop proceeded at once to clean out the disheartened Hamburg, who fought on the tactics which had so often proved of so great value to him, and amazed his furious antagonist by the briskness with which he got out of the coop, up on to the barn, and perched himself on the restless and uncertain weather-cock. The Spaniard and the bantam then had it until neither of them could stand, when the pacific Hamburg improved the opportunity to come down and partake of the first square meal he had eaten since the new boarders had come to the house. Two days later, Master Bilderback brought home a vile looking white rooster with no tail feathers, his comb shaved off close to the head, and spurs as long as your thumb, a vile plebeian of a rooster without a line of pedigree, of no particular strain, except a strain that made his very eyes turn red when he growled, which he had bought for an old base ball club. But the nameless stranger amazed the proprietor of the hennery by waltzing into the establishment with a terrific rooster oath, and following it up by kicking the bantam clear out of his mind, jerking the wattles off the Spaniard, and chasing the persecuted Hamburg half-way up the side of the house. This was the last addition made to the happy family for some time, Mr. Bilderback declaring that he was not going to have his premises turned into a cock-pit, and Master Bilderback was sternly forbidden to arrange any more meetings in the alley, with other boys and their birds. But a few days afterward, when Master Bilderback came home from school, it was evident that he had made a trade. He had some other boy’s shabby old hat on his head, and there wasn’t a lead pencil, piece of string, pistol cartridge, top, fish-hook, chalk line, marble, dime novel, or street car ticket in his pockets, and he had a new rooster, the crowning glory of the vast collection of fowls that were to furnish forth his mother’s table with fresh eggs and spring chickens. It was a Shanghai; young one, Master Bilderback said, as he prepared to untie its legs and wings and introduce it to its new home; hadn’t got his growth yet, but he was “a buster.” And Mrs. Bilderback thought he was. When he was untied he stood up and flapped one of his wings in his proprietor’s face, until that young gentleman was ready to “cross his heart,” that somebody had hit him with a clapboard. And before he had recovered from the effects of this blow the noble bird kicked him under the chin and darted off toward the front yard, with prodigious strides. He uttered a most awful croak as he neared Mrs. Bilderback, who was trying to get out of his way, and in a vain attempt to fly over her, he struck her on the head, just abaft her ear with his heel, gently dropping her; “grassed the old lady,” Master Bilderback afterward explained to his sister, “like a shot.” The wretched bird paused as he passed the sitting-room window, which was just about on a level with his head when he stooped, to look in and make some unintelligible remark in a guttural tone of language, and snatching up a new tidy that Miss Bilderback was at work upon, swallowed it and passed on. Wherever he trod, he smashed a house plant, and whenever he croaked, he threw somebody into a fit. He met Mr. Bilderback as he suddenly turned the corner of the house, ran against the old gentleman with a wild kind of a crow that sounded like a steamboat whistle with a bad cold, and as he trampled over that good man’s prostrate form, he plucked off his necktie and swallowed it. Then the “buster” wheeled around and straddled into the sitting-room window, and before they could head him out of the house he swallowed two spools of cotton, a tack hammer, a set of false teeth belonging to Mrs. Bilderback, a cake of toilet soap, a shoe buttoner, a ball of yarn, an arctic over-shoe, and finally choked on a photograph album which flew open when it was about half-way down. The bird when last heard from was still at large roaming around South Hill, but Master Bilderback’s hennery is empty and lonesome, because his parents are, from some unaccountable reason, bitterly prejudiced against keeping chickens.

A SUNDAY IDYL.