The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (english novels for beginners .TXT) 📗

"Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah?" said Miss Ophelia, with the air of one who "prayed for patience."

"Most anywhar, missis; there's some in that cracked tea-cup up there, and there's some over in that ar cupboard."

"Here are some in the grater," said Miss Ophelia, holding them up.

"Laws, yes; I put 'em there this morning; I likes to keep my things handy," said Dinah. "You Jake! what are you stopping for? You'll cotch it! Be still, thar!" she added, with a dive of her stick at the criminal.

"What's this?" said Miss Ophelia, holding up the saucer of pomade.

"Laws, it's my har-grease: I put it thar to have it handy."

"Do you use your mistress's best saucers for that?"

"Law! it was 'cause I was driv' and in sich a hurry. I was gwine to change it this very day."

"Here are two damask table-napkins."[Pg 339]

"Them table-napkins I put thar to get 'em washed out some day."

"Don't you have some place here on purpose for things to be washed?"

"Well, Mas'r St. Clair got dat ar chest, he said, for dat; but I likes to mix up biscuit and hev my things on it some days, and then it ain't handy a-liftin' up the lid."

"Why don't you mix your biscuits on the pastry-table, there?"

"Law, missis, it gets sot so full of dishes, and one thing and another, der ain't no room, noways."

"But you should wash your dishes, and clear them away."

"Wash my dishes!" said Dinah, in a high key, as her wrath began to rise over her habitual respect of manner. "What does ladies know 'bout work, I want to know? When'd mas'r ever get his dinner, if I was to spend all my time a-washin' and a-puttin' up dishes? Miss Marie never telled me so, nohow."

"Well, here are these onions."

"Laws, yes!" said Dinah; "that is whar I put 'em, now. I couldn't 'member. Them's particular onions I was a savin' for dis yer very stew. I'd forgot they was in dat ar old flannel."

Miss Ophelia lifted out the sifting papers of sweet herbs. "I wish missis wouldn't touch dem ar. I likes to keep my things where I knows whar to go to 'em," said Dinah, rather decidedly.

"But you don't want these holes in the papers."

"Them's handy for siftin' on't out," said Dinah.

"But you see it spills all over the drawer."

"Laws, yes! if missis will go a-tumblin' things all up so, it will. Missis has spilt lots dat ar way," said Dinah, coming uneasily to the drawers. "If missis only will go[Pg 340] up-sta'rs till my clarin'-up time comes, I'll have everything right; but I can't do nothin' when ladies is 'round a-henderin'. You Sam, don't you gib de baby dat ar sugar-bowl! I'll crack ye over, if ye don't mind!"

"I'm going through the kitchen, and going to put everything in order, once, Dinah; and then I'll expect you to keep it so."

"Lor', now, Miss 'Phelia, dat ar ain't no way for ladies to do. I never did see ladies doin' no sich; my old missis nor Miss Marie never did, and I don't see no kinder need on't." And Dinah stalked indignantly about, while Miss Ophelia piled and sorted dishes, emptied dozens of scattering bowls of sugar into one receptacle, sorted napkins, table-cloths, and towels, for washing; washing, wiping and arranging with her own hands, and with a speed and alacrity which perfectly amazed Dinah.

"Lor', now! if dat ar de way dem Northern ladies do, dey ain't ladies nohow," she said to some of her satellites, when at a safe hearing-distance. "I has things as straight as anybody, when my clarin'-up times comes; but I don't want ladies 'round a-henderin' and gettin' my things all where I can't find 'em."

To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxysms of reformation and arrangement, which she called "clarin'-up times," when she would begin with great zeal and turn every drawer and closet wrong side outward on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion sevenfold more confounded. Then she would light her pipe and leisurely go over her arrangements, looking things over and discoursing upon them; making all the young fry scour most vigorously on the tin things, and keeping up for several hours a most energetic state of confusion, which she would explain to the satisfaction of all inquirers by the remark that she was a "clarin'-up."[Pg 341] "She couldn't hev things a-gwine on so as they had been, and she was gwine to make these yer young ones keep better order;" for Dinah herself, somehow, indulged the illusion that she herself was the soul of order, and it was only the young uns, and the everybody else in the house, that were the cause of anything that fell short of perfection in this respect. When all the tins were scoured, and the tables scrubbed snowy white, and everything that could offend tucked out of sight in holes and corners, Dinah would dress herself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high, brilliant Madras turban, and tell all marauding "young uns" to keep out of the kitchen, for she was gwine to have things kept nice. Indeed, these periodic seasons were often an inconvenience to the whole household, for Dinah would contract such an immoderate attachment to her scoured tin as to insist upon it that it shouldn't be used again for any possible purpose,—at least till the ardor of the "clarin'-up" period abated.[Pg 342]

Away back in the fifties, "Hinman's" was not only the best school in Peoria, but it was the greatest school in the world. I sincerely thought so then, and as I was a very lively part of it, I should know. Mr. Hinman was the Faculty, and he was sufficiently numerous to demonstrate cube root with one hand and maintain discipline with the other. Dear old man; boys and girls with grandchildren love him to-day, and think of him among their blessings. He was superintendent of public instruction, board of education, school trustee, county superintendent, principal of the high school and janitor. He had a pleasant smile, a genius for mathematics, and a West Point idea of obedience and discipline. He carried upon his person a grip that would make the imported malady which mocks that name in these degenerate days, call itself Slack, in very terror at having assumed the wrong title.

We used to have "General Exercises" on Friday afternoon. The most exciting feature of this weekly frivolity consisted of a free-for-all exercise in mental arithmetic. Mr. Hinman gave out lists of numbers, beginning with easy ones and speaking slowly; each succeeding list he dictated more rapidly and with ever-increasing complications of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, until at last he was giving them out faster than he could talk. One by one the pupils dropped out of the[Pg 343] race with despairing faces, but always at the closing peremptory:

"Answer?"

At least a dozen hands shot into the air and as many voices shouted the correct result. We didn't have many books, and the curriculum of an Illinois school in those days was not academic; but two things the children could do, they could spell as well as the dictionary and they could handle figures. Some of the fellows fairly wallowed in them. I didn't. I simply drowned in the shallowest pond of numbers that ever spread itself on the page. As even unto this day I do the same.

Well, one year the Teacher introduced an innovation; "compositions" by the girls and "speakin' pieces" by the boys. It was easy enough for the girls, who had only to read the beautiful thought that "spring is the pleasantest season of the year." Now and then a new girl, from the east, awfully precise, would begin her essay—"spring is the most pleasant season of the year," and her would we call down with derisive laughter, whereat she walked to her seat, very stiffly, with a proud dry-eyed look in her face, only to lay her head upon her desk when she reached it, and weep silently until school closed. But "speakin' pieces" did not meet with favor from the boys, save one or two good boys who were in training by their parents for congressmen or presidents.

The rest of us, who were just boys, with no desire ever to be anything else, endured the tyranny of compulsory oratory about a month, and then resolved to abolish the whole business by a general revolt. Big and little, we agreed to stand by each other, break up the new exercise, and get back to the old order of things—the hurdle races in mental arithmetic and the geographical chants which we could run and intone together.[Pg 344]

Was I a mutineer? Well, say, son, your Pa was a constituent conspirator. He was in the color guard. You see, the first boy called on for a declamation was to announce the strike, and as my name stood very high—in the alphabetical roll of pupils—I had an excellent chance of leading the assaulting column, a distinction for which I was not at all ambitious, being a stripling of tender years, ruddy countenance, and sensitive feelings. However, I stiffened the sinews of my soul, girded on my armor by slipping an atlas back under my jacket and was ready for the fray, feeling a little terrified shiver of delight as I thought that the first lick Mr. Hinman gave me would make him think he had broken my back.

The hour for "speakin' pieces," an hour big with fate, arrived on time. A boy named Aby Abbott was called up ahead of me, but he happened to be one of the presidential aspirants (he was mate on an Illinois river steamboat, stern-wheeler at that, the last I knew of him), and of course he flunked and "said" his piece—a sadly prophetic selection—"Mr. President, it is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope." We made such suggestive and threatening gestures at him, however, when Mr. Hinman wasn't looking, that he forgot half his "piece," broke down and cried. He also cried after school, a little more bitterly, and with far better reason.

Then, after an awful pause, in which the conspirators could hear the beating of each other's hearts, my name was called.

I sat still at my desk and said:

"I ain't goin' to speak no piece."

Mr. Hinman looked gently surprised and asked:

"Why not, Robert?"

I replied:[Pg 345]

"Because there ain't goin' to be any more speakin' pieces."

The teacher's eyes grew round and big as he inquired:

"Who says there will not?"

I said, in slightly firmer tones, as I realized that the moment had come for dragging the rest of the rebels into court:

"All of us boys!"

But Mr. Hinman smiled, and said quietly that he guessed there would be "a little more speaking before the close of the session." Then laying his hand on my shoulder, with most punctilious but chilling courtesy, he invited me to the rostrum. The "rostrum" was twenty-five feet distant, but I arrived there on schedule time and only touched my feet to the floor twice on my way.

And then and there, under Mr. Hinman's judicious coaching, before the assembled school, with feelings, nay, emotions which I now shudder to recall, I did my first "song and dance." Many times before had I stepped off a solo-cachuca to the staccato pleasing of a fragment of slate frame, upon which my tutor was a gifted performer, but never until that day did I accompany myself with words. Boy like, I had chosen for my "piece" a poem sweetly expressive of those peaceful virtues which I most heartily despised. So that my performance, at the inauguration of the strike, as Mr. Hinman conducted the overture, ran something like this—