The Humors of Falconbridge Part 55

B---- had got out on to the pavement, with no time to spare to reach the cars in season; yet he halted--ran back--opened the door, and in evident concern, bawled out to his wife--

"Caddie!"

"Well?" she answered.

"Be sure to fasten the alley gate!"

"Ye-e-e-e-s!" responded the wife, from the interior of the house.

"And whatever you do, _don't forget them cellar doors_, Caddie!"

"Ye-e-e-e-s!" she repeated, and away went B----, lickety split, for the Boston train.

After a general and miscellaneous survey of modern Athens, B---- found an opening--a good one--to go into business, as he desired, upon a liberal scale; but he found vent for the explosion of one very hallucinating idea--his six hundred dollars, as a cash capital, was a most infinitesimal _circ.u.mstance_, a mere "flea bite;" would do very well for an amateur in the cake and candy, pea-nut or vegetable business, but was hardly sufficient to create a sensation among the monied folks of Milk street, or "bulls" and "bears" on 'change. However, this realization was more than counter-balanced by another fact--"confidence" was a largely developed _b.u.mp_ on the business head of Boston, and if a man merely lacked "means," yet possessed an abundance of good business qualifications--spirit, energy, talent and tact--they were bound to see him through! In short, B----, the great Portland capitalist, found things about right, and in good time, and in the best of spirits, started for home, determining, in his own mind, to give his wife a most pleasant surprise, in apprizing her of the fact that she was not only the wife of a man with six hundred silver dollars, and about to move his _inst.i.tution_--but the better half of a gentleman on the verge of a new campaign as a Boston business man.

"Lord! how Caroline's eyes will snap!" said B----; "how she'll go in; for she's had a great desire to live in Boston these five years, but thinks I'm in debt, and don't begin to believe I've got them six hundred all hid away down----. But I'll surprise her!"

B---- had hardly turned his corner and got sight of his house, with his mind fairly sizzling with the pent-up joyful tidings and grand surprise in store for Mrs. B., when a sudden change came over the spirit of his dream! As he gazed over the fence, by the now dim twilight of fading day, he thought--yes, he did see fresh earthy loose stones, barrels of lime, mortar, and an ominous display of other building and repairing materials, strewn in the rear of his domicil! The cellar doors--those wings of the subterranean recesses of his house--which he had cautioned, earnestly cautioned, the "wife of his bussim" to close, carefully and securely, were sprawling open, and indeed, the outside of his abode looked quite dreary and haunted.

"My dear Caroline!" exclaimed B----, rus.h.i.+ng into the rear door of his domestic establishment, to the no small surprise of Mrs. B., who gave a premature--

"Oh dear! how you frightened me, Fred! Got home?"

"Home? yes! don't you see I have. But, Carrie, didn't I earnestly beg of you to keep those doors--cellar doors--shut? fastened?"

"Why, how you talk! Bless me! Keep the cellar shut? Why, there's nothing in the cellar."

"Nothing in the cellar?" fairly howls B----.

"Nothing? Of course there is not," quietly responded the wife; "there is nothing in the cellar; day before yesterday, our drain and Mrs. A.'s drain got choked up; she went to the landlord about it; he sent some men, they examined the drain, and came back to-day with their tools and things, and went down the cellar."

"_Down the cellar?_" gasped B----, quite tragically.

"Down _the_ cellar!" slowly repeated Mrs. B.

"Give me a light--quick, give me a light, Caroline!"

"Why, don't be a fool. I brought up all the things, the potatoes, the meat, the squashes."

"P-o-o-h! blow the meat and squashes! Give me a light!" and with a genuine melo-drama rush, B---- seized the lamp from his wife's hand, and down the cellar stairs he went, four steps at a lick. In a moment was heard--

"O-o-o-h! I'm ruined!"

With a full-fledged scream, Mrs. B. dashed pell-mell down the stairs, to her husband. He had dropped the lamp--all was dark as a coal mine.

"Fred--Frederick! oh! where are you? What have you done?" cried his wife, in intense agony and doubt.

"Done? Oh! I'm done! yes, done now!" he heavily sighed.

"Done what? how? Tell me, Fred, are you hurt?"

"What on airth's the matter, thar? Are you committing murder on one another?" came a voice from above stairs.

"Is that you, Mrs. A.?" asked Mrs. B. to the last speaker.

"Yes, my dear; here's a dozen neighbors; don't get skeert. Is thare robbers in yer house? What on airth is going on?"

This brought B---- to his proper reckoning. He ordered his wife to "go up," and he followed, and upon reaching the room, he found quite a gathering of the neighbors. He was as white as a white-washed wall, and the neighbors staring at him as though he was a wild Indian, or a chained mad dog. Importuned from all sides to unravel the mystery, B---- informed them that he had merely gone down cellar to see what the masons, &c., had been doing--dropped his lamp--his wife screamed--and that was all about it! The wife said nothing, and the neighbors shook their incredulous heads, and went home; which, no sooner had they gone, than B---- seized his hat and cut stick for the office of a cunning, far-seeing limb of the law, leaving Mrs. B. in a state of mental agitation better imagined than described. B---- stated his case--he had buried six hundred dollars in a box under the _lee_ of the cellar-wall, and gone to Boston on business, and as if no other time would suit, a parcel of drain-cleaners, and masons, and laborers, must come and go right there and then to dig--get the six hundred dollars and clear.

After a long chase, law and bother, B---- recovered half his money--packed up and came to Boston.--There's a case for you! Beware of money!

Nursing a Legacy.

Waiting for dead men's shoes is a slow and not very sure business; sometimes it pays and sometimes it don't. I know a genius who lost by it, and his case will bear repeating, for there is both morality and fun in it.

Lev Smith, a native of "the Eastern sh.o.r.e" of Maryland, and a resident of a small town in the lower part of Delaware, began life on a very limited capital, and because of a natural disposition indigenous to the climate and customs of his native place--general apathy and unmitigated _patience_ peculiar to people raised on fish and Johnny-cake, amid the stunted pine swamps and sand-hills of that Lord-forsaken country--Lev never increased it. Lev had an uncle, an old bachelor, without "chick or child," and was reported to be pretty well off. Old man Gunter was proverbially mean, and as usual, heartily despised by one half of the people who knew him. He had a small estate, had lived long, and by his close-fisted manner of life, it was believed that Gunter had laid by a pretty considerable pile of the root of all evil, for something or somebody; and one day Lev Smith, the nephew, came to the conclusion that as the old man was getting quite shaky and must soon resign his interests in all worldly gear, _he_ would volunteer to console the declining years of his dear old uncle, by his own pleasant company and encouragement, and the old man very gladly accepted the proposals of Lev, to cut wood, dig, scratch and putter around his worn out and dilapidated farm. Uncle Gunter had but two negroes; through starvation and long service he had worn them about out; he had little or no "stock" upon his _farm_, quite as scant an a.s.sortment of utensils, few fences, and in fact, to any actively disposed individual, the general appearance and state of affairs about old Gunter's _place_ would have given the double-breasted blues. But Lev Smith had come to loaf and lounge, and not to display any very active or patriotic evolutions, so he was not so much disheartened by his uncle's dilapidated farm, as he was annoyed by the beggarly way the old man lived, and the a.s.siduous desire he seemed to manifest for Lev to be stirring around, gathering chips, patching fences, cutting brush; from morn till night, he and the two superannuated cuffies; and the old man barely raising enough to keep soul and body of the party together.

At first, the job he had undertaken proved almost too much for Lev Smith's const.i.tution, but the great object in view consoled him, and the more he saw of the old man's meanness, the more and more he took it for granted that his uncle had necessarily h.o.a.rded up treasure; but, after three years' drudgery, Lev's courage was on the point of breaking down; the only stay left seemed the fact that now he had served so long a time, so patiently and lovingly, and the old man apparently upon his very last legs--it seemed a ruthless waste of his golden dreams to give out, so he made up his mind to--wait a little longer. Another year rolled on; Uncle Gunter got indeed low, and the lower he got the more a.s.siduous got nephew Smith, and even the neighbors wondered how a young man _could_ stick on, and put up with such a miserly, mean, selfish and penurious old curmudgeon as old Joe Gunter. Gunter himself was apprized of the great indulgence and wonderful patience of his nephew, and not unfrequently said, in a groaning voice:

"Ah, my dear Levi, you're a good boy; I wish to the Lord it was in your poor, miserable, wretched old uncle's distressed power to--"

"Never mind, never mind, Uncle Joe," Lev would most deceitfully respond; "I ask nothing for myself; what I do, I _do_ willingly!"

"I know, I know you do, poor boy, but your poor, old, miserable, wretched uncle don't deserve it."

"Don't mind that, dear uncle," says Lev. "It's my duty, and I'll do it."

"Good boy, good boy; your poor, old, miserable uncle will be grateful--we'll see."

"I know that--I feel sure he will, dear Uncle Joe--and that's enough, _all_ I ask."

"And if he don't--poor, miserable old creature,--if he don't pay you, the Lord will, Levi!"

"And that will be all that's needed, Uncle Joe," says the humbugging nephew. And so they went, Lev not only waiting on the old man with the tender and faithful care of a good Samaritan, but out of his own slender resources ministering to the old man's especial comfort in many ways and matters which Uncle Joe would have seen him hanged and quartered before he would in a like manner done likewise. But the end came--the old fellow held on toughly; he never died until Lev's patience, hope and slender income were quite threadbare; so he at last went off the handle--Lev buried him and mourned the dispensation in true Kilkenny fas.h.i.+on.

Lev Smith now awaited the settlement of Uncle Gunter's affairs in grief and solicitude. Another party also awaited the upshot of the matter, with due solemnity and expectation, and that party was Polly Williams, Lev's "intended," and her poor and miserly dad and marm, who knew Lev Smith, as they said, was a lazy, lolloping sort of a feller, but sure to get all that his poor, miserable uncle was worth in the world, and therefore, with more craft and diligence, if possible, than Lev practised, the Williamses set Polly's cap for Lev, and who, in turn, was not unmindful of the fact that Williams "had something" too, as well as his two children, Polly and Peter. Things seemed indeed bright and propitious on all sides. The day came; Lev was on hand at Squire Cornelius's, to hear the will read, and the estate of the deceased settled.

As usual in such cases in the country, quite a number of the neighbors were on hand--old Williams, of course.

"He was a queer old mortal," began the Squire.

"But a good man," sobbed Lev Smith, drawing out his bandanna, and smothering his sharp nose in it. "A good man, 'Squire."

"G.o.d's his judge," responded the Squire, and a number of the neighbors shook their head and stroked their beards, as if to say amen.