Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Volume II Part 17

After a very long time,--during which the little girl probably took the goods, the money, and the slip to some central desk, where the note was received, its amount and number entered in a book, change given to the girl, a copy of the slip made and entered, girl's entry examined and approved, goods wrapped up, girl registered, plaits counted and entered on a slip of paper and copied by the girl in her book, girl taken to a hydrant and washed, number of towel entered on a paper slip and copied by the girl in her book, value of my note and amount of change branded somewhere on the child, and said process noted on a slip of paper and copied in her book,--the girl came to me, bringing my change and the package of Turkey-red calico.

I had time for but very little work at the office that afternoon, and when I reached home, I handed the package of calico to my wife She unrolled it and exclaimed:

"Why, this don't match the piece I gave you!"

"Match it!" I cried. "Oh, no! it don't match it. You didn't want that matched. You were mistaken. What you wanted was Turkey-red--third counter to the left. I mean, Turkey-red is what they use."

My wife looked at me in amazement, and then I detailed to her my troubles.

"Well," said she, "this Turkey-red is a great deal prettier than what I had, and you've got so much of it that I needn't use the other at all. I wish I had thought of Turkey-red before."

"I wish from my heart you had," said I.

ANDREW SCOGGIN.

--_The Lady or the Tiger, and other stories._

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.

(BORN, 1835.)

AUNT PEN'S FUNERAL.

Poor Aunt Pen! I am sorry to say it, but for a person alive and well--tolerably well and very much alive, that is--she did use to make the greatest business of dying! Alive! why, when she was stretched out on the sofa, after an agony of asthma, or indigestion, or whatever, and had called us all about her with faltering and tears, and was apparently at her last gasp, she would suddenly rise, like her own ghost, at the sound of a second ringing of the door-bell, which our little renegade Israel had failed to answer, and declare if she could only once lay hands on Israel she would box his ears till they heard!

For the door-bell was, perhaps, among many, one of Aunt Pen's weakest points. She knew everybody in town, as you might say. She was exceedingly entertaining to everybody outside the family. She was a great favorite with everybody. Countless gossips came to see her, tinkling at the door-bell, and hated individually by Israel, brought her all the news, heard all the previous ones had brought, admired her, praised her, pitied her, listened to her, and went away leaving her in such satisfied mood that she did not die any more that day. And as they went away they always paused at the door to say to some one of us what a cheerful invalid Aunt Pen had made herself, and what a nest of sunbeams her room always was, and what a lesson her patience and endurance ought to be. But, oh dear me, how very little they knew about it all!

We all lived together, as it happened; for when we children were left alone with but a small income, Aunt Pen--who was also alone, and only five years my senior--wrote word that we might as well come to her house in the city, for it wouldn't make expenses more, and might make them less if we divided them; and then, too, she said she would always be sure of one out of three bright and reasonable nurses. Poor Aunt Pen!

perhaps she didn't find us either so bright or so reasonable as she had expected; for we used to think that in her less degree she went on the same principle with the crazy man who declared all the rest of the world except himself insane.

In honest truth, as doctor after doctor was turned away by the impatient and distempered woman up-stairs, each one took occasion to say to us down-stairs that our aunt's illness was of that nature that all the physic it required was to have her fancies humored, and that we never need give ourselves any uneasiness, for she would doubtless live to a good old age, unless some acute disease should intervene, as there was nothing at all the matter with her except a slight nervous sensitiveness, that never destroyed anybody. I suppose we were a set of young heathen, for really there were times, if you will believe it, when that was not the most rea.s.suring statement in the world.

However. Sometimes Aunt Pen found a doctor, or a medicine, or a course of diet, or something, that gave her great sensations of relief, and then she would come down, and go about the house, and praise our administration, and say every thing went twice as far as it used to go before we came, and tell us delightful stories, of our mother's housewifely skill, and be quite herself again; and she would make the table ring with laughing, and give charming little tea-parties; and then we all did wish that Aunt Pen would live forever--and be down-stairs.

But probably the next day, after one of the tea-parties, oysters, or claret punch, or hot cakes, or all together, had wrought their diablerie, and the doctor was sent for, and the warming-pan was brought out, and there was another six weeks' siege, in which, obeyed by every one, and physicked by herself, and sympathized with to her heart's content by callers, and shut up in a hot room with the windows full of flowering plants, and somebody reading endless novels to her with the lights burning all night long--if she wasn't ill she had every inducement to be, and nothing but an indomitable const.i.tution hindered it. It was perfectly idle for us to tell her she was hurting herself; it only made her very indignant with us, and more determined than ever to persist in doing so.

Of course, then, the longer Aunt Pen staid in her own room the worse she really did get, and her nerves, with confinement and worry and relaxation, would by-and-by be in a condition for any sort of an outburst if we attempted the least reasoning with her. She would become, for one thing, as sleepless as an owl; then she was thoroughly sure she was going to be insane, and down would go the hydrate of chloral till the doctor forbade it on pain of death. After the chloral, too, such horrid eyes as she had! the eyes, you know, that chloral always leaves--inflamed, purple, swollen, heavy, crying, and good for any thing but seeing. Immediately then Aunt Pen went into a new tantrum; she was going to be stone-blind, and dependent on three heartless hussies for all her mercies in this life; but no, thank goodness! she had friends that would see she did not go absolutely to the wall, and would never suffer her to be imposed on by a parcel of girls who didn't care whether she lived or died--who perhaps would rather she did die--who stood open-handed for her bequests; she would leave her money to the almshouse, and if we wanted it we could go and get it there! And after that, to be sure, Aunt Pen would have a fit of remorse for her words, and confess her sin chokingly, and have us all come separately and forgive her, and would say she was the wretchedest woman on the face of the earth, that she should live undesired until her friends were all tired, and then die unlamented; and would burst into tears and cry herself into a tearing headache, and have ice on her head and a blister on the back of her neck, and be quite confident that now she was really going off with congestion of the brain.

After that, for a day or two, she would be in a heavenly frame of mind with the blister and cabbage leaves and simple cerate, and a couple of mirrors by which to examine the rise and fall of the blister; and, having had a hint of real illness, she would consent quite smilingly to the act of convalescence, and a descent to the healthy region of the parlors once more.

But no sooner were we all gay and happy in the house again, running out as we pleased, beginning to think of parties and drives and theatres and all enjoyment--and rather un.o.bservant, as young folks are apt to be un.o.bservant of Aunt Pen's slight habitual pensiveness in the absence of guests or excitement, and of her ways generally--than Aunt Pen would challenge some lobster-salad to mortal combat, and, of course, come out floored by the colic. A little whiskey then; and as a little gave so much ease, she would try a great deal. The result always was a precipitate retreat up-stairs, a howling hysteric, bilious cramps, the doctor, a subcutaneous injection of morphine in her arm; then chattering like a magpie, relapsed into awful silence, and, convinced that the morphine had been carried straight to her heart, a composing of her hands and feet, an injured dismissal of every soul from the room, with the a.s.surance that we should find her straight and stiff and stone-dead in the morning.

We never did. For, as we seldom had opportunity of an undisturbed night's rest, we usually took her at her word if any access of ill temper, or despair, or drowsiness occasioned banishment from the presence. Not that we had always been so calm about it; there was a time when we were excited with every alarm, thrown into flurries and panics quite to Aunt Pen's mind, running after the doctor at two o'clock of the morning, building a fire in the range ourselves at midnight to make gruel for her, rubbing her till we rubbed the skin off our hands, combing her hair till we went to sleep standing; but Aunt Pen had cried wolf so long, and the doctors had all declared so stoutly that there was no wolf, that our once soft hearts had become quite hard and concrete.

When at last Aunt Pen had had an alarm from nearly every illness for which the pharmacopoeia prescribes, and she knew that neither we nor the doctors would listen to the probability of their recurrence; she had an attack of "sinking." No, there was no particular disease, she used to say, only sinking; she had been pulled down to an extent from which she had no strength to recuperate; she was only sinking, a little weaker to-day than she was yesterday--only sinking. But Aunt Pen ate a very good breakfast of broiled birds and toast and coffee; a very good lunch of cold meats and dainties, and a great goblet of thick cream; a very good dinner of soup and roast and vegetables and dessert, and perhaps a chicken bone at eleven o'clock in the evening. And when the saucy little Israel, who carried up her tray, heard her say she was sinking, he remarked that it was because of the load on her stomach.

One day, I remember, Aunt Pen was very much worse than usual. We were all in her room, a suns.h.i.+ny place which she had connected with the adjoining one by sliding-doors, so that it might be big enough for us all to bring our work on occasion, and make it lively for her. She had on a white-cashmere dressing-gown trimmed with swan's-down, and she lay among the luxurious cus.h.i.+ons of a blue lounge, with a paler blue blanket, which she had had one of us tricot for her, lying over her feet, and altogether she looked very ideal and ethereal; for Aunt Pen always did have such an eye to picturesque effect that I don't know how she could ever consent to the idea of mouldering away into dust like common clay.

She had sent Maria down for Mel and me to come up-stairs with whatever occupied us, for she was convinced that she was failing fast, and knew we should regret it if we did not have the last of her. As we had received the same message nearly every other day during the last three or four weeks, we did not feel extraordinarily alarmed, but composedly took our baskets and scissors, and trudged along after Maria.

"I am sure I ought to be glad that I've succeeded in training my nieces into such industrious habits," said Aunt Pen, after a little while, looking at Mel; "but I should think that when a near relative approached the point of death, the fact might throw needle and thread into the background for a time." Then she paused for Maria to fan a little more breath into her. "It's different with Helen," soon she said; "the white silk shawl she is netting for me may be needed at any moment to lay me out in."

"Dear me, Aunt Pen!" cried Mel; "what a picture you'd be, laid out in a white net shawl!" For the doctor had told us to laugh at these whims all we might.

"Oh, you heartless girl!" said Aunt Pen. "To think of pictures at such a time!" And she closed her eyes as if weary of the world.

"I never saw anybody who liked to revel in the ghastly the way you do, Aunt Pen."

"Mel!" said Aunt Pen, with quite a show of color in her cheek; "I shall send you down stairs."

"Do," said Mel; "where I can cut out my gown in peace."

"Cutting a gown at the bedside of the dying! Are you cold-blooded, or are you insensible?"

"Aunt Pen," said Mel, leaning on the point of her scissors, "you know very well that I have to make my own dresses or go without them. And you have kept me running your idle errands, up and down two flights of stairs, to the doctor's and the druggist's, and goodness knows where and all, till I haven't a thread of any thing that is fit to be seen.

You've been posturing this grand finale of yours, too, all the last three weeks, and it's time you had it perfect now; and you must let me alone till I get my gown done."

"It will do to wear at my funeral," said Aunt Pen bitterly, as she concluded.

"No, it won't," said Mel, doggedly; "it's red."

"Red!" cried Aunt Pen, suddenly opening her eyes, and half raising on one hand. "What in wonder have you bought a red dress for? You are quite aware that I can't bear the least intimation of the color. My nerves are in such a state that a shred of red makes me--"

"You won't see it, you know," said Mel in what did seem to me an unfeeling manner.

"No," said Aunt Pen. "Very true. I sha'n't see it. But what," added she presently snapping open her eyes, "considered as a mere piece of economy, you bought a red dress for when you are immediately going into black, pa.s.ses common-sense to conjecture! You had better send it down and have it dyed at once before you cut it, for the shrinkage will spoil it forever if you don't."

"Much black I shall go into," said Mel.

Maria laughed. Aunt Pen cried.

"Aunt Pen," said the cruel Mel, "if you were going to die you wouldn't be crying. Dying people have no tears to shed, the doctors say."

"Somebody ought to cry," said poor Aunt Pen, witheringly. "Don't talk to me about doctors," she continued, after a silence interrupted only by the snipping of the scissors. "They are a set of quacks. They know nothing. I will have all the doctors in town at my funeral for pall-bearers. It will be a satire too delicate for them to appreciate, though. Speaking of that occasion, Helen," she went on, turning to me as a possible ally, "I have so many friends that I suppose the house will be full."

"Wouldn't you enjoy it more from church, auntie?" said I.

"Oh, you hard and wicked girls!" she cried. "You're all alike. Listen to me! If you won't hear my wishes, you must take my commands. Now, in the first place, I want the parlors to be overflowing with flowers, literally lined with flowers. I don't care how much money it takes; there'll be enough left for you--more than you deserve. And I want you to be very sure that I'm not to be exposed unless I look exactly as I'd like to look. You're to put on my white silk that I was to have been married in, and my veil, and the false orange blossoms. They're all in the third drawer of the press, and the key's on my chatelaine. And if--if--well," said Aunt Pen, more to herself than us, "if he comes, he'll understand. The Bride of Death."

After that she did not say any more for some minutes, and we were all silent and sorry, and Mel was fidgeting in a riot of repentance; we had never, either of us, heard a word of any romance of Aunt Pen's before.

We began to imagine that there might be some excuse for the overthrow of Aunt Pen's nervous system, some reality in the overthrow. "You will leave this ring on my finger;" said she; by-and-by. "If Chauncey Read comes, and wants it, he will take it off. It will fit his finger as well now, I suppose, as it did when he wore it before he gave it to me." Then Aunt Pen bit her lip and shut her eyes, and seemed to be slipping off into a gentle sleep.

"By-the-way!" said she, suddenly, sitting upright on the lounge, "I won't have the horses from Brown's livery--