The Talkative Wig Part 4

At these times, I was always smoothed and new pomatumed with the greatest care, then put on very carefully, and examined in the looking gla.s.s two or three times, and readjusted over and over, till I was as even as justice itself, before the Squire took his gold-headed cane, and proceeded to consider the case.

Once a boy was brought before him for stealing chestnuts. Now there was such an abundance of chestnuts in the town that they were almost thought common property. It happened, however, that the Squire had some fine chestnuts himself, and he wished it to be considered an unpardonable thing to steal chestnuts. So he condemned the boy's father to pay a very good price for those his son had stolen, leaving it to the man from whom the chestnuts had been taken to say how large the quant.i.ty was.

This unjust decision made the man and his son very angry. But my master was the Squire; and, in those old times, we retained a great deal of the English reverence for a country gentleman.

The son of this man, however, had not much reverence for any thing, and was determined to be revenged upon the Squire, as you will see.

I, however, was the greatest sufferer. It so happened that the pew in which the boy sat at church was directly behind the Squire's. The boy carried a piece of shoemaker's wax to meeting with him, and when, as was usually the case, the Squire's queue came over the edge of the pew, the young rascal took the opportunity, when no one was looking, to stick the short queue fast with the wax to the side of the pew.

When the Squire stood up, his wig was nearly jerked off his head, and would have been quite off, but for the boy's father who, seeing the good gentleman's danger, caught hold of me, tore off the horrid wax, and then pushed me back into my place.

All the foolish children in the church giggled at my expense. The simple Squire, thinking it was a nail or a hook, thanked the man who had aided him in his distress, and advised him to take out the troublesome hook. Cato, however, shook his black head and said, "Guess naughty Pickaninny did de queue of Ma.s.sa's wig. Neber mind, Cato no make trouble; queue no feelins; I smood him up. Dem chestnuts in his gizzard, spoze."

Not long after this, the poor Squire lost his wife. Her health had always been very delicate, and he had been a most devoted husband.

The Squire was a good man, and tried to find consolation in the only way it may be found, in the religious performance of duty. He became the benefactor of the village. He was the friend of all who needed his aid.

Now, my friends, I must pa.s.s over the next ten years. What I have just related to you of the Squire pa.s.sed in the year seventeen hundred and eighty. Now follow me to the year seventeen hundred and ninety-two.

The Americans, by their wisdom and bravery, had won their independence.

The Squire had done his part for his country by furnis.h.i.+ng money, and by making his large retired mansion an asylum for all his friends who were in want of it.

He was now seventy years old; and a haler, heartier, more serene old man was never seen. His house was the summer rendezvous of all his young and his old friends.

Well do I remember one beautiful afternoon, just before sunset, the Squire's going to the gla.s.s, and adjusting me nicely, and then going to the door, and looking up through the avenue of elms which were young trees when I was first carried there, and saying, "It is time my niece and her husband and children were here."

In a few minutes, a carriage appeared with a lady and her son and daughter in it. That little girl, then five years old, was afterwards the mother of our little friend asleep yonder.

Never was there a more cordial welcome given to friends than the good Squire gave them, and never was welcome more acceptable.

There were other friends in the house, and such frolicking and laughing and dancing on the lawn you seldom see nowadays.

For many years, the nieces and nephews and their children and children's children came in this way to refresh body and soul at their good uncle's; till childhood blossomed into youth, and youth began to strengthen into maturity, and maturity to fade away into age. Years gathered around the old man's head, but his vigor remained.

You need not bounce in that way, my friend musket, and you, Messrs.

tea-kettle and pitcher, need not try to turn up the noses you have lost, at my using these flowery expressions. Remember that, for more than half a century, I dwelt upon a human head. It is natural that I should have gained something from it, and that I should speak somewhat as human beings speak.

I hope you will pardon my talkativeness; and, even if you think me prosy, let me go on after my own fas.h.i.+on, and finish my story in my own way, for I am very old, and can speak in no other way. Remember, too, I shall never speak to you again."

"Go on, go on," cried the old coat, cloak, and baize gown.

The rest made no objection, and so the wig continued. "I a.s.sure you it was a very interesting thing to me to witness the changes that were going on among the Squire's visitors. I saw that child's mother come, first as a young lady, then as a bride, then as a mother; and then she came, first with one, then with two, and then with three children; and then, each year, I saw that these children had grown bigger, and it was pleasant, as I sat so quietly upon the old Squire's head, to see them jump out of the carriage each year, run up to the old man to receive his welcome, and then scamper off into the garden and fields like so many young animals; it was pleasant to watch their gleeful faces at his hospitable board, and to hear their merry shouts; it was pleasant, on Sunday, to see them, with their father and mother, follow the old gentleman respectfully at a distance, through the avenue of elms to church, with their small, solemn faces, just now and then slightly nodding to a b.u.t.tercup and s.n.a.t.c.hing it up; while he, with me and his three-cornered hat on his head, and his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his light drab suit of clothes, all his dress of the same cloth, and his shoes with gold buckles, strode along, while Cato, dressed in some of the Squire's old clothes, walked close behind him like his shadow. You would have thought my master forty instead of eighty.

Year after year I witnessed this, till, as I said, the children were youths, and their parents no longer young. Then the good Squire began to be, as I am now, a little garrulous; he loved to tell old stories more than once. But who was there that would not, with patient love, listen to them for many a time?

It was affecting to observe how all his dates were from the year fifty. No matter what story he told, or when it really did happen, he always finished by adding, "and that happened in the year fifty."

All his furniture and plate were purchased in the year fifty. It was to him the beginning of the world.

"Uncle," said one of his nieces one day to him, "let me try to dress your wig; I think it wants it."

"My dear, this wig was bought in the year fifty, and looks well now.

It has done me good service."

"How beautiful this avenue of elms is!"

"Yes, they were set out in the year fifty."

"You have a good housekeeper, uncle."

"Yes, my dear, she came to me in the year fifty."

And so on with every thing in and about his house, and so it was with every event which had made an abiding mark on his memory.

There was but one thing about which the good Squire showed the real childishness of his old age, and that was his fruit. He had bushels and bushels of apples and pears and peaches, but he never thought them fit to eat till they were at least half rotten.

His nephews and nieces were of a decidedly different opinion, but did not like to debate the subject with him; so they had recourse to a little trick. I don't think it was quite right. The Squire was in the habit every day of gathering the ripe fruit in baskets, and putting it in what he called especially his room; it was a sort of half dressing, half business room. Here it was that he kept the pole upon which he placed me at night. These baskets of fruit, if the good man had had his own way, would have remained there till they were all rotten like the heaps of windfalls which was the fruit he told the family, and the children especially, they might eat.

Now it was the custom of two or three roguish boys and girls, who visited him, to gather baskets of this rotten fruit, and when the good man had gone to bed, to carry them into this room, and put them in the place of the baskets of sound ripe fruit, which they took for themselves and others to eat.

In a day or two, the good Squire would look at his baskets, and, finding the fruit decaying, would call it fit to eat, bring it into the parlor, and then call in the children, and say to them, "Here, boys and girls, here is nice ripe fruit for you; you can just cut out the rotten with your penknives;" and then he would distribute it among them.

The little monkeys, of course, could scarce repress their giggles.

I can make no apology for their cheat, except that, upon this point, the good man was really childish; and, as he did not eat the fruit himself, or sell it, or do any thing with it, but give to the pigs what was not eaten in the family, no one was wronged by the trick.

It was, in fact, a piece of sport.

As you see, I had the benefit of being present at the whole of the fun; and I can hear now, it seems to me, as plainly as I did then, the suppressed laughter of these roguish children when they came into the room where I was, to exchange baskets of rotten for baskets of sound fruit.

In his eighty-seventh year, the old man ran a race with one of these children, and contrived, by an artifice, to win it. She got before him; when, fearing he would hurt himself, she stopped to look after him; he came up to her; and then, just pus.h.i.+ng her back a little, got before her to the goal, which was very near them. How he did shout, as though he were only twenty, and what a hitch he gave me on the occasion!

In his ninety-seventh year he died. It was a pity he did not live to be a hundred. The night before he died, he went into his room to put me on my accustomed pole. He did not see clearly, and let me fall on the floor.

"Ah!" said he, "the old head will fall too, before long. No matter; it is time it should go. Here, Cato, help your old master."

Cato was at hand, picked me up, put me in my place, and helped his master to bed.

I never saw the dear old man again.

The next thing that I remember, is being put into a box and carried I knew not whither.

The first light I saw was the dim light of this garret.

The mother of that little girl took me out; and as she put me on my pole, which she had caused to be brought here also, "People may laugh at me," said she, "but I will keep the dear old man's wig. It seems to me a part of him, and is a memorial of the happy hours I have pa.s.sed under his hospitable roof."

It is now one hundred and six years since I was born into this world. For twenty-eight years I flourished on the beautiful head of dear Alice. Ever since then, I have been only a wig. I am now falling into utter decay. If any one were to shake me, I should fall to pieces. I have, like many of you, my friends, since inhabiting this garret, been abused and made fun of, by children. I was once put upon the head of a donkey, while a boy with a fool's cap on his head rode him, and took a love letter to a young man. I was also put upon the head of a great monkey brought to the house for exhibition, who took me off his head and threw me at the boys. Once, as you know, I was made to play the mock judge on the head of a dog. Once that little girl who sleeps there, used me to keep a litter of kittens warm in, on a cold winter night. This nearly killed me, and from that moment the children were forbidden to touch me.

"I have now," concluded the wig, "only to ask your pardon, my friends, for the impatience with which I have listened to your stories when I thought them too long, and for the truly human vanity and inconsistency which made me tell the longest story myself. But I knew that no one waited for me. I shall certainly never speak more.