Mike Marble Part 1

Mike Marble.

by Uncle Frank.

CHAP. I.

ABOUT CROTCHETS.

Don't be frightened, reader, at what you see on the t.i.tle-page of this book, or at the head which I have given to my first chapter. Don't let the idea creep into your head, that I am going to give you a dull and sleepy essay on music. It is not the _crotchets_ which you find in the singing-book, that I intend to talk about; I leave them to those who know more about them than I do. There is a man of my acquaintance, whom I could hunt up without much trouble, and who, if you should ever choose to give him a chance, would talk you deaf, and write you blind, about this sort of crotchets, together with all the members of that noisy family--breves, semibreves, minims, and what not! I'll refer you to him, for all the mysteries of the _gamut_. Whenever you want to learn them, I a.s.sure you he would like no better fun than to teach them to you. I'll not interfere with his trade.

My business is with another family of crotchets. Webster--Noah Webster, the man who made the spelling-book, out of which Uncle Frank learned to say, or rather to drawl his letters--gives, in his large dictionary, as one of the definitions of the word _crotchet_, this: "a peculiar turn of mind, a whim, a fancy." Here you have just that kind of crotchet that I am going to deal with. Mr. Webster could not have hit my crotchet more exactly, if he had taken aim at it on purpose.

It is a _peculiar turn of mind_, or, if you prefer it, a _whim_, or a _fancy_, that I shall talk about, for an hour or so, perhaps longer.

Indeed, I am not perfectly sure but I shall find a whole flock of whims and fancies, because, you know, "birds of a feather flock together," and, in that case, I shall give you a peep at a score or two of whims and fancies.

Now, who knows but these crotchets will be worth hearing about? People write large, thick volumes, on drier topics than whims and fancies--that is, to my way of thinking--and I suppose their books are read. Certainly they expect to have them read, or they would not make them. Then why may not my book on crotchets find readers?

If I were to write a book on _warts_ and _corns_, don't you think the book would get read? I do. I have not the least doubt of it. Suppose, now, it were published in the newspapers, that _Messrs. Phillips, Sampson & Company_, one of the largest and most respectable publis.h.i.+ng houses in the Union, are about to issue a volume, ent.i.tled _Freaks of the Wart Family_, from the pen of Uncle Frank, a man who, first and last, has printed a good deal of sense, together with some nonsense, and who, in this volume, has succeeded in stringing together some of the strangest things that ever saw the light. Suppose that some newspaper should give that item of news, don't you think folks would get the book, when it was published? and don't you think they would read it, or, at all events, skim it over, to see what kind of stuff Uncle Frank had been emptying out of his brain? I think so.

Well, warts and corns are to the body what whims and crotchets are to the mind. The body has freaks--the mind has freaks. Warts don't exactly _belong_ to the body. That is, there could be a very good sort of a body, without a single wart on it; and indeed, if you please, a man would be a more perfect man, if there were no warts about him, from head to foot. So of crotchets. I don't pretend that a person has any thing to boast of, because his head is full of crotchets. Perhaps he would be better without them. _Perhaps_ he would. But warts and crotchets are both found among mankind. Both are freaks of nature, so to speak; of course, both are worth examining. One thing at a time, though. Let us turn our attention, at present, to _crotchets_.

CHAP. II.

CROTCHETY FOLKS.

A crotchety person, according to this same Noah Webster, whom I have quoted before, is one who has whims or crotchets in the brain. Now a word about these crotchety folks.

I'll tell you what it is, my friend. The older I grow, the more I feel inclined to let every man and woman, every boy and girl, act out himself, or herself. "That is a singular fellow," we often hear it said. "He's as odd as d.i.c.k's hat-band. I don't know what to think of him. He seems to be a good sort of a man. But he _is_ odd. His head is as full of crotchets as it can hold."

When I hear a person talk in this style, I feel like saying, "Stop a moment, my dear sir. He's 'a good sort of a man--_but_,' you say. That shows you are not precisely satisfied with his goodness; and pray, what is the matter with it? Why don't you like it, sir? What particular fault have you to find with it? Come, out with it now."

Press a man, who is talking in this way about a crotchety neighbor, right up to the point, and you will generally find that the reason he does not like him is because he has a different way of saying and doing things from his own.

Now I believe that some folks are odd because they cannot help it.

True, there are a great many who are odd, just for the sake of being odd. They are ambitious to be known as singular people. We will let them pa.s.s. They certainly work hard to earn the name they love to be known by; and perhaps we ought not to try to rob them of it, or to say any thing very severe about their taste. We will let them pa.s.s.

But there are a mult.i.tude of other people who are odd, and whose oddities cannot be accounted for in the same way. They are odd, because they were born so. They are odd, because they cannot help being odd. If they should try, with all their might, to do as most of their neighbors do, they would make perfect dunces of themselves; for every body, old or young, makes a dunce of himself, and nothing else, whenever he undertakes to be what he is not--whenever he undertakes to be somebody else. He is not very well acquainted with the race he belongs to, who, as he goes through the world, does not get this truth hammered into him.

Why, at this very moment, I can think of at least a dozen odd people, whom I am in the habit of meeting every day, and who, I verily believe, could no more help their oddities and crotchets than some of their neighbors could help having warts come out on their hands. The crotchets are natural and unavoidable in one case--the warts are natural and unavoidable in the other.

These are my notions about crotchety people, in general, and I have thrown them out, as one throws out feather beds from the garret windows, when the house is on fire--so that the articles that are to be thrown afterward may find a good soft spot to alight on, and not get damaged by their fall.

The truth is, I am going to introduce to you an old gentleman, who had a large head, tolerably well filled with crotchets; and as it is such a common thing for people to raise a hue and cry against every body who has any oddities about him, I thought I would put you on your guard a little, by a word of apology for that entire race of people, who are odd because they cannot be any thing else.

This old gentleman, who, by the way, was a great friend of the little folks, is _Mike Marble_. I introduce him to you as an _old_ gentleman.

But, although he was old, when I first saw him, I must not forget that he was young once--as young as any of my readers--and that he played his part as a boy, as well as his part as a man. There are a good many anecdotes afloat about him and his odd way of doing things, before he grew up to manhood. My grandfather knew him when he was a lad at school. I believe he and Mike were nearly of the same age.

That grandfather of mine, now I think of it, was a great story-teller.

I have sometimes nearly half made up my mind, while casting about me, to find some new mine of stories for my young readers, that I would put my thinking cap on, and see if I could not recollect a budget of my grandfather's stories, large enough to fill a book. I am not sure but I will do so one of these days; and, if I do, I shall print the budget, depend upon it.

My grandfather and Mike Marble were as dear to each other as if they had been brothers. They lived not far apart, and went to school together. For some of Mike's crotchets I am indebted to this old friend of his. Others I picked up, here and there, among old people that knew him, and others still I got from a personal acquaintance with him in his old age.

You will excuse me, if I call him _Mike_ sometimes. He was always so called, when he was a boy, I believe. And while you are excusing me for calling him _Mike_--you see I take you to be very kind and obliging--you will please excuse me, also, if I happen to prefix the t.i.tle of _Uncle_ to that nickname; for he was known, far and near, as _Uncle Mike_ in his later days.

It is true that _Michael_ was his name correctly and honestly spelled out. But it is equally true that Michael was a name to which he seldom had to answer. At school, and among his playmates, it was always _Mike_. I really believe, from what I have heard my grandfather say, that not half the boys and girls in his neighborhood could have been convinced, by any common arguments, that his name was Michael. Indeed, I remember having heard that once, when a schoolmate called the fellow by the long name, just to see how it would seem, he and the other boy both burst right out into a perfect roar of laughter over the sound of it. "For pity's sake," said he, when he got over his laughing fit, "don't call me by that hard name again, as long as I live;" and, as he seemed to be quite in earnest, none of the boys ever addressed him by any other name than _Mike_, after that.

CHAP. III.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

"But who is _Mike Marble_? where does he live? what sort of a man is he? what kind of oddities has he got?"

My little friend, your questions come out so fast, and there is such a long string of them, that they make me think of the way a whole pack of fire crackers go off, when you touch a coal to one of them, and throw the whole into the street. I am going to tell you ever so many things about this same Mike Marble. Before I get through with him, you will get very well acquainted with him, I think. But Uncle Frank, you know, has got some oddities himself. When he has got any thing to do, he, too, has his own way of doing it.

Some people, I suppose, if they were treating you to a few chapters in the history of this singular man, would weave the threads together in a different manner from mine. They would begin, very likely, by telling where the chap was born, who were his father and mother, how many brothers and sisters he had, what their names were, whether he had any uncles and aunts, and if he had, what kind of uncles and aunts they were, and all that sort of thing. And they would describe Mike's appearance exactly--tell you whether he had black eyes or blue, gray eyes or brown, red eyes or green. But I don't see much use in that.

Indeed, I am not sure but I shall keep you ignorant as to how he looked, and let you learn what there is worth learning in his character--for character is the great thing, after all, you know--by the stories I shall tell of him. I might, it is true, take every branch, and leaf, and bud, and flower, of his character, and pick it all to pieces, and show you, in this way, what he was made of. But you would get tired of all that. So I'll take another course. I'll tell you what he said and did--what he said and did at different times, at different periods in his life, and in different circ.u.mstances. Don't you think this is the best way to make you acquainted with him? I do; for, if you find out what a person says, and does, and thinks, you find out what he is.

One or two things, however, I must say about this Mike Marble, by way of general introduction.

He was born at a very interesting period--about nine years before the breaking out of the American Revolution. He was quite an old man before he went to his final rest. Indeed, it is but a few years since I saw his weather-beaten face, all lighted up with smiles. Unlike many other men, when they get to be old, he never made a practice of carping at every thing he saw about him, because it was not exactly in the style of 1776. He believed that there was wisdom among our grandfathers and grandmothers, but that there is wisdom, also, among their grand-children.

I have told you that he had some oddities. I have hinted, too, in a sort of whisper, that I do not consider a man an absolute Pagan, because he happens to be a little odd. Something more than this I could say of Uncle Mike, odd as he was; but I guess you will find out what I think of him, before I get through. Suffice it to say, that, while I didn't like him _because_ he was odd, I did like him, _in spite_ of his oddities. He was a fine old man. As the world goes, he was a most excellent man. He had his faults, a plenty of them; though I have sometimes thought

"That e'en his failings lean'd to virtue's side."

Some of them did, I know. He had his faults, nevertheless. I confess that. He always had them, no doubt. Faults are common things among mankind and womankind. But, with your consent, we will trip lightly over all that part of our hero's history which is shaded with blemishes.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAP. IV.

CHIPS FROM BIRCH WOODS.

One of the worst things I ever heard of in the history of Mike, according to the best of my recollection, was the way he served Billy Birch's dog. You must know something about this Billy Birch. _Burt_ was his real name. But it was changed into Birch by his neighbors, for a reason which I will give you by and bye.

Mr. Burt was a pretty good sort of a man, in his own estimation, but not greatly or generally beloved by his neighbors. He was a church-going man, and had a knack, somehow or other, of getting along decently with the forms--the outside garments, so to speak--of religion. It was really astonis.h.i.+ng how glibly he would _talk_ about religion. But as to the practical part of it, he did not succeed as well. That was up-hill work for the old man.