CHAPTER XL.

"Seems to me that you are nudging a fellow for his ticket every five minutes," said a lantern-jawed looking individual to the railroad conductor, as he roused himself from his nap, and pulled a bit of red pasteboard from his hat-band. "I feel as if my gastronomic region had been scooped out, and rubbed dry with a crash-towel; how long before we stop, hey?"

"Buy some books, sir?" said a young itinerant bookseller to our hungry traveler.

"Have you the 'True guide for travelers to preserve their temper?'" said our friend to the urchin.

The boy looked anxiously over the t.i.tles of his little library, and replied, with a shake of the head, "No, sir, I never heard of it."

"Nor I either," responded the hungry growler; "so get about your business; the best book that was ever written can neither be ate nor drank; I'd give a whole library for a gla.s.s of brandy and water this minute," and the unhappy man folded his arms over his waistband, and doubled himself up like a hedgehog in the corner.

"I am always sure to get a seat on the sunny side of the cars, and next to an Irish woman," muttered a young lady. "I wonder do the Irish never feed on any thing but rum and onions?"

"Very uncomfortable, these seats," muttered a gentleman who had tried all sorts of positions to accommodate his vertebrae; "the corporation really should attend to it. I will write an article about it in my paper, as soon as I reach home. I will annihilate the whole concern; they ought to remember that editors occasionally travel, and remember which side their bread is b.u.t.tered. Shade of Franklin! how my bones ache; they shall hear of this in 'The Weekly Scimeter.' It is a downright imposition."

In fact, every body was cross; every body was hungry and begrimed with dust; every body was ready to explode at the next feather's weight of annoyance.

Not every body; there was one dear little girl who found sunshine even there, and ran about extracting honey from what to others were only bitter herbs. Holding on by the seats, she pa.s.sed up and down the narrow avenue between the benches, peeping with the brightest smile in the world into the faces of the cross pa.s.sengers, drinking from the little tin-cup at the water-tank, clapping her hands at the sound of the whistle, and touching the sleeve even of the hedgehog gentleman rolled up in the corner. The child's mother sat on the back seat, looking after her as kindly as she was able; but, poor thing, traveling made her sick, and she held her camphor-bottle to her nostrils, and leaned gasping against the window-sill to catch every stray breath of air.

What's that?

Crash goes the window-gla.s.s; clouds of scalding steam pour into the cars, which seem to be vibrating in mid-air; benches, baskets, bags, and pa.s.sengers are all jumbled pell-mell together; every face is blanched with terror.

"Oh, it's nothing, only the cars run off the track--only the engine smashed, and baggage-car a wreck--only the pa.s.sengers' trunks disemboweled in a muddy brook--only the engineer scalded, and the pa.s.sengers turned out into a wet meadow in a pelting shower of rain; that's all. Not a son of Adam was to blame for it--of course not,"

growls the exasperated editor. "Thank Heaven the Superintendent of the road and the Directors were in the forward car and got the first baptism in that muddy brook."

"Zounds!" he exclaimed, pinning up his torn coat-flap, and punching out the crown of his hat; "they shall hear of this in 'The Weekly Scimeter.'

Railroad companies should remember that editors sometimes travel."

"May! my little May!" gasped the poor sick woman, recovering herself, and looking about for her child; "where's May?"

Ah, where's May? Folded in His arms who carries the little lambs so safely in his bosom--gone with the smile yet bright on her lip.

Blithe little May!

They take the little lifeless form and bear it across the fields to the nearest farm-house, and the mother falls senseless, with her face to the damp gra.s.s--the last tie of her widowed heart broken.

"Sad accident, ma'am--hope you are not hurt," said the bustling village doctor to a lady who held her handkerchief over her mouth. "Deplorable!"

exclaimed the delighted doctor. "My engagements are very pressing in the village--five cases of typhoid fever, two of chicken-pox--hurried up here in the face of promise to a lady, wife of one of our richest men, not to be gone over half an hour, in _case_ she should want me. Ladies can't always tell _exactly_, you know, ma'am.

"Jaw-bone fractured? I'm somewhat in a hurry. Senator Scott's wife, too, was very unwilling I should leave my office--;" and the doctor drew out a Lepine watch, as if his moments were so much gold-dust--as if he had not sat in his leathern chair, week in and week out, watching the spiders catch flies, and wishing he were a spider, and the flies were his patients.

"Jaw-bone broke, ma'am?" he asked, again.

"She is not hurt at all, I tell you," growled Mr. Howe, shaking the rain from his hat, as he stood knee-deep in the tall meadow-gra.s.s. "She lost her set of false teeth in the collision, and if you jabber at her till the last day you won't catch her to open her mouth till she gets another set."

"_Mr._ Howe," said that gentleman's wife, in a m.u.f.fled voice from behind the handkerchief, "how _can_ you?"

"How can I? I can do any thing, Mrs. Howe. Are not our trunks all emptied into that cursed brook? All that French trumpery spoiled for which you have been draining my pocket all the spring to go to Saratoga.

Did I want to come on this journey? Don't I hate journeying? Haven't I been obliged to go a whole day at a time with next to nothing on my stomach? Haven't I been poked in the ribs every fifteen minutes for the conductor to amuse himself by snipping off the ends of my railroad tickets? Don't my head feel as if Dodworth's bra.s.s band were playing Yankee Doodle inside of it? Refreshments! Yes--what are the refreshments? A rush round a semicircular counter by all sorts of barbarians--bowls of oysters, scalding hot, and ten minutes to swallow them--tea without milk--coffee without sugar--bread without b.u.t.ter, and unmitigated egg--no pepper--no salt--no nothing, and, seventy-five cents to pay; the whole thing is an outrageous humbug; and now here's this collision, and your false teeth gone, not to mention other things."

Another m.u.f.fled groan from behind the handkerchief.

"I'll have damages, heavy damages--let me see, there is the teeth, $200."

"Good heaven's, Mr. Howe," shrieked his wife--"you don't mean to mention _them_ to the corporation?"

"But I do, though," said John, "you never will be easy till you get another set, and I mean they shall find 'em."

Another groan from behind the handkerchief.

"Pa.s.sengers, please go through the meadow, and the cow-yard, yonder, and cross the stile to get into the cars beyond," shouted the brakeman.

Down jumped the ladies from their perches on the fences where they had been roosting, like draggled hens in the rain, for the last half hour, and all made a rush for the cow-yard.

"There now, Mrs. Howe--do you hear that? A pretty tramp through that high gra.s.s for your skirts and thin gaiter-boots. This is what tourists call the delights of traveling, I suppose--humph."

"We shan't get to ---- till the middle of the night, I suppose--_i. e._, provided the conductor concludes not to have another smash-up. There will be no refreshments, of course, to be had, that are good for any thing, at that time o' night; waiters sleepy and surly, and I as hungry as a bear who has had nothing but his claws to eat all winter. Pleasant prospect that. You needn't hold up your skirts Mrs. Howe; there's no dodging that tall gra.s.s. Trip to Saratoga! Mr. John Howe and lady--ha--ha! Catch me in such a trap again, Mrs. Howe."

Precisely at two o'clock in the morning, our hungry and jaded travelers arrived at ----. A warm cup of tea and some cold chicken, somewhat mollified our hero, and he was just subsiding into that Christian frame of mind common to his s.e.x when their hunger is appeased, when happening to remark to the waiter who stood beside him, that he was glad to find so good a supper so late at night--that worthy unfortunately replied:

"Oh--yes! ma.s.sa! de cars keep running off de track so often dat we have to keep de food ready all de time, 'cause dere's no knowing, you see, when de travelers will come; and dey is always powerful hungry."

"Do you hear that?" said Mr. Howe to his wife, who was munching, as well as she was able, behind her handkerchief; "and we have got to go back the same road. You may not want that other set of teeth, after all, my dear."

"Sh--sh--sh--" said that lady, treading not very gently on his corns under the table--"are you mad, Mr. Howe?"

"Yes," muttered her husband--"stark, staring mad, I have been mad all day--mad ever since I started on this journey; and I shall continue mad till I get back to St. John's Square and my old arm-chair and slippers;" and long after the light was extinguished, Mr. Howe was muttering in his sleep, "I'll have damages--let me see, there's $200 for the teeth."

From that journey Mr. Howe dated his final and triumphant Declaration of Domestic Independence. The spell of Mrs. Howe's cabalistic whisper was broken. Mr. Howe had a counter-spell. Mrs. Howe's day was over. Mr. Howe could smoke up stairs and down stairs, and in my lady's chamber; he could brush his coat in the best parlor; put his booted feet on the sofa, and read his political newspaper as long as he pleased. The word "damages," arrested Mrs. Howe in her wildest flights, and brought her to his feet, like a shot pigeon.

CHAPTER XLI.

A knock at the door--it was Chloe, with her gay bandanna, and shining teeth, and eyeb.a.l.l.s. She had come to take Charley out, ostensibly "for an airing," but in fact to make a public exhibition of him, for, in her eyes, he was the very perfection of childish beauty.

"He's tired, missis, stayin' in de house," said Chloe, as Charley crept toward the door, "let me take him out a bit;" and Chloe raised him from the floor, and tied his cap down over his bright curls, stoutly resisting all Rose's attempts to cover his ma.s.sive white shoulders, promising to protect them from the sun's rays, with her old-fashioned parasol.

Rose smiled, as Chloe sauntered off down the street with her pretty charge; Charley's dimpled hand making ineffectual attempts to gain possession of the floating ends of her gay-colored head-dress.

And well might Chloe be proud of him; she had been nurse to many a fair southern child in her day, but never a cherub like Charley. One and another stopped to look at him. Mothers who had lost their little ones, fathers in whose far-absent homes crowed some cherished baby-pet, and blessed little children, with more love than their little hearts could carry, stopped, and asked "to kiss the baby."