The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V

"Hey, you!" he shouted. "Keep out!"

She backed away hastily, and looked up to see if anything were about to fall on her.

"Why should I keep out?" she asked at last.

"'Cause you'll git hit with a rock if you don't," was the prompt reply.

"But, little boy—" she began.

"I ain't a little boy," asserted Danny. "I'm a union."

The woman looked puzzled, but she finally decided that this was some boyish joke.

"You'd better run home," she said, and turned to enter the messenger-office. She could not refrain from looking over her shoulder, however, and she saw that he was poised for a throw.

"Don't do that!" she cried hastily. "You might hurt me."

"Sure I'll hurt you," was the reply. "I'll smash your block in if you don't git a move on."

The woman decided to look for another messenger-office, and Danny, triumphant, resumed his seat on the paving-stones.

Then came another messenger, returning from a trip.

"What's the matter, Danny?" he asked.

"Got the plant picketed," asserted Danny. "Nobody can't go in or come out."

"I'm goin' in," said the other boy.

"You!" exclaimed Danny scornfully, as he suddenly caught the boy and swung him over on to the stones.

"No, I ain't, Danny," the boy hastened to say, for Danny gave every evidence of an intent to batter in his face.

"Sure?" asked Danny.

"Honest."

"This here's a strike," explained Danny.

"Oh, I didn't know that," apologized the boy. "I ain't a strike-breaker."

Danny let him up, but made him sit on another pile of stones a short distance away. He would be all right as long as he kept still, Danny explained, but no longer.

While Danny was continuing strike operations with rapidly growing enthusiasm, the woman he had first stopped was taking an unexpected part in the little comedy. She had gone to another of the branch offices with the message she wished delivered, and had told of the trouble she had experienced. Thereupon the manager of this office called up the manager of the other on the telephone.

"What's the matter over there?" he asked.

"Nothing," was the surprised reply. "Who said there was?"

"Why, a woman has just reported that she was driven away by a boy with a pile of stones."

The manager hastened to the window, and realized at once that something was decidedly wrong. On a pile of paving-stones directly in front of the door sat the proud and happy Danny. At his feet there was a pile of smaller stones, and he held a few in his hands. On his right was a boy who had started on a trip a short time before, and on his left was one who should have reported back. A man was gesticulating excitedly, a number of others and some boys were laughing, and Danny seemed to be intimating that any one who tried to enter would be hurt.

"Jim," said the manager to the largest messenger, "go out there and see what's the matter with Danny Burke. Tell him I'll have him arrested if he doesn't get out."

Danny was a wise general. He wanted no prisoners that he could not handle easily, and this big boy would be dangerous to have within his lines. The big boy was a sort of star messenger, who did not fraternize with Danny anyhow. Consequently Danny fired a volley the moment he saw who it was, and the big boy hastily retreated, bearing with him one bump on the forehead.

"That's Jim," Danny explained to the increasing crowd. "He's the biggest, next to the boss. Watch me nail the boss."

"You're the stuff!" exclaimed some of the delighted loiterers, thus proving that the loiterers are just as anxious to see trouble in a small strike as in a large one.

Danny picked out a stone considerably larger than the others, for he expected the manager to appear next, and the manager had incurred his personal enmity. In the case of his victims thus far, he had acted merely on principle—to win his point.

The manager appeared. For his own prestige (necessary to maintain discipline), the manager had to do something, but he felt reasonably sure that the dignity of his official position would make Danny less hasty and strenuous than he had been with others. The manager planned to extend the olive branch and at the same time raise the siege by beckoning Danny in, so that he might reason with him and show him how surely he would land in a police station if he would not consent to be a good boy. This would be quicker and better than summoning an officer. But the manager got the big stone in the pit of his stomach just as he had raised his hand to beckon, and he and his dignity collapsed together, with a most plebeian grunt. As he had not closed the door, he quickly rolled inside, where he lay on the floor with his hands on his stomach and listened to the joyous yelps of the crowd outside. This was too much for the manager.

"Call up police headquarters," he said, still holding his stomach as if fearful that it might become detached, "and tell them there's a riot here."

The boy addressed obeyed literally.

Meanwhile Danny had decided that, as victory perched on his banners, it was time to state the terms on which he would permit the enemy to surrender, but he was too wise to put himself in the enemy's power before these terms were settled.

"Go in, Tim," was the order he gave to one of his prisoners, "an' tell the guy with the stomick-ache that when he recognizes the union an' gives me fifty cents more a week an' makes a work-day end when the clock strikes, I'm willin' to call it off."

"Make him come down handsome," advised one of the loiterers.

"I guess I got 'em on the run," said Danny exultingly.

But Tim went in and failed to come out. This was not Tim's fault, however, for the manager released his hold on his stomach long enough to get a grip on Tim's collar. The striker's defiance seemed to displease him, and, because he could not shake Danny, he shook Tim, and he said things to Tim that he would have preferred to say to Danny. Then his excited harangue was interrupted by the sound of a gong, which convinced him that he might again venture to the door.

Danny was in the grasp of the strong arm of the law. A half dozen policemen had valiantly rushed through the crowd and captured the entire besieging party, which was Danny.

"What you doin'?" demanded Danny angrily.

"What are you doing?" retorted the police sergeant in charge.

"This here's a strike," asserted Danny. "I got the plant picketed."

"Run him in!" ordered the manager from the doorway.

"What's the row?" asked the sergeant.

"That's the row," said the manager, pointing to Danny.

"That!" exclaimed the sergeant scornfully. "You said it was a riot. You don't call that kid a riot, do you?"

"Well, it's assault and battery, anyhow," insisted the manager. "He hit me with a rock."

"Where?" asked the sergeant.

"Where he carries his brains," said Danny, which made the crowd yelp with joy again.

"Lock him up!" cried the manager angrily. "I'll prefer the charge and appear against him."

The sergeant looked at Danny and then at the manager.

"Say!" he said at last, "you ain't got the nerve to charge this kid with assaulting you, have you?"

"I'm going to do it," said the manager.

"Oh, all right," returned the sergeant disgustedly.

The crowd was disposed to protest, but the police were in sufficient force to make resistance unsafe, and Danny was lifted into the patrol-wagon.

At the station the captain happened to be present when Danny was brought in, escorted by a wagon-load of policemen.

"What's the charge?" asked the captain.

"Assault and battery on a grown man!" was the scornful reply of the sergeant.

"What did he do?" persisted the surprised captain.

"Hurt his digestion with a rock," explained the sergeant.

"I was on strike," said Danny. "I'm a good union man. You got no business to touch me."

"I understand," said the sergeant, "that he was discharged, and he stationed himself outside with a pile of rocks."

"You've no right to do that," the captain told Danny.

"They all do it," asserted Danny.

This was so near the truth that the captain thought it wise to dodge the subject.

"Of course, if no one else will take a man's place," he explained, "the employer will have to take him back or—"

"There wasn't nobody tryin' to take my place—not while I was there!" asserted Danny belligerently.

"That's no lie, either," laughed the sergeant. "He had the office tied up tight."

Danny swelled with pride at this testimonial to his prowess. Then it suddenly occurred to him that the sergeant did not act as he talked.

"What'd you butt in for, then?" he demanded.

"It was his duty," said the captain.

"Ho!" exclaimed Danny. "It's your business to protect the public, ain't it?"

"Of course," admitted the captain.

"Well, ain't we the public?"

The captain laughed uneasily. His experience as a policeman had left him very much in doubt as to who were the public. Both sides to a controversy always claimed that distinction, and the law-breaker was usually the louder in his claims. Danny's inability to see anything but his own side of the case was far from unusual.

The captain took Danny into his private office and talked to him. The captain did not wish to lock up the boy, so he sent for Danny's father and also for the manager of the branch messenger-office. Meanwhile he tried to explain the matter to Danny, but Danny was obtuse. Why should not he do as his father and his father's friends did? When they had a disagreement with the boss, they picketed the plant, and ensuing incidents sent many people to the hospitals. Why was it worse for one boy to do this than it was for some hundreds or thousands of men? Danny was confident that he was within his rights.

"Dad knows," he said in conclusion. "Dad'll say I'm right. You got no business mixin' in."

"Dad's coming," the captain told him.

The manager came first. "The boy ought to be punished," said he. "He hit me with a rock."

"I wish you'd seen him," said the beaming Danny to the captain, for the recollection of that victory made all else seem trivial. "Say! he doubled up like a clown droppin' into a barrel."

"If he isn't punished," asserted the glowering manager, "he'll get worse and worse and end by going to the devil."

"Perhaps," replied the captain. "But just stand beside him a moment, please. Don't dodge, Danny. He'll go behind the bars if he touches you. Stand side by side."

They did so.

"Now," said the captain to the manager, "how do you think you'll look, standing beside him in the police court and accusing him of assault and battery?"

"Like a fool," replied the manager promptly, forced to laugh in spite of himself.

"And what kind of a story—illustrated story—will it be for the papers?" persisted the captain.

"Let him go," said the manager; "but he ought to be whaled."

It was at this point that Dan arrived, accompanied by his wife.

"F'r why sh'u'd he be whaled?" demanded the latter aggressively.

The matter was explained to her.

"Is that thrue, Danny?" she asked.

"Sure," replied the boy.

"Well, I'd like to see anny wan outside the fam'ly whale ye," she said, with a defiant look at the manager, "but I'll do it mesilf."

Danny was astounded. In this quarter at least he had expected support. He glanced at his father.

"I'll take a lick or two at ye mesilf," said Dan. "The idee of breakin' the law an' makin' all this throuble."

"You've done it yourself," argued Danny.

"Shut up!" commanded Dan. "Ye don't know what ye're talkin' about. A sthrike's wan thing an' disordherly conduct's another."

"This was a strike," insisted Danny.

"Where's the union?" demanded Dan.

"I'm it," replied Danny. "I was organizin' it."

"If ye'll let him go, Captain," said Dan, ignoring his son's reply, "I'll larrup him good."

"For what?" wailed Danny. "I was only doin' what you said was right, an' what mom said was right, an' what you've all been talkin' for years. You've been a picket yourself, an' I've heard you laughin' over the way men who wouldn't strike was done up. We got to organize. Wasn't I organizin'? We got to enforce our rights. Wasn't I enforcin' them? We got to discourage traitors to the cause of labor. Wasn't I discouragin' them? Didn't the union tie up a plant once when you was discharged? What's eatin' you, dad?"

Danny's own presentation of the case was so strong that it gave him courage. But the last question made Dan jump, although he was not accustomed to any extraordinary show of respect from his son.

"The lad has no sinse," he announced, "but I'll larrup him plenty. Ye get an exthry wan f'r that, Danny. I'll tache ye that ye're not runnin' things."

"Makin' throuble f'r father an' mother an' th' good man that's payin' ye wages we need at home," added Mrs. Burke.

"Now, what do you think of that?" whimpered Danny, as he was led away. "I'm to be licked fer doin' what he does. Why don't he teach himself the same, an' stop others from doin' what he talks?"

"Danny," said the commiserating captain, "you're to be licked for learning your lesson too well, and that's the truth."

But that did not make the situation any the less painful for Danny.

SIMON STARTS IN THE WORLD

By J.J. Hooper

Until Simon entered his seventeenth year he lived with his father, an old "hard-shell" Baptist preacher, who, though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious. The old man reared his boy—or endeavored to do so—according to the strictest requisitions of the moral law. But he lived, at the time to which we refer, in Middle Georgia, which was then newly settled; and Simon, whose wits were always too sharp for his father's, contrived to contract all the coarse vices incident to such a region. He stole his mother's roosters to fight them at Bob Smith's grocery, and his father's plow-horses to enter them in "quarter" matches at the same place. He pitched dollars with Bob Smith himself, and could "beat him into doll rags" whenever it came to a measurement. To crown his accomplishments, Simon was tip-top at the game of "old sledge," which was the fashionable game of that era, and was early initiated in the mysteries of "stocking the papers." The vicious habits of Simon were, of course, a sore trouble to his father, Elder Jedediah. He reasoned, he counseled, he remonstrated, and he lashed; but Simon was an incorrigible, irreclaimable devil. One day the simple-minded old man returned rather unexpectedly to the field, where he had left Simon and Ben and a negro boy named Bill at work. Ben was still following his plow, but Simon and Bill were in a fence corner, very earnestly engaged at "seven up." Of course the game was instantly suspended as soon as they spied the old man, sixty or seventy yards off, striding towards them.

It was evidently a "gone case" with Simon and Bill; but our hero determined to make the best of it. Putting the cards into one pocket, he coolly picked up the small coins which constituted the stake, and fobbed them in the other, remarking, "Well, Bill, this game's blocked; we'd as well quit."

"But, Mass Simon," remarked the boy, "half dat money's mine. Ain't you gwine to lemme hab 'em?"

"Oh, never mind the money, Bill; the old man's going to take the bark off both of us; and besides, with the hand I helt when we quit, I should 'a' beat you and won it all, any way."

"Well, but Mass Simon, we nebber finish de game, and de rule—"

"Go to the devil with your rule!" said the impatient Simon. "Don't you see daddy's right down upon us, with an armful of hickories? I tell you, I helt nothin' but trumps, and could 'a' beat the horns off a billy-goat. Don't that satisfy you? Somehow or another, you're d—d hard to please!" About this time a thought struck Simon, and in a low tone—for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued, "But may be daddy don't know, right down sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie—'twon't hurt, noway: let's tell him we've been playin' mumble-peg."

Bill was perforce compelled to submit to this inequitable adjustment of his claim to a share of the stakes; and of course agreed to swear to the game of mumble-peg. All this was settled, and a pig driven into the ground, slyly and hurriedly, between Simon's legs as he sat on the ground, just as the old man reached the spot. He carried under his left arm several neatly-trimmed sprouts of formidable length, while in his left hand he held one which he was intently engaged in divesting of its superfluous twigs.

"Soho, youngsters!—you in the fence corner, and the crap in the grass. What saith the Scriptur', Simon? 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yearth have you and that nigger been a-doin'?"

Bill shook with fear, but Simon was cool as a cucumber, and answered his father to the effect that they had been wasting a little time in the game of mumble-peg.

"Mumble-peg! mumble-peg!" repeated old Mr. Suggs. "What's that?"

Simon explained the process of rooting for the peg: how the operator got upon his knees, keeping his arms stiff by his sides, leaned forward, and extracted the peg with his teeth.

"So you git upon your knees, do you, to pull up that nasty little stick! You'd better git upon 'em to ask mercy for your sinful souls and for a dyin' world. But let's see one o' you git the peg up now."

The first impulse of our hero was to volunteer to gratify the curiosity of his worthy sire, but a glance at the old man's countenance changed his "notion," and he remarked that "Bill was a long ways the best hand." Bill, who did not deem Simon's modesty an omen very favorable to himself, was inclined to reciprocate, compliments with his young master; but a gesture of impatience from the old man set him instantly upon his knees, and, bending forward, he essayed to lay hold with his teeth of the peg, which Simon, just at that moment, very wickedly pushed a half inch further down. Just as the breeches and hide of the boy were stretched to the uttermost, old Mr. Suggs brought down his longest hickory, with both hands, upon the precise spot where the tension was greatest. With a loud yell, Bill plunged forward, upsetting Simon, and rolled in the grass, rubbing the castigated part with fearful energy. Simon, though overthrown, was unhurt; and he was mentally complimenting himself upon the sagacity which had prevented his illustrating the game of mumble-peg for the paternal amusement, when his attention was arrested by the old man's stooping to pick up something—what is it?—a card upon which Simon had been sitting, and which, therefore, had not gone with the rest of the pack into his pocket. The simple Mr. Suggs had only a vague idea of the pasteboard abomination called cards; and though he decidedly inclined to the opinion that this was one, he was by no means certain of the fact. Had Simon known this he would certainly have escaped; but he did not. His father, assuming the look of extreme sapiency, which is always worn by the interrogator who does not desire or expect to increase his knowledge by his questions, asked:

"What's this, Simon?"

"The Jack-a-dimunts," promptly responded Simon, who gave up all as lost after this faux pas.

"What was it doin' down thar, Simon, my sonny?" continued Mr. Suggs, in an ironically affectionate tone of voice.

"I had it under my leg, thar to make it on Bill, the first time it come trumps," was the ready reply.

"What's trumps?" asked Mr. Suggs, with a view of arriving at the import of the word.

"Nothin' ain't trumps now," said Simon, who misapprehended his father's meaning, "but clubs was, when you come along and busted up the game."

A part of this answer was Greek to the Reverend Mr. Suggs, but a portion of it was full of meaning. They had, then, most unquestionably, been "throwing" cards, the scoundrels! the "oudacious" little hellions!

"To the 'mulberry' with both on ye, in a hurry," said the old man sternly. But the lads were not disposed to be in a "hurry," for the "mulberry" was the scene of all formal punishment administered during work hours in the field. Simon followed his father, however, but made, as he went along, all manner of "faces" at the old man's back; gesticulated as if he were going to strike him between the shoulders with his fists, and kicking at him so as almost to touch his coat tail with his shoe. In this style they walked on to the mulberry-tree, in whose shade Simon's brother Ben was resting.

It must not be supposed that, during the walk to the place of punishment, Simon's mind was either inactive, or engaged in suggesting the grimaces and contortions wherewith he was pantomimically expressing his irreverent sentiments toward his father. Far from it. The movements of his limbs and features were the mere workings of habit—the self-grinding of the corporeal machine—for which his reasoning half was only remotely responsible. For while Simon's person was thus, on its own account "making game" of old Jed'diah, his wits, in view of the anticipated flogging, were dashing, springing, bounding, darting about, in hot chase of some expedient suitable to the necessities of the case; much after the manner in which puss—when Betty, armed with the broom, and hotly seeking vengeance for pantry robbed or bed defiled, has closed upon her the garret doors and windows—attempts all sorts of impossible exits, to come down at last in the corner, with panting side and glaring eye, exhausted and defenseless. Our unfortunate hero could devise nothing by which he could reasonably expect to escape the heavy blows of his father. Having arrived at this conclusion and the "mulberry" about the same time, he stood with a dogged look, awaiting the issue.

The old man Suggs made no remark to any one while he was sizing up Bill,—a process which, though by no means novel to Simon, seemed to excite in him a sort of painful interest. He watched it closely, as if endeavoring to learn the precise fashion of his father's knot; and when at last Bill was swung up a-tiptoe to a limb, and the whipping commenced, Simon's eye followed every movement of his father's arm; and as each blow descended upon the bare shoulders of his sable friend, his own body writhed and "wriggled" in involuntary sympathy.

"It's the devil, it is," said Simon to himself, "to take such a wallopin' as that. Why, the old man looks like he wants to git to the holler, if he could,—rot his old picter! It's wuth, at the least, fifty cents—je-e-miny, how that hurt!—yes, it's wuth three-quarters of a dollar to take that 'ere lickin'! Wonder if I'm 'predestinated,' as old Jed'diah says, to git the feller to it? Lord, how daddy blows! I do wish to God he'd bust wide open, the durned old deer-face! If 'twa'n't for Ben helpin' him, I b'lieve I'd give the old dog a tussel when it comes to my turn. It couldn't make the thing no wuss, if it didn't make it no better. 'Drot it! what do boys have daddies for anyhow? 'Tain't for nuthin' but jist to beat 'em and work 'em. There's some use in mammies. I kin poke my finger right in the old 'oman's eye, and keep it thar; and if I say it ain't thar, she'll say so, too. I wish she was here to hold daddy off. If 'twa'n't so fur I'd holler for her, anyhow. How she would cling to the old fellow's coat-tail!"

Mr. Jedediah Suggs let down Bill and untied him. Approaching Simon, whose coat was off, "Come, Simon, son," said he, "cross them hands; I'm gwine to correct you."

"It ain't no use, daddy," said Simon.

"Why so, Simon?"

"Jist bekase it ain't. I'm gwine to play cards as long as I live. When I go off to myself, I'm gwine to make my livin' by it. So what's the use of beatin' me about it?"

Old Mr. Suggs groaned, as he was wont to do in the pulpit, at this display of Simon's viciousness.

"Simon," said he, "you're a poor ignunt creetur. You don't know nothin', and you've never been nowhars. If I was to turn you off, you'd starve in a week."

"I wish you'd try me," said Simon, "and jist see. I'd win more money in a week than you can make in a year. There ain't nobody round here kin make seed corn off o' me at cards. I'm rale smart," he added with great emphasis.

"Simon! Simon! you poor unlettered fool. Don't you know that all card-players and chicken-fighters and horse-racers go to hell? You crack-brained creetur, you! And don't you know that them that plays cards always loses their money, and—"