Part 19 (2/2)

I forget what I thought the advantages were, but I remember distinctly of getting into an inextricable tangle on two points: How could a cherub, being all head and wings, manage to sit down when he was tired?

To have to sit down on the back of his head struck me as an awkward alternative. Again: Where did a cherub carry those indispensable articles (such as jack-knives, marbles, and pieces of twine) which boys in an earthly state of existence usually stow away in their trousers-pockets?

These were knotty questions, and I was never able to dispose of them satisfactorily.

Meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb would scour the whole town in search of me.

He finally discovered my retreat, and dropped in on me abruptly one afternoon, while I was deep in the cherub problem.

”Look here, Tom Bailey!” said Pepper, shying a piece of clam-sh.e.l.l indignantly at the file jacet on a neighboring gravestone. ”You are just going to the dogs! Can't you tell a fellow what in thunder ails you, instead of prowling round among the tombs like a jolly old vampire?”

”Pepper,” I replied, solemnly, ”don't ask me. All is not well here”--touching my breast mysteriously. If I had touched my head instead, I should have been nearer the mark.

Pepper stared at me.

”Earthly happiness,” I continued, ”is a delusion and a snare. You will never be happy, Pepper, until you are a cherub.”

Pepper, by the by, would have made an excellent cherub, he was so chubby. Having delivered myself of these gloomy remarks, I arose languidly from the gra.s.s and moved away, leaving Pepper staring after me in mute astonishment. I was Hamlet and Werter and the late Lord Byron all in one.

You will ask what my purpose was in cultivating this fact.i.tious despondency. None whatever. Blighted beings never have any purpose in life excepting to be as blighted as possible.

Of course my present line of business could not long escape the eye of Captain Nutter. I don't know if the Captain suspected my attachment for Miss Glentworth. He never alluded to it; but he watched me. Miss Abigail watched me, Kitty Collins watched me, and Sailor Ben watched me.

”I can't make out his signals,” I overheard the Admiral remark to my grandfather one day. ”I hope he ain't got no kind of sickness aboard.”

There was something singularly agreeable in being an object of so great interest. Sometimes I had all I could do to preserve my dejected aspect, it was so pleasant to be miserable. I incline to the opinion that people who are melancholy without any particular reason, such as poets, artists, and young musicians with long hair, have rather an enviable time of it. In a quiet way I never enjoyed myself better in my life than when I was a Blighted Being.

Chapter Twenty--I Prove Myself To Be the Grandson of My Grandfather

It was not possible for a boy of my temperament to be a blighted being longer than three consecutive weeks.

I was gradually emerging from my self-imposed cloud when events took place that greatly a.s.sisted in restoring me to a more natural frame of mind. I awoke from an imaginary trouble to face a real one.

I suppose you don't know what a financial crisis is? I will give you an ill.u.s.tration.

You are deeply in debt--say to the amount of a quarter of a dollar--to the little knicknack shop round the corner, where they sell picture-papers, spruce-gum, needles, and Malaga raisins. A boy owes you a quarter of a dollar, which he promises to pay at a certain time. You are depending on this quarter to settle accounts with the small shop-keeper. The time arrives--and the quarter doesn't. That's a financial crisis, in one sense--twenty-five senses, if I may say so.

When this same thing happens, on a grander scale, in the mercantile world, it produces what is called a panic. One man's inability to pay his debts ruins another man, who, in turn, ruins someone else, and so on, until failure after failure makes even the richest capitalists tremble. Public confidence is suspended, and the smaller fry of merchants are knocked over like tenpins.

These commercial panics occur periodically, after the fas.h.i.+on of comets and earthquakes and other disagreeable things.

Such a panic took place in New Orleans in the year 18--, and my father's banking-house went to pieces in the crash.

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