Читать книгу The Hand-Made Gentleman: A Tale of the Battles of Peace - Irving Bacheller - Страница 8

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WAS born in 1843. Since then I have endured many perils, of which I shall try to tell you. First of all, there was the peril of being named Solomon; and it would appear that, fora day or two, I was threatened also with the name of Zephaniah, but escaped at last with the lighter penalty of Jacob.

When I found myself I had just printed my full name in big letters on a slate—Jacob Ezra Heron. I have had some success, but—bless you!—it is poverty when I think of the sense of riches that I had that day. I will try to give only the merest outline of my chief assets, and they were: this name, which was all my own; a mother, who was the joint possession of myself and my sister, four years older than I; one friend of the name of Lizzie McCormick, and one little green book which was a legacy from my grandmother. I had practically no liabilities save a number of unpunished sins.

Now, a little as to my schedule of assets. First of all, there is the boy indicated by the name on my slate—a small boy five years old. I was in the little red school-house! My eyes were not much above the level of my reading-book that rested on the teacher's knee. The watch at her belt seemed to prattle in my ear as if to put me out, and, when she opened the hateful thing, I felt sure it complained of me, for immediately she grew impatient. I was afraid, and spoke scarcely any louder than the watch itself. I feared that somebody would do something to me, and I had three occupations—looking out for danger, drawing cats, and printing my name on a slate.

Every evening I used to sit by the fireside in my little chair and rock and sing. My mother called me Cricket, because I was small and spry and cheerful. Others called me Cricket because she did.

Now, an important item in the schedule is my friend and confidant, Lizzie McCormick. She was one of the most remarkable things that ever was, being much and yet nothing. She was a myth—a creation of my fancy—but almost as real as any of you sitting here. There was a drunken old bachelor of the name of McCormick who lived not far away, and Lizzie claimed that she was his girl. I made her acquaintance one day when I had been very bad and was shut in my room alone. She sprang out of the air suddenly, and sat down beside me on the rag carpet, and made a gulping sound—like that of “a hen with the pip,” as our washerwoman said when I tried to make the sound for her. Lizzie was a freckled girl with red hair and a very long neck, and gold teeth and a wooden leg, because she had been shot in the war.

We played marbles together, and talked freely in a tongue so “foreign” that no human being could understand it, as my mother informed me later. She showed me her trinkets, and among them was a thing she called “a silver horruck,” which Santa Claus had brought to her—a shiny thing that looked like a goose's leg. She was with me a good deal after that, and always slept with me in my trundle-bed. In due time she began to do and say things for which I was held responsible, and eventually became a ghost, when I would have no more to do with her.

You will remember I spoke of the little green book. It was kept in a high drawer. Often I begged for a look at it, and when my mother opened the drawer I was on my tiptoes and reaching for the sacred thing. When I had looked at the pictures she put it away again very tenderly.

Well, that is about as things stood with me in my childhood. I have given you a core out of the bed-rock, and let it go at that—saving one circumstance. It will all help you to understand me.

I come now to the true tales, which are better for the fireside, on a white Christmas, than all that kind of thing. First, I shall tell you the very brief adventure of