Читать книгу The Hero of Manila: Dewey on the Mississippi and the Pacific - Rossiter Johnson - Страница 5

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FIGHTING.

It is not necessary to visit the Bay of Naples in order to witness a beautiful sunset. Our own atmosphere and our own waters produce those that are quite as gorgeous, while our own mountains and woodlands give them as worthy a setting as any in the world.

Half a century ago a little boy sat at his chamber window in Vermont looking at a summer sunset. He was so absorbed in the scene before him and in his own thoughts that he did not notice the entrance of his father until he spoke.

"What are you thinking about, George?" said the father.

"About ships," the boy answered, without turning his head.

"What kind of ships?"

"I can see nearly every kind," said George.

"See them—where?" said his father, looking over his shoulder.

"Right there in the sunset clouds," said the boy.

"Oh!" said his father; and then, after looking a while, added, "Suppose you point out a few of them."

"Do you see that small cloud, at some distance from the others—the one that is rather long and narrow, with a narrower one alongside?"

"Yes, I see that."

"Well, that," said the boy, "is a Brazilian catamaran, and those little knobs at the top are the heads of the men that are paddling it."

"Just so," said his father. "What else can you see?"

"The catamaran," said George, "is pulling out to that clipper ship which has just come to anchor off the port. The clipper is the large one, with her sails furled. Probably the Indians have some fruit on board, which they hope to sell to the sailors."

"Quite natural," said the father.

"And that smaller one, under full sail, fore-and-aft rigged, is a schooner in the coasting trade."

"That one appears to be changing shape rapidly," said the father.

"Yes," said the boy. "She is tacking, and you see her at a different angle."

"I might have suspected as much," said the father, "but I never was a good sailor."

"That very large one," continued the boy, "with a big spread of canvas and holes in her hull, where the red sunlight pours through, is an old-fashioned seventy-four, with all her battle-lanterns lit."

"A pretty fancy," said the father, who evidently was becoming more interested and better able to see the pictures that were so vivid to his son.

"Do you see that dark one over at the right, with one near it that is very red and very ragged?" said the boy.

"I do."

"Those are the Constitution and the Java. They had their famous battle yesterday, and the Java was so badly cut up that to-day Bainbridge has removed her crew and set her on fire. She will blow up pretty soon."

"I should like to see it," said the father.

"And if you look over there to the left," said the boy, "you see quite a collection of rather small ones, most of them very red, some half red and half black. It looks a little confused at first, but when you know what it is you can see plainly enough that it is the battle of Lake Erie. In the very center there is a small boat, and on it something that looks black and blue and red, with a little white. The black is cannon smoke. The blue and red and white is the American flag, which Perry is taking over to the Niagara, because the Lawrence is so badly damaged that he has had to leave her. That one with only one mast standing is the Lawrence."

"Yes, my son, I think you have accounted beautifully for everything there except one. What is that dark one, with rounded ends and no mast, just beyond the clipper?"

"Oh, that," said the boy, taking a moment for reflection. "I think that must be a bullhead boat on the Delaware and Hudson Canal."

"It is a good representation of one," said his father, smiling. "But, George, how came you to know so much about ships and boats and naval history?"

"By reading all I could find about them, sir."

"Well, George, I am really pleased," said Dr. Dewey; "pleased and encouraged to know that you have taken to reading instead of fighting. I was afraid you never would love books; but now that you have begun, you shall have all the good ones you will read."

"Thank you, father, I shall be glad of them."

"But come now, my son, supper is ready, and your sister is waiting for us."

"I will come pretty soon," said George, and his father descended the stairs.

A little later the boy went slowly down, and quietly slipped into his place at the table.

In a few minutes Dr. Dewey looked up, then started as if surprised, and dropped his hands to the edge of the table. He took a sharp look at George, and then said:

"What does that mean? How came you by that black eye?"

"There is only one way to get a black eye that I know of," said the boy.

"Fighting?"

"Yes, sir."

The doctor was silent for several minutes, and then said:

"I don't know what to say to you or do to you, my son. You know what I have said to you about your fighting habit, and you know that I mean it, for I have not only talked to you, but punished you. When I found you had been reading history I took new hope, for I thought you must have got past the fighting age and given your mind to better things. But here you are again with the marks of a pugilist."

"I don't fight when I can help it, and I'm afraid I never shall get past the fighting age," said George.

"Don't fight when you can help it?" said his father. "Can't you always help it?"

"I might by running away. Do you want me to do that?" the boy answered quietly.

"Of course I don't," said the doctor quickly. "But can't you keep away?"

"I have to go to school," said George, "and I have to be with the boys; and some of them are quarrelsome, and some are full of conceit, and some need a good licking now and then."

"And you consider it your duty to administer it," said the doctor. "Conceit is a crime that can not be too severely punished."

The boy felt the irony of his father's remark, and saw that he did not quite understand that use of the word "conceit," so he proceeded to explain:

"When a boy goes about bragging how many boys he has licked, and how many others he can lick, and how he will do this, that, and the other thing, if everybody doesn't look out, we say he is too conceited and he ought to have the conceit taken out of him; and the first good chance we get we take it out."

"Suppose you left it in him and paid no attention to it—what would happen in that case?" said the doctor.

"He would grow more and more conceited," said George, "and make himself so disagreeable that the boys couldn't enjoy life, and before a great while you would find him picking on smaller boys than himself and licking them, just to have more brag."

"Do you really have any such boys among your schoolfellows, or is this only theoretical?" the doctor inquired.

"There are a few," said George.

"And how do you determine whose duty it is to take the conceit out of one of them? Do you draw lots, or take turns?"

"The boy that enjoys the job the most generally gets it," said George.

"Just so," said the doctor. "And is there some one boy in the school who enjoys the job, as you call it, more than all the others?"

George evidently felt that this question came so near home he ought not to be expected to answer it, and he was silent.

His elder sister, Mary (they had lost their mother five years before), now spoke for the first time.

"Perhaps," said she, "we ought to ask George to tell us the circumstances of this last fight. I don't believe he is always the one to blame."

"Certainly," said the doctor; "that is only fair. Tell us all about it, George."

Thereupon the boy proceeded to tell them all about it in a very animated manner.

"Bill Ammon," he began, "is one of the bossingest boys in school. He expects to have everything his way. I don't blame a boy for wanting things his own way if he takes fair means to get them so, but Bill doesn't always. You and the teacher tell me that bad habits grow worse and worse, and I suppose it was that way with Bill. At any rate, we found out a few days ago that he was taking regular toll out of two smaller boys—Jimmy Nash and Teddy Hawkins—for not licking them. Each of them had to bring him something twice a week—apples, or nuts, or marbles, or candy, or something else that he wanted—and he threatened not only to lick them if they did not bring the things, but to lick them twice as hard if they told any one about it."

"Why did those boys submit to such treatment?" said the doctor.

"Well, you see," said George, "Jimmy Nash's father is a Quaker, and doesn't believe in hurting anybody, and so if Jimmy gets into any trouble he whales him like fury as soon as he finds it out. And Teddy Hawkins's mother gives him plenty of spending money, so he is always able to buy a little something to please Bill, and I suppose he would rather do that than fight."

"If they were boys of any spirit," said the doctor indignantly, "I should think they would join forces and give Bill the thrashing he deserves. The two together ought to be able to do it."

"Yes, they could," said George; "but, you see, they are not twins, and can't always be together—in fact, they live a long way apart—and as soon as Bill caught either of them alone he would make him pay dear for it. He needed to be licked by some one boy."

"I see," said the doctor; "a Decatur was wanted, to put an end to the tribute."

"Exactly!" said George, and his father's eyes twinkled with pleasure to see that he understood the allusion. He was specially anxious that his boy should become familiar with American history, but he had no anticipation that his son would one day make American history.

"When we found it out," George continued, "Bill tried to make us believe that Jimmy and Teddy were simply paying him to protect them. He said he was their best friend. 'What protection do they need?' said I. 'They are peaceable little fellows, and there is nobody that would be coward enough to attack them.' Bill saw that he was cornered on the argument, and at the same time he got mad at the word coward, thinking I meant it for him. I didn't, for I don't consider him a coward at all."

"Not if he is a bully?" said the doctor.

"No, sir," said George. "He certainly is something of a bully, but he is not cowardly."

"There you agree with Charles Lamb," said the doctor.

"Who is Charles Lamb?" said George.

"He was an Englishman, who died fifteen or twenty years ago," said the doctor, "and I hope you'll read his delightful essays some day—but not till you've mastered American history. Attend to that first."

"I'll try to," said George. "When Bill flared up at that word he seemed to lose his head a little. 'Who are you calling a coward?' said he, coming up close to me, with his fist clenched. I said I never called anybody a coward, because if he wasn't one it wouldn't be true, and if he was everybody would find it out soon enough, without my telling them. 'Well, you meant it for me,' said he, 'and you'll have to fight it out, so you'd better take off your jacket mighty quick.' I said I had no objection——"

"You had no objection!" exclaimed his sister Mary.

"Well—that is—under the circumstances," said George, "I didn't see how I could have any. I had no right to have any. Those two boys did need protection—they needed to be protected against Bill Ammon, who was robbing them. And I thought I might as well do it as anybody. So I said, 'Come over to the orchard, boys,' and we all went. Teddy Hawkins held my jacket, and Sim Nelson held Bill's. We squared off and sparred a little while, and I suppose I must have been careless, for Bill got the first clip at me, landing on my eye. But pretty soon I fetched him a good one under the cheek bone, and followed that up with a smasher on——"

An early battle.

Here Mary turned pale, and showed signs of uneasiness and repugnance. George, who was warming up with his subject, did not notice her, but was going on with his description of the fight, when his father stopped him.

"Your sister," he said, "has no taste for these particulars. Never mind them until some time when you and I are alone. Only tell us how it turned out."

"The boys said it turned out that I gave Bill what he deserved, and I hope I did, but I didn't tell them what a mighty hard job I found it."

"Bravo, George!" exclaimed the doctor, and then quickly added: "But don't fight any more."