John Kendrick Bangs

“ I’d a great deal rather lose the silver or anything else in the house a burglar might want than have you hit on the head with a sand-club,” said Bessie. “You men are too brave.”
“Thank you,” said Thaddeus, with a smile, as he thought of a certain discussion he had had not long before at the club, in which he and several other brave men had reached the unanimous conclusion that the best thing to do at dead of night, with burglars in the house, was to crawl down under the bedclothes and snore as loudly as possible. “Nevertheless, my dear, you should have told me.” ”

“ Perkins, after a few moments’ reflection, “is that such a horrible thing?”
“It isn’t for the parents of the successful youth, but for the successful youth himself it’s something awful,” returned Thaddeus, with a convincing shake of the head. “If no one ever lived beyond the age of thirty-five it wouldn’t be so bad, but think of living to be even so young as sixty, with a big reputation to sustain through more than half of that period! I wouldn’t want to have to sustain a big name for twenty-five years. Success entails conspicuousness, and conspicuousness makes error almost a crime. ”

“ Thaddeus was just beginning to get on easy terms with Mrs. Brown when she was summoned elsewhere.
“Change of heir is necessary for one in her profession,” sighed Thaddeus; and then, when he thought of resuming the reins himself, he sighed again, and wished that Mrs. Brown might have remained a fixture in the household forever. “Still,” he added, more to comfort himself than because he had any decided convictions to express—“still, a baby in the house will make a difference, and Ellen and Jane will behave better now that Bessie’s added responsibilities put them more upon their honor.” ”

“ Perkins, “and that is, Teddy needs more care than we can give him personally. We are too lenient. Whenever you start in to punish him it ends up with a game; when I do it, and he says something funny, as he always does, I have to laugh.”
“How about the ounce-of-prevention idea?” suggested Thaddeus. “We’ve let him go without a nurse for a year now—why can’t we employ a maid to look after him—not to boss him, but to keep an eye on him—to advise him, and, in case he declines to accept the advice, to communicate with us at once? All he needs is directed occupation. ”

“ Whether custom staled the infinite variety of the cook’s virtues, and age withered the efficiency of Mary, the waitress, or whether something was really and radically wrong with the girls, Thaddeus and Bessie could not make out. Certain it was, however, that by slow degrees the satisfaction for which that first dinner seemed to stand as guarantor wore away, and dissatisfaction entered the household. Mary developed a fondness for church at most inconvenient hours—hours at which in fact, neither Thaddeus nor Bessie had ever supposed church could be. ”

“ There were no farewells in the house that day; and inasmuch as there was no Christmas dinner either, Thaddeus and Bessie did not miss the service of the waitress, who, when last seen, was walking airily off towards the station, accompanied by the indignant John and a bundle-laden cook. Next day their trunks went also.
“It was rather a hard thing to do on Christmas Day, Thaddeus,” said Bessie, a little later.
“Oh no,” quibbled Thaddeus. “It was very easy under the circumstances, and quite appropriate. This is the time of peace on earth and good-will to men. ”

“ Breakfast passed off pleasantly in spite of a great drawback—the steak was burned almost to a crisp, and the fried potatoes were like chips of wood.
“Margaret seems to be unfamiliar with the art of cooking this morning,” said Thaddeus.
“So it would seem,” said Bessie. “This steak is horrible.”
“The worst part of it is,” said Thaddeus, “she has erred on the wrong side. If the steak were underdone it wouldn’t be so bad. Isn’t it a pity Edison can’t invent a machine to rarefy an overdone steak?” ”

“ Jane had to go to a funeral.”
“Oh, my!” cried Thaddeus. “This subject’s too much for me. Let’s go out—somewhere, anywhere—to a concert. Music hath its charms to soothe a savage breast, and my breast is simply the very essence of wildness to-night. Put on your things, Bess, and hurry, or I’ll suffocate.”
Bessie did as she was told, and before ten o’clock the happy pair had forgotten their woes, nor do I think they would have remembered them again that night had they not found on their return home that they were locked out. ”

“ And even if she had not completely mastered the art of keeping house, Thaddeus was confident that all would go well with them, for their waitress was a jewel, inherited from Bessie’s mother, and the cook, though somewhat advanced in years, was beyond cavil, having been known to the family of Thaddeus for a longer period than Thaddeus himself had been. The only uncertain quantity in the household was Norah, the up-stairs girl, who was not only new, but auburn-haired and of Celtic extraction. ”

“ Old people get set in their ways, and as long as results are satisfactory, we ought not to be captious about methods.”
“No, indeed, we shouldn’t,” smiled Thaddeus; “but I don’t want you to give in to Ellen to too great an extent, my dear. This is your home, and not my mother’s, and your ways must be the ways of the house.”
“Ellen is all right,” returned Bessie, “and I am so delighted to have her, because, you know, Teddy dear, she knows what you like even better, perhaps, than I do—naturally so, having grown up in your family.”
“Reverse that, my dear. Our family grew up on Ellen. ”

“ The latter might have been noticed as she entered the dining-room; it was soon forgotten in the unconsciously observed ease with which she went through her work.
“She’s fine,” said Perkins, after a dinner of twelve covers served by Jane with a pantry assistant. “I’ve always had a sneaking notion that nothing short of a butler could satisfy me, but now I think otherwise. Jane is perfection, and there is nothing paralyzing about her, as there is about most of those reduced swells who wait on tables nowadays.” ”

“ And Thaddeus, after thinking it all over, was inclined to believe that Bessie was in the right.
“Yes, Bess, she was perfect—perfect in the way she did her work, perfect in the way she smashed things, and nowhere did she more successfully show the thoroughness with which she did everything than when it came to removing the buttons from my vest. Isn’t it too bad that the only perfect servant that ever lived should turn out to be a hopeless maniac? ”

“ A man who will take advantage of his brother’s absence at a wake to black the shoes of that brother’s only employer with stove-polish is not the kind of a man I want to have around.”
“It will be a very good plan,” said Bessie, “for all except Mary. Her absences she cannot well avoid. She has to go to church.”
“How many times a week does she have to go?” queried Thaddeus. ”

“ It seems to me that the thing for us to do is to hold them back, if anything. If Teddy goes to school now, he’ll be ready for college when he is twelve. He’ll be graduated at sixteen, and at twenty he’ll be practising law. At twenty-five he’ll be leader of the bar; and then—what will there be left for him to achieve at fifty? Absolutely nothing.”
Mrs. Perkins laughed. “You have great hopes for Teddy, haven’t you?”
“Certainly I have,” Thaddeus replied; “and why shouldn’t I? Doesn’t he combine all my good qualities plus yours? How can he be anything else than great?” ”

“ Mrs. Perkins wants you to keep it as you would if she were here. Whatever you need to make yourselves comfortable, you may get. Good-bye.”
“What a comfort it is,” said Bessie, when they had reached the sea-shore, and were indulging in their first bit of that woful luxury, homesickness—“what a comfort it is to feel that the girls are there to look after things! An empty house is such a temptation to thieves.”
“Yes,” said Thaddeus. “I hope they won’t entertain too much, though.”
“Ellen and Jane are too old for that sort of thing,” Bessie answered.
“How about Norah?” ”

“ Mary may consider herself presented with sixty years’ vacation without pay; and for you, John, I have written this letter of recommendation to the proprietors of a large undertaking establishment in New York, who will, I trust, engage you as a chief mourner, or perhaps hearse-driver, for the balance of your days. At any rate, you, too, after January 1st, may consider yourself free to go to any funeral or militia exercises, or anything else you may choose to honor with your presence, at your own expense. You are all given leave of absence without pay until further notice. ”

“ There is nothing so affronting to a young house-keeper as the discovery that the inherited family jewels, upon whom much reliance has been placed, are as paste alongside of the newly acquired bauble from whom little was expected. It was almost unkind in Norah, Bessie thought, to be so impeccably conscientious when Jane and Ellen were developing eccentricities ”

“ Mrs. Perkins’s garden; he had supplied the family with a new gardener when the old one had taken on habits of drink, which destroyed not only himself but the cabbages; he had kept an eye on the plumbers; he had put up, taken down, and repaired awnings—in short, as Perkins said, he was a “Universal.” Once, when a delicate piece of bric-à-brac had been broken and the china-mender asserted that it could not be mended, Perkins had said, “See if Burke can’t fix it,” and Burke had fixed it; and as final tribute to this wonder, Perkins had said, in suffering:
“My dear, I’m afraid I have appendicitis. ”

“ Constant dropping of water on its surface will wear away a stone, and I think, perhaps, the constant dropping of an idea on a cook’s head may wear away some of the thickest parts of that—at least, until it is worn thin enough for the idea to get through to where her brain ought to be. You might say to her, too, that for several nights past dinner has been cold.”
“I’ll speak to her in the morning,” was Bessie’s reply; and the dear little woman was true to her purpose.
“She explained about the beef and the cold dinner, Ted,” she said, when Thaddeus came home that afternoon. ”

“ That woman—looking for all the world like a creature from some other part of the universe than this earth, her eyes burning like two huge coals, her checks as yellow and clear as so much wax, and her lips blue-white, with a great flaming red tongue sort of laid between them—worked like a slave cleaning the floor, polishing the range, and scrubbing the table. ”

“ The friend was an elderly man, with a business and a system. He was a man, for instance, who all his life had breakfasted at seven, lunched at one, and dined at six-thirty, of which Thaddeus was aware when he invited him to make his suburban home his headquarters while his own house was being renovated and his family abroad. Thaddeus was also aware that the breakfast and dinner hours under Bessie’s régime were nominally those of his friend, and so he was able to assure Mr. Liscomb that his coming would in no way disturb the usual serenity of the domestic pond. The trusting friend came. ”

“ Fortunately, Bessie’s mother called that evening, and some of her time was spent below-stairs. What she said there only Ellen and Jane knew, but it had its effect, and for two or three weeks the jewels worked almost as satisfactorily as did Norah, the new girl, and quite harmoniously.
“Bessie,” said Thaddeus, one night as they ate their supper, “does it occur to you that the roast is a little overdone to-night?”
“Yes, Teddy, it is very much overdone. I must speak to Ellen about it. She is a little careless about some things. I’ve told her several times that you like your beef rare.” ”

“ When I first come here, ma’am, not knowin’ ye well, I was afraid to be anything but what was right, but the way you took accidents, and a bit of a shortcomin’ once in a while, sort of took away my fear, and I’ve been goin’ down hill ever since. Servant-girls is only human, Mrs. Perkins.”
Mrs. Perkins looked at Jane inquiringly.
“We needs to be kept up to our work just as much as anybody else, and when a lady like yourself is too easy, it gets a girl into bad habits, and occasionally it does us good if the gentleman of the house will swear at us, Mrs. Perkins, and sort of scare us, so it does. ”

“ By the side of Dennis, John is a jewel.”
“John is very faithful with the furnace,” said Bessie. “He never lets it go down. Why, day before yesterday I turned off every register in the house, and even then had to open all the windows to keep from suffocating.”
“But that wasn’t all John, my dear,” said Thaddeus. “The Weather Bureau had something to do with it. It was a warm day for this season of the year, anyhow. If John could combine the two businesses of selling coal and feeding furnaces, I think he would become a millionaire. ”

“ Perfectly irrepressible.”
“That’s very true,” said Thaddeus. “I was speaking of it to the doctor up there, and asked him what he thought I’d better do.”
“And what did he say?” asked Mrs. Perkins.
“He stated his firm belief that there was nothing you or I could do to get him down to a basis, but thought Hagenbeck might accomplish something.”
“No doubt he thought that,” cried Bessie. “No doubt everybody thought that, but it wasn’t entirely Teddy’s fault. If there is anything in the world that is well calculated to demoralize an active-minded, able-bodied child, it is hotel life. ”

“ I suppose Jane got it out expecting me to prepare it.”
“Oh, well, never mind,” said Thaddeus, desirous of soothing the troubled soul of his wife. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it, only Jane does too much thinking, in a thoughtless way, anyhow. Servants aren’t paid to think.”
“I’ll tell you what, Thaddeus,” said Bessie, her spirits returning, “we are just as much to blame as they are; we’ve taken too much for granted, and so have they. Suppose we spend the evening putting together a set of rules for the management of the house? It will be lots of fun, and perhaps it will do the girls good. ”

“ Thaddeus has remained free, and, as he proudly observes, domestics now tremble at his approach—that is, all except Norah, who remembers him as of old. Ellen and Jane are living together in affluence, having saved their wages for nearly the whole of their term of “service.” Bessie is happy in the possession of two fine boys, to whom all her attention—all save a little reserved for Thaddeus—is given; and, as for the dubious, auburn-haired, and distinctly Celtic Norah, Thaddeus is afraid that she is developing into a “treasure.” ”

“ A great many men adopt this same method. I do. It is the easiest, though it is possibly prompted by that cowardice which is latent with us all. I never in my life have discharged more than one servant, and I not only did not do it gracefully, but discharged the wrong one; since which time I have left all that sort of work to others more competent than I. Perkins’s method was precisely thus. ”

“ She bore upon her face every evidence of respectability and character, as well as one or two lines which might have indicated years or toothache—it was difficult to decide which. On certain days, when the weather was very warm and she had much to do, the impression was that the lines meant years, and many of them, accentuated as they were by her pallor, the whiteness of her face making the lines seem almost black in their intensity. ”