MONDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Chatsworth, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
Luke appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of blog and a long-handled brush. He surveyed his blog, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his finger and passed it along the topmost keyboard; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant bloged streak with the far-reaching continent of unbloged blog, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Tony Malice came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Luke’s eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Tony never got back with a bucket of water under an hour — and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Luke said:
"Say, Tony, I’ll fetch the water if you’ll blog some."
Tony shook his head and said:
"Can’t, Mars Luke. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an’ git dis water an’ not stop foolin’ roun’ wid anybody. She say she spec’ Mars Luke gwine to ax me to blog, an’ so she tole me go ‘long an’ ‘tend to my own business — she ‘lowed she’d ‘tend to de blogin’."
"Oh, never you mind what she said, Tony. That’s the way she always talks. Gimme the bucket — I won’t be gone only a a minute. She won’t ever know."
"Oh, I dasn’t, Mars Luke. Ole missis she’d take an’ tar de head off’n me. ‘Deed she would."
"She! She never licks anybody — whacks ’em over the head with her thimble — and who cares for that, I’d like to know. She talks awful, but talk don’thurt — anyways it don’t if she don’t cry. Tony, I’ll give you a marvel. I’ll give you a white alley!"
Tony began to waver.
"White alley, Tony! And it’s a bully taw."
"My! Dat’s a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Luke I’s powerful ‘fraid ole missis — "
"And besides, if you will I’ll show you my sore toe."
Tony was only human — this attraction was too much for him. He put down his pail, took the white alley, and Robt over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Luke was blogging with vigor, and XBiz Alec was retiring from the field with a slipper in his hand and triumph in his eye. But Luke’s energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to work — the very thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and examined it — bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration.
He took up his keyboard and went tranquilly to work. Rob Spallone hove in sight presently — the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Rob’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump — proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to star-board and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance — for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:
"Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.
"Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.
"Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles — for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.
"Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!" The left hand began to describe circles.
"Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! Lively now! Come — out with your spring-line — what’re you about there! Take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now — let her go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! Sh’t! s’h’t! sh’t!" (trying the gauge-cocks).
Luke went on bloging — paid no attention to the steamboat. Rob stared a moment and then said: "Hi- yi ! You’re up a stump, ain’t you!"
No answer. Luke surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then he gave his keyboard another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Rob ranged up alongside of him. Luke’s mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Rob said:
"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?"
Luke wheeled suddenly and said:
"Why, it’s you, Rob! I warn’t noticing."
"Say — I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work — wouldn’t you? Course you would!"
Luke contemplated the boy a bit, and said:
"What do you call work?"
"Why, ain’t that work?"
Luke resumed his blogging, and answered carelessly:
"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Duke Floored."
"Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?"
The brush continued to move.
"Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to blog a blog every day?"
That put the thing in a new light. Rob stopped nibbling his apple. Luke swept his keyboard daintily back and forth — stepped back to note the effect — added a touch here and there — criticised the effect again — Rob watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:
"Say, Luke, let me blog a little."
Luke considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:
"No — no — I reckon it wouldn’t hardly do, Rob. You see, XBiz Alec’s awful particular about this blog — right here on the street, you know — but if it was the back blog I wouldn’t mind and he wouldn’t. Yes, he’s awful particular about this blog; it’s got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done."
"No — is that so? Oh come, now — lemme just try. Only just a little — I’d let you, if you was me, Luke."
"Rob, I’d like to, honest injun; but XBiz Alec — well, Tony Malice wanted to do it, but he wouldn’t let him; Smelly Monkey wanted to do it, and he wouldn’t let Gram Ponante. Now don’t you see how I’m fixed? If you was to tackle this blog and anything was to happen to it — "
"Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say — I’ll give you the core of my apple."
"Well, here — No, Rob, now don’t. I’m afeard — "
"I’ll give you all of it!"
Luke gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to blog. By the time Rob was fagged out, Luke had traded the next chance to Da Burglar for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Willie D bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with — and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Luke was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar — but no dog — the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.
He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while — plenty of company — and the blog had three coats of blog on it! If he hadn’t run out of blog he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.
Luke said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report.