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Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature by Various

V >> Various >> Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature




"I want it to match this," I said.

"I thought you weren't particular about the match," said the salesman.
"You said you didn't care for the quality of the goods, and you know you
can't match goods without you take into consideration quality and color
both. If you want that quality of goods in red, you ought to get
Turkey-red."

I did not think it necessary to answer this remark, but said:

"Then you've got nothing to match this?"

"No, sir. But perhaps they may have it in the upholstery department, in
the sixth story."

So I got in the elevator and went up to the top of the house.

"Have you any red stuff like this?" I said to a young man.

"Red stuff? Upholstery department,--other end of this floor."

I went to the other end of the floor.

"I want some red calico," I said to a man.

"Furniture goods?" he asked.

"Yes," said I.

"Fourth counter to the left."

I went to the fourth counter to the left, and showed my sample to a
salesman. He looked at it, and said:

"You'll get this down on the first floor--calico department."

I turned on my heel, descended in the elevator, and went out on
Broadway. I was thoroughly sick of red calico. But I determined to make
one more trial. My wife had bought her red calico not long before, and
there must be some to be had somewhere. I ought to have asked her where
she bought it, but I thought a simple little thing like that could be
bought anywhere.

I went into another large dry-goods store. As I entered the door a
sudden tremor seized me. I could not bear to take out that piece of red
calico. If I had had any other kind of a rag about me--a pen-wiper or
any thing of the sort--I think I would have asked them if they could
match that.

But I stepped up to a young woman and presented my sample, with the
usual question.

"Back room, counter on the left," she said.

I went there.

"Have you any red calico like this?" I asked of the lady behind the
counter.

"No, sir," she said, "but we have it in Turkey-red."

Turkey-red again! I surrendered.

"All right," I said, "give me Turkey-red."

"How much, sir?" she asked.

"I don't know--say five yards."

The lady looked at me rather strangely, but measured off five yards of
Turkey-red calico. Then she rapped on the counter and called out "cash!"
A little girl, with yellow hair in two long plaits, came slowly up. The
lady wrote the number of yards, the name of the goods, her own number,
the price, the amount of the bank-note I handed her, and some other
matters, probably the color of my eyes, and the direction and velocity
of the wind, on a slip of paper. She then copied all this in a little
book which she kept by her. Then she handed the slip of paper, the
money, and the Turkey-red to the yellow-haired girl. This young girl
copied the slip in a little book she carried, and then she went away
with the calico, the paper slip, and the money.

After a very long time,--during which the little girl probably took the
goods, the money, and the slip to some central desk, where the note was
received, its amount and number entered in a book, change given to the
girl, a copy of the slip made and entered, girl's entry examined and
approved, goods wrapped up, girl registered, plaits counted and entered
on a slip of paper and copied by the girl in her book, girl taken to a
hydrant and washed, number of towel entered on a paper slip and copied
by the girl in her book, value of my note and amount of change branded
somewhere on the child, and said process noted on a slip of paper and
copied in her book,--the girl came to me, bringing my change and the
package of Turkey-red calico.

I had time for but very little work at the office that afternoon, and
when I reached home, I handed the package of calico to my wife She
unrolled it and exclaimed:

"Why, this don't match the piece I gave you!"

"Match it!" I cried. "Oh, no! it don't match it. You didn't want that
matched. You were mistaken. What you wanted was Turkey-red--third
counter to the left. I mean, Turkey-red is what they use."

My wife looked at me in amazement, and then I detailed to her my
troubles.

"Well," said she, "this Turkey-red is a great deal prettier than what I
had, and you've got so much of it that I needn't use the other at all. I
wish I had thought of Turkey-red before."

"I wish from my heart you had," said I.

ANDREW SCOGGIN.

--_The Lady or the Tiger, and other stories._




HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.

(BORN, 1835.)

* * * * *

AUNT PEN'S FUNERAL.


Poor Aunt Pen! I am sorry to say it, but for a person alive and
well--tolerably well and very much alive, that is--she did use to make
the greatest business of dying! Alive! why, when she was stretched out
on the sofa, after an agony of asthma, or indigestion, or whatever, and
had called us all about her with faltering and tears, and was apparently
at her last gasp, she would suddenly rise, like her own ghost, at the
sound of a second ringing of the door-bell, which our little renegade
Israel had failed to answer, and declare if she could only once lay
hands on Israel she would box his ears till they heard!

For the door-bell was, perhaps, among many, one of Aunt Pen's weakest
points. She knew everybody in town, as you might say. She was
exceedingly entertaining to everybody outside the family. She was a
great favorite with everybody. Countless gossips came to see her,
tinkling at the door-bell, and hated individually by Israel, brought her
all the news, heard all the previous ones had brought, admired her,
praised her, pitied her, listened to her, and went away leaving her in
such satisfied mood that she did not die any more that day. And as they
went away they always paused at the door to say to some one of us what a
cheerful invalid Aunt Pen had made herself, and what a nest of sunbeams
her room always was, and what a lesson her patience and endurance ought
to be. But, oh dear me, how very little they knew about it all!

We all lived together, as it happened; for when we children were left
alone with but a small income, Aunt Pen--who was also alone, and only
five years my senior--wrote word that we might as well come to her house
in the city, for it wouldn't make expenses more, and might make them
less if we divided them; and then, too, she said she would always be
sure of one out of three bright and reasonable nurses. Poor Aunt Pen!
perhaps she didn't find us either so bright or so reasonable as she had
expected; for we used to think that in her less degree she went on the
same principle with the crazy man who declared all the rest of the world
except himself insane.

In honest truth, as doctor after doctor was turned away by the impatient
and distempered woman up-stairs, each one took occasion to say to us
down-stairs that our aunt's illness was of that nature that all the
physic it required was to have her fancies humored, and that we never
need give ourselves any uneasiness, for she would doubtless live to a
good old age, unless some acute disease should intervene, as there was
nothing at all the matter with her except a slight nervous
sensitiveness, that never destroyed anybody. I suppose we were a set of
young heathen, for really there were times, if you will believe it, when
that was not the most reassuring statement in the world.

However. Sometimes Aunt Pen found a doctor, or a medicine, or a course
of diet, or something, that gave her great sensations of relief, and
then she would come down, and go about the house, and praise our
administration, and say every thing went twice as far as it used to go
before we came, and tell us delightful stories, of our mother's
housewifely skill, and be quite herself again; and she would make the
table ring with laughing, and give charming little tea-parties; and then
we all did wish that Aunt Pen would live forever--and be down-stairs.
But probably the next day, after one of the tea-parties, oysters, or
claret punch, or hot cakes, or all together, had wrought their
diablerie, and the doctor was sent for, and the warming-pan was brought
out, and there was another six weeks' siege, in which, obeyed by every
one, and physicked by herself, and sympathized with to her heart's
content by callers, and shut up in a hot room with the windows full of
flowering plants, and somebody reading endless novels to her with the
lights burning all night long--if she wasn't ill she had every
inducement to be, and nothing but an indomitable constitution hindered
it. It was perfectly idle for us to tell her she was hurting herself; it
only made her very indignant with us, and more determined than ever to
persist in doing so.

Of course, then, the longer Aunt Pen staid in her own room the worse she
really did get, and her nerves, with confinement and worry and
relaxation, would by-and-by be in a condition for any sort of an
outburst if we attempted the least reasoning with her. She would
become, for one thing, as sleepless as an owl; then she was thoroughly
sure she was going to be insane, and down would go the hydrate of
chloral till the doctor forbade it on pain of death. After the chloral,
too, such horrid eyes as she had! the eyes, you know, that chloral
always leaves--inflamed, purple, swollen, heavy, crying, and good for
any thing but seeing. Immediately then Aunt Pen went into a new tantrum;
she was going to be stone-blind, and dependent on three heartless
hussies for all her mercies in this life; but no, thank goodness! she
had friends that would see she did not go absolutely to the wall, and
would never suffer her to be imposed on by a parcel of girls who didn't
care whether she lived or died--who perhaps would rather she did
die--who stood open-handed for her bequests; she would leave her money
to the almshouse, and if we wanted it we could go and get it there! And
after that, to be sure, Aunt Pen would have a fit of remorse for her
words, and confess her sin chokingly, and have us all come separately
and forgive her, and would say she was the wretchedest woman on the face
of the earth, that she should live undesired until her friends were all
tired, and then die unlamented; and would burst into tears and cry
herself into a tearing headache, and have ice on her head and a blister
on the back of her neck, and be quite confident that now she was really
going off with congestion of the brain.

After that, for a day or two, she would be in a heavenly frame of mind
with the blister and cabbage leaves and simple cerate, and a couple of
mirrors by which to examine the rise and fall of the blister; and,
having had a hint of real illness, she would consent quite smilingly to
the act of convalescence, and a descent to the healthy region of the
parlors once more.

But no sooner were we all gay and happy in the house again, running out
as we pleased, beginning to think of parties and drives and theatres and
all enjoyment--and rather unobservant, as young folks are apt to be
unobservant of Aunt Pen's slight habitual pensiveness in the absence of
guests or excitement, and of her ways generally--than Aunt Pen would
challenge some lobster-salad to mortal combat, and, of course, come out
floored by the colic. A little whiskey then; and as a little gave so
much ease, she would try a great deal. The result always was a
precipitate retreat up-stairs, a howling hysteric, bilious cramps, the
doctor, a subcutaneous injection of morphine in her arm; then chattering
like a magpie, relapsed into awful silence, and, convinced that the
morphine had been carried straight to her heart, a composing of her
hands and feet, an injured dismissal of every soul from the room, with
the assurance that we should find her straight and stiff and stone-dead
in the morning.

We never did. For, as we seldom had opportunity of an undisturbed
night's rest, we usually took her at her word if any access of ill
temper, or despair, or drowsiness occasioned banishment from the
presence. Not that we had always been so calm about it; there was a time
when we were excited with every alarm, thrown into flurries and panics
quite to Aunt Pen's mind, running after the doctor at two o'clock of the
morning, building a fire in the range ourselves at midnight to make
gruel for her, rubbing her till we rubbed the skin off our hands,
combing her hair till we went to sleep standing; but Aunt Pen had cried
wolf so long, and the doctors had all declared so stoutly that there was
no wolf, that our once soft hearts had become quite hard and concrete.

When at last Aunt Pen had had an alarm from nearly every illness for
which the pharmacopoeia prescribes, and she knew that neither we nor
the doctors would listen to the probability of their recurrence; she had
an attack of "sinking." No, there was no particular disease, she used to
say, only sinking; she had been pulled down to an extent from which she
had no strength to recuperate; she was only sinking, a little weaker
to-day than she was yesterday--only sinking. But Aunt Pen ate a very
good breakfast of broiled birds and toast and coffee; a very good lunch
of cold meats and dainties, and a great goblet of thick cream; a very
good dinner of soup and roast and vegetables and dessert, and perhaps a
chicken bone at eleven o'clock in the evening. And when the saucy little
Israel, who carried up her tray, heard her say she was sinking, he
remarked that it was because of the load on her stomach.

One day, I remember, Aunt Pen was very much worse than usual. We were
all in her room, a sunshiny place which she had connected with the
adjoining one by sliding-doors, so that it might be big enough for us
all to bring our work on occasion, and make it lively for her. She had
on a white-cashmere dressing-gown trimmed with swan's-down, and she lay
among the luxurious cushions of a blue lounge, with a paler blue
blanket, which she had had one of us tricot for her, lying over her
feet, and altogether she looked very ideal and ethereal; for Aunt Pen
always did have such an eye to picturesque effect that I don't know how
she could ever consent to the idea of mouldering away into dust like
common clay.

She had sent Maria down for Mel and me to come up-stairs with whatever
occupied us, for she was convinced that she was failing fast, and knew
we should regret it if we did not have the last of her. As we had
received the same message nearly every other day during the last three
or four weeks, we did not feel extraordinarily alarmed, but composedly
took our baskets and scissors, and trudged along after Maria.

"I am sure I ought to be glad that I've succeeded in training my nieces
into such industrious habits," said Aunt Pen, after a little while,
looking at Mel; "but I should think that when a near relative approached
the point of death, the fact might throw needle and thread into the
background for a time." Then she paused for Maria to fan a little more
breath into her. "It's different with Helen," soon she said; "the white
silk shawl she is netting for me may be needed at any moment to lay me
out in."

"Dear me, Aunt Pen!" cried Mel; "what a picture you'd be, laid out in a
white net shawl!" For the doctor had told us to laugh at these whims all
we might.

"Oh, you heartless girl!" said Aunt Pen. "To think of pictures at such a
time!" And she closed her eyes as if weary of the world.

"I never saw anybody who liked to revel in the ghastly the way you do,
Aunt Pen."

"Mel!" said Aunt Pen, with quite a show of color in her cheek; "I shall
send you down stairs."

"Do," said Mel; "where I can cut out my gown in peace."

"Cutting a gown at the bedside of the dying! Are you cold-blooded, or
are you insensible?"

"Aunt Pen," said Mel, leaning on the point of her scissors, "you know
very well that I have to make my own dresses or go without them. And you
have kept me running your idle errands, up and down two flights of
stairs, to the doctor's and the druggist's, and goodness knows where
and all, till I haven't a thread of any thing that is fit to be seen.
You've been posturing this grand finale of yours, too, all the last
three weeks, and it's time you had it perfect now; and you must let me
alone till I get my gown done."

"It will do to wear at my funeral," said Aunt Pen bitterly, as she
concluded.

"No, it won't," said Mel, doggedly; "it's red."

"Red!" cried Aunt Pen, suddenly opening her eyes, and half raising on
one hand. "What in wonder have you bought a red dress for? You are quite
aware that I can't bear the least intimation of the color. My nerves are
in such a state that a shred of red makes me--"

"You won't see it, you know," said Mel in what did seem to me an
unfeeling manner.

"No," said Aunt Pen. "Very true. I sha'n't see it. But what," added she
presently snapping open her eyes, "considered as a mere piece of
economy, you bought a red dress for when you are immediately going into
black, passes common-sense to conjecture! You had better send it down
and have it dyed at once before you cut it, for the shrinkage will spoil
it forever if you don't."

"Much black I shall go into," said Mel.

Maria laughed. Aunt Pen cried.

"Aunt Pen," said the cruel Mel, "if you were going to die you wouldn't
be crying. Dying people have no tears to shed, the doctors say."

"Somebody ought to cry," said poor Aunt Pen, witheringly. "Don't talk to
me about doctors," she continued, after a silence interrupted only by
the snipping of the scissors. "They are a set of quacks. They know
nothing. I will have all the doctors in town at my funeral for
pall-bearers. It will be a satire too delicate for them to appreciate,
though. Speaking of that occasion, Helen," she went on, turning to me as
a possible ally, "I have so many friends that I suppose the house will
be full."

"Wouldn't you enjoy it more from church, auntie?" said I.

"Oh, you hard and wicked girls!" she cried. "You're all alike. Listen to
me! If you won't hear my wishes, you must take my commands. Now, in the
first place, I want the parlors to be overflowing with flowers,
literally lined with flowers. I don't care how much money it takes;
there'll be enough left for you--more than you deserve. And I want you
to be very sure that I'm not to be exposed unless I look exactly as I'd
like to look. You're to put on my white silk that I was to have been
married in, and my veil, and the false orange blossoms. They're all in
the third drawer of the press, and the key's on my chatelaine. And
if--if--well," said Aunt Pen, more to herself than us, "if he comes,
he'll understand. The Bride of Death."

After that she did not say any more for some minutes, and we were all
silent and sorry, and Mel was fidgeting in a riot of repentance; we had
never, either of us, heard a word of any romance of Aunt Pen's before.
We began to imagine that there might be some excuse for the overthrow of
Aunt Pen's nervous system, some reality in the overthrow. "You will
leave this ring on my finger;" said she; by-and-by. "If Chauncey Read
comes, and wants it, he will take it off. It will fit his finger as well
now, I suppose, as it did when he wore it before he gave it to me." Then
Aunt Pen bit her lip and shut her eyes, and seemed to be slipping off
into a gentle sleep.

"By-the-way!" said she, suddenly, sitting upright on the lounge, "I
won't have the horses from Brown's livery--

"The what, auntie?"

"The horses for the cortege. You know Brown puts that magnificent span
of his in the hearse on account of their handsome action. I'm sure Mrs.
Gaylard would have been frightened to death if she could only have seen
the way they pranced at her funeral last fall. I was determined then
that they should never draw me;" and Aunt Pen shivered for herself
beforehand. "And I can't have them from Timlin's, for the same reason,"
said she. "All his animals are skittish; and you remember when a pair of
them took fright and dashed away from the procession and ran straight to
the river, and there'd have been four other funerals if the schooner at
the wharf hadn't stopped the runaways. And Timlins has a way, too, of
letting white horses follow the hearse with the first mourning-coach,
and it's very bad luck, very--an ill omen; a prophecy of Death and the
Pale Horse again, you know. And I won't have them from Shust's, either,"
said Aunt Pen, "for he is simply the greatest extortioner since old
Isaac the Jew."

"Well, auntie," said Mel, forgetful of her late repentance, "I don't see
but you'll have to go with Shank's mare."

Even Aunt Pen laughed then. "Don't you really think you are going to
lose me, girls?" asked she.

"No, auntie," replied Maria. "We all think you are a hypo."

"A hypo?"

"Not a hypocrite," said Mel, "but a hypochondriac."

"I wish I were," sighed Aunt Pen; "I wish I were. I should have some
hope of myself then," said the poor inconsistent innocent. "Oh no, no; I
feel it only too well; I am going fast. You will all regret your
disbelief when I am gone;" and she lay back among her pillows. "That
reminds me," she murmured, presently. "About my monument."

"Oh, Aunt Pen, do be still," said Mel.

"No," said Aunt Pen, firmly; "it may be a disagreeable duty, but that is
all the better reason for me to bring my mind to it. And if I don't
attend to it now, it never will be attended to. I know what relatives
are. They put down a slab of slate with a skull and cross-bones
scratched on it, and think they've done their duty. Not that I mean any
reflections on you; you're all well-meaning, but you're giddy. I shall
haunt you if you do any thing of the kind! No; you may send Mr. Mason up
here this afternoon, and I will go over his designs with him. I am
going to have carved Carrara marble, set in a base of polished Scotch
granite, and the inscription is--Girls!" cried Aunt Pen, rising and
clasping her knees with unexpected energy, "I expressly forbid my age
being printed in the paper, or on the lid, or on the stone! I won't
gratify every gossip in town, that I won't! I shall take real pleasure
in baffling their curiosity. And another thing, while I am about it,
don't you ask Tom Maltby to my funeral, or let him come in, if he comes
himself, on any account whatever. I should rise in my shroud if he
approached me. Yes, I should! Tom Maltby may be all very well; I dare
say he is; and I hope I die at peace with him and all mankind, as a good
Christian should. I forgive him; yes, certainly, I forgive him; but it
doesn't follow that I need forget him; and, so long as I remember him,
the way he conducted in buying the pew over my head I can't get over,
dead or alive. And if I only do get well we shall have a reckoning that
will make his hair stand on end--that he may rely on!" And here Aunt Pen
took the fan from Maria, and moved it actively, till she remembered
herself, when she resigned it. "One thing more," she said. "Whatever
happens, Helen, don't let me be kept over Sunday. There'll certainly be
another death in the family within the year if you do. If I die on
Saturday, there's no help for it. Common decency won't let you shove me
into the ground at once, and so you will have to make up your minds for
a second summons." And Aunt Pen, contemplating the suttee of some one of
us with great philosophy, lay down and closed her eyes again. "You might
have it by torchlight on Sunday night, though," said she, half opening
them. "That would be very pretty." And then she dropped off to sleep
with such a satisfied expression of countenance that we judged her to be
welcoming in imagination the guests at her last rites herself.

Whatever the dream was, she was rudely roused from it by the wreched
little Israel, who came bounding up the stairs, and, without word or
warning, burst into the room, almost white with horror. Why Israel was
afraid I can't conjecture, but, at any rate, a permanent fright would
have been of great personal advantage to him. "Oh, ma'am! oh, miss!
dere's a pusson down stairs, a cullud woman, wid der small-pox!" he
almost whistled in his alarm.

"With the small-pox!" cried Aunt Pen, springing into the middle of the
floor, regardless of her late repose _in articulo mortis_. "Go away,
Israel! Have you been near her? Put her out immediately! How on earth
did she get there?"

"You allus telled me to let everybody in," chattered Israel.

"Put her out! put her out!" cried Aunt Pen, half dancing with
impatience.

"We can't get her out. She's right acrost der door-step. We's feared ter
tech her."

But Aunt Pen's head was out of the window, and she was shouting:
"Police! fire! murder! thieves!" possibly in the order of importance of
the four calamities, but quite as if she had a plenty of breath left;
and, for a wonder, the police came to the rescue, and directly afterward
an ambulance took the poor victim of the frightful epidemic to the
hospital. I believe it turned out to be only measles after all, though.

"Run, Israel!" screamed Aunt Pen then; "run instantly and bring home a
couple of pounds of roll-brimstone, and tell the maids to riddle the
furnace fire and make it as bright and hot as possible, and to light
fires in the parlor grates, and in the old Latrobe, and in every room
in the house, without losing a minute. We'll make this house too warm
for it!"

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