Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot

by Charles Heber Clark

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  _THE TRIALS OF MR. KEYSER, GRANGER_.

  Mr. Keyser mentioned recently that he had employed a new hired girl,and that soon after her arrival Mrs. Keyser, before starting to spendthe day with a friend, instructed the girl to whitewash the kitchenduring her absence. Upon returning, Mrs. Keyser found the jobcompleted in a very satisfactory manner. On Wednesday, Mrs. Keyseralways churns, and on the following Wednesday, when she was ready, shewent out; and finding that Mr. Keyser had already put the milk intothe churn, she began to turn, the handle. This was at eight o'clockin the morning, and she turned until ten without any signs of butterappearing. Then she called in the hired man, and he turned untildinner-time, when he knocked off with some very offensive language,addressed to the butter, which had not yet come. After dinner thehired girl took hold of the crank and turned it energetically untiltwo o'clock, when she let go with a remark which conveyed theimpression that she believed the churn to be haunted. Then Mr. Keysercame out and said he wanted to know what was the matter with thatchurn. It was a good enough churn if people only knew enough to useit. Mr. Keyser then worked the crank until half-past three, when, asthe butter had not come, he surrendered it again to the hired manbecause he had an engagement in the village. The man ground themachine to an accompaniment of frightful imprecations. Then the Keyserchildren each took a turn for half an hour, then Mrs. Keyser tried herhand; and when she was exhausted, she again enlisted the hired girl,who said her prayers while she turned. But the butter didn't come.

  When Keyser came home and found the churn still in action, he feltangry; and seizing the handle, he said he'd make the butter come if hestirred up an earthquake in doing it. Mr. Keyser effected about twohundred revolutions of the crank a minute--enough to have madeany ordinary butter come from the ends of the earth; and when theperspiration began to stream from him, and still the butter didn'tcome, he uttered one wild yell of rage and disappointment and kickedthe churn over the fence. When Mrs. Keyser went to pick it up, sheput her nose down close to the buttermilk and took a sniff. Then sheunderstood how it was. The girl had mixed the whitewash in the churnand left it there. A good, honest and intelligent servant who knowshow to churn could have found a situation at Keyser's the next day.There was a vacancy.

  Mr. Keyser during the summer made a very narrow escape from amelancholy ending. He dreamed one night that he would die on the 14thof September. So strongly was he assured of the fact that the visionwould prove true that he began at once to make preparations for hisdeparture. He got measured for a burial-suit, he drew up his will, hepicked out a nice lot in the cemetery and had it fenced in, he joinedthe church and selected six of the deacons as his pall-bearers; healso requested the choir to sing at the funeral, and he got them torun over a favorite hymn of his to see how it would sound. Then hegot Toombs, the undertaker, to knock together a burial-casket withsilver-plated handles, and cushions inside, and he instructed theundertaker to use his best hearse, and to buy sixty pairs of blackgloves, to be distributed among the mourners. He had some troubledeciding upon a tombstone. The man at the marble-yard, however, atlast sold him a beautiful one with an angel weeping over a kind of aflower-pot, with the legend, "Not lost, but gone before."

  Then he got the village newspaper to put a good obituary notice of himin type, and he told his wife that he would be gratified if she wouldcome out in the spring and plant violets upon his grave. He said itwas hard to leave her and the children, but she must try and bear upunder it. These afflictions are for our good, and when he was an angelhe would come and watch over her and keep his eye on her. He said shemight marry again if she wanted to; for although the mere thought ofit nearly broke his heart, he wished her, above all, to be happy, andto have some one to love her and protect her from the storms of therude world. Then he and Mrs. Keyser and the children cried, andKeyser, as a closing word of counsel, advised her not to plough forcorn earlier than the middle of March.

  On the night of the 13th of September there was a flood in the creek,and Keyser got up at four o'clock in the morning of the 14th andworked until night, trying to save his buildings and his woodpile. Hewas so busy that he forgot all about its being the day of his death;and as he was very tired, he went to bed early and slept soundly allnight.

  About six o'clock on the morning of the 15th there was a ring at thedoor-bell. Keyser jumped out of bed, threw up the front window andexclaimed,

  "Who's there?"

  "It's me--Toombs," said the undertaker.

  "What do you want at this time of the morning?" demanded Keyser.

  "Want?" said Toombs, not recognizing Keyser. "Why, I've brought aroundthe ice to pack Keyser in, so's he'll keep until the funeral. Thecorpse'd spoil this kind of weather if we didn't."

  Then Keyser remembered, and it made him feel angry when he thought howthe day had passed and left him still alive, and how he had made afool of himself. So he said,

  "Well, you can just skeet around home agin with that ice; the corpseis not yet dead. You're a little too anxious, it strikes me. You'renot goin' to inter me yet, if you have got everything ready. So youcan haul off and unload."

  About half-past ten that morning the deacons came around, with crapeon their hats and gloom in their faces, to carry the body to thegrave; and while they were on the front steps the marble-yard mandrove up with the flower-pot tombstone and a shovel, and stepped in toask the widow how deep she wanted the grave dug. Just then the choirarrived with the minister, and the company was assembled in theparlor, when Keyser came in from the stable, where he had been dosinga horse with patent medicine and warm "mash" for the glanders. He wassurprised, but he proceeded to explain that there had been a littlemistake, somehow. He was also pained to find that everybody seemed tobe a good deal disappointed, particularly the tombstone-man, who wentaway mad, declaring that such an old fraud ought to be buried, anyhow,dead or alive. Just as the deacons left in a huff the tailor's boyarrived with the burial-suit, and before Keyser could kick him off thesteps the paper-carrier flung into the door the _Patriot_, in whichthat obituary notice occupied a prominent place.

  Anybody who wants a good reliable tombstone that has a flower-pot andan angel on it, with an affecting inscription, can buy one of thatkind, at a sacrifice for cash, from Keyser. He thinks the bad dreammust have been caused by eating too much at supper.

  After he felt assured that he should have to remain a little longerin this troublous world, Mr. Keyser determined to effect someimprovements of his farm that he had thought of. He greatly needed aconstant supply of water, and he resolved to bore an artesian well inthe barn-yard. The boring was done with a two-inch auger fixed in theend of an iron rod, which was twisted around by a wheel worked by twomen. One day, after they had gone down a good many feet, they tried topull the rod out, but it would not come. They were afraid to use muchforce lest the auger should come off and stay in the hole, and so, asthe boring went along well enough, they concluded to keep on turning,and to trust to the force of the water, when they struck it, to drivethe loose dirt up from the hole. When they had gone down about threehundred and fifty feet, they began to think it queer that there wereno signs of water, but they bored a hundred feet farther; and oneday, just as they were beginning on another hundred, something oddhappened.

  On the day in question Keyser's boy came running into the house andtold him to come into the garden quick, for there was some kind of anextraordinary animal with a sharp nose burrowing out of the ground.Keyser concluded that it must be either a potato-bug or a grasshopperthat had been hatched in the spring, and he took out a bottle ofpoison to drop on it when it came up. When Keyser reached the spot, acouple of hundred yards from where they were boring the well, therecertainly was some kind of a creature slowly pushing its way upthrough the sod. Its nose seemed to resemble a sharp point like steel.Keyser dropped some poison on it; but it didn't appear to mind thestuff, but kept slowly creeping up from the ground. Then Keyser feltit, and was astonished to find that it felt exactly like the end of afork
-prong. He sent the boy over to call Perkins and the rest of theneighbors. Pretty soon a large crowd collected, and by this time theanimal had emerged to the extent of a couple of inches.

  A QUEER PLANT]

  Everybody was amazed to see that it looked exactly like the end of alarge auger; and two or three timid men were so scared at the idea ofsuch a thing actually growing out of the earth that they suddenlygot over the fence and left. Perkins couldn't account for it; but hesuggested that maybe somebody might have planted a gimlet there, andit had taken root and blossomed out into an auger; but he admittedthat he had never heard of such a thing before.

  The excitement increased so that the men who were boring the artesianwell knocked off and came over to see the phenomenon. It was noticedthat as soon as they stopped work the auger ceased to grow; and whenthey arrived, they looked at it for a minute, and one of them said,

  "Bill, do you recognize that auger?"

  "I think I do," said Bill.

  "Well, Bill, you go and unhitch that wheel from the other end of therod."

  Bill did so; and then the other man asked the crowd to take hold ofthe auger and pull. They did; and out came four hundred and fifty feetof iron rod. The auger had slid off to the side, turned upward andcome to the surface in Keyser's garden. Then the artesian well wasabandoned, and Keyser bought a steam-pump and began to get water fromthe river.

  Another remarkable boring experience that occurred in our neighborhooddeserves to be related here. When Butterwick bought his present place,the former owner offered, as one of the inducements to purchase, thefact that there was a superb sugar-maple tree in the garden. It was anoble tree, and Butterwick made up his mind that he would tap it someday and manufacture some sugar. However, he never did so until lastyear. Then he concluded to draw the sap and to have "a sugar-boiling."

  Mr. Butterwick's wife's uncle was staying with him, and after invitingsome friends to come and eat the sugar they got to work. They took ahuge wash-kettle down into the yard and piled some wood beneath it,and then they brought out a couple of buckets to catch the sap, andthe auger with which to bore a hole in the tree.

  Butterwick's wife's uncle said that the bucket ought to be set aboutthree feet from the tree, as the sap would spurt right out with a gooddeal of force, and it would be a pity to waste any of it.

  Then he lighted the fire, while Butterwick bored the hole about fourinches deep. When he took the auger out, the sap did not follow, butButterwick's wife's uncle said what it wanted was a little time, andso, while the folks waited, he put a fresh armful of wood on the fire.They waited half an hour; and as the sap didn't come, Butterwickconcluded that the hole was not deep enough, so he began boring again,but he bored too far, for the auger went clear through the tree andpenetrated the back of his wife's uncle, who was leaning up againstthe trunk trying to light his pipe. He jumped nearly forty feet, andthey had to mend him up with court-plaster.

  TOO MUCH OF A BORE.]

  Then he said he thought the reason the sap didn't come was that thereought to be a kind of spigot in the hole, so as to let it run offeasily. They got the wooden spigot from the vinegar-barrel in thecellar and inserted it. Then, as the sap did not come, Butterwick'swife's uncle said he thought the spigot must be jammed in so tightthat it choked the flow; and while Butterwick tried to push it out,his wife's uncle fed the fire with some kindling-wood. As the spigotcould not be budged with a hammer, Butterwick concluded to bore it outwith the auger; and meanwhile his wife's uncle stirred the fire. Then,the auger broke off short in the hole, and Butterwick had to go half amile to the hardware-store to get another one.

  Then Butterwick bored a fresh hole; and although the sap would notcome, the company did; and they examined with much interest thekettle, which was now red-hot, and which Butterwick's wife's unclewas trying to lift off the fire with the hay-fork. As the sap stillrefused to come, Butterwick went over for Keyser to ask him how tomake the exasperating tree disgorge. When he arrived, he looked at thehole, then at the spigot, then at the kettle and then at the tree.Then, turning to Butterwick with a mournful face, he said,

  "Butterwick, you have had a good deal of trouble in your life, an'it's done you good; it's made a man of you. This world is full ofsorrow, but we must bear it without grumbling. You know that, ofcourse. Consequently, now that I've some bad news to break to you, Ifeel 'sif the shock won't knock you endways, but'll be received withpatient resignation. I say I hope you won't break down an' give awayto your feelin's when I tell you that there tree is no sugar-mapleat all. Grashus! why, that's a black hickory. It is, indeed; and youmight as well bore for maple-sugar in the side of a telegraph-pole."

  Then the company went home, and Butterwick's wife's uncle said he hadan engagement with a man in Hatboro' which he must keep right off.Butterwick took the kettle up to the house; but as it was burned out,he sold it next day for fifteen cents for old iron and bought a newone for twelve dollars. He thinks now maybe it's better to buy yourmaple sugar.