University of Virginia Library

8. VIII.
THE ADVENTURES OF CHEESY.

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 731EAF. Page 085. In-line Illustration. Image of a boy sitting on a curb with his chin in his hand.]

CHEERING, shouting and tugging at the
rope, in the flying crowd of men and
boys, whose enthusiasm he had imbibed,
Cheesy ran with the engine to the fire.
He seemed like one upon whose exertions
the safety of the town depended.
For the first time in his life, that evening,
the heroic element shone through his
character, like a lamp, newly lighted, through a transparent sign.
It transfigured his face. It was visible in his tight fustians
straddling over the pavement. It seemed bursting out of every
rent, and streaming from his hair. It twinkled in his shirt-sleeves.
It was the lightning of which his voice was the thunder.
In short, Cheesy was HIMSELF! Those noble feelings, which Mrs.
Dabney's base treatment had so long suppressed, which the daring
feats of circus-riders and occasional dog-fights in the village
had fitfully aroused, and which had been so quick to recognize
the merits of Martin's great Romance, now burst forth like the
conflagration he was rushing to put out.

At length, the engine to which he had joined himself drove into
a dense and confused mass of people. Long lines of vehicles were
stopped on either side, and the alarm that day seemed to be the

exciting cause of many profound drivers' oaths. Firemen shouted
and hurried hither and thither, and ran out long hose-pipes and
manned the brakes. The sea of spectators heaved and swayed
to and fro, as light hose-carriages dashed through them. The
great source and centre of all this excitement appearing to be in
a narrow alley, Cheesy scrambled forward, until he could look in,
and see the hose-pipes lying along the ground, like huge black
snakes. About that time, a hook-and-ladder company arrived,
and he was greatly excited on seeing them make a long ladder
out of two short ones, and raise it to the roof of a tall brick
building at the end of the alley. Two firemen mounted at once,
the first with a hatchet, the second with a hose-pipe. Having got
upon the eaves and chopped open a garret-window, out of which
rolled a small cloud of very black smoke, they shouted forth,
“Play away, Five!” and in an instant Cheesy, who happened to
be standing by the brake of the said number, received a blow
against the shoulder, which sent him sprawling into a small flood of
waste water. Without knowing very well what had happened, but
entertaining a confused idea that the town was tumbling down
about his ears, he raised himself upon his hands and knees, and
darted at an opening in the legs of the crowd, where he was
pressed, trodden upon, and knocked about, for some moments, in
a most reckless manner.

When he regained his feet, the fire was extinguished. The
firemen cried “All out!” and began to haul off the engines and
limber up the hose-pipes. The spectators echoed “All out!”
and began to disperse. The hack, truck and omnibus drivers
growled “All out!” and whipped their horses, relieving their
feelings in attempts to drive over scattered pedestrians. Cheesy
muttered “All out,” in a vacant manner, rubbing the back of his

head with a look of bewilderment, as if alluding to his brains,
and wondering if the thing which somebody was kicking towards
him, from under the feet of the crowd, was really and truly his
hat.

Cheesy picked up the article, shook the water off, stretched it
into shape, and put it on his head. This done, he cast a startled
look around him, and said, “B-y g-r-a-c-i-o-u-s!” in his deep,
coarse-grained voice, expressive of the utmost amazement.

“What 's the matter?” asked a soberly-dressed man, with a
benevolent countenance, observing his bewilderment.

“By gracious!” repeated Cheesy, continuing to stare all about
him. “I don't know where I be! I was with Mr. Mer'vale. I
left him — I swow I don' know where! Can you tell me which
way I come?”

“I 'm sorry to say I cannot,” replied the gentleman, smiling at
Cheesy's ludicrous figure. “Did you come with an engine?”

“Yes; with this 'ere one, I guess 't was,” cried Cheesy,
eagerly.

The soberly-dressed gentleman said, if that was the case, he
had no better advice to give than that he should follow the engine
when it returned.

“I will, by gracious!” exclaimed Cheesy. “And, look here;
if you see Mr. Mer'vale coming after me, I wish ye would tell
him, will ye? I want to find him, the wust way; for he 's got my
cut, and vest, and bundle.”

The gentleman laughed, made some pleasant remark about the
likelihood of his meeting and recognizing a person he never saw,
in such a place as Boston, and walked away.

Cheesy then began to make eager inquiries of the firemen, concerning
“Mr. Mer'vale,” the engine he came with, and the way

back. As he manifested a decided talent for throwing himself in
everybody's way, he received many a rude push and gruff reply,
but no satisfaction whatever on the subject which filled his anxious
mind. At length some boys began to make fun of him, tripping
him up, and pulling off his hat.

“Come!” said he, with an incensed look, “quit! le' me be! I
an't doing nothing to you, be I, — say?”

He selected the weakest boy in the crowd, gave him a terrible
frown, and drew back, holding his fist behind his hip, ready for a
blow. The boy quailed, but, somebody pushing him forward, and
promising to back him, he advanced a small defiant shoulder
towards Cheesy, told him to “hit him if he da'st,” in a feeble
voice, at the same time looking very pale.

“Who wants to hit ye?” demanded Cheesy, retiring from the
field. “You jest let me alone, that 's all I ask. Here!” to a
tall fellow, who snatched off his hat. “Give that up, — come!”

“I han't got yer hat,” laughed the tall fellow, tossing it over
Cheesy 's head. “What ye talking about?”

Cheesy turned to chase it, when, by a skilfully-managed accident,
a fireman emptied a hose-pipe over his back. A shout of
exultation arose from the spectators. But what was sport to
them was death to Cheesy. Gasping for breath, he clapped his
hands behind him on his dripping clothes, and uttered a loud
wail of exasperation and distress. The shouts increased; the
weak boy danced and cheered, and Cheesy, quite breaking down
beneath the burden of his woes, withdrew blubbering to the
wall, where he wedged his elbow into the bricks with his forehead,
and lifted up one foot in an attitude of remonstrance against
his persecutors.

At this juncture, his hat was flung at his head, and the cry was

to “let him alone.” He was afterwards permitted to go off with
his engine undisturbed; and, although still suffering a good deal
from his drenching, and from a heavy sense of his misfortunes,
he cheered up, polished his face on his sleeve, and took hold of
the rope with some spirit. The company returned leisurely, and
he had plenty of time to look about him. But the way back
seemed interminable. He was astonished to find that he had run
so far, and was also surprised to see the streets so much quieter
than when he passed through them before. The city did not
seem the same. The phenomenon occasioned him a good deal of
uneasiness; but he did not venture to ask an explanation of any
one, for fear of getting himself into trouble. All this time, he
turned his despairing eyes on every side in search of Martin, and
looked far ahead into the darkness, straining his sight, in the vain
hope of discovering some indications of his presence.

It was in a luckless hour that Cheesy put his trust in the
engine. It proved a false guide. After leading him an unknown
distance from the street he wished to find, it drew up before a
small building, the doors of which were thrown open to receive it,
and stopped. Cheesy regarded this operation with increased
alarm.

“Don't you go no fu'ther?” he asked, with trepidation, of a
strong, good-natured fireman.

“We don't go no further jest yit,” was the reply. “We think
of tyin' up here for a spell.”

Cheesy's heart sank, and his knees grew weak. He wished to
know if that was their stopping-place “for good.”

“Wal, 't is,” was the overwhelming and hope-crushing response.

In the perturbation of his soul, Cheesy could only utter incoherent
and unintelligible sentences, from which, however, the fireman

gathered that, having been betrayed and led astray by
the treacherous engine, he wished to go back somewhere and
find somebody, who was waiting for him impatiently and in great
distress.

“What ye jawin' about?” asked the fireman. “Where is it
ye want to go? Who is 't ye want to find? Speak out, if ye
want anything of me!”

Inspired with confidence, Cheesy made a second attempt, and
expressed himself more clearly. Then he learned that the engine
had come home by a circuitous route, to avoid a hill; and that, if
he wished to find the spot where he joined it, he must pass around
the second corner, take the first turn to the left, the third to the
right, another to the left, and keep on past the church, straight
ahead, with his eyes peeled, until he discovered the place. Possessed
of this clear and unmistakable information, Cheesy set out
in wild haste, repeating the directions aloud as he ran along the
street. But, as might have been expected, he was scarcely out
of sight of the engine-house when he began to transpose and
jumble together the right turns and left turns, the corners and the
churches, confusedly.

“Fust turn to the right,” he muttered, breathlessly; “third
turn to left; another to the right, — no, another to the left,
then keep on to the second church on the corner, — no — to the
church on the second corner, — that 's it. Now, le' me see: fust
turn to right, second turn to left, pass the third church on the
corner, — Darn it!” exclaimed Cheesy, getting perplexed,
“I forgit! No, I don't, nuther! Second turn to left, fust turn
to right, pass the church —” and so forth, and so forth.

Persevering in this certain method of keeping the directions in
mind, Cheesy went on, until, making his second turn to the right,

he discovered that it took him into a court, where his career was
terminated by a lamp-post, door-steps, and a house set, as he afterwards
expressed it, “right acrost the road.” Then, in perfect despair,
he made use of the steps to sit down upon, and burst into an
uncontrollable fit of weeping, calling himself a fool, and reddening
his nose with the friction of his sleeve. In his utter woe, he
would have given his interest in Martin's Romance, sacrificed his
hopes of a clerkship, and risked the peril of death at his step-mother's
hands, could he have crept quietly and humbly into his
mean little chamber at home, and lain down upon his forsaken
bed, never, never, never to leave his native village more.

He sat there sobbing and shivering, and grinding his eyes with
his wrists, until a ruddy hope rose like a full moon upon the night
of his despair. He thought of his Uncle Jesse, his father's Boston
brother, and blamed himself for not having gone in search of
him before, instead of worrying childishly about his lost companion.
He wiped his face, got off the door-step, and looked
around him. Seeing some persons passing on the walk near the
head of the court, he approached them, and, accosting the first he
met, who happened to be a short Irishman, smoking a short pipe,
inquired for his Uncle Jesse.

“Uncle Jesse!” repeated the Irishman. “And who is Uncle
Jesse?”

“My Uncle Jesse,” replied Cheesy, disgusted with the man's
stupidity. “Whose uncle d' ye s'pose?”

“Your Uncle Jesse, is it?” exclaimed the other.

“You don't know him?”

“Who said I did n't? I war'nt I know him as well as he
knows me, and perhaps betther. Jist tell me what his name is,
besides Uncle Jesse.”

“Dabney, of course!” replied Cheesy, impatiently.

“Yes, to be sure!” said the Irishman, puffing out a cloud of
smoke with great self-complacency. “Dabney 's the man. Sure
and I think he used to be a good frind of mine, and a fine fellow
he is too. I remimber me very well now, his name was Jesse.”

Cheesy brightened, and began to feel very friendly towards
the smoking Irishman.

“You know where he lives, then?”

“Who said I did? 'T is n't ivery man knows that, to be sure.
I belave it 's in Hanover-sthreet, though. What 'd ye say his
name was?”

“Dab-ney!” exclaimed the boy, growing impatient again.

“Inquire as you go along,” answered his smoking friend, coolly.
“Most any one can tell ye all aboot him. I belave it 's in Hanover-sthreet;
if 't is n't there, it 's somewhere else, but I 'm forgetting
intirely.”

Strongly suspicious of the Irishman's candor, Cheesy gave him
a doubtful look, and limped with his sore feet out of the court.
Then commenced the most perplexing, unsatisfactory and wearisome
series of investigations of which it is possible to conceive.
The boy could meet with no one who knew anything about his
uncle; and an hour later, giving up the search in despair, he lay
down upon another door-step, with the intention of remaining
there until morning.

But inexorable fate pursued Cheesy, in the shape of a watchman,
who roused him up, shook a little life into him, and asked
him where he belonged. Cheesy blubbered forth the story of his
woes, and was straightway marched off to the watch-house.

“Any time when you think you 've cried enough,” growled his

guide, on the way, “put in the stopple and hold up. What 's the
matter with your shirt? Has it been wet?”

“They played the ingine on to me!” sobbed Cheesy.

The watchman, although harsh and unfeeling in his manner,
cheered the boy with the promise of a warm berth and a secure
apartment, which he could enjoy until morning. Cheesy was so
much affected by this kindness, that he could not refrain from
tears. But, on entering the watch-house, he began to doubt the
benevolence of his friend's motives. He was shown into a plain,
naked sort of a room, where a tall, large man, who was called
“Captain,” received him pleasantly, and demanded if he had any
weapons about him.

“Han't got nothing,” murmured Cheesy.

“Empty your pockets, and let 's see,” observed the large
gentleman.

Snivelling pitifully, the boy slowly and reluctantly put his
hands in his pockets, and took out a butternut and shingle-nail.

“Come, that an't all, — empty!” cried the captain.

Cheesy hauled out a piece of chalk, a tin whistle, a brass button,
three or four jack-stones and a pop-gun. He displayed these
valuables with a doleful face, observing that he guessed that was
about all. Not satisfied, however, the large captain undertook
to insert his large hand in one of the pockets, splitting the stitches
without mercy.

“Let 's have that knife,” said he, sternly.

“The knife? Did n't I give it to you?” drawled Cheesy. “O,
here it is,” said he, with a lugubrious look, surrendering Martin's
present.

The captain pocketed the weapon, and, having returned to the
boy all the other articles, pushed him rudely before him down a

flight of stairs. He carried a bunch of keys, the jingling of which
inspired Cheesy with distrust.

“You an't going to lock me up, be ye?” he asked, with an
appealing look, on finding himself in a narrow hall before a row
of cells.

The captain replied by throwing open a cell-door with a clanging
sound. Cheesy walked in dejectedly, and the key was turned
in the lock. Then, with a feeling of utter desolation, he looked
through the grating of the door, and saw the captain ascend the
stairs; after which, creeping into the bunk, he wrapped a blanket
around him, made a pillow of his arm, and cried himself to sleep.

Strange dreams visited Cheesy that night. The events of the
day shifted and ran into each other, in his vision, like dissolving
views. Again he was lost in the great city. He sat down on a
door-step to bemoan his fate, when suddenly Mrs. Dabney darted
out upon him, and drove him over into the cow-pasture. The cow
turned into a fire-engine, and played upon him; and the pasture
swarmed with men and boys, who kicked a toad-stool about from
one to the other, and tossed it over his head. The toad-stool
appeared at first to be his hat; then it was a squirrel which he
was chasing along the fences, while Martin and Caleb Thorne
were resting with blind Alice under the shade of a road-side tree.
Seeing his persecutors again, who now came in the form of a flock
of hissing geese, he jumped over the fence, and met his Uncle Jesse,
who was on his way to Bagdad, with a bundle on his shoulder.
Suddenly Uncle Jesse changed to a watchman, with a short pipe in
his mouth; who, having locked Cheesy up in a school-house, swallowed
the key, which proved to be a wedge of gingerbread, and
instantly became a hose-carriage, with a calf's head, and a tail
which went up through the roof like a stove-pipe. Finally Cheesy

seemed to be lying on his own bed at home, while his step-mother
stood by and shook him.

The shaking was real, and Cheesy awoke. Startled at finding
himself in a strange place, he uttered a hoarse cry. But gradually
a recollection of the watch-house dawned upon his mind. It
was a watchman who was shaking him up; and, looking in the
face of a third person, who was reeling into the cell, he recognized
his friend and fellow-traveller, Caleb Thorne.