University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
TALK AT THE BONFIRE.

The time at which our story begins was the early
October, and the day was going down cloudless. If any
good eyes were scanning the heavens, and had known
where to look, they might perhaps have seen a faint
smoke rising from somewhere between the school buildings
and the horizon. The observer, then, if he had
gone till he came to it, would have found a group
of boys gathered about a fire, and in all sorts of attitudes,
— lying, sitting, leaning, standing, and, for the
most part, silent, as we are apt to be (even boys) in
declining day, and about a dying fire. A man in plain
working clothes, whom they addressed as “Mr. Stout,”
had just passed by, stopping to look at the state of
things, and taking, unmoved, while he stopped, a scattering
volley of teasings for leave to break up all sorts
of things for fuel.

Of course the little party had had its subjects of conversation
before this time, and just now only one — a
curly-headed, black-eyed young fellow — is speaking,
leaning on his elbow, with his chin in his hand.

“That's her goin' along West Road, now” —

“Where, Hutchins? Where?” asked several voices,
as most of the company turned and looked. He went
on: —

“In black clo'es: she brings that swell girl with her to
church, that never looks at any of the fellahs. I s'pose
her mother tells her not to. They ain't what you may
call exactly ladies. Some o' the fellahs were with Brade
t'other day when he met her, and she only jest looked
sideways at him (I don' know whether she did look at
him), and he turned all over first red, and then as pale
as a ghost. I shouldn't wonder if she was a watch over
him. They do have such things, — I've read of 'em, —
`dianas' they call 'em, — to watch over girls, and see
that they don't get married, in Spain and Italy, and all
those places. I suppose Peters can tell us how it used
to be in those times of his knights and maidens and
things he's so proud of.”

A fair-haired, large-eyed, thoughtful-looking boy, on
whom the flame into which he had been gazing shone
brightly, at the moment, looked up at this appeal, but
seemed not to think it worth while to answer, although
at first his lips parted, and a voice seemed about to
come forth.

Hutchins's story had gone on swimmingly so far, and
his conjectures would, no doubt, have been equally
successful, if one of the company — a thin, straight-nosed,
nervous-looking fellow — had not spied here a
weak spot.

“Diana was a goddess. They don't call 'em `dianas,'
I know. I forget what they do call 'em; but I know it
ain't that.” But here the rest of the company, who had
tolerated the intrusion so long as they did not know
what effect it was to have upon the substance of Hutchins's
story, now finding that the objection only touched
a very immaterial point in it, cried out to him to go on,
and never mind about the goddess Diana. Indeed, one

small fellow, who seemed to have studied to some purpose,
supported Hutchins, by saying that “the goddess
Diana did keep girls from getting married as much as
she could.”

“There, Remsen! Meadows knows,” said another,
a big and rather loutish fellow, whose hat, turned inside
out, sat on the back of his head. “Hooray for Third
Form! Hooray for the Great Middle Class!”

Then, as the young mythologist was about to follow
up his success (as even grown-up human nature will
sometimes do) with communications of learning at
greater length, the new speaker set himself against any
indulgence of this sort.

“That'll do, Meadows,” he said: “you ain't reciting
now;” and the young scholar, discomfited, resorted to
the feeding of the fire.

Hutchins, however, came to the rescue of his learned
supporter:

“Yes, Meadows has done very well. Towne, you
may go on where Meadows left off.”

And a laugh went up against Towne, who said, —

“Oh, I don't pretend to know any thing.”

Hutchins, now re-enforced by Meadows's classical contribution,
restored himself again to his own satisfaction,
and to his leadership, by saying, —

“I knoo she did something o' the sort,” but then
seemed at a loss where to begin again.

One of the company — a pretty large little fellow —
set him going once more.

“But that ain't boys. Because they have 'em for
girls, that don't show that they have 'em for boys.”

“Hooray for Villicks!” said Towne, at the expiration
of this speech.

Now Hutchins recovered the full swing of his argument.

“Why should n't they have 'em for boys jest as well
as for girls? Can't a woman watch, I should like to
know? `The Black Watch' I call her.”

“The Black Watch was an English regiment,” said
Towne, who seemed to have read something, and to
have information of some sort.

“Don't I know that?” retorted the chief speaker.
“Haven't I got the book? But if she's black, and if
she watches, ain't she a black watch?”

Having thus settled Towne, he took up his interrupted
story about Brade.

“Well, after that he turned and looked after her ever
so many times, and began to cry, too.”

This story seemed to have gained and grown in its
travels, not otherwise than as men's stories generally
gain; for the same boy who had taken exception to
the name “diana” now undertook to set Hutchins
right in other points.

“Why, I was there, and he didn't keep turning
round, and he didn't cry. He only looked queer-like.
Perhaps it wa'n't at her at all, — bashful.”

“There!” said Hutchins again, “I leave it to anybody
if Remsen ain't backing up all I said. I said she
was most likely watching him; and Remsen says he
was frightened as soon as he saw her. Where's the
difference? I shouldn't wonder but what she'd had
the charge of him before he came here. I shouldn't
think he'd had much schooling.”

“That's a likely story!” said Remsen. “He must be
a very smart fellow, indeed, if he hasn't had much
schooling, to get on the way he's got on. An' I don't

say he was frightened, — he was queer-like, jest for a
little; but he laughed and talked and played like any
person else after that.”

Tom Hutchins had no thought of giving in. Feeding
the bonfire with such sticks and bits of combustible
material as were at hand, he answered, —

“He signed his name in the big book, there, with a
kind of a tail to it, just like a y, jes 's if he was going to
write `Brady,' and then he made an e of it. Burgeon
told me, — he comes next to him. So he couldn't write
his own name very good, if that's the way. He's a
pretty educated man that can't write his own name
without blundering.”

“Much you know!” said the same thin, light-colored,
nervous fellow, who looked a little younger than the
other. He was still standing opposite, as if waiting his
chance. “He writes enough sight better'n you, Tom
Hutchins, any day. He writes better'n any fellow in
the school.”

“Don't be personal!” said the loutish young fellow
before-mentioned, and whom Hutchins had called
“Towne.”

Here several boys, — mostly pretty small, — as silent
as Indians before, broke in, —

“That's a likely story!”

“A fresh chap like that!”

“Better than Lawrence?”

“Better than Lamson?”

“Better than Mason?”

All which supplementary helps were gathered by
Tom Hutchins into one final and conclusive argument,—

“You tell that to your grand-aunt's granny, Nick
Remsen.”

It was evident from the number and eagerness of the
interrupters that the point interested a good many.

“Well, I was going to say” — began the interrupted
speaker, rather confused, as if his explanation was not
quite ready.

“You want to make out that he's goin' to take the
shine off Gaston,” said Tom Hutchins, quietly, as an
elder, to Remsen, not heeding his attempt to right
himself with the company. “Now, I tell you it won't
be one, nor two, nor three Brades that'll do that, if he
does belong to Third Form, an' a big old Dutch family
as long as your arm.”

The incongruity of this descriptive phrase of Hutchins
seemed not to strike any of the boys; for with the
young race fancy adjusts itself more easily, and is less
hampered by taste, than in grown-up people; and Remsen
accordingly took no advantage of it.

“Who said he was a big Dutch family?” said he.
“He ain't Dutch at all, but some sort of a nobleman, or
something that nobody knows any thing about.”

“That's the way with a good many o' those kind o'
fellahs, — those noblemans and counts and kings, I
guess,” said Hutchins. “Nobody knows any thing
about 'em; and the first thing you hear one of 'em's
got cotched in the paper, an' they find out he wasn't
any king and nobleman and such stuff, but a great,
long-tailed Irishman.”

Hutchins had resented the comparison of the new-comer
Brade with Gaston. He was not the only one to
rate Gaston's scholarship highly.

“I believe that fellow Gaston could pretty nearly enter
college now,” said a boy, who had a large mouth, easily
worked, and which gave him a look of drollery in saying
a very common thing.

“I guess he could enter that `Ulterior College' you're
always talking about, Blake,” said Hutchins. “What
do they ask there for admission?”

“When a fellow comes,” said Blake, “they ask him
whether he's made up his mind that he really wants a
degree, so that they can be sure he'll take it when they
give it to him. That's their examination. Then they
make him give bonds that he'll pay 'em five dollars for
his degree when he gets it.”

The boys laughed at Blake's way of saying this.

“But what do they do all the four years waiting till
it's time to take their degree?” asked Towne. “I guess
that's the college for me.”

“Well,” said Blake, “they take it as comfortably as
they can. Most o' their real work is writing petitions.
If it's a fine day, they send up a petition to the President,
— he's an old man, a hundred and fifty years old for all
I know, — and they tell him they think they should
enjoy a walk for their health; and the old gentleman
says `walking's very saluberous,' or some such word,
— he's awful good-natured, — `and he'll go with 'em;'
and so they send him back word `they're afraid they'll
walk too fast for him,' and he lets 'em go without him.”

“When 'tain't a fine day?” asked Hutchins; and
added, “How do you spell that college?”

“Ulterior;” said Blake. “I don't know how they
spell it. When 'tain't a fine day, they tell him the light
hurts their eyes. — Then he takes off a few days at the
beginning of a term, because they've just come, and a
few days at the end of a term, because they're just
going, and so” —

“Look here, old Ultimatum,” said Hutchins, “do they
use any books at that college?”

“They say they do,” said Blake; “but they give 'em
three or four days to look over a book before they go
into it, and express their sentiments.”

“That's my college!” said Towne. “They'll hear
of me there some o' these days.”

“It's the only place you ever will be heard of, I
guess,” said Blake.

If our readers, further on in life, on the upper side of
that easy slope which leads from college or young ladies'
school straight up to the heights of fame and fashion
and fortune, and all that, object to the language of our
very young friends, that it is not elegant enough or
grammatical enough for the members of a great school
of the first class, let us remind them that most boys
disencumber themselves as readily of the hindrances of
grammar and spelling-book, when they can, as of those
of dress; and that even “lady teachers,” sharp and
sudden as they may be in rebuking mistakes, and
thorough in exacting spelling and parsing and syntax
and prosody in their classes, fall back easily from art to
second nature when out of recitation. For boys, too,
beside the attraction that other people find, common
old words and queer words have a little interest and
adventure, as well as homeliness, about them. These
boys will come to good English by and by.

The conversation (like most conversations of boys
round a bonfire, at any rate) was rather rambling; but,
as nobody was in a hurry, so there were some who
kept hold of the thread of the main subject. As soon
as the laugh settled down, Remsen began treating all
that had been said for some time back as altogether a
mere side-talk, and going back, —

“I don't say but what there are impostors; but Brade

ain't one of 'em. Why, if you just barely look at him,
you can see he's a gentleman. He ain't a common
person. A common, vulgar man never has a handsome
skin, — soft, that way, like Antony Brade's got; and he
don't have handsome hair and handsome eyes, that
way.”

The late interrupters allowed all these points to go
unchallenged; and even Hutchins seemed not disposed
to argue them. He took another ground now: —

“All boys are gentlemen, ain't they?” he asked; but, as
objections were beginning of a sudden to rise from every
side, he changed the form of his expression, and limited
its generalization: “All our fellahs, I mean, of course.
What do you say, Wilkins?” he said, appealing to the
largish small boy, who was ready and waiting to speak.

Here many hands poked the pieces of wood and
brands together, and several mouths puffed up flames.

“To be sure, all Bartlemas fellows are gentlemen,” said
the boy who had been called upon, and whose features
and complexion perhaps imperfectly satisfied Remsen's
requirements; for he had a smooth skin and soft hair, if
not the very expressive eyes which made part of Remsen's
catalogue of gentlemanly qualities. “Every rich
man's son's a gentleman, ain't he?” he asked, a little
doubtfully; for, in truth, the question was a deep-going
one, and these boys were groping among the elements
of things.

“Not without you give him an education, an' make a
gentleman of him,” said Tom Hutchins; “and not always
then.”

Remsen was inclined to go further than this: —

“I know they used to say that anybody couldn't be
a gentleman if his father and grandfather wasn't one
too.”

“And the boy himself, three (Arithmetic, ain't it?)”
said Tom Hutchins. “But look here!” he added, as a
still brighter play upon Remsen's words occurred to
him: “you say the father and grandfather were one
gentleman, — that makes each of 'em a half-gentleman,
don't it? Remsen's an old Dutchman. You go back
to Adam's flood, I guess, with your family, don't you?
Rem, Shem, and Jacob, — the three patri-arks, the fellows
that made the Ark, — Rem's son, you see: that's where
Remsen came from.”

Our smaller scholar of antiquity, who has been called
Meadows, undertook to correct Hutchins's loose and
latitudinarian quotation.

“It wasn't `Rem, Shem, and Jacob,' you old Hutchins,”
he objected.

Hutchins laughed with the most absolute confidence,
and answered the objector as if he had him safely in
the palm of his hand, to be crushed or let go.

“Why wa'n't it?” he asked. “Ain't his name Remson
to this day? And after he'd been so long in the
flood, didn't his family settle in Holland, where it's
always been half under water?”

While the conversation was beginning to lag in this
way, several members of the company got upon their
feet, as if to disperse, the chief subject having been quite
forgotten, and this last poor witticism of Hutchins's
serving, like the cracker in the bottom of the Roman
candle, to scatter them.

“Let the little fellows go home,” said Blake, “because
their legs are short, and they want to start early. I
propose to see this fire out.”

The natural effect of this speech was to stop all the
younger boys who had started to go.

“My fathers and grandfathers,” said Wilkins, glad of
so large an audience, “were all gentlemen.” This he
said with much satisfaction, and with that kindliness,
and that condescension, and that easiness to be propitiated,
which mild people show who are secure in the
enjoyment of a privilege which cannot be shared by
others.

“Your father used to make real good clo'es, I know,”
said Hutchins; “but” —

“But he didn't make 'em himself: his men made
'em,” said the scion of a noble stock. “He had ever so
many men.”

Wilkins's gentility was allowed to stand where he
put it. Hutchins's attention was drawn to something
else.

“There's Brade, now, ain't it? Don't he walk like a
lordship?” he said; and a boy drew near, with one of
those gaits peculiar to childhood, — a sort of canter, —
in which that age, feeling (no thanks to Mr. Darwin) its
born sympathy with lower living beings, expresses it
often by imitation.

Instead of coming up to the ring round the fire, the
subject of Hutchins's remark turned off down the play-ground
toward the West Road.

The boys, remembering suddenly, began to ask, —

“Where's the woman in black clothes?”

While they are waiting and watching, we leave them,
to take the reader to the house of a person who is growing
interested in the mystery of our hero.