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The Heels Of Her
by
“Good morning, father,” said Mr. Scolliver, approaching, and displaying a long, cheerful smile. “Got a nice roaster there?” The elder gentleman’s head turned slowly and steadily, as upon a swivel, until his eyes pointed backward; then he drew his arms out of the barrel, and finally, revolving his body till it matched his head, he deliberately mounted upon the supporting block and sat down upon the sharp edge of the barrel in the hot steam. Then he replied, “Good mornin’ Jacob. Fine mornin’.”
“A little warm in spots, I should imagine,” returned the son. “Do you find that a comfortable seat?” “Why-yes-it’s good enough for an old man,” he answered, in a slightly husky voice, and with an uneasy gesture of the legs; “don’t make much difference in this life where we set, if we’re good-does it? This world ain’t heaven, anyhow, I s’spose.”
“There I do not entirely agree with you,” rejoined the young man, composing his body upon a stump for a philosophical argument. “I don’t neither,” added the old one, absently, screwing about on the edge of the barrel and constructing a painful grimace. There was no argument, but a silence instead. Suddenly the aged party sprang off that barrel with exceeding great haste, as of one who has made up his mind to do a thing and is impatient of delay. The seat of his trousers was steaming grandly, the barrel upset, and there was a great wash of hot water, leaving a deposit of spotted pig. In life that pig had belonged to Mr. Scolliver the younger! Mr. Scolliver the younger was angry, but remembering Jefferson’s maxim, he rattled off the number ten, finishing up with “You–thief!” Then perceiving himself very angry, he began all over again and ran up to one hundred, as a monkey scampers up a ladder. As the last syllable shot from his lips he planted a dreadful blow between the old man’s eyes, with a shriek that sounded like–“You son of a sea-cook!”
Mr. Scolliver the elder went down like a stricken beef, and his son often afterward explained that if he had not counted a hundred, and so given himself time to get thoroughly mad, he did not believe he could ever have licked the old man. Mr. Hunker’s Mourner.
Strolling through Lone Mountain cemetery one day my attention was arrested by the inconsolable grief of a granite angel bewailing the loss of “Jacob Hunker, aged 67.” The attitude of utter dejection, the look of matchless misery upon that angel’s face sank into my heart like water into a sponge. I was about to offer some words of condolence when another man, similarly affected, got in before me, and laying a rather unsteady hand upon the celestial shoulder tipped back a very senile hat, and pointing to the name on the stone remarked with the most exact care and scrupulous accent: “Friend of yours, perhaps; been dead long?”
There was no reply; he continued: “Very worthy man, that Jake; knew him up in Tuolumne. Good feller-Jake.” No response: the gentleman settled his hat still farther back, and continued with a trifle less exactness of speech: “I say, young wom’n, Jake was my pard in the mines. Goo’ fell’r I ‘bserved!”
The last sentence was shot straight into the celestial ear at short range. It produced no effect. The gentleman’s patience and rhetorical vigilance were now completely exhausted. He walked round, and planting himself defiantly in front of the vicarious mourner, he stuck his hands doggedly into his pockets and delivered the following rebuke, like the desultory explosions of a bunch of damaged fire-crackers: “It wont do, old girl; ef Jake knowed how you’s treatin’ his old pard he’d jest git up and snatch you bald headed-he would! You ain’t no friend o’ his’n and you ain’t yur fur no good-you bet! Now you jest ‘sling your swag an’ bolt back to heaven, or I’m hanged ef I don’t have suthin’ worse’n horse-stealin’ to answer fur, this time.”