“‘My dear madam,’” read the doctor, “‘I simply wished to propose to you that you gave me a lunch before dinner so I could catch the train, as I am obliged to be out of town for a day. But as it is, I have gone without it, so don’t trouble yourself.’”
A hushed silence pervaded the room, during which the doctor was afraid to look at the landlady, and Tom was afraid to look at the doctor.
At length the former remarked quietly as he fitted his napkin into its pewter ring, “There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.”
“An’ there’s as good fish in the sea as was ever pulled out’n it,” quoted our landlady bitterly.
“For my part,” said Tom to the doctor, as he closed the front door behind them, “if the colonel ever tries to put on any more airs, I shall just call him ‘the Landlord!”‘
“Men,” remarked Mrs. Bilkins, as she walked into the kitchen and kicked the cat for eating the soup, “men is all deceivers, an’ alius was. I won’t git a husband — not jest now — but I’ll get them nine weeks board if it takes a leg!”
She Tells Why Farmers Should be Happy and Displays Remarkable Forethought
5 April 1890
“Yes,” said our landlady, as she buttered the toast with a strange compound she scraped from an old teacup, “yes, it’s a splendid mornin’, an’ one that reminds me of my childhood’s days.”
“I have heard,” said the doctor, tapping his boiled egg with his knife, “that in the beginning of the present century the weather was very delightful.”
Our landlady looked puzzled, and glanced at the colonel, but the colonel’s eyes sought his plate. He has been very quiet since his adventure of last week.
“The farmers,” continued Mrs. Bilkins, “is in splendid spirits. They say the ground is as damp as an infant and will plow like new cheese. An’ old Wiggins he perdicts a flood in the Jim river valley, an’ every farmer in the land is happy, from Jena Jewell to ole Hick inbotham, for they expects a big crop — anything wrong wi’ that egg, doctor?”
“Chickens,” remarked the doctor, meekly, pushing aside his egg-cup, “should be broiled for breakfast — not boiled in the shell; and permit me to state that I consider it wicked to cook so young a fowl at all.”
“Dear me,” exclaimed our landlady, “what a fraud them grocers is, and so near Yeaster, too! Try another — do!”
But the doctor took a mature doughnut instead, one that he was well enough acquainted with to believe it entitled to vote under the universal suffrage bill.
“It’s all very well for the farmers to feel good,” said Tom, “but where are they going to get the seed to sow?”
“Pshaw!” replied Mrs. Bilkins, “that don’t worry ‘em. Ain’t they got ole man Alley to look out fer ‘em? Why, my cousin Jim were jest the destitutest man in Brown county, an’ now he goes about grinnin’ like Fred Wallace, he’s so happy. He went to Alley, as is pullin’ the strings down ter Bagley’s elevator, an’ he says, ‘C’mish’,’ says he, ‘I’ll take them 75 bushel o’ wheat as is cornin’ to me.’ An’ the C’mish’ had him sign a paper swearin’ to everything excep’ that his soul were his own, an’ gin him the 75 bushel. An’ then he goes to a private grain dealer, an’ mortgages his stock fer another seventy-five bushel, an’ then he goes to the bank and mortgages his farm fer enough money to buy a team o’ horses, an’ then he hired a boy fer his board to do his plowin’; an’ now he’s all fixed, an’ is hangin’ around the Senate waitin’ fer a machine man ter sell him a new harvester, a threshin’ machine, a hay baler an’ a stump puller on time an’ take his notes fer security. Oh, my cousin Jim is a reglar Dakota farmer, an’ don’t you fergit it!”
“He is a Jim dandy,” said the doctor, gravely.
“But what will he do when his notes come due?” asked Tom.
“Do? why give ‘em all the wheat he’s got an’ put a new mortgage on his stock fer the balance an’ a new mortgage on his farm fer enough to see him through the winter. What do s’pose he’ll do?”
“And how long can he keep this up?”
“Well, he’s been a farmer here fer seven year, an’ he’s better off today than he ever were. The fust year he got in debt he worried so his wife hed to lock up the razor an’ the ‘rough on agents, but now he lets the agents an’ the banks worry, an’ he lives happy an’ contented.”
“The banks,” remarked the doctor, “own half the farms in the State.”
“Mebbe they do,” replied Mrs. Bilkins, “but they can’t work ‘em, an’ so they let the farmers raise the crops for ‘em. It ain’t the farmers as is worryin’ about the crops, it’s them as holds the mortgages. But termorrer’s Yeaster, ye know, an’ I’d like to know as how you gentlemen’d like yer eggs cooked.”
“I,” said Tom, “will have a few boiled, a few fried, and a few roasted on the coals.”
“An omelet,” said the colonel, “will do for me.”
“If they are fresh,” the doctor replied, remembering his late encounter, “I’ll have mine’ scrambled, dropped on toast, and frizzled.”
“Oh, they’re fresh,” declared our landlady.
But when they had gone down town she repaired to the attic and drew out an old box apparently filled with salt, but from which she fished enough soiled looking eggs to fill her apron.
“Some of’em ratdes a mite,” she said, holding one to her ear, “but I guess they’ll do. Them boarders thinks as they can bust this establishment jest because it’s Yeaster, but I remembered Yeaster day last Summer, when eggs was six cents a dozen, an’ there won’t be any bust on my plate — not if I knows it!”
She Aspires to Rival Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Concocts Another Scheme
12 April 1890
“Yes,” said our landlady, “times has been pretty lively this week, an’ all because o’ this political business. But it’s all turned out pretty well.”
“How’s that?” asked the doctor, as he scraped the lard off his toast and carefully buttered it.
“Why, you see the witty man is feelin’ kind o’ moody, and the man as was wilder than he was is tamed down a bit, an’ the moody man is a feelin’ quite witty an’ comfortable, so you see it’s all turned out for the best.”
“You seem to have sifted the matter pretty thoroughly,” said Tom.
“Not I,” replied the landlady, after extracting her false teeth, and wiping them on her apron, “I have too much to do siftin’ my ashes an’ flour to tackle anything else, but at politics I won’t take a back seat for anybody. Them boobies that want to run things themselves says as a woman ain’t got no head for politics, but I know different. Now I’ve jest writ a political dockyment that I think will most paralize that air People’s Ticket o’ theirs, an’ I’d like to have you gentlemen read it an’ see if it would’nt win more votes than Cholly Howard will for alderman.”
“Why, it’s poetry,” exclaimed the doctor. Our landlady blushed, and the doctor passed it over to the colonel.
“Poetry,” said the latter, “was never my forte. Here Tom, read it.”
The landlady tittered and became so confused that she put salt into the colonel’s second cup of coffee instead of sugar. “Listen,” said Tom, and read as follows:
Hurrah, hurrah! the time is nigh
When every honest voter
Can lift his bugle voice on high
An’ praise artesian water!
The saloonists they has got to go —
The boodlers too is beaten.
They’re punkins that has rotted so
They ain’t fit ter be eaten!
Poor Major How can advertise
“A closin’ out sale” on the square.
He’ll go to England,
and surprise His rich relations there.
We won’t be taxed more than we’re worth
To pay for water mains
That’s buried in the frozen earth
And irrigate our lanes.
On Tuesday how the Dems. will holler
<
br /> When their defeat they learns,
An’ Moody’s took ‘em by the collar
An’ gently kicked their Stearns!
“Very good, very good!” cried the doctor, “I didn’t think it was in you, Mrs. Bilkins.”
“Oh, it were,” said our landlady modestly. “It came out kinder by jerks, but it’s out, an’ I expect it’ll have its influence on the ‘lection.”
“It can’t fail to,” said the colonel, gravely, “and I’m glad to find you are a good republican.”
“Oh, as for that,” replied Mrs. Bilkins, “I’m like Clarence Becker, an’ looks to see which side my bread is buttered on. An’ as I ain’t no fool, it’s buttered pretty thick for Bob Moody, an’ that’s a fact. — But what’s the matter, colonel?”
“I don’t know,” replied the veteran, in a voice whose calmness contradicted the uneasy look upon his face, “I simply reached out my leg under the table, and I’m afraid — I’ve put my foot in something.”
Mrs. Bilkins looked startled.
“Dear me!” she said, “what can it be?”
The colonel slowly swung around in his chair and lifted his right leg above the level of the table. At its extremity was a lady’s bandbox, and the colonel’s foot was completely hidden in its interior.
Our landlady gave one look and a scream and decided to faint — but she changed her mind instantly, and seizing her precious band-box she jerked it from the colonel’s boot and burst into a flood of tears.
Now nothing breaks the colonel up so much as a woman’s tears, but experience is a dear teacher, and he dared not comfort her. He simply thrust his hands deeply into his trousers pockets and whistled.
The doctor was more gallant; he removed the cover of the wrecked band-box and withdrew the remains of Mrs. Bilkins’ last pride and glory — her Easter bonnet!
“I declare!” said Tom sympathetically, “it’s too awfully bad.”
“But how did it come there?” asked the doctor.
“What is it?” demanded the colonel, beginning to be frightened.
“What is it, you brute?” sobbed Mrs. Bilkins, in terrible anger, “why it’s my Spring bonnet, as I bought of Miss McDonald only the Saturday ‘afore Yeaster, an’ everybody said as it were the prettiest hat in the whole town, yes, an’ the cheapest, too, an’ I put jest two week’s board inter it an’ now the colonel’s put his foot inter it an’ it’s busted wuss nor the Peoples’ ticket!” and she sobbed again, and wiped her eyes on the doctor’s napkin. And the colonel heaved a deep sea sigh and drew two shining gold pieces from his pocket and laid them on the table.
Silently the boarders withdrew and left our landlady alone with her sorrow.
But when they were gone she ceased crying and pocketed the gold pieces with a grim smile.
“The Kernel, he’ll make more’n that on ‘lection day,” she said, “an’ it’s only right to make him divide. But lor’ bless the fool! the bonnet ain’t hurt much. Miss McDonald said as it would stand no end o’ bangin’, an’ after I’ve had the feather dressed an’ the ribbons pressed a-bit it’ll look as good as new. Of course when I put it there I hoped the doctor’d be the one to step in it, ‘cause he’s so soft-hearted. But the scheme turned out pretty well as it was. A woman,” she continued, as she gathered up the bits of butter from the various plates and smoothed it all in shape again in the butter dish, “a woman has no business to keep boarders unless she understands human nature, — an’ I jest flatter myself as Mrs. Bilkins does!”
She Lectures the Boarders for Unseemly Conduct and Feeds Them a Green Apple Pie
19 April 1890
“Well, yes,” said our landlady, “we’re gettin’ settled down to work agin. But I never did see such highfalutin’ doin’s as you boarders indulged in last Tuesday night. Now that you’re sober minded agin, I might as well tell the truth.”
“I’m sure, Mrs. Bilkins,” exclaimed the doctor, “that I behaved myself with the utmost propriety. I was quiet as a mouse.”
“Quieter,” said our landlady, with sarcastic emphasis. “When Cholly Wright brought you home in a hack at midnight, with your feet stickin’ out of one winder an’ a new broom outer the other, you couldn’t wiggle. It wasn’t till the next mornin’ as you told me about the glorious victory, an’ how Frank Brown hired you to celebrate for him because Frank Hagerty wouldn’t let him celebrate for hisself; an’ how you shook han’s with Cholly Howard so many times that the las’ thing you remembered was Cholly leanin’ agin’ a telegraph pole and bobbin’ his arm up and down like it was a pump handle — although he was the only pusson within two blocks; an’ how you had the foresight to buy me a new broom to pay me for pullin’ off your boots an’ puttin’ of you to bed.”
“Very true,” assented the docter, boldly; but he blushed furiously, and ate a piece of Mrs. Bilkins’ com-starch cake without a grimace.
“Bosh!” exclaimed our landlady: “I ain’t no fool, doctor. But I don’t complain, because I raked in three new brooms that night. You see while I were a puttin’ you to bed I heard a strange noise, so I goes inter the Kernel’s room and finds a new broom tucked up in the Kernel’s bed. I didn’t know what to make of it then, but when I went down into the kitchen I found the Kernel leanin’ up behind the kitchen door. ‘Who are you?’ says I. ‘Hush,’ says he, ‘I’m the new broom, but don’t make a noise or else you’ll wake the gallant Kernel, as is upstairs abed an’ fast asleep!’ So I had ter get him to bed. An’ just as I were a comin’ down stairs I heard a sorter scratchin’ on the front door. An’ so I opened it and Tom fell inter the hall an’ another new broom hit me right over the nose.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bilkins,” said Tom, “but you must excuse me. It only happens once in a lifetime.”
“Very true,” replied our landlady, “an’ I don’t bare no grudge, for it’s the fust time I ever knew one o’ you to touch the firewater, but it strikes me that it were a queer way to celebrate the ‘lection of a law and order administration.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Tom, “Charlie Howard — ”
“I don’t care nothin”bout Cholly Howard,” interrupted the landlady, severely, “an’ if Bob Moody’s ever elected agin I’ll make you all sign the temperance pledge before ‘lection or else I’ll close this here boardin’ house ‘til further notis. You ain’t eatin’, Kernel — try them turnips.”
“No thank you,” said the colonel, “I’m too happy to eat.”
“Humph!” rejoined Mrs. Bilkins, “I don’t see as my grocery bills is any less since ‘lection. But I know some folks as ain’t happy, although when I met the Majah today he were wearin’ a sickly smile on his face an’ a grease spot on his vest. ‘Grin an’ barrett, Majah,’ says I. ‘I’m a doin’ it,’ says he. An’ he toddled away like an old man with the rheumatiz. I was almost sorry for him, for some folks do say as he’s in his second childhood. Green apple pie, doctor?”
“If you please.”
“Just see how the times has improved under republican rule. Why, Thompson & Kearney has reduced their tea to twenty cents a pound, there’s eleven buildin’s goin’ to be built right away; the News has come out for republican principles, and it’s reported as Narregang set up the cigars to a man as he had just sold a dime’s worth of ipecac to for forty cents. The Fair man is sellin’ three postage stamps fer five cents, the saloons is bein’ turned into shoe-shops, an’ Taubman has took two drinks o’ water. Anything wrong with that pie, doctor?”
“Nothing especial,” he replied, meekly, “except that perhaps the under crust is a little burned, and the upper one a little too raw, and you forgot to take the string out of the dried apples you stuffed it with. But it don’t matter.”
“Some boarders,” soliloquized our landlady a half hour later, as she cleared away the dishes, “is too particular for anything. But when women has their rights the men can keep the boardin’ houses, an’ we’ll see then who is the biggest kickers. But it don’t matter, as the doctor says, for after a
ll, Moody is elected, an’ I b’lieve my poetry had suthin’ to do with electin’ of him!”
Her Experiences in Attempting to Photograph a Baby, and the Severe Mental Strain that Ensued
26 April 1890
“Tell you what, gen’lmen,” said our landlady, as she leaned over to turn the doctor’s coffee and dropped a tea-leaf off her front hair into the cup, “I’m just about tuckered out, an’ there ain’t no more starch in my back-bone than there air in a dish rag.”
“Why, when I saw you down town this morning,” said Taub, fishing a tack out of the prunes, “I thought you looked remarkably fresh.”
“So I might, this mornin’,” acknowledged our landlady, sadly, “but that ain’t now. You see my niece ‘Raldy come to town this mornin’ an’ brought her baby, because she said the weather were so croptious that she wanted his pictur’ took. So she helped me git the breakfast dishes out of the way, an’ then we dressed the baby in his best duds an’ took him down to the pictur’-taker to be tooked.”
“I sympathize with the child,” remarked the doctor, sadly, as he eyed the dark lumps in the mashed potatoes.
“Well, you won’t,” snapped our landlady, “when you’ve heerd all my story. Well, we got him to the gallery, an’ washed his face, an’ smoothed his gownd, an’ brushed his hair — which is only a little red fizz — an’ the fust thing we knew he begun to cry. An’ jest then the pictur’-taker he yells ‘fetch him along,’ an’ we fetched him along a bawlin’ like a hired girl for the water-man when he’s a half a mile away.
“‘Now, then,’ says the pictur’-taker, ‘stop his yellin’.’
“‘That’s werry easy to say,’ says I, kind o’ riled by all the noise, ‘but it ain’t so easy ter be did!’ Nor was it. A little thing will set a baby a cryin’ but a yoke o’ oxen won’t stop him if he wants ter howl it out. We shooed him, an’ cuddled him, an’ tossed him in our arms, but he would yell. We couldn’t stop him short o’ chokin’ the brat, an’ it weren’t wuth while ter do that. An’jest then Taub he comes in ter have his pictur’ took ‘afore he begins ter git thin on artesian water, an’ he says, ‘I’ll quiet the baby,’ says he. So he took him on his knee an’ says ‘there, there!’ to him about fifty times, an’ the more he says ‘there’ the more the little cuss yelled. An’ Taub he said he had a engagement an’ he went away. An’ then Hiram Pratt he comed in wi’ a draft, an’ the pictur’-taker hed business on a suddent in another room an’ Hiram he says ‘I know what’ll stop his yellin’,’ says he, so he got down before him an’ sung: ‘A Grasshopper sat on a sweet pertater bush!’
Complete Works of L. Frank Baum Page 801
