Complete Works of L. Frank Baum

by L. Frank Baum

  Jest fifteen minits o’ hell.’”

  She Prepares a Treat for the Boarders Which Leads to a Strange Comedy of Errors

  21 June 1890

  “Yes,” said our landlady, as she picked a fly out of the cream jug and fed it to the cat, “this is a great country an’ no mistake. There ain’t nothin’ on earth as we don’t have.”

  “Except beer,” quoth the colonel, sotto voce.

  “Yes, an’ religion!” replied Mrs. Bilkins, catching the remark, “but most things you can count on findin’ right here in Dakota. For instance, what do you think is on that dish?”

  “I should judge,” replied the doctor, as he eyed the dish critically, “that they were fried door-knobs.”

  “No,” said Tom, “they look more like fricasseed over-coat buttons.”

  “Or broiled butter plates,” hazarded the colonel.

  “All wrong, gen’lmen,” declared our landlady, much gratified, “them’s mushrooms, an’ growd in our own door yard! I don’t blame you for not knowin”em, for they’re a skeerce luxury in these here settlements.”

  “I suppose the rain brought them up,” remarked the colonel, taking one upon his plate.

  “Yes, Ike Fin he brung the rain, an’ the rain brung the mushrooms. But that ain’t all the rain did. I tell ye, it were a corker an’ no mistake. An’ the mos’ dredfol part of it were its cornin’ in the night. It seemed a pity to have poor Harvey Jewett pumpin’ water out o’ his cellar all night, an’ stoppin’ every two minutes to yell ‘dam that Fin!’ instead of tryin’ to dam the water. An’ the boys say the water run inter Al. Ward’s milk an’ filled the cellar o’the National Bank so full that it a’most watered the stock. An’ Cap. Hauser he’d forgot ter git his cow in, so he wadded out in the pasture with his pants rolled up ter the knees, an’ the rain cornin’ down as thick as the subscription papers is on the merchants; an’ Cap. he got hold o’ the stake pin an’ says he, ‘so boss!’ an’ tried to pull it up, an’jest then his foot slipped an’ he took a bath for the fust time in years in water that didn’t cost a quarter a barrel. But some neighbors dug the mud out o’ his eyes and ears an’ saved him the expense o’ a funeral. An’ the next mornin’ Miss Felch’s hired gal she made a raft out o’ a barn door an’ poled out to the wood pile to get enough wood to light the fire. Them are tall yarns fer a drouth struck country, but they’re kerrect, an’ you can bet on it.”

  “The farmers must be glad of the rain,” remarked Tom, with his mouth foil of mushrooms.

  “Yes, but they still croak. The latest story is that the wheat all caught cold because o’ the damp weather, an’ has sore throats; an’ they say Higginbottom bought a cord o’ pills from Doc. Fowler to try an’ cure ‘em. But o’ course —

  Hey! What’s wrong, colonel?”

  The boarders looked at the veteran and sprang to their feet in terror. His eyes rolled upward, his mouth was wide open, his tongue hung out, and his hands clutched wildly at the air before him!

  “Oh Lor!” screamed our landlady, “my poor dear kernul! — what is it?” The sufferer made an effort and gasped, “I’m poisoned!”

  “Pizened!” shrieked Mrs. Bilkins, “how?”

  The colonel pointed to the mushroom dish.

  “Those,” said he, “are toadstools!” and relapsed again into contortions. Tom and the doctor grew visibly pale, while Mrs. Bilkins burst into tears and cried “Oh, what shall we do?”

  “Brandy!” gasped the colonel.

  Our landlady flew out of the room and presently rushed in with a large black bottle which the colonel clutched fiercely.

  Tom caught a wink from the corner of the veteran’s left eye and immediately came down with convulsions. The doctor looked puzzled for a moment, but as the brandy disappeared between the two sufferers like bargains at a quarter-off sale he too showed symptoms of poisoning and was only able to seize the antidote in time to consume the last drop.

  “Tell you what,” remarked the colonel, as the boarders walked down the street shortly afterward quietly puffing their cigars, “I’ve long suspected that Mrs. Bilkins kept a bottle for emergencies, and I thought I’d see if I couldn’t get her to treat. Those were mushrooms all right, but it was a clever scheme.”

  “It was,” agreed Tom.

  “And it worked beautifully,” said the doctor.

  At that moment Mrs. Bilkins was eyeing ruefully her empty bottle.

  “O’ course,” she soliloquized, “I knew mighty well that them was toad-stools, but I didn’t think they’d poison nobody, an’ I wanted to make ‘em believe as this was a great country. But there’s no fool like a old fool, and I’ve lost a pint o’ Jim Ringrose’s pride. No — ” she continued, as she picked up the bottle, “I hain’t neither! I was so flustered that I guv ‘em the vinegar bitters! But it cured’ em jest the same, an’ if I don’t write a recommend for that ‘air medicine, my name ain’t Maria Bilkins!”

  She Announces Her Birthday and Makes an Even Exchange With the Boarders

  28 June 1890

  “Today,” murmured our landlady, as she rolled out the dough for the fried cakes and cut them out with a teacup and made a little hole in the middle with her brass thimble to save the dough; “today is the university o’ my birth.”

  “What’s that?” asked the doctor, looking up dreamily from his paper.

  “She means her birthday,” explained Tom, who was tying the cat by the tail to the tea-kettle.

  “Oh,” remarked the colonel, looking uneasy.

  “I well remember,” continued Mrs. Bilkins, wiping her eye absent-mindedly with the back of her hand, and leaving a white ring of flour around it, “my birthday last year. You all made me such pritty presents!”

  Tom and the doctor exchanged glances of alarm and the colonel rattled a few loose coins in his pocket and sighed as he replied, “Yes, and you gave us a delicious supper in return.”

  “So I did,” replied our landlady, blushing with pleasure and the heat of the cook stove. “I remember it well. There were strawberry short-cake an’ a watermillion an’ a cherry pie an’ lots o’ other delicates. Now, gen’lmen, how old do you s’pose I am today?”

  “About sixty,” replied Tom, with a grin.

  “Wrong!” replied Mrs. Bilkins, with a frown, and she threw the dough so viciously into the hot lard that it spattered onto the cat.

  That usually mild creature gave an unfeline howl of anguish and sprang from the table, while the empty teakettle being attached to her extremity flew into Mrs. Bilkins’ face, the bottom blacking her other eye, while our landlady started back with a scream of dismay and fell into Tom’s lap, whence they rolled upon the floor together.

  As the cat made for the door she passed under the chair the doctor had tilted back against the wall, and the teakettle striking the legs with full force brought the learned physician down on top of the others, where he became entangled in Mrs. Bilkins’ hoops and yelled “fire!” at the top of his voice.

  The colonel laid down his paper and came to the rescue. He took the doctor’s hands out of our landlady’s wig and Tom’s head out of the flour barrel and stood each upon his feet, while Mrs. Bilkins picked her upper teeth out of the oven and put herself generally to rights.

  “This,” said the colonel, sternly, to the originator of all the trouble, “comes from playing boyish tricks with cats.”

  “And also,” added Mrs. Bilkins, “from slandering a woman’s age!”

  “Quite true,” replied the culprit, “I knew she was only fifty.”

  “Fifty!” replied the doctor, scornfully, “she isn’t forty yet!”

  Our landlady smiled through all her troubles.

  “Gendemen,” said the colonel, “I happen to know that you are doing Mrs. Bilkins an injustice. I seldom fail to guess one’s age correctly, and I put down her age at just thirty-four.”

  Our landlady actually beamed upon him.

  “You shall have that short-cake, colonel,” she whispered, “if berries are 20cts
a quart!”

  The veteran walked away with a grim smile.

  “I have saved a dollar on her present by that speech,” he reflected.

  “A little while ago,” said our landlady to the others, as she again kneaded the dough industriously, “we was talkin’ of presents.”

  “Yes, I remember,” replied the doctor, ruefully.

  “We took the hint,” declared Tom.

  “What hint?” said Mrs. Bilkins, innocently, “I was only goin’ to say as I must send Doc. Fowler a present, for I hear he’s goin’ to be married.”

  “Nonsense!” replied Tom, “he’s only going to stand up with the groom.”

  “Oh, is that all? Well, I guess I’ll give him the present, anyway, for it’s probably the nearest he’ll ever come to bein’ married hisself. An’ it ain’t right for us to forget our friends, for it’s these little offerin’s that make us realize that it’s better to live than to be buried by a eight dollar undertaker.”

  “Mrs. Bilkins,” said the doctor, admiringly, as he lit his cigar and started for town, “you’d make a good enough orator to edit a daily paper. Good-bye — I won’t forget you are thirty-two today.”

  “Perhaps,” ruminated our landlady, as left to herself she picked her favorite piece of gum from where it was stuck on the under side of the cake basket, “I might ha’ give it to ‘em a little too hard. It ain’t that I wanted the presents so much, for I’ll give ‘em a big supper to make up for it; but when a lady gits to be my age a birthday is a important event, an’ I don’t mean to be treated with disrespec’ by my own boarders — that ain’t my style!”

  She Celebrates the Fourth and Relates Her Varied Experiences

  5 July 1890

  “It’s lucky for me,” said our landlady, as she staggered in from the kitchen with the bread plate, “that the Pilgrim fathers didn’t make a declaration o’ independence every day, for if we had to celebrate many of ‘em, I wouldn’t have no time to keep boardin’ house.”

  “Did you participate in the festivities yesterday?” asked the colonel, politely. “Participate?” replied Mrs. Bilkins, “well I should smile! Who didn’t? But them injines spiled all o’ my enjyment. Jest when the bands were playin’ the beautifulest, I’d think o’ them custard pies in the back kitchen and wonder if some injine warn’t pryin’ up the winder an’ stealing ‘em fer his squaws, an’ that brought my heart up inter my throat. An’ then when the procession comed along, every gal around me fell in love with the marshal o’ the day, ‘cause he looked so scrumptuous an’ sot so straight in his saddle, an’ that made me feel bad, ‘cause I knew he were a married man. An’ then everybody yelled ‘Hooray for Huron!’ an’ the same folks yelled, ‘Hooray for Pierre!’ an’ I knew that wasn’t right, ‘cause it would ratde Steve Hawkins an’ he wouldn’t know which town his inwestments were in. An’ considerin’ as he bought up the celebration for $2.50 he ought not to be bothered.

  “An’ then a tall galoot a ridin’ of a bicycle run over my left com, an”afore I recovered myself along comed the thumpdoodlums an’ nearly scared me outer my wits.”

  “You did have a bad time,” said the doctor, “still, many enjoyed the day.”

  “Well, the day wern’t without its dispensations,” observed our landlady reflectively. “The skim-milk ice cream an’ the artesian lemonade warn’t bad, an’ the Aberdeen Guard gals was wuth seein’. An’ then to see them fellers climin’ greesed poles an’ runnin’ races an’jumpin’ up like a set o’ fools wasn’t such bad fun neither.”

  “Did you attend the ball game?” asked Tom.

  “Oh, yes, — at the Opera House.”

  “No! No! that was the baby show.”

  “Well, that were the only bawl game I had any time for, an’ o’ course the fool judges guv the prizes to the homliest babies an’ the prettiest mothers.

  “I alius notis as that’s the case. But still, with all the drawbacks, I’d a got along fust rate if I hadn’t took it inter my head ter see the injine’s war dance. I paid my money to a greasy lookin’ injun an’ walked in an’ stood up. At one end o’ the hall was a big chief named Cowjumps, an’ back o’ him were some sleepy-lookin’ squaws an’ dried-up babys, an’ in the circle were the villainist lookin’ lot o’ red devils as I ever seed, pushin’ each other round the ring an’ yellin’.

  “‘Hi-yah! hip-yah! hi-yah! hip-yah!’ an’ drummin’ on a big kittle an’ shakin’ some tommyhawks and knives over their heads.

  “‘What’s up?’ says I to the policeman.

  “‘Hush!’ says he.

  “‘What’s got ‘em riled?’ says I.

  “‘Nothin’,’ says he, ‘they’re dancin’.’

  “‘Oh!’ says I; ‘well if they had a master they’d do it more polite.’

  “An’ just then I catched sight o’ my red bed-spread, as I’d leit out on the line, on one o’ the dancin’ injins’ shoulders. I didn’t wait for nothin’, but I jest busted inter that ring o’ war dancers an’ clubbed my umbreller in my fist an’ belted him a good whack over the shoulders. He knew what I wanted in a minit and pulled out a watch an’ handed me fer a bribe.

  “‘Not much!’ says I, ‘you just gimme that’ air bed-spread!’

  “An’ he give it up. He said he found it in the band wagon, but I knowed as he was lyin’.

  “This little rumpus broke me all up an’ I went down to the P.G’s. — I guess that means pritty gals — an’ had some ice cream an’ went home.

  “I didn’t see but one fireworks, an’ that was a sky-rocket as comed through the front winder while I was sayin’ my prayers. If I could find out who shot it I’d make him pay fer the glass, but as I can’t, I’ll jest contribute it as my share o’ the celebration.”

  She Discourses upon Love and Politics

  12 July 1890

  “Times is pretty dull nowadays,” said our landlady, as she killed a fly buzzing against the window with her slipper, and scared a lot more away from the sugar-bowl; “there don’t seem to be nothin’ goin’ on but politics. I s’pose you’ve heard about Cholly?”

  “No,” replied the doctor, “I havn’t. What about him?”

  “Why he’s goin’ to run agin’ Ben Harrison for the presidency.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “That’s what I tell’s him. But he says if he can’t be president he’ll be state senator.”

  “Why not vice-president?” asked the Colonel, sarcastically.

  “Because our Cholly won’t have nothin’ to do with vice. He’ll take all he can get and get all he can, but he draws the line at that. All his friends are workin’ for him, especially the G.A.R.’s, an’ you’ll either see somethin’ or else you won’t see nothin’, you mark my words.”

  “How about the independents?” asked Tom.

  “I’ll tell you. The other mornin’ I was sound asleep when I heerd a queer noise. It sounded like a turkey mother callin’ her chicks to see a worm. At fust I — thought it was a gang o’ burgulers, but when I got up an’ stuck my head outer the winder I see it was some gals cluckin’ to some other gals in the house oppersite.

  “‘What’s up?’ thinks I, fer it was only five o’clock, but I didn’t see nothin’ up but the gals. Well, they kep’ cluckin’ till they woke up the whole neighborhood, an’ then they woke up the gal. Then several young fellers jined ‘em an’ I saw to onct that there was an elopement goin’ on on a big scale. So I threw my shawl over my head an’ rushes out, just as they was startin’ up the street.

  “‘Hold, villin!’ says I to one o”em, givin’ a reglar war whoop, ‘unhand that gal!’

  “‘Unhand yourself,’ says Nat, ‘what do you want?’

  “‘I want you to restore them gals to their homes. No elopin’s goin’ on under my nose if I knows it!’

  “‘Fiddlesticks!’ says Alf. ‘We ain’t elopin’, are we Hat?’

  “‘No, are we Lu?’ says she.

  “‘We’re just goin’ fer a mornin’ walk,’ says J.B., lookin’ mad.<
br />
  “‘At five o’clock?’ says I, sardineically.

  “‘That’s the best time,’ says Eva, sweetly, ‘for the air is fresh an’ cool an’ it gives us an apetite for breakfus’. We go every mornin’ an’ walk about two miles an’ it’s more fun than the measles!’

  “‘Here comes Carrie,’ says another, ‘now let’s leave this ole meddler.’

  “‘Thanks,’ says I, ‘if you don’t like my company, don’t cluck so loud as to raise the hull neigborhood. We ole folks ain’t all in love, an’ we needs our rest!’ an’ wi’ that I slams inter the house an’ watched ‘em go up the street, an’ I thought they was about as independent as any folks I ever seed. But I wouldn’t like to feed ‘em if they takes these long walks every mornin’, although they do say as folks in love don’t eat much.”

  “Speaking of eadng,” remarked the colonel, “have you heard that Al. Ward was sun-struck yesterday?”

  “Yes, but I knew that suthin’ would strike Al. if he didn’t put the quality o’ grub up an’ the price down. I’m thinking o’ advertisin’ this ‘ere boardin’ house in his front winder, but I don’t care to ruin Al cause he’s got a good heart, so I guess I won’t interfere with his trade just yet.”

  She Buys a Cow and the Boarders Help Her Milk it

  19 July 1890

  “Gentlemen,” said our landlady, as she met the boarders at the door with her own sweet smile, (copyrighted), “I’ve bought a new cow!”

  “A live one?” asked Tom, with interest.

  “A milch cow?” queried the colonel.

  “A live milk cow!” responded Mrs. Bilkins, bobbing her head impressively. “A cow,” remarked the doctor, fanning himself gently with his straw hat, “is a delightful animal. She not only ministers to the wants of humanity, but she is t mild in disposition, gentle in temperament and recognizes man as her friend and master.”

  “I suppose,” said Tom, “you refer to the female cow.”

  The docter looked puzzled, but vouchsafed no answer.

  “I thought,” continued our landlady, “that you might like a little new milk for supper, and so, as we have a little time, you can come out in the back yard and see me milk her.”