Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1888 — IT WAS THE GAT-TAILS. [ARTICLE]

IT WAS THE GAT-TAILS.

BY EVA M. DE JARNETTE.

“Cat-tails. Genus Typhus, also called Reed-mace.” Vide dictionary. Girls, do you know what they say? In your zeal forgathering and decorating with them, have you ever thought to bend down your ear and listen to their whispers? In the dim ages of antiquity King Midas was punished for ill-ta-te in music by having asses’ ears clapped on his head. At his wife’s suggestion the king started the fashion of bangs, frizzes, ear-locks and such, and he wore a great bag-topped crown to conceal his deformity. But no man is a hero to his valet, and the barber knew all about it. Weary of the burden of the terrible secret, he dug a hole in a solitary place, and whispered into it, “Our master has asses’ ears!” Cat-tails sprang up, and to this day, when agitated by the wind, they mischievously repeat the tale, maliciously varying the ’message to make a personal affair of it. “Our rulers have asses’ ears!” they murmur—“asses’ ears!” They whisper in Greek, and if Dick and Tom, fresh from college, cannot make it out, it is because they are just humbugs, and don’t know anything about the language. Moreover, Homer says, the giant Typhus gave more trouble to the gods than all the rest put together. He was like a cork; push him under in one spot and he would pop up in another. It was a difficult thing to put a head on him,” for he possessed already a hundred of his own. And when at last Jupiter “planted” him alive in the Isle of Ischia, and was thinking abont setting up a nice tombstone over him, to let his friends know what a generous, spreading, übiquitous kind of old hairpin he was, all at once cat-tails with their hundred heads, appeared, and the wind floated their downy seed-puffs over the face of the earth.

Diseases with a hundred forms broke out among men and beastß, which are still called by his name wherever the cat-tails grow. So Jupiter concluded not to waste his money on a fellow who could acthally make the four winds of heaven and whole facb of nature do bis advertising gratis, even bending into the same channel the aesthetic fancies of fashionable young ladies of the nineteenth century. But Dick Harrington didn’t know a word of all this. Although long past the age when a fellow’s friends constantly tell him, as a piece of unexpected news, “how he has grown,” Dick had a.*, the whiskers he would ever own, and had grown to feel sorry he had not let his troublesome mustache remain latent, instead of rasping and scraping at it, and cutting it with his sister’s scissors, till it was aB siiff as a black-ing-brush. Of course, he had trampled over cattails and club-mosses, pond-lilies and wild celery, thousands of times, but had never bothered his brain over the generic names of sedges and reeds. He distinguished them as good “cover” for grouse, partridges and Indian hens, or •classed them along with sand-worm 9, snapshells, and other small Crustacea, as the proper food, or signs of feeding ground for “wiilets.” “marlins,” “summer ducks,” “seek-no-furthers,” and “doe-witches.” He wasn’t aesthetic at all, Dick wasn’t, and no wonder his pretty sister Kate was “out” with him for putting on that rusty velveteen shooting-jacket, and stuffing his pataloons into boots that were quite big and strong enough to walk about alone, and for going out after “dippers” and “spring-tails” when a girl was coming—one of those “utterly utter” kind, too, who have never a shadow of any kind of real trouble to sour them, and consequently think that the sun shines and the “wide world wags” for their private and individual benefit. “Afraid of a gal! And he just six feet two in his stocking feet.” No wonder he looked sneaking and mean; and when Kate followed him as far as the horseblocks, s'till arguing the question, he gave three perfectly hypocritical reasons for not going to the station to meet Dora, her doubly dear schoolmate and bosom friend, Dora. Falsely he averred a flock of diciappers or wild turkeys (Kate could not make out what he said, he mumbled so) to be scattered and in waiting for him to kill in Carrie’s Wood. In testimony of which he produced a “yelper,” and yelped till Kate put her fingers to her ears, for all the gobblers in the yard, angrily answering, came strutting up, with their “Turk’s heads” swelled up as red and big as acme tomatoes. “Dick, you are just too ut eriy mean to live. I’d like to throw a plate at you. Beally, Dick, lam ready to cry. To have to send the hired boy to drive, when b’ye got a brother tall as a church steeple.” “Kate, I'd go in a minute, but I’Ye got to meet a man ” , “Hush, Dick, you are telling stoirei Dora is so pretty too,” sighs Kate. “The washerwoman has all my collars, and- ” “I wonder you are not afraid you’ll end

like Ananias and Sapphin. Oh, Ido wish I wasn’t afraid to drive Flirt myself." And two bright little tears rolled down her cheeks. “Really, Katie. I was in the village yesterday, where they have measles, and I should not like to run the risk of her catching them through me." “Oh, I, do hope Dora will pay you for this; indeed I do. I hope she will flirt the bat off your bead, you aggravating, good-for-nothing ” Dick fled away ont of hearing, for in his heart of hearts he was “afeerd of a gal.” He bad climbed Homey’s Peak when it was two feet deep in snow; shot a California grizzly; had slept calmly by the bivouac fire to the music of the gray wolves’ hideous howling and the mountain-lion’s doleful roar. He had dared the redskins of the Black Hills in their rocky fastnesses, but was pitifully “afeerd of a woman." Stepping out, ns if he was owner of the Seven League Boots, keeping a keen eye to the slightest indication of a “point” from his black-and-tan setter, he communed sadiy with himself as to how he could possibly avail himsfelf of lodging privileges under his father's roof for the coming week. How he was to eat and sleep, keep out of sight of his sister’s friend, and still be highly tnought of and admired by her. “Afeerd of a woman!” Kate this time, for he dearly loved his pretty sister, and hated to cross her wishes. , “Unless I break a leg or knock out an eye, she would never forgive me,” was his conclusion. “However, I’ll hunt to-day, and go into the martyr business in the morning. ”

“Sine while we may, Another day Will bring enough of Borrow.” Hola! Something is the matter with Ponto! His white-tipped tail has ceased to vibrate—be elongates his body, thrasts forward his head; his eye is set; his limbs stiffen rigidly; he is abont to have a fit! “Hie on!” Whir-r-r! Bang, Bang! How the feathers fly! Three birds, by all that’s lovely! He bags the pretty, brown, quivering creatures, without a pang of compunction, and loads up for fresn victims. When game is plentiful the true hunter takes no note of time, nor does he heed the pangs of hunger. Passing through the dim, damp depths of the, leafless woods, he added some woodcock and “merry brown hares” to his bag. The short winter day is almost ended. The naked, rusty tree-tops stand out coldly against the pale, grayish skv; the shuddering chill of the dying day creeps over him, and he begins to realize that he has eaten nothing since breakfast

As the Loadstone Bock drew Sinbad's frail bark remorselessly to its destruction, so Dick is marching straight into the meshes which Fate has prepared for him. The unerring certainty with which skillful sportsmen can distinguish objects afar off is well known, but none the less remarkable. By the pale, smothered gleam of the fading sunset Dick perceives a thing which makes hi 3 heart flutter. There has been a signal of danger. His own footsteps crunching over the stiff, dry flags, and the noise of “The ripple washing in the reeds, And the water lapping on the crag,” are the only sounds he hears. Yet Crusoe’s man Friday was not more startled at “the man's footprint in the sand” than was Dick at a blue gauze caught in a bunch of briers, gently, innocently waving in the evening breeze. A step further there is a sprig of scarlet China berries, some small footprints in the mud, and a glove. Victor Hugo makes a big, tough old sailorman particularly fastidious about ladies’ hands. Dick liked them small himself, although his own would have done for Hercules. Ladies’ gloves are sometimes prettier than the hands they cover. This one was a dainty, embroidered little affair, and told a tale of distress lying there among the dried grasses and things girls are for ever reaching after for their winter vaso j , with scrambling little footprims in the mud all around it. Beauty bebogged in its greed for the decorative cat-tail! Dick sighed as he put the pretty trifles in his vest-pocket. A few more strides on the Seven-league Boots and he was ou the high road, where Hut had stamped holes, while the hired boy held her in, and the young lady “went for” the rushes.

Afar off he could, through the parlor windows, see the light, “where household flies gleamed warm and bright” He stalkea along with pounds ot' mud clinging to his boots, bristling all over with cockle burrs and Spanish needles, hands grimed with gunpowder, and a heavy gun and gameb ig. But nothing felt so heavy as that bit of gauze in his pocket, and the dainty glove. Dike the sjffiarite’s crumpled rose-leaf, they made a lump that rubbed and galled him. He was in a fever to be rid of them. He made a circuit of the stable-lot and garden to prevent the possibility of bis being seen from the parlor windows, as if in these days of high art young ladies had nothing better to do than sit moping and gaping like Mariana in the moated grange. Cautiously passing the honeysuckle arbor, looking about and around over bis shoulders, lie plumped upon what he most wished to avoid. Sitting on the back-porch steps, gazing at the moon rising in mystic majesty over the big wood-pile, sat his sister and her friend. He nearly stepped upon them, but before he had time to swoon or shoot himself, wicked Katie, who thoroughly enjoyed the situation, was introducing them. A fairy-like creature, with Italian , sunset in her hair, and aurora borealis in her cheeks, was murmuring his name. He bad not the sense to excuse himself and leave, but stood like a great object, blushing, muttering, looking like the poor “Exile of Erin,” or a Pennsylvania roadtramp. To Dora he appeared more of a bandit of the Pyrenees, for the slouch hat hid all the face his great beard left exposed, and in a pretty flute voice, she began talking to him. “Oh, Mr. Harrington, Kate and I have been thinking such things about the Pleiades and Orion, and Berenice’s Hair. How they must have looked and shone, just as they do now, thousands of yoais ago, when the Greek boys and girls went tramping over the hilly roads of Arcadia on their way to the Olympic Games; and they talked of them under the same names that we do tonight—didn’t they, Kate?” “Indeed they did, Dora.” “And they twinkle now just as they did on the night Alexander stormed Tyre, and Hannibal terrified Borne with his victory at Oannse. Don’t you think so, Mr.' Harrincrton?"

Kate did not want to see her brother die right in the prime of life, so she mercifully answered far him in an off-hand kind of way: “Indeed he does, Dora. Dick has been half over the world, yon know.” Then she carried her friend into the parlor, leaving Dick too weak to walk up the steps. When she went np to his room later, to see why he did not come down, he told her “he had a chip in his eye, his ankle was out of joint, his nose was bleeding. ” ” Katie just went on laying out his best clothes on the bed for him to pnt on. “Now, 6onny, don’t yon be a great goose. Dora’s the dearest little creature in the world. Don’t you mind her talk abont the sta-s and things; it is just a waj she has, and she'll get over it in no time. She is all dressed up in her great grandfather’s shoe-buckle, playing backgammon with pa like a dear. She’d make a nice sister for me, but I do not want her for a ma, so hurry on down.” Only a few girls will admit that they tremble and stand at the parlor door to get their courage np, Dick would have done so, but the man with an armful of wood to replenish the fire came along, and he had to go in to keeping Sambo from laughing at him. Dora was standing before an old family picture, which Mrs. Harrington was expatiating upon. She wore a black velvet dress, white laoe ruffles, a diamond buckle and a graceful bunch of crimson bouvardia in her lovely golden hair. Dick slipped into a seat and tried to look as if he had been sitting there a long time. “What you see to the left there is water,” the old gentleman was saying. “It is the river, not much of one, but there seems to be attraction enough to keep Dick for ever rambling along its margin. Come, Dick, and tell us what you find.” “Willets, marlins and doe-witches,” repeats Dick, as if answering a question in geography. “Oh, but I saw lovely things growing on the banks when I crossed it to-day!” cries Dora, and old Mr. Harrington, having lugged his bashful son into the conversation, gracefully retired behind his paper. Dick stood by her, and couldn’t help thinking her dislraotingly pretty, but he was not the fellow to take a lead in conversation.

“Don’t you think cat-tails are too utterly lovely for anything?” asked Dora, in a confidential kind at way. “I—l can’t say I like them much. They are always getting mashed, or being trod on, or being caught in shutting the door.” Dora opened her eyes and looked puzzled. “They should be hung with red ribbon to have'the most artistic effect. You know we oannot gel them in town, and I am so anxious to take three home with me. Will you not help me, Mr. Harrington, to get them?” “Certainly. But would you not prefer fox? I know a fellow who has a glass case full. He cuts them off as trophies. ” “How awfully cruel!” “Cat-tails would be worse, as you would have to kill them first, I suppose. My sister thinks almost as mnch of Tabby as she does of me.” Dora looked as completely mystified as if she were listening to a few remarks in the Hebrew language. Kate, on the lookout, caught the expression, and carried her friend off to the piano. Was it a shaft at random sent that made Dora sing “Wapping Old Stairs,” instead of the German songs she had spent so much time over?

Some little fairylike creatures know their man by instinct, and suit their ammunit:on to the game. Dick thought he had never heard anything so entrancingly sweet when Dora warbled—- “ Your Molly has never been false,.shedeclares, Since last time we parted at Wapping Old Stairs; When I art ore that I still would continue the same, And gave you a ’bacca-box marked with my neme. Be constant and kind, nor your Molly forsake, For your trousers I'll mend, and your grog, too, I’ll make.”

And then, to show what a domestic turn she possessed, the little creature went and got her knitting, and began narrowing to set the heel. There was a skein to be wound, and before Dick knew what he was about his arms were stretched in an imploring attitude, holding the hank, while Dora’s pretty white Augers loosened a tangle here and there in the most charming manner possible. “Is this for—a tidy?” he asked, by way of being agreeable. “No. It is for my—my stockings,” murmurs Dora. “I always knit them myself,“ she added. You might have knocked Dick down with a feather. Knitting her own stockings. Economh al little thing! A freak of memory called to mind how his mother used to do it, knitting his father’s socks in the bright firelight while he and his baby sister romped with the kittens on that very hearth. He wondered if anybody would ever knit socks for him there.

“And did the yam!” He looked so in hopes she would say yes. Dora was really 6orry she had not. She did not think fit to tell him that the silk cost as much as six ordinary pairs, and that the knitting had been her company work for a year. Crimson and creamcolored silk make little hands look so canning and white. “Iton are not like the young lady I met at a ball in California,” said Dick. “She said to me, ‘Stockings I can do without, but earrings I must have.’ I see you wear no earrings.” “I wear no ornaments except natural flowers, and this old shoebuckle of my grandfather’s.” Then and there Dick made up his mind he would get her the biggest breastpin money could buy, the. very next time h 6 went to the city, and send it anonymously. A girl who did her own knitting, wore a black gown without any peaks or raffles, and an old shoe-buckle for jewelry, deserved a breastpin. And that very night he reflected over his usual pine, that even if a fellow had not a great deal of money, any man would do welllo get a wife like that, and believed he woura tell his friend Howard about her. And he dreamed pleasant dreams of Dora knitting socks, and patching the big hole he had that day torn in his corduroy trousers, though the stars, and cats with their toils cut off, came and bothered him Borne. ' Dick spent an hour with the brush’s next morning, trying to get his hair to lie smooth. He had a way of looking as if he were always in a high wind, even on a day when a feather would droo like » bullet. Bnt

his teeth wen as white as Ponto’s, and he looked yon straight in the eye. There was a broiled woodcock for breakfast. “Oh, Katie, stop!” cries Dora. “Yon must eat yonn from the plate I painted for you." She runs away for it, and comes down with a charming bit of ceramic art. Ariadne was represented riding on a panther on a background of palest green, the color of a duck’s egg. The nymph was in a most graceful attitude, her countenance beaming with love and hope, as the joyous bride of Bacchus. “ This is a present for you, dear; I did it myself." “How utterly lovely! It must be hung up; it must! Look, pa, how beautiful." Mr. Harrington put on his spectacles, and examined it critically. “Avery pretty Scripture picture! Very good, indeed!”

Dick's wonder and admiration were too great for utterance. What could she not do? To make a plate actually! It was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. He threw np the sponge. The others chattered on about the plate, but he saw only Dora, and gazing at her between morsels of food, ran great risk of injuring himself with his fork. When his friend Howard came next day with hot-honse flowers, and another friend took her riding in the tightest, trimmest little habit, he despised his own sheepishness in letting the other fellow get ahead of him. And he wondered-why they made such officious fools of themselves. He grew dissatisfied with the fit of his clothes, and promised to make it lively for that bootmaker who sent him number nines, knowing that he could squeeze into eights and a half.

So many visitors kept on coming to see Dora that he grew gloomy and low-spirited, fell away from his food, till Kate was quite uneasy abont her brother. He wearied himself hunting woodcock because Dora was fond of them, and endangered his life climbing slim trees for deserted birds’ nests after she had begged him to bring her home one. His game bag was stuffed with long mosses, like old men’s gray beards, and dry seed-pods, and bunches of “trash” for Dora. He had caught a part of the tune of “Wapping Old Stairs,” which in secluded spots he sang with great gusto; and he foolishly kissed the little glove more than once, a thorn in the side no longer. The week had nearly slipped away, and he was out washing his gun, when she came and watched him. “You have not kept your promise, ” she remarked. “What promise?” “To help me get cat-tails.” “I’ll do it now. Shall I shoot them first?” he asked. “What do you mean? I’ll run in and get my hat and go with you.” “Like as not they are on the roof of the house,” muttered Dick, “and I don’t know what Kate will do. But if Dora wants Mazeppa’s tail it shall be cut off for her. What queer fancies girls have! To want a cat’s tail!”

Under that great furry black hat, with its wealth of soft plumes, any girl worJd have looked charming. Dora always looked so. “Come,” she said, “they are down on the river. I wan’t to scramble after them myself. It brings good luck.” “They’ll scratch you fearfully." “I am not afraid,” she replied, “with you at my side.” “There is a tide in the affairs of men,” and Dick felt that his had flowed of its own accord right to his feet, and that if he ever intended to get Dora to knitting his socks, he must make arrangements at once. He became so excited, and appeared to have such a hurricane blowing around him, that he could scarcely keep his hat on his head. Dora walked calmly and peacefully along under her big hat. Let us draw a veil over the love-making, which has been going on in about the same fashion ever since Adam said, “Miss Eve, I love you.” They came walking back about dinner time, with hands full of plethoric, brown, decorative cat-tails, and seemed to have very little to say to one another or anybody else. Kate, watching them from the window, felt very sorry Dick’s bashfulness was such a hindrance to him. While she helped Dora arrange cat-tails, she told ner how mortified she was that she and Dick got along so poorly, and hoped she would excuse his not being more attentive to her. Dora burst into a little ringing laugh. “Why, my dear little goose, as soon as Dick has time to ask papa for me, we shall be regularly engaged. “Then may heaven bless you, my dear children!” cries Kate, dramatically. “And may you never wake to sorrow fron ‘Love’s young dream.’ ” ***** * The last heard from young Mrs. Har, rington she was insisting that Dick should look at a duck of a bonnet in the light of poultry—as a household necessity.