The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.), Marshall P. Wilder [best books to read in your 20s txt] 📗

held a few in his hands. On his right was a boy who had started on a trip a short time before, and on his left was one who should have reported back. A man was gesticulating excitedly, a number of others and some boys were laughing, and Danny seemed to be intimating that any one who tried to enter would be hurt.

"Jim," said the manager to the largest messenger, "go out there and see what's the matter with Danny Burke. Tell him I'll have him arrested if he doesn't get out."

Danny was a wise general. He wanted no prisoners that he could not handle easily, and this big boy would be dangerous to have within his lines. The big boy was a sort of star messenger, who did not fraternize with Danny anyhow. Consequently Danny fired a volley the moment he saw who it was, and the big boy hastily retreated, bearing with him one bump on the forehead.

"That's Jim," Danny explained to the increasing crowd. "He's the biggest, next to the boss. Watch me nail the boss."

"You're the stuff!" exclaimed some of the delighted loiterers, thus proving that the loiterers are just as anxious to see trouble in a small strike as in a large one.

Danny picked out a stone considerably larger than the others, for he expected the manager to appear next, and the manager had incurred his personal enmity. In the case of his victims thus far, he had acted merely on principle—to win his point.

The manager appeared. For his own prestige (necessary to maintain discipline), the manager[Pg 89] had to do something, but he felt reasonably sure that the dignity of his official position would make Danny less hasty and strenuous than he had been with others. The manager planned to extend the olive branch and at the same time raise the siege by beckoning Danny in, so that he might reason with him and show him how surely he would land in a police station if he would not consent to be a good boy. This would be quicker and better than summoning an officer. But the manager got the big stone in the pit of his stomach just as he had raised his hand to beckon, and he and his dignity collapsed together, with a most plebeian grunt. As he had not closed the door, he quickly rolled inside, where he lay on the floor with his hands on his stomach and listened to the joyous yelps of the crowd outside. This was too much for the manager.

"Call up police headquarters," he said, still holding his stomach as if fearful that it might become detached, "and tell them there's a riot here."

The boy addressed obeyed literally.

Meanwhile Danny had decided that, as victory perched on his banners, it was time to state the terms on which he would permit the enemy to surrender, but he was too wise to put himself in the enemy's power before these terms were settled.

"Go in, Tim," was the order he gave to one of his prisoners, "an' tell the guy with the stomick-ache that when he recognizes the union an' gives me fifty cents more a week an' makes a work-day end when the clock strikes, I'm willin' to call it off."[Pg 90]

"Make him come down handsome," advised one of the loiterers.

"I guess I got 'em on the run," said Danny exultingly.

But Tim went in and failed to come out. This was not Tim's fault, however, for the manager released his hold on his stomach long enough to get a grip on Tim's collar. The striker's defiance seemed to displease him, and, because he could not shake Danny, he shook Tim, and he said things to Tim that he would have preferred to say to Danny. Then his excited harangue was interrupted by the sound of a gong, which convinced him that he might again venture to the door.

Danny was in the grasp of the strong arm of the law. A half dozen policemen had valiantly rushed through the crowd and captured the entire besieging party, which was Danny.

"What you doin'?" demanded Danny angrily.

"What are you doing?" retorted the police sergeant in charge.

"This here's a strike," asserted Danny. "I got the plant picketed."

"Run him in!" ordered the manager from the doorway.

"What's the row?" asked the sergeant.

"That's the row," said the manager, pointing to Danny.

"That!" exclaimed the sergeant scornfully. "You said it was a riot. You don't call that kid a riot, do you?"

"Well, it's assault and battery, anyhow," insisted the manager. "He hit me with a rock."

"Where?" asked the sergeant.[Pg 91]

"Where he carries his brains," said Danny, which made the crowd yelp with joy again.

"Lock him up!" cried the manager angrily. "I'll prefer the charge and appear against him."

The sergeant looked at Danny and then at the manager.

"Say!" he said at last, "you ain't got the nerve to charge this kid with assaulting you, have you?"

"I'm going to do it," said the manager.

"Oh, all right," returned the sergeant disgustedly.

The crowd was disposed to protest, but the police were in sufficient force to make resistance unsafe, and Danny was lifted into the patrol-wagon.

At the station the captain happened to be present when Danny was brought in, escorted by a wagon-load of policemen.

"What's the charge?" asked the captain.

"Assault and battery on a grown man!" was the scornful reply of the sergeant.

"What did he do?" persisted the surprised captain.

"Hurt his digestion with a rock," explained the sergeant.

"I was on strike," said Danny. "I'm a good union man. You got no business to touch me."

"I understand," said the sergeant, "that he was discharged, and he stationed himself outside with a pile of rocks."

"You've no right to do that," the captain told Danny.

"They all do it," asserted Danny.

This was so near the truth that the captain thought it wise to dodge the subject.[Pg 92]

"Of course, if no one else will take a man's place," he explained, "the employer will have to take him back or—"

"There wasn't nobody tryin' to take my place—not while I was there!" asserted Danny belligerently.

"That's no lie, either," laughed the sergeant. "He had the office tied up tight."

Danny swelled with pride at this testimonial to his prowess. Then it suddenly occurred to him that the sergeant did not act as he talked.

"What'd you butt in for, then?" he demanded.

"It was his duty," said the captain.

"Ho!" exclaimed Danny. "It's your business to protect the public, ain't it?"

"Of course," admitted the captain.

"Well, ain't we the public?"

The captain laughed uneasily. His experience as a policeman had left him very much in doubt as to who were the public. Both sides to a controversy always claimed that distinction, and the law-breaker was usually the louder in his claims. Danny's inability to see anything but his own side of the case was far from unusual.

The captain took Danny into his private office and talked to him. The captain did not wish to lock up the boy, so he sent for Danny's father and also for the manager of the branch messenger-office. Meanwhile he tried to explain the matter to Danny, but Danny was obtuse. Why should not he do as his father and his father's friends did? When they had a disagreement with the boss, they picketed the plant, and ensuing incidents sent many people to the hospitals. Why was it worse for one boy to do this than it was[Pg 93] for some hundreds or thousands of men? Danny was confident that he was within his rights.

"Dad knows," he said in conclusion. "Dad'll say I'm right. You got no business mixin' in."

"Dad's coming," the captain told him.

The manager came first. "The boy ought to be punished," said he. "He hit me with a rock."

"I wish you'd seen him," said the beaming Danny to the captain, for the recollection of that victory made all else seem trivial. "Say! he doubled up like a clown droppin' into a barrel."

"If he isn't punished," asserted the glowering manager, "he'll get worse and worse and end by going to the devil."

"Perhaps," replied the captain. "But just stand beside him a moment, please. Don't dodge, Danny. He'll go behind the bars if he touches you. Stand side by side."

They did so.

"Now," said the captain to the manager, "how do you think you'll look, standing beside him in the police court and accusing him of assault and battery?"

"Like a fool," replied the manager promptly, forced to laugh in spite of himself.

"And what kind of a story—illustrated story—will it be for the papers?" persisted the captain.

"Let him go," said the manager; "but he ought to be whaled."

It was at this point that Dan arrived, accompanied by his wife.

"F'r why sh'u'd he be whaled?" demanded the latter aggressively.

The matter was explained to her.

"Is that thrue, Danny?" she asked.

"Sure," replied the boy.[Pg 94]

"Well, I'd like to see anny wan outside the fam'ly whale ye," she said, with a defiant look at the manager, "but I'll do it mesilf."

Danny was astounded. In this quarter at least he had expected support. He glanced at his father.

"I'll take a lick or two at ye mesilf," said Dan. "The idee of breakin' the law an' makin' all this throuble."

"You've done it yourself," argued Danny.

"Shut up!" commanded Dan. "Ye don't know what ye're talkin' about. A sthrike's wan thing an' disordherly conduct's another."

"This was a strike," insisted Danny.

"Where's the union?" demanded Dan.

"I'm it," replied Danny. "I was organizin' it."

"If ye'll let him go, Captain," said Dan, ignoring his son's reply, "I'll larrup him good."

"For what?" wailed Danny. "I was only doin' what you said was right, an' what mom said was right, an' what you've all been talkin' for years. You've been a picket yourself, an' I've heard you laughin' over the way men who wouldn't strike was done up. We got to organize. Wasn't I organizin'? We got to enforce our rights. Wasn't I enforcin' them? We got to discourage traitors to the cause of labor. Wasn't I discouragin' them? Didn't the union tie up a plant once when you was discharged? What's eatin' you, dad?"

Danny's own presentation of the case was so strong that it gave him courage. But the last question made Dan jump, although he was not accustomed to any extraordinary show of respect from his son.

"The lad has no sinse," he announced, "but I'll[Pg 95] larrup him plenty. Ye get an exthry wan f'r that, Danny. I'll tache ye that ye're not runnin' things."

"Makin' throuble f'r father an' mother an' th' good man that's payin' ye wages we need at home," added Mrs. Burke.

"Now, what do you think of that?" whimpered Danny, as he was led away. "I'm to be licked fer doin' what he does. Why don't he teach himself the same, an' stop others from doin' what he talks?"

"Danny," said the commiserating captain, "you're to be licked for learning your lesson too well, and that's the truth."

But that did not make the situation any the less painful for Danny.[Pg 96]

SIMON STARTS IN THE WORLD By J.J. Hooper

Until Simon entered his seventeenth year he lived with his father, an old "hard-shell" Baptist preacher, who, though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious. The old man reared his boy—or endeavored to do so—according to the strictest requisitions of the moral law. But he lived, at the time to which we refer, in Middle Georgia, which was then newly settled; and Simon, whose wits were always too sharp for his father's, contrived to contract all the coarse vices incident to such a region. He stole his mother's roosters to fight them at Bob Smith's grocery, and his father's plow-horses to enter them in "quarter" matches at the same place. He pitched dollars with Bob Smith himself, and could "beat him into doll rags" whenever it came to a measurement. To crown his accomplishments, Simon was tip-top at the game of "old sledge," which was the fashionable game of that era, and was early initiated in the mysteries of "stocking the papers." The vicious habits of Simon were, of course, a sore trouble to his father, Elder Jedediah. He reasoned, he counseled, he remonstrated, and he lashed; but Simon was an incorrigible, irreclaimable devil. One day the simple-minded old man returned rather unexpectedly to the field, where he had left Simon and Ben and a negro boy named Bill at work. Ben was still following his plow,[Pg 97] but Simon and Bill were in a fence corner, very earnestly engaged at "seven up." Of course the game was instantly suspended as soon as they spied the old man, sixty or seventy yards off, striding towards them.

It was evidently a "gone case" with