Bunker Bean | Page 5

critic himself had a bigger one,
and showed it.
The two coins were held side by side. Bean was envious. The small
coin was of silver, the larger of copper, but he was no petty metallurgist.
He wanted to trade and said so. The newcomer assented with a large air
of benevolence, snatched the despised smaller coin and ran hastily
off--doubtless into a life of prosperous endeavour. And little Bean,
presently found by his mother crooning over a large copper cent, was
appalled by what followed. He had brought back "a bigger money," yet
he had done something infamous. It was the first gleam of an
incapacity for finance that was one day to become brilliant. He came to
think money was a pretty queer thing. People cheated it from you or
took it away for your own good. Anyhow, it was not a matter to bother
about. You never had it long enough.
Then there was language. Language was words, and politeness. Certain
phrases had to be mouthed to strangers, designed to imply a respect he
was generally far from feeling. This was bad enough, but what was
worse was that you couldn't use just any word you might hear, however
beautiful it sounded. For example, there was the compelling utterance

he got from the two merry gentlemen who passed him at the gate one
day. So jolly were they with their songs and laughter that he followed
them a little way to where they sat under a tree and drank turn by turn
from a bottle. His ear caught the thing and his lips shaped it so
cunningly that they laughed more than ever. He returned to his gate,
intoning it; the fresh voice rose higher as the phrasing became more
familiar. Then he was on the porch, chanting as a bard from the mere
sensuous beauty of the words. Through the open door he saw three
faces. The minister and his wife were calling on his mother.
The immediate happenings need not be set down. After events again
became coherent he was choking back sobs and listening to the
minister pray for those of unclean lips. And the minister prayed
especially for one among them that he might cease to pervert the right
ways of the Lord. He knew this to mean himself, for his mother glared
over at him where he knelt; he was grateful for the kneeling posture at
that moment; he would not have cared to sit. But all he had learned was
that if you are going to use words freely it had much better be when
you are alone; this, and that the minister had enormous feet, kneeling
there with the toes of his boots dug into the carpet.
No sooner was this language spectre laid than another confronted him;
that of class distinction. Certain people were "low" and must be
shunned by the high, unless the high perversely wished to be thought
equally low. His mother was again the arbiter. Her rule as applied to
children of his own age wrought but little hardship. She considered
other children generally to be low, and her son feared them for their
deeds of coarsely humorous violence. But he was never quite able to
believe that his father was an undesirable associate.
In all his young life he had found no sport so good as riding on the seat
beside that father while he drove the express wagon; a shiny green
wagon with a seat close to the front and a tilted rest for one's feet,
drawn by a grand black horse with a high-flung head, that would make
nothing of eating a small boy if it ever had the chance. You drove to
incoming trains, which was high adventure. But that was not all. You
loaded the wagon with packages from the trains and these you
proceeded to deliver in a leisurely and important manner. And some
citizen of weight was sure to halt the wagon and ask if that there
package of stuff from Chicago hadn't showed up yet, and it was mighty

funny if it hadn't, because it was ordered special. Whereupon you said
curtly that you didn't know anything about _that_--you couldn't fetch
any package if it hadn't come, could you? And you drove on with
pleased indignation.
Yet so fine a game as this was held by his mother to be unedifying. He
would pick up a fashion of speech not genteel; he would grow to be a
"rough." She, the inconsequent fair, who had herself been captivated by
the driver of that very wagon, a gay blade directing his steed with a
flourish! To be sure, she had found him doing this in a mist of romance,
as one who must have his gallant fling at life before settling down.