Elbow-Room | Page 4

forth at night against the
pitchy darkness of the sky. Here, as one whirls by in the train after
nightfall, he may catch hurried glimpses of swarthy men, stripped to
the waist, stirring the molten iron with their long levers or standing
amid showers of sparks as the brilliant metal slips to and fro among the
rollers that mould it into the forms of commerce. If upon a summer
evening one shall rest amid the sweet air and the rustling trees upon the
hill-top, he may hear coming up from this dusky, grimy blackness of
the mills and the railway the soughing of the blowers of the
blast-furnaces, the sharp crack of the exploding gases in the white-hot
iron, the shriek of the locomotive whistle and all night long the roar and
rattle of the passing trains, but so mellowed by the distance that the
harsh sounds seem almost musical--almost as pleasant and as easily
endured as the voices of nature. And in the early morning a look from
the chamber window perhaps may show a locomotive whirling down
the valley around the sharp curves with its white streamer flung out
upon the green hillside, and seeming like a snowy ribbon cut from the

huge mass of vapor which lies low upon the surface of the stream.
The name of this town among the hills is--well, it has a very charming
Indian name, to reveal which might be to point with too much
distinctness to the worthy people who in some sort figure in the
following pages. It shall be called Millburg in those pages, and its
inhabitants shall tell their stories and play their parts under the cover of
that unsuggestive title; so that the curious reader of little faith shall
have difficulty if he resolves to discover the whereabouts of the village
and to inquire respecting the author's claim to credibility as a historian.
CHAPTER II.
_THE TERRIBLE MISHAP TO MR. FOGG'S BABY_.
Mr. and Mrs. Fogg have a young baby which was exceedingly restless
and troublesome at night while it was cutting its teeth. Mr. Fogg,
devoted and faithful father that he is, used to take a good deal more
than his share of the nursing of the infant, and often, when he would
turn out of bed for the fifteenth or sixteenth time and with fluttering
garments and unshod feet carry the baby to and fro, soothing it with a
little song, he would think how true it is, as Napoleon once said, that
"the only real courage is two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage." Mr.
Fogg thought he had a reasonable amount of genuine bravery, and
justly, for he performed the functions of a nurse with unsurpassed
patience and good humor.
One night, however, the baby was unusually wakeful and tempestuous,
and after struggling with it for several hours he called Mrs. Fogg and
suggested that it would be well to give the child some paregoric to
relieve it from the intense pain from which it was evidently suffering.
The medicine stood upon the bureau, but Mrs. Fogg had to go down
stairs to the dining-room to get some sugar; and while she was
fumbling about in the entry in the dark it occurred to Mr. Fogg that he
had heard of persons being relieved from pain by applications of
mesmerism. He had no notion that he could exercise such power; but
while musing upon the subject he rubbed the baby's eyebrows

carelessly with his fingers and made several passes with his hands upon
its forehead. As Mrs. Fogg began to feel her way up stairs, he was
surprised and pleased to find that the baby had become quiet and had
dropped off into sweet and peaceful slumber. Mrs. Fogg put the sugar
away as her husband placed the child in its crib and covered it up
carefully, and then they went to bed.
[Illustration: MR. FOGG AS A MESMERIST]
They were not disturbed again that night, and in the morning the baby
was still fast asleep. Mrs. Fogg said she guessed the poor little darling
must have gotten a tooth through, which made it feel easier. Mr. Fogg
said, "Maybe it has."
But he had a faint though very dark suspicion that something was
wrong.
After breakfast he went up to the bed-room to see if the baby was
awake. It still remained asleep; and Mr. Fogg, when he had leaned over
and listened to its breathing, shook it roughly three or four times and
cleared his throat in a somewhat boisterous manner. But it did not wake,
and Mr. Fogg went down stairs with a horrible dread upon him, and
assuming his hat prepared to go to the office. Mrs. Fogg called to him,
"Don't slam the front door and wake the baby!"
And then Mr. Fogg did slam