Frictional Electricity | Page 5

Friend Amelia she set down again and turned over the leaves of Barclay and begun oncet more to read about Salutations and Recreations while, strange as it may seem to you, sir, I felt that I'd rather see the policeman and be locked up in a dungeon than to hear more of it.
"But, howsomdever, after a while in comes the Quaker and the officer with him, and the very first minute the officer seen me he says:
"'I reckernize him as an old offender.'
"'No you don't!' says I; 'I'm no old offender nor a young offender. I'm a perfeckly honest Baptist plumber, and I kin prove it, too.'
"'How kin you prove it?' says the officer.
"'By William Jones,' says I, 'who is a-setting in that kitchen right next door, a-wooing the hired girl.'
"I was bold about it, sir, because I knowed William Jones daresn't strike at me while the officer was there.
"'We'll see about that,' says the officer, and in he goes to Mr. Muffitt's yard next door and comes back with William Jones. I have no use for a man like William Jones. What do you think he does, sir? Why, he looks me over, from head to foot, in a blank sort of a way, and then, turning to the policeman, he says: 'I don't know the man, officer; never seen him before'; then that low-down plumber walks out and leaves me there and goes back, and in a minute I hear him and Bella Dougherty a-laughing worse than ever.
"'I thought not,' says the officer, slipping the handcuffs on me, 'and so now you come right along.' And Friend Amelia looked mournful at me and says to me she would come around regular and read Barclay to me in my cell after I was convicted.
"And so, sir, to make a long story short, I was took up before the magistrate and held for burglary, and my mate, George Watkins, went my bail and so I was let go.
"I might stop here, sir, but I must tell you that the following Thursday I met William Jones up a kind of a blind alley where I was working, while he was working in a house on the opposite side. He had me in a corner where there was no chance to run, so I put on a bold face and went right up to him and says:
"'William, there's been some differences betwixt us, but I'm not the man to bear grudges and I forgive you."
"'What's that?' says he, savage.
"'Why,' says I, 'the whole thing is just one of them unpleasant misunderstandings'; and then I started to explain to him about the Huxley Institute theory of frictional electricity and the aurora borealis.
"I can't tell what he said, sir, in reply, with reference to the aurora borealis, because I'm a decent man and never use no low language; but suddenly he jumped on me, and the first thing I knowed I was being lifted in the ambulance and fetched to this yer hospital. Was it right, sir, do you think, for William Jones to strike me foul, like that, while I was trying to state my case to him? No, sir. But that's not the worst of it. Last Tuesday word came to me that Bella Dougherty had throwed me over and is going to marry William Jones on Decoration Day! Think of that, sir!" and Mordecai Barnes turned his head upon his pillow and moaned.
Turning again toward me, he was about to resume his statement, when suddenly he exclaimed: "Why, there's Aunt Maggie."
A woman of fifty years, nicely clad, came to the bedside and said to him coldly:
"Is that you, Mordecai Barnes?"
"Yes, Aunt Maggie."
"I'm ashamed of you, Mordecai Barnes," said she; "ashamed of you. It served you right. You got just what was comin' to you. I wish William had banged you worse."
Mordecai Barnes groaned.
"And more than that," continued Aunt Maggie, glaring at him through her spectacles, "I've torn up my old will which named you my sole heir and made a new one and left all my property to this yer very hospital."
With these words Aunt Maggie walked away and left the room.
Mordecai Barnes could not speak for a few minutes. He looked as if death would be welcome. Then, pulling the bedclothes up under his chin and closing his eyes wearily, he said:
"Curse the day, say I, when George Watkins first went to the Huxley Institute and heard about frictional electricity."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Frictional Electricity, by Max Adeler
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