Who Spoke Next | Page 8

with which, in good faith, however unwillingly, I ought to mention. Uncle John used me to kill skunks occasionally. This there was no great harm in doing, only he should not have talked about it. I disliked, it, however, exceedingly.
Once, I am told, when he was in the South, some southern gentleman, for some trifling offense, challenged him.
Uncle John was told that he, as the party challenged, might choose his weapons.
"Well," he said to his enemy, "if you will wait till I can send for my skunk gun, I am ready for you."
I have since, I do hate to say it, been called the skunk gun repeatedly. To be sure, no one that has any reverence in his nature speaks of me in this way. Uncle John had not much, but his son, the father of that little girl, treats me with due respect, and forbids them to call me the skunk gun.
I was once the defender of liberty, and am ready to be so again. I was not made to kill skunks, those disgusting little animals. I hate to think of them.
Pardon me for keeping you listening to me so long; I have done. I wish to hear now what that respectable-looking broadsword has to say. We two ought to be friends."
"I was born a gentleman," said the broadsword. "I was always considered the sign, the symbol of one. Not many years since, a sword was so essential to the character of a gentleman that a man without one by his side, was, in fact, not considered a gentleman.
My master, who was also yours, Mr. Curlingtongs, was one the officers in the company of Cadets at its first formation. He had the honorable title of Major, and all his best friends called him Major. Little did I think once that I should be condemned to the disgrace of spending my old age in a garret with crooked curling tongs, broken pitchers, old baize gowns, noseless tea-kettles, old crutches, a foot stove, and, worse than all, a spinning wheel.
My only peers here are the venerable musket and the respectable wig. Even they have seen too much hard service to be able fully to appreciate the feelings of a gentleman who has been brought up as I have. The degradation the musket especially endured, in being used as a spade by such a very common sort of person as Judah Loring--a degradation of which, far from being ashamed, he seems actually proud; all this, I say, my friends, makes a wide separation between us never to be forgotten or got over."
"I'm agreed, the further off the better," growled the musket. The old wig also gave a sort of contemptuous hitch, that seemed to say, he agreed with the musket.
"I consider myself," resumed the broad-sword, "to be a perfect gentleman. I have never denied myself by any sort of labor. I have been considered something to show, something to be used only as a terror to evil doers.
It strikes me that I really made the Major; he never could appear in his company or perform his duties without me; his queue was not more essential. He was not a Major without me. Every one feared me when they saw my shining blade out of its scabbard, and it was really amusing occasionally to see the effect I produced. There have been swords that have done bloody work, but I have never been so defiled.
The Boston Cadets, you know, are the Governor's body guard, and such is the anxiety of people sometimes to see a real live governor when he has on his governor's dress and character, that the women and children crowd around him so that he can hardly find room to move and breathe. At one of these times of great pressure, my master took me out and flourished me round bravely. O, how they all scampered! just like a flock of frightened geese, merely at the sight of me. Such is the effect of my mere appearance. To be sure, the Major laughed whenever he told this story. I know not why, for it is perfectly true.
Once, when all the men in the family were gone away,--it was since we have lived in the country,--the children were in the upper chamber, and the doors were open below, and they saw a frightful- looking beggar coming up the avenue; he was lame and had a patch over his eye. He looked terrible; but one of the girls ran for me, and took me out of the scabbard, and shook me at him out of the window, and screamed out to him to go off; whereupon he turned about and hobbled off as fast as he could.
One of the little girls said she did not believe there was any harm in the