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Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmds d des taux de reduction diff6rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichd, il est filmd d partir de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas. en prenant le rombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m6thode. 1 2 3 4 5 6 R< TI u ROB ROBERTSON'S CHEAP SERIES. POraUR READING AT POPUUR PRICES. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MUSTACHE; AND OTHER "HAWK-EYETEMS." BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE The Humorist ot the " Burllugton Hawkeje." AMERICAN EDITION. $200, ROBERTSON'S EDITION - FIFTEEN CENTS. COMt'I^K'^rK. TOROMTO : J. Boftb RoBiBTBON, 67 Yoxaie Snasaa, 1877. y • I *} n 2V9286 P K E F A C: E To llw Aiiifvican Edition. The appearance of a new book is an inuic.ition tluit anotlier man liarj found a mission, has entej'td ujion tlie peiformaiice of a lofty uuty, actuated only by the noblest impulses that can spur tiie sou) of man to action, k. is the proudest boast of tlie profession of literature, that no man ever published a book for selHsh purposes or with ignoble aim. Books have been published for the consolation of the distressed ; for the guidance of tlie wandering ; for the relief of the destitute ; for tlie hope of the penitent ; for uplifting the burdened soul above its sorrows and fears ; for the general amelioration of the condition of \ ill mankind ; for the right against the wrong ; for the good against the bad ; for the t'uth. This book is publislied for two dollars per volume. R. J. B. THE RISE AND FALL OE THE MUSTACHE. We open our eyes in thi.s liTing world | to the quiet, happy, care-free, independent around us, in a wonder land, peopled with life of a jocuud farmer, with nothiiii,' aiider dreams, and L:."'' 'tetl with wonderful shapis; ajitl every day dawns upon us in a medley of new marvels. We are awakened from these ilreams by conract with Hard, stub- ; born facts, not rudely and h.irslily, but i gradually and ienileily. So much tliat i.s bri;^iit and beautiful, aiul lull of romance ami vv(tnder, passes away with the earlier wheat wheat. years of lite, that by the lime we are able to i didn't know earn our tirst .salary we hold ni our hands ' " only the crumpled, witiiered leaves of child- hood's simple crec(ls and loving superstitions. Year after year, the iconoclastic haiul of earnest, real lito, tears from the lofty pe- I destals upon which our loving fancy had i ensiiriued them, the gods of gold that crumble into worthless clay at our feet. We live to lose faith, at last, in "Puss in Boots ;" we cease to weep over the sad tragedy of "(Jock llobin;" there comes a time when we can read "Arabian Nights," the canopy to molest or make tiun afraid, with everv thing on tiie ])laiitatioii going on sniDothiy and lovelily, with a little rust in the oats; army worm in the (;orn; (.'olorado beetles swarming up anil dwwu tlu; potato patcli; cutworms lay ing waste the curundu^rs; curculio in the [ilums and borers in the apple trees; a new kii'd of luiii that he the name uf, dosdiatiiig the iilds; dry weather burning up the Wet weather blighting the corn; too cold for the nieloiiS, tmi dreadfully hot lor the strawberries; chickens dying wiih the pip; hogs Iteing fathered to their fathers with the cholera; slieep failing away with a complication of things that no man could remember ; horses g.tting ah)ng as well as c(«uld be expected, with a little spavin, ring bone, wolf teeth, dis- temper, heaves, blind stiiggers, collar chafe.=i, saddle galls, colic now and then, founder and then go to bed without a tremor; with occisionally, epizootic when there was noth- one heart-breaking pang at last we give up j ing else ; cattle going wild with the horn ail ; darling "Jack the Giant Killer," and ac- moth in the bee hives ; snakes in the milk knowledge him to be the fraud he stands i house ; moles in the kitchen garden — Adam confessed; it is not long after that we learn | had just about got through breaking wild to look upon William Tell as a national , land with a crooked stick, and settled down myth, and then we come to know, in spite comfortably, when the sound of the boy was of all that orthodox theology has taught us heard in the land. to the contrary, that Adam was not the first [ Did it ever occur to yon that Adam was man — that raised a mustache. Adam was | probably the most troubled and won ied i.ian too old — vhen he was born — to care very j that ever lived ? We have alv\ ays pictured much about what our fU'ander and more Adam as a care-worn looking man ; ajiuzzled gradually developed civilization considcis looking granger who would sigh fifty times a the crowning facial ornament. And after j day, ami sit down on a log aiui run ids his natural human idleness got him into perfectly natural human trouble, he was kept too l)usy raising srmethiiig t()|)iit uniler his lip, to think much about what grew above it. If Atlam wore a mustache, he uevei' raised it. It raised itself. It evolved itself out of its own inner consciou^ner.s, like a primordial germ. It grew, like the weeds on his farm, in spite of him, and to torment him. For Adam had hardly got his farm reduced to a ki: d of turbulent, weed-producing, granger Kghting. regular order of things — had scarcely settled down II resolute lin^rers tlnouirh his hair while ho wondered wiiat under tlie canopy he was gi'iiig to do with those boyn, and whatever was going to become of them. \\\i have thought too, that as often as our esteemed jiarent asivcd himself this onundrum, he gave it u\). They must have bepy ?" "That's a silurns malapterus. Don't you go near him, for lie lias the disposition of a Ueorgia mule. " " Oh, yes ; a Rla])terua. little one ?" " Oh, it's nothing but Where did you get it'? throwing stones at that acanthopterygian ; do you want to be kicked? And keep away from the nothodenatrichomanoides. My stars, Eve ! where did he get that anonaceo- hydrocharideo-nymphieoid ? Do you never look after him at all? Here, you Cain, get right away down from there, and chase that megalosauriuH out of the melon patch, or I'll set the monopleuro brauchian on you. " And what's this an aristolochioid. There now, quit Just think of it. Christian man with a family to support, with last year's stock on your slielves, and a draft as long as a clothes- line to pay to-mo./ow ! Think of it, woman with all a woman's love and constancy, and a woman's sympathetic nature, with three meals a day 3().) times a year to think of, and the Hies to chase out of the sitting- room ; think, if your cherub boy was the only boy in the wide wide world, and all his (jucstions whicTi now radiate in a thousand directions auKjng other boys, who tell iiim lies and help him to cut his eye-teeth, were focused upon ! Adam had only one consida- ti(ni that has been denied his more remote descendants. His boy never belonged tt) a base ball club, and never teased his father from tiie first of Xovembcr till the last of March for a pair of skates. Well, you have no time to pity .Adam. You have your own boy to loOiC after. Or, your neiglibour has a boy, whom you can look after much more closely than his mother does, and much more to your own satisfaction than to the boy's comfort. Your l,>oy is, as Adam's boy was, an animal that asks questions. If there were any truth in the ol I theory of the transmigration of souls, when a boy dieil he would ])ass into an inter- rogation point. And he'd stay there. He'd never get out of it ; for he never gets through asking questions. The older he grows the more he asks, and the more perplexing his questions are, and the more unreasonable he is about wanting them answered to su't himself. Why, the oldest boy I ever knew — he was fifty-seven years old, and I went to school to him — could and did ask the longtst, hardest, crookedest questions, that no fellow, who used to trade of all his boolis for a pair of skates and a knife with a corkscrew in t, could answer. And when his questions were not answered to suit him, it was his custom — a custom more honoured iu the ; bree dies, we used to think, than in the ob- i Ecrvance — to take up a long, slender, but I exceedingly tenacious rod, which lay ever • near the big dictionary, and smite with it I the boy whose naturally derived Adamic ig- j uorancc was made manifest. Ah me, if the I boy could only do as he is done by, and fer- I ule the man or woman who fails to reply to : his inquiries, as he is himself corrected for j similar ahortcomitigs, what a valley of tears, what a literally howling wilderness he could and would make of this world. Your boy, asking to-day pretty much the same questions, with heaven knows how many additional ones, that Adam's boy did, is told every time he asks one that you don't know anything about, just as Adam told Cain fifty times a day, that he will know all THE RISE AND FALL about it when he in a mean. And so from | sends the entire family to the cemetery hy the (lays of Cain down to the present wick- ! making practical tests of his teas, eder generation of boys, the boy ever looks I And as hia knowledge broadens, forward to the time when he will be a man ' his human superstition develops .and know everything. That happy, far | itself. He has a formula, repeat- away, omniscient, unattainable )nanhood, j iny which nine times a daj', wlii!e pointing which never comes to your iioy ; which his finger fixedly toward the sun, will cause would never come to him if he lived a ! warts to dinappear from the hand, or, to use tliou.sand years; manliood, that like boy- 1 his own expression, will " knock warts." If hood, evtr looks forward from day to day to ; the eight day clock at home tells liim it is the morrow ; still peering into the future for ' two o'clock, and the Hying leaves of the dan- brighter light and broader knowledge : day ' deliou declare it is half-past Hve, he will after day, as its world opens I.efore it, ' stanil or fall with the dandel on. He has u stundding upj:-nut tree fn-r.) a pec:ui tree ; you monstrous and hideous beetles and bugs and things that j'ou never saw before, and for which he h: s apjTojriate names of hisov.;:^ He hiiows where there are three oriel s iiosts, and so far as you t\'vn rem em 1 '■;■•. you never s;iw an oriole's nest in your life. He can tell yon liow to distinguish tlie good mushrooms from the poisonous one**, and ])oiRon grapes from good ones, and how he ever round out ex(;ei)t by eating both kinds, is a inysteiy to hi^ motiier. Every root, T)U<1, betrv ir baric, that will make any Itit- ter, horrible, semi-]joi8onous tea, rejnited to have marvellous medii'inal virtues, he knows where to find, and brings home, and all but can't make friends with strange dogs ; you can't mnketlicterriHcnoises with your mouth, you can't invent the inimitable signals or the characteristic catehwords of boyhood. He is getting on, is your boy. He reaches the dime novel uge. He wants to lie a mis- sionary. Or a'pii'ate. So fai- as he expresses any i)refeiei)ce, he would rather be a pirate, an occujiation in which there are more chances for making money, and fewer o])j)0) tunities for I'eiiiu devoured. He develops a yearning love for school and study about this time, also, and everv time he dreams of being a pi- rate he dreams of hanging his dear teacher at the yard arm in the presence of the de- lightetl sc more rapi' In the } street, ar is a patch his neck < to drown He whisp dinary, c He excha his father liviu'g in t teresting mediate satisfai'ti less d'sn hatred f walking feet nevi and his I using it ; the othe less habi water pi the saint the drye manages the car] door m; years ol a scrapt time, \k out mys of the w larity, a tidence, buy hiii hat in than lit it up tl the cro hat rac son Cr make harder casion, shelve itself, water of me he giv When clotht cause philoi rrof. Becai see T cing link, are wait fort OF THE MUSTACHE. etery by lighted SL-holars. His voice develops, even more rapiilly and thorouirhly than his morals, roadens, In the jard, on the houae too, down the develops street, around the corner ; wherever there repeat- is a patch of i ; big enough for him to breaii pointing his neck on, or a pond of water »leep enough ill cause to drown in, the voice of ymir boy is heard. )r, to use He whispers in a shout, and converses, in or- 1 '.rts. ■' Ff dinary, confiilential moments, in a shriek. ! him ii is He exchan,L;ea bits of back-fenee gossip about I the dan- his father s domestic matters witli the boy : he will living in the a'ljaieufc township, to which in- j Je lias a teresting revelations of home life the inter- 1 las been mediate neighl)ourhood listens with inten.se | 1 things, satisfaction, and the two home circles in help- | e woods, less dismay. He has an unconqueralde | a squir- hatred f >r company, and an aversion for e — and if walking dawn stairs. For a year or two his ! she does feet never touch the stairway in hisdescent, | week — and his habit of polishing t lie stair rail by ; e looking using it as a passenger tramway, soon breaks ■ e dollars the other members of the family of the care- | less habit of setting the hall lamp or the ; water pitcher on the baUister post. He wears ! the same sized boots as his father ; ynd on i the dryest, or Turn, his life is not all comedy at this period. Go up to your boy's room some night, and his sleeping face will preach yon a sermon on the griefs and troubles that sometimes weigh his little heart down almost to breaking, more eloquently than the lips of a Spufgeou could picture them. The cur- tain has fallen on one day's act in the uiama THE RISE AND FALL of his active little life. The resUess little feet that all day long have pattered ao far — down diifity streetH, over scorching pave- ments, tlirough long stretches of quiet wooded lanes, along the winding cattle paths in the derp. .silent wood.s ; that have dahhled in the cool brook.s where it wrangles and scolds over tlie shining pebbles, that have filled your house with noise and dust and racket, ^are still. The stained hand outside the sheet is soileil and rough, and the cut finger with the rude bandage of the boy's own surgery, pleads with a mute, effective pathos of its own, for the mischievous hand that is never idle. On the brown cheek the trace of a tear marks the piteous close of the day's troubles, the closing scene in the troubled drama ; trouble at school with books that were too many for him ; trouble with temptations to have unlawful fun that were too strong for him, as they are fre- quently too strong for his father ; trouble in the street with ])oys that were too big for him ; and at iant, in his home, in his castle, his refuae, trouble has pursued him until, feeling ut^erlj* friendless and in everybody's way, he lias crawled off to the dismantled den, dignified by the title of "the boy's room," and liis over-charged heart has welled up into his eyes, and his last waking breath has broken into a sol), and just as he begins to think that after all, life is only one broad sea ot troubles, whose restless billows, in never-ending succession, break and beat and double and dash upon the short shore line of a boy's life, he has drifted away into the wonderland of a boy's sleep, where fairy fin- gers picture his dreams. How soundly, deeply, peacefully he sleeps. No' mother who has never dragged a sleepy boy ott" the lounge at 9 o'clock, and hauled him off up stairs to bed, can know with what a hercu- lean grip a square sleep takes hold of a boy's senses, nor how fearfully and wonderfully limp and nerveless it makes him ; nor how, in direct antagonism to all established laws of anatomy, it deveiops'i joints that work both ways, all the way up and down that boy. And what pen can portray the wonder- ful enchantment of a boy's dreamland ! No marvellous visions wrought by the weird, strange power of hasheesh, no dreams that come to the sleep of jaded woman or tired man, no ghastly spectres that dance atten- dance upon cold mince pie, but shrink into tiresome, stale, and tiifling commonplaces compared with the marvellous, the grotesque, the wonderful, the terrible, the beautiful and the enchanting scenes and people of a boy's dreamland. "This may be owing, in a gi-eat measure, to the fact that the boy never relates his dream until all the other members of the family have related theirs ; and^then he comes in, like a back country, with the ne- cessary majority ; like the directory of a western city, following the census of a rival town. Tom is a miniature Ishmaelite at this period of his career. His hand is against every man, and about every man's hand, and nearly every woman's hand, is against him, ofl[" and on. Often, and then the iron enters his soul, the hand that is .against him holds the slipper. He wears his mother's slipper on his jncket quite as often as she wears it on her foot. And this is all wrong, unchristian and unpolitic. It spreads the slipper and discoaroges the boy. When he reads in his Sunday-school lesson that the wicked stand on slippery places, he takes it as a direct personal reference, and he is af- fronted, and maybe the seeds of atheism are implanted in his breast. Moreover, this re- peated application of the slipper not only sours his temper, and gives a bias to his moral ideas, but it sharpens his wits. How many a Christian mother, her soft eyes swimmin|2 in tears of real jjain that plashed up from the depths of a loving heart, as she bent over her wayward boy until his heart- rending wails and piteous shrieks drowned her own choking sympathetic sobs, has been wasting her strength, and wearing out a good slipper, and pouring our all that price- less riood of mother love and duty and pity and tender sympathy upon a concealed atlas- back, or a Saginaw shingle. It is a historical fact that no boy is ever whipped twice for precisely the same offence. He varies and improves a little on every rep- etition of the prank, until at last he reaches a point where detection is almost impossible. He is a big boy then, and glides almost im- perceptibly from the discipline of his father, under the surveillance of the police. By easy stages he passes into the uncom- fortable period of boyhood. His jacket de- velops into a tail-coat. The boy of to-day, who is slipped into a hollow, unabbreviated mocker> of a tail-coat, when he is taken out of long dresses, has no idea — not the faintest conception ( f the grandeur, the momentous importance of the epoch in a boy's life that was marked by the transition from the old- fashioned cadet roundabout to the tail-coat, it is an experience that heaven, ever chary of its choicest blessings, and mindful of the decadence of the race of boys, has not vouch- safed to the untoward, forsaken boys of this wicked generation. When the roundabout went out of fashion, the heroic race of boya passed away from earth, and weeping nature sobbed and broke the moulds. "The fashion that started a boy of six years on his pil- grimage of life iu a miniature edition of his father s coat, marked » period of retrogrea- II. OF THE MUSTACHE. 9 th the ne- ctory of a of a rival e at this is against hand, and ainst him, iron enters him liolds mother's often as this is all It spreads y. When n that the le takes it he is af- theism are r, this re- not only ias to his its. How soft eyes ,t plashed irt, as she liis heart- drowned has been ■iiig out a lat price- and pity aled atlas- oy is ever le od'ence. 3 very rep- le reaches npossible. Imost im- lis father, e uncom- acket de- f to-day, breviated iaken out e faintest jmeutous life that 1 the old- tail-coat, er chary ul of the )t vouch- es of this [ndabout I of boys g nature i fashion 1 his pil- }n of hia itrogrea- sion in the aftairs of men, and stamped a de- cayinj^ and dogenerate race. Tliere arc no bo3'3 now, or very few at least, such as peo- pled tlie grand old earth wlien the men of our age wore boys And tliat it is so, socie- ty is to be congratulated. The step from the roundabout to the tail-coat was a leap in life. It was tiie buy lulus, dotting tho /ir<'- tcpjr.ta and flinging upon his slionlderss tlio hji/n viri,ll.-< of .lulius : I'atroclus, donning thi; armour of Achilles, in which to go for'.li and be Hectored to death. Tom is slow to realize the grandeur of that tail-coat, liowcver, on its trial trip. How differently it fools from his good, snug- fit- ting, comfortable old jacket. It tits him too nuicli in every direction, lie knows. Every now and then he stops, witli a gasj) of terror, feelnig positive, from tlie awful sensa- tion of nothiuL'uess about tiio neck, that the entire collar has fallen otF lu the street. The tails are i)rairio'<, the pockets are cav- erns, and the liack is one vast, illimitable, stretching waste. How Touisiilles along as close to tJH! fence as lie can scrajie, a" 1 what a wary eye he keeps in every direction for other boys. When lie forgets the school, he is half tempted to feel proud of his toga ; but when he thinks of the boys, and the recep- tion that awaits him, his heart sinks, and he is tempted to go l)ack home, squeak tij) stairs, and rescue his worn tdd jacket from the rag- bag. He glances in terror at his distorted shadow on the fence, and, confident that it is a faithfid outline nf his figure, he knows that he h;is worn his father's coat off by mistake. He tries various methods of buttoning his coat, to make it conform nu)re harmoniously to his figure and his ideas of tlie eternal fitness of things. He buttons just the lever button, and immediately it Hies allabroal at the shoulders, and he beholds himself an exaggerated maunikin of "C'ap'n Cuttle." Then he fastens just the upper buttons, and the frantic tails flap and flutter like a clothes- line in a cyclone. Then he buttons it all up, a la militairp, and tries to Iof>k soldierly, but the effect is so theological-studently that it frightens him until his heart stops beating. As he reaches the last friendly corner that shields him from the pitiless gaze of the boys he can hear howling and shrieking not fifty yards away, he pauses to give the final ad- justment to the manly and unmanageable raiment. It is bigger and looser. Happier and wri»klier than ever. New and startling folds, and unexpected wrinkles, and uncon- templated bulges develop themselves, like masked batteries, just when and where their effect will be most demoralizing. And a new horror discloses itself at this trying and awful jancture. He wants to lie down on the side- walk and try to die. For the first time he notices the colour of his coat. Hiiicous ! He has b(!en duped, swindled, betrayed - made a monstrous idiot by tliat siIver-tontiiu;d sales- miiu, who iias palmed off upon him a coat 2,0()() years old ; a coat that the most sweetly enthusiastic anil terribly niisinforuioil women's missionary society would hesitate to otf'er a wild Hottentot ; ami wtiich tlio most benighted, old-fashioned Hottentot that ever disdained clotlies, would certainly blush to wear in the d;i.rk, and wouhl probably driclino with thanks. Oh madness! 'Lne colour is no coli>ur. It is all cokairs. It is a brindle — a vcritalile, untleniable brindle. 'i'lmro must have been a faViulons auKUUit of brindle cloth made up into boys" first coats, sixteen or eighteen or nineteen years ago ; because, f)ut of S!»4 — I like to bo exact in the use of figures, because nothing else in the world lends such an air of profound truthfulness to a discourse- (Viit of 8'.)4 Iioyu I knew in their lirt^t tail-coat pel iod. 8tl.S c;i;ne to sidiool in brindle coats. And the other one —tlie 804th boy — made his wretciied debut in a bottle- green toga, with dreailful glaring l)rass but- tons. He left school very suddenly, and we always believed tliat the angels saw him in that coat, and ran away with him. But Tom, shivering with apprehension, and faint witii mortiticati(Ui over the discovery of this new horror, gives one lawt despairing si^rooch of his shoulders, to make the coat hiok shorter, and, with a liiial frantic tug at the tails, to make it apjiear longer, steps oat from the protecting' a>gis of tne corner, is stunned with a vocal hurricane of "Oh, what a coat !" and his cup of misery is as full as a rag-bag in three minutes. Passing into the tail coat period, Tom awakens to a knowledge of the lu'oad physi- cal truth, that he has hands. He is not very positive in his own mind how many. At times he is ready to swear to an even l.vo ; one pair ; gootl hand. Again, when cruel fate and the liou-appearanco or some one's else brother has conifielled him to accompany his sister to a church sociable, he can see eleven ; and as he sits bolt ujjright in the grimmest of straight-back chairs, plastered right up against the wall, as the "sociable " custom is, or used to be, trying to find enough unoccupied pockets in which to sequester all his hands, he is dimly conscious that hands should come in pairs, and vaguely wonders, if he has only five pair of regularly ordained hands, where this odd hand came from. And hitherto, Tom has been content to encase his feet in anything that would stay on them. Now, however, he has an eye for a glove-fitting boot, and learns to wreathe his face in smiles, hollow, heartless, deceitful smiles, while his boots are as full of agony 10 THE RISE AND FALL &B a broken heart, and his tortured feet cry out for vengeance upon the shoemaker, and make Tom feel that life is a hollow mockery and there is nothing real but soft corns and bunions. And : His mother never cuts his hair again. Never. Wlien Tom assumes the manly gown she has looked her last upon his head, with trimming ideas. His hair will he trimmed and clipped, barberously it may be, but she will not be acscissory before the fact. She may sometimes long to have her boy kneel down l)efore her, while she gnaws around his terrified locks with a pair of scis- sors that were sharpened when they were made ; and have since then cut acres of calico, and miles and miles of paper, and great stretches of cloth, and snarls and coils of string ; and furlongs of lamp wick ; and have suutfed caudles ; and dug refractory corks out of the family ink bottle; and punched holes in skate straps ; and trimmed the family nails ; and have even done their level best, at the annual struggle, to cut stove-pipe lengths in two; and have success fully 0|->ened oyster and fruit cans; and prieo up carpet tacks; and have many a time and oft gone snarlingly and toilsomely around Tom's head, :ind made him an object of terror to tlie children in the street, and made hiiu look so much like a yearling colt with tlie run of a bur pasture, tliat jieople have been afraid to approach him too suddenly, lest he tjl.ould jump through his collar and run away. He fee's tor, tlie dawning consciousness of another grand truth in the human economy. It dawns upon his deepening intelligence with the inlierent strength and tlie unquestioned truth of a new revelation, that man's upper li[) was clesigneil by naturo for a niustacho pasture. How tenderly nsscrved ho is wlien he is l)roiiilini|, over this momentousdihcoveiy. With what exquisite caution and delicacy arc his primal iuvcstiLratioiis conducted. In Ins niicroM;(i| io.d resoarcuv:", it a]Hiears In him that tlic down on his upper lip is cer- tainly ninie dettr.nineddown ; more positive, more proiiduiiccil. more iiidivuliiiil fiiz/ than that ^viiich vcLietates in neglected teudtinies.i upon liis cht'Dlvs. iliMuakes cautious explor- ations ailing the land of promise with tiie tip of iii.s L"nderes linger, delicately l)acking up the grade the wrong wny, going always a^'ain>t the grain, that he may the more readily detect the slightest symptom of an uprising ))y the linst feeling of velvet} re- siataiuje. Ami day by day lie is more and more lirmly ciuivincod tliat there isin his li|>, the primordial germs, the [)rotophism of a gicuy that will, in its full devilopment, eclipse even the majesty and grandeur of hia first tail eoat. And in the first dawning consciousness that the mustache is there, lik« the vote, ami only needs to be brought out, how often Tom walks down to the baiber shop, gazes longingly in at the window, and walks past. And how often, when he musters up sufficient courage to go in, and climbs into the chair, and is just on the point oi huskily whispering to the barber that he would like a shave, the entrance of a man with a beard like Frederick Barbarossa, frightens away his resolution, and he has his hair cut again. The third time that week, and it is so short that the barber has to hole' it with his teeth while he files it off, and parts it with a straight edge and a scratch awl. Naturally driven from the barber chair, Tom casts longing eyes upon the ancestral shaving machinery at home. And whi> shall say by what means he at length obtains possession of the pater- nal razor? No one. Nobody knows. No- body ever did know. Even the searching investigation that always follows the paternal demand for the immetliate extradition of whoever opened a fruit can with tliat razor, which always fullows Tom's iirst shave, is always, and ever will be, barren of results, All that we know about it is, that Tom holds the razor in his hand about a minute, won- dering what to do with it, before ilie blade falls across his lingers and cuts every one of them. First blood claimed and allowed, for the lazor. Then he straps the razor furiously. Or rather, he razors the strap. He slashes and cuts that pas'sive implement in as many directions as he can make motions with t!ie razor. He would cut it oftener if the strap lasted longer. Then he nicks the razor against the side of the mug. Tlien he drops it on the floor and steps on it and nicks it again. They are small nicks, not ho large by half as a saw tooth, and he ilatters iniiisclf his father will never see thoiu. Thtn ho soaks the razor in hot vvatfr, as he has seen his father do. Then he takes it our, at a ti'inperature anyvvlicre under 980 - I'alin'u- I heit, and lays ic aiiainst his tdicck. and raises a Ijli.'vtor there tin? size of the razor, as he never .saw his father do, but aa 'lis father I most assniedly di ', many, many yrars liefnro Tom met him. Then he made a variety of indcscriltable i.;riniaciother member «)f the family— poor little Cain ' takes advantage of the presence of a nu- uever knew the dilference between his i merous company in the house, to shriek over father s sunburned nose and a glowing coal, ] the baluster- up stairs, apparently tn any boy until lie had pulled the one and jiicked nj) ! anywhere this side of China, "'i'om's a raisin' the other. And Abel had to find out thodif- | inustashers ! " Tom smiles, a w.m, neglect- ference in tiie same vay, although he was ' cd-oiphan smile ; a smile that looks as though told five hundred times, Sy his biother's ex- ! it had come up on his taee to weep over the perience, that the coal would burn him and I barrenness of the land ; a perfect ghost of a the nose wouldn't. And Cain's boy wouUln't i smile, as compared with the rugged 7x9 believe that fire was any hotter than an i smiles that play like animated crescents over icicle, until he made a digital e.vperiment, ' tlie countenances of the comiuiny. iiut the and understood why tliey called it tire. And ' mustache grows Jt conns on apace ; very 80 Enoch and Methuselah, unl Moses, and , short m the middle, very no longer at the Daniel, and Solomon, anil (jesar, and Na- ends, and very blonde all round. Whenever noleon, and Washington, and the you see such a mustache, do noi. lauuh at it ; Vresidcnt, and the C>overiior, and the ilo not point at the slow, iiiimoviii;_' linger of M.iyor, and you and i, have all senrn. I'.rii'uur'age it; speak kindly ot' it; ofn.-^,at orictniKMM' another, in one way or an- allcet admiration forit ; eo.ix italong. I'ray other, burned our tiiijiers at the s;iuic old f')r it-for it is a first. I'hey aiuays come fires thit have -corchcd iiunian lingers in tlu; , that way. And when, in the fulness (f time, same ihO:ioren tea old wa\ s, at the same ee \ it has dcvi'li>ped so f.ir that it can l.t |:iiiled, liable stands, foi' the past (i.OOO years; and there is all the agony of iiiakingittakc cnh. ur. all the veilial mslructi'm between here and It is worse, ;uiil in ire niistniate, ami more the silent Lirave eoiililn't teach \is so iiiuc!], ' dcliliciali! ihan a nieer.- eiiauni. The .sun, or to tea h it so llioioii';ldy, as one well di- i that tans Tom's cheeks ami blisters his nose, rec ted singe. And a millinn nf yuii-. fidm j mily bleaches his mustache. Nothing ever no\\ if tliis dr'cary old world may einiure . hasttJns its colour ; nothing dues it any per- flo loin.'--wlM!n iuiinau kno\\ ledge shall fall a i nianent good, noihinu but patience, and little shoit .)f 1 lu' inlinit(!, and all the lore 1 faith, ami persistent (nillinn. and erudition of this wonderful age will be With all tlic comedy liiei'e is aimut it, how- but tlie primer of that day of lii.dit - the haby evur, ios is the grand period ot a I'oy s life, that is bjirn into the \,'oi)d of knowledge and • Vou Uiok at them, witli their caiele^ss, easy, wisibnn and progress, rich with all the years i natural manners and movements in tin- streets of hunran experience, will cry for the lamj), i and on the base ball grmind, and their mar- aud, the very first time th.it o|ipoitunity fa- : veilous. systematic, indeset iliali'c, inimrtable vours it, will try to pull the llauic up by the i and complex awkwardness in your parlours, IL THE RISE AND FATL and do you never dream, looking at those j and France, were boys — schoolboys — the boy young fellows, of the overshadowing : conscripts of France, torn from their homes destinies awaiting then>, the mighty strug- gles mapped out in the earnest future of their lives, the thrilling contjucsts in the world of arms, the grander triumplis in the realm of philosophy, the fadeless laurels in the empire of letters, and the im and their sciiools to stay the failing fortunes of the last g'-and army and the Empire that was tottering to its fall. You don't know how soon these happy-go-lucky young fellows making summer hideous with base ball slang, or gliding around a skating rink on their perishable crowns that he who giveth them |ibacks, may hold the state and its destinies the victory binds about their brows, that wait for the courage and ambition of these boys ? Why, the world is at the boy's feet ; and power and conquest and leadership slum- ber in his rugged arms and care-free heart. A boy sets his ambitiim at whatever mark he will — lofty or grovelling, as he may elect— and the boy who resolutely sets his heart on fame, on wealth, on power, on what he will ; who consecrates iiimself to a life of noble en- deavour, and lofty effort ; who concentrates every faculty of his mind and body on the attainment of his one darling point ; who brings to support his ambition courage and industry ami patience, can tramplo on genius; for these are ))etter Hud grander than genius ; and he will l)egin to rise above his fellows as steadily and as surely as the sun climbs above the mountains. Hannilial, standing beforu the Punic aitar tires and in the lisping ac- cents of ctiildhood swearing cteiyial hatred to Rome, was the Hannibal at twenty-four years commandijig the army tliat swept down upon Italy like a mountain torrent, and shook the power of the mistress of the M'orld, bid her detiance at her oNvn gates, while af- frighted Home huddled and cowered under the protecting shadow of her walls. Na- poleon, building snow forts at school aa I planning mimic battles for his pla\fell>wb, was the lieutenant of artillery it sixteen years, general of artillery and the victor of Toulon at twenty-four, and at last Emperor — not by the paltry accident of birth which miglit liappen to any man however unworthy, but by the manhood and grace of his own right arm, and his own brain, and his cour age and dauntless ambition — Emperor, with 1 Laura's dress in their grasp ; you don't know how soon these boys may make and write the history of the hour ; how soon they alone may shape events and guide the current of public action; how soon ojie of them may run away with your daughter or borrow money of you. Certain it is, there is one thing Tom will do, just about this period of his existence. He will fall in love with -somebody before his mustache is long enough to wax. Perhaps one of the earliest indications of this event, for it does not always break out in the same manner, is a sudden and alarm- ing increase in the number and variety of Tom's neck-ties. In his boxes and on his dressing case, his mother is ccmstantly start- led by the changing and increasing assort- ment of the display. Monday he en- circles his tender throad with a lilac knot, fearfully and wonderfully tied. A lavender tie succeeds the following day. Wednesday iagraced with a sweet little tangle of pale, pale blue, that faove their heails, who, with their young lives streaming from wounds, opened their pallid lips to cry, "Vivo L 'Bmpereur," as they died for^onour And (luring the variegated necktie period of man's existence how tenderly that mus- tache is coaxed and petted and caressed. How it is brushed to make it lie down and waxed to make it stand out, and how he notes its slow growth, and weeps and mourns and prays and swears over it day after weary day. And now, if ever, and generally now. he buys things to make it take colour. But he never repeats this offence against nature. He buys a wonderful dye, warranted to "produce a beautiful glosfey black or brown at one application, without stain or injury to their gaping | the skin." Buys it at a little shabby, round the corner, obscure drug store, because he is not known there. And he tells the assas- sin who sel for a sick i he lies. .A tude of hii drawn an< \ irtues of fingers and It burns hi tries to rul: lingers. I real camel tenderly, turns his dark. An darkness a every thiuj mustache ghastly hi 'moon throi untainted, ble blonde, fools Tom The eye faultless c( and sistei shirt in thi that he wo room to be And th( Sunday -sc pic-uic or1 influx of 1 morals ai compare w those bool narrow at the only t fill his vei when Ton somebody or four til atiou wou tranquiliz his startiu rush of in the straps aud puUiu befoie hii head, the off. Thei earth rod he can fi home. A the first t the Chris Or would says. Hi old that 1 if it is se up in ag' time he v ho leaves " lixy" lo OF THE MUSTACHE. 11^ —the boy sir homes : fortunes pire that n't know iR fellows lall slang, on their destiniea how soon history nay shape lie action; vay with J'ou. Tom will existence, before his cations of break out id alarra- ^ariety of il on his itly start- ng awaort- he en- lac knot, lavender 'eduesday f pale, pale mrsday is pea green, ufficiently collar; to om's wash ot of dark it-me-nots )nes itself lutral tint Sunday is isdffiicult xpress the his neck- will har- or match itie period that mus- caressed. down and d how he nd mourns fter weary 'ally now. our. But st nature, rraated to or brown r injury to »by, round because he the assas- sin who sells it to him, that he is buying it for a sick sister. And the assassin knows he lies. And in the guilty silence and soli- tude of his own room, with the curtains drawn and the door locked, Tom tries the \ irtues of that magic dye. It gets on his tingers and turns them black, to the elbow. It burns holes in his handkerchief when he tries to rub the malignant poison otf his ebony tingers. He applies it to his silky mustaolie, real camel's hair, very cautiously and very tenderly, and with some misgivings. It turns his lip so black it makes the room dark. And out of all the clouds ami the darkness and the sable splotches tJiat p;ili every thing else iu I'lutoiiian gloom, that mustache smiles out, grinning like hoiae ghastly hirsute spectre, gleaming like the moon through arilted storm cloud unstained, untainted, unshaded ; a natural, incorrupti- ble bloude. That is the last time anybody fools Tom OH hair dye. The eye he has for immaculate linen and faultless collars. How it amazes his mother and sisters to learn that there isn't a shirt in the house fit for a pig to wear, and that he wouldn't wear the best collar in his room to be hanged iu. And the boots he crowds bis feet into ! A Sunday -school room, the Sunday before the pic-uic or the Christmas tree, with its sudden influx of new scholars, with irreproachable morals and ambitious appetites, doesn't compare with the overcrowded condition of those boots. Too tight in the instep ; too narrow at the toes : too short at both ends ; the only things about those boots that don't fill his very soul with agony, are the straps, when Tom is pulling them on, he feels that if somebody would kindly run over him t^ree or four times, with a freight train, the sens- ation would be pleasant and reassuring and tranquiliziug. The air turns blaok before his starting eyes, there is a roaring like tlie rush of many waters in his ears, he tugs at { the straps that are cutting his fingers iu two > aud pulling hisarms out by the roots,and just i befote his bloodshot eyes shoot out of his head, the boot comes on — or the straps pull otf. Then when he stands up, the | earth rocks beneath his feet, and he thinks j he can faintly hear the angels calling him I home. And when he walks across the floor i the first time his standins; iu the church and the Christian community is ruined forever. Or would be if anyone could hear what he says. He never, never, nev»:i- gets to be so old that he cannot remember those boots,aud if it is seventy years afterward his feet curl up in agony at the recollection. The first time he wears them, ho is vaguely aware, as he leaves his room that there is a sort of " tixy" look about him,aud his sisters' titt«r- iog is not needed to cojpfirm this impression. He has a certain, half-defined impression that everything he has on is a size too small for any other man of his size. That his boots are a tritle snug, like a house with four rooms for a family of thirty-seven. That the hat which sits so lightly on the crown of his head is jaunty but limited, like a junior olerk's salary ; that his gloves are a neat ht, and can't be buttoned with a stump machine. Tom doesn't know all this ; lie has only a general, vague impression that it may be so. And he doesn't know that liis sisters know every line of it. For he has lived many years longer, and got in evfii- so much more trouble, before he learns that one bright, good, sensible girl— and 1 Ijelieve they are all that — will see and notice more in a glance, remember it more accurately, and talk more about it, than twenty men can see in a week. Toin does not know, for his crying feet will not let him, how he gets from his room to the earthly paradise where Laura lives. Nor does he kn>w, after he gets there, that Laura sees him trying to rest one foot by setting it up on the heel. And she sees him sneak it back under his chair and tilt it up on the toe for a change. She sees him ease the oWier foot a little by tugging the heel of the boot at the leg of the chair. A hazardous, reck- less, presumptuous experiment. Tom tries it so far one night, and slides his heel so far up the leg of his boot, that his foot actually feels comfortable, and he thinks the angels must be rubbing it. He walks out of the parlour sideways that night, trying to hide the cause of the sudden elongation of one leg, and he hobbles all the way home in the same disjointed condition. But Laura sees that too. She sees all the little knobs and lumps on his foot, and sees him fidget and fuss, she sees the look of anguish fhttiug across his face under the heartless, deceitful, veueering of smiles, and she makes the mental remark that iViaster Tom would feel much happier, and much more comfortable, aud more like staying longer, if he had worn his father's boot^ But on his way to the house, despite the distraction of his crying feet, how many pleasant, really beautiful, romantic things Tom thinks up aud recollects and compiles aud composes to tiay to Laura, to impress her with his originality, and wisdom, and genius, and bright exuberant fancy aud general su- periority over all the rest of Tom kind. Real earnest things, you know ; now hollow, con- versational compliments, or uou*euse, but such thiuga, Tom flutters himself, as none of the other fellows can or will say. Aud he has them all iu beautiful order when he gets at the foot of the hill. The remark about the weather, to begin with ; not the stereotyped 14 THE RISE AND I-'AF.L old phnise, Init ;; qiiiiint, droll, liumorons coiicfit tint no ono in the worM hnt T'oin could tliiiik f)f. Then, artcr the oiienini,' overture a'loiit tlie weather, soinethiiiu Jiboiit musio iuid Het'thuven's Honata in M Hat. atid Haydn's k\ iniihuiiies, and of course houio- thint; about lieetiio- eii's grand old Fifth symphony, somebody's else ma'^s, in heaven knows how many flats ; and then sometliinf? about art, and a profound tliought or two on science anl philosophy, and so on to poetry and from poetry to "" iiusmess. " But alan, when Tom reaches the gate, all tliose well orderc'l ideas dis[ilay evident symptoms of breaking up ; as he cr-osses the yard, he is dismayed to know that they are in the convulsions of a panic, and when he touches the bell knob, every, each, all ami several "f tiie ideas, original and eompihtd, that he has had on any subjeet durinjx the past ten years, forsake hiin :\ni\ return nn more that evening. When Laui'a o])ened the door tie had intemled t) saj' somethinir real splend I r.lfout the: imiJri.MiiKHl sutdight of sonietliiii:;, ijeamin:' out a welcome upon the what you may call it o( the nii.dit or some- thing. Instead of which he says, or rather j^asps : " dh, yc», to be sure; to bi' ^ure ; ho." And then, consciou.s that he has not said anything ])articularly brilliant or ori- ginal, or tiiat most any of the other fellovs could not say with a little jtractice, he makes one more eliort to redeem himself before he steps into the hall, and adds, "Oh, good morning ; good morning." I'^ecling that even this is only a jjariial succes?, he collects hia scattered faculties for one united eti'ort and inquiries; "How is your mother?" And then it strikes him that he has about ex- hausted the subject, and he goes into the i)arlour, and sits down, ami just as soon as le has placed his reyiroachfid feetin the least agonizing position, he proceeds to wholly, completely andsuecessfullj' I'orget eveiything he ever knew in liis life. He returns to con- sciousness to tind himself, to his own amaze- ment and rqually t«> Ijaura's bewildernnint. conducting a conversation abr»ut the crops. and a new method of fumlintr tlie national ilel)t, subjectti upon which he is about as well iiifornieil as the town clock. Me rallies, aiid make.', a successful elfcut to turn the conversation into literary channels by asking her if she has read "Daniel Deromia,' and wasn't it odd that (Jeorge Washington l^liot should name her heroine " (-irenadine," after a dretine. tiiWII tills iMider little sparkling loks at the kviii daiigh- tui'u grows t it, until he must impressive iw can he his breast? \ hand ; his leftly hides [lood night, le mus*;ache 1 of his own rom the de- hes two of ■r crept out ntl swore in jrofaiiiiy at And his and bilter- lim ^liMt he advantage ; ^i1 vfsry like Mitirely un- rifver want losopiiioally liiid never, ,gain. And tile manliest Id, to think ' tiiP sun for ender little hes himself essncsa that OF THE MUSTACHE. w tumbles pillows, bolsters, and sheets into one hapeless, wild, chaotic mass, and he goes i through the motions of going to sleep, like a 1 man who would go to sleep by steam, fie j stands his pillow up on end, and pounds it { into a wad, and he props his head upon it as though it were tlie guillotine block. He lays it down and smooths it out lerel, and pats all the wrinkles out of it, and there is more sleeplessness in it to the square inch than there is in tiie hungriest mosquito that ever s impled a martyr's blood. He gets up and smokes like a patent stove, although not three hours ago he told Laura that he de- tested 'obacco. This is the only time Tom will ever go through this, in exactly this way. It is the one rare golden experience, the one bright, rosy dream of his life. He may live to be as iable " was the beautiful aria, '' Uoliert toy que jam," considers Brown a very pro- digal in linguistic attainments, another Cardinal Mezzofanti, and hates him for it accordingly. And hc hates Daubs, the artist, too, who was up there one evening and made an olF hand crayon sketch of her in her album. The jiicture looked much more like Daubs' mother, and Tom knew it, but Laura said it was oh just delightfully, perfectly splendid, and Tom has hated I laubs most conlially ever siuoe. In fact,Tom hates every man who has the temerity to speak to her, or whom slie may treat with ladylike courtesy. Un- til there conies one night when the boots of the inquisition pattern sit more lightly on their sufierimr victims. When Providence has been on Tom's 8i' very drunk indeed. " It isn't that, Sir. Sir, tiiat isn't it. I — I — I want to many your daughter !" Ami there it is at last, as hluntly as though Tom had wadded it into a gun .iiul shot it at the old man. Mr. Tret does not say any thing for twenty B6con:ht that Tom, in all his inexperi- ence and with all the rash enthusiasm and ooaceit of a young man, is just getting ready to run and fight, or tight and run, you never «Mua tell whicn until ne is through with it. And the old man, looking at Tom, and through him, and past him, feels his o\^ heart throb almoEt as quickly as does that of the young man before him. l*'or lookinsr down a long vista of happy,, eventful jean, bordered . with roseate hopea bright i dnaau and antidpatioai, he sees a tender face, radiant with smiles and kindled m ith blushes ; he feels a soft hand drop nito his own with its timid pressure ; he sees the vision oiien, under the glitteringsummoi'stara, down niossv liillsiiUs. where tlie restless breeze.-', sighing tJirough th'j rustling leaves w'cispered their tender secret to the noisy kacy.Uds ; stiolliim along the winiiing paths, deep in the bending wihl grass, down in the star-lit ai;les of the dim old woods; loitering \\hcro tiie nieailow brook sparkles over the white pebbles or murmurs around the great Hat stepping- stones; lingering on the rustic foot biiilge, while he gazes into eyes eloquent and tender in their silent love-liulit ; up through the long pathway of 3ea)s, lleckeil and checkered with sunshine aad yloiid, with storm and calm, tlin.ngh years of stiiigelc, trial, sorrow, disappointinont, out at -asfe into the grand, gloiiouH, crowning beauty and benison of hard-won and wed-doserved success, until he sees now tii'.s sei'i ii') Lnura, re-imaging her mother as she was in the dear old days. And he rou'-es from his dream with a start, and he tells Tom he'll "Talk it over with Mrs. Tret, and see him again in the morning. " And so they are duly and form.dly en- gaged , and the very hrst thing they do, they make the very sensdde, though very uncommon, resolution to so conduct tiiein- selves that no one will ever suspect it. And they suo'.'ced admiral/ly. No one ever does suspect it. They come into church in time to hear the benediction — every time they come together. They shun all otl.er people when church is dismissed, and are seen to go I home alone the longest way. At iiic-nica they are missed not more than fifty times a day, and are di.scovcred sitting unler a tree, holding each other's hands, gazin.; into each other's eyes and saying — nothing. W hen he throws her shawl over her shouliters, he never looks at what he is doing, but looks into her starry eyes, throws the shawl right over her natural cr.ls, and drags them out by the hair-pins. If, at sociatile or festival, they are left alone in a dressing-rooiu a second and a half, Laura emerges with her ruffle standing around like a railroad acci- dent ; and Tom has enough complexion on his shoulder to go around a ladies' seminary. When they drive out, they sit in a buggy with a seat eighteen inches wide, and there is two feet of unoccupied room at either end of it. Long years afterwards, when they drive, a street car isn't too wide for them ; and when they walk you could drive four loads of hay between them. And yet, as carefully as they guard their precious liktle secret, and as cautious and circniaapeet aa they are in their walk aoA 18 THE RI8B AND FALL behaviour, it gets talked around that they are engaged. People are so prying and bub- pioioiib. And so the months of their engagement nm on ; never before or since, time flies so swiftly — unless, it may be, some time when Tom lifts an acceptance in bank to meet in two