Henry Edward Warner

There are four little disconnected adventures in my notes that must find a place somewhere, and so I have decided to bunch them all in this chapter. If you'll draw your chair up closer, I'll give them to you in order:

First—The Adventure of the Prospective Tenant.

Second—The Adventure of the Mysterious Push Button.

Third—The Adventure of the Reluctant Cow.

Fourth—The Adventure of the Nasty Little Fat Robin.

Now for the Adventure of the Prospective Tenant.

The fact has been mentioned that we yearned to let our second floor of four beautiful rooms, private bath and shower, closet in every room, large plumbing, polished floors and heaven knows what. As a condition precedent to becoming a flatlord, I appealed to the populace through the want ad. My first copy ran like this:

3313 BATEMAN AVENUE, MONT ALTO—30 minutes from City Hall; four rooms and private hallway; bath with shower and spray, private; fine southern exposure two rooms; airy, ample windows; use of parlor, porch, piano and laundry; water-heated; Garrison avenue cars; beautiful neighborhood; splendid view of city and bay; no children; will give breakfast if desired; church within a block; nearest saloon three miles away, but very fast street cars to that point. Burglars shun neighborhood and nobody ever gets drunk.

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There were other things I overlooked, but we decided to let it go at that. Certainly virtues had been mentioned which should overcome any prejudice against suburban life and the crickets. Blithely I passed the copy over the counter and inquired the cost. The man smiled.

"Why don't you make this a display ad. and get a seven-cent flat rate on a six months' contract?" he inquired.

I hate a sarcastic man with a pencil.

"If you don't like that," I said, "do it yourself!"

To make a long recital short, he put it satisfactorily into four lines and we waited for replies. We'll skip the first forty or fifty that didn't suit us. One day there came a gentleman who looked at our four rooms, raved over them and made a proposition, to wit: If we would put a gas range and sink in the red room, open up the wall in the front room and build a sleeping porch for his baby, furnish refrigerating plant for all the baby's milk and allow him the free use of the telephone, he would take our four rooms for three months at $18 a month.

"My good friend," I said, with suppressed emotion, "you overwhelm us. Can't we remove the roof and build a little nursery for the baby, and rig you up a rainy-weather playroom in the basement? We expected to get $50 a month, unfurnished, without changes; but you have made us to see the error of our conceit. Can't we let you have the piano at the end of your three months, to move away to your future home, as an expression of good will?"

He made a gesture of protest.

"No," I insisted, "we will not have it any other way. You must accept our hospitality, sir—you simply must! My wife has a diamond ring that I'm sure she would be delighted to give your wife, and any time you want a trunk carried up or down stairs just call on me. My clothes would about fit you—allow me to lend you my dress suit and pajamas! Not a word, sir, not a word! I will not permit you to excel me in generosity. And as for your $18. I wouldn't think of taking it! Give it to a fund to provide red flannel nightshirts for the little heathens in Timbuctoo. They need the night shirts, and, believe me, I thoroughly detest money!"

He went away, and going in told the conductor that he was glad he didn't get roped into that lunatic asylum.

Now the Adventure of the Mysterious Push Button:

What a wonderful lot of push buttons a contractor can get into ten rooms and a basement!

My wife and I jammed our thumbs into at least thirty different kinds, trying them out. There were push buttons to turn on the electric light, push buttons to call the indefinite servant, push buttons to ring bells of all sorts. I half expected to find a push button that would kick a collector off the porch, but was disappointed.

We wondered who made all the push buttons, and how much royalty they paid.

A push button in That House I Bought turns on the porch light and another on the second floor lights the hallway at the foot of the grand staircase, so that in case of burglars the lady of the house doesn't have to go down in advance, carrying the lamp.

"That," I said, "is a distinct convenience. I can imagine the discomfiture of the burglar who suddenly finds himself illuminated for a Mardi Gras pageant, all ready to be shot up like a cheese or a porous plaster."

"Would you shoot a burglar?" asked my wife admiringly.

I imitated a pouter pigeon with my chest.

"The extent of my murders," I replied, "would be limited only by the supply of burglars."

It does a fellow a lot of good, when he is just moving into the responsibilities of a real citizen, to perform mental assassinations like that. I piled up my dead and we passed on.

We found, by pushing another button, that the Consolidated Gas and Electric Light Company had provided the chandeliers in both parlor and dining room with as many globes as could be crowded into the set. The man who put them in left them all turned on. We burned fully seven cents' worth of watts before it occurred to us to limit the incandescence by turning off a few globes. Then my wife got a mania for economizing, and it was Uncle Henry on a high chair under every individual set of lights, tickling the little flat black key things into a subdued quiescence. We left one watt incubator in each set, with the understanding that if company came we'd turn on the whole business and average it up on the month by sitting as late as possible on the front porch.

But there was one button that got me. It was in the front bedroom with the double-mirror doors on the big closet. We pushed it and didn't hear a thing. Logically, it ought to do something. I pushed again and listened for the tinkle. My wife went upstairs and downstairs, while I pushed, and every now and then I'd yell at her.

"Anything happening?"

"No," she would reply. "Push it real quickly and see if you can't take it by surprise!"

I tried every method I could think of to make that push button earn its existence. Every day since I've tried it, determined to learn what it ought to do or die in the attempt. But to this day that push button is a mystery.

The Adventure of the Reluctant Cow:

Billy Pentz wants to know if we will keep a bee at our house. We will not. And another thing, I don't know why bees are kept in an apiary. I cannot see the line of identification between bees and apes. Apes should be kept in an apiary; bees should be kept in a beeswax.

But we have been thinking about a cow. There is a company cowary right back of our house, and when the wind is from the south the call of the diary is strong upon us. Pardon me, I should have written the dairy. There's another digression. Why should the transportation of two letters change a notebook into a milk foundry?

I watched William milking a cow in the cowary, and the ease with which he performed what to me seemed no less than magic was simply astounding. Sitting there as quietly as you please, on an inverted bucket, with an uninverted bucket between his knees, he directed streams of embryo butter and ice-cream and custard into the centre of a foaming pool with no more concern than a Queen of the sixth century would show in knifing a kneeling page.

"We will get a cow," I announced briefly, but with that masterful tone that identifies me in any company.

My wife looked at me, the way some women look at some men. I withered but held my ground.

"Why, you can't even milk a cow!" she said.

Now, I've never taken a dare from any woman. I hiked right back down the patch, careless of the newly sown grass plots, and blundered into the cowary.

"William," I said, "arise and hand me that can! I'm going to show you how I used to milk when I was a cowboy!"

If this were fiction it would be funny, but it's fact; and many a thing that's funny in fiction is tragedy in fact.

William handed me the bucket. I said, "So, Bossy," and seated myself just as I had seen William do it, with my feet crossed and the bucket between my knees. That it slipped the first time and slopped over my trousers was merely an incident. After I'd managed a half-nelson grip with my knee caps I grabbed a couple of the cow's depending protuberances and squeezed. Nothing happened. I squeezed again and pulled. A couple of drops trickled into the palms of my hands. Encouraged, I tried a jiu-jitsu stunt designed to astonish the cow into yielding to superior intelligence, and she looked around at me and grinned.

I say that cow grinned. Some one once told me that among animals only hyenas could grin. Then this cow was a hyena, that's all.

I tackled her again, shoving my head into her ribs after the manner of certain yokels I had observed, as if there must be a secret spring to push open the vents. William and the cow grinned a duet. I pulled and pushed, twisted and tugged, coaxed and threatened, and finally I said something to that cow that was uncouth.

Heaven forgive me for ever speaking rudely to a lady beef!

She lifted her near hind hoof and sent the bucket flying. Then she moved over against me and mingled me with the soft sod. I got up and silently handed William a quarter, winking the while to accent the hush. When I went into the house I said:

"My dear, William informs me that the company may keep a cow around here, but by the terms of our purchase we may not. It's a rank discrimination, but I'm afraid we cannot have a cow. The Duke of Mont Alto and the city ordinances will not permit it!"

The Adventure of the Nasty Little Fat Robin:

I don't know the botanical names of the birds around our house; in fact, I am not sure that botany is the science of birds. But, at any rate, we have half a dozen trees and each one is a choir loft. No wheezing organ, with rattling foot pedals and thumping water-pump, disturbs the clear harmonies of their music. No sonorous basso in the amen corner growls out a flat profundo to insult the memory of Phoebe Carey; no shrill tenor raises his chin until his Adam's apple sticks out like a loose bung in a cider barrel, to shriek his blasphemy of divine music!

We have just the little birds, whose throats swell and swell until you would think they must burst, and who sing their love-bugles through the branches careless of their audience. Wonderful cadenzas chase each other in a game of lyric tag, never wearying, never breaking. Trills that can be written only in spirit composition—long notes that sometimes salute a saint, sometimes absolve a sinner—sibilant sighs that bring up memories—all these things we have in our choir, and upon them there is no mortgage!

There's a nasty little fat robin outside our kitchen door, though, who is some day going to meet disaster.

We feed the robins on crumbs, and throw them such little delicacies as cracked marrow bones, chunks of suet and bits of sugar. When they have finished eating they hurry to the end of the house, where there is always a little water trickling out to make a bird fountain. (Item: I must build a regular bird fountain.) This nasty little fat robin, who is going straight into trouble, is a hog on wings. All the others will be cheerfully setting about their dinner, when he will rush in, nibble a single bite and then stand guard over the rest, to keep them from it. I do not know whether to call him Rottenfeller for hogging it, or Rosenfelt for fighting.

Now Kadott is my pet. I've called her Kadott for a little missionary Japanese friend, who lives at Hadji Konak, and I wonder if the Japanese at Hadji Konak will appreciate the honor? The one thing that makes me fond of Kadott is that she is very much in love with me; but she annoys me, too, because she makes me keep my distance and still coquettes. She has an odd little trick of coming nearly to me, turning her head and cocking her ear, as if to say:

"There is going to be a love scene, and I must beware of eavesdroppers."

Some of these days she will eat from my hand. But now she only comes close and darts away at the first approach. She has built her nest and she has the mother instinct. When she has hatched her little family I'm going to be Uncle Henry to every one of them.

And that is what I've been trying to get to. If the nasty little fat robin butts into Kadott's family relations, there will be a murder. My hands will be red with the blood of a bandit.

When you come out to That House I Bought, stay all night and listen to the birds in the early morning. It seems to me that a man who listens to the birds in the right spirit ought to make a fairly decent citizen, in time.