Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
The policeman, finding him immovable in his determination, sent for
help, and soon the battered “old Brockwell” was being washed and
strapped and bandaged and stitched, and had a few feet of plaster over
some strained muscles, and was generally “made over.” And then the
stunned burglars had recovered their scattered senses and received a
smiling and joyous welcome from the policemen, such as is only offered
when the lost is found--and indeed one of these gentlemen had been
lost--from the penitentiary--for several months. When the party of
three were rounded up, ready for an early morning stroll to the station
house, No. 1 had turned to Brockwell and growled: “See here, you old
slugger, next time I come up against you just hit me over the head
with a loaded cane, or the butt-end of a revolver or something _soft_
like that, will you? I don’t want to be ‘put out’ no more with another
‘mug’s’ head, now I tell you fair!”
“A--a--ah!” cried the little fellow, “he’s a fightin’ freak, he is! He
ought to be a doin’ time for jamming a tin pail over a man’s head and
half cutting off his ears!”
And so they went forth, cursing the night they had tackled “old Bull
Brockwell!”
And then he had returned home, “sans buttons et sans reproche,” and
finding a barrel of flour standing at the side door, had picked it up
and carried it into the house, apparently to convince himself that
he was not much hurt. Then, beginning to feel stiff and lame, he put
himself into Emily’s hands, and she promptly put him into his bed,
and scrambled through the “Fall of Jericho,” stuck her gum upon the
bed-post while she did it, then she had looked at his head and said,
“she’d no idea a man could sew so neatly!” and then old Brockwell got
hot and feverish, and his eye and cheek had blackened, and the doctor
said he must be kept quiet a few days, at which dictum Emily had
groaned aloud: “Kept quiet? Him? Good Lord!”
And, truly, had she been alone with him those days, her work would
have been cut out for her. The ideal “bull in a china shop” would have
proved an inoffensive and lymphatic creature compared to this pawing,
plunging, irritable old Bull Brockwell! Bad enough at any time, when
his eyes had swelled so he could no longer by the aid of his Bible put
women and children to “the edge of the sword,” nor erect altars, nor
even calculate the dollars’ worth of a “wedge of gold of fifty shekels
weight,” he proceeded to fret himself into a fever, and I was moved
partly by pity and partly, I am sorry to say, by a spirit of mischief,
to seat myself by his side, and with the air of one who carefully
selects a soothing and pleasant topic for sick-room conversation, I
brought forward the subject of eternal punishment, and for my reward
had his fixed attention in a moment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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