The Chronic Loafer — Reading Notes

omrade, what air you starin’ so fer?’

“Sais he, ‘That letter was fer Mary Parker?’

“‘True,’ sais I, surprised.

“‘Dead sure?’ sais he.

“Then he shakes his fist an’ yells, ‘I’ve ’tended most every reunion here sence the war hopin’ to meet the idjet that sent that letter to my wife an’ wrote that foolishness ’bout findin’ my dead body. After twenty-five years I’ve foun’ you!’

“He pulls off his coat. The boys all jumps up.

“I, half skeert to death, cries, ‘But you ain’t the dead man!’

“‘Dead,’ he yells. ‘Never ben near it. Nor did I ’tend to hev every blame fool in the army mailin’ my letters nuther. Because you finds a man with my coat on, that hain’t no reason he’s me. I was gittin’ to the rear with orders ez lively ez a cricket an’ th’owed off that coat jest because it was warm runnin’.’

“‘Hen I seen what I’d done I grabs his arm, I was so excited, an’ cries, ‘Did she merry Silas Quincy?’

“‘It wasn’t your fault she didn’t,’ he sais, deliberate like, rollin’ up his sleeves. ‘I got home two days after the letter an’ stopped the weddin’ party on their way to church.’”

The Chronic Loafer stretched his legs along the counter and rested his back comfortably against a pile of calicoes.

“I allus held,” he said, “that they hain’t no sech things ez a roarinborinallus. I know some sais they is ’lectric lights, but ’hen I seen that big un last night I sayd to my Missus, an’ I hol’ I’m right, I sayd that it was nawthin’ but the iron furnaces over the mo’ntain. Fer s’pose, ez the Teacher claims, they was lights at the North Pole--does you uns believe we could see ’em all that distance? Well now!”

He gazed impressively about the store. The Patriarch, the Miller and the G.A.R. Man were disposed to agree with him. The School Teacher was sarcastic.

“Where ignorance is bliss ’twere folly to be wise,” he said. He tilted back on two legs of his chair and adjusted his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, so that all eight of his long quivering fingers seemed to be pointing in scorn at the man on the counter.

The Loafer rolled slowly over on one side and eyed the pedagogue.

“Ben readin’ the almanick lately, hain’t ye?” he drawled.

“If you devoted less time to the almanac and more to physical geography,” retorted the Teacher, “you’d know that the Aurora Borealis hain’t a light made on _terra firma_ but that it is a peculiar magnetic condition of the atmosphere. And the manner in which you pronounce it is exceedingly ludicrous. It’s not a roarinborinallus. It is spelled _A-u-r-o-r-a B-o-r-e-a-l-i-s_.”

The Loafer sat up, crossed his legs and embraced his knee, thus forming a natural fortification behind which he could collect his thoughts before hurling them at his glib and smiling foe. He gazed dully at his rival a moment; then said suddenly, “My pap was a cute man.”

“He hasn’t left any living monument to his good sense,” said the Teacher.

The Loafer looked at the Storekeeper, who was sitting beneath him on an empty egg-crate. “Do you mind how he use to say that Solerman meant ‘teacher’ ’hen he sayd ‘wine’; how Solerman meant, ‘Look not upon the teacher ’hen he is read,’ fer a leetle learnin’ leaveneth the whole lump an’ puffs him up so----”

The pedagogue’s chair came down on all four legs with a crash. His right thumb left the seclusion of his waistcoat, his right arm shot out straight, and a trembling forefinger pointed at the eyes that were just visible over the top of the white-patched knee.

“See here!” he shouted. “I’m ready for an argyment, but no callin’ names. This is no place for abuse.”

The Loafer resumed his reclining attitude and fixed his gaze on the dim recesses of the ceiling.

“I hain’t callin’ no one names,” he said slowly, “I was jest tellin’ what my pap use to say.”

“Tut-tut-tut, boys,” interrupted the Patriarch, thumping the floor with his stick. “Don’t git quarrelin’ over sech a leetle thing ez the meanin’ o’ a word. Mebbe ye’s both right.”

The Tinsmith had hitherto occupied a nail keg near the stove, unnoticed. Now he began to rub his hands together gleefully and to chuckle. The Teacher was convinced that his own discomfiture was the cause of the other’s mirth.

“Well, what are you so tickled about?” he snapped.