The Talkative Wig
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Eliza Lee Follen >> The Talkative Wig
I should mention that the Squire was a justice of the peace. As he
lived in a remote and very quiet country town, he had not many
culprits brought before him. But occasionally he was called upon to
decide upon the proper punishment of some young rogue, and now and
then he had to marry a couple.
At these times, I was always smoothed and new pomatumed with the
greatest care, then put on very carefully, and examined in the
looking glass two or three times, and readjusted over and over, till
I was as even as justice itself, before the Squire took his gold-
headed cane, and proceeded to consider the case.
Once a boy was brought before him for stealing chestnuts. Now there
was such an abundance of chestnuts in the town that they were almost
thought common property. It happened, however, that the Squire had
some fine chestnuts himself, and he wished it to be considered an
unpardonable thing to steal chestnuts. So he condemned the boy's
father to pay a very good price for those his son had stolen,
leaving it to the man from whom the chestnuts had been taken to say
how large the quantity was.
This unjust decision made the man and his son very angry. But my
master was the Squire; and, in those old times, we retained a great
deal of the English reverence for a country gentleman.
The son of this man, however, had not much reverence for any thing,
and was determined to be revenged upon the Squire, as you will see.
I, however, was the greatest sufferer. It so happened that the pew
in which the boy sat at church was directly behind the Squire's. The
boy carried a piece of shoemaker's wax to meeting with him, and
when, as was usually the case, the Squire's queue came over the edge
of the pew, the young rascal took the opportunity, when no one was
looking, to stick the short queue fast with the wax to the side of
the pew.
When the Squire stood up, his wig was nearly jerked off his head,
and would have been quite off, but for the boy's father who, seeing
the good gentleman's danger, caught hold of me, tore off the horrid
wax, and then pushed me back into my place.
All the foolish children in the church giggled at my expense. The
simple Squire, thinking it was a nail or a hook, thanked the man who
had aided him in his distress, and advised him to take out the
troublesome hook. Cato, however, shook his black head and said,
"Guess naughty Pickaninny did de queue of Massa's wig. Neber mind,
Cato no make trouble; queue no feelins; I smood him up. Dem
chestnuts in his gizzard, spoze."
Not long after this, the poor Squire lost his wife. Her health had
always been very delicate, and he had been a most devoted husband.
The Squire was a good man, and tried to find consolation in the only
way it may be found, in the religious performance of duty. He became
the benefactor of the village. He was the friend of all who needed
his aid.
Now, my friends, I must pass over the next ten years. What I have
just related to you of the Squire passed in the year seventeen
hundred and eighty. Now follow me to the year seventeen hundred and
ninety-two.
The Americans, by their wisdom and bravery, had won their
independence.
The Squire had done his part for his country by furnishing money,
and by making his large retired mansion an asylum for all his
friends who were in want of it.
He was now seventy years old; and a haler, heartier, more serene old
man was never seen. His house was the summer rendezvous of all his
young and his old friends.
Well do I remember one beautiful afternoon, just before sunset, the
Squire's going to the glass, and adjusting me nicely, and then going
to the door, and looking up through the avenue of elms which were
young trees when I was first carried there, and saying, "It is time
my niece and her husband and children were here."
In a few minutes, a carriage appeared with a lady and her son and
daughter in it. That little girl, then five years old, was
afterwards the mother of our little friend asleep yonder.
Never was there a more cordial welcome given to friends than the
good Squire gave them, and never was welcome more acceptable.
There were other friends in the house, and such frolicking and
laughing and dancing on the lawn you seldom see nowadays.
For many years, the nieces and nephews and their children and
children's children came in this way to refresh body and soul at
their good uncle's; till childhood blossomed into youth, and youth
began to strengthen into maturity, and maturity to fade away into
age. Years gathered around the old man's head, but his vigor
remained.
You need not bounce in that way, my friend musket, and you, Messrs.
tea-kettle and pitcher, need not try to turn up the noses you have
lost, at my using these flowery expressions. Remember that, for more
than half a century, I dwelt upon a human head. It is natural that I
should have gained something from it, and that I should speak
somewhat as human beings speak.
I hope you will pardon my talkativeness; and, even if you think me
prosy, let me go on after my own fashion, and finish my story in my
own way, for I am very old, and can speak in no other way. Remember,
too, I shall never speak to you again."
"Go on, go on," cried the old coat, cloak, and baize gown.
The rest made no objection, and so the wig continued. "I assure you
it was a very interesting thing to me to witness the changes that
were going on among the Squire's visitors. I saw that child's mother
come, first as a young lady, then as a bride, then as a mother; and
then she came, first with one, then with two, and then with three
children; and then, each year, I saw that these children had grown
bigger, and it was pleasant, as I sat so quietly upon the old
Squire's head, to see them jump out of the carriage each year, run
up to the old man to receive his welcome, and then scamper off into
the garden and fields like so many young animals; it was pleasant to
watch their gleeful faces at his hospitable board, and to hear their
merry shouts; it was pleasant, on Sunday, to see them, with their
father and mother, follow the old gentleman respectfully at a
distance, through the avenue of elms to church, with their small,
solemn faces, just now and then slightly nodding to a buttercup and
snatching it up; while he, with me and his three-cornered hat on his
head, and his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his light drab suit
of clothes, all his dress of the same cloth, and his shoes with gold
buckles, strode along, while Cato, dressed in some of the Squire's
old clothes, walked close behind him like his shadow. You would have
thought my master forty instead of eighty.
Year after year I witnessed this, till, as I said, the children were
youths, and their parents no longer young. Then the good Squire
began to be, as I am now, a little garrulous; he loved to tell old
stories more than once. But who was there that would not, with
patient love, listen to them for many a time?
It was affecting to observe how all his dates were from the year
fifty. No matter what story he told, or when it really did happen,
he always finished by adding, "and that happened in the year fifty."
All his furniture and plate were purchased in the year fifty. It was
to him the beginning of the world.
"Uncle," said one of his nieces one day to him, "let me try to dress
your wig; I think it wants it."
"My dear, this wig was bought in the year fifty, and looks well now.
It has done me good service."
"How beautiful this avenue of elms is!"
"Yes, they were set out in the year fifty."
"You have a good housekeeper, uncle."
"Yes, my dear, she came to me in the year fifty."
And so on with every thing in and about his house, and so it was
with every event which had made an abiding mark on his memory.
There was but one thing about which the good Squire showed the real
childishness of his old age, and that was his fruit. He had bushels
and bushels of apples and pears and peaches, but he never thought
them fit to eat till they were at least half rotten.
His nephews and nieces were of a decidedly different opinion, but
did not like to debate the subject with him; so they had recourse to
a little trick. I don't think it was quite right. The Squire was in
the habit every day of gathering the ripe fruit in baskets, and
putting it in what he called especially his room; it was a sort of
half dressing, half business room. Here it was that he kept the pole
upon which he placed me at night. These baskets of fruit, if the
good man had had his own way, would have remained there till they
were all rotten like the heaps of windfalls which was the fruit he
told the family, and the children especially, they might eat.
Now it was the custom of two or three roguish boys and girls, who
visited him, to gather baskets of this rotten fruit, and when the
good man had gone to bed, to carry them into this room, and put them
in the place of the baskets of sound ripe fruit, which they took for
themselves and others to eat.
In a day or two, the good Squire would look at his baskets, and,
finding the fruit decaying, would call it fit to eat, bring it into
the parlor, and then call in the children, and say to them, "Here,
boys and girls, here is nice ripe fruit for you; you can just cut
out the rotten with your penknives;" and then he would distribute it
among them.
The little monkeys, of course, could scarce repress their giggles.
I can make no apology for their cheat, except that, upon this point,
the good man was really childish; and, as he did not eat the fruit
himself, or sell it, or do any thing with it, but give to the pigs
what was not eaten in the family, no one was wronged by the trick.
It was, in fact, a piece of sport.
As you see, I had the benefit of being present at the whole of the
fun; and I can hear now, it seems to me, as plainly as I did then,
the suppressed laughter of these roguish children when they came
into the room where I was, to exchange baskets of rotten for baskets
of sound fruit.
In his eighty-seventh year, the old man ran a race with one of these
children, and contrived, by an artifice, to win it. She got before
him; when, fearing he would hurt himself, she stopped to look after
him; he came up to her; and then, just pushing her back a little,
got before her to the goal, which was very near them. How he did
shout, as though he were only twenty, and what a hitch he gave me on
the occasion!
In his ninety-seventh year he died. It was a pity he did not live to
be a hundred. The night before he died, he went into his room to put
me on my accustomed pole. He did not see clearly, and let me fall on
the floor.
"Ah!" said he, "the old head will fall too, before long. No matter;
it is time it should go. Here, Cato, help your old master."
Cato was at hand, picked me up, put me in my place, and helped his
master to bed.
I never saw the dear old man again.
The next thing that I remember, is being put into a box and carried
I knew not whither.
The first light I saw was the dim light of this garret.
The mother of that little girl took me out; and as she put me on my
pole, which she had caused to be brought here also, "People may
laugh at me," said she, "but I will keep the dear old man's wig. It
seems to me a part of him, and is a memorial of the happy hours I
have passed under his hospitable roof."
It is now one hundred and six years since I was born into this
world. For twenty-eight years I flourished on the beautiful head of
dear Alice. Ever since then, I have been only a wig. I am now
falling into utter decay. If any one were to shake me, I should fall
to pieces. I have, like many of you, my friends, since inhabiting
this garret, been abused and made fun of, by children. I was once
put upon the head of a donkey, while a boy with a fool's cap on his
head rode him, and took a love letter to a young man. I was also put
upon the head of a great monkey brought to the house for exhibition,
who took me off his head and threw me at the boys. Once, as you
know, I was made to play the mock judge on the head of a dog. Once
that little girl who sleeps there, used me to keep a litter of
kittens warm in, on a cold winter night. This nearly killed me, and
from that moment the children were forbidden to touch me.
"I have now," concluded the wig, "only to ask your pardon, my
friends, for the impatience with which I have listened to your
stories when I thought them too long, and for the truly human vanity
and inconsistency which made me tell the longest story myself. But I
knew that no one waited for me. I shall certainly never speak more.
These are my last words. Farewell."
Just at these words, it seemed to me as if the wig gradually
dissolved into a bright halo. Then suddenly it fell into golden
ringlets all so soft and graceful and beautiful; while I looked,
they seemed to shade such a lovely, innocent face, that I knew it
must be that of dear Alice looking like an angel in heaven.
I awoke very happy. There was every thing in the old garret just as
I first described it, and all as quiet and still as if nothing had
happened."