occasion—and, during the short talk we had about our health and the weather, I didn’t let him divert me from what I believed my plain duty as a funeral guest. I kept my face mournful and spoke in a low voice, mainly monosyllables, trying to seem on the verge of breaking down completely with my grief for Uncle George.
This was my manner throughout the day and evening, and during the obsequial ceremonies of the next day. A stranger seeing me might have thought I’d been closer to Uncle George than almost anybody’d been. I was sure this was the effect called for, and, as I came prominently forth from the house, a member of the mourning family, to go to the cemetery, I saw respectful spectators in the yard and on the sidewalk and wished that the transcendent rose-and-gold little circus girl could see me then. In my thoughts she occupied almost as large a place as I did, myself, at Uncle George’s funeral.
The other grown person—the one I didn’t know—for whom my boyish anxieties became acute was the President of the United States, General Garfield. Every year, with the Chapman family, two branches of the Hendrickses, and half a dozen other neighborly intimates, we had a Fourth of July we dreamed about—the sylvan games, bosky wanderings, and rare foods of an all-day picnic in the woods far out of town —and for the children of this association of old friends the Fourth meant the rose-lighted festival of all the year. On the second of the month that year the President was shot down by an assassin. Trying to act the man, I asked my parents as calmly as I could if the picnic would have to be given up.
Grave, they said, yes, of course; there couldn’t be any kind of Fourth of July celebration anywhere unless the surgeons in Washington should decide the next day that General Garfield was going to get well. I wasn’t one solitary little monster; every boy I saw on the third of July was as passionately hopeful as I that those doctors in Washington would issue the right kind of bulletins, no matter what. But the eve of the Fourth came, no preliminary rockets hissed up over the housetops, and the nation was in gloom. Late on the morning of the Fourth the news became more encouraging: the President had a chance; and after hesitant consultations it was decided that there were to be no firecrackers, but to the great question—the picnic—the answer at last was yes.
Noon had passed before the family carriages came lurching one by one through the green woods, and immediately the baskets were unpacked and the long white tablecloths laid upon the grass. An hour later, partly gorged, the boys all instinctively withdrew themselves far from the elders and maidens of the tribe; we ran yelping and chasing one another through the woodland until we were securely distant, out of earshot, and had found a stream. Upon its bank we gathered in a chattering clump; a thing forbidden was revealed.
Woodland Casualty
One of us, an adventurous boy, Chase Walker, had it—a pistol. He had blank cartridges, too—he’d not been able to acquire any with bullets, though he’d tried—but he showed us how he could shoot at a mark just the same.
He took small pebbles from the edge of the little creek, pushed them into the muzzle of the pistol, and, with the unsharpened end of a lead pencil, rammed down a wad of paper after them. For a target he fastened a torn bit of newspaper against the rough bark of a tree; then, retiring a few feet, fired and proudly showed two or three holes in the paper made by the pebbles.
He was generous, let all of us shoot pebbles at the mark until he and we found the sport monotonous and tired of it. We waded in the stream, caught crawdads, discovered a deep hole, and went swimming. We sunburned ourselves upon a sandbank, held our heads under water, and clinked stones together to see how much it made our ears hurt; we rioted waterily till the length of our thin shadows on the sandbank made us think of spicy foods again. It would be picnic suppertime soon. Chase Walker, sitting on a large rock at the edge of the sandbank, fired his pistol at a sapling; then reloaded it with pebbles, cocked it to shoot again, but decided that he’d better begin dressing instead.
People sometimes say, “It’s a wonder any boy ever lives to grow up!” and, remembering how many times I was near drowning, what weeds, roots, and wild berries I tried to find edible, and how often I just saved myself on roofs, though I was the least daring of my kind, I think there’s something in the saying. Chase Walker sat on his rock, dabbling his feet in the water and preparing a pebble-loaded pistol to be carried in his pocket. With the muzzle resting upon his bare leg, as he sat, he held the hammer back with his thumb and pressed the trigger. The hammer should have been restrained by his thumb, but wasn’t; the pistol uttered its sharp report—and there was Chase staring, mystified, at a nasty red-and-black spot just above his right knee. Then his face was contorted and he began to whimper a little.
“What can I do?” he said.
We couldn’t tell him; he appeared to be ruined and already we were thinking of something else. Nothing was more severely forbidden to every one of us than to have anything to do with a pistol; and, now that Chase had shot himself with one, our alarm—for ourselves—was acute. It gave us, too, a distaste for Chase; but we helped him to tie a wet handkerchief round his leg and to get into his clothes. Then, after several trials and collapses, he found that he could progress hobblingly and we set forth.
For a while some of us lingered scaredly along in the rear with Chase; but when we began to hear distant adult shouts calling us to the picnic supper, the first law of Nature asserted itself. Already the two or three youngest, and therefore most instinctive, were far ahead. Scattering ourselves—every boy for himself—we arrived singly in the glade where our elders and the maidens sat upon the grass, feasting.
We found our places quietly, very quietly; said nothing unless spoken to and carefully didn’t look at one another. Seated, we ate slowly—until all of us paused in both eating and breathing when Chase Walker’s mother asked a natural question. “Wasn’t Chase with the rest of you? Where is he?”
“Where?” I repeated. “Chase? Well—I think he must be coming. I think I saw him walking along behind us somewhere back in the woods. I mean I think I did.”
Somebody said, “Yes, there he is, Mrs. Walker,” and Chase emerged from a thicket, bravely limping only a little.
“I fell and bumped my knee,” he explained, as he contrived to let himself down upon the grass beside the white cloth. “My goodness, mother, don’t make a fuss over my just tripping on a root and falling down!”
Mrs. Walker was reassured and the gay chatter of the elders and maidens resumed. Chase ate in a natural manner, and the rest of us preserved the kind of still expressionlessness that always ought to be investigated when boys wear it.
Fool’s Paradise
Now the last sunshine had faded from the tops of the trees; the horses were harnessed; and, singing “Good night, ladies, we’re going to leave you now,” the families all piled themselves into the carriages. The boys contributed little to the song; but, as I jogged sleepily back into the town in the dusty dusk, my anxiety evaporated. Obviously, the episode was closed. General Garfield had been shot, but we’d had our picnic; and Chase Walker had shot himself, but nobody knew it—that is, nobody who’d do anything disagreeable about it. Everything was all right.
The next day at noon, however, I had bad moments. The Pennsylvania Street streetcar, drawn by one mule with a bell hung round its neck, stopped before our house, and my mother got out, looking serious.
“There’s sad news for you,” she said as I came to the gate to meet her. “A terrible thing happened at the picnic yesterday.”
“Did it?” I contrived to ask. “You mean something happened that—that nobody knew about?”
“Yes, to Chase Walker. I’ve just come from their house. The poor boy had a pistol and he loaded it with some pebbles and accidentally
