CHARACTER SKETCH OF BOB SHILLABER (continued)

Even More on Old Bob

When I published the first paper describing the peculiarities and idiosyncracies of My Brother Bob, there were those who said I had not given the world the best illustrations of his character--each one of them having some pet anecdote of his own that should have stood luminous in the foreground. There are indeed many such that might be told, and to present a few more features of a similar character I have been induced to venture this paper.

I believe I hinted in my previous sketch that Bob was meditating a suit against a railroad for damages in cutting off certain privileges. This he has actually commenced, and a vigorous fight he is making of it, with a certainty of winning if justice is at all regarded. The specifications in his claim are very funny. They are more savory than elegant, and I cannot use them here, but the close is a triumph of magnanimity and a number of other virtues. He says if the directors of the road will only come and endure for eighteen or twenty years what he has done--the villanous smells and noises and sights, the interrupted view by and the interrupted rest by night--and then refuse to him the modest amount he demands, he will pay it to them.

This, however, needs the choice strong words of Bob's vocabulary to give it due force. His rhetoric is unapproachable in its distinctness and point. While on the stand as a witness in this case, he was asked if there was not a mutual dislike betwixt him and some other party of the opposition. He said there was not. "Do you deny, sir," said the lawyer for the Road, "that there is a mutual dislike between you?" "I do," said Bob, "most decidedly; he has a dislike for me, but I hate him." I am sorry to record the fact, but the distinction is very nice, and I cannot omit the incident though it tell against him.

One of our most honored and respected naval officers asked me the other day if I was the brother of my Brother Bob, which was at once an introduction to a most delightful acquaintance. Bob had been his right hand man in beautifying and adorning his grounds, and if a plant by any chance didn't grow, it wasn't Bob's fault; Nature had to bear all the responsibility of the failure. But they rarely failed. There was such a thorough undestanding betwixt him and them that they seemed to make up their minds to flourish at once after he had looked at them. Like the housewife who was boiling soap and kept it from boiling over by the force of her will, saying it didn't dare to, so they didn't dare depart from the directions he gave them. There always seemed a trembling among the more sensitive of the vines when he went through them for fear that they had transgressed in some way. He is wonderful in grafting. Grapes from thorns and figs from thistle are no impossibilities with Bob.

At the commencement of the war when gold took its first start, Bob had some hundred dollars or so in gold pieces that he had put by for a rainy day. No one who knows him will accuse him of extravagant practices, and his economy has enabled him to secure a respectable pile, the gold being simply the dust that rolled off in the piling. He saw the rise one per cent.! two per cent.! three per cent.! "It must be down to-morrow," thought Bob, as he counted over the ingots, like the broker of Bogota. But no; the next day it was four, and Bob grew nervous. Then it was five--six--and, at seven, he could contain himself no longer, but put his yellow boys in the hands of Discount, the broker, who gave him seven dollars in green-backs on the hundred. The next day it leaped to ten and in a very short time it was up to fifty, at which time he told me the story of his want of shrewdness. There was one thing, however, to comfort him. As to every deep there is a lower deep, so if we but think that to every misery or disappointment there is a greater, we gain comfort and thank heaven it is no worse. So reckoned Bob. "Why," said he, with a tone of great satisfaction, "there were some ---- fools here that sold at four."

The idea of being outwitted pained him most. There is one man in his town whose shrewdness he holds in the highest respect. He marvels at the positive genius he shows in his operations. It is to ordinary shrewdness what the genius of Sherman is to common clodhoppers in the science of war. It was Bob's fortune to sell him some hay by the lot, at the shrewd man's own valuation, who a few days afterwards came to Bob with a long face, telling him that the hay fell short about one hundred pounds, and asked allowance for it. Bob told him he should make none. "Well," said the genius, "I will tell it, all round town, that you cheated me." "Do it," said Bob, "by all means; only let it get about that I was sharp enough to cheat you, and my fortune is made."

There is no man more loyal than my brother Bob. He has a bright eye on the conduct of the war, and criticises everything with the sharpest discrimination. No one is exempt from his strictures, were he a thousand times his friend. At a time of terrible inertness in the army, when active service seemed suspended forever, Bob was terribly exercised about it. He was engaged in his garden, and his spade went into the soil as if he were throwing up entrenchments. "Dead enough," said he, as he worked his spade by some obstacle; "dead enough; why, a defeat would be better than this." There were certain emphatic words interspersed that gave the sentence a gothic massiveness.

My Brother Bob comes to town but seldom, holding the city in but poor esteem. The sun rises here, as he avers, when he stops over long enough to prove it in the south west and sets he don't know where. He has never seen the great organ yet and says he don't want to, which is an offence not to be forgiven.His early musical education, however, was neglected, which may be submitted in palliation. When asked during a visit which he liked best, Boston or his own town, he replied gravely that he liked the latter best, because he could lie down there in the street and sleep with no danger of getting run over, while here he was in danger all the time with his eyes wide open.

I have written thus far and my pen cleaves to the subject, but I dare risk no more, at present. I received a letter from him yesterday, dated "Poverty Cottage, Highlands, Wibird's Hill" -- the location may be remembered by some--where Bob lives enjoying the otium cum dig., cultivating a potato patch and rendering himself useful for a consideration, taking care by a judicious advance in the value of his service to wake a depressed currency go as far as ever he did.

 Text scanned courtesy of The Brewster Family Network
Copy of Rambles courtesy Peter E. Randall
History Hypertext project by SeacoastNH.com
This digital transcript  © 1999 SeacoastNH.com