CHARACTER SKETCH OF BOB SHILLABER (continued)

Stories About Bob

Speaking of this, I was wont to try him fearfully in the olden time, and well did I rue it in the lofty indignation that fired him; but now, a right philosophy that submits, murmurless, to destiny, governs his conduct to me. This must be the case, else would he denounce me for my failure to answer his letters, and the other indignities of neglect and silence. Even when he called upon me in town in the drive of business, and I begged him, for heaven's sake, to go till I was at leisure -- a rudeness which I repented of in dust and ashes -- he turned without a complaint, and I did not see him again for six months. In reply to an abject apology I made, he said it was all right; he knew me well enough to believe that I was actuated by right motives, and he had no cause to fret about it. I wish, for myself, that such understanding could more universally prevail; that, when in our honesty we use a friend in this manner, he might not imagine an offence and abuse us for the virtue of candor, which may be the only one we have.

Candor is a virtue which Bob especially possesses. He was entrusted for many years with the care of the Court House, in the town where he lives, and was intimate with those comprising the Bench and Bar; Pierce, Christie, Hackett, Marston, Hayes, Eastman, Harvey, by all of whom he was held in high regard -- one of them, who was after-President, having borrowed money of him, upon which he based a claim for an office under his administration, that he didn't get. He was, as I have intimated, not a very dressy person, therein proving an exception to a rule of our family, and strangers underrated him on account of it. A plain suit of clothes, perhaps a green baize jacket, his collar turned back, cravatless, revealing his stout neck, presented an appearance somewhat different from the beau monde, but it was tolerated by all those who were not more nice than wise. There was but one who ever attempted to meddle with him on this point, and he tried it but once.

Bob knew everything that had ever transpired in town. It was said of him by an admirer, somewhat irreverently, that he was next to Omniscience in penetrating human secrets. He had an intuition that was infallible, and could read men like a book. Concerning this one alluded to, Bob had obtained the fact that he was owing a large tailor's bill in town, about which there was some fear. As Bob entered the Court House one morning, there was an extra number of lawyers present, and the individual named among them.

"There, gentlemen," said he, pointing to the green jacket and the open shirt collar, "there is a dress in which to associate with gentlemen!" "True," replied Bob very quietly; "I don't dress very well, but if I had gone down to Snip's and run in debt for my clothes, I might have appeared as well as you do." This was a stunner, so to speak, and Bob was declared the winner by a full bench.

Both Witty & Wise

He was always ready with replies that had a salutary smart in them. Though an early and ardent Jackson man, in honor of whose inauguration he illumined his house from attic to cellar in 1829, and inheriting the Democratic chart in politics, he turned over to the free soil side of the question, for which he was abused by those with whom he had previously acted. About this time a movement was made against the banks of his State, and Bob, having a few shares of bank stock, took a decided stand in support of the banks, against his old associates. "Well, Bob," said one of these, "I hear you have gone over to the enemy. That's just the way; as soon as a man gets a dollar's worth of bank stock and a house to his back, off he goes among the aristocracy." Bob was all the time pursuing his work of grafting trees -- he is a famous grafter, and buds will grow if he but look at them -- and only stopped long enongh to to say: "Adze, if you paid less attention to politics and more to your business, you might pay off that mortgage on your house in a little while." Adze made no further remark.

Bob's idea of family discipline would hardly be adopted yet, though we are fast gaining on it. All great ideas have found the course slow before they are established. He has had a fine family of children, though they have become divided -- some here and there, and some yonder, beyond the reach of earthly care and sorrow. When they were young, he was asked the question if he ever flogged them. "Flogged them!" said he in a tone half indignant "no, that would be too cowardly, I am going to wait till they are big enough to strike me back, and then pitch in. It is mighty mean business to strike a child."

He has filled offices of trust and emolument, but has been more distinguished for those he didn't fill. He has been captain of an engine, fence-viewer, constable, and keeper of the court-house, the latter of which offices he now holds in connection with that of messenger to the Fire Department. He was invaluable on election days, before his town was divided into wards; and stationed by the polls, no man passed that he did not know -- that fact being regarded as prima facie and sufficient evidence that the unknown one had no right to vote. They might do away with the check list in the town and no inconvenience be experienced. How he does now, I don't know, but have no doubt that at the last election he exercised the same watchfulness over the ballot-box of his ward.

He is well posted in the news of the day, but living so far from Boston, he receives his paper but twice a week. Asking him how he liked this, he replied that he liked it very well, for he had found that news was like beef steak, much better after it had been kept a little while.

This little matter of personal biography may recall the individual to the memory of many. It is the story of a little life, rather than a large one, but it has been usefully and honorably spent. I know no stigma that attaches to his name. Odd, rough, abrupt, he proves in a thousand ways, that sterling stuff rests beneath the at times forbidding exterior of MY BROTHER BOB.

CONTINUE with MY BROTHER BOB