# "Chet" (Yates)/Chapter 2

I WENT and sat in the hammock again. It seemed a week since I had stretched out there after dinner; and here it was only four o'clock, and Bess had got back, and she and I had squabbled, and that other girl was coming, and everything was at logger-heads,—whatever they are. I swung, and kicked the railing, and yanked the hammock, and jabbed at the clematis frame with my feet. It's funny how you feel like smashing something when things go wrong! Of course my face was dirty and streaked and so was my blouse, and my necktie was untied. Bess must have thought I looked nice! I kicked the railing harder than ever. There was no use in going over to Bob Stevens' that late in the afternoon;—and I didn't want to see him anyway. Just to think of him, made me feel like punching him. Bess had no right to say I was selfish.
Just then a young man came around the corner of the house. He was about twenty, and his eyes were nice. "Hello, Chet!" he said.
​"Hello," I said, sort of weak; for I'd never set eyes on him before in my life.
He laughed. "Want an introduction, do you?" he said, still grinning. "I didn't need one—I knew you at a glance."
I tried to grin, too. He sat down on the upper step and leaned back against the pillar.
"Want a job?" he said.
"Sure," said I, "if it isn't working."
He laughed again. "All right," he said; "There's no work within ten miles of it—but it doesn't begin until after supper, and all you get out of it is this," and he tossed me a little package.
It was a hard, flat package, wrapped in blue paper. I untied the string, and there was a thin wooden box. I knew what was in it, right at a glance. "Gee!" I said, as I unhooked the fastenings and saw the set of compasses that I had been simply aching to have, for a year. There was the compass with two sharp points, and one of the points could be taken off and you could put in another section that had a sort of a pen on the end of it, or one that had a place for a pencil, and there was an extra piece to put in to make one arm longer than the other;—and there was a little ​ruler with sixteenths of an inch marked on it; and a wooden triangle; and a brass circle; and a china cup for indelible ink; and a pen; and a brush; and even a little key to be used in putting on and taking off the sections. It was the finest set I ever saw, and I just sat and stared at it and began to think that I was still dreaming,—had been asleep ever since dinner.
"Like it?" asked the young man.
"You bet," said I. "Say, whose is it? What'd you bring it here for?"
The young man fanned himself with his hat and looked at me, still grinning. "Well, now, Chet, I'll tell you about it," he said. "I just arrived this afternoon and I want to see the town. I want to see the Ohio River, and the Muskingum, and the earth-works, and a few things like that; and I don't want the bother of hunting them up, and not knowing which is which. So I said to a young lady I know:—'Since you have to stay at home and get acquainted with your father all over again, do you suppose that the "Chet" who has been dinned into my ears for two months would show me the sights of the city?'"
​I began to see light.
"'Well,' said she, 'Chet can do it if anybody can; only he'll walk your legs off.'
"'I'll take the chances,' said I; and then she brought out that affair and asked me to deliver it for her, and tell you that it is for the civil engineer that you are going to be."
That was just like Bess. She always remembered what I really wanted, at birthdays and Christmas; and here she had brought me this from Boston, and she had sent it over, just the same, after I had been so ugly to her!
The young man was looking off, over the town. The part where we live is up on a hill,—they've called it the "stockade," ever since Indian times. He pointed to the bluffs more than a mile away, across the Muskingum. "Is that West Virginia?" he asked.
"No," I said. "That's Harmar Hill. Are you Bess's uncle?"
"Yes. Why isn't it West Virginia?"
"Because it's Ohio. That's West Virginia over there, across the Ohio River. How long you going to stay?"
"Maybe a week,—maybe all winter. There ​doesn't seem to be much but trees in this town,—all I can see is trees and church-steeples."
"It does look like woods, from here, doesn't it?" I said. "I never noticed that before. There's such a lot of hard maples, that you can't see much else."
"That isn't a hard maple in front of your house."
"No. That's a Tree of Heaven."
"A what?"
"Tree of Heaven. That's what they call it."
He shook his head and looked thoughtfully at his hands. "I broke off some leaves to examine them," he said.
I giggled.
"—And you can never make me believe there's any tree like that in Heaven."
"Why didn't you smell of the leaves before you broke them off?" I asked.
"Didn't know it was the proper thing to do. I'll guarantee that no one ever does both. Really, what is it?"
"Everybody calls it 'Tree of Heaven'; but I've heard some one say its other name is 'lanthus'—or something like that."
​"Oh, that's the article, is it?—ailantus—Tree of New Haven!"
"They call it 'Tree of Heaven' here," I insisted; "and if you think it smells bad now, you ought to be here when it's in blossom."
"No, thank you," said he. "I shouldn't care for anything stronger." He sniffed at his hands and put them behind him and got up. "I think I'll take these home and soak them until suppertime," he said; "and then, after supper, we 'I'll begin our exploring expedition."
"All right," said I, and he turned to go. "Say," I called after him; "tell Bess I've got this and! I'll—I'll thank her when I see her."
"All O. K." said the young man, and walked off around the house.
I kept on swinging in the hammock. I'd heard Bess talk about Uncle Rob, ever since she came here, and I knew she had been visiting his folks in Boston; but I didn't know he was coming back with her. It wouldn't have hurt her to have told me,—but then, of course, she didn't have much—chance to while we were under the sweet-apple tree; things were moving too fast! I liked him. He didn't seem "grown-up" at all; and his eyes ​had a way of looking as if he liked you, and was interested in what you said.
I was just finishing supper when I heard Bess whistle out in front of the house. I was awfully surprised, for always before, when Bess and I had had a tiff, she had waited for me to come three-thirds of the way towards making up, no matter who was in the wrong; so when I heard her whistle, I hurried out, and there she was with her uncle. "Hello, Chet!" she called; "You don't have to be introduced to Uncle Rob, do you? He said he was talking to you before supper. Father had to go down town on business, and so I'm going walking with you two, if you don't mind."
"We sure don't mind," said I. "Where shall we go first?"
"Let's take him up and show him where we go to school," said Bess; so off we started, up the street.
It was only about four blocks, and when we got there, we pointed out the building, and Uncle Rob tried to look interested, and Bess and I did a little talking; but, someway, everything seemed awfully flat. I didn't know quite what was the ​matter; but Bess did in a minute, and she began to laugh. "Now," she said, turning to Uncle Rob and folding her hands primly, "we've entertained ourselves by showing you what interests us most; what shall we do to entertain you?"
Isn't it odd how selfish people are, without even thinking of it?
Uncle Rob laughed. "Don't let me interfere with your pleasure," he said. "If you want to take me over into the school-yard and show me where you cut your names on the fence, and where you sharpen your pencils on the stone-work, and the marks outside of the up-stairs windows where you pound the black-board erasers to get the chalk out, why come along. Maybe we can climb up and look in the windows and you can show me just where you sit, and tell me who sits everywhere else in the room. Come on," and he started toward the building.
And, do you know, those were just about the things that I'd been thinking that I wished we could do!
"No," I said, "we'll leave that for the next trip."
"Not much," said Uncle Rob. "Never leave ​for the future a woe that you can put into the past real quickly."
I thought that he was going to make us do it in spite of ourselves; but Bess knew that he was only fooling, and so she grabbed his arm; "Stop teasing, Uncle Rob," she said, "and tell us what you most want to see."
"Some mound-builders' works," said Uncle Rob.
"All right," said I. "Look at 'em."
"Where?" said Uncle Rob, craning his neck and looking up and down the street and then up into the tree-tops.
"Right beside you," I said.
And then Uncle Rob drew in his neck and looked at the corner lot, where we were standing. "H'm!" he said. "Isn't that just the way! When we're looking for something wonderful, we always stretch our necks and look a long way off, when, if we'd shorten the focus of our eyes and look close beside us, we'd find something wonderful all the time."
And then he went up the steep, grassy bank, from the sidewalk, onto the raised square of earth with the slanting approaches at each side, and then ​across the flat surface of it, and up onto the second raised square, which stood on top of the first. And then he paced off the sides to see how long they were, and sighted to see how high, and had the best time you ever saw, without saying a word or asking a question.
Bess and I sat down on the grassy bank while he was looking about, and I thanked her for the compasses, and we talked about the things that had happened to each of us while she had been away; and by and by the talk drifted around to that other girl again. That is, I brought up the subject. Always before, when we had had tiffs and had got 'em straightened up, Bess had to keep Fletcherizing on them for a long time afterward, and so I was rather surprised that she didn't start in right off, to making a cud of the matter; but she didn't say a word, although I gave her several chances, and so I had to;—and at the same time I had to acknowledge to myself that while I had always blamed her for wanting: to talk about things when they were all over and settled, the fact was that I had really wanted to talk about them myself,—and thought I didn't.
​"Well," I said at last, "what have you decided about that other girl?"
Bess tossed a little handful of grass into the air.
"Going to love her," she said.
"What nonsense!" I exclaimed. You can't, just because you say you're going to. We don't love people because we want to; but because we can't help it. It's because they are nice, that we love them."
"Is that so!" said Bess.
"Yes, it is," said I, beginning to feel very much like a philosopher, and swelling up some, in both feelings and words. "We love people because they possess qualities that make them lovable; and we dislike them because they are—are—cranks."
"H'm!" said Bess. "What is a 'crank'? Be honest, Chet."
I looked at the word with my mind,—and looked—
"Be honest, Chet," said Bess, again.
I grinned. "Bess," I said, "a crank is some one who thinks differently from what I do, and doesn't hesitate to say so."
Bess laughed and clapped her hands together. "Good, Chet! Good! I'm proud of you. Now ​listen. You say that we like people because of their good qualities?"
"Yep."
"Well, there's Bob Stevens;—Fred Walker likes him awfully well, you like him some, and I don't like him at all."
"That's so," I said.
"Well, Fred Walker is one of the very nicest boys in our school, isn't he?"
"He sure is," I said.
"And he knows Bob better than either of us does."
"He ought to; he's lived next door to him for two years."
"And you know Bob better than I do."
"Yep. What are you driving at?"
"Now wait. Here are three of us looking at the same fellow in three different ways. Is that because of Bob,—or us?"
I had to stop and think things over. "It's queer, isn't it?" I said. "Why, there are as many different opinions of him as there are pupils in school,—and some of the teachers have liked him, and some haven't, and have nagged him dreadfully,—and he was mean to those."
​"Well, then what do you think?"
I was still puzzled. "It looks as if it were the attitudes of people," I said; "but still there are a lot of unpleasant things about Bob. I don't know what to say."
"Well, I've been thinking it over, and this is the way that I've figured it out," said Bess. "It's something as if we held up a pair of scales, and weighed a person's attributes, without knowing that we did it. A pair of scales with two scoops, you know; and we throw into one or the other scoop, our impressions of him; the ideas we get from what we see him do and hear him say, the good things into one scoop and the bad things into the other. And then, if the good things weigh heaviest, we like him; and if the bad things make that side go down,—we don't."
"Fine!" I said. "That's exactly the way it is. Why, I've held up a scale that went way, way down on the bad side, and then seen the fellow do one really fine thing, and down would go the good side, and I'd wonder how I ever could have disliked any one who had it in him to do a thing like that." And then I remembered how it was when I had it in for Bob Stevens about a ball of ​mine that he lost. Why, I used to find something to chuck into the wrong side of the scales every day, until it weighed so much that I didn't have any use for him at all;—and then, one day, after more than six months of that sort of thing, I saw him do something that was so white, that, gee! there wasn't a thing in the bad scoop that could weigh a featherweight against it,—it just simply went up in the air, and though it's teetered a good deal since, it's never dropped below the other, not a hair's breadth. And then I saw that Bess didn't like him because she didn't know him very well, and saw only his rowdy ways, and so the bad scoop was away down with her; and Fred Walker knew him better than either of us—
And just then Bess broke in. "Well?" she said.
"I was just trying to see how the idea worked out," I said; "and it looks good to me."
"Well, now," said Bess, spreading her hands out on her knees, "here's what I'm going to do about that other girl:—I'm going to keep my eyes open from the very start, to find things to throw into the good side of the scale,—I'm going to put in every little wee thing that will help to ​weigh down that side,—and I am going to try not to see anything at all to put into the other."
"But there will be things to go into the other side," I said. "There always are."
"Yes," said Bess, "but I'm not going to see any more than I can help; and when I do see one that I simply can't keep out of the wrong side, I'm going to—to dissect it;—because if I don't, I might accidentally throw into the wrong scoop something that belongs in the right one, or at least a part of it might belong there, and I'm not going to take any chances. And then—and then, if it just has to go in, I'm going to make it weigh as light as possible and—and—"
"Yes," I said, "and I suppose you'll keep slapping down the good scoop all the time, to make it weigh as heavy as possible."
"Sure, I will," laughed Bess. "Thank you for the suggestion. That will help some. I believe I'm beginning to like her already."
"I'm not," said I; for just then I got a picture of those two girls chumming together and—I didn't like it; and I didn't like the fact that I had to admit to myself that I was selfish, either. I commenced punching holes in the sod with my ​knife, and I could feel my lips shutting hard on each other.
Bess looked at me steadily. She knew my moods. "Chet," she said, "you're making a mistake. It isn't as if it were something we could get around or break down,—it's something we've got to face. I'm going to face it with a smile. Are you going to face it with your lips like that?"
"Yep," I said, jabbing with my knife.
"All right," said Bess. "Let's talk about the weather now. Oh, but first, have you said anything to your folks about it?"
"No, and I'm not going to. If the subject once gets started in the house, it'll be talked all the time, and I can't stand for it. If anybody starts it with me, I'll tell 'em I know, and ask 'em to kindly shut up."
Bess nodded. "I guess that's the best way. I don't want to talk about it with others, either. You see, Chet," she added," I don't feel quite—quite smooth about it myself. I can talk to you," Bess laughed, "because, knowing how ugly you feel, I have what Father calls a 'holier than thou sensation,' and that is quite pleasant; but I get a wrathy streak sometimes when I think about it, ​and then if folks should begin to tell me what I ought to do, or go to teasing me and saying that you and I won't be chums any more after she comes, and things like that,—well, it would make it harder, and I've got work enough to do on it as it is."
I looked at her. "You've got—what?"
Bess blushed. "Oh, nothing," she said, "I just—Come, we were going to talk about the weather."
"But what did you say?" I persisted.
Bess hesitated.
"You said you had 'work' to do on it."
"Well, I meant—I meant that—why, if I've been thinking wrong about anything, it takes some work to come to think right, doesn't it?"
"How?" I asked. "What sort of work?"
"Well, if I had learned the wrong way to do examples in multiplication, learned the rule wrong, you know, it would take some work to learn to do them right, wouldn't it?"
"Yes."
"And if I had learned addition and subtraction wrong, it would make it harder still, wouldn't it?"
​"You'd have to begin away back and learn 'em over."
"And if I hadn't even learned to write down figures correctly?"
"You'd be in a bad way."
"I'd have work to do, wouldn't I?"
"It would look so to me."
"And the time to begin it, would be as soon as I found out that I was wrong?"
"Yep."
"And if I made some mistakes, it wouldn't be so very wonderful, would it, Chet?"
"Well, I should say not."
"And if there were some problems that I couldn't seem to get the right answer to, try as hard as I would?"
"It would be a wonder if you got any of them right, just at first."
"You see," went on Bess, "I'd have not only to learn the right way; but I'd have to unlearn the wrong way."
"'Unlearn' is good," I said.
"Well, you know what I mean, Chet. When I would try to do a thing, the wrong way to do it would come to my mind before the right way; ​and sometimes I might forget, or just be careless, and do it wrong without thinking, and not notice my mistake, or know what was the matter when the example wouldn't come out right. You see what I mean by 'unlearning' the wrong way, don't you? I don't know any other word to use."
"I do," said I.
"What is it?"
"Forget it."
"Wh-what? Are you trying to be funny, Chet?" Bess's voice was accusing.
"No. I mean what I said. To learn a thing is to understand and remember it, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Then to 'unlearn' it, is to forget it, isn't it?"
"Oh, oh!" cried Bess, clapping her hands together, in her soft little way. "That is fine, Chet; perfectly fine! To unlearn it is to understand that it is wrong, and forget it. Oh, that helps me such a lot!"
I looked at Bess and shook my head. I couldn't, for the life of me, make out what she was driving at. She had just "supposed" something about learning her arithmetic wrong; and we had fol​lowed her fancy out, as we always did, and here she was looking just the way I did when I opened that box of compasses.
"Bess," I said, "what's got you?"
Bess hesitated, and then seemed suddenly to make up her mind, and lifting up her head and looking me squarely in the face, she said,—"Christian Science."
I gasped and stared at her. Bess and I had talked religion together a great deal, and we had always agreed that, to be honest with ourselves, we had to have something we could understand,—something we could study out and figure on, like arithmetic, instead of something we had to commit to memory and believe only because some one said that it was so. We wanted to know that a thing was so because it was reasonable, and would prove, and not just because some one else believed it. And so now, for her to sit up there and say that Christian Science had "got her," it was no wonder I stared.
"Well?" said Bess, as she always did when it was my turn to talk, and I didn't.
"Nothing to say," I said.
"Well," said Bess again, smoothing down her ​dress and smiling into her lap, "you might do worse."
"And so," I said at last, "you have decided to take something down in one gulp, like an oyster! I didn't think it of you, Bess. I hope it won't give you indigestion."
"It won't," said Bess. "I never chewed anything so thoroughly in all my life. That's why I like it. You don't have to swallow a single chunk that chokes."
I shook my head. "You're mistaken, Bess," I said. "Maybe the chunks are greased and go down so easy that you don't notice."
Bess laughed. "Nope," she said, positively.
"What you going to use it for? You aren't sick, and that's all it's for."
"No, it isn't, Chet. You don't know anything about it."
"Yes, I do," I said. "The principal thing is that they don't take medicine."
Just then Uncle Rob came along. He heard what I said, and sat down beside us on the bank. "What's this you know so much about, Chet?" he said.
"Christian Science. I know all about it."
​"You're lucky," said Uncle Rob.
I felt my face flush. "Well," I said, "I know that the principal thing is that they don't take medicine."
"H'm, if you know it all like that," said Uncle Rob, "it's—it's interesting. I don't know all about Christian Science; but I know a little about some other things, in just the same way. For instance, on these great steamships which go across the ocean, it is the uniforms of the captain and the sailors, that take care of the boat. Those blue uniforms understand the ship from stem to stern, they watch the compass and the charts, they know the ocean and issue the orders and obey them, and carry the boat safely through to port. Those uniforms are the principal part of the boat and the trip and everything pertaining thereto. Curious, isn't it?"
I looked at him, a good deal puzzled.
"It doesn't look reasonable, does it?" he said.
"It isn't true," I blurted out.
"But I know it in just the same way that you know what you said."
"But the uniforms don't have anything to do with the boat, at all."
​"No?" asked Uncle Rob. "Think a little. Why does the captain wear his?"
"So that people can find him," I said. "When folks see that, they know that he is on deck, attending to business and that the boat is being handled right. It's a sort of a guaranty that things are in the hands of some one who knows how."
"And the sailors' uniforms?"
"Same thing. They show where the sailors are and that there are plenty of them, and what sort of looking fellows they are, and that they are attending to their duties. The uniforms give confidence, of course."
"And is that all they are good for?"
"Well, all except to keep the men warm, and protect them."
"Yes," said Uncle Rob, "that is something, isn't it? To keep the men in them comfortable no matter what the weather;—so that they can go about their duties and not be thinking to whether they are going to be warm or cold when the next breeze blows. Still, you think that the uniforms are not the principal thing about the boat and voyage?"
​"No," I said. "Was what I said as far off the track as that?"
"Farther. Your remark would be something like this:—'The principal thing about a big steamship and its trip is that the officers and sail: ors do not wear frock coats.'"
I know I looked foolish.
"Now listen just a minute, Chet," he went on, "I want to correct this idea of yours. The simile is not nearly perfect; but it will serve. In the first place, the principal thing about Christian Science is not negative, as you put it, something that they don't do. Nothing could stand upon a negative principle. In the second place, neither is the principal thing the fact that they heal without medicine, as you probably intended to imply. There is something as much greater back of the physical healing, as the intelligence which handles the great ship is greater than that which shows where to find it."
I pondered for a few minutes. "That sounds interesting," I said.
"It is," said Uncle Rob. "It is the most interesting and fascinating study in the world, and ​gathers interest as you proceed. And, Chet, do you realize how much value that point has? Interest makes us lose sight of difficulties, as such, in the fascination of studying the methods of overcoming them."
"I want to know more about it," I said. "It sounds 'different,' someway. But what makes so many people think that the healing is the main thing?"
"Don't you suppose that there were many who, in Jesus' time, told of him only with reference to the healing and the loaves and fishes, even after hearing his wonderful sermons? It is because people don't think and investigate for themselves. They take the statement of some one who is not able to grasp anything higher than mere physical manifestation, and accept it without question, and pass it on."
"But that isn't fair," I said.
Uncle Rob smiled good-naturedly. "Chet," he said, "had I known nothing about Christian Science a few moments ago when you yourself made that very statement, you would have said what you did just the same, and I might have been misled."
​I felt my face burn. "But I didn't know anything about it," I said.
"No, but you said that you knew all about it,—and then made the statement."
"I wasn't fair," I admitted. "I hadn't any right to say it; for I didn't know."
"Neither does any one else who makes the same statement," said Uncle Rob. "Now I want to ask you some questions about these earth-works."
"Don't know any more about those than I did about Christian Science."
Uncle Rob laughed. "Haven't you ever paced these squares off and studied the proportions of them and wondered what sort of instruments were used?"
"No," I said, "I haven't."
"And you are planning to be a civil engineer, and have taken no concern in this work, done with such accuracy, hundreds and hundreds of years ago?"
I looked around at the upper square, with a new interest. "Well," I said, "I'm so used to seeing them, you know, that I've never thought much about them,—never thought of them in that way,'t all."
​Uncle Rob shook his head slowly. "Chester, Chester! And people coming here all the time, from all over the country, just to see them! I think you'd better short-focus your own eyes a little."