Lesson 5: Uncle Podger Hangs a Picture

You never saw such a commotion up and down a house in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-makers, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up. Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say: "Oh, you leave that to me. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I'll do all that." And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl out for sixpen'orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get. "Now you go and get me my hammer, Will," he would shout, "and you bring me the rule, Tom. I shall want the step-ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too. And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold me the light. When the girl comes back she must go out again for a bit of picture cord. Tom!- Where's Tom?-Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture." And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame. He would try to save the glass and cut himself. Then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat. All the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them. "Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came across such a set in all my life - upon my life I didn't. Six of you! - and you can't find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the--" Then he'd get up and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out: "Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now." When half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got, he would have another go. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third would help him up on it, and hold him there. A fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of the nail, and drop it. "There!" he would say in an injured tone, "now the nail's gone." And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it. The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the hammer. "Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, gaping round there, and you don't know what I did with the hammer!"

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in. Each of us had to get up on the chair beside him, and see if we could find it. We would each discover it in a different place, and he would call us all fools. Trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano. At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on somebody's toes. Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time. She could then make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done. "Oh! You woman, you make such a fuss over everything." Uncle Podger would reply picking himself up. "Why, I like doing a little job of this sort." And then he would have another try. At the second blow, the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it. Then we would find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made. About midnight, the picture would be up - very crooked and insecure. "There you are," he would say, stepping heavily off the chair on to the charwoman's corns, and surveying the mess he had made with evident pride. "Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little thing like that!"