"You never saw anybody in your life that was as full of knowledge and had less sense than old Cal.
He was advised about all the branches of information contained in learning, and he was up to all the rudiments of doctrines and enlightenment.
You couldn't advance him any ideas on any of the parts of speech or lines of thought.
You would have thought he was a professor of the weather and politics and chemistry and natural history and the origin of derivations.
Any subject you brought up old Cal could give you an abundant synopsis of it from the Greek root up to the time it was sacked and on the market.
"One day just after the fall shearing I rides over to the Double-Elm with a lady's magazine about fashions for Marilla and a scientific paper for old Cal.
"While I was tying my pony to a mesquite, out runs Marilla, 'tickled to death' with some news that couldn't wait.
"'Oh, Rush,' she says, all flushed up with esteem and gratification, 'what do you think!
Dad's going to buy me a piano.
Ain't it grand?
I never dreamed I'd ever have one."
"'It's sure joyful,' says I.
'I always admired the agreeable uproar of a piano.
It'll be lots of company for you.
That's mighty good of Uncle Cal to do that.'
"'I'm all undecided,' says Marilla, 'between a piano and an organ.
A parlour organ is nice.'
"'Either of 'em,' says I, 'is first-class for mitigating the lack of noise around a sheep-ranch. For my part,' I says,
'I shouldn't like anything better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few waltzes and jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the piano- stool and rounding up the notes.'
"'Oh, hush about that,' says Marilla, 'and go on in the house.
Dad hasn't rode out to-day.
He's not feeling well.'
"Old Cal was inside, lying on a cot.
He had a pretty bad cold and cough.
I stayed to supper.
"'Going to get Marilla a piano, I hear,' says I to him.
"'Why, yes, something of the kind, Rush,' says he.
'She's been hankering for music for a long spell; and I allow to fix her up with something in that line right away.
The sheep sheared six pounds all round this fall; and I'm going to get Marilla an instrument if it takes the price of the whole clip to do it.'
"'Star wayno,' says I.
'The little girl deserves it.'
"'I'm going to San Antone on the last load of wool,' says Uncle Cal, 'and select an instrument for her myself.'
"'Wouldn't it be better,' I suggests, 'to take Marilla along and let her pick out one that she likes?'
"I might have known that would set Uncle Cal going.
Of course, a man like him, that knew everything about everything, would look at that as a reflection on his attainments.
"'No, sir, it wouldn't,' says he, pulling at his white whiskers.
'There ain't a better judge of musical instruments in the whole world than what I am.
I had an uncle,' says he, 'that was a partner in a piano-factory, and I've seen thousands of 'em put together.
I know all about musical instruments from a pipe-organ to a corn-stalk fiddle.
There ain't a man lives, sir, that can tell me any news about any instrument that has to be pounded, blowed, scraped, grinded, picked, or wound with a key.'
"'You get me what you like, dad,' says Marilla, who couldn't keep her feet on the floor from joy.
'Of course you know what to select.
I'd just as lief it was a piano or a organ or what.'
"'I see in St. Louis once what they call a orchestrion,' says Uncle Cal, 'that I judged was about the finest thing in the way of music ever invented.
But there ain't room in this house for one.
Anyway, I imagine they'd cost a thousand dollars.
I reckon something in the piano line would suit Marilla the best.
She took lessons in that respect for two years over at Birdstail.
I wouldn't trust the buying of an instrument to anybody else but myself.
I reckon if I hadn't took up sheep-raising I'd have been one of the finest composers or piano- and-organ manufacturers in the world.'