A fearful tale comes to us from Columbus. A party of prominent citizens
of that place took a trip to the Dells of Wisconsin one day last week.
It was composed of ladies and gentlemen of both political parties,
and it was hoped that nothing would occur to mar the pleasure of the
excursion.
When the party visited the Dells, Mr. Chapin, a lawyer of Democratic
proclivities, went out upon a rock overhanging a precipice, or words to
that effect, and he became so absorbed in the beauty of the scene that
he did not notice a Republican lady who left the throng and waltzed
softly up behind him. She had blood in her eye and gum in her mouth, and
she grasped the lawyer, who is a weak man, by the arms, and hissed in
his ear:
“Hurrah for Garfield, or I will plunge you headlong into the yawning
gulf below!”
It was a trying moment. Chapin rather enjoyed being held by a woman,
but not in such a position that, if she let go her hold to spit on
her hands, he would go a hundred feet down, and become as flat as the
Greenback party, and have to be carried home in a basket.
In a second he thought over all the sins of his past life, which was
pretty quick work, as anybody will admit who knows the man. He thought
of how he would be looked down upon by Gabe Bouck, and all the fellows,
if it once got out that he had been frightened into going back on his
party.
He made up his mind that he would die before he would hurrah for
Garfield, but when the merciless woman pushed him towards the edge of
the rock, and said, “Last call! Yell, or down you go!” he opened his
mouth and yelled so they heard it in Kilbourn City:
“Hurrah for Garfield! Now lemme go!”
Though endowed with more than ordinary eloquence, no remarks that he had
ever made before brought the applause that this did. Everybody yelled,
and the woman smiled as pleasantly as though she had not crushed the
young life out of her victim, and left him a bleeding sacrifice on the
altar of his country, but when she had realized what she had done her
heart smote her, and she felt bad.
Chapin will never be himself again. From that moment his proud spirit
was broken, and all during the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud. He
leaned listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned himself
with a skimmer. When the party had spread the lunch on the ground
and gathered around, sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them
mechanically, but his appetite was gone, and when that is gone there is
not enough of him left for a quorum.
Friends rallied around him, passed the pickles, and drove the antmires
out of a sandwich, and handed it to him on a piece of shingle, but he
either passed or turned it down. He said he couldn't take a trick. Later
on, when the lemonade was brought on, the flies were skimmed off of some
of it, and a little colored water was put in to make it look inviting,
but his eyes were sot. He said they couldn't fool him. After what had
occurred, he didn't feel as though any Democrat was safe. He expected to
be poisoned on account of his politics, and all he asked was to live to
get home.
Nothing was left undone to rally him, and cause him to forget the
fearful scene through which he had passed. Only once did he partially
come to himself, and show an interest in worldly affairs, and that was
when it was found that he had sat down on some raspberry jam with his
white pants on. When told of it, he smiled a ghastly smile, and said
they were all welcome to his share of the jam.
They tried to interest him in conversation by drawing war maps with
three-tined forks on the jam, but he never showed that he knew what
they were about until Mr. Moak, of Watertown, took a brush, made of
cauliflower preserved in mustard, and shaded the lines of the war map on
Mr. Cha-pin's trousers, which Mr. Butterfield had drawn in the jam. Then
his artistic eye took in the incongruity of the colors, and he gasped
for breath, and said:
“Moak, that is played out. People will notice it.”
But he relapsed again into semi-unconsciousness, and never spoke again,
not a great deal, till he got home.
He has ordered that there be no more borrowing of sugar and drawings of
tea back and forth between his house and that of the lady who broke his
heart, and he has announced that he will go without saurkraut all winter
rather than borrow a machine for cutting cabbage of a woman that would
destroy the political prospects of a man who had never done a wrong in
his life.
He has written to the chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee
to suspend judgment on his case, until he can explain how it happened
that a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat hurrahed for Garfield.