Last week a train load of insane persons were removed from the Oshkosh
Asylum to the Madison Asylum. As the train was standing on the sidetrack
at Watertown Junction it created considerable curiosity. People who have
ever passed Watertown Junction have noticed the fine old gentleman who
comes into the car with a large square basket, peddling popcorn. He is
one of the most innocent and confiding men in the world. He is honest,
and he believes that everybody else is honest.
He came up to the depot with his basket, and seeing the train he asked
Pierce, the landlord there, what train it was. Pierce, who is a most
diabolical person, told the old gentleman that it was a load of members
of the legislature and female lobbyists going to Madison. With that
beautiful confidence which the pop corn man has in all persons, he
believed the story, and went in the car to sell pop corn.
Stopping at the first seat, where a middle-aged lady was sitting alone,
the pop corn man passed out his basket and said, “fresh pop corn.” The
lady took her foot down off the stove, looked at the man a moment with
eyes glaring and wild, and said, “It is--no, it cannot be--and yet it
_is_ me long lost Duke of Oshkosh,” and she grabbed the old man by the
necktie with one hand and pulled him down into the seat, and began to
mow away corn into her mouth. The pop corn man blushed, looked at the
rest of the passengers to see if they were looking, and said, as he
replaced the necktie knot from under his left ear and pushed his collar
down, “Madame, you are mistaken. I have never been a duke in Oshkosh.
I live here at the Junction.” The woman looked at him as though she
doubted his statement, but let him go.
He proceeded to the next seat, when a serious looking man rose up and
bowed; the pop corn man also bowed and smiled as though he might have
met him before. Taking a paper of pop corn and putting it in his coat
tail pocket, the serious man said, “I was honestly elected President of
the United States in 1876, but was counted out by the vilest conspiracy
that ever was concocted on the earth, and I believe you are one of the
conspirators,” and he spit on his hands and looked the pop corn man
in the eye. The pop corn man said he never took any active part in
politics, and had nothing to do with that Hayes business at all. Then
the serious man sat down and began eating the pop corn, while two
women on the other side of the car helped themselves to the corn in the
basket.
The pop corn man held out his hand for the money, when a man two seats
back came forward and shook hands with him, saying: “They told me you
would not come, but you have come, Daniel, and now we will fight it out.
I will take this razor, and you can arm yourself at your leisure.” The
man reached into an inside, pocket of his coat, evidently for a razor,
when the pop corn man started for the door, his eyes sticking out two
inches. Every person he passed took a paper of pop corn, one man grabbed
his coat and tore one tail off, another took his basket away and as
he rushed out on the platform the basket was thrown at his head, and a
female voice said, “I will be ready when the carriage calls at 8.”
As the old gentleman struck the platform and began to arrange his toilet
he met Fitzgerald, the conductor, who asked him what was the matter.
He said Pierce told him that crowd was going to the legislature, “but,”
says he, as he picked some pieces of paper collar out of the back of
his neck, “if those people are not delegates to a democratic convention,
then I have been peddling pop corn on this road ten years for nothing,
and don't know my business.” Fitz told him they were patients going to
the Insane Asylum.
The old man thought it over a moment, and then he picked up a coupling
pin and went looking for Pierce. He says he will kill him. Pierce has
not been out of the house since. This Pierce is the same man that lent
us a runaway horse once.