Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting
his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of
supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below
Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred
gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that
there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on
the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested
himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.
At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning
sob of fate, the candle went out!
For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more
composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides,
he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little
Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his
with envy and chagrin?
He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined
friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet
requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his
jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of
Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a
sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He
tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an imperial? Why not?
He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration
complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little
Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber--to dream he had
Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the
Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.
* * * * *
Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when
Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer--that last toddy, no
doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache.
Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of
civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out
upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that
made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the
last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating
madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable
officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a
square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police
manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s,
and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with
a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that
he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of
his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other
assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he
promptly turned the nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched
forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads,
chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a
varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded
them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in
wild and dripping confusion.
That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an
excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and
there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque
night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut
lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his
nose--cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird
melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”
It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his
teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning
over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his
curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head
altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction
of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its
growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had
invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so
renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of
a walnut escritoire.
Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had
anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is
now another’s.
CONSTABLE X.
Whose walk is so stately and grand round the beat?
What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street?
What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx,
Repels so the notion of frivolous winks?
Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook,
Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look;
The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks,
Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?
How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks,
As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box,
And kisses the book with a resonant smack,
Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack.
Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat
To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet,
And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex
Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.
Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours
When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers,
And he, even he, that great creature, has known
Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne.
And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt
Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt.
For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex,
Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.
Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please,
But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees,
He has even unbended to laughter and sport,
And his kiss has resounded outside of the court,
Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate!
Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late;
Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex
Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.
LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.
Surrounded by bottles and flagons and bowls,
To the music of shrieks from perishing souls,
Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask,
The Devil pursued his terrible task.
Hatred and lust, and all the horde
Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured,
And when it was brimming with fever and sin,
He took the bottle and labelled it GIN.
Another flask in his hand he raised
And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed,
As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft,
Orphans fatherless, wives bereft,
Doses of poverty, doses of crime,
For every region, for every clime,
And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb
As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM.
And then a barrel he seized to fill
With grief and affliction, pain and ill;
Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim;
Coma, to palsy the heart and limb;
Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog
Till God’s image became but a senseless log,
And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer
As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER.
The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth
As he scattered his mixtures around the earth.
And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed,
North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught.
And the demon yell as each toper fell,
Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell!
Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin,
Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”
THE MONOPOLIST’S MOAN.
Am I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed?
Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my head?
Has the world gone to smash? is it chaos that reigns?
Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains?
There’s something gone wrong which I cannot make out,
The people don’t know what on earth they’re about;
There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents,
For no longer we rule with our dollars and cents.
Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers?
Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours?
Fame’s ladder saw us on the top, and you know
That muscle and brain were contented below;
Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold
Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold,
For a very small gift from our riches contents
The outcast who hasn’t got dollars and cents.
But now there’s a muttering startling and strange
From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change,
A really absurd and ridiculous plan
To ostracize gold and to dignify man;
The base common herd won’t submit any more
To a rule that their fathers found proper before,
And the veriest scum of the gutters invents
Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents.
WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS.
AT GRANT’S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885.
Once again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant of the column
That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of darksome days;
Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors furled or drooping
’Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents of battle’s blaze.
Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in sombre garb of pity,
Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the old brigade;
And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time soldier order--
The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade.
At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies pierce surrounding
Mists and clouds of two long decades--picture visions far away,
Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero’s pillow,
Or the Rappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue and Gray.
Hark! the muffled drums are beating calls for charging or retreating,
And their old Commander leads again the legions of the free;
In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war’s thunder rolling;
They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to the sea.
See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their painful footsteps lighter;
The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camping strains,
And the “boys” again together tramp through swamp or over heather,
Joyous only in their triumphs and forgetful of their pains.
Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle glance is sweeping
With mingled pride and pleasure o’er the tried and faithful line;
Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried ranks ascending
The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o’er abandoned scarp and mine.
Still more vivid grows the seeming: still more real is the dreaming,
While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict’s passioned glow,
For in Victory’s fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands of power,
Like their leader, they know only former brothers in the foe.
* * * * *
Halt! The soldier’s dream is over, and gray scattered locks uncover;
Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners must entwine;
For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, kneeling,
Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the line.
Yet, no; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever,
And, when Time shall close the record of all nations’ peace and war,
The Angel’s trump shall waken ranks unbroken and unshaken,
And their old Commander lead them through the Golden Gates Ajar.
THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT’S GRAVE.
Great chieftain, o’er thy silent clay
Unite in tears the Blue and Gray,
Grief knows no frontier line to-day.
Among the gifts the nation showers
Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours--
A shamrock wreath among the flowers.
A type its emerald leaflets three
Of thy best attributes will be--
Faith, Courage, and Humanity.
Faith in the right, whate’er oppose,
Courage that with disaster rose,
Mercy to brave but beaten foes.
When danger threatened Freedom’s shrine
In her defence with thee and thine
Our exiled race were found in line.
With thee we bore the storm and stress,
Hard-fought retreat and onward press
Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness.
Thy eagle glances oft might scan
Our Celtic features in the van
When battle surged round Sheridan.
And never poured the crimson flood,
To mark where desperate valor stood,
But with the tide ebbed Irish blood.
So as your life-stream then we fed,
Where’er your own brave nation bled,
Our tears to-day with hers are shed.
Our steel shone ’mid your bayonets,
Our grief now sobs with your regrets,
Our shamrocks fringe your violets.
MAINE AND MAYO.
Six months in front of Richmond’s walls we fretted and we fumed,
As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon boomed;
We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy swamp,
But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp.
There was snarling and complaining all along the Union line,
And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine,
While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train
Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank from Maine.
Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors foul,
The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long-familiar howl;
And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were impressed,
Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest.
One day with such a batch there came a boy with sunny hair,
And a laugh that took the breath away of every veteran there,
Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet’s rippling flow,
“I’m very glad to meet ye--I’m a stranger from Mayo.”
Lord! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed his cheerful way
To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy day;
He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry wiles,
And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles.
Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, at first,
Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he inly cursed;
But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish glow,
Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine from Mayo.
And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose
Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled lurking foes,
When “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” shook the leafless Southern pines,
Or “The Rocky Road to Dublin” seemed a-winding through our lines,
A pair of feet went treading through the dance’s tangled maze
With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling days--
“Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?” was sometimes the refrain,
And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice in Maine.
* * * * *
Our corps is but a corporal’s guard; beneath Virginian clay,
Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God’s reviewing day,
But the “twins,” as once we called them, Celt and Yankee, still remain,
Though one’s at home in Connaught, and the other back in Maine.
Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags proclaim
That Ireland’s in the Union now in everything but name;
While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to know
How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for Mayo.
A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH.
Sandy Row, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in
Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its
true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles,
the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from
prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To
h--with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its
consecrated--whiskey consecrated--shore, that Papist foot would be
carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it
contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of
the desecrated pavement.
In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one
Green--Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and
immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread
as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan
Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in
more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional
anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his
campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable
commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors,
but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has
suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half
a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.
In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in
consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his
back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes,
banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons,
blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National
League invaders.
For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners
and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an
assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal
principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no
salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.
During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of
Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a
howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given
musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent
continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval
for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor
gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a
short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’
duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red
Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached
the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the
influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with
the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with scales and
variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in
scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into
which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with
heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses,
and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings;
and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley,
and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening
lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear
at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs
in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted
yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the
thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass
kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through,
ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that
you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.
From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there
isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or
symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call
it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about
four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.
The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to
this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this
systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old
boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-up culinary
utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established
a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been
exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate
measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard.
They were adopted.
Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order--each
man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander--a
kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously
maddening marauders!
Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass,
rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.
Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving
stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.
The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and
completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.
Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a
marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long
cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.
Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord
Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes
and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?
About 11.30 on New-Year’s night, the quadrupedal Pattis and Nicolinis
commenced their usual grand concert. Green waited patiently until they
had got through the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some
Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in wrath and his
night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, towards the fatal shed.
Almost at the same moment three neighboring windows were noiselessly
raised, and preparations for three terrific onslaughts were rapidly
perfected.
It was dark,--so dark that the gleaming orbits of the phosphorescent
choristers could scarcely be discerned, and the artillerists and rifle
rangers had little but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim.
Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the caterwauling corps had caught
a glimpse of Green’s nightgown as it was floating and fluttering
gracefully in the winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a
step-ladder, he was amongst them; and as the sabre of his sire whirled
round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, slashes, and scintillations, a
hundred expressions of feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation,
and rage burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred different
cats, and the concentrated essence of their three months’ lyrical
training surged through their teeth in one stupendous, ear-splitting,
paralyzing, five-hundred-dollar prize screech.
Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a mystic halo; but alas,
like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in
the hour of his triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by
Tomlinson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in the small of
the back, a washing-mug, donated to the general good by the Roman matron
spirit of Mrs. T., was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower
of sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and when he
turned round to scream “Cease Firing,” a three-inch Niagara from the
grocery caught him square in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels
off the shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault through the
air, bang! went Jones’s blunderbuss, and it seemed to Green as if all
the cats had suddenly combined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon
his person, and were clawing him in about ten million directions.
The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever since, and striking new
veins of scrap-iron and lead at every excavation. The nurses at the
Northern Hospital say that no such thrilling sight has ever been
witnessed in that institution in their experience as is afforded by the
spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs with a pair of
pincers, while another operates on his shoulder with a screw-driver, and
the third man threads the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out
by the gross. It is the general opinion among these professional men
that to clear him out thoroughly they want a laborer or two with
pickaxes and shovels.
Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he will quit L. O. L. 1111
forever. When the rank and file can’t tell the difference between a
tom-cat and a grand master, it’s time to vacate the latter post. He
thinks the government is very remiss in allowing the Orangemen to retain
their weapons. If Jones don’t get three years under the Crimes Act for
carrying arms in a proclaimed district and perforating a loyal hide with
the contents of a tinker’s budget--why, he’ll join the Fenians, that’s
all. They have one motto he appreciates:--
Whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle’s van,
The fittest place for man to die
Is where he dies for man.
That’s decent. It sounds a great deal better than dying on the top of an
old shed in a dirty back yard for a lot of confounded cats. But he’s not
going to die if he knows it. He don’t want the poet laureate of L. O. L.
1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in this fashion:--