THE LAST OF THE K.'S.
A Popular Fallacy--Karl Konstant Esq.--A Fit Companion for the
Wandering Jew--Awaiting Events--The First Visitation--An Intricate
Subject for the Hospitals and Doctors--Getting Even with the
Latter--Put Away--Yellow Jack on a Raid--K. K. K., Esq., in his
Prison Cell--Promoted to the Hospital--An Uncommon Defiance--A
Picturesque Outside--Waiting for the End--K. Konstant Kain Struggles
back to Shore--"Do not Weep"--A Critical Moment--A New Cast and
entire Change of Scenery--"Gruel" did it--Waited upon by a Deputation
of Citizens--"Young Man, Go West"--The New Orleans
Pest-House--Konfounded, Krooked Konundrum.
Some dealer in those cheap apothegms which commend themselves to the
public gullibility, through the public tendency to moralize concerning
subjects of which it knows nothing, has rendered himself famous, and the
great majority of mankind asses, by the announcement that "everything must
have an end." Without a design of reopening a dead controversy, or so much
as mentioning the word "fossil," we must be permitted to record a belief
that the author of this sage prophecy had never heard of the
mathematician's war involving the crookedness of the half circle, and was
grossly uninformed on the topic of the great Woman's Rights movement and
those leaders who have concerned themselves about its temperature for the
past two hundred years. And while the cause of orthodoxy might be safely
entrusted to two such examples of
"The few immortal _things_
That were not born to die,"
it is in no sense of triumphing over a fallen adversary that we add the
conviction that the beaming countenance of Karl Konstant Kain, the last of
the K.'s, had never dawned upon this prophet's sense of the ridiculous.
We shall introduce him to the reader as he was, and is, and without any
reference to a future--that with him is but a name, a fleeting shadow. And
in order that this reminiscence may be perfect, it will be needful to
relate that he had reached, at this period of his existence, a climax of
loneliness and gaunt despair that would have rendered him a fit companion
for the "Wandering Jew," and a most unfit one for anything less
ludicrously ideal. Though it had been of his own choosing, a shadow
pursued him and would not let him rest: it was the ghost of the murdered
K. K. K. He had been with it in its prosperity; had eaten its bread in its
adversity; and since above the spot of its interment the daisies were
developing into types of its departed beauty, he had given himself to the
magnanimous resolve of perpetuating its genius in other climes.
Having chalked a freight car, "Through without delay," he deposited his
remains on the inside, and four days thereafter found himself at the door
of a cheap hashery, in the thriving little city of Columbus, Texas. Here
he refreshed the inner man on a promise to pay, rendered subsequent to the
meal, and having been damned for a "blister," and a "cooter," and a
"scorpion," wandered forth, that image of "blank dismay" which we have
already depicted to the reader. Destiny was now begun with him in earnest,
and it was only necessary for him to sit still and "administer upon the
fluttering pasteboards," with that resignation of soul which should
characterize the man who has given five points in the game, and occupies
the losing seat. Mounting a goods-box on a neighboring corner, he adjusted
his unshapeliness to its angles in a posture that would have been an easy
one for another man, and awaited events. They were not slow in coming. In
fact they came in troops, and awaited their turn with a constancy of
resolve that would have frightened a less Napoleonic structure. The first
visitation comprised two Hibernians of smiling aspect, who, observing this
unusual tableau, affected to note a disposition to sneeze in the subject.
Instantly our hero accepted the challenge (_ad hominem et sine
exceptione_), and leaping from his perch engaged his persecutors with the
desperation of a man who feels that he would be made happier if soundly
whipped. Striking right and left, he provoked his adversaries to do their
worst, and soon brandishing huge knives, they made inroads upon his
anatomy which left him an intricate subject for the hospitals and doctors.
Twenty-two wounds in all had severally penetrated his lungs, severed his
carotid artery, atrophied his liver, wasp-nested his umbilicus, riddled
his facial parts, and bereft him of five fingers and the arm to which
their five fellows were attached,--and yet he would not die, could not see
it to his interest to die, felt that it would not be destiny to die,--and
four weeks thereafter exhibited himself in public to a goodly number of
false prophets, who, excusing him and themselves on the ground of a
miracle, tendered him congratulations.
But if Karl Konstant was some the worse for wear, he was none the worse
for something to wear, having levied on a full cloth rig and watch,
belonging to one of the hospital doctors, as some remuneration for the
torturing exercises in surgery which had been directed at his corporosity.
Walking the streets with the air of a man whom melancholy has marked for
her own, and yet attracting the notice of passers-by through a subdued
emphasis of gait and manner, which could hardly have proceeded from a less
philosophic cause than good clothes, and a chronometer that would
unfailingly chronicle the hash hour, he was next interviewed by two
policemen with drawn clubs, who, by virtue of his late condition of
mayhem, subjected him to but one-half the regulation mauling, and having
divested him of his borrowed plumage, jugged him, and corked him, and
expressed through the bars a wish to kiss him for his mother-in-law.
About this time "Yellow Jack," in making his decennial tour of the
Southern cities of Texas, debarked at Columbus, and for a period of four
weeks lent his energies to a most devastating epidemic. Thousands were
stricken, hundreds rendered their final account, and the undertakers,
protesting that it was an ill-wind, took orders for coffins. Karl Konstant
Kain beheld the public dismay through his prison bars, and despaired. He
knew that it would come; fate had whispered him that it would come--and
feeling this, his anxiety on the subject soon developed into a wish that
it might come. He was not disappointed; and when it came and lodged a
great pain in his side, and touched up his pulse an half hundred degrees
or so, it did not conclude its labors, but promoted him to the hospital
and doctors, and bade him look about him for means of offsetting the
latter.
But we regret to state that, notwithstanding these small but disinterested
attentions, K. K. K., Esq., murmured, and the very day upon which he was
transferred to hospital sumptuousness, confronted his yellow-visaged enemy
with a challenge to do his worst. That individual hesitated, and objected
that the combat would prove an unequal one; but soon seeing that any
explanation which might be rendered would be construed into a possible
desire to avoid defeat (and becoming the least bit enraged in view of such
an uncommon defiance), began his dispositions.
And now the battle of the giants raged in good earnest; and as there was a
kind of Pindaric grotesqueness about it which could not fail to attract
observers, it became first the hospital talk, and then the subject of no
inconsiderable amount of by-betting, with the odds in favor of "Yellow
Jack." One week from the period of his inoculation, the victim had
developed the most picturesque outside that it is possible for any man to
possess east or west of the Malayan dominions, and inwardly, a type of the
black vomit that would have set an undertaker's teeth on edge. The
doctors, examining their watches at a safe distance, thought that he could
not last twenty-four hours, and the subject of the disorder, transferring
an abandoned kerchief to the rear of his shirt front, gave himself but
half that time. But doctors, though controlling the other features of the
business with tolerable accuracy, are not always infallible as to "time
when." It was three days before a coffin was ordered, and pending the half
hour required to produce a fair example of pest-house carpentry, Karl
Konstant struggled back to shore with the announcement that he had changed
his mind, and a sarcastic appeal to his medical attendants "not to weep."
The "box" was found to square the dimensions of a stiff in a neighboring
ward, who had accomplished the stormy voyage in forty-eight hours, and
into it he was jammed, and committed to the cartman with an injunction to
drive fast.
K. K. K., Esq., was now billed "for five days, only with a new cast and
entire change of scenery," the latter part of this announcement referring
to an abandoned hut on the river shore, one mile below the city. The
doctors, despairing of the disease, declared that the stench in his body
would suffocate him in twenty-four hours (extending the time as above, to
avoid accidents), and dismissed him to an aged negress, with instructions
to draw on the city for boneyard supplies. Situated in this quiet retreat,
our hero could lie "heels uppermost," and number his waning breaths, or
hearken to the death-rattle in his throat, without aught to molest or make
him afraid, and controlled by that sweet imperturbability of temper so
necessary to perfect rest amid such scenes. He had enjoyed his new lease
of happiness two full days before it was thought necessary to apply to his
city correspondents, and as there was some delay in forwarding the
stipulated articles, it is needless to say that when they arrived the
subject had "limbered up," and the cartman found it necessary to imitate
his example, and drive back a sadder man.
Five days came and went, and still Karl Konstant Kain lingered above
ground, viewing the shadows go up and down on the pine box destined for
his remains (a standing menace of this character now occupied one corner
of his apartment), and realizing that his symptoms grew hourly worse. His
old friends, the doctors, feeling some anxiety, came to examine into the
matter, but after a careful diagnosis of the patient, they left with very
marked abridgments of countenance and their pills. Under the
circumstances, they felt that pills would only hasten the sad event. And,
indeed, their prognostications seemed not ill-founded. Six hours later, a
fearful coma seized his struggling anatomy and held it fast, and in a few
minutes, at farthest, the last mournful rites would be in order. The pulse
had become quite motionless, the suppressed breathing grew momentarily
fainter,--and, aha! hold a light, nurse.
What a moral is pointed in that much quoted sentiment referring to the
"fate of men and empires." 'Twas but a drop of water trickling from the
rain-drenched roof, and yet it had power to call a human being to life.
K. K. Kain, Esq., now sat bolt upright in his straw-bed and
demanded--shall we write it--would it be politic--in a word, would it be
accepted as true? In such an emergency there is no alternative left to the
undissembling chronicler of fact, nor do we seek one. K. Konstant Kain
demanded gruel, and indeed from this moment conceived such an attachment
for gruel, that it was with difficulty that their separation could be
accomplished for any considerable portion of his waking moments. Nor can
it be denied that gruel aided his convalescence and his complexion as
nothing else but tolerably regular doses of Blooming Cereus could have
done. (This joke is paid for, and on that ground it is hoped there will
be no objection to it.) In two weeks, time gruel stood him on his two legs
and bade him "view, the landscape o'er." In three it had brought its
magician's art to bear on his sunken cheeks, and converted the yellow rose
of Texas into a lively peach bloom. And in the short space of one month it
had so far rehabilitated his battered hulk, that he was enabled to receive
a deputation of citizens with a purse of Mexican coin, and a "gruel"
request to convey himself across that border. It is needless to say that
Mr. Kain accepted the _douceur_ and stood not upon the order of his going.
Arrived in that sun-burnt clime, one of his first acts, according to the
Texas journalists, was to involve himself in a railroad smash-up, with a
loss of his dexter leg and a head, but as he was shortly afterwards
advertised to appear in a Greaser circus combination as a tight-rope
performer, it is apprehended that some of the facts were suppressed.
Terminating his engagement in debt to the managers, he reached the city of
New Orleans by "hook or crook," or both, and more of the former, and a
good deal of the latter, and was last heard of as one of the inmates of
the famous pest-house of that city. How he escaped from this institution,
and resumed his peripatetic career, would doubtless make a very pretty
romance, but we must be pardoned, if we assert that we know no more about
this _konfounded, krooked konundrum_ than does the reader, and drop our
quill.