Produced by Scott Pfenninger, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
HALF-HOURS
WITH
GREAT STORY TELLERS.
_ARTEMUS WARD, GEORGE MACDONALD,
MAX ADELER, SAMUEL LOVER,
AND OTHERS._
1891
CONTENTS.
GREY DOLPHIN _Richard Harris Barham_
MOSES, THE SASSY _Artemus Ward_
MR. COLUMBUS CORIANDER'S GORILLA
THE FATE OF YOUNG CHUBB _Max Adeler_
BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE INN _Charles Dickens_
THE ENTHUSIAST IN ANATOMY _John Oxenford_
"THE LIGHT PRINCESS" _George Macdonald_
LEGEND OF THE LITTLE WEAVER _Samuel Lover_
GREY DOLPHIN.
"He won't--won't he? Then bring me my boots," said the Baron.
Consternation was at its height in the castle of Shurland--a catiff had
dared to disobey the Baron; and--the Baron had called for his boots!
A thunderbolt in the great hall had been a _bagatelle_ to it.
A few days before, a notable miracle had been wrought in the
neighborhood; and in those times miracles were not so common as they
are now; no royal balloons, no steam, no railroads,--while the few
saints who took the trouble to walk with their heads under their arms,
or to pull the Devil by the nose, scarcely appeared above once in a
century:--so the affair made the greatest sensation.
The clock had done striking twelve, and the Clerk of Chatham was
untrussing his points preparatory to seeking his truckle-bed; a half-
emptied tankard of mild ale stood at his elbow, the roasted crab yet
floating on its surface. Midnight had surprised the worthy functionary
while occupied in discussing it, and with his task yet unaccomplished.
He meditated a mighty draft: one hand was fumbling with his tags, while
the other was extended in the act of grasping the jorum, when a knock
on the portal, solemn and sonorous, arrested his fingers. It was
repeated thrice ere Emmanuel Saddleton had presence of mind sufficient
to inquire who sought admittance at that untimeous hour.
"Open! open! good Clerk of St. Bridget's," said a female voice, small
yet distinct and sweet,--an excellent thing in woman.
The Clerk arose, crossed to the doorway, and undid the latchet.
On the threshold stood a lady of surpassing beauty: her robes were
rich, and large, and full; and a diadem, sparkling with gems that shed
a halo around, crowned her brow: she beckoned the Clerk as he stood in
astonishment before her.
"Emmanuel!" said the lady; and her tones sounded like those of a silver
flute. "Emmanuel Saddleton, truss up your points, and follow me!"
The worthy Clerk stated aghast at the vision; the purple robe, the
cymar, the coronet,--above all, the smile; no, there was no mistaking
her; it was the blessed St. Bridget herself!
And what could have brought the sainted lady out of her warm shrine at
such a time of night? and on such a night? for it was dark as pitch,
and metaphorically speaking, 'rained cats and dogs.'
Emmanuel could not speak, so he looked the question.
"No matter for that," said the saint, answering to his thought. "No
matter for that, Emmanuel Saddleton; only follow me, and you'll see!"
The Clerk turned a wistful eye at the corner cupboard.
"Oh! never mind the lantern, Emmanuel; you'll not want it; but you may
bring a mattock and a shovel." As she spoke, the beautiful apparition
held up her delicate hand. From the tip of each of her long taper
fingers issued a lambent flame of such surpassing brilliancy as would
have plunged a whole gas company into despair--it was a 'Hand of
Glory,' [Footnote: One of the uses to which this mystic chandelier was
put, was the protection of secreted treasure. Blow out all the fingers
at one puff, and you had the money.] such a one as tradition tells us
yet burns in Rochester Castle every St. Mark's Eve. Many are the daring
individuals who have watched in Gundulph's Tower, hoping to find it,
and the treasure it guards; but none of them ever did.
"This way, Emmanuel!" and a flame of peculiar radiance streamed from
her little finger as it pointed to the pathway leading to the
churchyard.
Saddleton shouldered his tools and followed in silence.
The cemetery of St. Bridget's was some half-mile distant from the
Clerk's domicile, and adjoined a chapel dedicated to that illustrious
lady, who, after leading but a so-so life, had died in the odor of
sanctity. Emmanuel Saddleton was fat and scant of breath, the mattock
was heavy, and the Saint walked too fast for him: he paused to take
second wind at the end of the first furlong.
"Emmanuel," said the holy lady, good-humoredly, for she heard him
puffing: "rest awhile Emmanuel, and I'll tell you what I want with
you."
Her auditor wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and looked all
attention and obedience.
"Emmanuel," continued she "what did you and Father Fothergill, and the
rest of you, mean yesterday by burying that drowned man so close to me?
He died in mortal sin, Emmanuel; no shrift, no unction, no absolution:
why he might as well have been excommunicated. He plagues me with his
grinning, and I can't have any peace in my shrine. You must howk him up
again, Emmanuel."
"To be sure, madame,--my lady,--that is, your holiness," stammered
Saddleton, trembling at the thought of the task assigned him. "To be
sure, your ladyship; only--that is--"
"Emmanuel," said the saint, "you'll do my bidding; or it would be
better you had!" and her eye changed from a dove's eye to that of a
hawk, and a flash came from it as bright as the one from her little
finger. The Clerk shook in his shoes; and, again dashing the cold
perspiration from his brow, followed the footsteps of his mysterious
guide.
The next morning all Chatham was in an uproar. The Clerk of St.
Bridget's had found himself at home at daybreak, seated in his own
armchair, the fire out,--and--the tankard of ale out too! Who had drunk
it?--where had he been?--how had he got home?--all was mystery!--he
remembered "a mass of things, but nothing distinctly;" all was fog and
fantasy. What he could clearly recollect was, that he had dug up the
Grinning Sailor, and that the Saint had helped to throw him into the
river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were
sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald
had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at
their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre;
--Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of
Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who
had a soul to be saved, flocked with his offering to St. Bridget's
shrine, and Emmanual Saddleton gathered more fees from the promiscuous
piety of that one week, than he had pocketed during the twelve
preceding months.
Meanwhile, the corpse of the ejected reprobate oscillated like a
pendulum between Sheerness and Gillingham Reach. Now borne by the
Medway into the Western Swale,--now carried by the refluent tide back
to the vicinity of its old quarters,--it seemed as though the River god
and Neptune were amusing themselves with a game of subaqueous
battledore, and had chosen this unfortunate carcass as a marine
shuttlecock. For some time the alternation was kept up with great
spirit, till Boreas, interfering in the shape of a stiffish "Nor'-
wester," drifted the bone (and flesh) of contention ashore on the
Shurland domain, where it lay in all the majesty of mud. It was soon
discovered by the retainers, and dragged from its oozy bed, grinning
worse than ever. Tidings of the godsend were of course carried
instantly to the castle; for the Baron was a very great man; and if a
dun cow had flown across his property unannounced by the warder, the
Baron would have pecked him, the said warder, from the topmost
battlement into the bottommost ditch,--a descent of peril, and one
which "Ludwig the Leaper," or the illustrious Trenck himself, might
well have shrunk from encountering.
"An't please your lordship--" said Peter Periwinkle.
"No, villain! it does not please!" roared the Baron.
His lordship was deeply engaged with a peck of Faversham oysters,--he
doted on shellfish, hated interruption at meals, and had not yet
despatched more than twenty dozen of the "natives."
"There's a body, my lord, washed ashore in the lower creek," said the
seneschal.
The Baron was going to throw the shells at his head; but paused in the
act, and said with much dignity,
"Turn out the fellow's pockets!"
But the defunct had before been subjected to the double scrutiny of
Father Fothergill and the Clerk of St. Bridget's. It was ill gleaning
after such hands; there was not a single maravedi.
We have already said that Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of the Isle of
Sheppey, and of many a fair manor on the main land, was a man of
worship. He had rights of free-warren, saccage and sockage, cuisage and
jambage, fosse and fork, infang theofe and outfang theofe; and all
waifs and strays belonged to him in fee simple.
"Turn out his pockets!" said the knight.
"An't please you, my lord, I must say as how they was turned afore, and
the devil a rap's left."
"Then bury the blackguard!"
"Please your lordship, he had been buried once."
"Then bury him again, and be--" The Baron bestowed a benediction.
The seneschal bowed low as he left the room and the Baron went on with
his oysters.
"Scarcely ten dozen more had vanished, when Periwinkle reappeared.
"An't please you, my lord, Father Fothergill says as how it's the
Grinning Sailor, and he won't bury him anyhow."
"Oh! he won't--won't he?" said the Baron. Can it be wondered at that he
called for his boots?
Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of Shurland and Minster, Baron of Sheppey
in _comitatu_ Kent, was, as has been before hinted, a very great
man. He was also a very little man; that is, he was relatively great,
and relatively little--or physically little, and metaphorically great--
like Sir Sidney Smith and the late Mr. Buonaparte. To the frame of a
dwarf, he united the soul of a giant, and the valor of a gamecock.
Then, for so small a man, his strength was prodigious; his fist would
fell an ox, and his kick!--oh! his kick was tremendous, and, when he
had his boots on, would--to use an expression of his own, which he had
picked up in the holy wars--would "send a man from Jericho to June." He
was bull-necked and bandy-legged; his chest was broad and deep, his
head large and uncommonly thick, his eyes a little bloodshot, and his
nose _retrousse_ with a remarkably red tip. Strictly speaking, the
Baron could not be called handsome; but his _tout ensemble_ was
singularly impressive; and when he called for his boots, everybody
trembled and dreaded the worst.
"Periwinkle," said the Baron, as he encased his better leg, "let the
grave be twenty feet deep!"
"Your lordship's command is law."
"And, Perwinkle"--Sir Robert stamped his left heel into it's
receptacle--"and, Periwinkle, see that it be wide enough to hold not
exceeding two!"
"Ye--ye--yes, my lord."
"And, Periwinkle--tell Father Fothergill I would fain speak with his
Reverence."
"Ye--ye--yes, my lord."
The Baron's beard was peaked; and his mustache, stiff and stumpy,
projected horizontally like those of a Tom Cat; he twirled the one, he
stroked the other, he drew the buckle of his surcingle a thought
tighter, and strode down the great staircase three steps at a stride.
The vassals were assembled in the great hall of Shurland Castle; every
cheek was pale, every tongue was mute, expectation and perplexity were
visible on every brow. What would his lordship do? Were the recusant
anybody else, gyves to the heels and hemp to the throat were but too
good for him; but it was Father Fothergill who had said "I won't;" and
though the Baron was a very great man, the Pope was a greater, and the
Pope was Father Fothergill's great friend--some people said he was his
uncle.
Father Fothergill was busy in the refectory trying conclusions with a
venison pasty, when he received the summons of his patron to attend him
in the chapel cemetery. Of course he lost no time in obeying it, for
obedience was the general rule in Shurland Castle. If anybody ever said
"I won't" it was the exception; and, like all other exceptions, only
proved the rule the stronger. The Father was a friar of the Augustine
persuasion; a brotherhood which, having been planted in Kent some few
centuries earlier, had taken very kindly to the soil, and overspread
the county much as hops did some few centuries later. He was plump and
portly, a little thick-winded, especially after dinner, stood five feet
four in his sandals, and weighed hard upon eighteen stone. He was,
moreover, a personage of singular piety; and the iron girdle, which, he
said, he wore under his cassock to mortify withal, might have been well
mistaken for the tire of a cart-wheel. When he arrived, Sir Robert was
pacing up and down by the side of a newly opened grave.
"_Benedecite!_ fair son"--(the Baron was brown as a cigar)--
"_Benedecite!_" said the Chaplain.
The Baron was too angry to stand upon compliment. "Bury me that
grinning caitiff there!" he, pointing to the defunct.
"It may not be, fair son," said the friar, "he hath perished without
absolution."
"Bury the body!" roared Sir Robert.
"Water and earth alike reject him," returned the Chaplain; "holy St.
Bridget herself--"
"Bridget me no Bridgets!--do me thine office quickly, Sir Shaveling! or
by the Piper that played before Moses--" The oath was a fearful one;
and whenever the Baron swore to do mischief, he was never known to
perjure himself. He was playing with the hilt of his sword. "Do me
thine office, I say. Give him his passport to heaven."
"He is already gone to Hell!" stammered the Friar.
"Then do you go after him!" thundered the Lord of Shurland.
His sword half leaped from its scabbard. No!--the trenchant blade, that
had cut Suleiman Ben Malek Ben Buckskin from helmet to chin, disdained
to daub itself with the cerebellum of a miserable monk;--it leaped back
again;--and as the Chaplain, scared at its flash, turned him in terror,
the Baron gave him a kick!--one kick!--it was but one!--but such a one!
Despite its obesity, up flew his holy body in an angle of forty-five
degrees; then having reached its highest point of elevation, sunk
headlong into the open grave that yawned to receive it. If the reverend
gentleman had possessed such a thing as a neck, he had infallibly
broken it! as he did not, he only dislocated his vertebrae--but that
did quite as well. He was as dead as ditch-water!
"In with the other rascal!" said the baron--and he was obeyed; for
there he stood in his boots. Mattock and shovel made short work of it;
twenty feet of superincumbent mould pressed down alike the saint and
the sinner. "Now sing a requiem who list!" said the Baron, and his
lordship went back to his oysters.
The vassals at Castle Shurland were astounded, or, as the Seneschal
Hugh better expressed it, "perfectly conglomerated," by this event.
What! murder a monk in the odor of sanctity--and on consecrated ground
too! They trembled for the health of the Baron's soul. To the
unsophisticated many, it seemed that matters could not have been much
worse had he shot a bishop's coach-horse--all looked for some signal
judgment. The melancholy catastrophe of their neighbors at Canterbury
was yet rife in their memories; no two centuries had elapsed since
those miserable sinners had cut off the tail of the blessed St.
Thomas's mule. The tail of the mule, it was well known, had been
forthwith affixed to that of the Mayor; and rumor said it had since
been hereditary in the corporation. The least that could be expected
was, that Sir Robert should have a friar tacked on to his for the term
of his natural life! Some bolder spirits there were, 'tis true, who
viewed the matter in various lights, according to their different
temperaments and dispositions; for perfect unanimity existed not even
in the good old time. The verderer, roistering Hob Roebuck, swore
roundly, "'Twere as good a deed as to eat, to kick down the chapel as
well as the monk." Hob had stood there in a white sheet for kissing
Giles Miller's daughter. On the other hand, Simpkin Agnew, the bell-
ringer, doubted if the devil's cellar, which runs under the bottomless
abyss, were quite deep enough for the delinquent, and speculated on the
probability of a hole being dug in it for his especial accommodation.
The philosophers and economists thought, with Saunders McBullock, the
Baron's bagpiper, that a 'feckless monk more or less was nae great
subject for a clamjamphrey,' especially as 'the supply exceeded the
demand;' while Malthouse, the tapster, was arguing to Dame Martin that
a murder now and then was a seasonable check to population, without
which the isle of Sheppey would in time be devoured, like a mouldy
cheese, by inhabitants of its own producing. Meanwhile the Baron ate
his oysters and thought no more of the matter.
But this tranquillity of his lordship was not to last. A couple of
Saints had been seriously offended; and we have all of us read at
school that celestial minds are by no means insensible to the
provocations of anger. There were those who expected that St. Bridget
would come in person, and have the friar up again, as she did the
sailor; but perhaps her ladyship did not care to trust herself within
the walls of Shurland Castle. To say the truth, it was scarcely a
decent house for a female saint to be seen in. The Baron's gallantries,
since he became a widower had been but too notorious; and her own
reputation was a little blown upon in the earlier days of her earthly
pilgrimage; then things were so apt to be misrepresented--in short, she
would leave the whole affair to St. Austin, who being a gentleman,
could interfere with propriety, avenge her affront as well as his own,
and leave no loop-hole for scandal. St. Austin himself seems to have
had his scruples, though of their precise nature it would be difficult
to determine, for it were idle to suppose him at all afraid of the
Baron's boots. Be this as it may, the mode which he adopted was at once
prudent and efficacious. As an ecclesiastic, he could not well call the
Baron out--had his boots been out of the question; so he resolved to
have recourse to the law. Instead of Shurland Castle, therefore, he
repaired forthwith to his own magnificent monastery, situate just
without the walls of Canterbury, and presented himself in a vision to
its abbot. No one who has ever visited that ancient city can fail to
recollect the splendid gateway which terminates the vista of St. Paul's
street, and stands there yet in all its pristine beauty. The tiny train
of miniature artillery which now adorns its battlements is, it is true,
an ornament of a later date; and is said to have been added some
centuries after by a learned but jealous proprietor, for the purpose of
shooting any wiser man than himself, who might chance to come that way.
Tradition is silent as to any discharge having taken place, nor can the
oldest inhabitant of modern days recollect any such occurrence.
[Footnote: Since the appearance of the first edition of this Legend
"the guns" have been dismounted. Rumor hints at some alarm on the part
of the Town Council.] Here it was, in a handsome chamber, immediately
over the lofty archway, that the Superior of the monastery lay buried
in a brief slumber, snatched from his accustomed vigils. His mitre--for
he was a mitred Abbot, and had a seat in parliament--rested on a table
beside him: near it stood a silver flagon of Gascony wine, ready, no
doubt, for the pious uses of the morrow. Fasting and watching had made
him more than usually somnolent, than which nothing could have been
better for the purpose of the Saint, who now appeared to him radiant in
all the colors of the rainbow.
"Anselm!" said the beatific vision,--"Anselm! are you not a pretty
fellow to lie snoring there when your brethren are being knocked at
head, and Mother Church herself is menaced?--It is a sin and a shame,
Anselm!"
"What's the matter?--Who are you?" cried the Abbot, rubbing his eyes,
which the celestial splendour of his visitor had set a-winking. "Ave
Maria! St. Austin himself! Speak, _Beatissime!_ what would you with the
humblest of your votaries?"
"Anselm!" said the saint, a "brother of our order, whose soul Heaven
assoilzie! hath been foully murdered. He had been ignominiously kicked
to the death, Anselm; and there he lieth check-by-jowl with a wretched
carcass, which our sister Bridget has turned out of her cemetery for
unseemly grinning. Arouse thee, Anselm!"
"Ay, so please you, _Sanctssime!_" said the Abbot. "I will order
forthwith that thirty masses be said, thirty _Paters,_ and thirty
_Aves."_
"Thirty fools' heads!" interrupted his patron, who was a little
peppery.
"I will send for bell, book, and candle--"
"Send for an inkhorn, Anselm. Write me now a letter to his Holiness the
Pope in good round terms, and another to the Sheriff, and seize me the
never-enough-to-be anathematized villain who hath done this deed! Hang
him as high as Haman, Anselm!--up with him!--down with his dwelling
place, root and branch, hearth-stone and roof-tree,--down with it all,
and sow the site with salt and sawdust."
St. Austin, it will perceived, was a radical reformer.
"Marry will I," quoth the Abbot, warming with the Saint's eloquence:
"ay, marry will I, and that _instanter_. But there is one thing you have
forgotten most Beatified--the name of the culprit."
"Robert de Shurland."
"The Lord of Sheppey! Bless me!" said the Abbot, crossing himself,
"won't that be rather inconvenient? Sir Robert is a bold baron, and a
powerful: blows will come and go, and crowns will be cracked and--"
"What is that to you, since yours will not be of the number?"
"Very true, _Beatissime!_--I will don me with speed and do your
bidding."
"Do so, Anselm!--fail not to hang the Baron, burn his castle,
confiscate his estate, and buy me two large wax candles for my own
particular shrine out of your share of the property."
With this solemn injunction, the vision began to fade.
"One thing more!" cried the Abbot, grasping his rosary.
"What is that?" asked the Saint.
"_O Beate Augustine, ora pro nobis!_"
"Of course I shall," said St. Austin. _"Pax vo-biscum!"_--and Abbot
Anselm was left alone.
Within an hour all Canterbury was in commotion. A friar had been
murdered,--two friars--ten, twenty; a whole convent had been
assaulted, sacked, burnt,--all the monks had been killed, and all the
nuns had been kissed! Murder! fire! sacrilege! Never was city in such
an uproar. From St. George's gate to St. Dunstan's suburb, from the
Donjon to the borough of Staplegate, it was noise and hubbub. "Where
was it?"--"When was it?"--"How was it?" The Mayor caught up his chain,
the Aldermen donned their furred gowns, the Town Clerk put on his
spectacles. "Who was he?"--"What was he?"--"Where was he?"--He should
be hanged,--he should be burned,--he should be broiled,--he should be
fried,--he should be scraped to death with red-hot-oyster-shells! "Who
was he?"--"What was his name?"
The Abbot's Apparitor drew forth his roll and read aloud:--'Sir Robert
de Shurland, Knight banneret, Baron of Shurland and Minster, and Lord
of Sheppey.
The Mayor put his chain in his pocket, the Aldermen took off their
gowns, the Town Clerk put his pen behind his ear. It was a county
business altogether;--the Sheriff had better call out the _posse
comitatus_.
While saints and sinners were thus leaning against him, the Baron de
Shurland was quietly eating his breakfast. He had passed a tranquil
night, undisturbed by dreams of cowl or capuchin; nor was his appetite
more affected than his conscience. On the contrary, he sat rather
longer over his meal than usual; luncheon-time came, and he was ready
as ever for his oysters: but scarcely had Dame Martin opened his first
half-dozen when the warder's horn was heard from the barbican.
"Who the devil's that?" said Sir Robert. "I'm not at home, Periwinkle.
I hate to be disturbed at meals, and I won't be at home to anybody."
"An't please your lordship," answered the Seneschal, "Paul Prior hath
given notice that there is a body--"
"Another body!" roared the Baron. "Am I to be everlastingly plagued
with bodies? No time allowed me to swallow a morsel. Throw it into the
moat!"
"So please you my lord, it is a body of horse,--and--and Paul says
there is a still large body of foot behind it; and he thinks, my lord--
that is, he does not know, but he thinks--and we all think, my lord,
that they are coming to--to besiege the castle!"
"Besiege the castle! Who? What? What for?"
"Paul says, my lord, that he can see the banner of St. Austin, and the
bleeding heart of Hamo de Crevecoeur, the Abbot's chief vassal; and
there is John de Northwood, the sheriff, with his red cross engrailed;
and Hever, and Leybourne, and Heaven knows how many more: and they are
all coming on as fast as ever they can."
"Periwinkle," said the Baron, "up with the draw-bridge; down with the
portcullis; bring me a cup of canary, and my nightcap. I won't be
bothered with them. I shall go to bed."
"To bed, my lord!" cried Periwinkle, with a look that seemed to say,
"He's crazy!"
At this moment the shrill tones of a trumpet were heard to sound thrice
from the champaign. It was the signal for parley; the Baron changed his
mind; instead of going to bed, he went to the ramparts.
"Well, rapscallions! and what now?" said the Baron.
A herald, two pursuivants, and a trumpeter, occupied the foreground of
the scene; behind them, some three hundred paces off, upon a rising
ground, was drawn up in battle-array the main body of the
ecclesiastical forces.
"Hear you, Robert de Shurland, Knight, Baron of Shurland and Minster,
and Lord of Sheppey, and know all men, by these presents, that I do
hereby attach you, said Robert, of murder and sacrilege, now, or of the
late, done and committed by you, the said Robert, contrary to the peace
of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity: and I do hereby
require and charge you, the said Robert, to forthwith surrender and
give up your own proper person, together with the castle of Shurland
aforesaid, in order that the same may be duly dealt with according to
law. And here standeth John de Northwood, Esquire, good man and true,
sheriff of this his Majesty's most loyal county of Kent, to enforce the
same if need be, with his _posse comitatus_--"
"His what?" said the Baron.
"His _posse comitatus_, and--" "Go to Bath!" said the Baron.
A defiance so contemptuous roused the ire of the adverse commanders. A
volley of missiles rattled about the Baron's ears. Nightcaps avail
little against contusions. He left the walls, and returned to the great
hall. "Let them pelt away," quoth the Baron; "there are no windows to
break, and they can't get in." So he took his afternoon nap, and the
siege went on.
Towards evening his lordship awoke, and grew tired of the din. Guy
Pearson, too, had got a black eye from a brick bat, and the assailants
were clambering over the outer wall. So the Baron called for his Sunday
hauberk of Milan steel, and his great two-handed sword with the
terrible name:--it was the fashion in feudal times to give names to
swords: King Arthur's was christened Excalibar; the Baron called his
Tickletoby, and whenever he took it in hand, it was no joke.
"Up with the portcullis! down with the bridge!" said Sir Robert; and
out he sallied followed by the _elite_ of his retainers. Then there was
a pretty to-do. Heads flew one way--arms and legs another; round went
Tickletoby, and, wherever it alighted, down came horse and man, the
Baron excelled himself that day. All that he had done in Palestine faded
in the comparison; he had fought for fun there, but now it was for life
and lands. Away went John de Northwood; away went William of Hever, and
Roger of Leybourne. Hamo de Crevecoeur, with the church vassals and the
banner of St. Austin, had been gone some time. The siege was raised, and
the Lord of Sheppey was left alone in his glory.
But, brave as the Baron undoubtedly was, and total as had been the
defeat of his enemies, it cannot be supposed that _La Stoccata_
would be allowed to carry it away thus. It has before been hinted that
Abbot Anselm had written to the Pope, and Boniface the Eight piqued
himself on his punctuality as a correspondent in all matters connected
with church discipline. He sent back an answer by return of post; and
by it all Christian people were strictly enjoined to aid in
exterminating the offender, on pain of the greater excommunication in
this world and a million of years of purgatory in the next. But then,
again, Boniface the Eight was rather at a discount in England just
then. He had affronted Longshanks, as the royal lieges had nicknamed
their monarch; and Longshanks had been rather sharp upon the clergy in
consequence. If the Baron de Shurland could but get the King's pardon
for what, in his cooler moments, he admitted to be a peccadillo, he
might sniff at the Pope, and bid him 'to do his devilmost.'
Fortune, who as the poet says, delights to favor the bold, stood his
friend on this occasion. Edward had been for some time collecting a
large force on the coast of Kent, to carry on his French wars for the
recovery of Guienne; he was expected shortly to review it in person;
but, then, the troops lay principally in cantonments about the mouth of
the Thames, and his majesty was to come down by water. What was to be
done?--the royal barge was in sight, and John de Norwood and Hamo de
Crevecoeur had broken up all the boats to boil their camp-kettles. A
truly great mind is never without resources.
"Bring me my boots!" said the Baron.
They brought him his boots, and his dapple-grey steed along with them.
Such a courser; all blood and bone, short-backed, broad-chested, and--
but that he was a little ewe-necked--faultless in form and figure. The
Baron sprang upon his back, and dashed at once into the river.
The barge which carried Edward Longshanks and his fortunes had by this
time nearly reached the Nore; the stream was broad and the current
strong, but Sir Robert and his steed were almost as broad, and a great
deal stronger. After breasting the tide gallantly for a couple of
miles, the knight was near enough to hail the steersman.
"What have we got here?" said the King. "It's a mermaid," said one.
"It's a grampus," said another. "It's the devil," said a third. But
they were all wrong; It was only Robert de Shurland. "Gramercy" said
the King, "that fellow was never born to be drowned!"
It has been said before that the Baron had fought in the Holy Wars; in
fact, he had accompanied Longshanks, when only heir-apparent, in his
expedition twenty-five years before, although his name is unaccountably
omitted by Sir Harris Nicolas in his list of crusaders. He had been
present at Acre when Amirand of Joppa stabbed the prince with a
poisoned dagger, and had lent Princess Eleanor his own tooth-brush
after she had sucked out the venom from the wound. He had slain certain
Saracens, contented himself with his own plunder, and never dunned the
commissariat for arrears of pay. Of course he ranked high in Edward's
good graces, and had received the honor of knighthood at his hands on
the field of battle.
In one so circumstanced, it cannot be supposed that such a trifle as
the killing of a frowsy friar would be much resented, even had he not
taken so bold a measure to obtain his pardon. His petition was granted,
of course, as soon as asked; and so it would have been had the
indictment drawn up by the Canterbury town-clerk, viz., "That he, the
said Robert de Shurland, &c., had then and there, with several, to wit,
one thousand pairs of boots, given sundry, to wit, two thousand kicks,
and therewith and thereby killed divers, to wit, ten thousand, Austin
friars," been true to the letter.
Thrice did the gallant grey circumnavigate the barge, while Robert de
Winchelsey, the chancellor and archbishop to boot, was making out,
albeit with great reluctance, the royal pardon. The interval was
sufficiently long to enable his Majesty, who, gracious as he was, had
always an eye to business, just to hint that the gratitude he felt
towards the Baron was not unmixed with a lively sense of services to
come; and that, if life were now spared him, common decency must oblige
him to make himself useful. Before the archbishop, who had scalded his
fingers with the wax in affixing the great seal, had time to take them
out of his mouth, all was settled, and the Baron de Shurland had
pledged himself to be forthwith in readiness, _cum suis_, to accompany
his liege lord to Guienne.
With the royal pardon secured in his vest, boldly did his lordship turn
again to the shore; and as boldly did his courser oppose his breadth of
chest to the stream. It was a work of no common difficulty or danger; a
steed of less "mettle and bone" had long since sunk in the effort; as
it was, the Baron's boots were full of water, and Grey Dolphin's
chamfrain more than once dipped beneath the wave. The convulsive snorts
of the noble animal showed his distress; each instant they became more
loud and frequent; when his hoof touched the strand, "the horse and his
rider" stood once again in safety on the shore.
Rapidly dismounting the Baron was loosening the girths of his demi-
pique, to give the panting animal breath, when he was aware of as ugly
an old woman as he ever clapped eyes upon, peeping at him under the
horse's belly.
"Make much of your steed, Robert Shurland! Make much of your steed!"
cried the hag, shaking at him her long and bony finger." Groom to the
hide, and corn to the manger! He has saved your life, Robert Shurland,
for the nonce? but he shall yet be the means of your losing it for all
that!"
The Baron started: "What's that you say, you old faggot!" He ran round
by his horse's tail; the woman was gone!
The Baron paused: his great soul was not to be shaken by trifles! he
looked around him, and solemnly ejaculated the word "Humbug!" then
slinging the bridle across his arm, walked slowly on in the direction
of the castle.
The appearance, and still more, the disappearance of the crone, had,
however, made an impression; "'Twould be deuced provoking, though, if
he should break my neck after all." He turned and gazed at Dolphin with
the eye of a veterinary surgeon. "I'll be shot if he is not groggy!"
said the Baron.
With his lordship, like another great commander, "Once to be in doubt,
was once to be resolved:" it would never do to go to the wars on a
ricketty prad. He dropped the rein, drew forth Tickletoby, and, as the
enfranchised Dolphin, good easy horse, stretched out his ewe-neck to
the herbage, struck off his head at a single blow. "There, you lying
old beldame!" said the Baron; "now take him away to the knacker's."
Three years were come and gone. King Edward's French wars were over;
both parties having fought till they came to a standstill, shook hands,
and the quarrel, as usual, was patched up by a royal marriage. This
happy event gave his majesty leisure to turn his attention to Scotland,
where things, through the intervention of William Wallace, were looking
rather queerish. As his reconciliation with Philip now allowed of his
fighting the Scotch in peace and quietness, the monarch lost no time in
marching his long legs across the border, and the short ones of the
Baron followed him of course. At Falkirk, Tickletoby was in great
request; and in the year following, we find a contemporary poet hinting
at his master's prowess under the walls of Caerlaverock--
A quatrain which Mr. Simpkinson translates,
Ovec ens fu achiminez
Li beau Robert de Shurland
Ri kant seoit sur le cheval
Ne sembloit home ke someille.
With them was marching
The good Robert de Shurland,
Who, when seated on horseback,
Does not resemble a man asleep!
So thoroughly awake, indeed, does he seem to have proved himself, that
the bard subsequently exclaims in an ecstasy of admiration,
Si ie estoie une pucellete
Je li dourie ceur et cors
Tant est de lu bons li reeors.
If I were a young maiden,
I would give my heart and perso
So great is his fame!
Fortunately the poet was a tough old monk of Exeter; since such a
present to a nobleman, now in his grand climacteric, would hardly have
been worth the carriage. With the reduction of this stronghold of the
Maxwellsse, em to have concluded the Baron's military services; as on
the very first day of the fourteenth century we find him once more
landed on his native shore, and marching, with such of his retainers as
the wars had left him, towards the hospitable shelter of Shurland
Castle. It was then, upon that very beach, some hundred yards distant
from high-water mark, that his eye fell upon something like an ugly
woman in a red cloak. She was seated on what seemed to be a large
stone, in an interesting attitude, with her elbows resting upon her
knees, and her chin upon her thumbs The Baron started; the remembrance
of his interview with a similar personage in the same place, some three
years since, flashed upon his recollection. He rushed towards the spot,
but the form was gone:--nothing remained but the seat it had appeared
to occupy. This, on examination, turned out to be no stone, but the
whitened skull of a dead horse! A tender remembrance of the deceased
Grey Dolphin shot a momentary pang into the Baron's bosom: he drew the
back of his hand across his face; the thought of the hag's prediction
in an instant rose, and banished all softer emotions. In utter contempt
of his own weakness, yet with a tremor that deprived his redoubtable
kick of half its wonted force, he spurned the relic with his foot. One
word alone issued from his lips, elucidatory of what was passing in his
mind--it long remained imprinted on the memory of his faithful
followers--that word was "Gammon!" The skull bounded across the beach
till it reached the very margin of the stream:--one instant more and it
would be ingulfed for ever. At that moment a loud "Ha! ha! ha!" was
distinctly heard by the whole train to issue from its bleached and
toothless jaws: it sank beneath the flood in a horselaugh.
Meanwhile Sir Robert de Shurland felt an odd sort of sensation in his
right foot. His boots had suffered in the wars. Great pains had been
taken for their preservation. They had been "soled" and "heeled" more
than once:--had they been "goloshed," their owner might have defied
Fate! Well has it been said that "there is no such a thing as a
trifle." A nobleman's life depended upon a question of ninepence.
The Baron marched on: the uneasiness in his foot increased. He plucked
off his boot; a horse's tooth was sticking in his great toe!
The result may be anticipated. Lame as he was, his lordship, with
characteristic decision, would hobble on to Shurland; his walk increased
the inflammation; a flagon of _aqua vitae_ did not mend matters. He was
in a high fever; he took to his bed. Next morning the toe presented the
appearance of a Bedfordshire carrot; by dinner time it had deepened to
beet-root; and when Bargrave, the leech, at last sliced it off, the
gangrene was too confirmed to admit of remedy. Dame Martin thought it
high time to send for Miss Margaret, who, ever since her mother's death,
had been living with her maternal aunt, the abbess, in the Ursuline
convent at Greenwich. The young lady came, and with her came one Master
Ingoldsby, her cousin-german by the mother's side; but the Baron was too
far gone in the dead-thraw to recognize either. He died as he lived,
unconquered and unconquerable. His last words were--"tell the old hag
she may go to--." Whither remains a secret. He expired without fully
articulating the place of her destination.
But who and what _was_ the crone who prophesied the catastrophe?
Ay, "that is the mystery of this wonderful history."--Some say it was
Dame Fothergill, the late confessor's mamma; others, St. Bridget
herself; others thought it was nobody at all, but only a phantom
conjured up by conscience. As we do not know, we decline giving an
opinion.
And what became of the Clerk of Chatham? Mr. Simkinson avers that he
lived to a good old age, and was at last hanged by Jack Cade, with his
inkhorn about his neck, for "setting boys copies." In support of this
he adduces his name "Emmanuel," and refers to the historian
Shakespeare. Mr. Peters, on the contrary, considers this to be what he
calls one of Simkinson's "Anacreonisms," inasmuch as, at the
introduction of Mr. Cade's reform measure, the Clerk, if alive, would
have been hard upon two hundred years old. The probability is that the
unfortunate alluded to was his great grandson.
Margaret Shurland in due course became Margaret Ingoldsby: her portrait
still hangs in the gallery at Tappington. The features are handsome,
but shrewdish, betraying, as it were, a touch of the old Baron's
temperament; but we never could learn that she actually kicked her
husband. She brought him a very pretty fortune in chains, watches, and
Saracen ear-rings; the barony, being a male fief, reverted to the
Crown.
In the Abbey-church at Minster may yet be seen the tomb of a recumbent
warrior, clad in the chain-mail of the 13th century. His hands are
clasped in prayer; his legs, crossed in that position so prized by
Templars in ancient, and tailors in modern days, bespeak him a soldier
of the faith in Palestine. Close behind his dexter calf lies sculptured
in bold relief a horse's head: and a respectable elderly lady, as she
shows the monument, fails not to read her auditors a fine moral lesson
on the sin of ingratitude, or to claim a sympathizing tear to the
memory of poor "Grey Dolphin!"
RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM.
MOSES, THE SASSY;
OR,
THE DISGUISED DUKE.
CHAPTER I.
ELIZY.
My story opens in the classic presinks of Bostin. In the parler of the
bloated aristocratic mansion on Bacon street sits a luvly young lady,
whose hair is cuvered ore with the frosts of between 17 Summers. She
had just sot down to the piany, and is warblin the popler ballad called
"Smells of the Notion," in which she tells how with pensiv thought, she
wandered by a C beat shore. The son is settin in its horizon, and its
gorjus light pores in a golden meller flud through the winders, and
makes the young lady twice as beautiful nor what she was before, which
is onnecessary. She is magnificently dressed up in a Berage basque,
with poplin trimmins, More Antique, Ball Morals and 3 ply carpeting.
Also, considerable guaze. Her dress contains 16 flounders and her shoes
is red morocker, with gold spangles onto them. Presently she jumps up
with a wild snort, and pressin her hands to her brow, she exclaims,
"Methinks I see a voice!"
A noble youth of 27 summers enters. He is attired in a red shirt and
black trowis, which last air turned up over his boots; his hat, which
is a plug, being cockt onto one side of his classiual hed. In sooth, he
was a heroic lookin person, with a fine shape. Grease, in its barmiest
days near projuced a more hefty cavileer. Gazin upon him admirinly for
a spell, Elizy (for that was her name) organized herself into a tabloo,
and stated as follers:
"Ha! do me eyes deceive me earsight? No, I reckon not! That frame! them
store close! those nose! Yes, it is me own, me only Moses!"
He (Moses) folded her to his hart, with the remark that he was a
"hunkey boy."
CHAPTER II.
WAS MOSES OF NOBLE BIRTH?
Moses was foreman of Engine Co. No. 40. Forty's fellers had just bin
having an annual reunion with Fifty's fellers, on the day I intorjuce
Moses to my readers, and Moses had his arms full of trofees, to wit: 4
scalps, 5 eyes, 3 fingers, 7 ears (which he chawed off), and several
half and quarter sections of noses. When the fair Elizy recovered from
her delight at meetin Moses, she said:--"How hast the battle gonest?
Tell me!"
"We chawed 'em up--that's what we did!" said the bold Moses.
"I thank the gods!" said the fair Elizy. "Thou did'st excellent well.
And Moses," she continued, layin her hed confidinly again his weskit,
"dost know I sumtimes think thou istest of noble birth?"
"No!" said he, wildly ketchin hold of hisself. "You don't say so!"
"Indeed do I! Your dead grandfather's sperrit comest to me the tother
night."
"Oh no, I guess it's a mistake," sed Moses.
"I'll bet two dollars and a quarter he did!" replied Elizy. "He said:
'Moses is a Disguised Juke.'"
"You mean Duke," said Moses.
"Dost not the actors all call it Juke?" said she. That settled the
matter.
"I hev thought of this thing afore," said Moses abstractedly. "If it is
so, then thus it must be! 2 B or not 2 B! Which? Sow, sow! But enuff. O
life! life!--_you're too many for me!_" He tore out some of his pretty
yeller hair, stampt on the floor several times, and was gone.
CHAPTER III.
THE PIRUT FOILED.
Sixteen long and weary years has elapst since the seen narrated in the
last chapter took place. A noble ship, the Sary Jane, is a-sailin from
France to Ameriky via the Wabash Canal. The pirut ship is in hot
pursoot of the Sary. The pirut capting isn't a man of much principle,
and intends to kill all the people on bored the Sary and confiscate the
walleables. The capting of the S. J. is on the pint of givin in, when a
fine lookin feller in russet boots and a buffalo overcoat rushes
forored and obsarves:
"Old man! go down stairs! Retire to the starbud bulk-hed! I'll take
charge of this Bote!"
"Owdashus cuss!" yelled the capting, "away with thee or I shall do mur-
rer-der-r-r!"
"Skurcely," obsarved the stranger, and he drew a diamond-hilted-fish-
knife and cut orf the capting's hed. He expired shortly, his last words
bein, "We are governed too much."
"People!" sed the stranger, "I'm the Juke de Moses!"
"Old hoss!" sed a passenger, "methinks thou art blowin!" whareupon the
Juke cut orf his hed also.
"Oh that I should live to see myself a ded body!" screamed the
unfortnit man. "But don't print any verses about my deth in the
newspapers, for if you do I'll haunt ye!"
"People!" sed the Juke, "I alone can save you from yon bloody pirut!
Ho! a peck of oats!" The oats was brought, and the Juke, boldly mountin
the jibpoop, throwed them onto the towpath. The pirut rapidly
approached, chucklin with fiendish delight at the idee of increasin his
ill-gotten gains. But the leadin hoss of the pirut ship stopt suddent
on comin to the oats, and commenst for to devour them. In vain the
piruts swore and throwed stones and bottles at the hoss--he wouldn't
budge a inch. Meanwhile the Sary Jane, her hosses on the full jump, was
fast leavin the pirut ship!
"Onct agin do I escape deth!" said the Juke between his clencht teeth,
still on the jibpoop.
CHAPTER IV.
THE WANDERER'S RETURN.
The Juke was the Sassy! Yes, it was!
He had bin to France and now he was home agin in Bostin, which gave
birth to a Bunker Hill!! He had some trouble in getting hisself
acknowledged as Juke in France, as the Orleans Dienasty and Borebones
were fernest him, he finely conkered. Elizy knowed him right off, as
one of his ears and a part of his nose had bin chawed off in his fights
with opposition firemen durin boyhood's sunny hours. They lived to a
green old age, beloved by all, both grate and small. Their children, of
which they have numerous, often go up onto the Common and see the
Fountain squirt.
This is my 1st attempt at writin a Tail & it is far from bein perfeck,
but if I have indoosed folks to see that in 9 cases out of 10 they can
either make Life as barren as the Dessert of Sarah, or as joyus as the
flower garding, my objeck will have bin accomplished, and more too.
ARTEMUS WARD.
MR. COLUMBUS CORIANDER'S GORILLA.
My article on the Origin of the Human Species had been months in
preparation. Much of the fame which I have since secured by its
publication in that widely circulated magazine, the _Interoceanic
Monthly_, is due to the fact that I spent weeks in deep investigations
in ethnological science, comparing results, and especially examining the
points of resemblance which exist in the brute creation and the nobler
race of man. To say that I utterly overthrew the Darwinian theory, and
quite demolished the tribe of pretenders who have since attempted to
imitate that great apostle of error, may not be strictly in accordance
with modesty, but hosts of candid friends will admit that it is strictly
true. I know very well that, though my untiring labors in the cause of
science are not yet thoroughly appreciated, an admiring posterity will
dwell with delight on the name of Samuel Simcox as the benefactor of his
race, who showed where that race had its birth and from what primitive
elements it sprang. For further particulars, see the _Interoceanic
Monthly_ for June, 18--.
My favorite haunt during the progress of this article was Coriander's
Menagerie; having resolved that this should be the masterpiece of my
life, I spared neither labor nor expense upon it, and actually procured
a season ticket to the menagerie, and passed many pleasant hours in
watching the wild animals, studying their habits, and drawing many
valuable conclusions from their points of resemblance and difference.
Consequently, though the apes and monkeys had furnished me with an
inexhaustible fund of amusement and interest, I was delighted beyond
measure when it was announced that Coriander had secured a live gorilla
for his collection of wild beasts. An agent had been dispatched to
Africa, and had sent home, with great secrecy, a real live specimen of
this dreadful beast; and so well had all the negotiations been kept
that nobody knew of what was being done, until the monster was fairly
caged and on exhibition at Coriander's Menagerie. I entered with zest
upon a study of the creature's habits and peculiarities; and while the
idle curiosity of mere wonder-mongers kept a vast crowd about the cage
wherein the furious beast was confined, calmly I surveyed it from a
safe distance and made my scientific observations for the benefit of
mankind. And when vulgar wonder at the strange beast had somewhat
subsided, and I could get nearer the cage and watch the gorilla, I was
more and more impressed with the human traits which I discovered in the
extraordinary animal. His manner of reclining was, though impish, half
human; and his grotesque gait, as he sprang from side to side of the
narrow prison, was suggestive of his supposititious congener-man; even
his terrible howl, which rent the air of the museum constantly, had a
human shade of sound.
One rainy day, when the great hall of the museum was unusually vacant
of visitors, I almost leaned against the cage in my eager watch of the
movements of the gorilla. I fancied him roaming his native African
jungles, the terror of every living thing, or rearing, with a strange
grotesque solicitude, his young family. I wondered how much akin to
human love and hate were the passions that raged beneath that hairy
breast, and how much of real feeling was in the loud and anguished howl
that occasionally burst from those fanglike jaws. Thus speculating, I
drew incautiously near the bars of the cage where the monster
restlessly paced up and down, and was inexpressibly startled at feeling
his hot breath on my cheek, while from his huge, hairy lips came the
sound--"Sam!" I actually jumped with astonishment, whereupon the
creature beseechingly said: "Hush, hush, for Heaven's sake do not leave
me!" I mustered courage enough to ask what all this meant. The gorilla
answered: "I am your old friend, Jack Gale; don't leave me."
So Coriander's famous gorilla was no other than my old crony, Jack
Gale.
And this is how Jack happened to be a gorilla:
Coriander's keepers were too watchful to permit much conversation, but
taking from the gorilla--for such he still was to me--the address of
Jack Gale, No. 1283, Morusmulticaulis Street, I went home to revise
some of my deductions relative to the origin of the human species,
founded on observations of the gorilla in a state of comparative
wildness. The menagerie closed at ten o'clock in the evening, and
precisely at half-past ten I was at Jack's lodgings, to which I climbed
up four flights of crooked and very dark stairways. The room was small
and cheerless; the windows were carefully guarded by thick curtains;
three or four swinging bars depended from the ceiling for the practice
of its inmate in acrobatic exercises; across the foot of the bed lay a
well-dressed gorilla's skin, and at a small table, and absorbing the
contents of a pot of beer, sat the wearer of this discarded robe. This
was the haunt of the African gorilla. He told his story in a few words.
"When you and I were used to talk with each other along the Tallapoosa
and Athens wire, I never thought to meet you as a live gorilla; but
here I am. After the war was over and the Government discharged so many
telegraph operators, it was hard scratching for a while; and after you
and I left the Decapolis office, I was well-nigh broke more than once,
only a few cents standing between me and beggary. But I kept a stiff
upper lip and struggled up to Cincinnati, where I met with Coriander.
He was out there with his menagerie and was about to come on to this
city and open a big show. He is a great old villain, but he has the
sweetest, nicest little daughter that ever was given to man. You
haven't seen Clara Coriander, have you? No? Well, you have not seen the
loveliest and best girl in the world, then. But, as I was saying, old
Coriander was preparing for a year's campaign in this city, and
allotted a great deal on a real, live gorilla which had been captured
in the wilds of Africa somewhere. Oh, curse that gorilla; I wish I had
been dead before I ever heard of him."
And here Jack groaned.
"I love Clara Coriander. I suppose you have guessed that out already.
But it was the old story; poor young man, without fortune or friends;
cruel parents determined that their only daughter shall not marry a
beggar; young lady inconsolable and devoted to aforesaid young man, but
dreadfully afraid of papa, whose only child she is. Well, Coriander
came on here and I followed, the old man giving me the job of writing
his posters and advertisements--to keep me from starving, I suppose.
The long-expected _Gooroo_ arrived from Zanzibar, but no gorilla was
there on board for Mr. Coriander; there was a skin of that celebrated
animal, the beast himself having departed this life off the island of
St. Helena, an imitation of the example of another much-feared person
who once resided in that locality.
"Coriander was frantic. The great card of his menagerie was not to be
his. His long-cherished plans were a wreck; his money was spent for
naught; he had no gorilla. After all, I rather like the old wretch
(Coriander, I mean). He has an absolute passion for his 'profession,'
as he calls it, and was more in despair because he had no gorilla, than
because it was a bad financial operation, which left him without that
for which he had spent so much money. He was wretched in his
disappointment, and postponed indefinitely the opening of his
menagerie, though my elegant advertisements were in all the papers, and
our flaming posters covered the walls of the city from one end to the
other. Gloom reigned in the house of Coriander.
"This was my opportunity. I was in love with Clara and without any
permanent occupation. Presenting myself before the old man, I said:
'Mr. Coriander, you want a gorilla?'
"'To be sure,' said he, testily.
"'I will furnish you with one.'
"'The devil you will!'
"'Look here,' said I, stepping back a few paces. Grasping the top of a
heavy wardrobe that stood in the room, I swung myself up, clambered
along the top, sprang up and down over chairs and tables, raced around
the room with huge strides and jumps, and finally wound up my
performances by rushing at the astonished Coriander, and, beating my
breast, gave a terrific howl, that fairly made the old man quail as he
writhed in his chair. I had not been practicing for nothing, evidently.
Coriander was actually frightened.
"'What does this mean,' he gasped, with some rage mingled with his
perturbation.
"'I am the live gorilla from the wilds of Africa,' said I. 'Give me my
skin that arrived by the _Gooroo_ from Zanzibar, and I will scare
this city out of its senses when the menagerie opens, after a brief
delay on account of the difficulty of preparing for the enormous
additions, which a discriminating public will be delighted to see.'
"Old Coriander embraced me with tears in his eyes, declaring that I was
a real genius, and was born to the show business.
"'But,' said I, 'though I am poor and need the money which you will pay
me, I have one other condition, and that is that you shall give me your
daughter's hand if I succeed.'
"The old man was rather taken aback at this, and flatly refused at
first; and we wrangled over the matter for two or three days, but,
after seeing me in the skin of the gorilla, and go through my antics
and performances, he reluctantly gave in and agreed that after one year
of gorilla life in his service, I should have the happiness of marrying
Clara. He only stipulated that I should not hereafter tell anybody of
the cheat, and that not even Clara should know of it now.
"I am aware that my profession is not high art as you call it, and on
hot days it is precious uncomfortable. But what won't a fellow do under
the pressure of an exchequer in distress, and enticed by the promise of
the hand of the prettiest and best girl in the world? The pay is not
much, but I keep soul and body together, which is more than some poor
devils do in this great city. By the way, Sam, have you got five
dollars about you?"
Now, if there was anything that Jack Gale specially loved, it was the
state of being in debt. He was never so happy as when in debt, and when
by accident, or the interference of friends, he got out of it, he was
uneasy and wretched, apparently, until he got in again. The normal
condition of the man was debt; so when he asked me for a loan, I could
not help laughing; and I told him that he had undoubtedly found one of
the greatest privations of his gorilla life to be the difficulty of
contracting new debts.
"That's a fact," said Jack. "The menagerie opens at eight o'clock in
the morning; it takes me a good hour to get myself up for the day; and
we don't shut up until ten o'clock at night; so you see my professional
duties are very confining, and a real, live African gorilla is not
supposed to have first-rate credit with the people who poke stale
sandwiches and peanuts through his cage-bars by day."
I promised Jack that if old Seanecks, of the _Interoceanic Monthly_,
accepted my article on the Origin of the Human Species, I would divide
the proceeds with him. Jack and I had shared and shared alike with our
little gains too often in years gone by, for me to remember which owed
the other now. Besides, I told him that I had studied his habits as a
gorilla, and he had some claim upon the profits of an article in which
his personal peculiarities figured so largely.
During the next few days I observed the characteristics of Coriander's
African gorilla with new interest. He performed wonderfully well; it
was difficult to realize that the hairy, ravening, agile, and
grotesquely-moving beast, from which every visitor shrank back aghast,
was only jolly Jack Gale serving out his hard servitude for an
anticipated bride, very much after the ancient fashion of Laban's
kinsman. The cunning rascal had a fashion of leaping at the bars when
curious people came too near, driving them away from a narrow
inspection by his hideous yells and angry mouthings. But his roars,
which were really artistic in their brutal sonorousness, served us a
good purpose. As I was night editor on the _Daily Highflyer_, and
kept pretty close from ten until three o'clock in the morning, and Jack
was caged until the hour at which I went to work, it was not easy for
us to meet. So we exchanged the salutations of the day and a few scraps
of news by using our old signals, learned long ago in the telegraph
office. Instead of the rat-tat-tat of the little instrument so familiar
to both of us, Jack, by a series of long or short howls and grunts,
gave me his message, to which I replied by careless taps of my cane or
hand, nobody suspecting that my casual movements meant anything, nor
supposing for an instant that a sudden burst of African forest yells,
which sent a fat lady nearly into hysterics, and made two small
children howl with apprehension, merely meant "She with the pink bonnet
is my Clara."
And it must be confessed that Clara Coriander was an exceedingly
attractive young person. Blonde, slight in figure, and with one of
those fair transparent complexions that make you think of a light
shining through an alabaster vase, Clara Coriander was certainly as
lovely a girl as one ever lays eyes upon. Besides, she was an only
daughter, and old Coriander had grown rich in the menagerie business.
Jack was a lucky dog (gorilla, I should say), to gain her hand--if he
ever did; but one could not help thinking, as he noted her dainty
manner and delicate, somewhat _distingue_ face, that she was
hardly the girl to fancy a fellow who had personated a gorilla, even
for her hand. I was afraid that Jack had made a mistake in thus
debasing himself to the absurd passion of her cruel parent for the
possession of a gorilla. Moreover, by debarring himself from her
society for a greater portion of the time (Sundays only excepted), he
left the field open for some more fortunate rival who might, in the
meantime, carry off the prize.
But Jack felt sure that he was all right, and by a precious bit of
deception he had led Clara to believe that he was hard at work, night
and day, at some legitimate calling, earning money for his future
ambitious designs in life. The poor little thing believed in him, but
Jack said it was very hard for him to be obliged to see his beloved
flirting, right before his eyes at the menagerie (for the girl had a
taste for natural history, and was there often), with some perfumed
dangler who was in love with her pretty face and old Coriander's money.
On these occasions, he hated himself for his mean disguise, and found
satisfaction in howling at the gay party in such dreadful fashion as
sent them quaking from his cage; and then he cursed himself for having
driven away his lovely angel, and was smitten with sudden remorse as he
saw her rose-hued cheeks blanch at his terrific cries. At such times he
could with difficulty restrain himself from shouting: "Don't be
frightened, dear, it's only Jack!" But he was fortunately preserved
from such an untimely exposure.
Old Seanecks was very mean, and, though he accepted my article on the
Origin of the Human Species, only paid me the pitiful sum of twenty
dollars for that valuable contribution to knowledge. Twenty dollars for
the labor and thought of weeks! Was ever anything so absurd! And there
was Jack confidently expecting at least twenty-five dollars to purchase
a birth-day present for Clara. Jack loved to make presents, and the
deeper he got into debt, the more presents did he bestow on his
friends. Such another whole-souled fellow as he was, to be sure.
But I pocketed the disappointment along with the money and went
straightway to the menagerie. There was quite a little crowd about
Jack's cage, standing at a respectful distance. In his capacity as the
real African gorilla, Jack had just avenged himself on a dangerous
rival by snatching off his matchless wig. This gentleman had long
deceived his friends with his ambrosial locks, but Jack's quick eye had
discovered the cheat, and he seized a favorable moment to make a grab
for it. To his inexpressible joy, it came off in his paw, and the
discomfitted gallant stood with his bare poll in the presence of the
giggling and amused Clara Coriander. The amateur gorilla was in a
frenzy of delight, and tore up and down his cage, scattering Mr.
Jonquil's chestnut curls with savage glee. Old Coriander afterwards had
to pay for the wig, of course, but he was so delighted with the stroke
of showman genius displayed in its destruction, that he paid the bill
without a murmur. None but a wild and savage animal, of course, would
"snatch a gentleman bald-headed," as the old man expressed it. I
suppose some of my readers, who now recollect the occurrence, will
agree with Mr. Coriander in his opinion.
After the little crowd which this amusing affair had drawn around the
cage, dispersed in various directions, I drew near enough to hand Jack
a ten-dollar note, which was his share of the proceeds of my article in
_Interoceanic Monthly_. He snatched it furtively, for the keepers
were not far off, and cramming it into his ferocious jaws (lined with
blood-red velvet), he howled in his usual _staccato_ style, "Didn't I
scalp old Jonquil, though!"
One of the keepers approaching me, said, suspiciously, "Look a-here,
young man, you make entirely too free with that ere beast. He's awful,
he is, and some day he'll just go for you, if you ain't keerful. Why,
this afternoon, he jest tore a gentleman's skelp clean off his head,
and he was borne out in a fainting condition. Jest see the hair of him
all scattered over the cage."
I humbly thanked him for the caution, and drew off, asking for
information as to the creatures's habits. He was very talkative, and
enlightened me with much valuable knowledge relative to his diet,
averring that he invariably was fed before the menagerie was opened,
the raw meat and live rabbits which he devoured exasperating him by
their blood to that degree, that it was not safe for any person but the
keeper to come into his sight. The gorilla enjoyed this confidential
communication, and roared his approval thus: "He's the head liar of
this menagerie."
Jack and I kept up a casual correspondence from day to day by means of
our telegraphic signals, for I had little time to see him when off
duty. Occasionally I strolled in of an evening to commiserate his
_ennui_ and cheer him up with a friendly sign, or when opportunity
offered, to chat furtively with the man-gorilla, who swore dreadfully
at the bad bargain which he had made. His confinement was growing
excessively irksome, and though his constant exercise kept him in good
bodily health, poor Jack lost his spirits and grew positively wretched
in mind. One night, when I had managed to find time to visit him at his
"den" in Morusmulticaulis Street, he grew quite plaintive over his
unhappy condition.
"Hang it, Sam," said he, "you have no idea how mad it makes me to think
that I have shut myself up in that cage for a year, and with no chance
of getting out without telling Clara what I have been doing. And there
she goes pottering about the out the least idea that Jack, unhappy
Jack, is glowering at her from his cursed gorilla prison, longing to
say the words that would bring confusion and dismay upon all of us. And
then when I see some other fellow flirting around with her, and old
Coriander leering over her head at me, knowing full well how aggravated
I am, why, it just makes me wild."
I comforted Jack as well as I could, and bade him hope that some stroke
of luck would yet deliver him from his voluntary thraldom and bring him
to his love. He was hopeful that old Coriander would find the gorilla
business unprofitable, and would offer to buy him off, or consent to
shorter terms. He vowed one day that unless relief soon came, he would
address the crowd about his cage and inform them that he was an
unmitigated humbug; that he was no gorilla at all, but only a
distressed gentleman, John Gale by name, temporarily held in duress by
that old rascal, Columbus Coriander. But he restrained himself and
waited. It was well that he did.
One evening, finding an unemployed half-hour at my disposal, I
sauntered into the menagerie hall, and watched the poor weary beasts
slowly composing themselves to their unquiet slumbers. It was nearly
time to close the show for the night, and not many people were left to
stroll about among the cages. Old Coriander was there with his fat
wife, the lovely Clara floating about in a cloudy white dress, and
followed by a train of admiring swains. The poor gorilla was stretched
at full length on the floor of his cage, with his face sullenly turned
to the rear partition. Passing by the poor fellow, with a little pang
of regret, I stopped before a cage of apes, poor Jack's next door
neighbors. No wonder that he felt blue sometimes.
Suddenly there was a rush of hurrying feet; a strange confusion
pervaded the whole place, lately so quiet and still; and above the
pungent odor of the menagerie, I detected that of burning wood. The
place was on fire, and instantly everybody ran for the exits. The hall
was filled with blinding smoke; the red tongues of flame thrust
themselves eagerly through the thin partitions which separated the main
exhibition hall from the lumber-rooms in the rear. And the people who
rushed selfishly down the narrow stairways fled not only from the
flames, but from the poor beasts who cowered in their cages, or roared
angrily as they caught the mad excitement around them. The scene was
terrible; the crackling, roaring fires sweeping out into the long room;
the wild terror of the caged animals; the shrieks and cries of flocks
of suddenly-liberated strange birds; and the surging clouds of smoke
which rolled through the high arches overhead. Passing near the
gorilla's cage I heard Jack's voice, as he yelled with stentorian
lungs: "Will nobody let me out? Oh, will nobody let me out?" Quick as
thought I ran behind his cage, and unfastened the narrow flap that
closed the opening. In another moment the African gorilla was out and
across the hall, to where a blonde young lady in a white dress was
being helplessly borne along by old Coriander, also encumbered by the
stout mother of Miss Clara--for Jack had seen that his beloved was in
mortal danger. Raising the fainting girl in his strong arms, the hairy
monster rushed down the stairs, astounding the coming firemen with the
sight of a ferocious gorilla carrying off a respectable young lady,
whose flaxen curls lay lovingly over the dreadful shoulders of the
beast, which, with ludicrous failure, endeavored to caress the pallid
face of the young lady with his hairy jaws, stiff with padding and
whalebone, and nicely lined with blood-red velvet.
The gorilla fled up the street, bearing his dainty burden--for, once in
sight, he could not stop with out exposure. Plodding travellers on the
illuminated sidewalks were startled by the swift apparition of a
gorilla carrying off a young lady, who was borne into dark alleys to be
eaten in the obscurity of some hidden den. Casual wayfarers through
back streets shrieked and ran as they beheld a flaming hairy dragon
leaping with enormous strides, and carrying the corpse of a nice young
person hanging over his shoulder. Good Mrs. Harris, who keeps the
lodging-house at No. 1283, Morusmulticaulis Street, fell down in a
deadly swoon at her own doorway, as she was returning from a class-
meeting, to see the Evil One, equipped with the traditional head,
horns, and tail, breathing fire and sulphurous smoke, violently
deporting a beautiful young lady, who had for love of dress and other
worldly vanities, sold herself to Old Nick. Vaulting over the prone
body of the insensible Mrs. Harris, Jack eluded his few pursuers, and
darted up the stairs to his own private den, were he shut and locked
himself and his fair burthen from the world.
The lovely Clara revived shortly, and opening her eyes shut them again
with a great scream. She was in the den of the African gorilla. There
was more fainting, and more anguish on the part of Jack, who cursed his
luck and his folly together. "It's Jack; it's only Jack," he cried,
with real agony, as he tore off his mask; and the young lady, slowly
returning to her senses, once more opened her eyes and beheld her
lover, a real African gorilla from his chin downwards, but possessing a
very resolute yet anxious human head, very like Jack Gale's, with the
scalp and grinning jaws of the defunct monster hanging behind his ears.
This was an extraordinary situation; a nice young lady in a strange
garret, confronted by an erratic young man in semi-gorilla costume; his
countenance flushed with excitement and exercise; his eyes wild with
anxiety and alarm, and his whole manner that of a person who is in a
state of utter quandary. The truth of history compels me to record the
fact that Miss Clara Coriander threw up her hands and laughed as she
would die. She was a sensible girl, and liked a good joke. Old
Coriander's plans were laid bare to her clear vision in one moment; she
saw through the whole trick; and laughed in the face of the astonished
Mr. Gale. "Oh, Jack," she said, as soon as she could recover her
breath, "how could you be such a fool? Where Oh, oh, oh!" To all of
which Jack could only reply by instalments. But by secluding the young
lady on the stairway, he succeeded in preparing for their return to the
Coriander mansion. Through the half-deserted streets the young couple
went in different guise from that in which they had before astonished
those who saw them flee. The gorilla delivered up the old man's
daughter, and was glad to be told that the menagerie, not quite ruined,
must needs he closed for a few months for repairs.
The show opened again in due season with new attractions, under the
management of Coriander and Gale. But in all the lines of cages of rare
beasts, no African gorilla was to be found. In lieu thereof they showed
a handsomely stuffed skin of the much lamented beast, which came to an
untimely end in consequence of a cold caught by exposure at the great
menagerie fire. Coriander's heart relented when Jack saved his daughter
from the burning building, and he found his inventive genius invaluable
in the show business.
I have seen the only young gorilla born on American soil, of which
there is any account. It has pink cheeks and blue eyes, and is learning
to answer to the name of Clara Gale.
THE FATE OF YOUNG CHUBB
When Mr. Chubb, the elder, returned from Europe, he brought with him
from Geneva, a miniature musical-box, long and very narrow, and
altogether of hardly greater dimensions, say, then a large pocket-
knife. The instrument played four cheerful little tunes, for the
benefit of the Chubb family, and they enjoyed it. Young Henry Chubb
enjoyed it to such an extent that one day, just after the machine had
been wound up ready for action he got to sucking the end of it, and in
a moment of inadvertence it slipped, and he swallowed it. The only
immediate consequence of the accident was that a harmonic stomach-ache
was organized upon the interior of Henry Chubb and he experienced a
restlessness which he well knew would defy the soothing tendencies of
peppermint and make a mockery of paregoric.
And Henry Chubb kept his secret in his own soul and in his stomach,
also determined to hide his misery from his father, and to spare the
rod to the spoiled child--spoiled, at any rate, as far as his digestive
apparatus was concerned.
But that evening, at the supper table, Henry had eaten but one mouthful
of bread, when strains of wild, mysterious music were suddenly wafted
from under the table. The family immediately made an effort to discover
whence the sounds came, although Henry Chubb set there filled with
agony and remorse and bread and tunes, and desperately asserted his
belief that the music came from the cellar where the hired girl was
concealed with a harp. He well knew that Mary Ann was unfamiliar with
the harp, but he was frantic with anxiety to hide his guilt. Thus it is
that one crime leads to another.
But he could not disguise the truth forever, and that very night, while
the family was at prayers, Henry all at once began to hiccup, and the
musicbox started off without warning, with "way down on the Swanee
River," with variations. Whereupon the paternal Chubb arose from his
knees and grasped Henry kindly but firmly by his hair and shook him up,
and inquired what he meant by such conduct.
And Henry asserted that he was practicing something for a Sunday-school
celebration, which old Chubb intimated was a singularly thin
explanation.
Then they tried to get up that music-box, and every time they would
seize Henry by the leg and shake him over the sofa-cushion, or would
pour some fresh variety of emetic down his throat, the instrument would
give some fresh sport, and joyously grind out "Listen to the Mocking
Bird," or "Thou'lt Never Cease to love."
At last, they were compelled to permit that musical box to remain
within the sepulchral recesses of the epigastrium of young Chubb. To
say that the unfortunate victim of the disaster was made miserable by
his condition, would be to express in the feeblest manner the state of
his mind. The more music there was in his stomach, the wilder and more
chaotic became the discord in his soul. As likely as not, it would
occur that while he lay asleep in bed in the middle of the night, the
works would begin to revolve, and would play "Home, Sweet Home," for
two or three hours, unless the peg happened to slip, when the cylinder
would switch back again to "way down upon the Swanee River" and would
rattle out that tune with variations and fragments of the scales, until
Henry's brother would kick him out of bed in wild despair, and sit on
him in a vain effort to subdue the serenade, which, how ever,
invariably proceeded with fresh vigor when subjected to unusual
pressure.
And when Henry Chubb went to church it frequently occurred that, in the
very midst of the most solemn portion of the sermon, he would feel a
gentle disturbance under the lower button of his jacket, and presently,
when everything was hushed, the undigested engine would give a
preliminary buzz, and then reel off "Listen to the Mocking Bird," and
"Thou'lt Never Cease to Love," and scales and exercises, until the
clergyman would stop and glare at Henry over his spectacles, and
whisper to one of the deacons.
Then the sexton would suddenly tack up the aisle and clutch the unhappy
Mr. Chubb by the collar, and scud down the aisle again to the
accompaniment of "Home Sweet Home," and then incarcerate Henry in the
upper portion of the steeple until after church. But the end came at
last, and the miserable boy found peace. One day, while he was sitting
in school, endeavoring to learn his multiplication table to the tune of
"Thou'lt Cease to Love," his gastric juice triumphed. Something or
other in the music-box gave way all at once, the springs were unrolled
with alarming force, and Henry Chubb, as he felt the fragments of the
instruments hurled right and left among his vitals, tumbled over on the
floor and expired.
At the _post-mortem_ examination they found several pieces of "Home,
Sweet Home" in his liver, while one of his lungs was severely torn by a
fragment of "Way down upon the Swanee river."
Particles of "Listen to the Mocking Bird" were removed from his heart
and breast-bone, and three brass pegs of "Thou'lt Never Cease to Love"
were found firmly driven into his fifth rib.
They had no music at the funeral. They lifted the machinery out of him
and buried him quietly in the cemetery. Whenever the Chubbs buy musical
boxes now, they get them as large as a piano, and chain them to the
wall. MAX ADLER.
BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE INN.
Before the days of railways, and in the time of the old Great North
Road, I was once snowed up at the Holly-tree Inn. Beguiling the days of
my imprisonment there by talking at one time or other with the whole
establishment, I one day talked with the Boots, when he lingered in my
room.
Where had he been in his time? Boots repeated when I asked him the
question. Lord, he had been everywhere! And what had he been? Bless
you, he had been everything you could mention a'most.
Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. I should say so, he could
assure me, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had come in
_his_ way. Why, it would be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he
hadn't seen than what he had. Ah! A deal, it would.
What was the most curious thing he had seen? Well! He didn't know. He
couldn't momently name what was the curiousest thing he had seen,
unless it was a Unicorn,--and he see _him_ once at a Fair. But supposing
a young gentleman not eight years old was to run away with a young woman
of seven, might I think _that_ a queer start? Certainly? Then that was a
start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the
shoes they run away in,--and they was so little that he couldn't get his
hand into 'em.
Master Harry Walmer's father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down
away by Shooter's Hill there, six or seven mile from Lunnon. He was a
gentle man of spirit, and good-looking, and held his head up when he
walked, and had what you may call fire about him. He wrote poetry, and
he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, and he acted, and
he done it all equally beautiful. He was uncommon proud of Master Harry
as was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was a
gentleman that had a will of his own. and a eye of his own, and that
would be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the
fine bright boy and was delighted to see him so fond of his fairy
books, and was never tired of hearing him say, my name is Norval, or
hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and
When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept
the command over the child, and the child _was_ a child, an it's to be
wished more of 'em was!
How did Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being under-
gardener. Of course he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always about,
in the summer time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and
sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting
acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master Harry
hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you
spell Norah, if you was asked?" and then begun cutting it in print all
over the fence.
He couldn't say that he had taken particular notice of children before
that: but really it was pretty to see them two mites a going about the
place together, deep in love. And the courage of the boy! Bless your
soul, he'd have throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little
sleeves, and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to meet
one, and she been frightened of him. One day he stops, along with her,
where Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up,
"Cobbs," he says, "I like _you_." "Do you, sir? I'm proud to hear
it." "Yes, I do, Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?" "Don't
know, Master Harry, I am sure." "Because Norah likes you, Cobbs."
"Indeed, sir? that's very gratifying." "Gratifying, Cobbs? It's better
than millions of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah."
"Certainly, sir." "You're going away, ain't you, Cobbs?" "Yes, sir."
"Would you like another situation, Cobbs?" "Well, sir, I shouldn't
object, if it was a good 'un." "Then, Cobbs," said he," you shall be
our Head Gardener when we are married." And he tucks her in her little
sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks away.
Boots could assure me that it was better than a picture, and equal to a
play, to see them babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their
sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a rambling about the
garden, deep in love. Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they
was birds, and kept up with 'em, singing to please 'em. Sometimes they
would creep under the Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms
round one another's necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading
about the Prince, and the Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and
the king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would hear them planning about
having a house in a forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely
on milk and honey. Once he came upon them by the pond, and heard Master
Harry say, "Adorable Norah, kiss me, and say you love me to
distraction, or I'll jump in head-foremost." And Boots made no question
he would have done it if she hadn't complied. On the whole, Boots said
it had a tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himself,--only
he didn't exactly know who with.
"Cobbs," said master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the
flowers, "I am going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my
grandmamma's at York."
"Are you indeed, sir? I hope you'll have a pleasant time. I am going
into Yorkshire, myself, when I leave here."
"Are you going to your grandmamma's, Cobbs?"
"No, sir. I haven't got such a thing."
"Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs?"
"No, sir."
The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while,
and then said, "I shall be very glad indeed to go, Cobbs,--Norah's
going."
"You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, "with your beautiful
sweetheart by your side."
"Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, "I never let anybody joke about
it, when I can prevent them."
"It wasn't a joke, sir," says Cobbs, with humility,--"wasn't so meant."
"I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you're
going to live with us.--Cobbs!"
"Sir."
"What do you think my grandmama gives me when I go down there?"
"I couldn't so much as make a guess, sir."
"A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs."
"Whew!" says Cobbs, "that's a spanking sum of money, Master Harry."
"A person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that,--
couldn't a person, Cobbs?"
"I believe you, sir!"
"Cobbs," said the boy, "I'll tell you a secret. At Norah's house, they
have been joking her about me, and pretending to laugh at our being
engaged--pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!"
"Such, sir," says Cobbs, "is the depravity of human nature."
The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with
his glowing face towards the sunset, and then departed with, "Good-
night, Cobbs. I'm going in."
If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a going to leave that
place just at that present time, well, he couldn't rightly answer me.
He did suppose he might have stayed there till now if he had been
anyways inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he wanted
change. That's what he wanted,--change. Mr. Walmers, he said to him
when he gave him notice of his intentions to leave, "Cobbs," he says,
"have you anything to complain of? I make the inquiry because if I find
that any of my people really has anything to complain of, I wish to
make it right if I can." "No, sir," says Cobbs; "thanking you, sir, I
find myself as well situated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The
truth is, sir, that I am going to seek my fortune." "O, indeed, Cobbs?"
he says: "I hope you may find it." And Boots could assure me--which he
did, touching his hair with his bootjack as a salute in the way of his
present calling--that he hadn't found it yet.
Well, sir! Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master
Harry, he went down to the old lady's at York, which old lady would
have given that child the teeth out of her head (if she had had any),
she was so wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do--but cut away
from that old lady's with his Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna
Green and be married!
Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it several
times to better himself, but always come back through one thing or
another), when one summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of
the coach gets them two children. The Guard says to our Governor, "I
don't quite make out these little passengers, but the young gentleman's
words was, that they was to be brought here." The young gentleman gets
out; hands his lady out; gives the Guard something for himself; says to
our Governor "We're to stop here to-night, please. Sitting-room and two
bed-rooms will be required. Chops and cherry pudding for two!" and
tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into
the house much bolder than Brass.
Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was,
when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into
the Angel,--much more so, when he, who had seen them without their
seeing him, give the Governor his views of the expedition they was
upon. "Cobbs," says the Governor, "if this is so, I must set off myself
to York, and quiet their friends minds. In which case you must keep
your eye upon 'em, and humor 'em, till I come back. But before I take
these measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to find from themselves
whether your opinions is correct." "Sir, to you," says Cobbs, "that
shall be done directly."
So Boots goes up-stairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry,
on a enormous sofa,--immense at any time, but looking like the Great
Bed of Ware, compared with him,--a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with
his pocket-handkechref. Their little legs was entirely off the ground,
of course, and it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how
small them children looked.
"It's Cobbs! It's Cobbs!" cried Master Harry, and comes running to him,
and catching hold of his hand. Miss Norah comes running to him on
t'other side and catching hold of his t'other hand, and they both jump
for joy.
"I see you a getting out, sir," says Cobbs, "I thought it was you. I
thought I couldn't be mistaken in your height and figure. What's the
object of your journey, sir?--Matrimonial?"
"We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green," returned the boy.
"We have run away on purpose. Norah has been in rather low spirits,
Cobbs; but she'll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend."
"Thank you, sir, and thank _you_, miss," says Cobbs, "for your good
opinion. _Did_ you bring any luggage with you, sir!"
If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honor upon it,
the lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of
cold buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush,--
seemingly a doll's. The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of
string, a knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up
surprising small, a orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.
"What may be the exact nature of your plans, sir?" says Cobbs.
"To go on," replied the boy,--which the courage of that boy was
something wonderful!--"in the morning, and be married to-morrow."
"Just so, sir," says Cobbs. "Would it meet your views, sir, if I was to
accompany you?"
When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, "O
yes, yes, Cobbs! Yes!"
"Well, sir," says Cobbs, "if you will excuse my having the freedom to
give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this. I'm acquainted
with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow, would
take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior (myself driving, if you
approved), to the end of your journey in a very short space of time. I
am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-
morrow, but even if you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be
worth your while. As to the small account here, sir, in case you was to
find yourself running at all short, that don't signify; because I'm a
part proprietor of this inn, and it could stand over."
Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy
again, and called him "Good Cobbs!" and "Dear Cobbs!" and bent across
him to kiss one another in the delight of their confiding heart, and he
felt himself the meanest rascal for deceiving 'em that ever was born.
"Is there any thing you want just at present, sir?" says Cobbs,
mortally ashamed of himself.
"We should like some cake after dinner," answered Master Harry, folding
his arms, putting out one leg and looking straight at him, "and two
apples,--and jam. With dinner we should like to have some toast and
water. But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant
wine at dessert. And so have I."
"It shall be ordered at the bar, sir," says Cobbs; and away he went.
Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as
he had then, that he would far rather have it out in half a dozen
rounds with the Governor, then have combined with him; and that he
wished with all his heart there was any impossible place where those
two babies could make an impossible marriage, and live impossibly happy
ever afterwards. However, as it couldn't be, he went into the
Governor's plans, and the Governor set off for York in half an hour.
The way in which the women of that house--without exception--every one
of 'em--married _and_ single--took to that boy when they heard the
story, Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he could do to
keep 'em from dashing into the room and kissing him. They climbed up
all sorts of places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through
a pane of glass. They were seven deep at the keyhole. Ihey were out of
their minds about him and his bold spirit.
In the evening, Boots went into the room to see how the runaway couple
was getting on. The gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting the
lady in his arms, she had tears upon her face, and was lying very tired
and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.
"Mrs. Henry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?" says Cobbs.
"Yes, she is tired, Cobbs: but she is not used to be away from home,
and she has been in low spirits again. Cobbs, do you think you could
bring a biffin, please?"
"I ask your pardon, sir," says Cobbs. "What was it you--?"
"I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very fond of
them."
Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he
brought it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a
spoon, and took a little himself; the lady being heavy with sleep, and
rather cross. "What should you think, sir," says Cobbs, "of a chamber
candlestick?" The gentleman approved; the chamber-maid went first, up
the great staircase; the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed,
gallantly escorted by the gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her
door, and retired to his own apartment, where Boots softly locked him
up.
Boots couldn't but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver
he was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet
milk-and-water, and toast and currant jelly, over-night), about the
pony. It really was as much as he could do, he don't mind confessing to
me, to look them two young things in the face, and think what a wicked
old father of lies he had grown up to be. Howsomever, he went on a
lying like a Trojan about the pony. He told 'em that it did so
unfort'nately happen that the pony was half clipped, you see, and that
he couldn't be taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to
his inside. But that he'd be finished clipping in the course of the
day, and that to-morrow morning at eight o'clock the pheayton would be
ready. Boots's view of the whole case, looking back upon it in my room,
is, that Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to give in. She
hadn't had her hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem
quite up to brushing it herself, and its getting in her eyes put her
out. But nothing put out Master Harry. He set behind his breakfast-cup,
a tearing away at the jelly, as if he had been his own father.
After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed
soldiers,--at least, he knows that many such were found in the
fireplace, all on horseback. In the course of the morning, Master Harry
rang the bell,--it was surprising how that there boy did carry on,--and
said, in a sprightly way, "Cobbs, is there any good walks in this
neighborhood?"
"Yes, sir," say Cobbs. "There's Love Lane."
"Get out with you, Cobbs;"--that was that there boy's expression,--
"you're joking."
"Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, "there really is Love Lane. And
a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and
Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior."
"Norah, dear," said Master Harry, "this is curious. We really ought to
see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go
there with Cobbs."
Boots leaves me to judge what a beast he felt himself to be, when that
young pair told him, as they jogged along together, that they had made
up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head
gardener, on account of his being so true a friend to 'em. Boots could
have wished at that moment that the earth would have opened and
swallered him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a-looking at
him, and believing him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well
as he could, and he took 'em down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and
there Master Harry would have drownded himself, in half a moment more,
a getting out a water-lily for her,--but nothing daunted that boy.
Well, sir, they were tired out. All being so new and strange to 'em,
they was tired as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of
daisies, like the children of the wood, leastways meadows, and fell
asleep.
Boots don't know--perhaps I do,--but never mind, it don't signify
either way--why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself to see them
two pretty babies a lying there in the clear, still, sunny day, not
dreaming half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was
awake. But, Lord! when you come to think of yourself, if you know, and
what game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle,
and what a poor sort of a chap you are, and how it's always either
Yesterday with you, or else To-morrow, and never To-day, that's where
it is!
Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty
clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior's temper was
on the move. When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he
"teased her so;" and when he says, "Norah, my young May Moon, your
Harry tease you?" she tells him, "Yes; and I want to go home!"
A biled fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers
up a little; but Boots could have wished, he must privately own to me,
to have seen her more sensible of the voice of love, and less
abandoning of herself to currants. However, master Harry, he kept up,
and his noble heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very
sleepy about dusk, and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off
to bed as per yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.
About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise,
along with Mr. Walmers and an elderly lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused
and very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, "We are much
indebted to you, ma'am for your kind care of our little children, which
we can never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray ma'am, where is my boy?"
Our missis says, "Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir, Cobbs, show
Forty!" Then he says to Cobbs, "Ah, Cobbs! I am glad to see _you_.
I understood you was here!" And Cobbs says, "Yes, sir. Your most
obedient sir."
I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps; but Boots assures me
that his heart beat like a hammer, going up stairs. "I beg your pardon,
sir," says he, while unlocking the door; "I hope you are not angry with
Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you
credit and honor." And Boots signifies to me, that, if the fine boy's
father had contradicted him in that daring state of mind in which he
then was, he thinks he should have "fetched him a crack," and taken the
consquence.
But Mr. Walmers only says, "No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. Thank you!"
And the door being opened, goes in. Boots goes in too, holding the
light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to the bedside, bend gently down,
and kiss the little sleeping face. Then he stands looking at it for a
minute, looking wonderfully like it (they do say he ran away with Mrs.
Walmers); and then he gently shakes the little shoulder.
"Harry, my dear boy! Harry!"
Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks at Cobbs too. Such is
the honor of that mite, that he looks at Cobbs, to see whether he has
brought him into trouble.
"I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress yourself and come
home."
"Yes, pa."
Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast begins to swell when
he has nearly finished, and it swells more and more as he stands at
last, a looking at his father: his father standing looking at him, the
quiet image of him.
"Please may I"--the spirit of that little creature, and the way he kept
his rising tears down!--"please dear pa--may I--kiss Norah before I
go?"
"You may, my child."
So he takes Master Harry by his hand, Boots leads the way with the
candle, and they come to that other bedroom, where the elderly lady is
seated by the bed and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmer, Junior, is fast
asleep. There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he lays
his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor
unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to
him--a sight so touching to the chamber-maids who are peeping through
the door, that one of them calls out, "It's a shame to part 'em!" But
the chamber-maid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one.
Not that there was any harm in that girl. Far from it.
Finally, Boots says, that's all about it. Mr. Walmers drove away in the
chaise, having hold of Master Harry's hand. The elderly lady and Mrs.
Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married a Captain long
afterwards, and died in India), went off next day. In conclusion, Boots
puts it to me whether I hold with him in two opinions: firstly, that
there are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as
innocent of guile as those two children; secondly, that it would be a
jolly good thing for a great many couples on their way to be married,
if they could only be stopped in time, and brought back separately.
CHARLES DICKENS.
THE ENTHUSIAST IN ANATOMY.
The youth whom we shall call "Tom"--and nothing but "Tom," was one of
those individuals who labor with a fierce, burning anxiety to burst
through the trammels imposed upon them by a limited education,--one of
those votaries of science, whose energy seems to grow all the more,
because it has nothing to feed upon. He was very slightly formed, and
had eyes so bright and shining that when one gazed on him, one was
inclined to overlook all his other thin, sharply defined features.
Never was there a more complete appearance of a clear intelligence in a
corporeal form.
The few half-pence which Tom was enabled to save from his scanty
earnings at a laborious trade, he regularly expended at the bookstall;
and on one occasion was highly delighted at picking up a small book on
anatomy. The work was one of those that had long been superseded by
more modern and better treatises, and the little plates were as ill and
coarsely done as possible. Nevertheless, with him it had not the
disadvantage of comparison. He thought it a mine of science yet
unexplored, and he suffered his whole soul to be absorbed by it.
In a few weeks he had transferred the entire contents of the work into
his own brain; and though he invariably carried the book in his pocket,
it was more out of respect to it, as an old friend, than from any
further benefit to be derived from it. The names of eery bone,
cartilage, ligament, and muscle of which he had read, were deeply
imprinted in his mind; and he could have passed with glory through the
sharpest examination, provided it had been based on the contents of the
little book.
But Tom, in spite of his knowledge, was too intelligent not to perceive
the defective state of his acquirements. He soon felt that his anatomy
was after all, a science of names, rather than of things--that though
he could have described accurately all the intricate bones of the
skull, and all the muscles of the extremities, his descriptions would
have been little more than a repetition of words committed to memory.
He had not seen a single real object connected with his science. If he
could but have set eyes upon a skeleton, what an advantage it would
have been.
We once read of a celebrated anatomist, who, far from admiring human
beauty, regarded the skin, as an impertinent obstacle to the
acquisition of science, concealing, as it does, the play of the
muscles. Whether such a clear notion as this ever entered the mind of
our hero, we cannot say, but certainly if some tall, lean beggar passed
him on the road, he would clutch convulsively at his knife, and follow
the man with a sad, wistful look.
One autumnal evening he sat in the ale-house parlor, watching the smoke
of his pipe, and indulging in his own reflections; for though the
conversation in the room was noisy and animated, it had no interest for
him. Devoted to his own pursuits, births, deaths and marriages were to
him things of nought, and he paid no heed to the constant discussions
which were held in the village, on the extraordinary case of old
Ebenezer Grindstone, who had been thought extremely rich, but in whose
house not a farthing had been found after his decease, to the great
disappointment of his creditors.
Soon, however, there was such a violent dash of rain against the
window, that even Tom was compelled to start, when he saw the door
open, and a stranger enter, completely muffled in a cloak. The new
comer stood before the fire as if to dry himself, and seemed to be of
the same taciturn disposition as Tom, for he made no answer to the
different questions that were addressed to him, nor did he even
condescend to look at the speakers. The shower having ceased, the moon
shining brightly through the window, the stranger walked out again,
without the sign of leave-taking.
"That be a queer chap," said the ostler, "I'll run and see where he's
going," and he followed the stranger, who had awakened a curiosity in
every one except Tom. Scarcely five minutes had elapsed, when the
ostler rushed into the room, pale as death.
"Udds buddikins!" said he, and it was not before a glass of spirits had
been poured down his throat, that he could state the cause of his
alarm. "Old chap just gone out got no proper face like--only a death's
head--he just looked around on me in the moonlight."
"Do you mean to say," exclaimed Tom, "that he is nothing but a
skeleton?"
"Aye, sure I do," said the ostler.
"And which way did he go?"
"Why, towards the church-yard, sure," said the ostler. Tom waited for
no more, but, dashing down his pipe, he rushed out of the room, and
tore along the road to the churchyard. When he had got there, he saw
the stranger standing by the tomb of old Ebenezer Grindstone. The moon
was shining full upon him, and, as Tom approached, the cloak fell down,
leaving nothing but a bare skeleton before him.
"Thank my stars!" exclaimed Tom, "I have seen a skeleton at last!"
"Young man!" said the skeleton, in a hollow voice, while it hideously
moved its jaws, "attend!"
"How beautifully," cried Tom, enraptured, "can I see the play of the
lower maxillary!"
"Attend!" repeated the skeleton; "but, rash man! what are you about?"
it added, turning suddenly round. The fact is, Tom was running his
fingers down the vertebrae, and counting to see if their number
corresponded with that given in his book. "Seven cervical, twelve
dorsal!" he cried with immense glee.
The skeleton lost all patience, and, raising its arm, shook its fist
angrily at Tom, who, with his eyes fixed on the elbow, merely shouted
his joy, at perceiving the "ginglymoid" movement.
The skeleton, who had been accustomed to terrify other people, was
completely amazed at the scientific position taken by the young
anatomist. In fact, the most extraordinary scene that can be conceived
presently occurred; for the apparition, feeling panic-struck at Tom's
coolness and scientific spirit, darted away from him, and endeavored to
escape by dodging among the tomb-stones. Tom was too anxious to pursue
his studies to allow himself to be baffled in this way; and putting
forth all his strength, soon overtook the skeleton, and held him tight,
a conversation ensued, in the course of which the skeleton explained
that he was old Grindstone himself, who had buried a quantity of money
underground, and could not rest in peace till it was dug up and
distributed among the creditors. This office he requested Tom to
perform.
"It will be some trouble," said Tom, "and the affair is none of mine--
but lookye--I'm willing to comply with your request, if, as a reward,
you will allow me to come and study you every night for the next month.
You may then retire to rest for as long a time as you please."
"Agreed," said the skeleton; and, quite recovered from his alarm, he
shook hands with Tom in ratification of the bargain.
Tom found the money, distributed it among the creditors, and passed
every night for the next month in the old churchyard, observing his
beloved skeleton, which as it moved into any position he desired, gave
him an opportunity of studying the motion of the bones, in a way that
had not been enjoyed by any other anatomist.
The young enthusiast, sitting at midnight with the strange assistant to
his pursuits, would have been a delightful sight, had any one possessed
the courage to stop and look at the party. When the month had expired,
Tom and his good friend shook hands and parted with great regret; but
Tom had completely retained in his mind all he had seen and laid the
foundation of that profound anatomical science by which he was
afterwards so much distinguished.
It is needless to add that this is the true account of the early career
of the celebrated Dr.----, and that all others are baseless
fabrications.
JOHN OXENFORD.
"THE LIGHT PRINCESS"
CHAPTER I.
WHAT! NO CHILDREN?
Once upon a time, so long ago that I have quite forgotten the date,
there lived a king and queen who had no children.
"And the king said to himself: 'All the queens of my acquaintance have
children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my
queen has not one. I feel ill-used.' So he made up his mind to be cross
with his wife about it. But she bore it all like a good, patient queen,
as she was. Then the king grew very cross indeed. But the queen
pretended to take it all as a joke, and a very good one too.
"'Why don't you have any daughters, at least?' said he, 'I don't say
_sons;_ that might be too much to expect.'
"'I am sure, clear king, I am very sorry,' said the queen.
"'So you ought to be,' retorted the king; 'you are not going to make a
virtue of _that_, surely.'
"But he was not an ill-tempered king; and, in any matter of less
moment, he would have let the queen have her own way, with all his
heart. This, however, was an affair of state.
"The queen smiled.
"'You must have patience with a lady, you know, dear king,' said she.
"She was, indeed, a very nice queen, and heartily sorry that she could
not oblige the king immediately.
"The king tried to have patience, but he succeeded very badly. It was
more than he deserved, therefore, when, at last, the queen gave him a
daughter,--as lovely a little princess as ever cried."