The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a

correspondent who posted him as a Radical:--"While he was writing

the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and

punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was

saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--Exchange.

I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my

health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning

Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor. When I went on

duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair

with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room

and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers

and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand,

sprinkled with cigar stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door

hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black

cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and

neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing

collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends

hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and

trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his

locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was

concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the

exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee

Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of

interest.

I wrote as follows:

SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS

The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a

misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad. It is not

the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side.

On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points

along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it.

The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in

making the correction.

John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville

Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city

yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House.

We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has

fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter

is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake

before this reminder reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless misled

by incomplete election returns.

It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring

to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its well-nigh

impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The Daily Hurrah

urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate

success.

I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance,

alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He

ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was

easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said:

"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those

cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such

gruel as that? Give me the pen!"

I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plow

through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was

in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window,

and marred the symmetry of my ear.

"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano--he

was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and

fired--Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim,

who was just taking a second chance and he crippled a stranger. It was

me. Merely a finger shot off.

Then the chief editor went on with his erasure; and interlineations.

Just as he finished them a hand grenade came down the stove-pipe, and the

explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did

no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my

teeth out.

"That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor.

I said I believed it was.

"Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man

that did it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be

written."

I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations

till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as

follows:

SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS

The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently

endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another

of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most

glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack

railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side

originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in the settlings

which they regard as brains. They had better, swallow this lie if

they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding

they so richly deserve.

That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of

Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren.

We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning

Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van

Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to

disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and

elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more

gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and

holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades

his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood,

calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.

Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement--it wants a jail and a

poorhouse more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed

of two gin-mills, a blacksmith shop, and that mustard-plaster of a

newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who

edits the Hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary

imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense.

"Now that is the way to write--peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk

journalism gives me the fan-tods."

About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash,

and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range

--I began to feel in the way.

The chief said, "That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting him

for two days. He will be up now right away."

He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with

a dragoon revolver in his hand.

He said, "Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this

mangy sheet?"

"You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is

gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel

Blatherskite Tecumseh?"

"Right, Sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at

leisure we will begin."

"I have an article on the 'Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual

Development in America' to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin."

Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief

lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its career in the

fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a

little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time, but I got my

share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded

slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said, I believed I would

go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a

delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me

to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.

They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded,

and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again

with animation, and every shot took effect--but it is proper to remark

that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally

wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would have to

say good morning now, as he had business uptown. He then inquired the

way to the undertaker's and left.

The chief turned to me and said, "I am expecting company to dinner, and

shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read proof

and attend to the customers."

I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was

too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my ears to

think of anything to say.

He continued, "Jones will be here at three--cowhide him. Gillespie will

call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be

along about four--kill him. That is all for today, I believe. If you

have any odd time, you may write a blistering article on the police--give

the chief inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table; weapons in

the drawer--ammunition there in the corner--lint and bandages up there in

the pigeonholes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon,

downstairs. He advertises--we take it out in trade."

He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been

through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were

gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window.

Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took

the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger, not in the bill

of fare, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson,

left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in

the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs,

politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their

weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of

steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief

arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then

ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one

either, could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up,

thrown out of the window. There was a brief tornado of murky blasphemy,

with a confused and frantic war-dance glimmering through it, and then all

was over. In five minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I

sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around

us.

He said, "You'll like this place when you get used to it."

I said, "I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I might write

to suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some practice and learned

the language I am confident I could. But, to speak the plain truth, that

sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a, man is liable

to interruption.

"You see that yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the

public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as

it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much

as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough, but I don't like

to be left here to wait on the customers. The experiences are novel,

I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not

judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window

and cripples me; a bombshell comes down the stovepipe for your

gratification and sends the stove door down my throat; a friend drops in

to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my

skin won't hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his

cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my

clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom

of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards

in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest

of me to death with their tomahawks. Take it altogether, I never had

such a spirited time in all my life as I have had to-day. No; I like

you, and I like your calm unruffled way of explaining things to the

customers, but you see I am not used to it. The Southern heart is too

impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The

paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences

your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean

journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of

editors will come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for

breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at

these festivities. I came South for my health, I will go back on the

same errand, and suddenly. Tennesseean journalism is too stirring for

me."

After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the

hospital.

THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY--[Written about 1865]

Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim--though, if you will

notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James

in your Sunday-school books. It was strange, but still it was true, that

this one was called Jim.

He didn't have any sick mother, either--a sick mother who was pious and

had the consumption, and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at

rest but for the strong love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt

that the world might be harsh and cold toward him when she was gone.

Most bad boys in the Sunday books are named James, and have sick mothers,

who teach them to say, "Now, I lay me down," etc., and sing them to sleep

with sweet, plaintive voices, and then kiss them good night, and kneel

down by the bedside and weep. But it was different with this fellow.

He was named Jim, and there wasn't anything the matter with his mother

--no consumption, nor anything of that kind. She was rather stout than

otherwise, and she was not pious; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim's

account. She said if he were to break his neck it wouldn't be much loss.

She always spanked Jim to sleep, and she never kissed him good night; on

the contrary, she boxed his ears when she was ready to leave him.

Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry, and slipped in

there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel with tar,

so that his mother would never know the difference; but all at once a

terrible feeling didn't come over him, and something didn't seem to

whisper to him, "Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn't it sinful to do

this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's

jam?" and then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be

wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell

his mother all about it, and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her

with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. No; that is the way

with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this

Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his

sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also,

and laughed, and observed "that the old woman would get up and snort"

when she found it out; and when she did find it out, he denied knowing

anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying

himself. Everything about this boy was curious--everything turned out

differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the

books.

Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple tree to steal apples, and the

limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by

the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sickbed for weeks, and

repent and become good. Oh, no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and

came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked

him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange

--nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled

backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and

bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women

with the waists of their dresses under their arms, and no hoops on.

Nothing like it in any of the Sunday-school books.

Once he stole the teacher's penknife, and, when he was afraid it would be

found out and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's

cap poor Widow Wilson's son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the

village, who always obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was

fond of his lessons, and infatuated with Sunday-school. And when the

knife dropped from the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed,

as if in conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon

him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch down upon his

trembling shoulders, a white-haired, improbable justice of the peace did

not suddenly appear in their midst, and strike an attitude and say,

"Spare this noble boy--there stands the cowering culprit! I was passing

the school door at recess, and, unseen myself, I saw the theft

committed!" And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice

didn't read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and

say such boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him come and make his

home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands,

and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife do household labors, and

have all the balance of the time to play and get forty cents a month, and

be happy. No it would have happened that way in the books, but didn't

happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to

make trouble, and so the model boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad

of it because, you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said he was "down on

them milksops." Such was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.

But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went

boating on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he

got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday and didn't get

struck by lightning. Why, you might look, and look, all through the

Sunday-school books from now till next Christmas, and you would never

come across anything like this. Oh, no; you would find that all the bad

boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned; and all the bad

boys who get caught out in storms when they are fishing on Sunday

infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in them always

upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on the

Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.

This Jim bore a charmed life--that must have been the way of it. Nothing

could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of

tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his

trunk. He browsed around the cupboard after essence-of peppermint, and

didn't make a mistake and drink aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun

and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his

fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist

when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long summer

days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that

redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No; she got over it. He

ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself

sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet

churchyard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and

gone to decay. Ah, no; he came home as drunk as a piper, and got into

the station-house the first thing.

And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them

all with an ax one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and

rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his

native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the

legislature.

So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that

had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.

THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY--[Written about 1865]

Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always

obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands

were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at

Sabbath-school. He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment

told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. None of the other

boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn't

lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie,

and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply

ridiculous. The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything.

He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he

wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to

take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys

used to try to reason it out and come to an understanding of him, but

they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. As I said before,

they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was "afflicted,"

and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm

to come to him.

This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books; they were his

greatest delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the

good little boys they put in the Sunday-school book; he had every

confidence in them. He longed to come across one of them alive once;

but he never did. They all died before his time, maybe. Whenever he

read about a particularly good one he turned over quickly to the end to

see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles

and gaze on him; but it wasn't any use; that good little boy always died

in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his

relations and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave in

pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and

everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half

of stuff in them. He was always headed off in this way. He never could

see one of those good little boys on account of his always dying in the

last chapter.

Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted

to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie

to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures

representing him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor

beggar-woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but

not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him

magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait for

him around the corner as he came from school, and welted him so over the

head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he

proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to

be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a lithe uncomfortable

sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He

loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about

being a Sunday-school-boo boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good.

He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally good

as the boys in the books were he knew that none of them had ever been

able to stand it long, and it pained him to think that if they put him in

a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did get the book out

before he died it wouldn't be popular without any picture of his funeral

in the back part of it. It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school book that

couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was

dying. So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best

he could under the circumstances--to live right, and hang on as long as

he could and have his dying speech all ready when his time came.

But somehow nothing ever went right with the good little boy; nothing

ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys

in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the

broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere, and it

all happened just the other way. When he found Jim Blake stealing

apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little boy

who fell out of a neighbor's apple tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out

of the tree, too, but he fell on him and broke his arm, and Jim wasn't

hurt at all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in

the books like it.

And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and

Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not

give him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his

stick and said he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then

pretending to help him up. This was not in accordance with any of the

books. Jacob looked them all over to see.

One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any

place to stay, and was hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet

him and have that dog's imperishable gratitude. And at last he found one

and was happy; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going

to pet him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except

those that were in front, and made a spectacle of him that was

astonishing. He examined authorities, but he could not understand the

matter. It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it

acted very differently. Whatever this boy did he got into trouble. The

very things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about

the most unprofitable things he could invest in.

Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys

starting off pleasuring in a sailboat. He was filled with consternation,

because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday

invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log

turned with him and slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty

soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a fresh

start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks.

But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the

boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the

most surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these

things in the books. He was perfectly dumfounded.

When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on

trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in

a book, but he hadn't yet reached the allotted term of life for good

little boys, and he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could

hold on till his time was fully up. If everything else failed he had his

dying speech to fall back on.

He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go

to sea as a cabin-boy. He called on a ship-captain and made his

application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he

proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the word, "To Jacob Blivens, from

his affectionate teacher." But the captain was a coarse, vulgar man, and

he said, "Oh, that be blowed! that wasn't any proof that he knew how to

wash dishes or handle a slush-bucket, and he guessed he didn't want him."

This was altogether the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to

Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had

never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship-captains, and open

the way to all offices of honor and profit in their gift it never had in

any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses.

This boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according

to the authorities with him. At last, one day, when he was around

hunting up bad little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old

iron-foundry fixing up a little joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which

they had tied together in long procession, and were going to ornament

with empty nitroglycerin cans made fast to their tails. Jacob's heart

was touched. He sat down on one of those cans (for he never minded

grease when duty was before him), and he took hold of the foremost dog by

the collar, and turned his reproving eye upon wicked Tom Jones. But just

at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad

boys ran away, but Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began

one of those stately little Sunday-school-book speeches which always

commence with "Oh, sir!" in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good

or bad, ever starts a remark with "Oh, sir." But the alderman never

waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him

around, and hit him a whack in the rear with the flat of his hand; and in

an instant that good little boy shot out through the roof and soared away

toward the sun with the fragments of those fifteen dogs stringing after

him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn't a sign of that alderman or

that old iron-foundry left on the face of the earth; and, as for young

Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech after

all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because,

although the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in an

adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among four

townships, and so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out

whether he was dead or not, and how it occurred. You never saw a boy

scattered so.--[This glycerin catastrophe is borrowed from a floating

newspaper item, whose author's name I would give if I knew it.--M. T.]

Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn't

come out according to the books. Every boy who ever did as he did

prospered except him. His case is truly remarkable. It will probably

never be accounted for.

A COUPLE OF POEMS BY TWAIN AND MOORE--[Written about 1865]

THOSE EVENING BELLS

BY THOMAS MOORE

Those evening bells! those evening bells!

How many a tale their music tells

Of youth, and home, and that sweet time

When last I heard their soothing chime.

Those joyous hours are passed away;

And many a heart that then was gay,

Within the tomb now darkly dwells,

And hears no more those evening bells.

And so 'twill be when I am gone

That tuneful peal will still ring on;

While other bards shall walk these dells,

And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.

THOSE ANNUAL BILLS

BY MARK TWAIN

These annual bills! these annual bills!

How many a song their discord trills

Of "truck" consumed, enjoyed, forgot,

Since I was skinned by last year's lot!

Those joyous beans are passed away;

Those onions blithe, O where are they?

Once loved, lost, mourned--now vexing ILLS

Your shades troop back in annual bills!

And so 'twill be when I'm aground

These yearly duns will still go round,

While other bards, with frantic quills,

Shall damn and damn these annual bills!

NIAGARA [ Written about 1871.]

Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels are

excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. The opportunities for

fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even

equaled elsewhere. Because, in other localities, certain places in the

streams are much better than others; but at Niagara one place is just as

good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and

so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you can

depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. The advantages of this

state of things have never heretofore been properly placed before the

public.

The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant

and none of them fatiguing. When you start out to "do" the Falls you

first drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of

looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara

River. A railway "cut" through a hill would be as comely if it had the

angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. You can descend a

staircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of

the water. After you have done it, you will wonder why you did it; but

you will then be too late.

The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the

little steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids--how first

one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the

other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard,

and where her planking began to break and part asunder--and how she did

finally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of

traveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen

minutes, I have really forgotten which. But it was very extraordinary,

anyhow. It is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the

story nine times in succession to different parties, and never miss a

word or alter a sentence or a gesture.

Then you drive over to Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery between

the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and

the chances of having the railway-train overhead smashing down onto you.

Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together,

they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness.

On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of

photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an

ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your

solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the

light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime

Niagara; and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or the

native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime.

Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately

pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis or a couple of country

cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and

uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their

awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of

that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose

voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was

monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this sackful of small

reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's

unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages

after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood-relations, the

other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust.

There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display

one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a

sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it.

When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you are

satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new

Suspension Bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Cave

of the Winds.

Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and

put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque,

but not beautiful. A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight

of winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long

after the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before

it had begun to be a pleasure. We were then well down under the

precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river.

We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our persons

shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clung

with both hands--not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to.

Presently the descent became steeper and the bridge flimsier, and sprays

from the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheets

that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the

nature of groping. Nova a furious wind began to rush out from behind the

waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and

scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that I

wanted to go home; but it was too late. We were almost under the

monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in

vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound.

In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and bewildered

by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowy

tempest of rain, I followed. All was darkness. Such a mad storming,

roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my ears

before. I bent my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back.

The world seemed going to destruction. I could not see anything, the

flood poured down savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the

most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a

leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the

bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and

precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we

got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand

in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water,

and look at it. When I saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully

in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it.

The noble Red Man has always been a friend and darling of mine. I love

to read about him in tales and legends and romances. I love to read of

his inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and

forest, and his general nobility of character, and his stately

metaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky

maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements.

Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. When I

found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian beadwork, and

stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human

beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and

bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion.

I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the noble

Red Man.

A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of

curiosities were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about the

Falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to

speak to them. And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading over

to Luna Island, I came upon a noble Son of the Forest sitting under a

tree, diligently at work on a bead reticule. He wore a slouch hat and

brogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. Thus does the baneful

contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp

which is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his native

haunts. I addressed the relic as follows:

"Is the Wawhoo-Wang-Wang of the Whack-a-Whack happy? Does the great

Speckled Thunder sigh for the war-path, or is his heart contented with

dreaming of the dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest? Does the mighty

Sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to

make bead reticules for the pappooses of the paleface? Speak, sublime

relic of bygone grandeur--venerable ruin, speak!"

The relic said:

"An' is it mesilf, Dennis Hooligan, that ye'd be takon' for a dirty

Injin, ye drawlin', lantern-jawed, spider-legged divil! By the piper

that played before Moses, I'll ate ye!"

I went away from there.

By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a

gentle daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin

moccasins and leggins, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her.

She had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family

resemblance to a clothes-pin, and was now boring a hole through his

abdomen to put his bow through. I hesitated a moment, and then addressed

her:

"Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? Is the Laughing Tadpole

lonely? Does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race,

and the vanished glory of her ancestors? Or does her sad spirit wander

afar toward the hunting-grounds whither her brave Gobbler-of-the-

Lightnings is gone? Why is my daughter silent? Has she ought against

the paleface stranger?"

The maiden said:

"Faix, an' is it Biddy Malone ye dare to be callin' names? Lave this, or

I'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!"

I adjourned from there also.

"Confound these Indians!" I said. "They told me they were tame; but, if

appearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the warpath."

I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. I came

upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum

and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship:

"Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High

Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you!

You, Beneficent Polecat--you, Devourer of Mountains--you, Roaring

Thundergust --you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye--the paleface from beyond

the great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned your

ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. Poker and seven-up, and a

vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have

depleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of

others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your

simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper.

Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and

tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the

picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of

the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the

purlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors! Recall their

mighty deeds! Remember Uncas!--and Red jacket! and Hole in the Day!--and

Whoopdedoodledo! Emulate their achievements! Unfurl yourselves under my

banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes--"

"Down wid him!" "Scoop the blaggard!" "Burn him!" "Bang him!"

"Dhround him!"

It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash

in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins--a

single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them

in the same place. In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me.

They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave

me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like

a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to

injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet.

About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest

caught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get

loose. I finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the

foot of the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several

inches above my head. Of course I got into the eddy. I sailed round and

round in it forty-four times--chasing a chip and gaining on it--each

round trip a half-mile--reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four

times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time.

At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe

in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the

other on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind.

Presently a puff of wind blew it out. The next time I swept around he

said:

"Got a match?"

"Yes; in my other vest. Help me out, please."

"Not for Joe."

When I came round again, I said:

"Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will

you explain this singular conduct of yours?"

"With pleasure. I am the coroner. Don't hurry on my account. I can

wait for you. But I wish I had a match."

I said: "Take my place, and I'll go and get you one."

He declined. This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness

between us, and from that time forward I avoided him. It was my idea,

in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my

custom into the hands of the opposition coroner on the American side.

At last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peace

by yelling at people on shore for help. The judge fined me, but had the

advantage of him. My money was with my pantaloons, and my pantaloons

were with the Indians.

Thus I escaped. I am now lying in a very critical condition. At least I

am lying anyway---critical or not critical. I am hurt all over, but I

cannot tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done taking

inventory. He will make out my manifest this evening. However, thus far

he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. I don't mind the others.

Upon regaining my right mind, I said:

"It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the beadwork and

moccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor. Where are they from?"

"Limerick, my son."

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS--[Written about 1865.]

"MORAL STATISTICIAN."--I don't want any of your statistics; I took your

whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You

are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much

his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he

wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal

practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking

coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of

wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. And you are always figuring out how

many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of

wearing expansive hoops, etc., etc., etc. You never see more than one

side of the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in

America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they

ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and

survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet

grow older and fatter all the time. And you never by to find out how

much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking

in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would

save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost

in a lifetime your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can

save money by denying yourself all the little vicious enjoyments for

fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it

to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money

can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life;

therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use

of accumulating cash? It won't do for you say that you can use it to

better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in

supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who

have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you

stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and

hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor

wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you;

and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in

the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give

the revenue officer: full statement of your income. Now you know these

things yourself, don't you? Very well, then what is the use of your

stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What

is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In

a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying

to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as you are

yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"? Now I don't approve

of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a

particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so

I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same

man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of

smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your

reprehensible fireproof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor

stove.

"YOUNG AUTHOR."--Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because

the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot

help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat--at least, not

with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair

usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be

all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply

good, middling-sized whales.

"SIMON WHEELER," Sonora.--The following simple and touching remarks and

accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region

of Sonora:

To Mr. Mark Twain: The within parson, which I have set to poetry

under the name and style of "He Done His Level Best," was one among

the whitest men I ever see, and it ain't every man that knowed him

that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is

busted and gone home to the States. He was here in an early day,

and he was the handyest man about takin' holt of anything that come

along you most ever see, I judge. He was a cheerful, stirnn'

cretur, always doin' somethin', and no man can say he ever see him

do anything by halvers. Preachin was his nateral gait, but he

warn't a man to lay back a twidle his thumbs because there didn't

happen to be nothin' do in his own especial line--no, sir, he was a

man who would meander forth and stir up something for hisself. His

last acts was to go his pile on "Kings-and" (calkatin' to fill, but

which he didn't fill), when there was a "flush" out agin him, and

naterally, you see, he went under. And so he was cleaned out as you

may say, and he struck the home-trail, cheerful but flat broke. I

knowed this talonted man in Arkansaw, and if you would print this

humbly tribute to his gorgis abilities, you would greatly obleege

his onhappy friend.

HE DONE HIS LEVEL BEST

Was he a mining on the flat--

He done it with a zest;

Was he a leading of the choir--

He done his level best.

If he'd a reg'lar task to do,

He never took no rest;

Or if 'twas off-and-on-the same--

He done his level best.

If he was preachin' on his beat,

He'd tramp from east to west,

And north to south-in cold and heat

He done his level best.

He'd yank a sinner outen (Hades),**

And land him with the blest;

Then snatch a prayer'n waltz in again,

And do his level best.

**Here I have taken a slight liberty with the original MS. "Hades"

does not make such good meter as the other word of one syllable, but

it sounds better.

He'd cuss and sing and howl and pray,

And dance and drink and jest,

And lie and steal--all one to him--

He done his level best.

Whate'er this man was sot to do,

He done it with a zest;

No matter what his contract was,

HE'D DO HIS LEVEL BEST.

Verily, this man was gifted with "gorgis abilities," and it is a

happiness to me to embalm the memory of their luster in these columns.

If it were not that the poet crop is unusually large and rank in

California this year, I would encourage you to continue writing, Simon

Wheeler; but, as it is, perhaps it might be too risky in you to enter

against so much opposition.

"PROFESSIONAL BEGGAR."--NO; you are not obliged to take greenbacks at

par.

"MELTON MOWBRAY," Dutch Flat.--This correspondent sends a lot of

doggerel, and says it has been regarded as very good in Dutch Flat. I

give a specimen verse:

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold;

And the sheen of his spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.**

**This piece of pleasantry, published in a San Francisco paper, was

mistaken by the country journals for seriousness, and many and loud

were the denunciations of the ignorance of author and editor, in not

knowing that the lines in question were "written by Byron."

There, that will do. That may be very good Dutch Flat poetry, but it

won't do in the metropolis. It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like

butter milk gurgling from a jug. What the people ought to have is

something spirited--something like "Johnny Comes Marching Home." However

keep on practising, and you may succeed yet. There is genius in you, but

too much blubber.

"ST. CLAIR HIGGINS." Los Angeles.--"My life is a failure; I have

adored, wildly, madly, and she whom I love has turned coldly from me

and shed her affections upon another. What would you advise me to

do?"

You should set your affections on another also--or on several, if there

are enough to go round. Also, do everything you can to make your former

flame unhappy. There is an absurd idea disseminated in novels, that the

happier a girl is with another man, the happier it makes the old lover

she has blighted. Don't allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as

that. The more cause that girl finds to regret that she did not marry

you, the more comfortable you will feel over it. It isn't poetical, but

it is mighty sound doctrine.

"ARITHMETICUS." Virginia, Nevada.--"If it would take a cannon-ball

3 and 1/3 seconds to travel four miles, and 3 and 3/8 seconds to

travel the next four, and 3 and 5/8 to travel the next four, and if

its rate of progress continued to diminish in the same ratio, how

long would it take it to go fifteen hundred million miles?"

I don't know.

"AMBITIOUS LEARNER," Oakland.--Yes; you are right America was not

discovered by Alexander Selkirk.

"DISCARDED LOVER."--"I loved, and still love, the beautiful Edwitha

Howard, and intended to marry her. Yet, during my temporary absence

at Benicia, last week, alas! she married Jones. Is my happiness to

be thus blasted for life? Have I no redress?"

Of course you have. All the law, written and unwritten, is on your side.

The intention and not the act constitutes crime--in other words,

constitutes the deed. If you call your bosom friend a fool, and intend

it for an insult, it is an insult; but if you do it playfully, and

meaning no insult, it is not an insult. If you discharge a pistol

accidentally, and kill a man, you can go free, for you have done no

murder; but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend to kill him,

but fail utterly to do it, the law still holds that the intention

constituted the crime, and you are guilty of murder. Ergo, if you had

married Edwitha accidentally, and without really intending to do it, you

would not actually be married to her at all, because the act of marriage

could not be complete without the intention. And ergo, in the strict

spirit of the law, since you deliberately intended to marry Edwitha, and

didn't do it, you are married to her all the same--because, as I said

before, the intention constitutes the crime. It is as clear as day that

Edwitha is your wife, and your redress lies in taking a club and

mutilating Jones with it as much as you can. Any man has a right to

protect his own wife from the advances of other men. But you have

another alternative--you were married to Edwitha first, because of your

deliberate intention, and now you can prosecute her for bigamy, in

subsequently marrying Jones. But there is another phase in this

complicated case: You intended to marry Edwitha, and consequently,

according to law, she is your wife--there is no getting around that; but

she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you, you are not

her husband, of course. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of

bigamy, because she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all

very well as far as it goes--but then, don't you see, she had no other

husband when she married Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of

bigamy. Now, according to this view of the case, Jones married a

spinster, who was a widow at the same time and another man's wife at the

same time, and yet who had no husband and never had one, and never had

any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never had

been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you

have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a

wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have

been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia

in the first place, while things were so mixed. And by this time I have

got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case

that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you--I might

get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could take up

the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile,

perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed

at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don't need the

faithless Edwitha--I think I could do that, if it would afford you any

comfort.

"ARTHUR AUGUSTUS."--No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a

brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you

will hurt somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down,

take it by the stems, and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever

pitch quoits? that is the idea. The practice of recklessly heaving

immense solid bouquets, of the general size and weight of prize cabbages,

from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and very

reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just

after Signorina had finished that exquisite melody, "The Last Rose of

Summer," one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the

atmosphere of applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right,

it would have driven her into the floor like a shinglenail. Of course

that bouquet was well meant; but how would you like to have been the

target? A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as

you don't try to knock her down with it.

"YOUNG MOTHER."--And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy

forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks

the same of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly,

but still she thinks it nevertheless. I honor the cow for it. We all

honor this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the

home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed. But really, madam, when I

come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find that the

correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded

as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short

years, no baby is competent to be a joy "forever." It pains me thus to

demolish two-thirds of your pretty sentiment in a single sentence; but

the position I hold in this chair requires that I shall not permit you to

deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures of speech.

I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot

hold out as a "joy" twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone "forever."

And it possesses some of the most remarkable eccentricities of character

and appetite that have ever fallen under my notice. I will set down here

a statement of this infant's operations (conceived, planned, and earned

out by itself, and without suggestion or assistance from its mother or

any one else), during a single day; and what I shall say can be

substantiated by the sworn testimony of witnesses.

It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all; then

it fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a blue and purple knot on

its forehead, after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment

and amusement. It found a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work

--smashed up and ate the glass, and then swallowed the brass.

Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and more than a dozen

tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor. The reason why it took no

more laudanum was because there was no more to take. After this it lay

down on its back, and shoved five or six, inches of a silver-headed

whalebone cane down its throat; got it fast there, and it was all its

mother could do to pull the cane out again, without pulling out some of

the child with it. Then, being hungry for glass again, it broke up

several wine glasses, and fell to eating and swallowing the fragments,

not minding a cut or two. Then it ate a quantity of butter, pepper,

salt, and California matches, actually taking a spoonful of butter, a

spoonful of salt, a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer matches

at each mouthful. (I will remark here that this thing of beauty likes

painted German lucifers, and eats all she can get of them; but she

prefers California matches, which I regard as a compliment to our home

manufactures of more than ordinary value, coming, as it does, from one

who is too young to flatter.) Then she washed her head with soap and

water, and afterward ate what soap was left, and drank as much of the

suds as she had room for; after which she sallied forth and took the cow

familiarly by the tail, and got kicked heels over head. At odd times

during the day, when this joy forever happened to have nothing particular

on hand, she put in the time by climbing up on places, and falling down

off them, uniformly damaging her self in the operation. As young as she

is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly; and being plain spoken in

other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with all

strangers, male or female, with the same formula, "How do, Jim?"

Not being familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have

been magnifying into matter of surprise things which may not strike any

one who is familiar with infancy as being at all astonishing. However, I

cannot believe that such is the case, and so I repeat that my report of

this baby's performances is strictly true; and if any one doubts it,

I can produce the child. I will further engage that she will devour

anything that is given her (reserving to myself only the right to exclude

anvils), and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated

(merely stipulating that her preference for alighting on her head shall

be respected, and, therefore, that the elevation chosen shall be high

enough to enable her to accomplish this to her satisfaction). But I find

I have wandered from my subject; so, without further argument, I will

reiterate my conviction that not all babies are things of beauty and joys

forever.

"ARITHMETICUS." Virginia, Nevada.--"I am an enthusiastic student of

mathematics, and it is so vexatious to me to find my progress

constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalities.

Now do tell me what the difference is between geometry and

conchology?"

Here you come again with your arithmetical conundrums, when I am

suffering death with a cold in the head. If you could have seen the

expression of scorn that darkened my countenance a moment ago, and was

instantly split from the center in every direction like a fractured

looking-glass by my last sneeze, you never would have written that

disgraceful question. Conchology is a science which has nothing to do

with mathematics; it relates only to shells. At the same time, however,

a man who opens oysters for a hotel, or shells a fortified town, or sucks

eggs, is not, strictly speaking, a conchologist-a fine stroke of sarcasm

that, but it will be lost on such an unintellectual clam as you. Now

compare conchology and geometry together, and you will see what the

difference is, and your question will be answered. But don't torture me

with any more arithmetical horrors until you know I am rid of my cold. I

feel the bitterest animosity toward you at this moment-bothering me in

this way, when I can do nothing but sneeze and rage and snort

pocket-handkerchiefs to atoms. If I had you in range of my nose now

I would blow your brains out.

TO RAISE POULTRY

--[Being a letter written to a Poultry Society that had conferred a

complimentary membership upon the author. Written about 1870.]

Seriously, from early youth I have taken an especial interest in the

subject of poultry-raising, and so this membership touches a ready

sympathy in my breast. Even as a schoolboy, poultry-raising was a study

with me, and I may say without egotism that as early as the age of

seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods of

raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer

matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty

night by insinuating the end of a warm board under their heels. By the

time I was twenty years old, I really suppose I had raised more poultry

than any one individual in all the section round about there. The very

chickens came to know my talent by and by. The youth of both sexes

ceased to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters that came to crow,

"remained to pray," when I passed by.

I have had so much experience in the raising of fowls that I cannot but

think that a few hints from me might be useful to the society. The two

methods I have already touched upon are very simple, and are only used in

the raising of the commonest class of fowls; one is for summer, the other

for winter. In the one case you start out with a friend along about

eleven o'clock' on a summer's night (not later, because in some states

--especially in California and Oregon--chickens always rouse up just at

midnight and crow from ten to thirty minutes, according to the ease or

difficulty they experience in getting the public waked up), and your

friend carries with him a sack. Arrived at the henroost (your

neighbor's, not your own), you light a match and hold it under first one

and then another pullet's nose until they are willing to go into that bag

without making any trouble about it. You then return home, either taking

the bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall

dictate. N. B.--I have seen the time when it was eligible and

appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable

velocity, without ever leaving any word where to send it.

In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your

friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you

carry a long slender plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived

at the tree, or fence, or other henroost (your own if you are an idiot),

you warm the end of your plank in your friend's fire vessel, and then

raise it aloft and ease it up gently against a slumbering chicken's foot.

If the subject of your attentions is a true bird, he will infallibly

return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two, and step out and take up

quarters on the plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before

the fact to his own murder as to make it a grave question in our minds as

it once was in the mind of Blackstone, whether he is not really and

deliberately, committing suicide in the second degree. [But you enter

into a contemplation of these legal refinements subsequently not then.]

When you wish to raise a fine, large, donkey voiced Shanghai rooster, you

do it with a lasso, just as you would a bull. It is because he must

choked, and choked effectually, too. It is the only good, certain way,

for whenever he mentions a matter which he is cordially interested in,

the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred that he secures somebody else's

immediate attention to it too, whether it day or night.

The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one.

Thirty-five dollars is the usual figure and fifty a not uncommon price

for a specimen. Even its eggs are worth from a dollar to a dollar and a

half apiece, and yet are so unwholesome that the city physician seldom or

never orders them for the workhouse. Still I have once or twice procured

as high as a dozen at a time for nothing, in the dark of the moon. The

best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and

raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is that, the

birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around

promiscuously, they put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and

keep it in the kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a

bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles

of vertu about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally

bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap one night,

worth ninety cents.

But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject?

I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to

their bosom a party who is not a spring chicken by any means, but a man

who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient

methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself.

I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred

upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my

good feeling and my official zeal by deeds as well as by this hastily

penned advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising

poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o'clock.

EXPERIENCE OF THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANOUS CROUP

[As related to the author of this book by Mr. McWilliams, a pleasant New

York gentleman whom the said author met by chance on a journey.]

Well, to go back to where I was before I digressed to explain to you how

that frightful and incurable disease, membranous croup,[Diphtheria D.W.]

was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror, I called

Mrs. McWilliams's attention to little Penelope, and said:

"Darling, I wouldn't let that child be chewing that pine stick if I were

you."

"Precious, where is the harm in it?" said she, but at the same time

preparing to take away the stick for women cannot receive even the most

palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it, that is married women.

I replied:

"Love, it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a

child can eat."

My wife's hand paused, in the act of taking the stick, and returned

itself to her lap. She bridled perceptibly, and said:

"Hubby, you know better than that. You know you do. Doctors all say

that the turpentine in pine wood is good for weak back and the kidneys."

"Ah--I was under a misapprehension. I did not know that the child's

kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had

recommended--"

"Who said the child's spine and kidneys were affected?"

"My love, you intimated it."

"The idea! I never intimated anything of the kind."

"Why, my dear, it hasn't been two minutes since you said--"

"Bother what I said! I don't care what I did say. There isn't any harm

in the child's chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know

it perfectly well. And she shall chew it, too. So there, now!"

"Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will

go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day. No child

of mine shall want while I--"

"Oh, please go along to your office and let me have some peace. A body

can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to

arguing and arguing and arguing till you don't know what you are talking

about, and you never do."

"Very well, it shall be as you say. But there is a want of logic in your

last remark which--"

However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had

taken the child with her. That night at dinner she confronted me with a

face a white as a sheet:

"Oh, Mortimer, there's another! Little Georgi Gordon is taken."

"Membranous croup?"

"Membranous croup."

"Is there any hope for him?"

"None in the wide world. Oh, what is to be come of us!"

By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good night and offer the

customary prayer at the mother's knee. In the midst of "Now I lay me

down to sleep," she gave a slight cough! My wife fell back like one

stricken with death. But the next moment she was up and brimming with

the activities which terror inspires.

She commanded that the child's crib be removed from the nursery to our

bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed. She took me with

her, of course. We got matters arranged with speed. A cot-bed was put

up in my wife's dressing room for the nurse. But now Mrs. McWilliams

said we were too far away from the other baby, and what if he were to

have the symptoms in the night--and she blanched again, poor thing.

We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed

for ourselves in a room adjoining.

Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said suppose the baby should catch it

from Penelope? This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the

tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough

to satisfy my wife, though she assisted in her own person and well-nigh

pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry.

We moved down-stairs; but there was no place there to stow the nurse, and

Mrs. McWilliams said the nurse's experience would be an inestimable help.

So we returned, bag and baggage, to our own bedroom once more, and felt a

great gladness, like storm-buffeted birds that have found their nest

again.

Mrs. McWilliams sped to the nursery to see how things were going on

there. She was back in a moment with a new dread. She said:

"What can make Baby sleep so?"

I said:

"Why, my darling, Baby always sleeps like a graven image."

"I know. I know; but there's something peculiar about his sleep now.

He seems to--to--he seems to breathe so regularly. Oh, this is

dreadful."

"But, my dear, he always breathes regularly."

"Oh, I know it, but there's something frightful about it now. His nurse

is too young and inexperienced. Maria shall stay there with her, and be

on hand if anything happens."

"That is a good idea, but who will help you?"

"You can help me all I want. I wouldn't allow anybody to do anything but

myself, anyhow, at such a time as this."

I said I would feel mean to lie abed and sleep, and leave her to watch

and toil over our little patient all the weary night. But she reconciled

me to it. So old Maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the

nursery.

Penelope coughed twice in her sleep.

"Oh, why don't that doctor come! Mortimer, this room is too warm. This

room is certainly too warm. Turn off the register-quick!"

I shut it off, glancing at the thermometer at the same time, and

wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child.

The coachman arrived from down-town now with the news that our physician

was ill and confined to his bed. Mrs. McWilliams turned a dead eye upon

me, and said in a dead voice:

"There is a Providence in it. It is foreordained. He never was sick

before. Never. We have not been living as we ought to live, Mortimer.

Time and time again I have told you so. Now you see the result. Our

child will never get well. Be thankful if you can forgive yourself; I

never can forgive myself."

I said, without intent to hurt, but with heedless choice of words, that I

could not see that we had been living such an abandoned life.

"Mortimer! Do you want to bring the judgment upon Baby, too!"

Then she began to cry, but suddenly exclaimed:

"The doctor must have sent medicines!"

I said:

"Certainly. They are here. I was only waiting for you to give me a

chance."

"Well do give them to me! Don't you know that every moment is precious

now? But what was the use in sending medicines, when he knows that the

disease is incurable?"

I said that while there was life there was hope.

"Hope! Mortimer, you know no more what you are talking about than the

child unborn. If you would--As I live, the directions say give one

teaspoonful once an hour! Once an hour!--as if we had a whole year

before us to save the child in! Mortimer, please hurry. Give the poor

perishing thing a tablespoonful, and try to be quick!"

"Why, my dear, a tablespoonful might--"

"Don't drive me frantic! . . . There, there, there, my precious, my

own; it's nasty bitter stuff, but it's good for Nelly--good for mother's

precious darling; and it will make her well. There, there, there, put

the little head on mamma's breast and go to sleep, and pretty soon--oh,

I know she can't live till morning! Mortimer, a tablespoonful every

half-hour will--Oh, the child needs belladonna, too; I know she does--and

aconite. Get them, Mortimer. Now do let me have my way. You know

nothing about these things."

We now went to bed, placing the crib close to my wife's pillow. All this

turmoil had worn upon me, and within two minutes I was something more

than half asleep. Mrs. McWilliams roused me:

"Darling, is that register turned on?"

"No."

"I thought as much. Please turn it on at once. This room is cold."

I turned it on, and presently fell asleep again. I was aroused once

more:

"Dearie, would you mind moving the crib to your side of the bed? It is

nearer the register."

I moved it, but had a collision with the rug and woke up the child. I

dozed off once more, while my wife quieted the sufferer. But in a little

while these words came murmuring remotely through the fog of my

drowsiness:

"Mortimer, if we only had some goose grease--will you ring?"

I climbed dreamily out, and stepped on a cat, which responded with a

protest and would have got a convincing kick for it if a chair had not

got it instead.

"Now, Mortimer, why do you want to turn up the gas and wake up the child

again?"

"Because I want to see how much I am hurt, Caroline."

"Well, look at the chair, too--I have no doubt it is ruined. Poor cat,

suppose you had--"

"Now I am not going to suppose anything about the cat. It never would

have occurred if Maria had been allowed to remain here and attend to

these duties, which are in her line and are not in mine."

"Now, Mortimer, I should think you would be ashamed to make a remark like

that. It is a pity if you cannot do the few little things I ask of you

at such an awful time as this when our child--"

"There, there, I will do anything you want. But I can't raise anybody

with this bell. They're all gone to bed. Where is the goose grease?"

"On the mantelpiece in the nursery. If you'll step there and speak to

Maria--"

I fetched the goose grease and went to sleep again. Once more I was

called:

"Mortimer, I so hate to disturb you, but the room is still too cold for

me to try to apply this stuff. Would you mind lighting the fire? It is

all ready to touch a match to."

I dragged myself out and lit the fire, and then sat down disconsolate.

"Mortimer, don't sit there and catch your death of cold. Come to bed."

As I was stepping in she said:

"But wait a moment. Please give the child some more of the medicine."

Which I did. It was a medicine which made a child more or less lively;

so my wife made use of its waking interval to strip it and grease it all

over with the goose oil. I was soon asleep once more, but once more I

had to get up.

"Mortimer, I feel a draft. I feel it distinctly. There is nothing so

bad for this disease as a draft. Please move the crib in front of the

fire."

I did it; and collided with the rug again, which I threw in the fire.

Mrs. McWilliams sprang out of bed and rescued it and we had some words.

I had another trifling interval of sleep, and then got up, by request,

and constructed a flax-seed poultice. This was placed upon the child's

breast and left there to do its healing work.

A wood-fire is not a permanent thing. I got up every twenty minutes and

renewed ours, and this gave Mrs. McWilliams the opportunity to shorten

the times of giving the medicines by ten minutes, which was a great

satisfaction to her. Now and then, between times, I reorganized the

flax-seed poultices, and applied sinapisms and other sorts of blisters

where unoccupied places could be found upon the child. Well, toward

morning the wood gave out and my wife wanted me to go down cellar and get

some more. I said:

"My dear, it is a laborious job, and the child must be nearly warm

enough, with her extra clothing. Now mightn't we put on another layer of

poultices and--"

I did not finish, because I was interrupted. I lugged wood up from below

for some little time, and then turned in and fell to snoring as only a

man can whose strength is all gone and whose soul is worn out. Just at

broad daylight I felt a grip on my shoulder that brought me to my senses

suddenly. My wife was glaring down upon me and gasping. As soon as she

could command her tongue she said:

"It is all over! All over! The child's perspiring! What shall we do?"

"Mercy, how you terrify me! I don't know what we ought to do. Maybe if

we scraped her and put her in the draft again--"

"Oh, idiot! There is not a moment to lose! Go for the doctor.

Go yourself. Tell him he must come, dead or alive."

I dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him. He looked at

the child and said she was not dying. This was joy unspeakable to me,

but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront.

Then he said the child's cough was only caused by some trifling

irritation or other in the throat. At this I thought my wife had a mind

to show him the door. Now the doctor said he would make the child cough

harder and dislodge the trouble. So he gave her something that sent her

into a spasm of coughing, and presently up came a little wood splinter or

so.

"This child has no membranous croup," said he. "She has been chewing a

bit of pine shingle or something of the kind, and got some little slivers

in her throat. They won't do her any hurt."

"No," said I, "I can well believe that. Indeed, the turpentine that is

in them is very good for certain sorts of diseases that are peculiar to

children. My wife will tell you so."

But she did not. She turned away in disdain and left the room; and since

that time there is one episode in our life which we never refer to.

Hence the tide of our days flows by in deep and untroubled serenity.

[Very few married men have such an experience as McWilliams's, and so the

author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give it a

passing interest to the reader.]

MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE

I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen--an unusually smart

child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper

scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation in

the community. It did, indeed, and I was very proud of it, too. I was a

printer's "devil," and a progressive and aspiring one. My uncle had me

on his paper (the Weekly Hannibal journal, two dollars a year in advance

--five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages, and

unmarketable turnips), and on a lucky summer's day he left town to be

gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the

paper judiciously. Ah! didn't I want to try! Higgins was the editor on

the rival paper. He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend found

an open note on the poor fellow's bed, in which he stated that he could

not longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear Creek. The friend

ran down there and discovered Higgins wading back to shore. He had

concluded he wouldn't. The village was full of it for several days,

but Higgins did not suspect it. I thought this was a fine opportunity.

I wrote an elaborately wretched account of the whole matter, and then

illustrated it with villainous cuts engraved on the bottoms of wooden

type with a jackknife--one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into

the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water

with a walking-stick. I thought it was desperately funny, and was

densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a

publication. Being satisfied with this effort I looked around for other

worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting

matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece

of gratuitous rascality and "see him squirm."

I did it, putting the article into the form of a parody on the "Burial of

Sir John Moore"--and a pretty crude parody it was, too.

Then I lampooned two prominent citizens outrageously--not because they

had done anything to deserve, but merely because I thought it was my duty

to make the paper lively.

Next I gently touched up the newest stranger--the lion of the day, the

gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of

the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the state. He was an

inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy "poetry" for the

journal, about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were headed,

"To MARY IN H--l," meaning to Mary in Hannibal, of course. But while

setting up the piece I was suddenly riven from head to heel by what I

regarded as a perfect thunderbolt of humor, and I compressed it into a

snappy footnote at the bottom--thus: "We will let this thing pass, just

this once; but we wish Mr. J. Gordon Runnels to understand distinctly

that we have a character to sustain, and from this time forth when he

wants to commune with his friends in h--l, he must select some other

medium than the columns of this journal!"

The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing attract so much

attention as those playful trifles of mine.

For once the Hannibal Journal was in demand--a novelty it had not

experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped in with

a double-barreled shotgun early in the forenoon. When he found that it

was an infant (as he called me) that had done him the damage, he simply

pulled my ears and went away; but he threw up his situation that night

and left town for good. The tailor came with his goose and a pair of

shears; but he despised me, too, and departed for the South that night.

The two lampooned citizens came with threats of libel, and went away

incensed at my insignificance. The country editor pranced in with a

war-whoop next day, suffering for blood to drink; but he ended by

forgiving me cordially and inviting me down to the drug store to wash

away all animosity in a friendly bumper of "Fahnestock's Vermifuge."

It was his little joke. My uncle was very angry when he got back

--unreasonably so, I thought, considering what an impetus I had given the

paper, and considering also that gratitude for his preservation ought to

have been uppermost in his mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so

wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his head

shot off.

But he softened when he looked at the accounts and saw that I had

actually booked the unparalleled number of thirty-three new subscribers,

and had the vegetables to show for it, cordwood, cabbage, beans, and

unsalable turnips enough to run the family for two dears!

HOW THE AUTHOR WAS SOLD IN NEWARK--[Written about 1869.]

It is seldom pleasant to tell on oneself, but some times it is a sort of

relief to a man to make a confession. I wish to unburden my mind now,

and yet I almost believe that I am moved to do it more because I long to

bring censure upon another man than because I desire to pour balm upon my

wounded heart. (I don't know what balm is, but I believe it is the

correct expression to use in this connection--never having seen any

balm.) You may remember that I lectured in Newark lately for the young

gentlemen of the-----Society? I did at any rate. During the afternoon

of that day I was talking with one of the young gentlemen just referred

to, and he said he had an uncle who, from some cause or other, seemed to

have grown permanently bereft of all emotion. And with tears in his

eyes, this young man said, "Oh, if I could only see him laugh once more!

Oh, if I could only see him weep!" I was touched. I could never

withstand distress.

I said: "Bring him to my lecture. I'll start him for you."

"Oh, if you could but do it! If you could but do it, all our family

would bless you for evermore--for he is so very dear to us. Oh, my

benefactor, can you make him laugh? can you bring soothing tears to those

parched orbs?"

I was profoundly moved. I said: "My son, bring the old party round.

I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there

is any laugh in him; and if they miss fire, I have got some others that

will make him cry or kill him, one or the other." Then the young man

blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle. He placed him

in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on

him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him

with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes

into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed

up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and

behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and

sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once--I never started

a smile or a tear! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of

moisture! I was astounded. I closed the lecture at last with one

despairing shriek--with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of

supernatural atrocity full at him!

Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted.

The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water,

and said: "What made you carry on so toward the last?"

I said: "I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the

second row."

And he said: "Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and

dumb, and as blind as a badger!"

Now, was that any way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger

and orphan like me? I ask you as a man and brother, if that was any way

for him to do?

THE OFFICE BORE--[Written about 1869]

He arrives just as regularly as the clock strikes nine in the morning.

And so he even beats the editor sometimes, and the porter must leave his

work and climb two or three pairs of stairs to unlock the "Sanctum" door

and let him in. He lights one of the office pipes--not reflecting,

perhaps, that the editor may be one of those "stuck-up" people who would

as soon have a stranger defile his tooth-brush as his pipe-stem. Then he

begins to loll--for a person who can consent to loaf his useless life

away in ignominious indolence has not the energy to sit up straight.

He stretches full length on the sofa awhile; then draws up to half

length; then gets into a chair, hangs his head back and his arms abroad,

and stretches his legs till the rims of his boot-heels rest upon the

floor; by and by sits up and leans forward, with one leg or both over the

arm of the chair. But it is still observable that with all his changes

of position, he never assumes the upright or a fraudful affectation of

dignity. From time to time he yawns, and stretches, and scratches

himself with a tranquil, mangy enjoyment, and now and then he grunts a

kind of stuffy, overfed grunt, which is full of animal contentment. At

rare and long intervals, however, he sighs a sigh that is the eloquent

expression of a secret confession, to wit "I am useless and a nuisance,

a cumberer of the earth." The bore and his comrades--for there are

usually from two to four on hand, day and night--mix into the

conversation when men come in to see the editors for a moment on

business; they hold noisy talks among themselves about politics in

particular, and all other subjects in general--even warming up, after a

fashion, sometimes, and seeming to take almost a real interest in what

they are discussing. They ruthlessly call an editor from his work with

such a remark as: "Did you see this, Smith, in the Gazette?" and proceed

to read the paragraph while the sufferer reins in his impatient pen and

listens; they often loll and sprawl round the office hour after hour,

swapping anecdotes and relating personal experiences to each other

--hairbreadth escapes, social encounters with distinguished men, election

reminiscences, sketches of odd characters, etc. And through all those

hours they never seem to comprehend that they are robbing the editors of

their time, and the public of journalistic excellence in next day's

paper. At other times they drowse, or dreamily pore over exchanges, or

droop limp and pensive over the chair-arms for an hour. Even this solemn

silence is small respite to the editor, for the next uncomfortable thing

to having people look over his shoulders, perhaps, is to have them sit by

in silence and listen to the scratching of his pen. If a body desires to

talk private business with one of the editors, he must call him outside,

for no hint milder than blasting-powder or nitroglycerin would be likely

to move the bores out of listening-distance. To have to sit and endure

the presence of a bore day after day; to feel your cheerful spirits begin

to sink as his footstep sounds on the stair, and utterly vanish away as

his tiresome form enters the door; to suffer through his anecdotes and

die slowly to his reminiscences; to feel always the fetters of his

clogging presence; to long hopelessly for one single day's privacy; to

note with a shudder, by and by, that to contemplate his funeral in fancy

has ceased to soothe, to imagine him undergoing in strict and fearful

detail the tortures of the ancient Inquisition has lost its power to

satisfy the heart, and that even to wish him millions and millions and

millions of miles in Tophet is able to bring only a fitful gleam of joy;

to have to endure all this, day after day, and week after week, and month

after month, is an affliction that transcends any other that men suffer.

Physical pain is pastime to it, and hanging a pleasure excursion.

JOHNNY GREER

"The church was densely crowded that lovely summer Sabbath," said the

Sunday-school superintendent, "and all, as their eyes rested upon the

small coffin, seemed impressed by the poor black boy's fate. Above the

stillness the pastor's voice rose, and chained the interest of every ear

as he told, with many an envied compliment, how that the brave, noble,

daring little Johnny Greer, when he saw the drowned body sweeping down

toward the deep part of the river whence the agonized parents never could

have recovered it in this world, gallantly sprang into the stream, and,

at the risk of his life, towed the corpse to shore, and held it fast till

help came and secured it. Johnny Greer was sitting just in front of me.

A ragged street-boy, with eager eye, turned upon him instantly, and said

in a hoarse whisper

"'No; but did you, though?'

"'Yes.'

"'Towed the carkiss ashore and saved it yo'self?'

"'Yes.'

"'Cracky! What did they give you?'

"'Nothing.'

"'W-h-a-t [with intense disgust]! D'you know what I'd 'a' done? I'd 'a'

anchored him out in the stream, and said, Five dollars, gents, or you

carn't have yo' nigger.'"

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT--[Written about 1867.]

In as few words as possible I wish to lay before the nation what's here,

howsoever small, I have had in this matter--this matter which has so

exercised the public mind, engendered so much ill-feeling, and so filled

the newspapers of both continents with distorted statements and

extravagant comments.

The origin of this distressful thing was this--and I assert here that

every fact in the following resume can be amply proved by the official

records of the General Government.

John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey,

deceased, contracted with the General Government, on or about the 10th

day of October, 1861, to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of

thirty barrels of beef.

Very well.

He started after Sherman with the beef, but when he got to Washington

Sherman had gone to Manassas; so he took the beef and followed him there,

but arrived too late; he followed him to Nashville, and from Nashville to

Chattanooga, and from Chattanooga to Atlanta--but he never could overtake

him. At Atlanta he took a fresh start and followed him clear through his

march to the sea. He arrived too late again by a few days; but hearing

that Sherman was going out in the Quaker City excursion to the Holy Land,

he took shipping for Beirut, calculating to head off the other vessel.

When he arrived in Jerusalem with his beef, he learned that Sherman had

not sailed in the Quaker City, but had gone to the Plains to fight the

Indians. He returned to America and started for the Rocky Mountains.

After sixty-eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had

got within four miles of Sherman's headquarters, he was tomahawked and

scalped, and the Indians got the beef. They got all of it but one

barrel. Sherman's army captured that, and so, even in death, the bold

navigator partly fulfilled his contract. In his will, which he had kept

like a journal, he bequeathed the contract to his son Bartholomew W.

Bartholomew W. made out the following bill, and then died:

THE UNITED STATES

In account with JOHN WILSON MACKENZIE, of New Jersey,

deceased, . . . . . . . . . . Dr.

To thirty barrels of beef for General Sherman, at $100, $3,000

To traveling expenses and transportation . . . . . 14,000

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $17,000

Rec'd Pay't.

He died then; but he left the contract to Wm. J. Martin, who tried to

collect it, but died before he got through. He left it to Barker J.

Allen, and he tried to collect it also. He did not survive. Barker J.

Allen left it to Anson G. Rogers, who attempted to collect it, and got

along as far as the Ninth Auditor's Office, when Death, the great

Leveler, came all unsummoned, and foreclosed on him also. He left the

bill to a relative of his in Connecticut, Vengeance Hopkins by name, who

lasted four weeks and two days, and made the best time on record, coming

within one of reaching the Twelfth Auditor. In his will he gave the

contract bill to his uncle, by the name of O-be-joyful Johnson. It was

too undermining for joyful. His last words were: "Weep not for me--I am

willing to go." And so he was, poor soul. Seven people inherited the

contract after that; but they all died. So it came into my hands at

last. It fell to me through a relative by the name of, Hubbard

--Bethlehem Hubbard, of Indiana. He had had a grudge against me for a

long time; but in his last moments he sent for me, and forgave me

everything, and, weeping, gave me the beef contract.

This ends the history of it up to the time that I succeeded to the

property. I will now endeavor to set myself straight before the nation

in everything that concerns my share in the matter. I took this beef

contract, and the bill for mileage and transportation, to the President

of the United States.

He said, "Well, sir, what can I do for you?"

I said, "Sire, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861, John Wilson

Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased, contracted

with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum total

of thirty barrels of beef--"

He stopped me there, and dismissed me from his presence--kindly, but

firmly. The next day called on the Secretary of State.

He said, "Well, sir?"

I said, "Your Royal Highness: on or about the 10th day of October, 1861,

John Wilson Mackenzie of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased,

contracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the

sum total of thirty barrels of beef--"

"That will do, sir--that will do; this office has nothing to do with

contracts for beef."

I was bowed out. I thought the matter all over and finally, the

following day, I visited the Secretary of the Navy, who said, "Speak

quickly, sir; do not keep me waiting."

I said, "Your Royal Highness, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861,

John Wilson Mackenzie of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased,

contracted with the General Government to General Sherman the sum total

of thirty barrels of beef--"

Well, it was as far as I could get. He had nothing to do with beef

contracts for General Sherman either. I began to think it was a curious

kind of government. It looked somewhat as if they wanted to get out of

paying for that beef. The following day I went to the Secretary of the

Interior.

I said, "Your Imperial Highness, on or about the 10th day of October--"

"That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you before. Go, take your

infamous beef contract out of this establishment. The Interior

Department has nothing whatever to do with subsistence for the army."

I went away. But I was exasperated now. I said I would haunt them;

I would infest every department of this iniquitous government till that

contract business was settled. I would collect that bill, or fall, as

fell my predecessors, trying. I assailed the Postmaster-General;

I besieged the Agricultural Department; I waylaid the Speaker of the

House of Representatives. They had nothing to do with army contracts for

beef. I moved upon the Commissioner of the Patent Office.

I said, "Your August Excellency, on or about--"

"Perdition! have you got here with your incendiary beef contract, at

last? We have nothing to do with beef contracts for the army, my dear

sir."

"Oh, that is all very well--but somebody has got to pay for that beef.

It has got to be paid now, too, or I'll confiscate this old Patent Office

and everything in it."

"But, my dear sir--"

"It don't make any difference, sir. The Patent Office is liable for that

beef, I reckon; and, liable or not liable, the Patent Office has got to

pay for it."

Never mind the details. It ended in a fight. The Patent Office won.

But I found out something to my advantage. I was told that the Treasury

Department was the proper place for me to go to. I went there. I waited

two hours and a half, and then I was admitted to the First Lord of the

Treasury.

I said, "Most noble, grave, and reverend Signor, on or about the 10th day

of October, 1861, John Wilson Macken--"

"That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you. Go to the First Auditor

of the Treasury."

I did so. He sent me to the Second Auditor. The Second Auditor sent me

to the Third, and the Third sent me to the First Comptroller of the

Corn-Beef Division. This began to look like business. He examined his

books and all his loose papers, but found no minute of the beef contract.

I went to the Second Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division. He examined

his books and his loose papers, but with no success. I was encouraged.

During that week I got as far as the Sixth Comptroller in that division;

the next week I got through the Claims Department; the third week I began

and completed the Mislaid Contracts Department, and got a foothold in the

Dead Reckoning Department. I finished that in three days. There was

only one place left for it now. I laid siege to the Commissioner of Odds

and Ends. To his clerk, rather--he was not there himself. There were

sixteen beautiful young ladies in the room, writing in books, and there

were seven well-favored young clerks showing them how. The young women

smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled back at them, and

all went merry as a marriage bell. Two or three clerks that were reading

the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and nobody

said anything. However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from

Fourth Assistant Junior Clerks all through my eventful career, from the

very day I entered the first office of the Corn-Beef Bureau clear till I

passed out of the last one in the Dead Reckoning Division. I had got so

accomplished by this time that I could stand on one foot from the moment

I entered an office till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than

two, or maybe three, times.

So I stood there till I had changed four different times. Then I said to

one of the clerks who was reading:

"Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk?"

"What do you mean, sir? whom do you mean? If you mean the Chief of the

Bureau, he is out."

"Will he visit the harem to-day?"

The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper.

But I knew the ways of those clerks. I knew I was safe if he got through

before another New York mail arrived. He only had two more papers left.

After a while he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I

wanted.

"Renowned and honored Imbecile: on or about--"

"You are the beef-contract man. Give me your papers."

He took them, and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends.

Finally he found the Northwest Passage, as I regarded it--he found the

long lost record of that beef contract--he found the rock upon which so

many of my ancestors had split before they ever got to it. I was deeply

moved. And yet I rejoiced--for I had survived. I said with emotion,

"Give it me. The government will settle now." He waved me back, and

said there was something yet to be done first.

"Where is this John Wilson Mackenzie?" said he.

"Dead."

"When did he die?"

"He didn't die at all--he was killed."

"How?"

"Tomahawked."

"Who tomahawked him?"

"Why, an Indian, of course. You didn't suppose it was the superintendent

of a Sunday-school, did you?"

"No. An Indian, was it?"

"The same."

"Name of the Indian?"

"His name? I don't know his name."

"Must have his name. Who saw the tomahawking done?"

"I don't know."

"You were not present yourself, then?"

"Which you can see by my hair. I was absent.

"Then how do you know that Mackenzie is dead?"

"Because he certainly died at that time, and have every reason to believe

that he has been dead ever since. I know he has, in fact."

"We must have proofs. Have you got this Indian?"

"Of course not."

"Well, you must get him. Have you got the tomahawk?"

"I never thought of such a thing."

"You must get the tomahawk. You must produce the Indian and the

tomahawk. If Mackenzie's death can be proven by these, you can then go

before the commission appointed to audit claims with some show of getting

your bill under such headway that your children may possibly live to

receive the money and enjoy it. But that man's death must be proven.

However, I may as well tell you that the government will never pay that

transportation and those traveling expenses of the lamented Mackenzie.

It may possibly pay for the barrel of beef that Sherman's soldiers

captured, if you can get a relief bill through Congress making an

appropriation for that purpose; but it will not pay for the twenty-nine

barrels the Indians ate."

"Then there is only a hundred dollars due me, and that isn't certain!

After all Mackenzie's travels in Europe, Asia, and America with that

beef; after all his trials and tribulations and transportation; after the

slaughter of all those innocents that tried to collect that bill! Young

man, why didn't the First Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division tell me

this?"

"He didn't know anything about the genuineness of your claim."

"Why didn't the Second tell me? why didn't the, Third? why didn't all

those divisions and departments tell me?"

"None of them knew. We do things by routine here. You have followed the

routine and found out what you wanted to know. It is the best way.

It is the only way. It is very regular, and very slow, but it is very

certain."

"Yes, certain death. It has been, to the most of our tribe. I begin to

feel that I, too, am called."

"Young man, you love the bright creature yonder with the gentle blue eyes

and the steel pens behind her ears--I see it in your soft glances; you

wish to marry her--but you are poor. Here, hold out your hand--here is

the beef contract; go, take her and be happy Heaven bless you, my

children!"

This is all I know about the great beef contract that has created so much

talk in the community. The clerk to whom I bequeathed it died. I know

nothing further about the contract, or any one connected with it. I only

know that if a man lives long enough he can trace a thing through the

Circumlocution Office of Washington and find out, after much labor and

trouble and delay, that which he could have found out on the first day if

the business of the Circumlocution Office were as ingeniously

systematized as it would be if it were a great private mercantile

institution.

THE CASE OF GEORGE FISHER

--[Some years ago, about 1867, when this was first published, few people

believed it, but considered it a mere extravaganza. In these latter days

it seems hard to realize that there was ever a time when the robbing of

our government was a novelty. The very man who showed me where to find

the documents for this case was at that very time spending hundreds of

thousands of dollars in Washington for a mail steamship concern, in the

effort to procure a subsidy for the company--a fact which was a long time

in coming to the surface, but leaked out at last and underwent

Congressional investigation.]

This is history. It is not a wild extravaganza, like "John Wilson

Mackenzie's Great Beef Contract," but is a plain statement of facts and

circumstances with which the Congress of the United States has interested

itself from time to time during the long period of half a century.

I will not call this matter of George Fisher's a great deathless and

unrelenting swindle upon the government and people of the United States

--for it has never been so decided, and I hold that it is a grave and

solemn wrong for a writer to cast slurs or call names when such is the

case--but will simply present the evidence and let the reader deduce his

own verdict. Then we shall do nobody injustice, and our consciences

shall be clear.

On or about the 1st day of September, 1813, the Creek war being then in

progress in Florida, the crops, herds, and houses of Mr. George Fisher,

a citizen, were destroyed, either by the Indians or by the United States

troops in pursuit of them. By the terms of the law, if the Indians

destroyed the property, there was no relief for Fisher; but if the troops

destroyed it, the Government of the United States was debtor to Fisher

for the amount involved.

George Fisher must have considered that the Indians destroyed the

property, because, although he lived several years afterward, he does not

appear to have ever made any claim upon the government.

In the course of time Fisher died, and his widow married again.

And by and by, nearly twenty years after that dimly remembered raid upon

Fisher's corn-fields, the widow Fisher's new husband petitioned Congress

for pay for the property, and backed up the petition with many

depositions and affidavits which purported to prove that the troops,

and not the Indians, destroyed the property; that the troops, for some

inscrutable reason, deliberately burned down "houses" (or cabins) valued

at $600, the same belonging to a peaceable private citizen, and also

destroyed various other property belonging to the same citizen. But

Congress declined to believe that the troops were such idiots (after

overtaking and scattering a band of Indians proved to have been found

destroying Fisher's property) as to calmly continue the work of

destruction themselves; and make a complete job of what the Indians had

only commenced. So Congress denied the petition of the heirs of George

Fisher in 1832, and did not pay them a cent.

We hear no more from them officially until 1848, sixteen years after

their first attempt on the Treasury, and a full generation after the

death of the man whose fields were destroyed. The new generation of

Fisher heirs then came forward and put in a bill for damages. The Second

Auditor awarded them $8,873, being half the damage sustained by Fisher.

The Auditor said the testimony showed that at least half the destruction

was done by the Indians "before the troops started in pursuit," and of

course the government was not responsible for that half.

2. That was in April, 1848. In December, 1848, the heirs of George

Fisher, deceased, came forward and pleaded for a "revision" of their bill

of damages. The revision was made, but nothing new could be found in

their favor except an error of $100 in the former calculation. However,

in order to keep up the spirits of the Fisher family, the Auditor

concluded to go back and allow interest from the date of the first

petition (1832) to the date when the bill of damages was awarded. This

sent the Fishers home happy with sixteen years' interest on $8,873--the

same amounting to $8,997.94. Total, $17,870.94.

3. For an entire year the suffering Fisher family remained quiet--even

satisfied, after a fashion. Then they swooped down upon the government

with their wrongs once more. That old patriot, Attorney-General Toucey,

burrowed through the musty papers of the Fishers and discovered one more

chance for the desolate orphans--interest on that original award of

$8,873 from date of destruction of the property (1813) up to 1832!

Result, $110,004.89 for the indigent Fishers. So now we have: First,

$8,873 damages; second, interest on it from 1832 to 1848, $8997.94;

third, interest on it dated back to 1813, $10,004.89. Total, $27,875.83!

What better investment for a great-grandchild than to get the Indians to

burn a corn-field for him sixty or seventy years before his birth, and

plausibly lay it on lunatic United States troops?

4. Strange as it may seem, the Fishers let Congress alone for five

years--or, what is perhaps more likely, failed to make themselves heard

by Congress for that length of time. But at last, in 1854, they got a

hearing. They persuaded Congress to pass an act requiring the Auditor to

re-examine their case. But this time they stumbled upon the misfortune

of an honest Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. James Guthrie), and he

spoiled everything. He said in very plain language that the Fishers were

not only not entitled to another cent, but that those children of many

sorrows and acquainted with grief had been paid too much already.

5. Therefore another interval of rest and silent ensued-an interval

which lasted four years--viz till 1858. The "right man in the right

place" was then Secretary of War--John B. Floyd, of peculiar renown!

Here was a master intellect; here was the very man to succor the

suffering heirs of dead and forgotten Fisher. They came up from Florida

with a rush--a great tidal wave of Fishers freighted with the same old

musty documents about the same in immortal corn-fields of their ancestor.

They straight-way got an act passed transferring the Fisher matter from

the dull Auditor to the ingenious Floyd. What did Floyd do? He said,

"IT WAS PROVED that the Indians destroyed everything they could before

the troops entered in pursuit." He considered, therefore, that what they

destroyed must have consisted of "the houses with all their contents, and

the liquor" (the most trifling part of the destruction, and set down at

only $3,200 all told), and that the government troops then drove them off

and calmly proceeded to destroy--

Two hundred and twenty acres of corn in the field, thirty-five acres of

wheat, and nine hundred and eighty-six head of live stock! [What a

singularly intelligent army we had in those days, according to Mr. Floyd

--though not according to the Congress of 1832.]

So Mr. Floyd decided that the Government was not responsible for that

$3,200 worth of rubbish which the Indians destroyed, but was responsible

for the property destroyed by the troops--which property consisted of (I

quote from the printed United States Senate document):

Dollars

Corn at Bassett's Creek, ............... 3,000

Cattle, ................................ 5,000

Stock hogs, ............................ 1,050

Drove hogs, ............................ 1,204

Wheat, ................................. 350

Hides, ................................. 4,000

Corn on the Alabama River, ............. 3,500

Total, .............18,104

That sum, in his report, Mr. Floyd calls the "full value of the property

destroyed by the troops."

He allows that sum to the starving Fishers, TOGETHER WITH INTEREST FROM

1813. From this new sum total the amounts already paid to the Fishers

were deducted, and then the cheerful remainder (a fraction under forty

thousand dollars) was handed to then and again they retired to Florida in

a condition of temporary tranquillity. Their ancestor's farm had now

yielded them altogether nearly sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash.

6. Does the reader suppose that that was the end of it? Does he suppose

those diffident Fishers we: satisfied? Let the evidence show. The

Fishers were quiet just two years. Then they came swarming up out of the

fertile swamps of Florida with their same old documents, and besieged

Congress once more. Congress capitulated on the 1st of June, 1860, and

instructed Mr. Floyd to overhaul those papers again, and pay that bill.

A Treasury clerk was ordered to go through those papers and report to Mr.

Floyd what amount was still due the emaciated Fishers. This clerk (I can

produce him whenever he is wanted) discovered what was apparently a

glaring and recent forgery in the paper; whereby a witness's testimony as

to the price of corn in Florida in 1813 was made to name double the

amount which that witness had originally specified as the price! The

clerk not only called his superior's attention to this thing, but in

making up his brief of the case called particular attention to it in

writing. That part of the brief never got before Congress, nor has

Congress ever yet had a hint of forgery existing among the Fisher papers.

Nevertheless, on the basis of the double prices (and totally ignoring the

clerk's assertion that the figures were manifestly and unquestionably a

recent forgery), Mr. Floyd remarks in his new report that "the testimony,

particularly in regard to the corn crops, DEMANDS A MUCH HIGHER ALLOWANCE

than any heretofore made by the Auditor or myself." So he estimates the

crop at sixty bushels to the acre (double what Florida acres produce),

and then virtuously allows pay for only half the crop, but allows two

dollars and a half a bushel for that half, when there are rusty old books

and documents in the Congressional library to show just what the Fisher

testimony showed before the forgery--viz., that in the fall of 1813 corn

was only worth from $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel. Having accomplished this,

what does Mr. Floyd do next? Mr. Floyd ("with an earnest desire to

execute truly the legislative will," as he piously remarks) goes to work

and makes out an entirely new bill of Fisher damages, and in this new

bill he placidly ignores the Indians altogether puts no particle of the

destruction of the Fisher property upon them, but, even repenting him of

charging them with burning the cabins and drinking the whisky and

breaking the crockery, lays the entire damage at the door of the imbecile

United States troops down to the very last item! And not only that, but

uses the forgery to double the loss of corn at "Bassett's Creek," and

uses it again to absolutely treble the loss of corn on the "Alabama

River." This new and ably conceived and executed bill of Mr. Floyd's

figures up as follows (I copy again from the printed United States Senate

document):

The United States in account with the legal representatives

of George Fisher, deceased.

DOL.C

1813.--To 550 head of cattle, at 10 dollars, ............. 5,500.00

To 86 head of drove hogs, ......................... 1,204.00

To 350 head of stock hogs, ........................ 1,750.00

To 100 ACRES OF CORN ON BASSETT'S CREEK, .......... 6,000.00

To 8 barrels of whisky, ........................... 350.00

To 2 barrels of brandy, ........................... 280.00

To 1 barrel of rum, ............................... 70.00

To dry-goods and merchandise in store, ............ 1,100.00

To 35 acres of wheat, ............................. 350.00

To 2,000 hides, ................................... 4,000.00

To furs and hats in store, ........................ 600.00

To crockery ware in store, ........................ 100.00

To smith's and carpenter's tools, ................. 250.00

To houses burned and destroyed, ................... 600.00

To 4 dozen bottles of wine, ....................... 48.00

1814.--To 120 acres of corn on Alabama River, ............ 9,500.00

To crops of peas, fodder, etc. .................... 3,250.00

Total, ..........................34,952.00

To interest on $22,202, from July 1813

to November 1860, 47 years and 4 months, .......63,053.68

To interest on $12,750, from September

1814 to November 1860, 46 years and 2 months, ..35,317.50

Total, ........................ 133,323.18

He puts everything in this time. He does not even allow that the Indians

destroyed the crockery or drank the four dozen bottles of (currant) wine.

When it came to supernatural comprehensiveness in "gobbling," John B.

Floyd was without his equal, in his own or any other generation.

Subtracting from the above total the $67,000 already paid to

George Fisher's implacable heirs, Mr. Floyd announced that the government

was still indebted to them in the sum of sixty-six thousand five hundred

and nineteen dollars and eighty-five cents, "which," Mr. Floyd

complacently remarks, "will be paid, accordingly, to the administrator of

the estate of George Fisher, deceased, or to his attorney in fact."

But, sadly enough for the destitute orphans, a new President came in just

at this time, Buchanan and Floyd went out, and they never got their

money. The first thing Congress did in 1861 was to rescind the

resolution of June 1, 1860, under which Mr. Floyd had been ciphering.

Then Floyd (and doubtless the heirs of George Fisher likewise) had to

give up financial business for a while, and go into the Confederate army

and serve their country.

Were the heirs of George Fisher killed? No. They are back now at this

very time (July, 1870), beseeching Congress through that blushing and

diffident creature, Garrett Davis, to commence making payments again on

their interminable and insatiable bill of damages for corn and whisky

destroyed by a gang of irresponsible Indians, so long ago that even

government red-tape has failed to keep consistent and intelligent track

of it.

Now the above are facts. They are history. Any one who doubts it can

send to the Senate Document Department of the Capitol for H. R. Ex. Doc.

No. 21, 36th Congress, 2d Session; and for S. Ex. Doc. No. 106, 41st

Congress, 2d Session, and satisfy himself. The whole case is set forth

in the first volume of the Court of Claims Reports.

It is my belief that as long as the continent of America holds together,

the heirs of George Fisher, deceased, will still make pilgrimages to

Washington from the swamps of Florida, to plead for just a little more

cash on their bill of damages (even when they received the last of that

sixty-seven thousand dollars, they said it was only one fourth what the

government owed them on that fruitful corn-field), and as long as they

choose to come they will find Garrett Davises to drag their vampire

schemes before Congress. This is not the only hereditary fraud (if fraud

it is--which I have before repeatedly remarked is not proven) that is

being quietly handed down from generation to generation of fathers and

sons, through the persecuted Treasury of the United States.

DISGRACEFUL PERSECUTION OF A BOY

In San Francisco, the other day, "A well-dressed boy, on his way to

Sunday-school, was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoning

Chinamen."

What a commentary is this upon human justice! What sad prominence it

gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the weak! San Francisco

has little right to take credit to herself for her treatment of this poor

boy. What had the child's education been? How should he suppose it was

wrong to stone a Chinaman? Before we side against him, along with

outraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance--let us hear the

testimony for the defense.