This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of

the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in

history. For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio, twenty-two

years ago. Baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vindictive,

malignant, quarrelsome nature. He put a boy's eye out once, and never

was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it. He did many such

things. But at last he did something that was serious. He called at a

house just after dark one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came to

the door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape, but was captured.

Two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the man

he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet had

knocked him down. Such was the Baldwin case. The trial was long and

exciting; the community was fearfully wrought up. Men said this

spiteful, bad-hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, and

now he should satisfy the law. But they were mistaken; Baldwin was

insane when he did the deed--they had not thought of that. By the

argument of counsel it was shown that at half past ten in the morning on

the day of the murder, Baldwin became insane, and remained so for eleven

hours and a half exactly. This just covered the case comfortably, and he

was acquitted. Thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been

listened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature

would have been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of

madness. Baldwin went clear, and although his relatives and friends were

naturally incensed against the community for their injurious suspicions

and remarks, they said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute.

The Baldwins were very wealthy. This same Baldwin had momentary fits of

insanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed people he had

grudges against. And on both these occasions the circumstances of the

killing were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless and

treacherous, that if Baldwin had not been insane he would have been

hanged without the shadow of a doubt. As it was, it required all his

political and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, and

cost him not less than ten thousand dollars to get clear in the other.

One of these men he had notoriously been threatening to kill for twelve

years. The poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill fortune,

to come along a dark alley at the very moment that Baldwin's insanity

came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with

slugs.

Take the case of Lynch Hackett, of Pennsylvania. Twice, in public, he

attacked a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane, and

both times Feldner whipped him with his fists. Hackett was a vain,

wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem,

and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches. He

brooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a

momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town,

waited a couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down the street with

his wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which

he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck,

killing him instantly. The widow caught the limp form and eased it to

the earth. Both were drenched with blood. Hackett jocosely remarked to

her that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the

artistic neatness of the job that left her in condition to marry again,

in case she wanted to. This remark, and another which he made to a

friend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscure

citizen simply an "eccentricity" instead of a crime, were shown to be

evidences of insanity, and so Hackett escaped punishment. The jury were

hardly inclined to accept these as proofs at first, inasmuch as the

prisoner had never been insane before the murder, and under the

tranquilizing effect of the butchering had immediately regained his right

mind; but when the defense came to show that a third cousin of Hackett's

wife's stepfather was insane, and not only insane, but had a nose the

very counterpart of Hackett's, it was plain that insanity was hereditary

in the family, and Hackett had come by it by legitimate inheritance.

Of course the jury then acquitted him. But it was a merciful providence

that Mrs. H.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else Hackett would

certainly have been hanged.

However, it is not possible to recount all the marvelous cases of

insanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or

forty years. There was the Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago.

The servant girl, Bridget Durgin, at dead of night, invaded her

mistress's bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife.

Then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged

it with chairs and such things. Next she opened the feather beds, and

strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set

fire to the general wreck. She now took up the young child of the

murdered woman in her blood smeared hands and walked off, through the

snow, with no shoes on, to a neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off,

and told a string of wild, incoherent stories about some men coming and

setting fire to the house; and then she cried piteously, and without

seeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon her

hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was

afraid those men had murdered her mistress! Afterward, by her own

confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had

always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the

murder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the

burning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not

the motive.

Now, the reader says, "Here comes that same old plea of insanity again."

But the reader has deceived himself this time. No such plea was offered

in her defense. The judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the governor

with petitions for her pardon, and she was promptly hanged.

There was that youth in Pennsylvania, whose curious confession was

published some years ago. It was simply a conglomeration of incoherent

drivel from beginning to end; and so was his lengthy speech on the

scaffold afterward. For a whole year he was haunted with a desire to

disfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would marry her. He did

not love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want

anybody else to do it. He would not go anywhere with her, and yet was

opposed to anybody else's escorting her. Upon one occasion he declined

to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait

for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the

escort. After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a

full year, he at last attempted its execution--that is, attempted to

disfigure the young woman. It was a success. It was permanent. In

trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table with her

parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its

comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and

she dropped dead. To the very last moment of his life he bewailed the

ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment. And so

he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her

own fault that she got killed. This idiot was hanged. The plea, of

insanity was not offered.

Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying

out. There are no longer any murders--none worth mentioning, at any

rate. Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were

insane--but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a mate, it is

evidence that you are a lunatic. In these days, too, if a person of good

family and high social standing steals anything, they call it

kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum. If a person of high

standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with

strychnine or a bullet, "Temporary Aberration" is what was the trouble

with him.

Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common

that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal

case that comes before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and so

common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the

newspaper mentions it?

And is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the

prisoner? Of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so

conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly

insane. If he talks about the stars, he is insane. If he appears

nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. If he weeps

over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is

"not right." If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease,

preoccupied, and excited, he is, unquestionably insane.

Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against

insanity. There is where the true evil lies.

A CURIOUS DREAM

CONTAINING A MORAL

Night before last I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on a

doorstep (in no particular city perhaps) ruminating, and the time of

night appeared to be about twelve or one o'clock. The weather was balmy

and delicious. There was no human sound in the air, not even a footstep.

There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except

the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter

answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony

clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party.

In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and

moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of

its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray

gloom of the starlight. It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on its

shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what the

clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together,

and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I was

surprised. Before I could collect my thoughts and enter upon any

speculations as to what this apparition might portend, I heard another

one coming for I recognized his clack-clack. He had two-thirds of a

coffin on his shoulder, and some foot and head boards under his arm.

I mightily wanted, to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when he

turned and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting

grin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gone

when I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy

half-light. This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging

a shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me he gave me a

steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me,

saying:

"Ease this down for a fellow, will you?"

I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so

noticed that it bore the name of "John Baxter Copmanhurst," with "May,

1839," as the date of his death. Deceased sat wearily down by me, and

wiped his os frontis with his major maxillary--chiefly from former habit

I judged, for I could not see that he brought away any perspiration.

"It is too bad, too bad," said he, drawing the remnant of the shroud

about him and leaning his jaw pensively on his hand. Then he put his

left foot up on his knee and fell to scratching his anklebone absently

with a rusty nail which he got out of his coffin.

"What is too bad, friend?"

"Oh, everything, everything. I almost wish I never had died."

"You surprise me. Why do you say this? Has anything gone wrong? What

is the matter?"

"Matter! Look at this shroud-rags. Look at this gravestone, all

battered up. Look at that disgraceful old coffin. All a man's property

going to ruin and destruction before his eyes, and ask him if anything is

wrong? Fire and brimstone!"

"Calm yourself, calm yourself," I said. "It is too bad--it is certainly

too bad, but then I had not supposed that you would much mind such

matters situated as you are."

"Well, my dear sir, I do mind them. My pride is hurt, and my comfort is

impaired--destroyed, I might say. I will state my case--I will put it to

you in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me," said

the poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his shroud back, as if he were

clearing for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty and

festive air very much at variance with the grave character of his

position in life--so to speak--and in prominent contrast with his

distressful mood.

"Proceed," said I.

"I reside in the shameful old graveyard a block or two above you here,

in this street--there, now, I just expected that cartilage would let go!

--third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine with

a string, if you have got such a thing about you, though a bit of silver

wire is a deal pleasanter, and more durable and becoming, if one keeps it

polished--to think of shredding out and going to pieces in this way, just

on account of the indifference and neglect of one's posterity!"--and the

poor ghost grated his teeth in a way that gave me a wrench and a shiver

--for the effect is mightily increased by the absence of muffling flesh

and cuticle. "I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty

years; and I tell you things are changed since I first laid this old

tired frame there, and turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep,

with a delicious sense upon me of being done with bother, and grief,

and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, forever and ever, and listening with

comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the

startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away

to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home-delicious! My!

I wish you could try it to-night!" and out of my reverie deceased fetched

me a rattling slap with a bony hand.

"Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there, and was happy. For it

was out in the country then--out in the breezy, flowery, grand old woods,

and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels capered

over us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the birds

filled the tranquil solitude with music. Ah, it was worth ten years of a

man's life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good

neighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the

best families in the city. Our posterity appeared to think the world of

us. They kept our graves in the very best condition; the fences were

always in faultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or whitewashed,

and were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty or

decayed; monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the

rose-bushes and shrubbery trimmed, trained, and free from blemish, the

walks clean and smooth and graveled. But that day is gone by. Our

descendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in a stately house

built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a

neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them

nests withal! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the

prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves

leaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery which neighbors curse and

strangers scoff at. See the difference between the old time and this

--for instance: Our graves are all caved in now; our head-boards have

rotted away and tumbled down; our railings reel this way and that, with

one foot in the air, after a fashion of unseemly levity; our monuments

lean wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged; there be

no adornments any more--no roses, nor shrubs, nor graveled walks, nor

anything that is a comfort to the eye; and even the paintless old board

fence that did make a show of holding us sacred from companionship with

beasts and the defilement of heedless feet, has tottered till it

overhangs the street, and only advertises the presence of our dismal

resting-place and invites yet more derision to it. And now we cannot

hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has

stretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in, and all that remains

of the cheer of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest trees

that stand, bored and weary of a city life, with their feet in our

coffins, looking into the hazy distance and wishing they were there.

I tell you it is disgraceful!

"You begin to comprehend--you begin to see how it is. While our

descendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in the

city, we have to fight hard to keep skull and bones together. Bless you,

there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak not one. Every

time it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees

and sometimes we are wakened suddenly by the chilly water trickling down

the back of our necks. Then I tell you there is a general heaving up of

old graves and kicking over of old monuments, and scampering of old

skeletons for the trees! Bless me, if you had gone along there some such

nights after twelve you might have seen as many as fifteen of us roosting

on one limb, with our joints rattling drearily and the wind wheezing

through our ribs! Many a time we have perched there for three or four

dreary hours, and then come down, stiff and chilled through and drowsy,

and borrowed each other's skulls to bail out our graves with--if you will

glance up in my mouth now as I tilt my head back, you can see that my

head-piece is half full of old dry sediment how top-heavy and stupid it

makes me sometimes! Yes, sir, many a time if you had happened to come

along just before the dawn you'd have caught us bailing out the graves

and hanging our shrouds on the fence to dry. Why, I had an elegant

shroud stolen from there one morning--think a party by the name of Smith

took it, that resides in a plebeian graveyard over yonder--I think so

because the first time I ever saw him he hadn't anything on but a check

shirt, and the last time I saw him, which was at a social gathering in

the new cemetery, he was the best-dressed corpse in the company--and it

is a significant fact that he left when he saw me; and presently an old

woman from here missed her coffin--she generally took it with her when

she went anywhere, because she was liable to take cold and bring on the

spasmodic rheumatism that originally killed her if she exposed herself to

the night air much. She was named Hotchkiss--Anna Matilda Hotchkiss--you

might know her? She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal

inclined to stoop, one rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty

hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft just

above and a little forward of her right ear, has her underjaw wired on

one side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone--lost

in a fight has a kind of swagger in her gait and a 'gallus' way of going

with: her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air has been pretty free

and easy, and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like a

queensware crate in ruins--maybe you have met her?"

"God forbid!" I involuntarily ejaculated, for somehow I was not looking

for that form of question, and it caught me a little off my guard. But I

hastened to make amends for my rudeness, and say, "I simply meant I had

not had the honor--for I would not deliberately speak discourteously of a

friend of yours. You were saying that you were robbed--and it was a

shame, too--but it appears by what is left of the shroud you have on that

it was a costly one in its day. How did--"

A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features and

shriveled integuments of my guest's face, and I was beginning to grow

uneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep,

sly smile, with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he acquired

his present garment a ghost in a neighboring cemetery missed one. This

reassured me, but I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth,

because his facial expression was uncertain. Even with the most

elaborate care it was liable to miss fire. Smiling should especially be

avoided. What he might honestly consider a shining success was likely to

strike me in a very different light. I said I liked to see a skeleton

cheerful, even decorously playful, but I did not think smiling was a

skeleton's best hold.

"Yes, friend," said the poor skeleton, "the facts are just as I have

given them to you. Two of these old graveyards--the one that I resided

in and one further along have been deliberately neglected by our

descendants of to-day until there is no occupying them any longer. Aside

from the osteological discomfort of it--and that is no light matter this

rainy weather--the present state of things is ruinous to property. We

have got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterly

destroyed.

"Now, you will hardly believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that there

isn't a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance--now that

is an absolute fact. I do not refer to low people who come in a pine box

mounted on an express-wagon, but I am talking about your high-toned,

silver-mounted burial-case, your monumental sort, that travel under black

plumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots

--I mean folks like the Jarvises, and the Bledsoes and Burlings, and such.

They are all about ruined. The most substantial people in our set, they

were. And now look at them--utterly used up and poverty-stricken. One

of the Bledsoes actually traded his monument to a late barkeeper for some

fresh shavings to put under his head. I tell you it speaks volumes, for

there is nothing a corpse takes so much pride in as his monument. He

loves to read the inscription. He comes after a while to believe what it

says himself, and then you may see him sitting on the fence night after

night enjoying it. Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world

of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was

alive. I wish they were used more. Now I don't complain, but

confidentially I do think it was a little shabby in my descendants to

give me nothing but this old slab of a gravestone--and all the more that

there isn't a compliment on it. It used to have:

'GONE TO HIS JUST REWARD'

on it, and I was proud when I first saw it, but by and by I noticed that

whenever an old friend of mine came along he would hook his chin on the

railing and pull a long face and read along down till he came to that,

and then he would chuckle to himself and walk off, looking satisfied and

comfortable. So I scratched it off to get rid of those fools. But a

dead man always takes a deal of pride in his monument. Yonder goes half

a dozen of the Jarvises now, with the family monument along. And

Smithers and some hired specters went by with his awhile ago. Hello,

Higgins, good-by, old friend! That's Meredith Higgins--died in '44

--belongs to our set in the cemetery--fine old family--great-grand mother

was an Injun--I am on the most familiar terms with him he didn't hear me

was the reason he didn't answer me. And I am sorry, too, because I would

have liked to introduce you. You would admire him. He is the most

disjointed, sway-backed, and generally distorted old skeleton you ever

saw, but he is full of fun. When he laughs it sounds like rasping two

stones together, and he always starts it off with a cheery screech like

raking a nail across a window-pane. Hey, Jones! That is old Columbus

Jones--shroud cost four hundred dollars entire trousseau, including

monument, twenty-seven hundred. This was in the spring of '26. It was

enormous style for those days. Dead people came all the way from the

Alleghanies to see his things--the party that occupied the grave next to

mine remembers it well. Now do you see that individual going along with

a piece of a head-board under his arm, one leg-bone below his knee gone,

and not a thing in the world on? That is Barstow Dalhousie, and next to

Columbus Jones he was the most sumptuously outfitted person that ever

entered our cemetery. We are all leaving. We cannot tolerate the

treatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants. They open

new cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignominy. They mend the

streets, but they never mend anything that is about us or belongs to us.

Look at that coffin of mine--yet I tell you in its day it was a piece of

furniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing-room in this

city. You may have it if you want it--I can't afford to repair it.

Put a new bottom in her, and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh lining

along the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable as any

receptacle of her species you ever tried. No thanks no, don't mention it

you have been civil to me, and I would give you all the property I have

got before I would seem ungrateful. Now this winding-sheet is a kind of

a sweet thing in its way, if you would like to--No? Well, just as you

say, but I wished to be fair and liberal there's nothing mean about me.

Good-by, friend, I must be going. I may have a good way to go to-night

--don't know. I only know one thing for certain, and that is that I am

on the emigrant trail now, and I'll never sleep in that crazy old

cemetery again. I will travel till I fiend respectable quarters, if I

have to hoof it to New Jersey. All the boys are going. It was decided

in public conclave, last night, to emigrate, and by the time the sun

rises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations. Such cemeteries

may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains that have

the honor to make these remarks. My opinion is the general opinion.

If you doubt it, go and see how the departing ghosts upset things before

they started. They were almost riotous in their demonstrations of

distaste. Hello, here are some of the Bledsoes, and if you will give me

a lift with this tombstone I guess I will join company and jog along with

them--mighty respectable old family, the Bledsoes, and used to always

come out in six-horse hearses and all that sort of thing fifty years ago

when I walked these streets in daylight. Good-by, friend."

And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grisly procession,

dragging his damaged coffin after him, for notwithstanding he pressed it

upon me so earnestly, I utterly refused his hospitality. I suppose that

for as much as two hours these sad outcasts went clacking by, laden with

their dismal effects, and all that time I sat pitying them. One or two

of the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnight

trains on the railways, but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode

of travel, and merely asked about common public roads to various towns

and cities, some of which are not on the map now, and vanished from it

and from the earth as much as thirty years ago, and some few of them

never had existed anywhere but on maps, and private ones in real-estate

agencies at that. And they asked about the condition of the cemeteries

in these towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens bore as

to reverence for the dead.

This whole matter interested me deeply, and likewise compelled my

sympathy for these homeless ones. And it all seeming real, and I not

knowing it was a dream, I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea that

had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very

sorrowful exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully,

and just as it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subject

and exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distress

their surviving friends. But this bland and stately remnant of a former

citizen leaned him far over my gate and whispered in my ear, and said:

"Do not let that disturb you. The community that can stand such

graveyards as those we are emigrating from can stand anything a body can

say about the neglected and forsaken dead that lie in them."

At that very moment a cock crowed, and the weird procession vanished and

left not a shred or a bone behind. I awoke, and found myself lying with

my head out of the bed and "sagging" downward considerably--a position

favorable to dreaming dreams with morals in them, maybe, but not poetry.

NOTE.--The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept

in good order, this Dream is not leveled at his town at all, but is

leveled particularly and venomously at the next town.

A TRUE STORY

REPEATED WORD FOR WORD AS I HEARD IT--[Written about 1876]

It was summer-time, and twilight. We were sitting on the porch of the

farmhouse, on the summit of the hill, and "Aunt Rachel" was sitting

respectfully below our level, on the steps-for she was our Servant, and

colored. She was of mighty frame and stature; she was sixty years old,

but her eye was undimmed and her strength unabated. She was a cheerful,

hearty soul, and it was no more trouble for her to laugh than it is for a

bird to sing. She was under fire now, as usual when the day was done.

That is to say, she was being chaffed without mercy, and was enjoying it.

She would let off peal after of laughter, and then sit with her face in

her hands and shake with throes of enjoyment which she could no longer

get breath enough to express. It such a moment as this a thought

occurred to me, and I said:

"Aunt Rachel, how is it that you've lived sixty years and never had any

trouble?"

She stopped quaking. She paused, and there was moment of silence. She

turned her face over her shoulder toward me, and said, without even a

smile her voice:

"Misto C-----, is you in 'arnest?"

It surprised me a good deal; and it sobered my manner and my speech, too.

I said:

"Why, I thought--that is, I meant--why, you can't have had any trouble.

I've never heard you sigh, and never seen your eye when there wasn't a

laugh in it."

She faced fairly around now, and was full earnestness.

"Has I had any trouble? Misto C-----, I's gwyne to tell you, den I leave

it to you. I was bawn down 'mongst de slaves; I knows all 'bout slavery,

'case I ben one of 'em my own se'f. Well sah, my ole man--dat's my

husban'--he was lov an' kind to me, jist as kind as you is to yo' own

wife. An' we had chil'en--seven chil'en--an' loved dem chil'en jist de

same as you loves yo' chil'en. Dey was black, but de Lord can't make

chil'en so black but what dey mother loves 'em an' wouldn't give 'em up,

no, not for anything dat's in dis whole world.

"Well, sah, I was raised in ole Fo'ginny, but mother she was raised in

Maryland; an' my souls she was turrible when she'd git started! My lan!

but she'd make de fur fly! When she'd git into dem tantrums, she always

had one word dat she said. She'd straighten herse'f up an' put her fists

in her hips an' say, 'I want you to understan' dat I wa'n't bawn in the

mash to be fool' by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, I is!'

'Ca'se you see, dat's what folks dat's bawn in Maryland calls deyselves,

an' dey's proud of it. Well, dat was her word. I don't ever forgit it,

beca'se she said it so much, an' beca'se she said it one day when my

little Henry tore his wris' awful, and most busted 'is head, right up at

de top of his forehead, an' de niggers didn't fly aroun' fas' enough to

'tend to him. An' when dey talk' back at her, she up an' she says,

'Look-a-heah!' she says, 'I want you niggers to understan' dat I wa'n't

bawn in de mash be fool' by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's chickens,

I is!' an' den she clar' dat kitchen an' bandage' up de chile herse'f.

So I says dat word, too, when I's riled.

"Well, bymeby my ole mistis say she's broke, an she got to sell all de

niggers on de place. An' when I heah dat dey gwyne to sell us all off at

oction in Richmon', oh, de good gracious! I know what dat mean!"

Aunt Rachel had gradually risen, while she warmed to her subject, and now

she towered above us, black against the stars.

"Dey put chains on us an' put us on a stan' as high as dis po'ch--twenty

foot high--an' all de people stood aroun', crowds 'an' crowds. An' dey'd

come up dah an' look at us all roun', an' squeeze our arm, an' make us

git up an' walk, an' den say, Dis one too ole,' or 'Dis one lame,' or

'Dis one don't 'mount to much.' An' dey sole my ole man, an' took him

away, an' dey begin to sell my chil'en an' take dem away, an' I begin to

cry; an' de man say, 'Shet up yo' damn blubberin',' an' hit me on de mouf

wid his han'. An' when de las' one was gone but my little Henry, I grab'

him clost up to my breas' so, an' I ris up an' says, 'You sha'nt take him

away,' I says; 'I'll kill de man dat tetch him!' I says. But my little

Henry whisper an' say 'I gwyne to run away, an' den I work an' buy yo'

freedom' Oh, bless de chile, he always so good! But dey got him--dey got

him, de men did; but I took and tear de clo'es mos' off of 'em an' beat

'em over de head wid my chain; an' dey give it to me too, but I didn't

mine dat.

"Well, dah was my ole man gone, an' all my chil'en, all my seven chil'en

--an' six of 'em I hain't set eyes on ag'in to dis day, an' dat's

twenty-two year ago las' Easter. De man dat bought me b'long' in

Newbern, an' he took me dah. Well, bymeby de years roll on an' de waw

come. My marster he was a Confedrit colonel, an' I was his family's

cook. So when de Unions took dat town dey all run away an' lef' me all

by myse'f wid de other niggers in dat mons'us big house. So de big Union

officers move in dah, an' dey ask me would I cook for dem. 'Lord bless

you,' says I, 'dat what I's for.'

"Dey wa'n't no small-fry officers, mine you, de was de biggest dey is;

an' de way dey made dem sojers mosey roun'! De Gen'l he tole me to boss

dat kitchen; an' he say, 'If anybody come meddlin' wid you, you jist make

'em walk chalk; don't you be afeared,' he say; 'you's 'mong frens now.'

"Well, I thinks to myse'f, if my little Henry ever got a chance to run

away, he'd make to de Norf, o' course. So one day I comes in dah whar de

big officers was, in de parlor, an' I drops a kurtchy, so, an' I up an'

tole 'em 'bout my Henry, dey a-listenin' to my troubles jist de same as

if I was white folks; an' I says, 'What I come for is beca'se if he got

away and got up Norf whar you gemmen comes from, you might 'a' seen him,

maybe, an' could tell me so as I could fine him ag'in; he was very

little, an' he had a sk-yar on his lef' wris' an' at de top of his

forehead.' Den dey look mournful, an' de Gen'l says, 'How long sence you

los' him?' an' I say, 'Thirteen year. Den de Gen'l say, 'He wouldn't be

little no mo' now--he's a man!'

"I never thought o' dat befo'! He was only dat little feller to me yit.

I never thought 'bout him growin' up an' bein' big. But I see it den.

None o' de gemmen had run acrost him, so dey couldn't do nothin' for me.

But all dat time, do' I didn't know it, my Henry was run off to de Norf,

years an' years, an' he was a barber, too, an' worked for hisse'f. An'

bymeby, when de waw come he ups an' he says: 'I's done barberin',' he

says, 'I's gwyne to fine my ole mammy, less'n she's dead.' So he sole

out an' went to whar dey was recruitin', an' hired hisse'f out to de

colonel for his servant an' den he went all froo de battles everywhah,

huntin' for his ole mammy; yes, indeedy, he'd hire to fust one officer

an' den another, tell he'd ransacked de whole Souf; but you see I didn't

know nuffin 'bout dis. How was I gwyne to know it?

"Well, one night we had a big sojer ball; de sojers dah at Newbern was

always havin' balls an' carryin' on. Dey had 'em in my kitchen, heaps o'

times, 'ca'se it was so big. Mine you, I was down on sich doin's;

beca'se my place was wid de officers, an' it rasp me to have dem common

sojers cavortin' roun' in my kitchen like dat. But I alway' stood aroun'

an kep' things straight, I did; an' sometimes dey'd git my dander up, an'

den I'd make 'em clar dat kitchen mine I tell you!

"Well, one night--it was a Friday night--dey comes a whole platoon f'm a

nigger ridgment da was on guard at de house--de house was head quarters,

you know-an' den I was jist a-bilin' mad? I was jist a-boomin'! I

swelled aroun', an swelled aroun'; I jist was a-itchin' for 'em to do

somefin for to start me. An' dey was a-waltzin' an a dancin'! my but dey

was havin' a time! an I jist a-swellin' an' a-swellin' up! Pooty soon,

'long comes sich a spruce young nigger a-sailin' down de room wid a

yaller wench roun' de wais'; an' roun an' roun' an roun' dey went, enough

to make a body drunk to look at 'em; an' when dey got abreas' o' me, dey

went to kin' o' balancin' aroun' fust on one leg an' den on t'other, an'

smilin' at my big red turban, an' makin' fun, an' I ups an' says 'Git

along wid you!--rubbage!' De young man's face kin' o' changed, all of a

sudden, for 'bout a second but den he went to smilin' ag'in, same as he

was befo'. Well, 'bout dis time, in comes some niggers dat played music

and b'long' to de ban', an' dey never could git along widout puttin' on

airs. An de very fust air dey put on dat night, I lit into em! Dey

laughed, an' dat made me wuss. De res' o' de niggers got to laughin',

an' den my soul alive but I was hot! My eye was jist a-blazin'! I jist

straightened myself up so--jist as I is now, plum to de ceilin', mos'

--an' I digs my fists into my hips, an' I says, 'Look-a-heah!' I says, 'I

want you niggers to understan' dat I wa'n't bawn in de mash to be fool'

by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue hen's Chickens, I is!'--an' den I see

dat young man stan' a-starin' an' stiff, lookin' kin' o' up at de ceilin'

like he fo'got somefin, an' couldn't 'member it no mo'. Well, I jist

march' on dem niggers--so, lookin' like a gen'l--an' dey jist cave' away

befo' me an' out at de do'. An' as dis young man a-goin' out, I heah him

say to another nigger, 'Jim,' he says, 'you go 'long an' tell de cap'n I

be on han' 'bout eight o'clock in de mawnin'; dey's somefin on my mine,'

he says; 'I don't sleep no mo' dis night. You go 'long,' he says, 'an'

leave me by my own se'f.'

"Dis was 'bout one o'clock in de mawnin'. Well, 'bout seven, I was up

an' on han', gittin' de officers' breakfast. I was a-stoopin' down by de

stove jist so, same as if yo' foot was de stove--an' I'd opened de stove

do' wid my right han'--so, pushin' it back, jist as I pushes yo' foot

--an' I'd jist got de pan o' hot biscuits in my han' an' was 'bout to

raise up, when I see a black face come aroun' under mine, an' de eyes

a-lookin' up into mine, jist as I's a-lookin' up clost under yo' face

now; an' I jist stopped right dah, an' never budged! jist gazed an' gazed

so; an' de pan begin to tremble, an' all of a sudden I knowed! De pan

drop' on de flo' an' I grab his lef' han' an' shove back his sleeve--jist

so, as I's doin' to you--an' den I goes for his forehead an' push de hair

back so, an' 'Boy!' I says, 'if you an't my Henry, what is you doin' wid

dis welt on yo' wris' an' dat sk-yar on yo' forehead? De Lord God ob

heaven be praise', I got my own ag'in!'

"Oh no' Misto C-----, I hain't had no trouble. An' no joy!"

THE SIAMESE TWINS--[Written about 1868.]

I do not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures

solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning

them, which, belonging only to their private life, have never crept into

print. Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well

qualified for the task I have taken upon myself.

The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate indisposition,

and have clung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and

eventful life. Even as children they were inseparable companions; and it

was noticed that they always seemed to prefer each other's society to

that of any other persons. They nearly always played together; and, so

accustomed was their mother to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of

them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them

--satisfied that when she found that one she would find his brother

somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. And yet these creatures were

ignorant and unlettered-barbarians themselves and the offspring of

barbarians, who knew not the light of philosophy and science. What a

withering rebuke is this to our boasted civilization, with its

quarrelings, its wranglings, and its separations of brothers!

As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still

there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go

away from each other and dwell apart. They have even occupied the same

house, as a general thing, and it is believed that they have never failed

to even sleep together on any night since they were born. How surely do

the habits of a lifetime become second nature to us! The Twins always go

to bed at the same time; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before

his brother. By an understanding between themselves, Chang does all the

indoor work and Eng runs all the errands. This is because Eng likes to

go out; Chang's habits are sedentary. However, Chang always goes along.

Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic; still, to please his

brother, Chang consented to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on

condition that it should not "count." During the war they were strong

partisans, and both fought gallantly all through the great struggle--Eng

on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other

prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly

balanced in favor of each, that a general army court had to be assembled

to determine which one was properly the captor and which the captive.

The jury was unable to agree for a long time; but the vexed question was

finally decided by agreeing to consider them both prisoners, and then

exchanging them. At one time Chang was convicted of disobedience of

orders, and sentenced to ten days in the guard-house, but Eng, in spite

of all arguments, felt obliged to share his imprisonment, notwithstanding

he himself was entirely innocent; and so, to save the blameless brother

from suffering, they had to discharge both from custody--the just reward

of faithfulness.

Upon one occasion the brothers fell out about something, and Chang

knocked Eng down, and then tripped and fell on him, whereupon both

clinched and began to beat and gouge each other without mercy. The

bystanders interfered, and tried to separate them, but they could not do

it, and so allowed them to fight it out. In the end both were disabled,

and were carried to the hospital on one and the same shutter.

Their ancient habit of going always together had its drawbacks when they

reached man's estate, and entered upon the luxury of courting. Both fell

in love with the same girl. Each tried to steal clandestine interviews

with her, but at the critical moment the other would always turn up.

By and by Eng saw, with distraction, that Chang had won the girl's

affections; and, from that day forth, he had to bear with the agony of

being a witness to all their dainty billing and cooing. But with a

magnanimity that did him infinite credit, he succumbed to his fate, and

gave countenance and encouragement to a state of things that bade fair to

sunder his generous heart-strings. He sat from seven every evening until

two in the morning, listening to the fond foolishness of the two lovers,

and to the concussion of hundreds of squandered kisses--for the privilege

of sharing only one of which he would have given his right hand. But he

sat patiently, and waited, and gaped, and yawned, and stretched, and

longed for two o'clock to come. And he took long walks with the lovers

on moonlight evenings--sometimes traversing ten miles, notwithstanding he

was usually suffering from rheumatism. He is an inveterate smoker; but

he could not smoke on these occasions, because the young lady was

painfully sensitive to the smell of tobacco. Eng cordially wanted them

married, and done with it; but although Chang often asked the momentous

question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it

while Eng was by. However, on one occasion, after having walked some

sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from

sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The

lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the

noble brother-in-law. His unwavering faithfulness was the theme of every

tongue. He had stayed by them all through their long and arduous

courtship; and when at last they were married, he lifted his hands above

their heads, and said with impressive unction, "Bless ye, my children, I

will never desert ye!" and he kept his word. Fidelity like this is all

too rare in this cold world.

By and by Eng fell in love with his sister-in-law's sister, and married

her, and since that day they have all lived together, night and day, in

an exceeding sociability which is touching and beautiful to behold, and

is a scathing rebuke to our boasted civilization.

The sympathy existing between these two brothers is so close and so

refined that the feelings, the impulses, the emotions of the one are

instantly experienced by the other. When one is sick, the other is sick;

when one feels pain, the other feels it; when one is angered, the other's

temper takes fire. We have already seen with what happy facility they

both fell in love with the same girl. Now Chang is bitterly opposed to

all forms of intemperance, on principle; but Eng is the reverse--for,

while these men's feelings and emotions are so closely wedded, their

reasoning faculties are unfettered; their thoughts are free. Chang

belongs to the Good Templars, and is a hard--working, enthusiastic

supporter of all temperance reforms. But, to his bitter distress, every

now and then Eng gets drunk, and, of course, that makes Chang drunk too.

This unfortunate thing has been a great sorrow to Chang, for it almost

destroys his usefulness in his favorite field of effort. As sure as he

is to head a great temperance procession Eng ranges up alongside of him,

prompt to the minute, and drunk as a lord; but yet no more dismally and

hopelessly drunk than his brother, who has not tasted a drop. And so the

two begin to hoot and yell, and throw mud and bricks at the Good

Templars; and, of course, they break up the procession. It would be

manifestly wrong to punish Chang for what Eng does, and, therefore, the

Good Templars accept the untoward situation, and suffer in silence and

sorrow. They have officially and deliberately examined into the matter,

and find Chang blameless. They have taken the two brothers and filled

Chang full of warm water and sugar and Eng full of whisky, and in

twenty-five minutes it was not possible to tell which was the drunkest.

Both were as drunk as loons--and on hot whisky punches, by the smell of

their breath. Yet all the while Chang's moral principles were unsullied,

his conscience clear; and so all just men were forced to confess that he

was not morally, but only physically, drunk. By every right and by every

moral evidence the man was strictly sober; and, therefore, it caused his

friends all the more anguish to see him shake hands with the pump and try

to wind his watch with his night-key.

There is a moral in these solemn warnings--or, at least, a warning in

these solemn morals; one or the other. No matter, it is somehow. Let us

heed it; let us profit by it.

I could say more of an instructive nature about these interesting beings,

but let what I have written suffice.

Having forgotten to mention it sooner, I will remark in conclusion that

the ages of the Siamese Twins are respectively fifty-one and fifty-three

years.

SPEECH AT THE SCOTTISH BANQUET IN LONDON--[Written about 1872.]

On the anniversary festival of the Scottish Corporation of London on

Monday evening, in response to the toast of "The Ladies," MARK TWAIN

replied. The following is his speech as reported in the London Observer:

I am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this

especial toast, to 'The Ladies,' or to women if you please, for that is

the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore

the more entitled to reverence [Laughter.] I have noticed that the

Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous

characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to

even the illustrious mother of all mankind herself as a 'lady,' but

speaks of her as a woman, [Laughter.] It is odd, but you will find it is

so. I am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think that the toast

to women is one which, by right and by every rule of gallantry, should

take precedence of all others--of the army, of the navy, of even royalty

itself perhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this day and in

this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general

health to all good women when you drink the health of the Queen of

England and the Princess of Wales. [Loud cheers.] I have in mind a poem

just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. And what

an inspiration that was (and how instantly the present toast recalls the

verses to all our minds) when the most noble, the most gracious, the

purest, and sweetest of all poets says:

"Woman! O woman!--er--

Wom--"

[Laughter.] However, you remember the lines; and you remember how

feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up

before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman;

and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into

worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere

breath, mere words. And you call to mind now, as I speak, how the poet,

with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this

beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows

that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how

the pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe--so wild, so regretful,

so full of mournful retrospection. The lines run thus:

"Alas!--alas!--a--alas!

----Alas!--------alas!"

--and so on. [Laughter.] I do not remember the rest; but, taken

together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that

human genius has ever brought forth--[laughter]--and I feel that if I

were to talk hours I could not do my great theme completer or more

graceful justice than I have now done in simply quoting that poet's

matchless words. [Renewed laughter.] The phases of the womanly nature

are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you shall

find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love.

And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. Who was more

patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a grander

instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you remember

well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over

us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. [Much laughter.] Who does not

sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel? [Laughter.]

Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening

influences, the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia? [Laughter.] Who can

join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when

he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed

in her modification of the Highland costume. [Roars of laughter.]

Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been

poets. As long as language lives the name of Cleopatra will live.

And, not because she conquered George III. [laughter]--but because she

wrote those divine lines:

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,

For God hath made them so."

[More laughter.] The story of the world is adorned with the names of

illustrious ones of our own sex--some of them sons of St. Andrew, too

--Scott, Bruce, Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis--[laughter]--the

gifted Ben Lomond, and the great new Scotchman, Ben Disraeli. [Great

laughter.] Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain

ranges of sublime women--the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey

Gamp; the list is endless--[laughter]--but I will not call the mighty

roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion,

luminous with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving

worship of the good and the true of all epochs and all climes. [Cheers.]

Suffice it for our pride and our honor that we in our day have added to

it such names as those of Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale.

[Cheers.] Woman is all that she should be-gentle, patient, long

suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous impulses. It is her

blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage

the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend

the friendless in a word, afford the healing of her sympathies and a home

in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune

that knock at its hospitable door. [Cheers.] And when I say, God bless

her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a

wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother, but in his heart will say,

Amen! [Loud and prolonged cheering.]

--[Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister of England, had

just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and had made a

speech which gave rise to a world of discussion.]

A GHOST STORY

I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper

stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came. The place had

long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence.

I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead,

that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my

life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of

the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and

clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.

I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mold and the

darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before

it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there,

thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning

half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy,

to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar

songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder

and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail,

the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil

patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the

hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the

distance and left no sound behind.

The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose

and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I

had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it

would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the

rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they

lulled me to sleep.

I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found

myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still.

All but my own heart--I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes

began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were

pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets

slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a

great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited,

listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay

torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At

last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and

held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug,

and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain--it grew

stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the

blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of

the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead

than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room--the step of

an elephant, it seemed to me--it was not like anything human. But it was

moving from me--there was relief in that. I heard it approach the door

--pass out without moving bolt or lock--and wander away among the dismal

corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it

passed--and then silence reigned once more.

When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This is a dream--simply

a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself

that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I

was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found that the

locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh

welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it,

and was just sitting down before the fire, when-down went the pipe out of

my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid

breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by

side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison

mine was but an infant's! Then I had had a visitor, and the elephant

tread was explained.

I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long

time, peering into the darkness, and listening.--Then I heard a grating

noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then

the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response

to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled

slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in

and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these

noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the

clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the

clanking grew nearer--while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking

each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle

upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard

muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently;

and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I

became conscious that my chamber was invaded--that I was not alone.

I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings.

Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling

directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped

--two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They, spattered,

liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had--turned to gouts of

blood as they fell--I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I

saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating

bodiless in the air--floating a moment and then disappearing.

The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, anal a solemn

stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have

light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a

sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand!

All strength went from me apparently, and I fell back like a stricken

invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment it seemed to pass to the

door and go out.

When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble,

and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a

hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat

down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the

ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up

and the broad gas-flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I

heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and

nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned.

The tread reached my very door and paused--the light had dwindled to a

sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The

door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and

presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched

it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its

cloudy folds took shape--an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and

last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy

housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed

above me!

All my misery vanished--for a child might know that no harm could come

with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once,

and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a

lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the

friendly giant. I said:

"Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for

the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish

I had a chair--Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing--"

But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him and down he

went--I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.

"Stop, stop, you'll ruin ev--"

Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved

into its original elements.

"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at' all? Do you want to ruin

all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--"

But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed,

and it was a melancholy ruin.

"Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about

the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry

me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which

would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a

respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex,

you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on.

And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have

broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with

chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to

be ashamed of yourself--you are big enough to know better."

"Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have

not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his

eyes.

"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you

are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here--nothing

else can stand your weight--and besides, we cannot be sociable with you

away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high

counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face." So he sat down

on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red

blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet

fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed

his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honeycombed

bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth.

"What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your

legs, that they are gouged up so?"

"Infernal chilblains--I caught them clear up to the back of my head,

roosting out there under Newell's farm. But I love the place; I love it

as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I

feel when I am there."

We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked

tired, and spoke of it.

"Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And now I will tell you all

about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the

Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the

ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have

given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing

for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it!

haunt the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after

night. I even got other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for

nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to

come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever

got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that

perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around

through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering,

tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost

worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night I roused my

energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am

tired out--entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some

hope!" I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:

"This transcends everything! everything that ever did occur! Why you

poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing

--you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself--the real Cardiff

Giant is in Albany!--[A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and

fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine"

Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real

colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a

museum is Albany,]--Confound it, don't you know your own remains?"

I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation,

overspread a countenance before.

The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:

"Honestly, is that true?"

"As true as I am sitting here."

He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood

irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands

where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping

his chin on his breast); and finally said:

"Well-I never felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold

everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own

ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor

friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how you would

feel if you had made such an ass of yourself."

I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out

into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow

--and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my

bath-tub.

THE CAPITOLINE VENUS

CHAPTER I

[Scene-An Artist's Studio in Rome.]

"Oh, George, I do love you!"

"Bless your dear heart, Mary, I know that--why is your father so

obdurate?"

"George, he means well, but art is folly to him--he only understands

groceries. He thinks you would starve me."

"Confound his wisdom--it savors of inspiration. Why am I not a

money-making bowelless grocer, instead of a divinely gifted sculptor

with nothing to eat?"

"Do not despond, Georgy, dear--all his prejudices will fade away as soon

as you shall have acquired fifty thousand dol--"

"Fifty thousand demons! Child, I am in arrears for my board!"

CHAPTER II

[Scene-A Dwelling in Rome.]

"My dear sir, it is useless to talk. I haven't anything against you, but

I can't let my daughter marry a hash of love, art, and starvation--I

believe you have nothing else to offer."

"Sir, I am poor, I grant you. But is fame nothing? The Hon. Bellamy

Foodle of Arkansas says that my new statue of America, is a clever piece

of sculpture, and he is satisfied that my name will one day be famous."

"Bosh! What does that Arkansas ass know about it? Fame's nothing--the

market price of your marble scarecrow is the thing to look at. It took

you six months to chisel it, and you can't sell it for a hundred dollars.

No, sir! Show me fifty thousand dollars and you can have my daughter

--otherwise she marries young Simper. You have just six months to raise

the money in. Good morning, sir."

"Alas! Woe is me!"

CHAPTER III

[ Scene-The Studio.]

"Oh, John, friend of my boyhood, I am the unhappiest of men."

"You're a simpleton!"

"I have nothing left to love but my poor statue of America--and see, even

she has no sympathy for me in her cold marble countenance--so beautiful

and so heartless!"

"You're a dummy!"

"Oh, John!"

Oh, fudge! Didn't you say you had six months to raise the money in?"

"Don't deride my agony, John. If I had six centuries what good would it

do? How could it help a poor wretch without name, capital, or friends?"

"Idiot! Coward! Baby! Six months to raise the money in--and five will

do!"

"Are you insane?"

"Six months--an abundance. Leave it to me. I'll raise it."

"What do you mean, John? How on earth can you raise such a monstrous sum

for me?"

"Will you let that be my business, and not meddle? Will you leave the

thing in my hands? Will you swear to submit to whatever I do? Will you

pledge me to find no fault with my actions?"

"I am dizzy--bewildered--but I swear."

John took up a hammer and deliberately smashed the nose of America! He

made another pass and two of her fingers fell to the floor--another, and

part of an ear came away--another, and a row of toes was mangled and

dismembered--another, and the left leg, from the knee down, lay a

fragmentary ruin!

John put on his hat and departed.

George gazed speechless upon the battered and grotesque nightmare before

him for the space of thirty seconds, and then wilted to the floor and

went into convulsions.

John returned presently with a carriage, got the broken-hearted artist

and the broken-legged statue aboard, and drove off, whistling low and

tranquilly.

He left the artist at his lodgings, and drove off and disappeared down

the Via Quirinalis with the statue.

CHAPTER IV

[Scene--The Studio.]

"The six months will be up at two o'clock to-day! Oh, agony! My life is

blighted. I would that I were dead. I had no supper yesterday. I have

had no breakfast to-day. I dare not enter an eating-house. And hungry?

--don't mention it! My bootmaker duns me to death--my tailor duns me

--my landlord haunts me. I am miserable. I haven't seen John since that

awful day. She smiles on me tenderly when we meet in the great

thoroughfares, but her old flint of a father makes her look in the other

direction in short order. Now who is knocking at that door? Who is come

to persecute me? That malignant villain the bootmaker, I'll warrant.

Come in!"

"Ah, happiness attend your highness--Heaven be propitious to your grace!

I have brought my lord's new boots--ah, say nothing about the pay, there

is no hurry, none in the world. Shall be proud if my noble lord will

continue to honor me with his custom--ah, adieu!"

"Brought the boots himself! Don't wait his pay! Takes his leave with a

bow and a scrape fit to honor majesty withal! Desires a continuance of

my custom! Is the world coming to an end? Of all the--come in!"

"Pardon, signore, but I have brought your new suit of clothes for--"

"Come in!"

"A thousand pardons for this intrusion, your worship. But I have

prepared the beautiful suite of rooms below for you--this wretched den is

but ill suited to--"

"Come in!"

"I have called to say that your credit at our bank, some time since

unfortunately interrupted, is entirely and most satisfactorily restored,

and we shall be most happy if you will draw upon us for any--"

"COME IN!"

"My noble boy, she is yours! She'll be here in a moment! Take her

--marry her--love her--be happy!--God bless you both! Hip, hip, hur--"

"COME IN!!!!!"

"Oh, George, my own darling, we are saved!"

"Oh, Mary, my own darling, we are saved--but I'll swear I don't know why

nor how!"

CHAPTER V

[Scene-A Roman Cafe.]

One of a group of American gentlemen reads and translates from the weekly

edition of 'Il Slangwhanger di Roma' as follows:

WONDERFUL DISCOVERY--Some six months ago Signor John Smitthe, an American

gentleman now some years a resident of Rome, purchased for a trifle a

small piece of ground in the Campagna, just beyond the tomb of the Scipio

family, from the owner, a bankrupt relative of the Princess Borghese.

Mr. Smitthe afterward went to the Minister of the Public Records and had

the piece of ground transferred to a poor American artist named George

Arnold, explaining that he did it as payment and satisfaction for

pecuniary damage accidentally done by him long since upon property

belonging to Signor Arnold, and further observed that he would make

additional satisfaction by improving the ground for Signor A., at his own

charge and cost. Four weeks ago, while making some necessary excavations

upon the property, Signor Smitthe unearthed the most remarkable ancient

statue that has ever bees added to the opulent art treasures of Rome.

It was an exquisite figure of a woman, and though sadly stained by the

soil and the mold of ages, no eye can look unmoved upon its ravishing

beauty. The nose, the left leg from the knee down, an ear, and also the

toes of the right foot and two fingers of one of the hands were gone,

but otherwise the noble figure was in a remarkable state of preservation.

The government at once took military possession of the statue, and

appointed a commission of art-critics, antiquaries, and cardinal princes

of the church to assess its value and determine the remuneration that

must go to the owner of the ground in which it was found. The whole

affair was kept a profound secret until last night. In the mean time the

commission sat with closed doors and deliberated. Last night they

decided unanimously that the statue is a Venus, and the work of some

unknown but sublimely gifted artist of the third century before Christ.

They consider it the most faultless work of art the world has any

knowledge of.

At midnight they held a final conference and, decided that the Venus was

worth the enormous sum of ten million francs! In accordance with Roman

law and Roman usage, the government being half-owner in all works of art

found in the Campagna, the State has naught to do but pay five million

francs to Mr. Arnold and take permanent possession of the beautiful

statue. This morning the Venus will be removed to the Capitol, there to

remain, and at noon the commission will wait upon Signor Arnold with His

Holiness the Pope's order upon the Treasury for the princely sum of five

million francs is gold!

Chorus of Voices.--"Luck! It's no name for it!"

Another Voice.--"Gentlemen, I propose that we immediately form an

American joint-stock company for the purchase of lands and excavations of

statues here, with proper connections in Wall Street to bull and bear the

stock."

All.--"Agreed."

CHAPTER VI

[Scene--The Roman Capitol Ten Years Later.]

"Dearest Mary, this is the most celebrated statue in the world. This is

the renowned 'Capitoline Venus' you've heard so much about. Here she is

with her little blemishes 'restored' (that is, patched) by the most noted

Roman artists--and the mere fact that they did the humble patching of so

noble a creation will make their names illustrious while the world

stands. How strange it seems this place! The day before I last stood

here, ten happy years ago, I wasn't a rich man bless your soul, I hadn't

a cent. And yet I had a good deal to do with making Rome mistress of

this grandest work of ancient art the world contains."

"The worshiped, the illustrious Capitoline Venus--and what a sum she is

valued at! Ten millions of francs!"

"Yes--now she is."

"And oh, Georgy, how divinely beautiful she is!"

"Ah, yes but nothing to what she was before that blessed John Smith broke

her leg and battered her nose. Ingenious Smith!--gifted Smith!--noble

Smith! Author of all our bliss! Hark! Do you know what that wheeze

means? Mary, that cub has got the whooping-cough. Will you never learn

to take care of the children!"

THE END

The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the

most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can

boast of. But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go

into the customary ecstasies over it, don't permit this true and secret

history of its origin to mar your bliss--and when you read about a

gigantic Petrified man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New

York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel--and if the Barnum

that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don't you

buy. Send him to the Pope!

[NOTE.--The above sketch was written at the time the famous swindle of

the "Petrified Giant" was the sensation of the day in the United States]

SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE

DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON

GENTLEMEN: I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished

guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has

extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of

brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's Arms Company making the

destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life insurance citizens

paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating

their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades

taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to assist in welcoming our

guest first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of

hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he

is in sympathy with insurance and has been the means of making may other

men cast their sympathies in the same direction.

Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance

line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been

a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a

better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a

kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their

horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an

advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care

for politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there

is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an

entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon

of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in

their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience

of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a

freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his

remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen

nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's

face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.

I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity

which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY--[The

speaker is a director of the company named.]--is an institution which is

peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it

his custom.

No man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year

is out. Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so

often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite

left him, he ceased to smile--life was but a weariness. Three weeks ago

I got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit

in this land has a good steady income and a stylish suit of new bandages

every day, and travels around on a shutter.

I will say, in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is

none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I

can say the same for the rest of the speakers.

JOHN CHINAMAN IN NEW YORK

As I passed along by one of those monster American tea stores in New

York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a

sign. Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their

heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks,

and a group had stopped to stare deliberately.

Is it not a shame that we, who prate so much about civilization and

humanity, are content to degrade a fellow-being to such an office as

this? Is it not time for reflection when we find ourselves willing to

see in such a being matter for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and

grave reflection? Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled

from his natural home beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have

touched these idle strangers that thronged about him; but did it?

Apparently not. Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of

culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint Chinese hat, with peaked

roof and ball on top, and his long queue dangling down his back; his

short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like the rest of

his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue cotton,

tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles; and his clumsy

blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from

head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or

his melancholy face, and passed on. In my heart I pitied the friendless

Mongol. I wondered what was passing behind his sad face, and what

distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his

heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific?

among the ricefields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of

remembered mountain peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange

forest trees unknown to climes like ours? And now and then, rippling

among his visions and his dreams, did he hear familiar laughter and

half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the friendly

faces of a bygone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen

this bronzed wanderer. In order that the group of idlers might be

touched at least by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his

pauper dress and his dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on

the shoulder and said:

"Cheer up--don't be downhearted. It is not America that treats you in

this way, it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the

humanity out of his heart. America has a broader hospitality for the

exiled and oppressed. America and Americans are always ready to help the

unfortunate. Money shall be raised--you shall go back to China you shall

see your friends again. What wages do they pay you here?"

"Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy,

barrin' the troublesome furrin clothes that's so expinsive."

The exile remains at his post. The New York tea merchants who need

picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen.

HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER--[Written abort 1870.]

I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without

misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without

misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object.

The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I

accepted the terms he offered, and took his place.

The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the

week with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with

some solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice.

As I left the office, toward sundown, a group of men and boys at the foot

of the stairs dispersed with one impulse, and gave me passageway, and I

heard one or two of them say: "That's him!" I was naturally pleased by

this incident. The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of

the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals standing here and

there in the street and over the way, watching me with interest. The

group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say,

"Look at his eye!" I pretended not to observe the notice I was

attracting, but secretly I was pleased with it, and was purposing to

write an account of it to my aunt. I went up the short flight of stairs,

and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door,

which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking men,

whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then they both

plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised.

In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine

but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He

seemed to have something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on

the floor, and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our

paper.

He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his spectacles with

his handkerchief he said, "Are you the new editor?"

I said I was.

"Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before?"

"No," I said; "this is my first attempt."

"Very likely. Have you had any experience in agriculture practically?"

"No; I believe I have not."

"Some instinct told me so," said the old gentleman, putting on his

spectacles, and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded

his paper into a convenient shape. "I wish to read you what must have

made me have that instinct. It was this editorial. Listen, and see if

it was you that wrote it:

"'Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them. It is much

better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree.'

"Now, what do you think of that? for I really suppose you wrote it?"

"Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no

doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are

spoiled in this township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition,

when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree--"

"Shake your grandmother! Turnips don't grow on trees!"

"Oh, they don't, don't they? Well, who said they did? The language was

intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows

anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine."

Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and

stamped on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did

not know as much as a cow; and then went--out and banged the door after

him, and, in short, acted in such a way that I fancied he was displeased

about something. But not knowing what the trouble was, I could not be

any help to him.

Pretty soon after this a long, cadaverous creature, with lanky locks

hanging down to his shoulders, and a week's stubble bristling from the

hills and valleys of his face, darted within the door, and halted,

motionless, with finger on lip, and head and body bent in listening

attitude. No sound was heard.

Still he listened. No sound. Then he turned the key in the door, and

came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till he was within long reaching

distance of me, when he stopped and, after scanning my face with intense

interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom, and

said:

"There, you wrote that. Read it to me--quick! Relieve me. I suffer."

I read as follows; and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the

relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out

of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful

moonlight over a desolate landscape:

The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it.

It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September.

In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch

out its young.

It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain.

Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his

corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of

August.

Concerning the pumpkin. This berry is a favorite with the natives

of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for

the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference

over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully

as satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange

family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or

two varieties of the squash. But the custom of planting it in the

front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is

now generally conceded that, the pumpkin as a shade tree is a

failure.

Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to

spawn--

The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said:

"There, there--that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have

read it just as I did, word, for word. But, stranger, when I first read

it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before,

notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I

believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have

heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody--because, you know,

I knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well

begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain,

and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several

people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want

him. But I thought I would call in here as I passed along and make the

thing perfectly certain; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is

lucky for the chap that is in the tree. I should have killed him sure,

as I went back. Good-by, sir, good-by; you have taken a great load off

my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural

articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-by, sir."

I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person

had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely

accessory to them. But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the

regular editor walked in! [I thought to myself, Now if you had gone to

Egypt as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand

in; but you wouldn't do it, and here you are. I sort of expected you.]

The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.

He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers

had made, and then said "This is a sad business--a very sad business.

There is the mucilage-bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a

spittoon, and two candlesticks. But that is not the worst. The

reputation of the paper is injured--and permanently, I fear. True, there

never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a

large edition or soared to such celebrity; but does one want to be famous

for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as

I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are

roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they

think you are crazy. And well they might after reading your editorials.

They are a disgrace to journalism. Why, what put it into your head that

you could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first

rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being

the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you

recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its playfulness

and its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if

music be played to them was superfluous--entirely superfluous. Nothing

disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever

about music. Ah, heavens and earth, friend! if you had made the

acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have

graduated with higher honor than you could to-day. I never saw anything

like it. Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of

commerce is steadily gaining in favor is simply calculated to destroy

this journal. I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no

more holiday--I could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you

in my chair. I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to

recommend next. It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your

discussing oyster-beds under the head of 'Landscape Gardening.' I want

you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday.

Oh! why didn't you tell me you didn't know anything about agriculture?"

"Tell you, you corn-stalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's

the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have

been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the

first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to

edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write the dramatic critiques for the

second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice

apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good

farming and no more. Who review the books? People who never wrote one.

Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had the largest

opportunities for knowing nothing about it. Who criticize the Indian

campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who

never have had to run a foot-race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of

the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire

with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing

bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in

the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you--yam? Men, as a

general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored novel line,

sensation, drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on

agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell

me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it

from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger

the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows

if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of

diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish

world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have

treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I

have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I

could make your paper of interest to all classes--and I have. I said I

could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had

two more weeks I'd have done it. And I'd have given you the best class

of readers that ever an agricultural paper had--not a farmer in it, nor a

solitary individual who could tell a watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to

save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant.

Adios."

I then left.

THE PETRIFIED MAN

Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an

unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly

missing one's mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in

this thing. In the fall of 1862, in Nevada and California, the people

got to running wild about extraordinary petrifactions and other natural

marvels. One could scarcely pick up a paper without finding in it one or

two glorified discoveries of this kind. The mania was becoming a little

ridiculous. I was a brand-new local editor in Virginia City, and I felt

called upon to destroy this growing evil; we all have our benignant,

fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose. I chose to kill the

petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate satire. But maybe it

was altogether too delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of

it at all. I put my scheme in the shape of the discovery of a remarkably

petrified man.

I had had a temporary falling out with Mr.----, the new coroner and

justice of the peace of Humboldt, and thought I might as well touch him

up a little at the same time and make him ridiculous, and thus combine

pleasure with business. So I told, in patient, belief-compelling detail,

all about the finding of a petrified-man at Gravelly Ford (exactly a

hundred and twenty miles, over a breakneck mountain trail from where

---- lived); how all the savants of the immediate neighborhood had been to

examine it (it was notorious that there was not a living creature within

fifty miles of there, except a few starving Indians; some crippled

grasshoppers, and four or five buzzards out of meat and too feeble to get

away); how those savants all pronounced the petrified man to have been in

a state of complete petrifaction for over ten generations; and then, with

a seriousness that I ought to have been ashamed to assume, I stated that

as soon as Mr.----heard the news he summoned a jury, mounted his mule,

and posted off, with noble reverence for official duty, on that awful

five days' journey, through alkali, sage brush, peril of body, and

imminent starvation, to hold an inquest on this man that had been dead

and turned to everlasting stone for more than three hundred years!

And then, my hand being "in," so to speak, I went on, with the same

unflinching gravity, to state that the jury returned a verdict that

deceased came to his death from protracted exposure. This only moved me

to higher flights of imagination, and I said that the jury, with that

charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a grave, and were about

to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found that for ages

a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone

against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and

cemented him fast to the "bed-rock"; that the jury (they were all

silver-miners) canvassed the difficulty a moment, and then got out their

powder and fuse, and proceeded to drill a hole under him, in order to

blast him from his position, when Mr.----, "with that delicacy so

characteristic of him, forbade them, observing that it would be little

less than sacrilege to do such a thing."

From beginning to end the "Petrified Man" squib was a string of roaring

absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretense of truth that

even imposed upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of

believing in my own fraud. But I really had no desire to deceive

anybody, and no expectation of doing it. I depended on the way the

petrified man was sitting to explain to the public that he was a swindle.

Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make it

obscure--and I did. I would describe the position of one foot, and then

say his right thumb was against the side of his nose; then talk about his

other foot, and presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand

were spread apart; then talk about the back of his head a little, and

return and say the left thumb was hooked into the right little finger;

then ramble off about something else, and by and by drift back again and

remark that the fingers of the left hand were spread like those of the

right. But I was too ingenious. I mixed it up rather too much; and so

all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the

article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered and

comprehended the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man's

hands.

As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my petrified Man

was a disheartening failure; for everybody received him in innocent good

faith, and I was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down

the wonder-business with, and bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to

the grand chief place in the list of the genuine marvels our Nevada had

produced. I was so disappointed at the curious miscarriage of my scheme,

that at first I was angry, and did not like to think about it; but by and

by, when the exchanges began to come in with the Petrified Man copied and

guilelessly glorified, I began to feel a soothing secret satisfaction;

and as my gentleman's field of travels broadened, and by the exchanges I

saw that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory,

state after state, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and

culminated in sublime and unimpeached legitimacy in the august London

Lancet, my cup was full, and I said I was glad I had done it. I think

that for about eleven months, as nearly as I can remember, Mr.----'s

daily mail-bag continued to be swollen by the addition of half a bushel

of newspapers hailing from many climes with the Petrified Man in them,

marked around with a prominent belt of ink. I sent them to him. I did

it for spite, not for fun.

He used to shovel them into his back yard and curse. And every day

during all those months the miners, his constituents (for miners never

quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if

he could tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the

Petrified Man in it. He could have accommodated a continent with them.

I hated-----in those days, and these things pacified me and pleased me.

I could not have gotten more real comfort out of him without killing him.

MY BLOODY MASSACRE

The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon the

financial expedients of "cooking dividends," a thing which became

shamefully frequent on the Pacific coast for a while. Once more, in my

self-complacent simplicity I felt that the time had arrived for me to

rise up and be a reformer. I put this reformatory satire, in the shape

of a fearful "Massacre at Empire City." The San Francisco papers were

making a great outcry about the iniquity of the Daney Silver-Mining

Company, whose directors had declared a "cooked" or false dividend, for

the purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so that they could

sell out at a comfortable figure, and then scramble from under the

tumbling concern. And while abusing the Daney, those papers did not

forget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver stocks and

invest in, sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring Valley

Water Company, etc. But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold the

Spring Valley cooked a dividend too! And so, under the insidious mask of

an invented "bloody massacre," I stole upon the public unawares with my

scathing satire upon the dividend cooking system. In about half a column

of imaginary human carnage I told how a citizen hard murdered his wife

and nine children, and then committed suicide. And I said slyly, at the

bottom, that the sudden madness of which this melancholy massacre was the

result had been brought about by his having allowed himself to be

persuaded by the California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada

silver stocks, and buy into Spring Valley just in time to get cooked

along with that company's fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had in

the world.

Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived. But I

made the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interesting

that the public devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked the

following distinctly stated facts, to wit: The murderer was perfectly

well known to every creature in the land as a bachelor, and consequently

he could not murder his wife and nine children; he murdered them "in his

splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forest

between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," when even the very pickled oysters

that came on our tables knew that there was not a "dressed-stone mansion"

in all Nevada Territory; also that, so far from there being a "great pine

forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," there wasn't a solitary

tree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was patent

and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same

place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could

be no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated

that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that

the reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of

an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife's

reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with

tremendous eclat, and dropped dead in front of the chief saloon, the envy

and admiration of all beholders.

Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that little

satire created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the

territory. Most of the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, and

they never finished their meal. There was something about those minutely

faithful details that was a sufficing substitute for food. Few people

that were able to read took food that morning. Dan and I (Dan was my

reportorial associate) took our seats on either side of our customary

table in the "Eagle Restaurant," and, as I unfolded the shred they used

to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table two

stalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled about

their clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from the

Truckee with a load of hay. The one facing me had the morning paper

folded to a long, narrow strip, and I knew, without any telling, that

that strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financial

satire. From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heedless

son of a hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to the

bloody details as quickly as possible; and so he was missing the

guide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud.

Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder to

take in a potato approaching it on a fork; the potato halted, the face

lit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement. Then he

broke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars--his potato

cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it

occasionally; but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still

more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and

rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression of

concentrated awe:

"Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp. Cuss'd if I

want any breakfast!"

And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend

departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied.

He never got down to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did.

They found the thrilling particulars sufficient. To drop in with a poor

little moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre was like

following the expiring sun with a candle and hope to attract the world's

attention to it.

The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine

occurrence never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by

all those telltale absurdities and impossibilities concerning the "great

pine forest," the "dressed-stone mansion," etc. But I found out then,

and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory

surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to

suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we

skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and

be happy.

THE UNDERTAKER'S CHAT

"Now that corpse," said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of

deceased approvingly, was a brick-every way you took him he was a brick.

He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last

moments. Friends wanted metallic burial-case--nothing else would do.

I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time--anybody could see

that.

"Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch

out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it.

Said he went more on room than style, anyway in a last final container.

"Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying who he was

and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust out such a

gaily thing as that in a little country-town like this. What did corpse

say?

"Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general

destination onto it with a blacking-brush and a stencil-plate, 'long with

a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for the tomb, and

mark him C. O. D., and just let him flicker. He warn't distressed any

more than you be--on the contrary, just as ca,'m and collected as a

hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to a body would find

it considerable better to attract attention by a picturesque moral

character than a natty burial-case with a swell door-plate on it.

"Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for a corpse like that 'n any I've

tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like

that. You feel that what you're doing is appreciated. Lord bless you,

so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly satisfied; said

his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them preparations was

bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't wish to be kept

layin' around. You never see such a clear head as what he had--and so

ca,'m and so cool. Jist a hunk of brains--that is what he was.

Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's

head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain-fever a-raging in

one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it--didn't

affect it any more than an Injun Insurrection in Arizona affects the

Atlantic States.

"Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was

down on flummery--didn,'t want any procession--fill the hearse full of

mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind. He was the most

down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful, simpleminded

creature it was what he was, you can depend on that. He was just set on

having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in

laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of

directions; then he had the minister stand up behind along box with a

table--cloth over it, to represent the coffin, and read his funeral

sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him

scratch out every bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then

he made them trot out the choir, so's he could help them pick out the

tunes for the occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,'

because he'd always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn

music made him sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes

(because they all loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just

laid there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all

over how much he enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited,

and tried to join in, for, mind you, he was pretty proud of his abilities

in the singing line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just

going to spread himself his breath took a walk.

"I never see a man snuffed out so sudden. Ah, it was a great loss--a,

powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I

hain't got time to be palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and

mosey along with him; and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him

into the hearse and meander along. Relations bound to have it so--don't

pay no attention to dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but, if I

had my way, if I didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the

hearse I'll be cuss'd. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for

his comfort is little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to

deceive him or take advantage of him; and whatever a corpse trusts me to

do I'm a-going to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him

yaller and keep him for a keepsake--you hear me!"

He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a

hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a

healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any

occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many

months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that

impressed it.

CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS

Against all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the

curse of bachelordom! Because:

They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the

gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the

ancient and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book

aloft, in an uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your

eyes.

When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the

morning, they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but,

glorying in their absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness,

they make the bed just as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the

pang their tyranny will cause you.

Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they

undo your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has

given you.

If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way,

they move the bed.

If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will

stay up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They

do it on purpose.

If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they

don't, and so they move it.

They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly

enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It

is because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and

make wild sweeps for them in the dark with the bootjack, and swear.

They always put the matchbox in some other place. They hunt up a new

place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass

thing, where the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that

glass thing, groping in the dark, and get yourself into trouble.

They are for ever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in in the

night you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in

the morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the

slop-bucket by the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in

at midnight or thereabout, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you

will proceed toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will

disgust you. They like that.

No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay

there. They will take it and move it the first chance they get. It is

their nature. And, besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and

contrary this way. They would die if they couldn't be villains.

They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on

the floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire

with your valuable manuscripts. If there is any one particular old scrap

that you are more down on than any other, and which you are gradually

wearing your life out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains

you possibly can in that direction, but it won't be of any use, because

they will always fetch that old scrap back and put it in the same old

place again every time. It does them good.

And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with

purloining the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a

hereafter? Absolutely nothing.

If you leave the key in the door for convenience' sake, they will carry

it down to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the

vile pretense of trying to protect your property from thieves; but

actually they do it because they want to make you tramp back down-stairs

after it when you come home tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a

waiter for it, which waiter will expect you to pay him something. In

which case I suppose the degraded creatures divide.

They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus

destroying your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up,

they don't come any more till next day.

They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out

of pure cussedness, and nothing else.

Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct.

If I can get a bill through the legislature abolishing chambermaids, I

mean to do it.

AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN--[Written about 1865.]

The facts in the following case came to me by letter from a young lady

who lives in the beautiful city of San Jose; she is perfectly unknown to

me, and simply signs herself "Aurelia Maria," which may possibly be a

fictitious name. But no matter, the poor girl is almost heartbroken by

the misfortunes she has undergone, and so confused by the conflicting

counsels of misguided friends and insidious enemies that she does not

know what course to pursue in order to extricate herself from the web of

difficulties in which she seems almost hopelessly involved. In this

dilemma she turns to me for help, and supplicates for my guidance and

instruction with a moving eloquence that would touch the heart of a

statue. Hear her sad story:

She says that when she was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all

the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named

Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior.

They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives,

and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to, be

characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of

humanity. But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became

infect with smallpox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered

from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mold, and his

comeliness gone forever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at

first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the

marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial.

The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge,

while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well

and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee.

Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love

triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to

reform.

And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the

premature discharge of a Fourth of July cannon, and within three months

he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart was

almost crushed by these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply

grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she

did, that he could not last forever under this disastrous process of

reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career, and in her

tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and lose,

that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an

alarming depreciation. Still, her brave soul bore her up, and she

resolved to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition yet a little

longer.

Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed

it; Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one of

his eyes entirely. The friends and relatives of the bride, considering

that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected

of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken

off; but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous spirit which did

her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not

discover that Breckinridge was to blame.

So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg.

It was a sad day for the poor girl when, she saw the surgeons reverently

bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience,

and her heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was

gone. She felt that the field of her affections was growing more and

more circumscribed every day, but once more she frowned down her

relatives and renewed her betrothal.

Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred.

There was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That

man was Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers of New Jersey. He was hurrying

home with happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair forever, and in

that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had

spared his head.

At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do. She

still loves her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling--she

still loves what is left of him but her parents are bitterly opposed to

the match, because he has no property and is disabled from working, and

she has not sufficient means to support both comfortably. "Now, what

should she do?" she asked with painful and anxious solicitude.

It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the lifelong

happiness of a woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and I feel

that it would be assuming too great a responsibility to do more than make

a mere suggestion in the case. How would it do to build to him? If

Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with

wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, and give him

another show; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not

break his neck in the mean time, marry him and take the chances. It does

not seem to me that there is much risk, anyway, Aurelia, because if he

sticks to his singular propensity for damaging himself every time he sees

a good opportunity, his next experiment is bound to finish him, and then

you are safe, married or single. If married, the wooden legs and such

other valuables as he may possess revert to the widow, and you see you

sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a noble but most

unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose

extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought

the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for

you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he

had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen

fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as

possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed

it. We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and try not to

feel exasperated at him.

"AFTER" JENKINS

A grand affair of a ball--the Pioneers'--came off at the Occidental some

time ago. The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the

occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jerkins may

get an idea therefrom:

Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant 'pate de foie gras,' made expressly

for her, and was greatly admired. Miss S. had her hair done up. She was

the center of attraction for the envy of all the ladies. Mrs. G. W. was

tastefully dressed in a 'tout ensemble,' and was greeted with deafening

applause wherever she went. Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid

gloves. Her modest and engaging manner accorded well with the

unpretending simplicity of her costume and caused her to be regarded with

absorbing interest by every one.

The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall, whose

exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants

alike. How beautiful she was!

The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful

false teeth, and the 'bon jour' effect they naturally produced was

heightened by her enchanting and well-sustained smile.

Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress which is so

peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened with

a neat pearl-button solitaire. The fine contrast between the sparkling

vivacity of her natural optic, and the steadfast attentiveness of her

placid glass eye, was the subject of general and enthusiastic remark.

Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enameled, and the easy grace

with which she blew it from time to time marked her as a cultivated and

accomplished woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited

the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it.

ABOUT BARBERS

All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the

surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a

barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences

in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this

morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I

approached it from Main--a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but

it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I

followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one

presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down,

hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the

remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair,

while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his

customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest.

When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to

solicitude. When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket

for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to

anxiety. When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were

pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers'

cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say "Next!" first,

my very breath stood still with the suspense. But when at the

culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through

his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single

instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling

into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that

enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell

him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair.

I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck.

Of course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting,

silent, unsociable, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who

are waiting their turn in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the

iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time far a while

reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for

dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the

private bayrum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the

private shaving-cups in the pigeonholes; studied the stained and damaged

cheap prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous

recumbent sultanas, and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting

her grandfather's spectacles on; execrated in my heart the cheerful

canary and the distracting parrot that few barbers' shops are without.

Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last year's illustrated

papers that littered the foul center-table, and conned their

unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events.

At last my turn came. A voice said "Next!" and I surrendered to--No. 2,

of course. It always happens so. I said meekly that I was in a hurry,

and it affected him as strongly as if he had never heard it. He shoved

up my head, and put a napkin under it. He plowed his fingers into my

collar and fixed a towel there. He explored my hair with his claws and

suggested that it needed trimming. I said I did not want it trimmed. He

explored again and said it was pretty long for the present style--better

have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially. I said I had

had it cut only a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment,

and then asked with a disparaging manner, who cut it? I came back at him

promptly with a "You did!" I had him there. Then he fell to stirring up

his lather and regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to

get close and examine his chin critically or inspect a pimple. Then he

lathered one side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the

other, when a dog-fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window

and stayed and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets

with the other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction. He

finished lathering, and then began to rub in the suds with his hand.

He now began to sharpen his razor on an old suspender, and was delayed a

good deal on account of a controversy about a cheap masquerade ball he

had figured at the night before, in red cambric and bogus ermine, as some

kind of a king. He was so gratified with being chaffed about some damsel

whom he had smitten with his charms that he used every means to continue

the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at the chaffings of his

fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the glass, and

he put down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care,

plastering an inverted arch of it down on his forehead, accomplishing an

accurate "Part" behind, and brushing the two wings forward over his ears

with nice exactness. In the mean time the lather was drying on my face,

and apparently eating into my vitals.

Now he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch

the skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as

convenience in shaving demanded. As long as he was on the tough sides of

my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at

my chin, the tears came. He now made a handle of my nose, to assist him

shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of

circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in

the shop was to clean the kerosene-lamps. I had often wondered in an

indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss.

About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be

most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on

the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately

sharpened his razor--he might have done it before. I do not like a close

shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get

him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my

chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice

without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one

little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the

forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up

smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum,

and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human

being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by slapping

with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face

in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next

he poked bay ruin into the cut place with his towel, then choked the

wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would

have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not

rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me

up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he

suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly.

I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath

yesterday. I "had him" again. He next recommended some of "Smith's Hair

Glorifier," and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the

new perfume, "Jones's Delight of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me

some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of

his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me.

He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise,

sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my

protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the

roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering

the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while

combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an

account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his

till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too

late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly

about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily

sang out "Next!"

This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting

over a day for my revenge--I am going to attend his funeral.

"PARTY CRIES" IN IRELAND

Belfast is a peculiarly religious community. This may be said of the

whole of the North of Ireland. About one-half of the people are

Protestants and the other half Catholics. Each party does all it can to

make its own doctrines popular and draw the affections of the irreligious

toward them. One hears constantly of the most touching instances of this

zeal. A week ago a vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to

dedicate a new Cathedral; and when they started home again the roadways

were lined with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them till

all the region round about was marked with blood. I thought that only

Catholics argued in that way, but it seems to be a mistake.

Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to

admonish the erring with. The law has tried to break this up, but not

with perfect success. It has decreed that irritating "party cries" shall

not be indulged in, and that persons uttering them shall be fined forty

shillings and costs. And so, in the police court reports every day, one

sees these fines recorded. Last week a girl of twelve years old was

fined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming in the public

streets that she was "a Protestant." The usual cry is, "To hell with the

Pope!" or "To hell with the Protestants!" according to the utterer's

system of salvation.