ABOUT SMELLS

In a recent issue of the "Independent," the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, of

Brooklyn, has the following utterance on the subject of "Smells":

I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in

church, and a working man should enter the door at the other end,

would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the

sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer

for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch dog. The fact is,

if you, had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing up of the

common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of

Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the

church thus with bad smells, I will have nothing to do with this

work of evangelization.

We have reason to believe that there will be labouring men in heaven; and

also a number of negroes, and Esquimaux, and Terra del Fuegans, and

Arabs, and a few Indians, and possibly even some Spaniards and

Portuguese. All things are possible with God. We shall have all these

sorts of people in heaven; but, alas! in getting them we shall lose the

society of Dr. Talmage. Which is to say, we shall lose the company of

one who could give more real "tone" to celestial society than any other

contribution Brooklyn could furnish. And what would eternal happiness be

without the Doctor? Blissful, unquestionably--we know that well enough

but would it be 'distingue,' would it be 'recherche' without him? St.

Matthew without stockings or sandals; St. Jerome bare headed, and with a

coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground; St. Sebastian with

scarcely any raiment at all--these we should see, and should enjoy seeing

them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn away

regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well enough,

but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn." I fear me that in the better

world we shall not even have Dr. Talmage's "good Christian friend."

For if he were sitting under the glory of the Throne, and the keeper of

the keys admitted a Benjamin Franklin or other labouring man, that

"friend," with his fine natural powers infinitely augmented by

emancipation from hampering flesh, would detect him with a single sniff,

and immediately take his hat and ask to be excused.

To all outward seeming, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is of the same

material as that used in the construction of his early predecessors in

the ministry; and yet one feels that there must be a difference somewhere

between him and the Saviour's first disciples. It may be because here,

in the nineteenth century, Dr. T. has had advantages which Paul and

Peter and the others could not and did not have. There was a lack of

polish about them, and a looseness of etiquette, and a want of

exclusiveness, which one cannot help noticing. They healed the very

beggars, and held intercourse with people of a villainous odour every

day. If the subject of these remarks had been chosen among the original

Twelve Apostles, he would not have associated with the rest, because he

could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his comrades who came

from around the Sea of Galilee. He would have resigned his commission

with some such remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master,

if thou art going to kill the church thus with bad smells, I will have

nothing to do with this work of evangelization." He is a disciple, and

makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is, that he makes it

in the nineteenth instead of the first century.

Is there a choir in Mr. T.'s church? And does it ever occur that they

have no better manners than to sing that hymn which is so suggestive of

labourers and mechanics:

"Son of the Carpenter! receive

This humble work of mine?"

Now, can it be possible that in a handful of centuries the Christian

character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even the

stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers

and wilts under an unsavoury smell? We are not prepared to believe so,

the reverend Doctor and his friend to the contrary notwithstanding.

A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES

When I published a squib recently in which I said I was going to edit an

Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to

deceive anybody. I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one's

confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who

will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless

inventions that go by that name. I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly

and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not

mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal

barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine--a tree

whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches

should spread abroad till they washed the chorea of, etc., etc. I

thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader. But to

make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously

mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my

postscript that I did not know anything about Agriculture. But alas!

right there is where I made my worst mistake--for that remark seems to

have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It

lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers

feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of

agricultural editors who "know it all." In fact, one of my

correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with

letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and

maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever

grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way

of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful,

and shall never write obscurely for fun any more).

Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in

fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of

the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and

the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at

second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write

a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in

perfect good faith by somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to

do. It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never

tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one

to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only

person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque. In other

instances the "nub" or moral of the burlesque--if its object be to

enforce a truth--escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the

body of the burlesque itself. And very often this "moral" is tagged on

at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the

whole thing and the only important paragraph in the article, tranquilly

turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire

with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is

careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the

travesty, and so bury it from the reader's sight and leave him a joked

and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his

knowledge or his wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques

and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I

tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly

palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak

the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in

America!

DAN MURPHY

One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the

banker's clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy

enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him,

and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was

too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a

sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for

him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to

keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. On the contrary,

she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. She grieved to part

with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had

known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a

dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again.

Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and

respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to

have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was to

dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his

friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the conclusion

that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband,

and so she telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that the bill for

embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild,

sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: "Sivinty-foive dollars for

stoofhn' Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils suppose I was goin'

to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities!"

The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.

THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A. D. 1870

Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the

customary universal round of the press:

A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional

site of the Garden of Eden.

As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this:

Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages.

It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest

achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating away

about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the heart and

home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of that

happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our

ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its tinsel

trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities in the high noon of the

nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great, broad-awake city

and an advanced civilisation.

A "tournament" in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the comprehension of

the average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive of such a

spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his powers. Brooklyn is part and

parcel of the city of New York, and there is hardly romance enough in the

entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia "knight" with "chivalry," in

case he happened to run out of it. Let the reader calmly and

dispassionately picture to himself "lists" in Brooklyn; heralds,

pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn; the marshalling of

the fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks,

ruffles, and plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable

patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood as "steeds,"

"destriers," and "chargers," and divested of their friendly, humble names

these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed "Mohammed,"

"Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn; mounted thus, and armed with

swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in paste board hauberks,

morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as "Sir" Smith, and "Sir"

Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as "The Disinherited Knight,"

the "Knight of Shenandoah," the "Knight of the Blue Ridge," the "Knight

of Maryland," and the "Knight of the Secret Sorrow"--in Brooklyn; and at

the toot of the horn charging fiercely upon a helpless ring hung on a

post, and prodding at it in trepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and

by skewering it and cavorting back to the judges' stand covered with

glory this in Brooklyn; and each noble success like this duly and

promptly announced by an applauding toot from the herald's horn, and "the

band playing three bars of an old circus tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad

daylight. And let the reader remember, and also add to his picture, as

follows, to wit: when the show was all over, the party who had shed the

most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or at

least had prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient

privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty--which

naming had in reality been done for, him by the "cut-and-dried" process,

and long in advance, by a committee of ladies, but the crowning he did in

person, though suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken to the

county hospital on a shutter to have his wounds dressed--these curious

things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no longer ago than one or two

yesterdays. It seems impossible, and yet it is true.

This was doubtless the first appearance of the "tournament" up here among

the rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last. It will

be well to let it retire permanently to the rural districts of Virginia,

where, it is said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured,

maiden-rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is

accepted and believed in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity, while

they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby history

exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian, a fantastic vagabond; and an

ignoramus.

All romance aside, what shape would our admiration of the heroes of Ashby

de la Zouch be likely to take, in this practical age, if those worthies

were to rise up and come here and perform again the chivalrous deeds of

that famous passage of arms? Nothing but a New York jury and the

insanity plea could save them from hanging, from the amiable

Bois-Guilbert and the pleasant Front-de-Boeuf clear down to the nameless

ruffians that entered the riot with unpictured shields and did their

first murder and acquired their first claim to respect that day. The

doings of the so-called "chivalry" of the Middle Ages were absurd enough,

even when they were brutally and bloodily in earnest, and when their

surroundings of castles and donjons, savage landscapes and half-savage

peoples, were in keeping; but those doings gravely reproduced with tinsel

decorations and mock pageantry, by bucolic gentlemen with broomstick

lances, and with muffin-rings to represent the foe, and all in the midst

of the refinement and dignity of a carefully-developed modern

civilisation, is absurdity gone crazy.

Now, for next exhibition, let us have a fine representation of one of

those chivalrous wholesale butcheries and burnings of Jewish women and

children, which the crusading heroes of romance used to indulge in in

their European homes, just before starting to the Holy Land, to seize and

take to their protection the Sepulchre and defend it from "pollution."

CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE

"For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows

and Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin Pipe,

procured at the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have

once belonged to the justly-renowned Witch of Endor. Parties

desiring to examine this singular relic with a view to purchasing,

can do so by calling upon Daniel S.. 119 and 121 William street, New

York"

As per advertisement in the "Herald." A curious old relic indeed, as I

had a good personal right to know. In a single instant of time, a long

drawn panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my

memory--town and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each

other and disappearing, leaping me with a little of the surprised and

dizzy feeling which I have experienced at sundry times when a long

express train has overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car

by car, around the corner and out of sight. In that prolific instant I

saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to

Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of

Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean. Leaving out unimportant stretches of

country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following

described matters and things. Immediately three years fell away from my

age, and a vanished time was restored to me September, 1867. It was a

flaming Oriental day--this one that had come up out of the past and

brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects--and

our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which

still holds the ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the

rear on my grave four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose

himself for his usual noon nap. My! only fifteen minutes before how the

black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted,

besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling,

wailing, begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had

swarmed out of the caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the

earth, and blocked our horses' way, besieged us, threw themselves in the

animals' path, clung to their manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking,

beseeching, demanding "bucksheesh! bucksheesh! BUCKSHEESH!" We had

rained small copper Turkish coins among them, as fugitives fling coats

and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had spurred our way through as they

stopped to scramble for the largess. I was fervently thankful when we

had gotten well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them and left

them jawing and gesticulating in the rear. What a tempest had seemingly

gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull thunders pulsing in my

ears!

I was in the rear, as I was saying. Our pack-mules and Arabs were far

ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these names

will do as well as any to represent the boys) were following close after

them. As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me,

and turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me

--a true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch--a

galvanised scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with

ophthalmia and leprous scars--an airy creature with an invisible

shirt-front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other

clothing to speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and a

venerable gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came

within shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article of dress.

I thought to myself, "Now this disease with a human heart in it is going

to shoot me." I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to

touch off his great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown

off for his pains. But then it occurred to me, in simple school-boy

language, "Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off' and fetch

me with the butt-end of it?" There was wisdom in that view of it, and I

stopped to parley. I found he was only a friendly villain who wanted a

trifle of bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in that way,

was perfectly willing to trade off everything he had for more. I believe

he would have parted with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he had had

one. He was smoking the "humbliest" pipe I ever saw--a dingy,

funnel-shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and tears of

tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty

per cent. of them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition. And

rank? I never smelt anything like it. It withered a cactus that stood

lifting its prickly hands aloft beside the trail. It even woke up my

horse. I said I would take that. It cost me a franc, a Russian kopek,

a brass button, and a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so won

upon the son of the desert that he passed over his pouch of most

unspeakably villainous tobacco to me as a free gift. What a pipe it was,

to be sure! It had a rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse

iron chain suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to

loosen up the tobacco and pick your teeth with. The stem looked like the

half of a slender walking-stick with the bark on.

I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of Endor as soon

as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it. Moreover, I asked the

Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic

that it was. I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking. And presently

I said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that could make a

man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected

whiff from this pipe would do it." I smoked along till I found I was

beginning to lie, and project murder, and steal my own things out of one

pocket and hide them in another; and then I put up my treasure, took off

my spurs and put them under my horse's tail, and shortly came tearing

through our caravan like a hurricane.

From that time forward, going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan,

Bethany, Bethlehem, and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and

enjoyed my infamous pipe and revelled in imaginary villany. But at the

end of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over

the Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that

Samson knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just at

night, and trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon. It was

perfectly jolly for three hours, and we whites crowded along together,

close after the chief Arab muleteer (all the pack-animals and the other

Arabs were miles in the rear), and we laughed, and chatted, and argued

hotly about Samson, and whether suicide was a sin or not, since Paul

speaks of Samson distinctly as being saved and in heaven. But by and by

the night air, and the duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in the

saddle, began to tell, and conversation flagged and finally died out

utterly. The squeak-squeaking of the saddles grew very distinct;

occasionally somebody sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it up;

now and then a horse sneezed. These things only emphasised the solemnity

and the stillness. Everybody got so listless that for once I and my

dreamer found ourselves in the lead. It was a glad, new sensation, and

I longed to keep the place forevermore. Every little stir in the dingy

cavalcade behind made me nervous. Davis and I were riding side by side,

right after the Arab. About 11 o'clock it had become really chilly, and

the dozing boys roused up and began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah

yet, and to demand that the Arab hurry along faster. I gave it up then,

and my heart sank within me, because of course they would come up to

scold the Arab. I knew I had to take the rear again. In my sorrow I

unconsciously took to my pipe, my only comfort. As I touched the match

to it the whole company came lumbering up and crowding my horse's rump

and flanks. A whiff of smoke drifted back over my shoulder, and--

"The suffering Moses!"

"Whew!"

"By George, who opened that graveyard?"

"Boys, that Arab's been swallowing something dead!"

Right away there was a gap behind us. Whiff after whiff sailed airily

back, and each one widened the breach. Within fifteen seconds the

barking, and gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their

angry abuse of the Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I

were alone with the leader. Davis did not know what the matter was, and

don't to this day. Occasionally he caught a faint film of the smoke and

fell to scolding at the Arab and wondering how long he had been decaying

in that way. Our boys kept on dropping back further and further, till at

last they were only in hearing, not in sight. And every time they

started gingerly forward to reconnoitre or shoot the Arab, as they

proposed to do--I let them get within good fair range of my relic (she

would carry seventy yards with wonderful precision), and then wafted a

whiff among them that sent them gasping and strangling to the rear again.

I kept my gun well charged and ready, and twice within the hour I decoyed

the boys right up to my horse's tail, and then with one malarious blast

emptied the saddles, almost. I never heard an Arab abused so in my life.

He really owed his preservation to me, because for one entire hour I

stood between him and certain death. The boys would have killed him if

they could have got by me.

By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away my pipe

--I was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather blown

with good diligent work--and spurred my animated trance up alongside the

Arab and stopped him and asked for water. He unslung his little

gourd-shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under my moustache and took a

long, glorious, satisfying draught. I was going to scour the mouth of

the jug a little, but I saw that I had brought the whole train together

once more by my delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too--and

would have been long ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out of

water. So I hastened to pass the vessel to Davis. He took a mouthful,

and never said a word, but climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in

the road. I felt sorry for Davis. It was too late now, though, and Dan

was drinking. Dan got down too, and hunted for a soft place. I thought

I heard Dan say, "That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or

else take him out and bury him somewhere." All the boys took a drink and

climbed down. It is not well to go into further particulars. Let us

draw the curtain upon this act.

..............................

Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should hear from

that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for the

benefit of a benevolent object. Dan is not treating that present right.

I gave that pipe to him for a keepsake. However, he probably finds that

it keeps away custom and interferes with business. It is the most

convincing inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps. Dan

and I were roommates in all that long "Quaker City" voyage, and whenever

I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up on that

pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change his

clothes, either. In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters of a

minute, he would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck and

cursing. I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell?

A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS

"Now that corpse [said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of the

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, any way, in the 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 skip along. He warn't

distressed any more than you be--on the contrary just as carm 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

doorplate 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' round. You never see such a clear head as what he

had--and so carm and so cool. Just 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,

simple-minded 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 a minister stand up behind a long

box with a tablecloth over it 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--it was 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

a 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.

A ROYAL COMPLIMENT

The latest report about the Spanish crown is, that it will now be

offered to Prince Alfonso, the second son of the King of Portugal,

who is but five years of age. The Spaniards have hunted through all

the nations of Europe for a King. They tried to get a Portuguese in

the person of Dom-Luis, who is an old ex-monarch; they tried to get

an Italian, in the person of Victor Emanuel's young son, the Duke of

Genoa; they tried to get a Spaniard, in the person of Espartero, who

is an octogenarian. Some of them desired a French Bourbon,

Montpensier; some of them a Spanish Bourbon, the Prince of Asturias;

some of them an English prince, one of the sons of Queen Victoria.

They have just tried to get the German Prince Leopold; but they have

thought it better to give him up than take a war along with him.

It is a long time since we first suggested to them to try an

American ruler. We can offer them a large number of able and

experienced sovereigns to pick from--men skilled in statesmanship,

versed in the science of government, and adepts in all the arts of

administration--men who could wear the crown with dignity and rule

the kingdom at a reasonable expense.

There is not the least danger of Napoleon threatening them if they

take an American sovereign; in fact, we have no doubt he would be

pleased to support such a candidature. We are unwilling to mention

names--though we have a man in our eye whom we wish they had in

theirs.--New York Tribune.

It would be but an ostentation of modesty to permit such a pointed

reference to myself to pass unnoticed. This is the second time that 'The

Tribune' (no doubt sincerely looking to the best interests of Spain and

the world at large) has done me the great and unusual honour to propose

me as a fit person to fill the Spanish throne. Why 'The Tribune' should

single me out in this way from the midst of a dozen Americans of higher

political prominence, is a problem which I cannot solve. Beyond a

somewhat intimate knowledge of Spanish history and a profound veneration

for its great names and illustrious deeds, I feel that I possess no merit

that should peculiarly recommend me to this royal distinction. I cannot

deny that Spanish history has always been mother's milk to me. I am

proud of every Spanish achievement, from Hernando Cortes's victory at

Thermopylae down to Vasco Nunez de Balboa's discovery of the Atlantic

ocean; and of every splendid Spanish name, from Don Quixote and the Duke

of Wellington down to Don Caesar de Bazan. However, these little graces

of erudition are of small consequence, being more showy than serviceable.

In case the Spanish sceptre is pressed upon me--and the indications

unquestionably are that it will be--I shall feel it necessary to have

certain things set down and distinctly understood beforehand. For

instance: My salary must be paid quarterly in advance. In these

unsettled times it will not do to trust. If Isabella had adopted this

plan, she would be roosting on her ancestral throne to-day, for the

simple reason that her subjects never could have raised three months of a

royal salary in advance, and of course they could not have discharged her

until they had squared up with her. My salary must be paid in gold; when

greenbacks are fresh in a country, they are too fluctuating. My salary

has got to be put at the ruling market rate; I am not going to cut under

on the trade, and they are not going to trail me a long way from home and

then practise on my ignorance and play me for a royal North Adams

Chinaman, by any means. As I understand it, imported kings generally get

five millions a year and house-rent free. Young George of Greece gets

that. As the revenues only yield two millions, he has to take the

national note for considerable; but even with things in that sort of

shape he is better fixed than he was in Denmark, where he had to

eternally stand up because he had no throne to sit on, and had to give

bail for his board, because a royal apprentice gets no salary there while

he is learning his trade. England is the place for that. Fifty thousand

dollars a year Great Britain pays on each royal child that is born, and

this is increased from year to year as the child becomes more and more

indispensable to his country. Look at Prince Arthur. At first he only

got the usual birth-bounty; but now that he has got so that he can dance,

there is simply no telling what wages he gets.

I should have to stipulate that the Spanish people wash more and

endeavour to get along with less quarantine. Do you know, Spain keeps

her ports fast locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each year,

because one day she is scared about the cholera, and the next about the

plague, and next the measles, next the hooping cough, the hives, and the

rash? but she does not mind leonine leprosy and elephantiasis any more

than a great and enlightened civilisation minds freckles. Soap would

soon remove her anxious distress about foreign distempers. The reason

arable land is so scarce in Spain is because the people squander so much

of it on their persons, and then when they die it is improvidently buried

with them.

I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be reduced to the

rank of constable, or even roundsman. He is no longer fit to be City

Marshal. A man who refused to be king because he was too old and feeble,

is ill qualified to help sick people to the station-house when they are

armed and their form of delirium tremens is of the exuberant and

demonstrative kind.

I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late Queen

Isabella out of France. Her presence there can work no advantage to

Spain, and she ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she

has been chaste enough heretofore--for a Spanish woman.

I should also require that--

I am at this moment authoritatively informed that "The Tribune" did not

mean me, after all. Very well, I do not care two cents.

THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC

One calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this country has not

awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it. We refer to the

fact that the nation is to be lectured to death and read to death all

next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry, with poor lamented Dickens for a

pretext. All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with

"readings" from Pickwick and Copperfield, and all the insignificants who

have been ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured by

his smile will make a marketable commodity of it now, and turn the sacred

reminiscence to the practical use of procuring bread and butter. The

lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates. Already the

signs of it are perceptible. Behold how the unclean creatures are

wending toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast:

"Reminiscences of Dickens." A lecture. By John Smith, who heard him

read eight times.

"Remembrances of Charles Dickens." A lecture. By John Jones, who saw

him once in a street car and twice in a barber shop.

"Recollections of Mr. Dickens." A lecture. By John Brown, who gained a

wide fame by writing deliriously appreciative critiques and rhapsodies

upon the great author's public readings; and who shook hands with the

great author upon various occasions, and held converse with him several

times.

"Readings from Dickens." By John White, who has the great delineator's

style and manner perfectly, having attended all his readings in this

country and made these things a study, always practising each reading

before retiring, and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips.

Upon this occasion Mr. W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he

saw Mr. Dickens smoke. This Relic is kept in a solid silver box made

purposely for it.

"Sights and Sounds of the Great Novelist." A popular lecture. By John

Gray, who waited on his table all the time he was at the Grand Hotel,

New York, and still has in his possession and will exhibit to the

audience a fragment of the Last Piece of Bread which the lamented author

tasted in this country.

"Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's Departed Monarch."

A lecture. By Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden, who still wears,

and will always wear, a glove upon the hand made sacred by the clasp of

Dickens. Only Death shall remove it.

"Readings from Dickens." By Mrs. J. O'Hooligan Murphy, who washed for

him.

"Familiar Talks with the Great Author." A narrative lecture. By John

Thomas, for two weeks his valet in America.

And so forth, and so on. This isn't half the list. The man who has a

"Toothpick once used by Charles Dickens" will have to have a hearing; and

the man who "once rode in an omnibus with Charles Dickens;" and the lady

to whom Charles Dickens "granted the hospitalities of his umbrella during

a storm;" and the person who "possesses a hole which once belonged in a

handkerchief owned by Charles Dickens." Be patient and long-suffering,

good people, for even this does not fill up the measure of what you must

endure next winter. There is no creature in all this land who has had

any personal relations with the late Mr. Dickens, however slight or

trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum and inflict his

testimony upon his helpless countrymen. To some people it is fatal to be

noticed by greatness.

THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE

I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will be able to

make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable

Tone-Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do

but sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper,

Horace Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand on

obscure lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would

otherwise clack eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences

into respectful hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas

and isms. That is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my

gray hairs. Let me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old

Red Sandstone Period and give Tone to an intellectual entertainment twice

a week, and be so reported, and my happiness will be complete. Those men

have been my envy for long, long time. And no memories of my life are so

pleasant as my reminiscence of their long and honorable career in the

Tone-imparting service. I can recollect that first time I ever saw them

on the platforms just as well as I can remember the events of yesterday.

Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left, and Thomas

Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock sat between

them. This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion of the

state' funeral of George Washington in New York. It was a great day,

that--a great day, and a very, very sad one. I remember that Broadway

was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to where the

City Hall now stands. The next time I saw these gentlemen officiate was

at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the

sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. Horace Greeley occupied one side

of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the

other. There were other Tone-imparters attendant upon the two chiefs,

but I have forgotten their names now. Horace Greeley, gray-haired and

beaming, was in sailor costume--white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the

breast, large neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty

sailor knot, broad turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black

little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two

gallant long ribbons. Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on

benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr. Greeley, and made

him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the

honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he was so ingeniously

representing. I shall never forget him. Mr. Cooper was dressed as a

general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike. I

neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers and sailors

in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from Boston--this

was during the war of 1812. At the grand national reception of

Lafayette, in 1824, Horace Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper to

the left. The other Tone-imparters of the day are sleeping the sleep of

the just now. I was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper,

and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor of

French liberty, in 1848. Then I never saw them any more until here

lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run down

every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and

several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the platform;"

and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the phonographic

report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other

distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say to myself,

"Thank God, I was present." Thus I have been enabled to see these

substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone to

lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures on

stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on miscegenation,

on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?" on veterinary matters, on all

kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics; and have seen them give

tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the Siamese Twins, the Great

Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original Jacobs. Whenever somebody

is to lecture on a subject not of general interest, I know that my

venerated Remains of the Old Red Sandstone Period will be on the

platform; whenever a lecturer is to appear whom nobody has heard of

before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know that the real

benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage of, and that they

will be on the platform (and in the bills) as an advertisement; and

whenever any new and obnoxious deviltry in philosophy, morals, or

politics is to be sprung upon the people, I know perfectly well that

these intrepid old heroes will be on the platform too, in the interest of

full and free discussion, and to crush down all narrower and less

generous souls with the solid dead weight of their awful respectability.

And let us all remember that while these inveterate and imperishable

presiders (if you please) appear on the platform every night in the year

as regularly as the volunteered piano from Steinway's or Chickering's,

and have bolstered up and given tone to a deal of questionable merit and

obscure emptiness in their time, they have also diversified this

inconsequential service by occasional powerful uplifting and upholding of

great progressive ideas which smaller men feared to meddle with or

countenance.

OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC

[From the Buffalo Express, Saturday, May 14, 1870.]

New YORK, May 10.

The Richardson-McFarland jury had been out one hour and fifty minutes.

A breathless silence brooded over court and auditory--a silence and a

stillness so absolute, notwithstanding the vast multitude of human beings

packed together there, that when some one far away among the throng under

the northeast balcony cleared his throat with a smothered little cough it

startled everybody uncomfortably, so distinctly did it grate upon the

pulseless air. At that imposing moment the bang of a door was heard,

then the shuffle of approaching feet, and then a sort of surging and

swaying disorder among the heads at the entrance from the jury-room told

them that the Twelve were coming. Presently all was silent again, and

the foreman of the jury rose and said:

"Your Honor and Gentleman: We, the jury charged with the duty of

determining whether the prisoner at the bar, Daniel McFarland, has been

guilty of murder, in taking by surprise an unarmed man and shooting him

to death, or whether the prisoner is afflicted with a sad but

irresponsible insanity which at times can be cheered only by violent

entertainment with firearms, do find as follows, namely:

"That the prisoner, Daniel McFarland, is insane as above described.

Because:

"1. His great grandfather's stepfather was tainted with insanity, and

frequently killed people who were distasteful to him. Hence, insanity is

hereditary in the family.

"2. For nine years the prisoner at the bar did not adequately support his

family. Strong circumstantial evidence of insanity.

"3. For nine years he made of his home, as a general thing, a poor-house;

sometimes (but very rarely) a cheery, happy habitation; frequently the

den of a beery, drivelling, stupefied animal; but never, as far as

ascertained, the abiding place of a gentleman. These be evidences of

insanity.

"4. He once took his young unmarried sister-in-law to the museum; while

there his hereditary insanity came upon him to such a degree that he

hiccupped and staggered; and afterward, on the way home, even made love

to the young girl he was protecting. These are the acts of a person not

in his right mind.

"5. For a good while his sufferings were so great that he had to submit

to the inconvenience of having his wife give public readings for the

family support; and at times, when he handed these shameful earnings to

the barkeeper, his haughty soul was so torn with anguish that he could

hardly stand without leaning against something. At such times he has

been known to shed tears into his sustenance till it diluted to utter

inefficiency. Inattention of this nature is not the act of a Democrat

unafflicted in mind.

"6. He never spared expense in making his wife comfortable during her

occasional confinements. Her father is able to testify to this. There

was always an element of unsoundness about the prisoner's generosities

that is very suggestive at this time and before this court.

"7. Two years ago the prisoner came fearlessly up behind Richardson in

the dark, and shot him in the leg. The prisoner's brave and protracted

defiance of an adversity that for years had left him little to depend

upon for support but a wife who sometimes earned scarcely anything for

weeks at a time, is evidence that he would have appeared in front of

Richardson and shot him in the stomach if he had not been insane at the

time of the shooting.

"8. Fourteen months ago the prisoner told Archibald Smith that he was

going to kill Richardson. This is insanity.

"9. Twelve months ago he told Marshall P. Jones that he was going to kill

Richardson. Insanity.

"10. Nine months ago he was lurking about Richardson's home in New

Jersey, and said he was going to kill Richardson. Insanity.

"11. Seven months ago he showed a pistol to Seth Brown and said that that

was for Richardson. He said Brown testified that at that time it seemed

plain that something was the matter with McFarland, for he crossed the

street diagonally nine times in fifty yards, apparently without any

settled reason for doing so, and finally fell in the gutter and went to

sleep. He remarked at the time that McFarland acted strange--believed he

was insane. Upon hearing Brown's evidence, John W. Galen, M.D., affirmed

at once that McFarland was insane.

"12. Five months ago, McFarland showed his customary pistol, in his

customary way, to his bed-fellow, Charles A. Dana, and told him he was

going to kill Richardson the first time an opportunity offered. Evidence

of insanity.

"13. Five months and two weeks ago McFarland asked John Morgan the time

of day, and turned and walked rapidly away without waiting for an answer.

Almost indubitable evidence of insanity. And--

"14. It is remarkable that exactly one week after this circumstance, the

prisoner, Daniel McFarland, confronted Albert D. Richardson suddenly and

without warning, and shot him dead. This is manifest insanity.

Everything we know of the prisoner goes to show that if he had been sane

at the time, he would have shot his victim from behind.

"15. There is an absolutely overwhelming mass of testimony to show that

an hour before the shooting, McFarland was ANXIOUS AND UNEASY, and that

five minutes after it he was EXCITED. Thus the accumulating conjectures

and evidences of insanity culminate in this sublime and unimpeachable

proof of it. Therefore--

"Your Honor and Gentlemen--We the jury pronounce the said Daniel McFarland

INNOCENT OF MURDER, BUT CALAMITOUSLY INSANE."

The scene that ensued almost defies description. Hats, handkerchiefs and

bonnets were frantically waved above the massed heads in the courtroom,

and three tremendous cheers and a tiger told where the sympathies of the

court and people were. Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to kiss

the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a

congratulatory shake--but presto! with a maniac's own quickness and a

maniac's own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his

friends with teeth and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing

rapidity with which he broke heads and limbs, and rent and sundered

bodies, till nearly a hundred citizens were reduced to mere quivering

heaps of fleshy odds and ends and crimson rags, was like nothing in this

world but the exultant frenzy of a plunging, tearing, roaring devil of a

steam machine when it snatches a human being and spins him and whirls him

till he shreds away to nothingness like a "Four o'clock" before the

breath of a child.

The destruction was awful. It is said that within the space of eight

minutes McFarland killed and crippled some six score persons and tore

down a large portion of the City Hall building, carrying away and casting

into Broadway six or seven marble columns fifty-four feet long and

weighing nearly two tons each. But he was finally captured and sent in

chains to the lunatic asylum for life.

(By late telegrams it appears that this is a mistake.--Editor Express.)

But the really curious part of this whole matter is yet to be told. And

that is, that McFarland's most intimate friends believe that the very

next time that it ever occurred to him that the insanity plea was not a

mere politic pretense, was when the verdict came in. They think that the

startling thought burst upon him then, that if twelve good and true men,

able to comprehend all the baseness of perjury, proclaimed under oath

that he was a lunatic, there was no gainsaying such evidence and that he

UNQUESTIONABLY WAS INSANE!

Possibly that was really the way of it. It is dreadful to think that

maybe the most awful calamity that can befall a man, namely, loss of

reason, was precipitated upon this poor prisoner's head by a jury that

could have hanged him instead, and so done him a mercy and his country a

service.

POSTSCRIPT-LATER

May 11--I do not expect anybody to believe so astounding a thing, and yet

it is the solemn truth that instead of instantly sending the dangerous

lunatic to the insane asylum (which I naturally supposed they would do,

and so I prematurely said they had) the court has actually SET HIM AT

LIBERTY. Comment is unnecessary. M. T.

THE EUROPEAN WARS--[From the Buffalo Express, July 25, 1870.]

First Day

THE EUROPEAN WAR!!!

NO BATTLE YET!!!

HOSTILITIES IMMINENT!!!

TREMENDOUS EXCITEMENT.

AUSTRIA ARMING!

BERLIN, Tuesday.

No battle has been fought yet. But hostilities may burst forth any week.

There is tremendous excitement here over news from the front that two

companies of French soldiers are assembling there.

It is rumoured that Austria is arming--what with, is not known.

.......................

Second Day

THE EUROPEAN WAR

NO BATTLE YET!

FIGHTING IMMINENT.

AWFUL EXCITEMENT.

RUSSIA SIDES WITH PRUSSIA!

ENGLAND NEUTRAL!!

AUSTRIA NOT ARMING.

BERLIN, Wednesday.

No battle has been fought yet. However, all thoughtful men feel that the

land may be drenched with blood before the Summer is over.

There is an awful excitement here over the rumour that two companies of

Prussian troops have concentrated on the border. German confidence

remains unshaken!!

There is news to the effect that Russia espouses the cause of Prussia and

will bring 4,000,000 men to the field.

England proclaims strict neutrality.

The report that Austria is arming needs confirmation.

.........................

Third Day

THE EUROPEAN WAR

NO BATTLE YET!

BLOODSHED IMMINENT!!

ENORMOUS EXCITEMENT!!

INVASION OF PRUSSIA!!

INVASION OF FRANCE!!

RUSSIA SIDES WITH FRANCE.

ENGLAND STILL NEUTRAL!

FIRING HEARD!

THE EMPEROR TO TAKE COMMAND.

PARIS, Thursday.

No battle has been fought yet. But Field Marshal McMahon telegraphs thus

to the Emperor:

"If the Frinch army survoives until Christmas there'll be throuble.

Forninst this fact it would be sagacious if the divil wint the rounds of

his establishment to prepare for the occasion, and tuk the precaution to

warrum up the Prussian depairtment a bit agin the day.

MIKE."

There is an enormous state of excitement here over news from the front to

the effect that yesterday France and Prussia were simultaneously invaded

by the two bodies of troops which lately assembled on the border. Both

armies conducted their invasions secretly and are now hunting around for

each other on opposite sides of the border.

Russia espouses the cause of France. She will bring 200,000 men to the

field.

England continues to remain neutral.

Firing was heard yesterday in the direction of Blucherberg, and for a

while the excitement was intense. However the people reflected that the

country in that direction is uninhabitable, and impassable by anything

but birds, they became quiet again.

The Emperor sends his troops to the field with immense enthusiasm. He

will lead them in person, when they return.

.....................

Fourth Day

THE EUROPEAN WAR!

NO BATTLE YET!!

THE TROOPS GROWING OLD!

BUT BITTER STRIFE IMMINENT!

PRODIGIOUS EXCITEMENT!

THE INVASIONS SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED

AND THE INVADERS SAFE!

RUSSIA SIDES WITH BOTH SIDES

ENGLAND WILL FIGHT BOTH!

LONDON, Friday.

No battle has been fought thus far, but a million impetuous soldiers are

gritting their teeth at each other across the border, and the most

serious fears entertained that if they do not die of old age first, there

will be bloodshed in this war yet.

The prodigious patriotic excitement goes on. In Prussia, per Prussian

telegrams, though contradicted from France. In France, per French

telegrams, though contradicted from Prussia.

The Prussian invasion of France was a magnificent success. The military

failed to find the French, but made good their return to Prussia without

the loss of a single man. The French invasion of Prussia is also

demonstrated to have been a brilliant and successful achievement. The

army failed to find the Prussians, but made good their return to the

Vaterland without bloodshed, after having invaded as much as they wanted

to.

There is glorious news from Russia to the effect that she will side with

both sides.

Also from England--she will fight both sides.

....................

LONDON, Thursday evening.

I rushed over too soon. I shall return home on Tuesday's steamer and

wait until the war begins. M. T.

THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED

[From the Buffalo Express, September 18, 1869.]

There has been so much talk about the mysterious "wild man" out there in

the West for some time, that I finally felt it was my duty to go out and

interview him. There was something peculiarly and touchingly romantic

about the creature and his strange actions, according to the newspaper

reports. He was represented as being hairy, long-armed, and of great

strength and stature; ugly and cumbrous; avoiding men, but appearing

suddenly and unexpectedly to women and children; going armed with a club,

but never molesting any creature, except sheep, or other prey; fond of

eating and drinking, and not particular about the quality, quantity, or

character of the beverages and edibles; living in the woods like a wild

beast, but never angry; moaning, and sometimes howling, but never

uttering articulate sounds.

Such was "Old Shep" as the papers painted him. I felt that the story of

his life must be a sad one--a story of suffering, disappointment, and

exile--a story of man's inhumanity to man in some shape or other--and I

longed to persuade the secret from him.

.....................

"Since you say you are a member of the press," said the wild man, "I am

willing to tell you all you wish to know. Bye and bye you will

comprehend why it is that I wish to unbosom myself to a newspaper man

when I have so studiously avoided conversation with other people. I will

now unfold my strange story. I was born with the world we live upon,

almost. I am the son of Cain."

"What?"

"I was present when the flood was announced."

"Which?"

"I am the father of the Wandering Jew."

"Sir?"

I moved out of range of his club, and went on taking notes, but keeping a

wary eye on him all the while. He smiled a melancholy smile and resumed:

"When I glance back over the dreary waste of ages, I see many a

glimmering and mark that is familiar to my memory. And oh, the leagues

I have travelled! the things I have seen! the events I have helped to

emphasise! I was at the assassination of Caesar. I marched upon Mecca

with Mahomet. I was in the Crusades, and stood with Godfrey when he

planted the banner of the cross on the battlements of Jerusalem. I--"

"One moment, please. Have you given these items to any other journal?

Can I--"

"Silence. I was in the Pinta's shrouds with Columbus when America burst

upon his vision. I saw Charles I beheaded. I was in London when the

Gunpowder Plot was discovered. I was present at the trial of Warren

Hastings. I was on American soil when the battle of Lexington was fought

when the declaration was promulgated--when Cornwallis surrendered

--When Washington died. I entered Paris with Napoleon after Elba. I was

present when you mounted your guns and manned your fleets for the war of

1812--when the South fired upon Sumter--when Richmond fell--when the

President's life was taken. In all the ages I have helped to celebrate

the triumphs of genius, the achievements of arms, the havoc of storm,

fire, pestilence, famine."

"Your career has been a stirring one. Might I ask how you came to locate

in these dull Kansas woods, when you have been so accustomed to

excitement during what I might term so protracted a period, not to put

too fine a point on it?"

"Listen. Once I was the honoured servitor of the noble and illustrious"

(here he heaved a sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but

in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and

newspapers. I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down,

sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with

cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character

at the behest of some driving journal. I attended to that Ocean Bank

robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the

pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific Railroad; immediately I was

spirited off to do an atrocious, murder for the benefit of the New York

papers; next to attend the wedding of a patriarchal millionaire; next to

raise a hurrah about the great boat race; and then, just when I had begun

to hope that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this

howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull

down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play

'Wild Man' generally--and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy

newspaper scribblers? From one end of the continent to the other, I am

described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me--and all to

gratify this quill-driving scum of the earth!"

"Poor old carpet bagger!"

"I have been served infamously, often, in modern and semi-modern times.

I have been compelled by base men to create fraudulent history, and to

perpetrate all sorts of humbugs. I wrote those crazy Junius letters, I

moped in a French dungeon for fifteen years, and wore a ridiculous Iron

Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians,

a solemn French idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the

gaping world might wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played

sea-serpent off Nahant, and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums;

I have interviewed politicians for the Sun, worked up all manner of

miracles for the Herald, ciphered up election returns for the World,

and thundered Political Economy through the Tribune. I have done all the

extravagant things that the wildest invention could contrive, and done

them well, and this is my reward--playing Wild Man in Kansas without a

shirt!"

"Mysterious being, a light dawns vaguely upon me--it grows apace--what

--what is your name."

"SENSATION!"

"Hence, horrible shape!"

It spoke again:

"Oh pitiless fate, my destiny hounds me once more. I am called. I go.

Alas, is there no rest for me?"

In a moment the Wild Man's features seemed to soften and refine, and his

form to assume a more human grace and symmetry. His club changed to a

spade, and he shouldered it and started away sighing profoundly and

shedding tears.

"Whither, poor shade?"

"TO DIG UP THE BYRON FAMILY!"

Such was the response that floated back upon the wind as the sad spirit

shook its ringlets to the breeze, flourished its shovel aloft, and

disappeared beyond the brow of the hill.

All of which is in strict accordance with the facts.

M. T.

LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN--[From the Buffalo Express, September 11, 1889.]

Marshal Neil's last words were: "L'armee fran-caise!" (The French

army.)--Exchange.

What a sad thing it is to see a man close a grand career with a

plagiarism in his mouth. Napoleon's last words were: "Tete d'armee."

(Head of the army.) Neither of those remarks amounts to anything as

"last words," and reflect little credit upon the utterers.

A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is

about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and

take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a

thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spirit

at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest

gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur. No--a man is apt to be too

much fagged and exhausted, both in body and mind, at such a time, to be

reliable; and maybe the very thing he wants to say, he cannot think of to

save him; and besides there are his weeping friends bothering around;

and worse than all as likely as not he may have to deliver his last gasp

before he is expecting to. A man cannot always expect to think of a

natty thing to say under such circumstances, and so it is pure egotistic

ostentation to put it off. There is hardly a case on record where a man

came to his last moment unprepared and said a good thing hardly a case

where a man trusted to that last moment and did not make a solemn botch

of it and go out of the world feeling absurd.

Now there was Daniel Webster. Nobody could tell him anything. He was

not afraid. He could do something neat when the time came. And how did

it turn out? Why, his will had to be fixed over; and then all the

relations came; and first one thing and then another interfered, till at

last he only had a chance to say, "I still live," and up he went.

Of course he didn't still live, because he died--and so he might as well

have kept his last words to himself as to have gone and made such a

failure of it as that. A week before that fifteen minutes of calm

reflection would have enabled that man to contrive some last words that

would have been a credit to himself and a comfort to his family for

generations to come.

And there was John Quincy Adams. Relying on his splendid abilities and

his coolness in emergencies, he trusted to a happy hit at the last moment

to carry him through, and what was the result? Death smote him in the

House of Representatives, and he observed, casually, "This is the last of

earth." The last of earth! Why "the last of earth" when there was so

much more left? If he had said it was the last rose of summer or the

last run of shad, it would have had as much point in it. What he meant

to say was, "Adam was the first and Adams is the last of earth," but he

put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with that unmeaning

observation on his lips.

And there we have Napoleon's "Tete d'armee." That don't mean anything.

Taken by itself, "Head of the army," is no more important than "Head of

the police." And yet that was a man who could have said a good thing if

he had barred out the doctor and studied over it a while. Marshal Neil,

with half a century at his disposal, could not dash off anything better

in his last moments than a poor plagiarism of another man's words, which

were not worth plagiarizing in the first place. "The French army."

Perfectly irrelevant--perfectly flat utterly pointless. But if he had

closed one eye significantly, and said, "The subscriber has made it

lively for the French army," and then thrown a little of the comic into

his last gasp, it would have been a thing to remember with satisfaction

all the rest of his life. I do wish our great men would quit saying

these flat things just at the moment they die. Let us have their

next-to-the-last words for a while, and see if we cannot patch up from

them something that will be more satisfactory.

The public does not wish to be outraged in this way all the time.

But when we come to call to mind the last words of parties who took the

trouble to make the proper preparation for the occasion, we immediately

notice a happy difference in the result.

There was Chesterfield. Lord Chesterfield had laboured all his life to

build up the most shining reputation for affability and elegance of

speech and manners the world has ever seen. And could you suppose he

failed to appreciate the efficiency of characteristic "last words," in

the matter of seizing the successfully driven nail of such a reputation

and clinching on the other side for ever? Not he. He prepared himself.

He kept his eye on the clock and his finger on his pulse. He awaited his

chance. And at last, when he knew his time was come, he pretended to

think a new visitor had entered, and so, with the rattle in his throat

emphasised for dramatic effect, he said to the servant, "Shin around,

John, and get the gentleman a chair." And so he died, amid thunders of

applause.

Next we have Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's

quaint sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up

at nights reducing the rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp and

snappy maxims that had a nice, varnished, original look in their

regimentals; who said, "Virtue is its own reward;" who said,

"Procrastination is the thief of time;" who said, "Time and tide wait for

no man" and "Necessity is the mother of invention;" good old Franklin,

the Josh Billings of the eighteenth century--though, sooth to say, the

latter transcends him in proverbial originality as much as he falls short

of him in correctness of orthography. What sort of tactics did Franklin

pursue? He pondered over his last words for as much as two weeks, and

then when the time came, he said, "None but the brave deserve the fair,"

and died happy. He could not have said a sweeter thing if he had lived

till he was an idiot.

Byron made a poor business of it, and could not think of anything to say,

at the last moment but, "Augusta--sister--Lady Byron--tell Harriet

Beecher Stowe"--etc., etc.,--but Shakespeare was ready and said, "England

expects every man to do his duty!" and went off with splendid eclat.

And there are other instances of sagacious preparation for a felicitous

closing remark. For instance:

Joan of Arc said, "Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching."

Alexander the Great said, "Another of those Santa Cruz punches, if you

please."

The Empress Josephine said, "Not for Jo-" and could get no further.

Cleopatra said, "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders."

Sir Walter Raleigh said, "Executioner, can I take your whetstone a

moment, please?" though what for is not clear.

John Smith said, "Alas, I am the last of my race."

Queen Elizabeth said, "Oh, I would give my kingdom for one moment more

--I have forgotten my last words."

And Red Jacket, the noblest Indian brave that ever wielded a tomahawk in

defence of a friendless and persecuted race, expired with these touching

words upon his lips, "Wawkawampanoosucwinnebayowallazvsagamoresa-

skatchewan." There was not a dry eye in the wigwam.

Let not this lesson be lost upon our public men. Let them take a healthy

moment for preparation, and contrive some last words that shall be neat

and to the point. Let Louis Napoleon say,

"I am content to follow my uncle--still, I do not wish to improve upon

his last word. Put me down for 'Tete d'armee.'"

And Garret Davis, "Let me recite the unabridged dictionary."

And H. G., "I desire, now, to say a few words on political economy."

And Mr. Bergh, "Only take part of me at a time, if the load will be

fatiguing to the hearse horses."

And Andrew Johnson, "I have been an alderman, Member of Congress,

Governor, Senator, Pres--adieu, you know the rest."

And Seward., "Alas!-ka."

And Grant, "O."

All of which is respectfully submitted, with the most honorable

intentions.

M. T.

P. S.--I am obliged to leave out the illustrations. The artist finds it

impossible to make a picture of people's last words.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

1601

by Mark Twain

MARK TWAIN'S

[Date, 1601]

Conversation

As it was by the Social Fireside

in the Time of the Tudors

INTRODUCTION

"Born irreverent," scrawled Mark Twain on a scratch pad, "--like all

other people I have ever known or heard of--I am hoping to remain so

while there are any reverent irreverences left to make fun of."

--[Holograph manuscript of Samuel L. Clemens, in the collection of the

F. J. Meine]

Mark Twain was just as irreverent as he dared be, and 1601 reveals his

richest expression of sovereign contempt for overstuffed language,

genteel literature, and conventional idiocies. Later, when a magazine

editor apostrophized, "O that we had a Rabelais!" Mark impishly and

anonymously--submitted 1601; and that same editor, a praiser of Rabelais,

scathingly abused it and the sender. In this episode, as in many others,

Mark Twain, the "bad boy" of American literature, revealed his huge

delight in blasting the shams of contemporary hypocrisy. Too, there was

always the spirit of Tom Sawyer deviltry in Mark's make-up that prompted

him, as he himself boasted, to see how much holy indignation he could

stir up in the world.

WHO WROTE 1601?

The correct and complete title of 1601, as first issued, was: [Date,

1601.] 'Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of

the Tudors.' For many years after its anonymous first issue in 1880,

its authorship was variously conjectured and widely disputed. In Boston,

William T. Ball, one of the leading theatrical critics during the late

90's, asserted that it was originally written by an English actor (name

not divulged) who gave it to him. Ball's original, it was said, looked

like a newspaper strip in the way it was printed, and may indeed have

been a proof pulled in some newspaper office. In St. Louis, William

Marion Reedy, editor of the St. Louis Mirror, had seen this famous tour

de force circulated in the early 80's in galley-proof form; he first

learned from Eugene Field that it was from the pen of Mark Twain.

"Many people," said Reedy, "thought the thing was done by Field and

attributed, as a joke, to Mark Twain. Field had a perfect genius for

that sort of thing, as many extant specimens attest, and for that sort of

practical joke; but to my thinking the humor of the piece is too mellow

--not hard and bright and bitter--to be Eugene Field's." Reedy's opinion

hits off the fundamental difference between these two great humorists;

one half suspects that Reedy was thinking of Field's French Crisis.

But Twain first claimed his bantling from the fog of anonymity in 1906,

in a letter addressed to Mr. Charles Orr, librarian of Case Library,

Cleveland. Said Clemens, in the course of his letter, dated July 30,

1906, from Dublin, New Hampshire:

"The title of the piece is 1601. The piece is a supposititious

conversation which takes place in Queen Elizabeth's closet in that year,

between the Queen, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duchess

of Bilgewater, and one or two others, and is not, as John Hay mistakenly

supposes, a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophy to

the sober and chaste Elizabeth's time; if there is a decent word findable

in it, it is because I overlooked it. I hasten to assure you that it is

not printed in my published writings."

TWITTING THE REV. JOSEPH TWICHELL

The circumstances of how 1601 came to be written have since been

officially revealed by Albert Bigelow Paine in 'Mark Twain,

A Bibliography' (1912), and in the publication of Mark Twain's Notebook

(1935).

1601 was written during the summer of 1876 when the Clemens family had

retreated to Quarry Farm in Elmira County, New York. Here Mrs. Clemens

enjoyed relief from social obligations, the children romped over the

countryside, and Mark retired to his octagonal study, which, perched high

on the hill, looked out upon the valley below. It was in the famous

summer of 1876, too, that Mark was putting the finishing touches to Tom

Sawyer. Before the close of the same year he had already begun work on

'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', published in 1885. It is

interesting to note the use of the title, the "Duke of Bilgewater," in

Huck Finn when the "Duchess of Bilgewater" had already made her

appearance in 1601. Sandwiched between his two great masterpieces, Tom

Sawyer and Huck Finn, the writing of 1601 was indeed a strange interlude.

During this prolific period Mark wrote many minor items, most of them

rejected by Howells, and read extensively in one of his favorite books,

Pepys' Diary. Like many another writer Mark was captivated by Pepys'

style and spirit, and "he determined," says Albert Bigelow Paine in his

'Mark Twain, A Biography', "to try his hand on an imaginary record of

conversation and court manners of a bygone day, written in the phrase of

the period. The result was 'Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen

Elizabeth', or as he later called it, '1601'. The 'conversation'

recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all the

outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when fireside

sociabilities were limited only to the loosened fancy, vocabulary, and

physical performance, and not by any bounds of convention."

"It was written as a letter," continues Paine, "to that robust divine,

Rev. Joseph Twichell, who, unlike Howells, had no scruples about Mark's

'Elizabethan breadth of parlance.'"

The Rev. Joseph Twichell, Mark's most intimate friend for over forty

years, was pastor of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church of Hartford,

which Mark facetiously called the "Church of the Holy Speculators,"

because of its wealthy parishioners. Here Mark had first met "Joe" at a

social, and their meeting ripened into a glorious, life long friendship.

Twichell was a man of about Mark's own age, a profound scholar, a devout

Christian, "yet a man with an exuberant sense of humor, and a profound

understanding of the frailties of mankind." The Rev. Mr. Twichell

performed the marriage ceremony for Mark Twain and solemnized the births

of his children; "Joe," his friend, counseled him on literary as well as

personal matters for the remainder of Mark's life. It is important to

catch this brief glimpse of the man for whom this masterpiece was

written, for without it one can not fully understand the spirit in which

1601 was written, or the keen enjoyment which Mark and "Joe" derived from

it.

"SAVE ME ONE."

The story of the first issue of 1601 is one of finesse, state diplomacy,

and surreptitious printing.

The Rev. "Joe" Twichell, for whose delectation the piece had been

written, apparently had pocketed the document for four long years. Then,

in 1880, it came into the hands of John Hay, later Secretary of State,

presumably sent to him by Mark Twain. Hay pronounced the sketch a

masterpiece, and wrote immediately to his old Cleveland friend, Alexander

Gunn, prince of connoisseurs in art and literature. The following

correspondence reveals the fine diplomacy which made the name of John Hay

known throughout the world.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Washington

June 21, 1880.

Dear Gunn:

Are you in Cleveland for all this week? If you will say yes by return

mail, I have a masterpiece to submit to your consideration which is only

in my hands for a few days.

Yours, very much worritted by the depravity of Christendom,

Hay

The second letter discloses Hay's own high opinion of the effort and his

deep concern for its safety.

June 24, 1880

My dear Gunn:

Here it is. It was written by Mark Twain in a serious effort to bring

back our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabethan

standard. But the taste of the present day is too corrupt for anything

so classic. He has not yet been able even to find a publisher. The

Globe has not yet recovered from Downey's inroad, and they won't touch

it.

I send it to you as one of the few lingering relics of that race of

appreciative critics, who know a good thing when they see it.

Read it with reverence and gratitude and send it back to me; for Mark is

impatient to see once more his wandering offspring.

Yours,

Hay.

In his third letter one can almost hear Hay's chuckle in the certainty

that his diplomatic, if somewhat wicked, suggestion would bear fruit.

Washington, D. C.

July 7, 1880

My dear Gunn:

I have your letter, and the proposition which you make to pull a few

proofs of the masterpiece is highly attractive, and of course highly

immoral. I cannot properly consent to it, and I am afraid the great many

would think I was taking an unfair advantage of his confidence. Please

send back the document as soon as you can, and if, in spite of my

prohibition, you take these proofs, save me one.

Very truly yours,

John Hay.

Thus was this Elizabethan dialogue poured into the moulds of cold type.

According to Merle Johnson, Mark Twain's bibliographer, it was issued in

pamphlet form, without wrappers or covers; there were 8 pages of text and

the pamphlet measured 7 by 8 1/2 inches. Only four copies are believed to

have been printed, one for Hay, one for Gunn, and two for Twain.

"In the matter of humor," wrote Clemens, referring to Hay's delicious

notes, "what an unsurpassable touch John Hay had!"

HUMOR AT WEST POINT

The first printing of 1601 in actual book form was "Donne at ye Academie

Press," in 1882, West Point, New York, under the supervision of Lieut. C.

E. S. Wood, then adjutant of the U. S. Military Academy.

In 1882 Mark Twain and Joe Twichell visited their friend Lieut. Wood at

West Point, where they learned that Wood, as Adjutant, had under his

control a small printing establishment. On Mark's return to Hartford,

Wood received a letter asking if he would do Mark a great favor by

printing something he had written, which he did not care to entrust to

the ordinary printer. Wood replied that he would be glad to oblige.

On April 3, 1882, Mark sent the manuscript:

"I enclose the original of 1603 [sic] as you suggest. I am afraid there

are errors in it, also, heedlessness in antiquated spelling--e's stuck on

often at end of words where they are not strickly necessary, etc.....

I would go through the manuscript but I am too much driven just now, and

it is not important anyway. I wish you would do me the kindness to make

any and all corrections that suggest themselves to you.

"Sincerely yours,

"S. L. Clemens."

Charles Erskine Scott Wood recalled in a foreword, which he wrote for the

limited edition of 1601 issued by the Grabhorn Press, how he felt when he

first saw the original manuscript. "When I read it," writes Wood,

"I felt that the character of it would be carried a little better by a

printing which pretended to the eye that it was contemporaneous with the

pretended 'conversation.'

"I wrote Mark that for literary effect I thought there should be a

species of forgery, though of course there was no effort to actually

deceive a scholar. Mark answered that I might do as I liked;--that his

only object was to secure a number of copies, as the demand for it was

becoming burdensome, but he would be very grateful for any interest I

brought to the doing.

"Well, Tucker [foreman of the printing shop] and I soaked some handmade

linen paper in weak coffee, put it as a wet bundle into a warm room to

mildew, dried it to a dampness approved by Tucker and he printed the

'copy' on a hand press. I had special punches cut for such Elizabethan

abbreviations as the a, e, o and u, when followed by m or n--and for the

(commonly and stupidly pronounced ye).

"The only editing I did was as to the spelling and a few old English

words introduced. The spelling, if I remember correctly, is mine, but

the text is exactly as written by Mark. I wrote asking his view of

making the spelling of the period and he was enthusiastic--telling me to

do whatever I thought best and he was greatly pleased with the result."

Thus was printed in a de luxe edition of fifty copies the most curious

masterpiece of American humor, at one of America's most dignified

institutions, the United States Military Academy at West Point.

"1601 was so be-praised by the archaeological scholars of a quarter of a

century ago," wrote Clemens in his letter to Charles Orr, "that I was

rather inordinately vain of it. At that time it had been privately

printed in several countries, among them Japan. A sumptuous edition on

large paper, rough-edged, was made by Lieut. C. E. S. Wood at West Point

--an edition of 50 copies--and distributed among popes and kings and such

people. In England copies of that issue were worth twenty guineas when I

was there six years ago, and none to be had."

FROM THE DEPTHS

Mark Twain's irreverence should not be misinterpreted: it was an

irreverence which bubbled up from a deep, passionate insight into the

well-springs of human nature. In 1601, as in 'The Man That Corrupted

Hadleyburg,' and in 'The Mysterious Stranger,' he tore the masks off

human beings and left them cringing before the public view. With the

deftness of a master surgeon Clemens dealt with human emotions and

delighted in exposing human nature in the raw.

The spirit and the language of the Fireside Conversation were rooted deep

in Mark Twain's nature and in his life, as C. E. S. Wood, who printed

1601 at West Point, has pertinently observed,

"If I made a guess as to the intellectual ferment out of which 1601 rose

I would say that Mark's intellectual structure and subconscious graining

was from Anglo-Saxons as primitive as the common man of the Tudor period.

He came from the banks of the Mississippi--from the flatboatmen, pilots,

roustabouts, farmers and village folk of a rude, primitive people--as

Lincoln did.

"He was finished in the mining camps of the West among stage drivers,

gamblers and the men of '49. The simple roughness of a frontier people

was in his blood and brain.

"Words vulgar and offensive to other ears were a common language to him.

Anyone who ever knew Mark heard him use them freely, forcibly,

picturesquely in his unrestrained conversation. Such language is

forcible as all primitive words are. Refinement seems to make for

weakness--or let us say a cutting edge--but the old vulgar monosyllabic

words bit like the blow of a pioneer's ax--and Mark was like that. Then

I think 1601 came out of Mark's instinctive humor, satire and hatred of

puritanism. But there is more than this; with all its humor there is a

sense of real delight in what may be called obscenity for its own sake.

Whitman and the Bible are no more obscene than Nature herself--no more

obscene than a manure pile, out of which come roses and cherries. Every

word used in 1601 was used by our own rude pioneers as a part of their

vocabulary--and no word was ever invented by man with obscene intent, but

only as language to express his meaning. No act of nature is obscene in

itself--but when such words and acts are dragged in for an ulterior

purpose they become offensive, as everything out of place is offensive.

I think he delighted, too, in shocking--giving resounding slaps on what

Chaucer would quite simply call 'the bare erse.'"

Quite aside from this Chaucerian "erse" slapping, Clemens had also a

semi-serious purpose, that of reproducing a past time as he saw it in

Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, and other writers of the Elizabethan era.

Fireside Conversation was an exercise in scholarship illumined by a keen

sense of character. It was made especially effective by the artistic

arrangement of widely-gathered material into a compressed picture of a

phase of the manners and even the minds of the men and women "in the

spacious times of great Elizabeth."

Mark Twain made of 1601 a very smart and fascinating performance, carried

over almost to grotesqueness just to show it was not done for mere

delight in the frank naturalism of the functions with which it deals.

That Mark Twain had made considerable study of this frankness is apparent

from chapter four of 'A Yankee At King Arthur's Court,' where he refers

to the conversation at the famous Round Table thus:

"Many of the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great

assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen of the land would have made

a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea.

However, I had read Tom Jones and Roderick Random and other books of that

kind and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in England

had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and

conduct which such talk implies, clear up to one hundred years ago; in

fact clear into our own nineteenth century--in which century, broadly

speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and the real gentleman

discoverable in English history,--or in European history, for that

matter--may be said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter

[Scott] instead of putting the conversation into the mouths of his

characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We

should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena

which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the unconsciously

indelicate all things are delicate."

Mark Twain's interest in history and in the depiction of historical

periods and characters is revealed through his fondness for historical

reading in preference to fiction, and through his other historical

writings. Even in the hilarious, youthful days in San Francisco, Paine

reports that "Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then,

as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose

himself in English or French history until his sleep conquered." Paine

tells us, too, that Lecky's 'European Morals' was an old favorite.

The notes to 'The Prince and the Pauper' show again how carefully Clemens

examined his historical background, and his interest in these materials.

Some of the more important sources are noted: Hume's 'History of

England', Timbs' 'Curiosities of London', J. Hammond Trumbull's 'Blue

Laws, True and False'. Apparently Mark Twain relished it, for as Bernard

DeVoto points out, "The book is always Mark Twain. Its parodies of Tudor

speech lapse sometimes into a callow satisfaction in that idiom--Mark

hugely enjoys his nathlesses and beshrews and marrys." The writing of

1601 foreshadows his fondness for this treatment.

"Do you suppose the liberties and the Brawn of These States have to

do only with delicate lady-words? with gloved gentleman words"

Walt Whitman, 'An American Primer'.

Although 1601 was not matched by any similar sketch in his published

works, it was representative of Mark Twain the man. He was no emaciated

literary tea-tosser. Bronzed and weatherbeaten son of the West, Mark was

a man's man, and that significant fact is emphasized by the several

phases of Mark's rich life as steamboat pilot, printer, miner, and

frontier journalist.

On the Virginia City Enterprise Mark learned from editor R. M. Daggett

that "when it was necessary to call a man names, there were no expletives

too long or too expressive to be hurled in rapid succession to emphasize

the utter want of character of the man assailed.... There were

typesetters there who could hurl anathemas at bad copy which would have

frightened a Bengal tiger. The news editor could damn a mutilated

dispatch in twenty-four languages."

In San Francisco in the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of Mark Twain

and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "The Doleful

Ballad of the Neglected Lover," an old piece of uncollected erotica.

One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to find his room-mate

standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a big

revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement," relates Paine in

his Biography.

"'Come here, Steve,' he said. 'I'm so chilled through I can't get a bead

on him.'

"'Sam,' said Steve, 'don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily

kill him at any range with your profanity.'

"Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain let go such a scorching, singeing

blast that the brute's owner sold him the next day for a Mexican hairless

dog."

Nor did Mark's "geysers of profanity" cease spouting after these gay and

youthful days in San Francisco. With Clemens it may truly be said that

profanity was an art--a pyrotechnic art that entertained nations.

"It was my duty to keep buttons on his shirts," recalled Katy Leary,

life-long housekeeper and friend in the Clemens menage, "and he'd swear

something terrible if I didn't. If he found a shirt in his drawer

without a button on, he'd take every single shirt out of that drawer and

throw them right out of the window, rain or shine--out of the bathroom

window they'd go. I used to look out every morning to see the

snowflakes--anything white. Out they'd fly.... Oh! he'd swear at

anything when he was on a rampage. He'd swear at his razor if it didn't

cut right, and Mrs. Clemens used to send me around to the bathroom door

sometimes to knock and ask him what was the matter. Well, I'd go and

knock; I'd say, 'Mrs. Clemens wants to know what's the matter.' And

then he'd say to me (kind of low) in a whisper like, 'Did she hear me

Katy?' 'Yes,' I'd say, 'every word.' Oh, well, he was ashamed then, he

was afraid of getting scolded for swearing like that, because Mrs.

Clemens hated swearing." But his swearing never seemed really bad to

Katy Leary, "It was sort of funny, and a part of him, somehow," she said.

"Sort of amusing it was--and gay--not like real swearing, 'cause he swore

like an angel."

In his later years at Stormfield Mark loved to play his favorite

billiards. "It was sometimes a wonderful and fearsome thing to watch Mr.

Clemens play billiards," relates Elizabeth Wallace. "He loved the game,

and he loved to win, but he occasionally made a very bad stroke, and then

the varied, picturesque, and unorthodox vocabulary, acquired in his more

youthful years, was the only thing that gave him comfort. Gently,

slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though

they had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came this

stream of unholy adjectives and choice expletives."

Mark's vocabulary ran the whole gamut of life itself. In Paris, in his

appearance in 1879 before the Stomach Club, a jolly lot of gay wags,

Mark's address, reports Paine, "obtained a wide celebrity among the clubs

of the world, though no line of it, not even its title, has ever found

its way into published literature." It is rumored to have been called

"Some Remarks on the Science of Onanism."

In Berlin, Mark asked Henry W. Fisher to accompany him on an exploration

of the Berlin Royal Library, where the librarian, having learned that

Clemens had been the Kaiser's guest at dinner, opened the secret treasure

chests for the famous visitor. One of these guarded treasures was a

volume of grossly indecent verses by Voltaire, addressed to Frederick the

Great. "Too much is enough," Mark is reported to have said, when Fisher

translated some of the verses, "I would blush to remember any of these

stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna."

When Fisher had finished copying a verse for him Mark put it into his

pocket, saying, "Livy [Mark's wife, Olivia] is so busy mispronouncing

German these days she can't even attempt to get at this."

In his letters, too, Howells observed, "He had the Southwestern, the

Lincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which I suppose one

ought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish; and I was

often hiding away in discreet holes and corners the letters in which he

had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion; I could not bear

to burn them, and I could not, after the first reading, quite bear to

look at them. I shall best give my feeling on this point by saying that

in it he was Shakespearean."

"With a nigger squat on her safety-valve"

John Hay, Pike County Ballads.

"Is there any other explanation," asks Van Wyck Brooks, "'of his

Elizabethan breadth of parlance?' Mr. Howells confesses that he

sometimes blushed over Mark Twain's letters, that there were some which,

to the very day when he wrote his eulogy on his dead friend, he could not

bear to reread. Perhaps if he had not so insisted, in former years,

while going over Mark Twain's proofs, upon 'having that swearing out in

an instant,' he would never had had cause to suffer from his having

'loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion.' Mark Twain's verbal

Rabelaisianism was obviously the expression of that vital sap which, not

having been permitted to inform his work, had been driven inward and left

thereto ferment. No wonder he was always indulging in orgies of

forbidden words. Consider the famous book, 1601, that fireside

conversation in the time of Queen Elizabeth: is there any obsolete verbal

indecency in the English language that Mark Twain has not painstakingly

resurrected and assembled there? He, whose blood was in constant ferment

and who could not contain within the narrow bonds that had been set for

him the roitous exuberance of his nature, had to have an escape-valve,

and he poured through it a fetid stream of meaningless obscenity--the

waste of a priceless psychic material!" Thus, Brooks lumps 1601 with

Mark Twain's "bawdry," and interprets it simply as another indication of

frustration.

FIGS FOR FIG LEAVES!

Of course, the writing of such a piece as 1601 raised the question of

freedom of expression for the creative artist.

Although little discussed at that time, it was a question which intensely

interested Mark, and for a fuller appreciation of Mark's position one

must keep in mind the year in which 1601 was written, 1876. There had

been nothing like it before in American literature; there had appeared no

Caldwells, no Faulkners, no Hemingways. Victorian England was gushing

Tennyson. In the United States polite letters was a cult of the Brahmins

of Boston, with William Dean Howells at the helm of the Atlantic. Louisa

May Alcott published Little Women in 1868-69, and Little Men in 1871. In

1873 Mark Twain led the van of the debunkers, scraping the gilt off the

lily in the Gilded Age.

In 1880 Mark took a few pot shots at license in Art and Literature in his

Tramp Abroad, "I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is

allowed as much indecent license to-day as in earlier times--but the

privileges of Literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed

within the past eighty or ninety years. Fielding and Smollet could

portray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have

plenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed

to approach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech.

But not so with Art. The brush may still deal freely with any subject;

however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze sarcasm at every

pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generation has

been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood in innocent

nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them.

Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing

it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comical thing

about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid

marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and

ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blooded paintings which do

really need it have in no case been furnished with it.

"At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of

a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they

hardly suggest human beings--yet these ridiculous creatures have been

thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious

generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery

that exists in the world.... and there, against the wall, without

obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the

vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus. It

isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the

attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe the

attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the Venus lies, for

anybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie,

for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls

stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly

at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic

interest. How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy

indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear the unreflecting

average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all

that.

"In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage,

oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerable suffering

--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful

detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and

publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for they are innocent,

they are inoffensive, being works of art. But suppose a literary artist

ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of

these grisly things--the critics would skin him alive. Well, let it go,

it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost

hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the

consistencies of it--I haven't got time."

PROFESSOR SCENTS PORNOGRAPHY

Unfortunately, 1601 has recently been tagged by Professor Edward

Wagenknecht as "the most famous piece of pornography in American

literature." Like many another uninformed, Prof. W. is like the little

boy who is shocked to see "naughty" words chalked on the back fence,

and thinks they are pornography. The initiated, after years of wading

through the mire, will recognize instantly the significant difference

between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is

something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has

pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist."

"The words which are criticised as dirty," observed justice John M.

Woolsey in the United States District Court of New York, lifting the ban

on Ulysses by James Joyce, "are old Saxon words known to almost all men

and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally

and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life, physical

and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe." Neither was there

"pornographic intent," according to justice Woolsey, nor was Ulysses

obscene within the legal definition of that word.

"The meaning of the word 'obscene,'" the Justice indicated, "as legally

defined by the courts is: tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to

sexually impure and lustful thoughts.

"Whether a particular book would tend to excite such impulses and

thoughts must be tested by the court's opinion as to its effect on a

person with average sex instincts--what the French would call 'l'homme

moyen sensuel'--who plays, in this branch of legal inquiry, the same role

of hypothetical reagent as does the 'reasonable man' in the law of torts

and 'the learned man in the art' on questions of invention in patent

law."

Obviously, it is ridiculous to say that the "leer of the sensualist"

lurks in the pages of Mark Twain's 1601.

DROLL STORY

"In a way," observed William Marion Reedy, "1601 is to Twain's whole

works what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than the

privately circulated ribaldry and vulgarity of Eugene Field; is, indeed,

an essay in a sort of primordial humor such as we find in Rabelais, or in

the plays of some of the lesser stars that drew their light from

Shakespeare's urn. It is humor or fun such as one expects, let us say,

from the peasants of Thomas Hardy, outside of Hardy's books. And, though

it be filthy, it yet hath a splendor of mere animalism of good spirits...

I would say it is scatalogical rather than erotic, save for one touch

toward the end. Indeed, it seems more of Rabelais than of Boccaccio or

Masuccio or Aretino--is brutally British rather than lasciviously

latinate, as to the subjects, but sumptuous as regards the language."

Immediately upon first reading, John Hay, later Secretary of State, had

proclaimed 1601 a masterpiece. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's

biographer, likewise acknowledged its greatness, when he said, "1601 is a

genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better than the

gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps in some day to come, the taste

that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this literary

refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writing of Mark

Twain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter of

environment and point of view."

"It depends on who writes a thing whether it is coarse or not," wrote

Clemens in his notebook in 1879. "I built a conversation which could

have happened--I used words such as were used at that time--1601. I sent

it anonymously to a magazine, and how the editor abused it and the

sender!"

But that man was a praiser of Rabelais and had been saying, 'O that we

had a Rabelais!' I judged that I could furnish him one.

"Then I took it to one of the greatest, best and most learned of Divines

[Rev. Joseph H. Twichell] and read it to him. He came within an ace of

killing himself with laughter (for between you and me the thing was

dreadfully funny. I don't often write anything that I laugh at myself,

but I can hardly think of that thing without laughing). That old Divine

said it was a piece of the finest kind of literary art--and David Gray of

the Buffalo Courier said it ought to be printed privately and left behind

me when I died, and then my fame as a literary artist would last."

FRANKLIN J. MEINE

THE FIRST PRINTING

Verbatim Reprint

[Date, 1601.]

CONVERSATION, AS IT WAS BY THE SOCIAL FIRESIDE, IN THE TIME OF THE

TUDORS.

[Mem.--The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the

Pepys of that day, the same being Queen Elizabeth's cup-bearer. He is

supposed to be of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises these

literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath, to see the queen

stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels that his nobility

is defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay

there till her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.]

YESTERNIGHT

toke her maiste ye queene a fantasie such as she sometimes hath, and had

to her closet certain that doe write playes, bokes, and such like, these

being my lord Bacon, his worship Sir Walter Ralegh, Mr. Ben Jonson, and

ye child Francis Beaumonte, which being but sixteen, hath yet turned his

hand to ye doing of ye Lattin masters into our Englishe tong, with grete

discretion and much applaus. Also came with these ye famous Shaxpur. A

righte straunge mixing truly of mighty blode with mean, ye more in

especial since ye queenes grace was present, as likewise these following,

to wit: Ye Duchess of Bilgewater, twenty-two yeres of age; ye Countesse

of Granby, twenty-six; her doter, ye Lady Helen, fifteen; as also these

two maides of honor, to-wit, ye Lady Margery Boothy, sixty-five, and ye

Lady Alice Dilberry, turned seventy, she being two yeres ye queenes

graces elder.

I being her maites cup-bearer, had no choice but to remaine and beholde

rank forgot, and ye high holde converse wh ye low as uppon equal termes,

a grete scandal did ye world heare thereof.

In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an

exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore,

and then--

Ye Queene.--Verily in mine eight and sixty yeres have I not heard the

fellow to this fart. Meseemeth, by ye grete sound and clamour of it, it

was male; yet ye belly it did lurk behinde shoulde now fall lean and flat

against ye spine of him yt hath bene delivered of so stately and so waste

a bulk, where as ye guts of them yt doe quiff-splitters bear, stand

comely still and rounde. Prithee let ye author confess ye offspring.

Will my Lady Alice testify?

Lady Alice.--Good your grace, an' I had room for such a thundergust

within mine ancient bowels, 'tis not in reason I coulde discharge ye same

and live to thank God for yt He did choose handmaid so humble whereby to

shew his power. Nay, 'tis not I yt have broughte forth this rich

o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray you seeke ye further.

Ye Queene.--Mayhap ye Lady Margery hath done ye companie this favor?

Lady Margery.--So please you madam, my limbs are feeble wh ye weighte and

drouth of five and sixty winters, and it behoveth yt I be tender unto

them. In ye good providence of God, an' I had contained this wonder,

forsoothe wolde I have gi'en 'ye whole evening of my sinking life to ye

dribbling of it forth, with trembling and uneasy soul, not launched it

sudden in its matchless might, taking mine own life with violence,

rending my weak frame like rotten rags. It was not I, your maisty.

Ye Queene.--O' God's name, who hath favored us? Hath it come to pass yt

a fart shall fart itself? Not such a one as this, I trow. Young Master

Beaumont--but no; 'twould have wafted him to heaven like down of goose's

boddy. 'Twas not ye little Lady Helen--nay, ne'er blush, my child;

thoul't tickle thy tender maidenhedde with many a mousie-squeak before

thou learnest to blow a harricane like this. Wasn't you, my learned and

ingenious Jonson?

Jonson.--So fell a blast hath ne'er mine ears saluted, nor yet a stench

so all-pervading and immortal. 'Twas not a novice did it, good your

maisty, but one of veteran experience--else hadde he failed of

confidence. In sooth it was not I.

Ye Queene.--My lord Bacon?

Lord Bacon.-Not from my leane entrailes hath this prodigy burst forth, so

please your grace. Naught doth so befit ye grete as grete performance;

and haply shall ye finde yt 'tis not from mediocrity this miracle hath

issued.

[Tho' ye subjoct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learning

pondrously phillosophize. Meantime did the foul and deadly stink pervade

all places to that degree, yt never smelt I ye like, yet dare I not to

leave ye presence, albeit I was like to suffocate.]

Ye Queene.--What saith ye worshipful Master Shaxpur?

Shaxpur.--In the great hand of God I stand and so proclaim mine

innocence. Though ye sinless hosts of heaven had foretold ye coming of

this most desolating breath, proclaiming it a work of uninspired man, its

quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his own achievement

in due course of nature, yet had not I believed it; but had said the pit

itself hath furnished forth the stink, and heaven's artillery hath shook

the globe in admiration of it.

[Then was there a silence, and each did turn him toward the worshipful

Sr Walter Ralegh, that browned, embattled, bloody swashbuckler, who

rising up did smile, and simpering say,]

Sr W.--Most gracious maisty, 'twas I that did it, but indeed it was so

poor and frail a note, compared with such as I am wont to furnish, yt in

sooth I was ashamed to call the weakling mine in so august a presence.

It was nothing--less than nothing, madam--I did it but to clear my nether

throat; but had I come prepared, then had I delivered something worthy.

Bear with me, please your grace, till I can make amends.

[Then delivered he himself of such a godless and rock-shivering blast

that all were fain to stop their ears, and following it did come so dense

and foul a stink that that which went before did seem a poor and trifling

thing beside it. Then saith he, feigning that he blushed and was

confused, I perceive that I am weak to-day, and cannot justice do unto my

powers; and sat him down as who should say, There, it is not much yet he

that hath an arse to spare, let him fellow that, an' he think he can. By

God, an' I were ye queene, I would e'en tip this swaggering braggart out

o' the court, and let him air his grandeurs and break his intolerable

wind before ye deaf and such as suffocation pleaseth.]

Then fell they to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, and

Master Shaxpur spake of ye boke of ye sieur Michael de Montaine, wherein

was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord to wear uppon ye

headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man's

member wilted and limber, whereat ye queene did laugh and say widows in

England doe wear prickes too, but betwixt the thighs, and not wilted

neither, till coition hath done that office for them. Master Shaxpur did

likewise observe how yt ye sieur de Montaine hath also spoken of a

certain emperor of such mighty prowess that he did take ten maidenheddes

in ye compass of a single night, ye while his empress did entertain two

and twenty lusty knights between her sheetes, yet was not satisfied;

whereat ye merrie Countess Granby saith a ram is yet ye emperor's

superior, sith he wil tup above a hundred yewes 'twixt sun and sun; and

after, if he can have none more to shag, will masturbate until he hath

enrich'd whole acres with his seed.

Then spake ye damned windmill, Sr Walter, of a people in ye uttermost

parts of America, yt capulate not until they be five and thirty yeres of

age, ye women being eight and twenty, and do it then but once in seven

yeres.

Ye Queene.--How doth that like my little Lady Helen? Shall we send thee

thither and preserve thy belly?

Lady Helen.--Please your highnesses grace, mine old nurse hath told me

there are more ways of serving God than by locking the thighs together;

yet am I willing to serve him yt way too, sith your highnesses grace hath

set ye ensample.

Ye Queene.--God' wowndes a good answer, childe.

Lady Alice.--Mayhap 'twill weaken when ye hair sprouts below ye navel.

Lady Helen.--Nay, it sprouted two yeres syne; I can scarce more than

cover it with my hand now.

Ye Queene.--Hear Ye that, my little Beaumonte? Have ye not a little

birde about ye that stirs at hearing tell of so sweete a neste?

Beaumonte.--'Tis not insensible, illustrious madam; but mousing owls and

bats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so whelming and ecstatic as is

found in ye downy nests of birdes of Paradise.

Ye Queene.--By ye gullet of God, 'tis a neat-turned compliment. With

such a tongue as thine, lad, thou'lt spread the ivory thighs of many a

willing maide in thy good time, an' thy cod-piece be as handy as thy

speeche.

Then spake ye queene of how she met old Rabelais when she was turned of

fifteen, and he did tell her of a man his father knew that had a double

pair of bollocks, whereon a controversy followed as concerning the most

just way to spell the word, ye contention running high betwixt ye learned

Bacon and ye ingenious Jonson, until at last ye old Lady Margery,

wearying of it all, saith, 'Gentles, what mattereth it how ye shall spell

the word? I warrant Ye when ye use your bollocks ye shall not think of

it; and my Lady Granby, be ye content; let the spelling be, ye shall

enjoy the beating of them on your buttocks just the same, I trow. Before

I had gained my fourteenth year I had learnt that them that would explore

a cunt stop'd not to consider the spelling o't.'

Sr W.--In sooth, when a shift's turned up, delay is meet for naught but

dalliance. Boccaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a maid

into his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace to be rightly

thankful for this tender maidenhead ye Lord had sent him; but ye abbot,

spying through ye key-hole, did see a tuft of brownish hair with fair

white flesh about it, wherefore when ye priest's prayer was done, his

chance was gone, forasmuch as ye little maid had but ye one cunt, and

that was already occupied to her content.

Then conversed they of religion, and ye mightie work ye old dead Luther

did doe by ye grace of God. Then next about poetry, and Master Shaxpur

did rede a part of his King Henry IV., ye which, it seemeth unto me,

is not of ye value of an arsefull of ashes, yet they praised it bravely,

one and all.

Ye same did rede a portion of his "Venus and Adonis," to their prodigious

admiration, whereas I, being sleepy and fatigued withal, did deme it but

paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blody bucanier had

got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting with such villain

zeal that presently I was like to choke once more. God damn this windy

ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that hell mighte get him.

They talked about ye wonderful defense which old Sr. Nicholas Throgmorton

did make for himself before ye judges in ye time of Mary; which was

unlucky matter to broach, sith it fetched out ye quene with a 'Pity yt

he, having so much wit, had yet not enough to save his doter's

maidenhedde sound for her marriage-bed.' And ye quene did give ye damn'd

Sr. Walter a look yt made hym wince--for she hath not forgot he was her

own lover it yt olde day. There was silent uncomfortableness now; 'twas

not a good turn for talk to take, sith if ye queene must find offense in

a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loathe

to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company was sinless;

behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with child

when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not her Grace of Bilgewater

roger'd by four lords before she had a husband? Was not ye little Lady

Helen born on her mother's wedding-day? And, beholde, were not ye Lady

Alice and ye Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whores from ye

cradle?

In time came they to discourse of Cervantes, and of the new painter,

Rubens, that is beginning to be heard of. Fine words and dainty-wrought

phrases from the ladies now, one or two of them being, in other days,

pupils of that poor ass, Lille, himself; and I marked how that Jonson and

Shaxpur did fidget to discharge some venom of sarcasm, yet dared they not

in the presence, the queene's grace being ye very flower of ye Euphuists

herself. But behold, these be they yt, having a specialty, and admiring

it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth essaye it, nor can

abide it in them long. Wherefore 'twas observable yt ye quene waxed

uncontent; and in time labor'd grandiose speeche out of ye mouth of Lady

Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, did quite

exhauste ye quene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was

done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony, mincing saith 'O

shit!' Whereat they alle did laffe, but not ye Lady Alice, yt olde

foolish bitche.

Now was Sr. Walter minded of a tale he once did hear ye ingenious

Margrette of Navarre relate, about a maid, which being like to suffer

rape by an olde archbishoppe, did smartly contrive a device to save her

maidenhedde, and said to him, First, my lord, I prithee, take out thy

holy tool and piss before me; which doing, lo his member felle, and would

not rise again.

FOOTNOTES

To Frivolity

The historical consistency of 1601 indicates that Twain must have given

the subject considerable thought. The author was careful to speak only

of men who conceivably might have been in the Virgin Queen's closet and

engaged in discourse with her.

THE CHARACTERS

At this time (1601) Queen Elizabeth was 68 years old. She speaks of

having talked to "old Rabelais" in her youth. This might have been

possible as Rabelais died in 1552, when the Queen was 19 years old.

Among those in the party were Shakespeare, at that time 37 years old; Ben

Jonson, 27; and Sir Walter Raleigh, 49. Beaumont at the time was 17, not

16. He was admitted as a member of the Inner Temple in 1600, and his

first translations, those from Ovid, were first published in 1602.

Therefore, if one were holding strictly to the year date, neither by age

nor by fame would Beaumont have been eligible to attend such a gathering

of august personages in the year 1601; but the point is unimportant.

THE ELIZABETHAN WRITERS

In the Conversation Shakespeare speaks of Montaigne's Essays. These were

first published in 1580 and successive editions were issued in the years

following, the third volume being published in 1588. "In England

Montaigne was early popular. It was long supposed that the autograph of

Shakespeare in a copy of Florio's translation showed his study of the

Essays. The autograph has been disputed, but divers passages, and

especially one in The Tempest, show that at first or second hand the poet

was acquainted with the essayist." (Encyclopedia Brittanica.)

The company at the Queen's fireside discoursed of Lilly (or Lyly),

English dramatist and novelist of the Elizabethan era, whose novel,

Euphues, published in two parts, 'Euphues', or the 'Anatomy of Wit'

(1579) and 'Euphues and His England' (1580) was a literary sensation.

It is said to have influenced literary style for more than a quarter of a

century, and traces of its influence are found in Shakespeare. (Columbia

Encyclopedia).

The introduction of Ben Jonson into the party was wholly appropriate,

if one may call to witness some of Jonson's writings. The subject under

discussion was one that Jonson was acquainted with, in The Alchemist:

Act. I, Scene I,

FACE: Believe't I will.

SUBTLE: Thy worst. I fart at thee.

DOL COMMON: Have you your wits? Why, gentlemen, for love----

Act. 2, Scene I,

SIR EPICURE MAMMON: ....and then my poets, the same that writ so subtly

of the fart, whom I shall entertain still for that subject and again in

Bartholomew Fair

NIGHTENGALE: (sings a ballad)

Hear for your love, and buy for your money.

A delicate ballad o' the ferret and the coney.

A preservative again' the punk's evil.

Another goose-green starch, and the devil.

A dozen of divine points, and the godly garter

The fairing of good counsel, of an ell and three-quarters.

What is't you buy?

The windmill blown down by the witche's fart,

Or Saint George, that, O! did break the dragon's heart.

GOOD OLD ENGLISH CUSTOM

That certain types of English society have not changed materially in

their freedom toward breaking wind in public can be noticed in some

comparatively recent literature. Frank Harris in My Life, Vol. 2,

Ch. XIII, tells of Lady Marriott, wife of a judge Advocate General,

being compelled to leave her own table, at which she was entertaining Sir

Robert Fowler, then the Lord Mayor of London, because of the suffocating

and nauseating odors there. He also tells of an instance in parliament,

and of a rather brilliant bon mot spoken upon that occasion.

"While Fowler was speaking Finch-Hatton had shewn signs of restlessness;

towards the end of the speech he had moved some three yards away from the

Baronet. As soon as Fowler sat down Finch-Hatton sprang up holding his

handkerchief to his nose:

"'Mr. Speaker,' he began, and was at once acknowledged by the Speaker,

for it was a maiden speech, and as such was entitled to precedence by the

courteous custom of the House, 'I know why the Right Honourable Member

from the City did not conclude his speech with a proposal. The only way

to conclude such a speech appropriately would be with a motion!'"

AEOLIAN CREPITATIONS

But society had apparently degenerated sadly in modern times, and even in

the era of Elizabeth, for at an earlier date it was a serious--nay,

capital--offense to break wind in the presence of majesty. The Emperor

Claudius, hearing that one who had suppressed the urge while paying him

court had suffered greatly thereby, "intended to issue an edict, allowing

to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distension

occasioned by flatulence:"

Martial, too (Book XII, Epigram LXXVII), tells of the embarrassment of

one who broke wind while praying in the Capitol,