queeriosity in the livin' world--a wild mare without no hair--
captered on the roarin wild prahayries of the far distant West by
sixteen Injuns. Don't fail to see this gerrate exhibition. Only
fifteen cents. Don't go hum without seein the State Fair, an' you
won't see the State Fair without you see my show. Gerratist
exhibition in the known world, an' all for the small sum of fifteen
cents."
Two gentlemen connected with the press here walked up and asked the
showman, in a still small voice, if he extended the usual courtesies
to editors. He said he did, and requested them to go in. While
they were in some sly dog told him their names. When they came out
the showman pretended to talk with them, though he didn't say a
word. They were evidently in a hurry.
"There, gentleMEN, what do you think them gentlemen say? They air
editors--editors, gentleMEN--Mr. ---, of the Cleveland ---, and Mr.
---, of the Detroit ---, and they say it is the gerratist show they
ever seed in their born days!"
[Nothing but the tip ends of the editors' coat-tails could be seen
when the showman concluded this speech.]
A smart-looking chap was doing a brisk business with a gambling
contrivance. Seeing two policemen approach, he rapidly and
ingeniously covered the dice up, mounted his table, and shouted:
"Ere's the only great show on the grounds! The highly trained and
performing Mud Turtle with nine heads and seventeen tails, captured
in a well-fortified hencoop, after a desperate struggle, in the
lowlands of the Wabash!"
The facetious wretch escaped.
A grave, ministerial-looking and elderly man in a white choker had a
gift-enterprise concern. "My friends," he solemnly said, "you will
observe that this jewellery is elegant indeed, but I can afford to
give it away, as I have a twin brother seven years older than I am,
in New York City, who steals it a great deal faster than I can give
it away. No blanks, my friends--all prizes--and only fifty cents a
chance. I don't make anything myself, my friends--all I get goes to
aid a sick woman--my aunt in the country, gentlemen--and besides I
like to see folks enjoy themselves!"
The old scamp said all this with a perfectly grave countenance.
The man with the "wonderful calf with five legs and a huming head,"
and "the philosophical lung-tester," were there. Then there was the
Flying Circus and any number of other ingenious contrivances to
relieve young ladies and gentlemen from the rural districts of their
spare change.
A young man was bitterly bewailing the loss of his watch, which had
been cut from his pocket by some thief.
"You ain't smart," said a middle-aged individual in a dingy Kossuth
hat with a feather in it, and who had a very you-can't-fool-me look.
"I've been to the State Fair before, I want yer to understan, and
knows my bizniss aboard a propeller. Here's MY money," he
exultingly cried, slapping his pantaloons' pocket.
About half an hour after this we saw this smart individual rushing
frantically around after a policeman. Somebody had adroitly
relieved him of HIS money. In his search for a policeman he
encountered the young man who wasn't smart.
"Haw, haw, haw," violently laughed the latter; "by G--, I thought
you was smart--I thought you'd been to the State Fair before."
The smart man looked sad for a moment, but a knowing smile soon
crossed his face, and drawing the young man who wasn't smart
confidentially toward him, said--
"There wasn't only fifteen cents in coppers in my pocket--my MONEY
is in my boot--they can't fool me--I'VE BEEN TO THE STATE FAIR
BEFORE!!"
7.8. THE WIFE.
"Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry.
All her maidens, watching, said,
'She must weep, or she will die.'"
The propriety of introducing a sad story like the following, in a
book intended to be rather cheerful in its character, may be
questioned; but it so beautifully illustrates the firmness of woman
when grief and despair have taken possession of "the chambers of her
heart," that we cannot refrain from relating it.
Lucy M-- loved with all the ardor of a fond and faithful wife, and
when he upon whom she had so confidingly leaned was stolen from her
by death, her friends and companions said Lucy would go mad. Ah,
how little they knew her!
Gazing for the last time upon the clay-cold features of her departed
husband, this young widow--beautiful even in her grief; so ethereal
to look upon, and yet so firm!--looking for the last time upon the
dear familiar face, now cold and still in death--oh, looking for the
last, last time--she rapidly put on her bonnet, and thus addressed
the sobbing gentlemen who were to act as pall-bearers:--"You
pall-bearers, just go into the buttery and get some rum, and we'll
start this man right along!"
7.9. A JUVENILE COMPOSITION.
ON THE ELEPHANT.
The Elephant is the most largest Annymile in the whole world. He
eats hay and kakes. You must not giv the Elephant Tobacker, becoz
if you do he will stamp his grate big feet upon to you and kill you
fatally Ded. Some folks thinks the Elephant is the most noblest
Annymile in the world; but as for Me, giv Me the American Egil and
the Stars & Stripes. Alexander Pottles, his Peace.
7.10. A POEM BY THE SAME.
SOME VERSES SUGGESTID BY 2 OF MY UNCLES.
Uncle Simon he
Clum up a tree
To see what he could see
When presentlee
Uncle Jim
Clum beside of him
And squatted down by he.
7.11. EAST SIDE THEATRICALS.
The Broadway houses have given the public immense quantities of
Central Park, Seven Sisters, Nancy Sykes, and J. Cade. I suppose
the Broadway houses have done this chiefly because it has paid them,
and so I mean no disrespect when I state that to me the thing became
rather stale. I sighed for novelty. A man may stand stewed veal
for several years, but banquets consisting exclusively of stewed
veal would become uninteresting after a century or so. A man would
want something else. The least particular man, it seems to me,
would desire to have his veal "biled," by way of a change. So I,
tired of the threadbare pieces at the Broadway houses, went to the
East Side for something fresh. I wanted to see some libertines and
brigands. I wanted to see some cheerful persons identified with the
blacksmith and sewing-machine interests triumph over those
libertines and brigands in the most signal manner. I wanted, in
short, to see the Downfall of Vice and Triumph of Virtue. That was
what ailed me. And so I went to the East Side.
Poor Jack Scott is gone, and Jo. Kirby dies no more on the East
Side. They've got the blood and things over there, but, alas!
they're deficient in lungs. The tragedians in the Bowery and
Chatham Street of to-day don't start the shingles on the roof as
their predecessors, now cold and stiff in death, used to when they
threw themselves upon their knees at the footlights and roared a
red-hot curse after the lord who had carried Susan away, swearing to
never more eat nor drink until the lord's vile heart was torn from
his body and ther-rown to the dorgs--rattling their knives against
the tin lamps and glaring upon the third tier most fearfully the
while.
Glancing at the spot where it is said Senator Benjamin used to vend
second-hand clothes, and regretting that he had not continued in
that comparatively honorable vocation instead of sinking to his
present position--wondering if Jo. Kirby would ever consent, if he
were alive, to die wrapped up in a Secession flag!--gazing
admiringly upon the unostentatious signboard which is suspended in
front of the Hon. Izzy Lazarus's tavern--glancing, wondering, and
gazing thus, I enter the old Chatham theatre. The pit is full, but
people fight shy of the boxes.
The play is about a servant girl, who comes to the metropolis from
the agricultural districts in short skirts, speckled hose, and a
dashing little white hat, gaily decked with pretty pink ribbons--
that being the style of dress invariably worn by servant girls
from the interior. She is accompanied by a chaste young man in a
short-tailed red coat, who, being very desirous of protecting her
from the temptations of a large city, naturally leaves her in the
street and goes off somewhere. Servant girl encounters an elderly
female, who seems to be a very nice sort of person indeed, but the
young man in a short-tailed coat comes in and thrusts the elderly
female aside, calling her "a vile hag." This pleases the pit,
which is ever true to virtue, and it accordingly cries "Hi! hi! hi!"
A robber appears. The idea of a robber in times like these is
rather absurd. The most adroit robber would eke out a miserable
subsistence if he attempted to follow his profession now-a-days. I
should prefer to publish a daily paper in Chelsea. Nevertheless,
here is a robber. He has been playing poker with his "dupe," but
singularly enough the dupe has won all the money. This displeases
the robber, and it occurs to him that he will kill the dupe. He
accordingly sticks him. The dupe staggers, falls, says "Dearest
Eliza!" and dies. Cries of "Hi! hi! hi!" in the pit, while a
gentleman with a weed on his hat, in the boxes, states that the
price of green smelts is five cents a quart. This announcement is
not favorably received by the pit, several members of which come
back at the weeded individual with some advice in regard to
liquidating a long-standing account for beans and other refreshments
at an adjacent restaurant.
The robber is seized with remorse, and says the money which he has
taken from the dupe's pockets "scorches" him. Robber seeks refuge
in a miser's drawing-room, where he stays for "seven days." There
is a long chest full of money and diamonds in the room. The chest
is unlocked, but misers very frequently go off and leave long chests
full of money unlocked in their drawing-rooms for seven days, and
this robber was too much of a gentleman to take advantage of this
particular miser's absence. By and by the miser returns, when the
robber quietly kills him and chucks him in the chest. "Sleep with
your gold, old man!" says the bold robber, as he melodramatically
retreats--retreats to a cellar, where the servant girl resides.
Finds that she was formerly his gal when he resided in the rural
districts, and regrets having killed so many persons, for if so be
he hadn't he might marry her and settle down, whereas now he can't
do it, as he says he is "unhappy." But he gives her a ring--a ring
he has stolen from the dupe--and flies. Presently the dupe, who has
come to life in a singular but eminently theatrical manner, is
brought into the cellar. He discovers the ring upon the servant
girl's finger--servant girl states that she is innocent, and the
dupe, with the remark that he sees his mother, dies, this time
positively without reserve. Servant girl is taken to Newgate,
whither goes the robber and gains admission by informing the turnkey
that he is her uncle. Throws off his disguise, and, like a robber
bold and gay, says he is the guilty party and will save the servant
girl. He drinks a vial of poison, says he sees HIS mother, and dies
to slow fiddling. Servant girl throws herself upon him wildly, and
the virtuous young party in a short-tailed coat comes in and assists
in the tableau. Robber tells the servant girl to take the party in
the short-tailed coat and be happy, repeats that he sees his mother
(they always do), and dies again. Cries of "Hi! hi! hi!" and the
weeded gentleman reiterates the price of green smelts.
Not a remarkably heavy plot, but quite as bulky as the plots of the
Broadway sensation pieces.
7.12. SOLILOQUY OF A LOW THIEF.
My name is Jim Griggins. I'm a low thief. My parients was ignorant
folks, and as poor as the shadder of a bean pole. My advantages for
gettin' a eddycation was exceedin' limited. I growed up in the
street, quite loose and permiskis, you see, and took to vice because
I had nothing else to take to, and because nobody had never given me
a sight at virtue.
I'm in the penitentiary. I was sent here onct before for priggin' a
watch. I served out my time, and now I'm here agin, this time for
stealin' a few insignificant clothes.
I shall always blame my parients for not eddycatin' me. Had I been
liberally eddycated I could, with my brilliant native talents, have
bin a big thief--I b'leeve they call 'em defaulters. Instead of
confinin' myself to priggin' clothes, watches, spoons, and sich
like, I could have plundered princely sums--thousands and hundreds
of thousands of dollars--and that old humbug, the Law, wouldn't have
harmed a hair of my head! For, you see, I should be smart enough to
get elected State Treasurer, or have something to do with Banks or
Railroads, and perhaps a little of both. Then, you see, I could
ride in my carriage, live in a big house with a free stun frunt,
drive a fast team, and drink as much gin and sugar as I wanted. A
inwestigation might be made, and some of the noospapers might come
down on me heavy, but what the d----l would I care about that,
havin' previously taken precious good care of the stolen money?
Besides, my "party" would swear stout that I was as innersunt as the
new-born babe, and a great many people would wink very pleasant, and
say, "Well, Griggins understands what HE'S 'bout, HE does.!"
But havin' no eddycation, I'm only a low thief--a stealer of watches
and spoons and sich--a low wretch, anyhow--and the Law puts me
through without mercy.
It's all right, I spose, and yet I sometimes think it's wery hard to
be shut up here, a wearin' checkered clothes, a livin' on cold
vittles, a sleepin' on iron beds, a lookin' out upon the world
through iron muskeeter bars, and poundin' stun like a galley slave,
day after day, week after week, and year after year, while my
brother thieves (for to speak candid, there's no difference between
a thief and a defaulter, except that the latter is forty times
wuss), who have stolen thousands of dollars to my one cent, are
walkin' out there in the bright sunshine--dressed up to kill, new
clothes upon their backs and piles of gold in their pockets! But
the Law don't tech 'em. They are too big game for the Law to shoot
at. It's as much as the Law can do to take care of us ignorant
thieves.
Who said there was no difference 'tween tweedledum and tweedledee?
He lied in his throat, like a villain as he was! I tell ye there's
a tremendous difference.
Oh that I had been liberally eddycated!
Jim Griggins.
Sing--Sing 1860.
7.13. THE NEGRO QUESTION.
I was sitting in the bar, quietly smokin a frugal pipe, when two
middle-aged and stern-looking females and a young and pretty female
suddenly entered the room. They were accompanied by two umberellers
and a negro gentleman.
"Do you feel for the down-trodden?" said one of the females, a
thin-faced and sharp-voiced person in green spectacles.
"Do I feel for it?" ansered the lan'lord, in a puzzled voice--" do
I feel for it?"
"Yes; for the oppressed, the benighted?"
"Inasmuch as to which?" said the lan'lord.
"You see this man?" said the female, pintin her umbreller at the
negro gentleman.
"Yes, marm, I see him."
"Yes!" said the female, raisin her voice to a exceedin high pitch,
"you see him, and he's your brother!"
"No, I'm darned if he is!" said the lan'lord, hastily retreating to
his beer-casks.
"And yours!" shouted the excited female, addressing me. "He is also
your brother!"
"No, I think not, marm," I pleasantly replied. "The nearest we come
to that color in our family was the case of my brother John. He had
the janders for sev'ral years, but they finally left him. I am
happy to state that, at the present time, he hasn't a solitary
jander."
"Look at this man!" screamed the female.
I looked at him. He was an able-bodied, well-dressed,
comfortable-looking negro. He looked as though he might heave three
or four good meals a day into him without a murmur.
"Look a that down-trodden man!" cried the female.
"Who trod on him?" I inquired.
"Villains! despots!"
"Well," said the lan'lord, "why don't you go to the willins about
it? Why do you come here tellin us niggers is our brothers, and
brandishin your umbrellers round us like a lot of lunytics? You're
wuss than the sperrit-rappers!"
"Have you," said middle-aged female No. 2, who was a quieter sort of
person, "have you no sentiment--no poetry in your soul--no love for
the beautiful? Dost never go into the green fields to cull the
beautiful flowers?"
"I not only never dost," said the landlord, in an angry voice, "but
I'll bet you five pound you can't bring a man as dares say I durst."
"The little birds," continued the female, "dost not love to gaze
onto them?"
"I would I were a bird, that I might fly to thou!" I humorously
sung, casting a sweet glance at the pretty young woman.
"Don't you look in that way at my dawter!" said female No. 1., in a
violent voice; "you're old enough to be her father."
"'Twas an innocent look, dear madam," I softly said. "You behold in
me an emblem of innocence and purity. In fact, I start for Rome by
the first train to-morrow to sit as a model to a celebrated artist
who is about to sculp a statue to be called Sweet Innocence. Do you
s'pose a sculper would send for me for that purpose onless he knowd
I was overflowing with innocency? Don't make a error about me."
"It is my opinyn," said the leading female, "that you're a scoffer
and a wretch! Your mind is in a wusser beclouded state than the
poor nergoes' we are seeking to aid. You are a groper in the dark
cellar of sin. O sinful man!
'There is a sparkling fount
Come, O come, and drink.'
No! you will not come and drink."
"Yes, he will," said the landlord, "if you'll treat. Jest try him."
"As for you," said the enraged female to the landlord, "you're a
degraded bein, too low and wulgar to talk to."
"This is the sparklin fount for me, dear sister!" cried the
lan'lord, drawin and drinkin a mug of beer. Having uttered which
goak, he gave a low rumblin larf, and relapsed into silence.
"My colored fren," I said to the negro, kindly, "what is it all
about?"
He said they was trying to raise money to send missionaries to the
Southern States in America to preach to the vast numbers of negroes
recently made free there. He said they were without the gospel.
They were without tracts.
I said, "My fren," this is a seris matter. I admire you for trying
to help the race to which you belong, and far be it from me to say
anything again carrying the gospel among the blacks of the South.
Let them go to them by all means. But I happen to individually know
that there are some thousands of liberated blacks in the South who
are starvin. I don't blame anybody for this, but it is a very sad
fact. Some are really too ill to work, some can't get work to do,
and others are too foolish to see any necessity for workin. I was
down there last winter and I observed that this class had plenty of
preachin for their souls, but skurce any vittles for their stummux.
Now, if it is proposed to send flour and bacon along with the
gospel, the idea is really an excellent one. If, on t'other hand,
it is proposed to send preachin alone, all I can say is that it's a
hard case for the niggers. If you expect a colored person to get
deeply interested in a tract when his stummuck is empty, you expect
too much."
I gave the negro as much as I could afford, and the kind-hearted
lan'lord did the same. I said:
"Farewell, my colored fren, I wish you well, certainly. You are now
as free as the eagle. Be like him and soar. But don't attempt to
convert a Ethiopian person while his stummuck yearns for vittles.
And you, ladies--I hope you are ready to help the poor and
unfortunate at home, as you seem to help the poor and unfortunate
abroad."
When they had gone, the lan'lord said, "Come into the garden, Ward."
And we went and culled some carrots for dinner.
7.14. ARTEMUS WARD ON HEALTH.
[The following fragment from the pen of Artemus Ward was written in
the last days of his illness, and was found amongst the loose papers
on the table beside his bed. It contains the last written jests of
the dying jester, and is illustrative of that strong spirit of humor
which even extreme exhaustion and the near approach of death itself
could not wholly destroy.
There is an anecdote related of Thomas Hood to the effect that when
he was just upon the point of dying, his friend, Mr. F.O. WARD,
visited him, and, to amuse him, related some of his adventures in
the low parts of the metropolis in his capacity as a sanitary
commissioner. "Pray desist," said Hood; "your anecdote gives me the
back-slum-bago." The proximity of death could no more deprive poor
Artemus of his power to jest than it could Thomas Hood. When
nothing else was left him to joke upon, when he could no longer seek
fun in the city streets, or visit the Tower of London and call it "a
sweet boon," his own shattered self suggested a theme for jesting.
He commenced this paper "On Health." The purport of it, I believe,
was to ridicule doctors generally; for Artemus was bitterly
sarcastic on his medical attendants, and he had some good reasons
for being so. A few weeks before he died, a German physician
examined his throat with a laryngoscope, and told him that nothing
was the matter with him except a slight inflammation of the larynx.
Another physician told him that he had heart disease, and a third
assured him that he merely required his throat to be sponged two or
three times a day, and take a preparation of tortoise shell for
medicine, to perfectly recover! Every doctor made a different
diagnosis, and each had a different specific. One alone of the many
physicians to whom Artemus applied seemed to be fully aware that the
poor patient was dying of consumption in its most formidable form.
Not merely phthisis, but a cessation of functions and a wasting away
of the organs most concerned in the vital processes. Artemus saw
how much the doctors were at fault, and used to smile at them with a
sadly scornful smile as they left the sick room. "I must write a
paper," said he, "about health and doctors." The few paragraphs
which follow are, I believe, all that he wrote on the subject.
Whether the matter became too serious to him for further jesting, or
whether his hand became too weak to hold the pen, I cannot say. The
article terminates as abruptly as did the life of its gentle, kind,
ill-fated author.
E.P.H.]
Ontil quite recent, I've bin a helthy individooal. I'm near 60, and
yit I've got a muskle into my arms which don't make my fists
resemble the tread of a canary bird when they fly out and hit a man.
Only a few weeks ago I was exhibitin in East Skowhegan, in a b'ildin
which had form'ly bin ockepyied by a pugylist--one of them fellers
which hits from the shoulder, and teaches the manly art of self
defens. And he cum and said he was goin in free, in consekence of
previ'sly ockepyin sed b'ildin, with a large yeller dog. I sed, "To
be sure, sir, but not with those yeller dogs." He sed, "Oh, yes."
I sed, "Oh, no." He sed, "Do you want to be ground to powder?" I
sed, "Yes, I do, if there is a powder-grindist handy." When he
struck me a disgustin blow in my left eye, which caused that concern
to at once close for repairs; but he didn't hurt me any more. I
went for him. I went for him energet'cally. His parents live near
by, and I will simply state that 15 minits after I'd gone for him,
his mother, seein the prostrate form of her son approachin the house
on to a shutter carrid by four men, run out doors, keerfully looked
him over, and sed, "My son, you've been foolin round a thrashin
masheen. You went in at the end where they put the grain in, come
out with the straw, and then got up in the thingumajig and let the
hosses tred on you, didn't you, my son?"
You can jedge by this what a disagreeable person I am when I'm
angry.
But to resoom about helth. I cum of a helthy fam'ly.
The Wards has allus been noted for helthiness.
The fust of my ancestors that I know anything about was Abijah Ward
and his wife, Abygil Ward who came over with the Pilgrims in the
"Mayflower." Most of the Pilgrims was sick on the passige, but my
ancestor wasn't. Even when the tempist raged and the billers
howled, he sold another Pilgrim a kag of apple sass. The Pilgrim
who bo't it was angry when he found that under a few layers of sass
the rest was sawdust, and my ancestor sed he wouldn't have b'leeved
such wickedness could exist, when he ascertained that the bill sed
Pilgrim gave him was onto a broken bank, and wasn't wuth the price
of a glass of new gin. It will be thus seen that my fust ancestor
had a commercial mind.
My ancestors has all bin helthy people, tho' their pursoots in life
has been vari's.
* * * * *
* * * * *
7.15. A FRAGMENT.