_Dear Sir:_ There has been a great religious upheaval here, and great
anxiety on the part of our entire congregation, and I write to you, hoping
that you may have some suggestions to offer that we could use at this time
beneficially.
All the bitter and irreverent remarks of Bob Ingersoll have fallen
harmlessly upon the minds of our people. The flippant sneers and wicked
sarcasms of the modern infidel, wise in his own conceit, have alike passed
over our heads without damage or disaster. These times that have tried
men's souls have only rooted us more firmly in the faith, and united us
more closely as brothers and sisters.
We do not care whether the earth was made in two billion years or two
minutes, so long as it was made and we are satisfied with it. We do not
care whether Jonah swallowed the whale or the whale swallowed Jonah. None
of these things worry us in the least. We do not pin our faith on such
little matters as those, but we try to so live that when we pass on beyond
the flood we may have a record to which we may point with pride.
But last Sabbath our entire congregation was visibly moved. People who had
grown gray in this church got right up during the service and went out,
and did not come in again. Brothers who had heard all kinds of infidelity
and scorned to be moved by it, got up, and kicked the pews, and slammed
the doors, and created a young riot.
For many years we have sailed along in the most peaceful faith, and
through joy or sorrow we came to the church together to worship. We have
laughed and wept as one family for a quarter of a century, and an humble
dignity and Christian style of etiquette have pervaded our incomings and
our outgoings.
That is the reason why a clear case of disorderly conduct in our church
has attracted attention and newspaper comment. That is the reason why we
want in some public way to have the church set right before we suffer from
unjust criticism and worldly scorn.
It has been reported that one of the brothers, who is sixty years of age,
and a model Christian, and a good provider, rose during the first prayer,
and, waving his plug hat in the air, gave a wild and blood-curdling whoop,
jumped over the back of his pew, and lit out. While this is in a measure
true, it is not accurate. He did do some wild and startling jumping, but
he did not jump over the pew. He tried to, but failed. He was too old.
It has also been stated that another brother, who has done more to build
up the church and society here than any other one man of his size, threw
his hymn book across the church, and, with a loud wail that sounded like
the word “Gosh!” hissed through clenched teeth, got out through the window
and went away. This is overdrawn, though there is an element of truth in
it, and I do not try to deny it.
There were other similar strong evidences of feeling throughout the
congregation, none of which had ever been noticed before in this place.
Our clergyman was amazed and horrified. He tried to ignore the action of
the brethren, but when a sister who has grown old in our church, and been
such a model and example of rectitude that all the girls in the county
were perfectly discouraged about trying to be anywhere near equal to her;
when she rose with a wild snort, got up on the pew with her feet, and
swung her parasol in a way that indicated that she would not go home till
morning, he paused and briefly wound up the services.
Of course there were other little eccentricities on the part of the
congregation, but these were the ones that people have talked about the
most, and have done us the most damage abroad.
Now, my desire is that through the medium of the press you will state that
this great trouble which has come upon us, by reason of which the ungodly
have spoken lightly of us, was not the result of a general tendency to
dissent from the statements made by our pastor, and therefore an
exhibition of our disapproval of his doctrines, but that the janitor had
started a light fire in the furnace, and that had revived a large nest of
common, streaked, hot-nosed wasps in the warm air pipe, and when they came
up through the register and united in the services, there was more or less
of an ovation.
Sometimes Christianity gets sluggish and comatose, but not under the above
circumstances. A man may slumber on softly with his bosom gently rising
and falling, and his breath coming and going through one corner of his
mouth like the death rattle of a bath-tub, while the pastor opens out a
new box of theological thunders and fills the air full of the sullen roar
of sulphurous waves, licking the shores of eternity and swallowing up the
great multitudes of the eternally lost; but when one little wasp, with a
red-hot revelation, goes gently up the leg of that same man's pantaloons,
leaving large, hot tracks whenever he stopped and sat down to think it
over, you will see a sudden awakening and a revival that will attract
attention.
I wish that you would take this letter, Mr. Nye, and write something from
it in your own way, for publication, showing how we happened to have more
zeal than usual in the church last Sabbath, and that it was not directly
the result of the sermon which was preached on that day.
Yours, with great respect,
William Lemons.
The Weeping Woman.
I have not written much for publication lately, because I did not feel
well, I was fatigued. I took a ride on the cars last week and it shook me
up a good deal.
The train was crowded somewhat, and so I sat in a seat with a woman who
got aboard at Minkin's Siding. I noticed as we pulled out of Minkin's
Siding, that this woman raised the window so that she could bid adieu to a
man in a dyed moustache. I do not know whether he was her dolce far
niente, or her grandson by her second husband. I know that if he had been
a relative of mine, however, I would have cheerfully concealed the fact.
[Illustration: SHE SOBBED SEVERAL MORE TIMES.]
She waved a little 2x6 handkerchief out of the window, said “good-bye,”
allowed a fresh zephyr from Cape Sabine to come in and play a xylophone
interlude on my spinal column, and then burst into a paroxysm of damp, hot
tears.
I had to go into another car for a moment, and when I returned a pugilist
from Chicago had my seat. When I travel I am uniformly courteous,
especially to pugilists. A pugilist who has started out as an obscure boy
with no money, no friends, and no one to practice on, except his wife or
his mother, with no capital aside from his bare hands; a man who has had
to fight his way through life, as it were, and yet who has come out of
obscurity and attracted the attention of the authorities, and won the good
will of those with whom he came in contact, will always find me cordial
and pacific. So I allowed this self-made man with the broad, high,
intellectual shoulder blades, to sit in my seat with his feet on my new
and expensive traveling bag, while I sat with the tear-bedewed memento
from Minkin's Siding.
She sobbed several more times, then hove a sigh that rattled the windows
in the car, and sat up. I asked her if I might sit by her side for a few
miles and share her great sorrow. She looked at me askance. I did not
resent it. She allowed me to take the seat, and I looked at a paper for a
few moments so that she could look me over through the corners of her
eyes. I also scrutinized her lineaments some.
She was dressed up considerably, and, when a woman dresses up to ride in a
railway train, she advertises the fact that her intellect is beginning to
totter on its throne. People who have more than one suit of clothes should
not pick out the fine raiment for traveling purposes. This person was not
handsomely dressed, but she had the kind of clothes that look as though
they had tried to present the appearance of affluence and had failed to do
so.
This leads me to say, in all seriousness, that there is nothing so sad as
the sight of a man or woman who would scorn to tell a wrong story, but who
will persist in wearing bogus clothes and bogus jewelry that wouldn't fool
anybody.
My seat-mate wore a cloak that had started out to bamboozle the American
people with the idea that it was worth $100, but it wouldn't mislead
anyone who might be nearer than half a mile. I also discovered, that it
had an air about it that would indicate that she wore it while she cooked
the pancakes and fried the doughnuts. It hardly seems possible that she
would do this, but the garment, I say, had that air about it.
She seemed to want to converse after awhile, and she began on the subject
of literature, picking up a volume that had been left in her seat by the
train boy, entitled: “Shadowed to Skowhegan and Back; or, The Child Fiend;
price $2,” we drifted on pleasantly into the broad domain of letters.
Incidentally I asked her what authors she read mostly.
“O, I don't remember the authors so much as I do the books,” said she; “I
am a great reader. If I should tell you how much I have read, you wouldn't
believe it.”
I said I certainly would. I had frequently been called upon to believe
things that would make the ordinary rooster quail.
If she discovered the true inwardness of this Anglo-American “Jewdesprit,”
she refrained from saying anything about it.
“I read a good deal,” she continued, “and it keeps me all strung up. I
weep, O so easily.” Just then she lightly laid her hand on my arm, and I
could see that the tears were rising to her eyes. I felt like asking her
if she had ever tried running herself through a clothes wringer every
morning? I did feel that someone ought to chirk her up, so I asked her if
she remembered the advice of the editor who received a letter from a young
lady troubled the same way. She stated that she couldn't explain it, but
every little while, without any apparent cause, she would shed tears, and
the editor asked her why she didn't lock up the shed.
We conversed for a long time about literature, but every little while she
would get me into deep water by quoting some author or work that I had
never read. I never realized what a hopeless ignoramus I was till I heard
about the scores of books that had made her shed the scalding, and yet
that I had never, never read. When she looked at me with that far-away
expression in her eyes, and with her hand resting lightly on my arm in
such a way as to give the gorgeous two karat Rhinestone from Pittsburg
full play, and told me how such works as “The New Made Grave; or The Twin
Murderers” had cost her many and many a copious tear, I told her I was
glad of it. If it be a blessed boon for the student of such books to weep
at home and work up their honest perspiration into scalding tears, far be
it from me to grudge that poor boon.
I hope that all who may read these lines, and who may feel that the pores
of their skin are getting torpid and sluggish, owing to an inherited
antipathy toward physical exertion, and who feel that they would rather
work up their perspiration into woe and shed it in the shape of common
red-eyed weep, will keep themselves to this poor boon. People have
different ways of enjoying themselves, and I hope no one will hesitate
about accepting this or any other poor boon that I do not happen to be
using at the time.
The Crops.
I have just been through Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, on a tour of
inspection. I rode for over ten days in these States in a sleeping-car,
examining crops, so that I could write an intelligent report.
[Illustration]
Grain in Northern Wisconsin suffered severely in the latter part of the
season from rust, chintz bug, Hessian fly and trichina. In the St. Croix
valley wheat will not average a half crop. I do not know why farmers
should insist upon leaving their grain out nights in July, when they know
from the experience of former years that it will surely rust.
In Southern Wisconsin too much rain has almost destroyed many crops, and
cattle have been unable to get enough to eat, unless they were fed, for
several weeks. This is a sad outlook for the farmer at this season.
In the northern part of the State many fields of grain were not worth
cutting, while others barely yielded the seed, and even that of a very
inferior quality.
The ruta-baga is looking unusually well this fall, but we cannot subsist
entirely upon the ruta-baga. It is juicy and rich if eaten in large
quantities, but it is too bulky to be popular with the aristocracy.
Cabbages in most places are looking well, though in some quarters I notice
an epidemic of worms. To successfully raise the cabbage, it will be
necessary at all times to be well supplied with vermifuge that can be
readily administered at any hour of the day or night.
The crook-neck squash in the Northwest is a great success this season. And
what can be more beautiful, as it calmly lies in its bower of green vines
in the crisp and golden haze of autumn, than the cute little crook-neck
squash, with yellow, warty skin, all cuddled up together in the cool
morning, like the discarded wife of an old Mormon elder--his first attempt
in the matrimonial line, so to speak, ere he had gained wisdom by
experience.
The full-dress, low-neck-and-short-sleeve summer squash will be worn as
usual this fall, with trimmings of salt and pepper in front and revers of
butter down the back.
N.B.--It will not be used much as an outside wrap, but will be worn mostly
inside.
Hop-poles in some parts of Wisconsin are entirely killed. I suppose that
continued dry weather in the early summer did it.
Hop-lice, however, are looking well. Many of our best hop-breeders thought
that when the hop-pole began to wither and die, the hop-louse could not
survive the intense dry heat; but hop-lice have never looked better in
this State than they do this fall.
I can remember very well when Wisconsin had to send to Ohio for hop-lice.
Now she could almost supply Ohio and still have enough to fill her own
coffers.
[Illustration: ENJOYING HIMSELF AT THE DANCE.]
I do not know that hop-lice are kept in coffers, and I may be wrong in
speaking thus freely of these two subjects, never having seen either a
hop-louse or a coffer, but I feel that the public must certainly and
naturally expect me to say something on these subjects. Fruit in the
Northwest this season is not a great success. Aside from the cranberry and
choke-cherry, the fruit yield in the northern district is light. The early
dwarf crab, with or without, worms, as desired--but mostly with--is
unusually poor this fall. They make good cider. This cider when put into a
brandy flask that has not been drained too dry, and allowed to stand until
Christmas, puts a great deal of expression into a country dance. I have
tried it once myself, so that I could write it up for your valuable paper.
People who were present at that dance, and who saw me frolic around there
like a thing of life, say that it was well worth the price of admission.
Stone fence always flies right to the weakest spot. So it goes right to my
head and makes me eccentric.
The violin virtuoso who “fiddled,” “called off” and acted as justice of
the peace that evening, said that I threw aside all reserve and entered
with great zest into the dance, and seemed to enjoy it much better than
those who danced in the same set with me. Since that, the very sight of a
common crab apple makes my head reel. I learned afterward that this cider
had frozen, so that the alleged cider which we drank that night was the
clear, old-fashioned brandy, which of course would not freeze.
We should strive, however, to lead such lives that we will never be
ashamed to look a cider barrel square in the bung.
[Illustration]
Literary Freaks.
People who write for a livelihood get some queer propositions from those
who have crude ideas about the operation of the literary machine. There is
a prevailing idea among those who have never dabbled in literature very
much, that the divine afflatus works a good deal like a corn sheller. This
is erroneous.
To put a bushel of words into the hopper and have them come out a poem or
a sermon, is a more complicated process than it would seem to the casual
observer.
I can hardly be called literary, though I admit that my tastes lie in that
direction, and yet I have had some singular experiences in that line. For
instance, last year I received flattering overtures from three young men
who wanted me to write speeches for them to deliver on the Fourth of July.
They could do it themselves, but hadn't the time. If I would write the
speeches they would be willing to revise them. They seemed to think it
would be a good idea to write the speeches a little longer than necessary
and then the poorer parts of the effort could be cut out. Various prices
were set on these efforts, from a dollar to “the kindest regards.” People
who have squeezed through one of our adult winters in this latitude,
subsisting on kind regards, will please communicate with the writer,
stating how they like it.
One gentleman, who was in the confectionery business, wanted a lot of
“humorous notices wrote for to put into conversation candy.” It was a big
temptation to write something that would be in every lady's mouth, but I
refrained. Writing gum drop epitaphs may properly belong to the domain of
literature, but I doubt it. Surely I do not want to be haughty and above
my business, but it seems to me that this is irrelevant.
Another man wanted me to write a “piece for his boy to speak,” and if I
would do so, I could come to his house some Saturday night and stay over
Sunday. He said that the boy was “a perfect little case to carry on and
folks didn't know whether he would develop into a condemb fool or a
youmerist.” So he wanted a piece of one of them tomfoolery kind for the
little cuss to speak the last day of school.
[Illustration: HIS MOTTO.]
A coal dealer who had risen to affluence by selling coal to the poor by
apothecaries' weight, wrote to ask me for a design to be used as a family
crest and a motto to emblazon on his arms. I told him I had run out of
crests, but that “weight for the wagon, we'll all take a ride,” would be a
good motto; or he might use the following: “The fuel and his money are
soon parted.” He might emblazon this on his arms, or tattoo it on any
other part of his system where he thought it would be becoming to his
complexion. I never heard from him again, and I do not know whether he was
offended or not.
Two young men in Massachusetts wrote me a letter in which they said they
“had a good thing on mother.” They wanted it written up in a facetious
vein. They said that their father had been on the coast a few weeks
before, engaged in the eeling industry. Being a good man, but partially
full, he had mingled himself in the flowing tide and got drowned. Finally,
after several days' search, the neighbors came in sadly and told the old
lady thai they had found all that was mortal of James, and there were two
eels in the remains. They asked for further instructions as to deceased.
The old lady swabbed out her weeping eyes, braced herself against the sink
and told the men to “bring in the eels and set him again.”
The boys thought that if this could be properly written up, “it would be a
mighty good joke on mother.” I was greatly shocked when I received this
letter. It seemed to me heartless for young men to speak lightly of their
widowed mother's great woe. I wrote them how I felt about it, and rebuked
them severely for treating their mother's grief so lightly. Also for
trying to impose upon me with an old chestnut.
A Father's Advice to His Son.
My dear Henry.--Your pensive favor of the 20th inst., asking for more
means with which to persecute your studies, and also a young man from
Ohio, is at hand and carefully noted.
I would not be ashamed to have you show the foregoing sentence to your
teacher, if it could be worked, in a quiet way, so as not to look
egotistic on my part. I think myself that it is pretty fair for a man that
never had any advantages.
But, Henry, why will you insist on fighting the young man from Ohio? It is
not only rude and wrong, but you invariably get licked. There's where the
enormity of the thing comes in.
It was this young man from Ohio, named Williams, that you hazed last year,
or at least that's what I gether from a letter sent me by your warden. He
maintains that you started in to mix Mr. Williams up with the campus in
some way, and that in some way Mr. Williams resented it and got his fangs
tangled up in the bridge of your nose.
You never wrote this to me or to your mother, but I know how busy you are
with your studies, and I hope you won't ever neglect your books just to
write to us.
Your warden, or whoever he is, said that Mr. Williams also hung a
hand-painted marine view over your eye and put an extra eyelid on one of
your ears.
I wish that, if you get time, you would write us about it, because, if
there's anything I can do for you in the arnica line, I would be pleased
to do so.
The president also says that in the scuffle you and Mr. Williams swapped
belts as follows, to-wit: That Williams snatched off the belt of your
little Norfolk jacket, and then gave you one in the eye.
From this I gether that the old prez, as you faseshusly call him, is an
youmorist. He is not a very good penman, however; though, so far, his
words have all been spelled correct.
I would hate to see you permanently injured, Henry, but I hope that when
you try to tramp on the toes of a good boy simply because you are a
seanyour and he is a fresh, as you frequently state, that he will arise
and rip your little pleated jacket up the back and make your spinal colyum
look like a corderoy bridge in the spring tra la. (This is from a Japan
show I was to last week.)
Why should a seanyour in a colledge tromp onto the young chaps that come
in there to learn? Have you forgot how I fatted up the old cow and beefed
her so that you could go and monkey with youclid and algebray? Have you
forgot how the other boys pulled you through a mill pond and made you
tobogin down hill in a salt barrel with brads in it? Do you remember how
your mother went down there to nuss you for two weeks and I stayed to
home, and done my own work and the housework too and cooked my own vittles
for the whole two weeks?
And now, Henry, you call yourself a seanyour, and therefore, because you
are simply older in crime, you want to muss up Mr. Williams's features so
that his mother will have to come over and nuss him. I am glad that your
little pleated coat is ripped up the back, Henry, under the circumstances,
and I am also glad that you are wearing the belt--over your off eye. If
there's anything I can do to add to the hilarity of the occasion, please
let me know and I will tend to it.
The lop-horned heifer is a parent once more, and I am trying in my poor,
weak way to learn her wayward offspring how to drink out of a patent pail
without pushing your old father over into the hay-mow. He is a cute little
quadruped, with a wild desire to have fun at my expense. He loves to
swaller a part of my coat-tail Sunday morning, when I am dressed up, and
then return it to me in a moist condition. He seems to know that when I
address the sabbath school the children will see the joke and enjoy it.
Your mother is about the same, trying in her meek way to adjust herself to
a new set of teeth that are a size too large for her. She has one large
bunion in the roof of her mouth already, but is still resolved to hold out
faithful, and hopes these few lines will find you enjoying the same great
blessing.
You will find inclosed a dark-blue money-order for four eighty-five. It is
money that I had set aside to pay my taxes, but there is no novelty about
paying taxes. I've done that before, so it don't thrill me as it used to.
Give my congratulations to Mr. Williams. He has got the elements of
greatness to a wonderful degree. If I happened to be participating in that
colledge of yours, I would gently but firmly decline to be tromped onto.
So good-bye for this time.
Your Father.
Eccentricity in Lunch.
Over at Kasota Junction, the other day, I found a living curiosity. He was
a man of about medium height, perhaps 45 years of age, of a quiet
disposition, and not noticeable or peculiar in his general manner. He runs
the railroad eating-house at that point, and the one odd characteristic
which he has, makes him well known all through three or four States. I
could not illustrate his eccentricity any better than by relating a
circumstance that occurred to me at the Junction last week. I had just
eaten breakfast there and paid for it. I stepped up to the cigar case and
asked this man if he had “a rattling good cigar.”
[Illustration: THE ANTIQUE LUNCH.]
Without knowing it I had struck the very point upon which this man seems
to be a crank, if you will allow me that expression, though it doesn't fit
very well in this place. He looked at me in a sad and subdued manner and
said, “No, sir; I haven't a rattling good cigar in the house. I have some
cigars there that I bought for Havana fillers, but they are mostly filled
with pieces of Colorado Maduro overalls. There's a box over yonder that I
bought for good, straight ten cent cigars, but they are only a chaos of
hay and Flora, Fino and Damfino, all socked into a Wisconsin wrapper. Over
in the other end of the case is a brand of cigars that were to knock the
tar out of all other kinds of weeds, according to the urbane rustler who
sold them to me, and then drew on me before I could light one of them.
Well, instead of being a fine Colorado Claro with a high-priced wrapper,
they are common Mexicano stinkaros in a Mother Hubbard wrapper. The
commercial tourist who sold me those cigars and then drew on me at sight
was a good deal better on the draw than his cigars are. If you will
notice, you will see that each cigar has a spinal column to it, and this
outer debris is wrapped around it. One man bought a cigar out of that box
last week. I told him, though, just as I am telling you, that they were no
good, and if he bought one he would regret it. But he took one and went
out on the veranda to smoke it. Then he stepped on a melon rind and fell
with great force on his side. When we picked him up he gasped once or
twice and expired. We opened his vest hurriedly and found that, in
falling, this bouquet de Gluefactoro cigar, with the spinal column, had
been driven through his breast bone and had penetrated his heart. The
wrapper of the cigar never so much as cracked.”
“But doesn't it impair your trade to run on in this wild, reckless way
about your cigars?”
“It may at first, but not after awhile. I always tell people what my
cigars are made of, and then they can't blame me; so, after awhile they
get to believe what I say about them. I often wonder that no cigar man
ever tried this way before. I do just the same way about my lunch counter.
If a man steps up and wants a fresh ham sandwich I give it to him if I've
got it, and if I haven't it I tell him so. If you turn my sandwiches over,
you will find the date of its publication on every one. If they are not
fresh, and I have no fresh ones, I tell the customer that they are not so
blamed fresh as the young man with the gauze moustache, but that I can
remember very well when they were fresh, and if his artificial teeth fit
him pretty well he can try one.
“It's just the same with boiled eggs. I have a rubber dating stamp, and as
soon as the eggs are turned over to me by the hen for inspection, I date
them. Then they are boiled and another date in red is stamped on them. If
one of my clerks should date an egg ahead, I would fire him too quick.
“On this account, people who know me will skip a meal at Missouri
Junction, in order to come here and eat things that are not clouded with
mystery. I do not keep any poor stuff when I can help it, but if I do, I
don't conceal the horrible fact.
“Of course a new cook will sometimes smuggle a late date onto a mediaeval
egg and sell it, but he has to change his name and flee.
“I suppose that if every eating-house should date everything, and be
square with the public, it would be an old story and wouldn't pay; but as
it is, no one trying to compete with me, I do well out of it, and people
come here out of curiosity a good deal.
“The reason I try to do right and win the public esteem is that the
general public never did me any harm and the majority of people who travel
are a kind that I may meet in a future state. I should hate to have a
thousand traveling men holding nuggets of rancid ham sandwiches under my
nose through all eternity, and know that I had lied about it. It's an
honest fact, if I knew I'd got to stand up and apologize for my hand-made,
all-around, seamless pies, and quarantine cigars, Heaven would be no
object.”
Insomnia in Domestic Animals.
If there be one thing above another that I revel in, it is science. I have
devoted much of my life to scientific research, and though it hasn't made
much stir in the scientific world so far, I am positive that when I am
gone the scientists of our day will miss me, and the red-nosed theorist
will come and shed the scalding tear over my humble tomb.
My attention was first attracted to insomnia as the foe of the domestic
animal, by the strange appearance of a favorite dog named Lucretia Borgia.
I did not name this animal Lucretia Borgia. He was named when I purchased
him. In his eccentric and abnormal thirst for blood he favored Lucretia,
but in sex he did not. I got him partly because he loved children. The
owner said Lucretia Borgia was an ardent lover of children, and I found
that he was. He seemed to love them best in the spring of the year, when
they were tender. He would have eaten up a favorite child of mine, if the
youngster hadn't left a rubber ball in his pocket which clogged the
glottis of Lucretia till I could get there and disengage what was left of
the child.
Lucretia soon after this began to be restless. He would come to my
casement and lift up his voice, and howl into the bosom of the silent
night. At first I thought that he had found some one in distress, or
wanted to get me out of doors and save my life. I went out several nights
in a weird costume that I had made up of garments belonging to different
members of my family. I dressed carefully in the dark and stole out to
kill the assassin referred to by Lucretia, but he was not there. Then the
faithful animal would run up to me and with almost human, pleading eyes,
bark and run away toward a distant alley. I immediately decided that some
one was suffering there. I had read in books about dogs that led their
masters away to the suffering and saved people's lives; so, when Lucretia
came to me with his great, honest eyes and took little mementoes out of
the calf of my leg, and then galloped off seven or eight blocks, I
followed him in the chill air of night and my Mosaic clothes. I wandered
away to where the dog stopped behind a livery stable, and there, lying in
a shuddering heap on the frosty ground, lay the still, white features of a
soup bone that had outlived its usefulness.
On the way back, I met a physician who had been up town to swear in an
American citizen who would vote twenty-one years later, if he lived. The
physician stopped me and was going to take me to the home of the
friendless, when he discovered who I was.
[Illustration: EXCITING PUBLIC CURIOSITY.]
You wrap a tall man, with a William H. Seward nose, in a flannel robe, cut
plain, and then put a plug hat and a sealskin sacque and Arctic overshoes
on him, and put him out in the street, under the gaslight, with his trim,
purple ankles just revealing themselves as he madly gallops after a
hydrophobia infested dog, and it is not, after all, surprising that
people's curiosity should be a little bit excited.
After I had introduced myself to the physician and asked him for a cigar,
explaining that I could not find any in the clothes I had on, I asked him
about Lucretia Borgia. I told the doctor how Lucretia seemed restless
nights and nervous and irritable days, and how he seemed to be almost a
mental wreck, and asked him what the trouble was.
He said it was undoubtedly “insomnia.” He said that it was a bad case of
it, too. I told him I thought so myself. I said I didn't mind the insomnia
that Lucretia had so much as I did my own. I was getting more insomnia on
my hands than I could use.
He gave me something to administer to Lucretia. He said I must put it in a
link of sausage and leave the sausage where it would appear that I didn't
want the dog to get it, and then Lucretia would eat it greedily.
I did so. It worked well so far as the administration of the remedy was
concerned, but it was fatal to my little, high strung, yearnful dog. It
must have contained something of a deleterious character, for the next
morning a coarse man took Lucretia Borgia by the tail and laid him where
the violets blow. Malignant insomnia is fast becoming the great foe to the
modern American dog.
Along Lake Superior.
I have just returned from a brief visit to Duluth. After strolling along
the Bay of Naples and watching old Vesuvius vomit red-hot mud, vapor and
other campaign documents, Duluth is quite a change. The ice in the bay at
Duluth was thirty-eight inches in depth when I left there the last week in
March, and we rode across it with the utmost impunity. By the time these
lines fall beneath the eye of the genial, courteous and urbane reader, the
new railroad bridge across the bay, over a mile and a half long, will have
been completed, so that you may ride from Chicago to Duluth over the
Northwestern and Omaha railroads with great comfort. I would be glad to
digress here and tell about the beauty of the summer scenery along the
Omaha road, and the shy and beautiful troutlet, and the dark and silent
Chippewa squawlet and her little bleached out pappooselet, were it not for
the unkind and cruel thrusts that I would invoke from the scenery cynic
who believes that a newspaper man's opinions may be largely warped with a
pass.
Duluth has been joked a good deal, but she stands it first-rate and takes
it good naturedly. She claims 16,000 people, some of whom I met at the
opera house there. If the rest of the 16,000 are as pleasant as those I
conversed with that evening, Duluth must be a pleasant place to live in.
Duluth has a very pleasant and beautiful opera house that seats 1,000
people. A few more could have elbowed their way into the opera house the
evening that I spoke there, but they preferred to suffer on at home.
Lake Superior is one of the largest aggregations of fresh wetness in the
world, if not the largest. When I stop to think that some day all this
cold, cold water will have to be absorbed by mankind, it gives me a cramp
in the geographical center.
Around the west end of Lake Superior there is a string of towns which
stretches along the shore for miles under one name or another, all waiting
for the boom to strike and make the northern Chicago. You cannot visit
Duluth or Superior without feeling that at any moment the tide of trade
will rise and designate the point where the future metropolis of the
northern lakes is to be. I firmly believe that this summer will decide it,
and my guess is that what is now known as West Superior is to get the
benefit. For many years destiny has been hovering over the west end of
this mighty lake, and now the favored point is going to be designated.
Duluth has past prosperity and expensive improvements in her favor, and in
fact the whole locality is going to be benefited, but if I had a block in
West Superior with a roller rink on it, I would wear my best clothes every
day and claim to be a millionaire in disguise. Ex-President R. B. Hayes
has a large brick block in Duluth, but he does not occupy it. Those who go
to Duluth hoping to meet Mr. Hayes will be bitterly disappointed.
The streams that run into Lake Superior are alive with trout, and next
summer I propose to go up there and roast until I have so thoroughly
saturated my system with trout that the trout bones will stick out through
my clothes in every direction and people will regard me as a beautiful
toothpick holder.
Still there will be a few left for those who think of going up there. All
I will need will be barely enough to feed Albert Victor and myself from
day to day. People who have never seen a crowned head with a peeled nose
on it are cordially invited to come over and see us during office hours.
Albert is not at all haughty, and I intend to throw aside my usual reserve
this summer also--for the time. P. Wales' son and I will be far from the
cares that crowd so thick and fast on greatness. People who come to our
cedar bark wigwam to show us their mosquito bites, will be received as
cordially as though no great social chasm yawned between us.
Many will meet us in the depths of the forest and go away thinking that we
are just common plugs of whom the world wots not; but there is where they
will fool themselves.
Then, when the season is over, we will come back into the great maelstrom
of life, he to wait for his grandmother's overshoes and I to thrill
waiting millions from the rostrum with my “Tale of the Broncho Cow.” And
so it goes with us all. Adown life's rugged pathway some must toil on from
daylight to dark to earn their meagre pittance as kings, while others are
born to wear a swallow-tail coat every evening and wring tears of genuine
anguish from their audiences.
They tell some rather wide stories about people who have gone up there
total physical wrecks and returned strong and well. One man said that he
knew a young college student, who was all run down and weak, go up there
on the Brule and eat trout and fight mosquitoes a few months, and when he
returned to his Boston home he was so stout and well and tanned up that
his parents did not know him. There was a man in our car who weighed 300
pounds. He seemed to be boiling out through his clothes everywhere. He was
the happiest looking man I ever saw. All he seemed to do in this life was
to sit all day and whistle and laugh and trot his stomach, first on one
knee and then on the other.
He said that he went up into the pine forests of the Great Lake region a
broken-down hypochondriac and confirmed consumptive. He had been measured
for a funeral sermon three times, he said, and had never used either of
them. He knew a clergyman named Brayley who went up into that region with
Bright's justly celebrated disease. He was so emaciated that he couldn't
carry a watch. The ticking of the watch rattled his bones so that it made
him nervous, and at night they had to pack him in cotton so that he
wouldn't break a leg when he turned over. He got to sleeping out nights on
a bed of balsam and spruce boughs and eating venison and trout.
When he came down in the spring, he passed through a car of lumbermen and
one of them put a warm, wet quid of tobacco in his plug hat for a joke.
There were a hundred of these lumbermen when the preacher began, and when
the train got into Eau Claire there were only three of them well enough to
go around to the office and draw their pay.
This is just as the story was given to me and I repeat it to show how
bracing the climate near Superior is. Remember, if you please, that I do
not want the story to be repeated as coming from me, for I have nothing
left now but my reputation for veracity, and that has had a very hard
winter of it.