so that those who were so disposed might feel perfectly free to lean up
against the rink and watch the progress of the flames.
Anon the bright glare of the devouring element might have been seen
bursting through the casement of Mr. Cicero Williams's residence, facing
on the alley west of Mr. Pendergast's rink. Across the street the
spectator whose early education had not been neglected could distinctly
read the sign of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Alonzo Burlingame,
which was lit up by the red glare of the flames so that the letters stood
out plainly as follows:
Alonzo Burlingame,
Dealer in Soft and Hard Coal, Ice-Cream, Wood, Lime, Cement, Perfumery,
Nails, Putty, Spectacles, and Horse Radish.
Chocolate Caramels and Tar Roofing.
Gas Fitting and Undertaking in all Its Branches.
Hides, Tallow, and Maple Syrup.
Fine Gold Jewelry, Silverware, and Salt.
Glue, Codfish, and Gent's Neckwear.
Undertaker and Confectioner.
Diseases of Horses and Children a Specialty.
Jno. White, Ptr.
The flames spread rapidly, until they threatened the Palace rink of our
esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Pendergast, whose genial and urbane manner
has endeared him to all.
With a degree of forethought worthy of a better cause, Mr. Leroy W. Butts
suggested the propriety of calling out the hook and ladder company, an
organization of which every one seemed to be justly proud. Some delay
ensued in trying to find the janitor of Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company
No. 1's building, but at last he was secured, and, after he had gone home
for the key, Mr. Butts ran swiftly down the street to awaken the foreman,
but, after he had dressed himself and inquired anxiously about the fire,
he said that he was not foreman of the company since the 2d of April.
Meantime the firefiend continued to rise up ever and anon on his hind feet
and lick up salt-barrel after salt-barrel in close proximity to the Palace
rink, owned by our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Pendergast. Twice Mr.
Pendergast was seen to shudder, after which he went home and filled out a
blank which he forwarded to the insurance company.
Just as the town seemed doomed, the hook and ladder company came rushing
down the street with their navy-blue hook and ladder truck. It is indeed a
beauty, being one of the Excelsior noiseless hook and ladder factory's
best instruments, with tall red pails and rich blue ladders.
Some delay ensued, as several of the officers claimed that under a new
bylaw passed in January they were permitted to ride on the truck to fires.
This having been objected to by a gentleman who had lived in Chicago
several years, a copy of the by-laws was sent for and the dispute
summarily settled. The company now donned its rubber overcoats with great
coolness and proceeded at once to deftly twist the tail of the firefiend.
It was a thrilling sight as James McDonald, a brother of Terrance
McDonald, Trombone, Ind., rapidly ascended one of the ladders in the full
glare of the devouring element and fell off again.
Then a wild cheer arose to a height of about nine feet, and all again
became confused.
It was now past 11 o'clock, and several of the members of the hook and
ladder company who had to get up early the next day in order to catch a
train excused themselves and went home to seek much-needed rest.
Suddenly it was discovered that the brick livery stable of Mr. Abraham
McMichaels, a nephew of our worthy assessor, was getting hot. Leaving the
Palace rink to its fate, the hook and ladder company directed its
attention to the brick barn, and, after numerous attempts, at last
succeeded in getting its large iron prong fastened on the second story
window-sill, which was pulled out. The hook was again inserted, but not so
effectively, bringing down at this time an armful of hay and part of an
old horse blanket. Another courageous jab was made with the iron hook,
which succeeded in pulling out about 5 cents worth of brick. This was
greeted by a wild burst of applause from the bystanders, during which the
hook and ladder company fell over each other and added to the horror of
the scene by a mad burst of pale-blue profanity.
It was not long before the stable was licked up by the firefiend, and the
hook and ladder company directed its attention toward the undertaking,
embalming, and ice-cream parlors of our highly esteemed fellow-townsman,
Mr. A. Burlingame. The company succeeded in pulling two stone window-sills
out of this building before it burned. Both times they were encored by the
large and aristocratic audience.
Mr. Burlingame at once recognized the efforts of the heroic firemen by
tapping a keg of beer, which he distributed among them at 25 cents per
glass.
This morning a space forty-seven feet wide, where but yesterday all was
joy and prosperity and beauty, is covered over with blackened ruins. Mr.
Pendergast is overcome by grief over the loss of his rink, but assures us
that if he is successful in getting the full amount of his insurance he
will take the money and build two rinks, either one of which will be far
more imposing than the one destroyed last evening.
A movement is on foot to give a literary and musical entertainment at
Burley's hall, to raise funds for the purchase of new uniforms for the
“fire laddies,” at which Mrs. Butts has consented to sing “When the Robins
Nest Again,” and Miss Mertie Stout will recite “'Ostler Jo,” a selection
which never fails to offend the best people everywhere. Twenty-five cents
for each offense.
Let there be a full house.
The Little Barefoot Boy.
With the moist and misty spring, with the pink and white columbine of the
wildwood and the breath of the cellar and the incense of burning overshoes
in the back yard, comes the little barefoot boy with fawn colored hair and
a droop in his pantaloons. Poverty is not the grand difficulty with the
little barefoot boy of spring. It is the wild, ungovernable desire to
wiggle his toes in the ambient air, and to soothe his parboiled heels in
the yielding mud.
I see him now in my mind's eye, making his annual appearance like a
rheumatic housefly, stepping high like a blind horse. He has just left his
shoes in the woodshed and stepped out on the piazza to proclaim that
violet-eyed spring is here. All over the land the gladiolus bulb and the
ice man begin to swell. The south wind and the new-born calf at the barn
begin to sigh. The oak tree and the dude begin to put on their spring
apparel. All nature is gay. The thrush is warbling in the asparagus
orchard, and the prima donna does her throat up in a red flannel rag to
wait for another season.
All these things indicate spring, but they are not so certain and
unfailing as the little barefoot boy whose white feet are thrust into the
face of the approaching season. Five months from now those little dimpled
feet, now so bleached and tender, will look like a mudturtle's back and
the superior and leading toe will have a bandage around it, tied with a
piece of thread.
Who would believe that the budding hoodlum before us, with the yellow
chilblain on his heel and the early spring toad in his pocket, which he
will present to the timid teacher as a testimonial of his regard this
afternoon, may be the Moses who will lead the American people forty years
hence into the glorious sunlight of a promised land.
He may possibly do it, but he doesn't look like it now.
Yet John A. Logan and Samuel J. Tilden were once barefooted boys, with a
suspender apiece. It doesn't seem possible, does it?
How can we imagine at this time Julius Caesar and Hannibal Hamlin and
Lucretia Borgia at some time or other stubbed their bare toes against a
root and filled the horizon with pianissimo wails. The barefoot boy of
spring will also proceed to bathe in the river as soon as the ice and the
policeman are out. He will choose a point on the boulevard, where he can
get a good view of those who pass, and in company with eleven other little
barefoot boys, he will clothe himself in an Adam vest, a pair of bare-skin
pantaloons, a Greek slave overcoat and a yard of sunlight, and gaze
earnestly at those who go by on the other side. Up and down the bank,
pasting each other with mud, the little barefoot boys of spring chase each
other, with their vertebrae sticking into the warm and sleepy air, while
down in the marsh, where the cat-tails and the broad flags and the peach
can and the deceased horse grow, the bull-frog is twittering to his mate.
[Illustration: A TESTIMONIAL OF REGARD.]
Later on, the hoarse voice of a rude parental snorter is heard
approaching, and twelve slim Cupids with sunburned backs are inserted into
twelve little cotton shirts and twelve despondent pairs of pantaloons hang
at half-mast to twelve home-made suspenders, and as the gloaming gathers
about the old home, twelve boys back up against the ice-house to cool off,
while the enraged parent hangs up the buggy whip in the old place.
Favored a Higher Fine.
Will Taylor, the son of the present American Consul at Marseilles, was a
good deal like other boys while at school in his old home, at Hudson, Wis.
One day he called his father into the library, and said:
“Pa, I don't like to tell you, but the teacher and I have had trouble.”
“What's the matter now?”
“Well, I cut one of the desks a little with my knife, and the teacher says
I've got to pay a dollar or take a lickin'.”
“Well, why don't you take the licking and say nothing more about it? I can
stand considerable physical pain, so long as it visits our family in that
form. Of course, it is not pleasant to be flogged, but you have broken a
rule of the school, and I guess you'll have to stand it. I presume that
the teacher will in wrath remember mercy, and avoid disabling you so that
you can't get your coat on any more.”
“But, pa, I feel mighty bad about it already, and if you'd pay my fine I'd
never do it again. I know a good deal more about it now, and I will never
do it again. A dollar ain't much to you, pa, but it's a heap to a boy that
hasn't got a cent. If I could make a dollar as easy as you can, pa, I'd
never let my little boy get flogged that way just to save a dollar. If I
had a little feller that got licked bekuz I didn't put up for him, I'd
hate the sight of money always. I'd feel as if every dollar in my pocket
had been taken out of my little kid's back.”
“Well, now, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you a dollar to save you
from punishment this time, but if anything of this kind ever occurs again
I'll hold you while the teacher licks you, and then I'll get the teacher
to hold you while I lick you. That's the way I feel about that. If you
want to go around whittling up our educational institutions you can do so;
but you will have to purchase them afterward yourself. I don't propose to
buy any more damaged school furniture. You probably grasp my meaning, do
you not? I send you to school to acquire an education, not to acquire
liabilities, so that you can come around and make an assessment on me. I
feel a great interest in you, Willie, but I do not feel as though it
should be an assessable interest. I want to go on, of course, and improve
the property, but when I pay my dues on it I want to know that it goes
toward development work. I don't want my assessments to go toward the
purchase of a school-desk with American hieroglyphics carved on it.
“I hope that you will bear this in your mind, my son, and beware. It will
be greatly to your interest to beware. If I were in your place I would put
in a large portion of my time in the beware business.”
The boy took the dollar and went thoughtfully away to school, and no more
was ever said about the matter until Mr. Taylor learned casually several
months later that the Spartan youth had received the walloping and filed
away the dollar for future reference. The boy was afterward heard to say
that he favored a much heavier fine in cases of that kind. One whipping
was sufficient, he said, but he favored a fine of $5. It ought to be
severe enough to make it an object.
“I Spy.”
Dear reader, do you remember the boy of your school who did the heavy
falling through the ice and was always about to break his neck, but
managed to live through it all? Do you call to mind the youth who never
allowed anybody else to fall out of a tree and break his collar bone when
he could attend to it himself? Every school has to secure the services of
such a boy before it can succeed, and so our school had one. When I
entered the school I saw at a glance that the board had neglected to
provide itself with a boy whose duty it was to nearly kill himself every
few days in order to keep up the interest so I applied for the position. I
secured it without any trouble whatever. The board understood at once from
my bearing that I would succeed. And I did not betray the trust they had
reposed in me.
[Illustration: BRINGING IN THE REMAINS.]
Before the first term was over I had tried to climb two trees at once and
been carried home on a stretcher; been pulled out of the river with my
lungs full of water, and artificial respiration resorted to; been jerked
around over the north half of the county by a fractious horse whose halter
I had tied to my leg, and which leg is now three inches longer than the
other; together with various other little early eccentricities which I
cannot at this moment call to mind. My parents at last got so that along
about 2 o'clock P.M. they would look anxiously out of the window and say,
“Isn't it about time for the boys to get here with William's remains? They
generally get here before 2 o'clock.”
One day five or six of us were playing “I spy” around our barn. Every body
knows how to play “I spy.” One shuts his eyes and counts 100, for
instance, while the others hide. Then he must find the rest and say “I
spy” so-and-so and touch the “goal” before they do. If anybody beats him
to the goal the victim has to “blind” over again.
Well, I knew the ground pretty well, and could drop twenty feet out of the
barn window and strike on a pile of straw so as to land near the goal,
touch it, and let the crowd in free without getting found out. I did this
several times and got the blinder, James Bang, pretty mad. After a boy has
counted 500 or 600, and worked hard to gather in the crowd, only to get
jeered and laughed at by the boys, he loses his temper. It was so with
James Cicero Bang. I knew that he almost hated me, and yet I went on.
Finally, in the fifth ballot, I saw a good chance to slide down and let
the crowd in again as I had done on former occasions. I slipped out of the
window and down the side of the barn about two feet, when I was detained
unavoidably. There was a “batten” on the barn that was loose at the upper
end. I think I was wearing my father's vest on that day, as he was away
from home, and I frequently wore his clothes when he was absent. Anyhow
the vest was too large, and when I slid down that loose board ran up
between the vest and my person in such a way as to suspend me about
eighteen feet from the ground, in a prominent but very uncomfortable
position.
I remember it quite distinctly. James C. Bang came around where he could
see me. He said: “I spy Billy Nye and touch the goal before him.” No one
came to remove the barn. No one came to sympathize with me in my great
sorrow and isolation. Every little while James C. Bang would come around
the corner and say: “Oh, I see ye. You needn't think you're out of sight
up there. I can see you real plain. You better come down and blind. I can
see ye up there!”
I tried to unbutton my vest and get down there and lick James, but it was
of no use. It was a very trying time. I can remember how I tried to kick
myself loose, but failed. Sometimes I would kick the barn and sometimes I
would kick a large hole in the horizon. Finally I was rescued by a
neighbor who said he didn't want to see a good barn kicked into chaos just
to save a long-legged boy that wasn't worth over six bits.
It affords me great pleasure to add that while I am looked up to and madly
loved by every one that does not know me, Jas. C. Bang is brevet president
of a fractured bank, taking a lonely bridal tour by himself in Europe and
waiting for the depositors to die of old age.
The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they most generally get there with
both feet. (Adapted from the French by permission.)
Mark Anthony.
Marcus Antonius, commonly called Mark Antony, was a celebrated Roman
general and successful politician, who was born in 83 B.C. His
grandfather, on his mother's side, was L. Julius Caesar, and it is
thought that to Mark's sagacity in his selection of a mother, much of
his subsequent success was due.
Young Antony was rather gay and festive during his early years, and led a
life that in any city but Rome would have occasioned talk. He got into a
great many youthful scrapes, and nothing seemed to please him better than
to repeatedly bring his father's gray hairs down in sorrow to the grave.
Debauchery was a matter to which he gave much thought, and many a time he
was found consuming the midnight oil while pursuing his studies in this
line.
At that time Rome was well provided for in the debauchery department, and
Mr. Antony became a thorough student of the entire curriculum.
About 57 B.C. he obtained command of the cavalry of Gambinino in Syria
and Egypt. He also acted as legate for Caesar in Gaul about 52 B.C., as
nearly as I can recall the year. I do not know exactly what a legate is,
but it had something to do with the Roman ballet, I understand, and
commanded a good salary.
He was also elected, in 50, B.C., as Argus and Tribune--acting as Tribune
at night and Argus during the day time, I presume, or he may have been
elected Tribune and ex-officio Argus. He was more successful as Tribune
than he was in the Argus business.
Early in 49, B.C., he fled to Caesar's camp, and the following year was
appointed commander-in-chief. He commanded the left wing of the army at
the battle of Pharsalia, and years afterward used to be passionately fond
of describing it and explaining how he saved the day, and how everybody
else was surprised but him, and how he was awakened by hearing one of the
enemy's troops, across the river, stealthily pulling on his pantaloons.
Antony married Fulvia, the widow of a successful demagogue named P.
Clodius. This marriage could hardly be regarded as a success. It would
have been better for the widow if she had remained Mrs. P. Clodius, for
Mark Antony was one of those old-fashioned Romans who favored the utmost
latitude among men, but heartily enjoyed seeing an unfaithful woman burned
at the stake. In those days the Roman girl had nothing to do but live a
pure and blameless life, so that she could marry a shattered Roman rake
who had succeeded in shunning a blameless life himself, and at last, when
he was sick of all kinds of depravity and needed a good, careful wife to
take care of him, would come with his dappled, sin-sick soul and shattered
constitution, and his vast acquisitions of debts, and ask to be loved by a
noble young woman. Nothing pleased a _blase_ Roman so well as to have a
young and beautiful girl, with eyes like liquid night, to take the job of
reforming him. I frequently get up in the night to congratulate myself
that I was not born, 2,000 years ago, a Roman girl.
The historian continues to say, that though Mr. Antony continued to live a
life of licentious lawlessness, that occasioned talk even in Rome, he was
singularly successful in politics.
He was very successful at funerals, also, and his off-hand obituary works
were sought for far and wide. His impromptu remarks at the grave of
Caesar, as afterward reported by Mr. Shakespeare, from memory, attracted
general notice and made the funeral a highly enjoyable affair. After this
no assassination could be regarded as a success, unless Mark Antony could
be secured to come and deliver his justly celebrated eulogy.
About 43, B.C., Antony, Octavius and Lepidus formed a co-partnership
under the firm name and style of Antony, Octavius & Co., for the purpose
of doing a general, all-round triumvirate business and dealing in Roman
republican pelts. The firm succeeded in making republicanism extremely
odious, and for years a republican hardly dared to go out after dark to
feed the horse, lest he be jumped on by a myrmidon and assassinated. It
was about this time that Cicero had a misunderstanding with Mark's
myrmidons and went home packed in ice.
Mark Antony, when the firm of Antony, Octavius & Co. settled up its
affairs, received as his share the Asiatic provinces and Egypt. It was at
this time that he met Cleopatra at an Egyptian sociable and fell in love
with her. Falling in love with fair women and speaking pieces over
new-made graves seemed to be Mark's normal condition. He got into a
quarrel with Octavius and settled it by marrying Octavia, Octavius'
sister, but this was not a love match, for he at once returned to
Cleopatra, the author of Cleopatra's needle and other works.
This love for Cleopatra was no doubt the cause of his final overthrow, for
he frequently went over to see her when he should have been at home
killing invaders. He ceased to care about slashing around in carnage, and
preferred to turn Cleopatra's music for her while she knocked out the
teeth of her old upright piano and sang to him in a low, passionate, _vox
humana_ tone.
So, at last, the great cemetery declaimer and long distance assassin, Mark
Antony, was driven out of his vast dominions after a big naval defeat at
Actium, in September, 31 B.C., retreated to Alexandria, called for more
reinforcements and didn't get them. Deserted by his fleet, and reduced to
a hand-me-down suit of clothes and a two-year-old plug hat, he wrote a
poetic wail addressed to Cleopatra and sent it to the Alexandria papers;
then, closing the door and hanging up his pantaloons on a nail so as to
reduce the sag in the knees, he blew out the gas and climbed over the high
board fence which stands forever between the sombre present and the dark
blue, mysterious ultimatum.
Man Overbored.
“Speaking about prohibition,” said Misery Brown one day, while we sat lying
on the damp of the _Blue Tail Fly_, “I am prone to allow that the more you
prohibit, the more you--all at once--discover that you have more or less
failed to prohibit.
“Now, you can win a man over to your way of thinking, sometimes, but you
mustn't do it with the butt-end of a telegraph-pole. You might convert him
that way, perhaps, but the mental shock and phrenological concussion of
the argument might be disastrous to the convert himself.
“A man once said to me that rum was the devil's drink, that Satan's home
was filled with the odor of hot rum, that perdition was soaked with spiced
rum and rum punch. 'You wot not,' said he, 'the ruin rum has rot. Why,
Misery Brown,' said he, 'rum is my _bete noir_.' I said I didn't care what
he used it for, he'd always find it very warming to the system. I told him
he could use it for a hot _bete noir_, or a _blanc mange_, or any of those
fancy drinks; I didn't care.
“But the worst time I ever had grappling with the great enemy, I reckon,
was in the later years of the war, when I pretty near squashed the
rebellion. Grim-visaged war had worn me down pretty well. I played the big
tuba in the regimental band, and I began to sigh for peace.
“We had been on the march all summer, it seemed to me. We'd travel through
dust ankle-deep all day that was just like ashes, and halt in the red-hot
sun five minutes to make coffee. We'd make our coffee in five minutes, and
sometimes we'd make it in the middle of the road; but that's neither here
nor there.
“We finally found out that we would make a stand in a certain town, and
that the Q.M. had two barrels of old and reliable whisky in store. We
also found out that we couldn't get any for medical purposes nor anything
else All we could do was to suffer on and wait till the war closed. I
didn't feel like postponing the thing myself, so I began to investigate.
The great foe of humanity was stored in a tobacco-house, and the Q.M.
slept three nights between the barrels. The chances for a debauch looked
peaked and slim in the extreme. However, there was a basement below, and I
got in there one night with a half-inch auger, and two wash-tubs. Later on
there was a sound of revelry by night. There was considerable 'on with the
dance, let joy be unconfined.'
“The next day there was a spongy appearance to the top of the head, which
seemed to be confined to our regiment, as a result of the sudden giving
way, as it were, of prohibitory restrictions. It was a very disagreeable
day, I remember. All nature seemed clothed in gloom, and R.E. Morse,
P.D.Q., seemed to be in charge of the proceedings. Redeyed Regret was
everywhere.
“We then proceeded to yearn for the other barrel of woe, that we might
pile up some more regret, and have enough misery to last us through the
balance of the campaign. We acted on this suggestion, and, with a firm
resolve and the same half-inch auger, we stole once more into the basement
of the tobacco-house.
“I bored nineteen consecutive holes in the atmosphere, and then an
intimate friend of mine bored twenty-seven distinct holes in the floor,
only to bore through the bosom of the night. Eleven of us spent the most
of the night boring into the floor, and at three o'clock A.M. it looked
like a hammock, it was so full of holes. The quartermaster slept on
through it all. He slept in a very audible tone of voice, and every now
and then we could hear him slumbering on.
“At last we decided that he was sleeping middling close to that barrel, so
we began to bore closer to the snore. It was my turn to bore, I remember,
and I took the auger with a heavy heart. I bored through the floor, and
for the first time bored into something besides oxygen. It was the
quartermaster. A wild yell echoed through the southern confederacy, and I
pulled out my auger. It had on the point a strawberry mark, and a fragment
of one of those old-fashioned woven wire gray shirts, such as
quartermasters used to wear.
“I remember that we then left the tobacco-house. In the hurry we forgot
two wash-tubs, a half-inch auger, and 980,361 new half-inch auger holes
that had never been used.”
“Done It A-Purpose.”
At Greeley a young man with a faded cardigan jacket and a look of woe got
on the train, and as the car was a little crowded he sat in the seat with
me. He had that troubled and anxious expression that a rural young man
wears when he first rides on the train. When the engine whistled he would
almost jump out of that cardigan jacket, and then he would look kind of
foolish, like a man who allows his impulses to get the best of him. Most
everyone noticed the young man and his cardigan jacket, for the latter had
arrived at the stage of droopiness and jaded-across-the-shoulders look
that the cheap knit jacket of commerce acquires after awhile, and it had
shrunken behind and stretched out in front so that the horizon, as you
stood behind the young man, seemed to be bound by the tail of this
garment, which started out at the pocket with good intentions and suddenly
decided to rise above the young man's shoulder blades.
He seemed so diffident and so frightened among strangers, that I began to
talk with him.
“Do you live at Greeley?” I inquired.
“No, sir,” he said, in an embarrassed way, as most anyone might in the
presence of greatness. “I live on a ranch up the Pandre. I was just at
Greeley to see the circus.”
I thought I would play the tenderfoot and inquiring pilgrim from the
cultured East, so I said: “You do not see the circus often in the West, I
presume, the distance is so great between towns and the cost of
transportation is so great?”
“No, sir. This is the first circus I ever was to. I have never saw a
circus before.”
“How did you like it?”
“O, tip-top. It was a good thing. I'd like to see it every day if I could,
I laughed and drank lemonade till I've got my cloze all pinned up with
pins, and I'd as soon tell you, if you wont give it away, that my pants is
tied on me with barbed fence wire.”
“Probably that's what gives you that anxious and apprehensive look?”
“Yes, sir. If I look kind of doubtless about something, its because I'm
afraid my pantaloons will fall off on the floor and I will have to borrow
a roller towel to wear home.”
“How did you like the animals?”
“I liked that part of the Great Moral Aggregation the best of all. I have
not saw such a sight before. I could stand there and watch that there old
scaly elephant stuff hay into his bosom with his long rubber nose for
hours. I'd read a good deal first and last about the elephant, the king of
beasts, but I had never yet saw one. Yesterday father told me there hadn't
been much joy into my young life, and so he gave me a dollar and told me
to go over to the circus and have a grand time. I tell you, I just turned
myself loose and gave myself up to pleasure.”
[Illustration: I WAS A POOR CONVERSATIONALIST.]
“What other animals seemed to please you?” I asked, seeing that he was
getting a little freer to talk.
“Oh, I saw the blue-nosed baboon from Farther India, and the red-eyed
sandhill crane from Maddygasker, I think it was, and the sacred
Jack-rabbit from Scandihoovia, and the lop-eared layme from South America.
Then there was the female acrobat with her hair tied up with red ribbon.
It's funny about them acrobat wimmen. They get big pay, but they never buy
cloze with their money. Now, the idea of a woman that gets $2 or $3 a day,
for all I know, coming out there before 2,000 total strangers, wearing a
pair of Indian war clubs and a red ribbon in her hair. I tell you,
pardner, them acrobat prima donnars are mighty stingy with their money, or
else they're mighty economical with their cloze.”
“Did you go into the side show?”
“No, sir. I studied the oil paintings on the outside, but I didn't go in,
I met a handsome looking man there near the side show, though, that seemed
to take an interest in me. There was a lottery along with the show and he
wanted me to go and throw for him.”
“Capper, probably?”
“Perhaps so. Anyhow, he gave me a dollar and told me to go and throw for
him.”
“Why didn't he throw for himself?”
“O, he said the lottery man knew him and wouldn't let him throw.”
“Of course. Same old story. He saw you were a greeney and got you to throw
for him. He stood in with the game so that you drew a big prize for the
capper, created a big excitement, and you and the crowd sailed in and lost
all the money you had. I'll bet he was a man with a velvet coat, and a
moustache dyed a dead black and waxed as sharp as a cambric needle.”
“Yes; that's his description to a dot. I wonder if he really did do that
a-purpose.”
“Well, tell us about it. It does me good to hear a blamed fool tell how he
lost his money. Don't you see that your awkward ways and general greenness
struck the capper the first thing, and you not only threw away your own
money, but two or three hundred other wappy-jawed pelicans saw you draw a
big prize and thought it was yours, then they deposited what little they
had and everything was lovely.”
“Well, I'll tell you how it was, if it'll do any good and save other young
men in the future. You see this capper, as you call him, gave me a $1 bill
to throw for him, and I put it into my vest pocket so, along with the
dollar bill father gave me. I always carry my money in my right hand vest
pocket. Well, I sailed up to the game, big as old Jumbo himself, and put a
dollar into the game. As you say, I drawed a big prize, $20 and a silver
cup. The man offered me $5 for the cup and I took it.”
“Then it flashed over my mind that I might have got my dollar and the
other feller's mixed, so I says to the proprietor, 'I will now invest a
dollar for a gent who asked me to draw for him.'
“Thereupon I took out the other dollar, and I'll be eternally chastised if
I didn't draw a brass locket worth about two bits a bushel.”
I didn't say anything for a long time. Then I asked him how the capper
acted when he got his brass locket.
“Well, he seemed pained and grieved about something, and he asked me if I
hadn't time to go away into a quiet place where we could talk it over by
ourselves; but he had a kind of a cruel, insincere look in his eye, and I
said no, I believed I didn't care to, and that I was a poor
conversationalist, anyhow; and so I came away, and left him looking at his
brass locket and kicking holes in the ground and using profane language.
“Afterward I saw him talking to the proprietor of the lottery, and I feel,
somehow, that they had lost confidence in me. I heard them speak of me in
a jeering tone of voice, and one said as I passed by: 'There goes the
meek-eyed rural convict now,' and he used a horrid oath at the same time.
“If it hadn't been for that one little quincidence, there would have been
nothing to mar the enjoyment of the occasion.”
Picnic Incidents.
Camping out in summer for several weeks is a good thing generally. Freedom
from social restraint and suspenders is a great luxury for a time, and
nothing purifies the blood quicker, or makes a side of bacon taste more
like snipe on toast, than the crisp ozone that floats through the hills
and forests where man can monkey o'er the green grass without violating a
city ordinance.
The picnic is an aggravation. It has just enough of civilization to be a
nuisance, and not enough barbarism to make life seem a luxury. If our aim
be to lean up against a tree all day in a short seersucker coat and ditto
pantaloons that segregated while we were festooning the hammock, the
picnic is the thing. If we desire to go home at night with a jelly
symphony on each knee and a thousand-legged worm in each ear, we may look
upon the picnic as a success.
But to those who wish to forget the past and live only in the booming
present, to get careless of gain and breathe brand-new air that has never
been used, to appease an irritated liver, or straighten out a torpid lung,
let me say, pick out a high, dry clime, where there are trout enough to
give you an excuse for going there, take what is absolutely necessary and
no more, and then stay there long enough to have some fun.
If we picnic, we wear ourselves out trying to have a good time, so that we
can tell about it when we get back, but we do not actually get acquainted
with each other before we have to quit and return.
To camp, is to change the whole programme of life, and to stop long enough
in the never-ending conflict for dollars and distinction, to get a full
breath and look over the field. Still, it is not always smooth sailing. To
camp, is sometimes to show the material of which we are made. The dude at
home is the dude in camp, and wherever he goes he demonstrates that he was
made for naught. I do not know what a camping party would do with a dude
unless they used him to bait a bear trap with, and even then it would be
taking a mean advantage of the bear. The bear certainly has some rights
which we are bound in all decency to respect.
James Milton Sherrod said he had a peculiar experience once while he was
in camp on the Poudre in Colorado.
“We went over from Larmy,” said he, “in July, eight years ago--four of us.
There was me and Charcoal Brown, and old Joe and young Joe Connoy. We had
just got comfortably down on the Lower Fork, out of the reach of everybody
and sixty miles from a doctor, when Charcoal Brown got sick. Wa'al we had
a big time of it. You can imagine yourself somethin' about it. Long in the
night Brown began to groan and whoop and holler, and I made a diagnosis of
him. He didn't have much sand anyhow. He was tryin' to git a pension from
the government on the grounds of desertion and failure to provide, and
some such a blame thing or another, so I didn't feel much sympathy fur
him. But when I lit the gas and examined him, I found that he had a large
fever on hand, and there we was without a doggon thing in the house but a
jug of emigrant whiskey and a paper of condition powders fur the mule. I
was a good deal rattled at first to know what the dickens to do fur him.
The whiskey wouldn't do him any good, and, besides, if he was goin' to
have a long spell of sickness we needed it for the watchers.
[Illustration: MAKING USE OF A DUDE.]
“Wa'al, it was rough. I'd think of a thousand things that was good fur
fevers, and then I'd remember that we hadn't got 'em. Finally old Joe says
to me, 'James, why don't ye soak his feet?' says he. 'Soak nuthin',' says
I; 'what would ye soak 'em in?' We had a long-handle frying-pan, and we
could heat water in it, of course, but it was too shaller to do any good,
anyhow; so we abandoned that synopsis right off. First I thought I'd try
the condition powders in him, but I hated to go into a case and prescribe
so recklessly. Finally I thought of a case of rheumatiz that I had up in
Bitter Creek years ago, and how the boys filled their socks full of hot
ashes and put 'em all over me till it started the persbyterian all over me
and I got over it. So we begun to skirmish around the tent for socks, and
I hope I may be tee-totally skun if there was a blame sock in the whole
syndicate. Ez fur me, I never wore 'em, but I did think young Joe would be
fixed. He wasn't though. Said he didn't want to be considered proud and
high strung, so he left his socks at home.
[Illustration: CHARCOAL BROWN'S REPROACHES.]
“Then we begun to look around and finally decided that Brown would die
pretty soon if we didn't break up the fever, so we concluded to take all
the ashes under the camp-fire, fill up his cloze, which was loose, tie his
sleeves at the wrists, and his pants at the ankles, give him a dash of
condition powders and a little whiskey to take the taste out of his mouth,
and then see what ejosted nature would do.
“So we stood Brown up agin a tree and poured hot ashes down his back till
he begun to fit his cloze pretty quick, and then we laid him down in the
tent and covered him up with everything we had in our humble cot.
Everything worked well till he begun to perspirate, and then there was
music, and don't you forget it. That kind of soaked the ashes, don't you
see, and made a lye that would take the peelin' off a telegraph pole.
“Charcoal Brown jest simply riz up and uttered a shrill whoop that jarred
the geology of Colorado, and made my blood run cold. The goose flesh riz
on old Joe Connoy till you could hang your hat on him anywhere. It was
awful.
“Brown stood up on his feet, and threw things, and cussed us till we felt
ashamed of ourselves. I've seen sickness a good deal in my time, but--I
give it to you straight--I never seen an invalid stand up in the
loneliness of the night, far from home and friends, with the concentrated
lye oozin' out of the cracks of his boots, and reproach people the way
Charcoal Brown did us.
“He got over it, of course, before Christmas, but he was a different man
after that. I've been out campin' with him a good many times sence, but he
never complained of feelin' indisposed. He seemed to be timid about
tellin' us even if he was under the weather, and old Joe Connoy said mebbe
Brown was afraid we would prescribe fur him or sumthin'.”
Nero.
Nero, who was a Roman Emperor from 54 to 68 A.D., was said to have been
one of the most disagreeable monarchs to meet that Rome ever had. He was a
nephew of Culigula, the Emperor, on his mother's side, and a son of
Dominitius Ahenobarbust, of St. Lawrence county. The above was really
Nero's name, but in the year 50, A.D., his mother married Claudius and
her son adopted the name of Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. This
name he was in the habit of wearing during the cold weather, buttoned up
in front. During the hot weather, Nero was all the name he wore. In 53,
Nero married Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and went right to
housekeeping. Nero and Octavia did not get along first-rate. Nero soon
wearied of his young wife and finally transferred her to the New
Jerusalem.
In 54, Nero's mother, by concealing the rightful heir to the throne for
several weeks and doctoring the returns, succeeded in getting the steady
job of Emperor for Nero at a good salary.
His reign was quite stormy and several long, bloody wars were carried on
during that period. He was a good vicarious fighter and could successfully
hold a man's coat all day, while the man went to the front to get killed.
He loved to go out riding over the battle fields, as soon as it was safe,
in his gorgeously bedizened band chariot and he didn't care if the wheels
rolled in gore up to the hub, providing it was some other man's gore. It
gave him great pleasure to drive about over the field of carnage and gloat
over the dead. Nero was not a great success as an Emperor, but as a
gloater he has no rival in history.
Nero's reign was characterized, also, by the great conflagration and Roman
fireworks of July, 64, by which two-thirds of the city of Rome was
destroyed. The emperor was charged with starting this fire in order to get
the insurance on a stock of dry goods on Main street.
Instead of taking off his crown, hanging it up in the hall and helping to
put out the fire, as other Emperors have done time and again, Nero took
his violin up stairs and played, “I'll Meet You When the Sun Goes Down.”
This occasioned a great deal of adverse criticism on the part of those who
opposed the administration. Several persons openly criticised Nero's
policy and then died.
A man in those days, would put on his overcoat in the morning and tell his
wife not to keep dinner waiting. “I am going down town to criticise the
Emperor a few moments,” he would say. “If I do not get home in time for
dinner, meet me on the 'evergreen shore.'”
Nero, after the death of Octavia, married Poppaea Sabina. She died
afterward at her husband's earnest solicitation. Nero did not care so much
about being a bridegroom, but the excitement of being a widower always
gratified and pleased him.
He was a very zealous monarch and kept Rome pretty well stirred up during
his reign. If a man failed to show up anywhere on time, his friends would
look sadly at each other and say, “Alas, he has criticised Nero.”
A man could wrestle with the yellow fever, or the small-pox, or the
Asiatic cholera and stand a chance for recovery, but when he spoke
sarcastically of Nero, it was good-bye John.
When Nero decided that a man was an offensive partisan, that man would
generally put up the following notice on his office door:
“Gone to see the Emperor in relation to charge of offensive partisanship.
Meet me at the cemetery at 2 o'clock.”
Finally, Nero overdid this thing and ran it into the ground. He did not
want to be disliked and so, those who disliked him were killed. This made
people timid and muzzled the press a good deal.
The Roman papers in those days were all on one side. They did not dare to
be fearless and outspoken, for fear that Nero would take out his ad. So
they would confine themselves to the statement that: “The genial and
urbane Afranius Burrhus had painted his new and _recherche_ picket fence
last week,” or “Our enterprising fellow townsman, Caesar Kersikes, will
remove the tail of his favorite bulldog next week, if the weather should
be auspicious,” or “Miss Agrippina Bangoline, eldest daughter of Romulus
Bangoline, the great Roman rinkist, will teach the school at Eupatorium,
Trifoliatum Holler, this summer. She is a highly accomplished young lady,
and a good speller.”
Nero got more and more fatal as he grew older, and finally the Romans
began to wonder whether he would not wipe out the Empire before he died.
His back yard was full all the time of people who had dropped in to be
killed, so that they could have it off their minds.
Finally, Nero himself yielded to the great strain that had been placed
upon him and, in the midst of an insurrection in Gaul, Spain and Rome
itself, he fled and killed himself.
The Romans were very grateful for Nero's great crowning act in the killing
line, but they were dissatisfied because he delayed it so long, and
therefore they refused to erect a tall monument over his remains. While
they admired the royal suicide and regarded it as a success, they censured
Nero's negligence and poor judgment in suiciding at the wrong end of his
reign.
I have often wondered what Nero would have done if he had been Emperor of
the United States for a few weeks and felt as sensitive to newspaper
criticism as he seems to have been. Wouldn't it be a picnic to see Nero
cross the Jersey ferry to kill off a few journalists who had adversely
criticised his course? The great violin virtuoso and light weight Roman
tyrant would probably go home by return mail, wrapped in tinfoil,
accompanied by a note of regret from each journalist in New York, closing
with the remark, that “in the midst of life we are in death, therefore now
is the time to subscribe.”
Squaw Jim.
“Jim, you long-haired, backslidden Caucasian nomad, why don't you say
something? Brace up and tell us your experience. Were you kidnapped when
you were a kid and run off into the wild wickyup of the forest, or how was
it that you came to leave the Yankee reservation and eat the raw dog of
the Sioux?”
We were all sitting around the roaring fat-pine fire at the foot of the
canon, and above us the full moon was filling the bottom of the black
notch in the mountains, where God began to engrave the gulch that grew
wider and deeper till it reached the valley where we were.
Squaw Jim was tall, silent and grave. He was as dignified as the king of
clubs, and as reticent as the private cemetery of a deaf and dumb asylum.
He didn't move when Dutch Joe spoke to him, but he noticed the remark, and
after awhile got up in the firelight, and later on the silent savage made
the longest speech of his life.
[Illustration: “BOYS, YOU CALL ME SQUAW JIM.”]
“Boys, you call me Squaw Jim, and you call my girl a half breed. I have no
other name than Squaw Jim with the pale faced dude and the dyspeptic sky
pilot who tells me of his God. You call me Squaw Jim because I've married
a squaw and insist on living with her. If I had married
Mist-of-the-Waterfall, and had lived in my tepee with her summers, and
wintered at St. Louis with a wife who belonged to a tall peaked church,
and who wore her war paint, and her false scalp-lock, and her false heart
into God's wigwam, I'd be all right, probably. They would have laughed
about it a little among the boys, but it would have been “wayno” in the
big stone lodges at the white man's city.
“I loved a pale faced girl in Connecticut forty years ago. She said she
did me, but she met with a change of heart and married a bare-back rider
in a circus. Then she ran away with the sword swallower of the side show,
and finally broke her neck trying to walk the tight rope. The jury said if
the rope had been as tight as she was it might have saved her life.
“Since then I've been where the sun and the air and the soil were free. It
kind of soothed me to wear moccasins and throw my biled shirt into the
Missouri. It took the fever of jealousy and disappointment out of my soul
to sleep in the great bosom of the unhoused night. Soon I learned how to
parley-vous in the Indian language, and to wear the clothes of the red
man. I married the squaw girl who saved me from the mountain fever and my
foes. She did not yearn for the equestrian of the white man's circus. She
didn't know how to raise XxYxZ to the nth power, but she was a wife worthy
of the President of the United States. She was way off the trail in
matters of etiquette, but she didn't know what it was to envy and hate the
pale faced squaw with the sealskin sacque and the torpid liver, and the
high-priced throne of grace. She never sighed to go where they are filling
up Connecticut's celestial exhibit with girls who get mysteriously
murdered and the young men who did it go out lecturing. You see I keep
posted.
“Boys, you kind of pity me, I reckon, and say Squaw Jim might have been in
Congress if he'd stayed with his people and wore night shirts and pared
his claws, but you needn't.
“My wife can't knock the tar out of a symphony on the piano, but she can
mop the dew off the grass with a burglar, and knock out a dude's eyes at
sixty yards rise.
“My wife is a little foggy on the winter style of salvation, and probably
you'd stall her on how to drape a silk velvet overskirt so it wouldn't
hang one-sided, but she has a crude idea of an every day, all wool General
Superintendent of the Universe and Father of all-Humanity, whether they
live under a horse blanket tepee or a Gothic mortgage. She might look out
of place before the cross, with her chilblains and her childlike
confidence, among the Tom cat sealskin sacques of your camel's hair
Christianity, but if the world was supplied with Christians like my wife,
purgatory would make an assignment, and the Salvation Army would go home
and hoe corn. Sabe?”
Squaw Jim's Religion.
Referring to religious matters, the other day, Squaw Jim said: “I was up
at the Post yesterday to kind of rub up against royalty, and refresh my
memory with a few papers. I ain't a regular subscriber to any paper, for I
can't always get my mail on time. We're liable to be here, there and
everywhere, mebbe at some celebrated Sioux watering place and mebbe on the
warpath, so I can't rely on the mails much, but I manage, generally, to
get hold of a few old papers and magazines now and then. I don't always
know who's president before breakfast the day after election, but I manage
to skirmish around and find out before his term expires.
“Now, speaking about the religion of the day, or, rather, the place where
it used to be, it seems to me as if there's a mistake somewhere. It looks
as if religion meant greenness, and infidelity meant science and
smartness, according to the papers. I'm no scientist myself. I don't know
evolution from the side of a house. As an evolver I couldn't earn my
board, probably, and I wouldn't know a protoplasm from a side of sole
leather; but I know when I get to the end of my picket rope, and I know
just as sure where the knowable quits and the unknowable begins as
anybody. I mean I can crawl into a prairie dog hole, and pull the hole in
and put it in my pocket, in my poor, weak way, just as well as a scientist
can. If a man offered to trade me a spavined megatherium for a foundered
hypothesis, I couldn't know enough about either of the blamed brutes to
trade and make a profit. I never run around after delightful worms and
eccentric caterpillers. I have so far controlled myself and escaped the
habit, but I am able to arrive at certain conclusions. You think that
because I am the brother-in-law to an Indian outbreak, I don't care
whether Zion languishes or not; but you are erroneous. You make a very
common mistake.
“Mind you, I don't pretend to be up on the plan of salvation, and so far
as vicarious atonement goes, I don't even know who is the author of it,
but I've got a kind of hand-made religion that suits me. It's cheap, and
portable, and durable, and stands our severe northern climate first rate.
It ain't the protuberant kind. It don't protrude into other people's way
like a sore thumb. All-wool religion don't go around with a chip on it's
shoulder looking for a personal deal.
“If I had time and could move my library around with me during our summer
tour, I might monkey with speculative science and expose the plan of
creation, but as it is now, I really haven't time.
[Illustration: MOVING HIS LIBRARY.]
“I say this, however, friends, Romans and backsliders: I think sometimes
when my little half-breed girl comes to me in the evening in her night
dress, and kneels by me with her little brown face in between my knees,
and with my hard hands in her unbraided hair, that she's got something
better than speculative science when she says:
'Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take:
This I ask for Jesus' sake;'
“and I know that a million more little angels are saying that same thing,
at that same hour, to the same imaginary God, I say to myself, if that is
a vain, empty infatuation, blessed be that holy infatuation.
“If that's a wild and crazy delusion, let me be always deluded. If forty
millions of chubby little angels bow their dimpled knees every evening to
a false and foolish tradition, let me do so, too. If I die, then I will be
in good company, even if I go no farther than the clouds of the valley.”
One Kind of Fool.
A young man, with a plated watch-chain that would do to tie up a sacred
elephant, came into Denver the other day from the East, on the Julesburg
Short line, and told the hotel clerk that he had just returned from
Europe, and was on his way across the continent with the intention of
publishing a book of international information. He handed an oilcloth grip
across the counter, registered in a bold, bad way and with a flourish that
scattered the ink all over the clerk's white shirt front.
He was assigned to a quiet room on the fifth floor, that had been damaged
by water a few weeks before by the fire department. After an hour or two
spent in riding up and down the elevator and ringing for things that
didn't cost anything, he oiled his hair and strolled into the dining-room
with a severe air and sat down opposite a big cattle man, who never oiled
his hair or stuck his nose into other people's business.
The European traveler entered into conversation with the cattle man. He
told him all about Paris and the continent, meanwhile polishing his hands
on the tablecloth and eating everything within reach. While he ate another
man's dessert, he chatted on gaily about Cologne and pitied the cattle man
who had to stay out on the bleak plains and watch the cows, while others
paddled around Venice and acquired information in a foreign land.
At first the cattle man showed some interest in Europe, but after awhile
he grew quiet and didn't seem to enjoy it. Later on the European tourist,
with soiled cuffs and auburn mane, ordered the waiters around in a
majestic way, to impress people with his greatness, tipped over the
vinegar cruet into the salt and ate a slice of boiled egg out of another
man's salad.
Casually a tall Kansas man strolled in and asked the European tourist what
he was doing in Denver. The cattle man, who, by the way, has been abroad
five or six times and is as much at home in Paris as he is in Omaha,
investigated the matter, and learned that the fresh French tourist had
been herding hens on a chicken ranch in Kansas for six years, and had
never seen blue water. He then took a few personal friends to the
dining-room door, and they watched the alleged traveler. He had just taken
a long, refreshing drink from the finger bowl of his neighbor on the left
and was at that moment, trying to scoop up a lump of sugar with the wrong
end of the tongs.
There are a good many fools who drift around through the world and dodge
the authorities, but the most disastrous ass that I know is the man who
goes West with two dollars and forty cents in his pocket, without brains
enough to soil the most delicate cambric handkerchief, and tries to play
himself for a savant with so much knowledge that he has to shed
information all the time to keep his abnormal knowledge from hurting him.
John Adams' Diary.
December 3, 1764.--I am determined to keep a diary, if possible, the rest
of my life. I fully realize how difficult it will be to do so. Many others
of my acquaintance have endeavored to maintain a diary, but have only
advanced so far as the second week in January. It is my purpose to write
down each evening the events of the day as they occur to my mind, in order
that in a few years they may be read and enjoyed by my family. I shall try
to deal truthfully with all matters that I may refer to in these pages,
whether they be of national or personal interest, and I shall seek to
avoid anything bitter or vituperative, trying rather to cool my temper
before I shall submit my thoughts to paper.
[Illustration: “WHERE'S THE PIE?”]
December 4.--This morning we have had trouble with the hired girl. It
occurred in this wise: We had fully two-thirds of a pumpkin pie that had
been baked in a square tin. This major portion of the pie was left over
from our dinner yesterday, and last night, before retiring to rest, I
desired my wife to suggest something in the cold pie line, which she did.
I lit a candle and explored the pantry in vain. The pie was no longer
visible. I told Mrs. Adams that I had not been successful, whereupon we
sought out the hired girl, whose name is Tootie Tooterson, a foreign
damsel, who landed in this country Nov. 7, this present year. She does not
understand our language, apparently, especially when we refer to pie. The
only thing she does without a strong foreign accent is to eat pumpkin pie
and draw her salary. She landed on our coast six weeks ago, after a
tedious voyage across the heaving billows. It was a close fight between
Tootie and the ocean, but when they quit, the heaving billows were one
heave ahead by the log.
Miss Tooterson landed in Massachusetts in a woolen dress and hollow clear
down into the ground. A strong desire to acquire knowledge and cold,
hand-made American pie seems to pervade her entire being.
She has only allowed Mrs. Adams and myself to eat what she did not want
herself.
Miss Tooterson has also introduced into my household various European
eccentricities and strokes of economy which deserve a brief notice here.
Among other things she has made pie crust with castor oil in it, and
lubricated the pancake griddle with a pork rind that I had used on my lame
neck. She is thrifty and saving in this way, but rashly extravagant in the
use of doughnuts, pie and Medford rum, which we keep in the house for
visitors who are so unfortunate as to be addicted to the doughnut, pie or
rum habit.
It is discouraging, indeed, for two young people like Mrs. Adams and
myself, who have just begun to keep house, to inherit a famine, and such a
robust famine, too. It is true that I should not have set my heart upon
such a transitory and evanescent terrestrial object like a pumpkin pie so
near to T. Tooterson, imported pie soloist, doughnut mastro and feminine
virtuoso, but I did, and so I returned from the pantry desolate.
[Illustration: A PIE SOLOIST.]
I told Abigail that unless we poisoned a few pies for Tootie the Adams
family would be a short-lived race. I could see with my prophetic eye that
unless the Tootersons yielded the Adamses would be wiped out. Abigail
would not consent to this, but decided to relieve Miss Tooterson from duty
in this department, so this morning she went away. Not being at all
familiar with the English language, she took four of Abigail's sheets and
quite a number of towels, handkerchiefs and collars. She also erroneously
took a pair of my night-shirts in her poor, broken way. Being entirely
ignorant of American customs, I presume that she will put a belt around
them and wear them externally to church. I trust that she will not do
this, however, without mature deliberation.
[Illustration: IGNORANT OF AMERICAN CUSTOMS.]
I also had a bottle of lung medicine of a very powerful nature which the
doctor had prepared for me. By some oversight, Miss Tooterson drank this
the first day that she was in our service. This was entirely wrong, as I
did not intend to use it for the foreign trade, but mostly for home
consumption.
This is a little piece of drollery that I thought of myself. I do not
think that a joke impairs the usefulness of a diary, as some do. A diary
with a joke in it is just as good to fork over to posterity as one that is
not thus disfigured. In fact, what has posterity ever done for me that I
should hesitate about socking a little humor into a diary? When has
posterity ever gone out of its way to do me a favor? Never! I defy the
historian to show a single instance where posterity has ever been the
first to recognize and remunerate ability.
John Adams' Diary.
(No. 2.)
December 6.--It is with great difficulty that I write this entry in my
diary, for this morning Abigail thought best for me to carry the oleander
down into the cellar, as the nights have been growing colder of late.
I do not know which I dislike most, foreign usurpation or the oleander. I
have carried that plant up and down stairs every time the weather has
changed, and the fickle elements of New England have kept me rising and
falling with the thermometer, and whenever I raised or fell I most always
had that scrawny oleander in my arms.
Richly has it repaid us, however, with its long, green, limber branches
and its little yellow nubs on the end. How full of promises to the eye
that are broken to the heart. The oleander is always just about to meet
its engagements, but later on it peters out and fails to materialize.
I do not know what we would do if it were not for our house plants. Every
fall I shall carry them cheerfully down cellar, and in the spring I will
bring up the pots for Mrs. Adams to weep softly into. Many a night at the
special instance and request of my wife I have risen, clothed in one
simple, clinging garment, to go and see if the speckled, double and
twisted Rise-up-William-Riley geranium was feeling all right.
Last summer Abigail brought home a slip of English ivy. I do not like
things that are English very much, but I tolerated this little sickly
thing because it seemed to please Abigail. I asked her what were the
salient features of the English ivy. What did the English ivy do? What
might be its specialty? Mrs. Adams said that it made a specialty of
climbing. It was a climber from away back. “All right,” I then to her did
straightway say, “let her climb.” It was a good early climber. It climbed
higher than Jack's beanstalk. It climbed the golden stair. Most of our
plants are actively engaged in descending the cellar stairs or in
ascending the golden stair most all the time.
I descended the stairs with the oleander this morning, though the oleander
got there a little more previously than I did. Parties desiring a good,
secondhand oleander tub, with castors on it, will do well to give us a
call before going elsewhere. Purchasers desiring a good set of second-hand
ear muffs for tulips will find something to their advantage by addressing
the subscriber.
We also have two very highly ornamental green dogoods for ivy vines to
ramble over. We could be induced to sell these dogoods at a sacrifice, in
order to make room for our large stock of new and attractive dogoods.
These articles are as good as ever. We bought them during the panic last
fall for our vines to climb over, but, as our vines died of membranous
croup in November, these dogoods still remain unclum. Second-hand dirt
always on hand. Ornamental geranium stumps at bed-rock prices. Highest
cash prices paid for slips of black-and-tan foliage plants. We are
headquarters for the century plant that draws a salary for ninety-nine
years and then dies.
I do not feel much like writing in my diary to-day, but the physician says
that my arm will be better in a day or two, so that it will be more of a
pleasure to do business.
We are still without a servant girl, so I do some of the cooking. I make a
fire each day and boil the teakettle. People who have tried my boiled
teakettle say it is very fine.
Some of my friends have asked me to run for the Legislature here next
election. Somehow I feel that I might, in public life, rise to distinction
some day, and perhaps at some future time figure prominently in the
affairs of a one-horse republic at a good salary.
I have never done anything in the statesman line, but it does not look
difficult to me. It occurs to me that success in public life is the result
of a union of several great primary elements, to-wit:
Firstly--Ability to whoop in a felicitous manner.
Secondly--Promptness in improving the proper moment in which to whoop.
Thirdly--Ready and correct decision in the matter of which side to whoop
on.
Fourthly--Ability to cork up the whoop at the proper moment and keep it in
a cool place till needed.
And this last is one of the most important of all. It is the amateur
statesman who talks the most. Fearing that he will conceal his identity as
a fool, he babbles in conversation and slashes around in his shallow banks
in public.
As soon as I get the house plants down cellar and get their overshoes on
for the winter, I will more seriously consider the question of our
political affairs here in this new land where we have to tie our scalps on
at night and where every summer is an Indian summer.
John Adams' Diary
(No. 3.)
December 10.--I have put in a long and exhausting day in the court to-day
in the case of Merkins vs. Merkins, a suit for divorce in which I am the
counsel for the plaintiff, Eliza J. Merkins.
The case itself is a peculiarly trying one, and the plaintiff adds to its
horrors by consulting me when I want to do something else. I took her case
at an agreed price, and so Mrs. Merkins is trying to get her money's worth
by consulting me in a way I abhor. She has consulted me in every mood and
tense that I know of; at my office, on the street, in church, at the
festive board and at different funerals to which we both happened to be
called. Mrs. Merkins has hung like a pall over several Massachusetts
funerals which otherwise had every symptom of success.
I am a great admirer of woman as a woman, but as a client in a suit for
divorce she has her peculiarities. I have seen Eliza in every phase of the
case. She has been calm and tearful, stormy and snorting, low-spirited and
red-nosed, violent and menacing, resigned but sobby, trustful and
confidential, high strung and haughty, crushed and weepy.
She makes a specialty of shedding the red-hot scalding tear wherever she
can obtain permission to do so. She has wept in my wood-box, in my new
spittoon, on my desk and on my birthday. I told her that I wished she
would please weep on something else. There were enough objects in nature
upon which a poor woman who wept constantly and had no other visible means
of support could shed the wild torrents of her grief, without weeping on
my anniversary. A man wants to keep his birthday as dry as possible. He
hates to have it wept on by a client who has jewed him down to half price,
and then insisted on coming in to sob with him in the morning before he
has swept the office floor.
One time she came and sobbed on my shoulder. Her tears are of the warm,
damp kind, and feel disagreeable as they roll down the neck of a
comparative stranger, who never can be aught but a friend. She rested her
bonnet on my bosom while she wept, and I then discovered that she has been
in the habit of wearing this bonnet while cooking her buckwheat pancakes.
I presume she keeps her bonnet on all the time, so that she may be ready
to dash out and consult me at all times without delay. Still, she ought
not to do it, for when she leans her head on the bosom of her counsel in
order to consult him, he detects the odor of the early sausage and the
fleeting pancake.
You may bust such a bonnet and crush it if you will,
But the scent of the pancake will cling round it still.
As soon as I saw that her object was to lean up against me and not only
convulse herself with sobs, but that she intended to jar me also with her
great woe, I told her that I would have to request her to avaunt. I then,
as she did not act upon my suggestion, avaunted her myself. I avaunted her
into a chair with a sickening thud.
[Illustration: A TENDER CASE.]
She then burst forth in a torrent of vituperation. When the abnormal
sobber is suddenly corked up, these sobs rankle in the system and burst
forth in the shape of vituperation. In the course of her remarks, she
stated in a violent manner that she would denounce me throughout the
country and retain other counsel. I told her I wished she would, as my
sympathies were with Mr. Merkins. I told her that she must either pay me a
larger fee or I should insist on her weeping in the alley before she came
up.
She then took her departure with a rising inflection. On the following
day, however, I found her at the office door, and she stood near and
consulted me again, while I took up the ashes and started a fire in the
stove.
Her case is quite peculiar.
She wants a divorce from her husband on the grounds of cruelty to animals,
or something of that kind, and when she first told me about it I thought
she had a case, but when we came to trial I found that she had had every
reason to believe that if she could be segregated from Mr. Merkins she
could at once become the bride of a gentleman who ploughed the raging
main.
Just as we went to the jury to-day with the case, she heard casually that
the gentleman who had been in the main-ploughing business had just married
without her knowledge or consent.
“Heap Brain.”
Much trouble has been done by a long haired phrenologist in the West who
has, during his life, felt of over a hundred thousand heads. A comparison
of a large number of charts given in these cases shows that so far no head
examined would indicate anything less than a member of the lower house of
congress. Artists, orators, prima-donnas and statesmen are plenty, but
there are no charts showing the natural-born farmer, carpenter, shoemaker
or chambermaid.
That is the reason butter is so high west of the Missouri river to-day,
while genius actually runs riot.
What this day and age of the world needs, is a phrenologist who will paw
around among the intellectual domes of free-born American citizens, and
search out a few men who can milk a cow in a cool and unimpassioned tone
of voice.
It is true that every man in America is a sovereign, but he had better not
overdo it. The man who sits up nights to be a sovereign and allows the
calves to eat his brown-eyed beans, is not leading his fellow men up to a
higher and nobler life. The sovereign business can be run in the ground if
we are not careful.
[Illustration: A FUTURE PRESIDENT.]
Very likely the white-eyed boy with the hickory dado along the base of his
overalls is the boy who in future years is to be the president of the
United States. But do not, oh, do not trow, fair young reader, that every
Albino youth in our broad land who wears an isosceles triangle in navy
blue flannel athwart his system, is going to be the chief magistrate of
this mighty republic.
We need statesmen and orators and artists very much; but the world at this
moment also needs several athletic parties with the horse-sense adequate
to produce flour and other vegetables necessary to feed the aforesaid
statesmen, orators, etc., etc.
Let me say a word to the bright-eyed youth of America, Let me murmur in
your ear this never dying truth: When a long-haired crank asks you a
dollar to tell you, you are a young Demosthenes, stand up and look
yourself over at a distance before you swallow it all.
There is no use talking, we have got to procure provisions in some manner,
and in order to do so the natural-born bone and muscle of the country must
go at and promote the growth of such things, or else we artists, poets and
statesmen, will have to take off our standing collars and do it ourselves.
Phrenology is a good thing, no doubt, if we can purify it. So long as it
does not become the slave of capital, there is nothing about phrenology
that is going to do harm; but when it becomes the creature of the trade
dollar, it looks as though the country would be filled up with wild-eyed
genius that hasn't had a square meal for two weeks. The time will surely
come when America will demand less statesmanship and more flour; when less
statistics and a purer, nobler and more progressive style of beefsteak
will demand our attention.
I had hoped that phrenology would step in and start this reform; but so
far it has not, within the range of my observation. It may be, however,
that the mental giant bump translator with whom I came in contact was not
a fair representative. Still, he has been in the business for over thirty
years, and some of our most polished criminals have passed under his
hands.
An erroneous phrenologist once told me that I would shine as a revivalist,
and said that I ought to marry a tall blonde with a nervous, sanguinary
temperament. Then he said, “One dollar, please,” and I said, “All right,
gentle scientist with the tawny mane, I will give you the dollar and marry
the tall blonde with the bank account and bilious temperament, when you
give me a chart showing me how to dispose of a brown-eyed brunette with a
thoughtful cast of countenance, who married me in an unguarded moment two
years ago.”
He looked at me in a reproachful kind of way, struck at me with a chair in
an absent-minded manner and stole away.
The Approaching Humorist.
The following letter has been received, and, as it encloses no unsmirched
postage stamp to insure a private reply, I take great pleasure in
answering it in these pages: