So, if I may take the liberty to do so, let me exhort the landlord who is
gradually accumulating indebtedness and remorse, to use a plainer, less
elaborate, but more edible list of refreshments. Otherwise his guests will
all die young.
Let him discard the seamless waffle and the kiln-dried hen. Let him
abstain from the debris known as cottage pudding, that being its alias,
while the doctors recognize it as old Gastric Disturbance. Too much of our
hotel food tastes like the second day of January or the fifth day of July.
That's the whole thing in a few words, and unless the good hotels are
nearer together we shall have to multiply our cemetery facilities.
Poor hotels are responsible for lots of drunkards every year. The only
time I am tempted to soak my sorrows in rum is after I have read a
delusive bill of fare and eaten a broiled barn-hinge with gravy on it that
tasted like the broth of perdition. It is then that the demon of
intemperance and colic comes to me and, in siren tones, says: “Try our
bourbon, with 'Polly Narius' on the side.”
Care of House Plants.
Stern winter is the season in which to keep the eye peeled for the fragile
little house plant. It is at that time that the coarse and brutal husband
carries the Scandinavian flower known as the Ole Ander, part way down the
cellar, and allows it to fall the rest of the way. I carried a large Ole
Andor up and down stairs for nine years, until the spring of 1880. That
was rather a backward spring, and a pale red cow, with one horn done up in
a French twist, ate the most of it as it stood on the porch.
[Illustration: CARRYING OUT THE OLE ANDER.]
This cow was a total stranger to me. I had never done anything for her by
which to win her esteem. It shows how Providence works through the
humblest means sometimes to accomplish a great good.
I have tried many times to find the postoffice address of that lonely cow,
so I might comfort her declining years, but she seemed to have melted away
into the bosom of space, for I cannot find her. Anyone knowing the
whereabouts of a pale red cow, with one horn done up in a French twist,
and wearing a look of settled melancholy, will please communicate the same
to me, as we have another Ole Ander that will just about fit her, I think,
by spring.
[Illustration: WREAKING VENGEANCE.]
Bulbs may be wrapped in cotton and put in a cool place in the fall, and
fed to the domestic animals in the spring. Geraniums should put on their
buffalo overcoats about the middle of November in our rigid northern
clime, and in the spring they will have the same luxuriant foliage as the
tropical hat-rack. Vines may be left in the room during the winter until
the furnace slips a cog and then you can pull them down and feed them to
the family horses. In changing your plants from the living rooms or
elsewhere to the cellar in the fall, take great care to avoid injury to
the pot. I have experienced some very severe winters in my life, but I
have never seen the mercury so low that a flowerpot couldn't struggle
through and look fresh and robust in the spring. The longevity of the pot
is surprising when we consider how much death there is all about it. I had
a large brown flower-pot once that originally held the germ of a calla
lily. This lily emerged from the soil with the light of immortality in its
eye. It got up to where we began to be attached to it, and then it died.
Then we put a plant in its place which was given us by a friend. I do not
remember now what this plant was called, but I know it was sent to us
wrapped up in a piece of moist brown paper, and half an hour later a dray
drove up to the house with the name of the plant itself. In the summer it
required very little care, and in the winter I would cover the little
thing up with its name, and it would be safe till spring. One evening we
had a free-for-all _musicale_ at my house, and a corpulent friend of mine
tried to climb it, and it died. (Tried to climb the plant, not the
_musicale_.) The plant yielded to the severe climb it. This joke now makes
its _debut_ for the first time before the world. Anyone who feels offended
with this joke may wreak his vengeance on a friend of mine named Sullivan,
who is passionately fond of having people wreak their vengeance on him.
People having a large amount of unwreaked vengeance on hand will do well
to give him a call before purchasing elsewhere.
A Peaceable Man.
Will L. Visscher always made a specialty of being a peaceable man. He
would make most any sacrifice in order to secure general amnesty. I've
known him to go around six blocks out of his way, to avoid a stormy
interview with a belligerant dog. He was always very tender-hearted about
dogs, especially the open-faced bulldog.
But he had a queer experience years ago, in St. Jo, Missouri. He had been
city editor of the Kansas City _Journal_ for some time, but one evening,
while in the composing-room, the foreman told him that the place for the
city editor was down stairs, in his office. He therefore ordered Visscher
to go down there. Visscher said he would do so later on, after he got
fatigued with the composing-room and wanted change of scene.
The foreman thereupon jumped on Mr. Visscher with a small pica wrought
iron side stick. Visscher allowed that he was a peaceable man, but entered
into the general chaos of double-leaded editorial, and hair and brass
dashes, and dashes for liberty and heterogeneous “pi,” and foot-sticks and
teeth, with great zeal. He succeeded in putting a large doric head on the
foreman, and although he was a peaceable man, he went down to the office
and got his discharge for disturbing the discipline of the office.
He went to St. Jo the same day, and celebrated his _debut_ into the town
by a little game of what is known as “draw.” He was fortunate in “filling
his hand,” and while he was taking in the stakes, a young man from
Arkansas, who was in the game, nipped a two-dollar note in a quiet kind of
way, which, however, was detected by Mr. V., who mentioned the matter at
the time. This maddened the Arkansas man, and later on he put one of his
long arms around Mr. Visscher so as to pinion him, and then smote him
across the brow with an instrument, known to science as “the brass
knucks.” This irritated Mr. Visscher, and as soon as he had returned to
consciousness he remarked that, although it was rather an up-hill job in
Missouri, he was trying to be a peaceable man. He then broke the leg of a
card-table over the head of the Arkansas man, and went to the doctor to
get his own brow sewed on again.
While he was sitting in the doctor's office a friend of the Arkansas man
came in and asked him to please stand up while he knocked him down.
Visscher opened a little dialogue with the man, and drew him into
conversation till he could open a case of surgical instruments near by,
then he took out one of those knives that the surgeons use in removing the
viscera from the leading gentleman at a post mortem.
“Now,” said he, sharpening the knife on the stove-pipe and handing down a
jar containing alcohol with a tumor in it, “I am a peaceful man and don't
want any fuss; but if you insist on a personal encounter, I will slice off
fragments of your physiognomy at my leisure, and for twenty minutes I will
fill this office with your favorite features. I make a specialty of being
a peaceable man, remember; but if you'll just say the word, I'll put
overcoat button-holes and eyelet-holes and crazy-quilts all over your
system. If I've got to kill off the poker-players of St. Jo before I can
have any fun, I guess I might as well begin on you as on any one I know.”
[Illustration: HE WAS A PEACEABLE MAN.]
He then made a stab at the man and pinned his coat-tail to the door-frame.
Fear loaned the bad man strength, and, splitting the coat-tail, he fled,
taking little mementoes of the tumor-jar and shedding them in his flight.
When Mr. Visscher went up to the _Herald_ office soon after to get a job,
he was introduced casually to the foreman, who said:
“Ah, this is the young man who licks the foreman of the paper he works on,
is it? I am glad to meet you, Mr. Visscher. I am looking for a white-eyed
son of a sea-cook who goes around over Missouri thumping the foremen of
our leading journals. Come out into the ante-room, Mr. Visscher, till I
jar your back teeth loose and send you to the morgue in a gunny-sack.” Mr.
Visscher repeated that he was trying to live in Missouri and be a
peaceable man, but that if there was anything that he could do to make it
pleasant for the foreman, he would cheerfully do it.
Mr. Visscher was a small man, but when he felt aggrieved about anything he
was very harassing to his adversary. They “clinched” and threw each other
back and forth across the hall with great vigor. When they stopped for
breath, the foreman's coat was pulled over his head and the bosom of Mr.
Visscher's shirt was hanging on the gas-jet. There were also two front
teeth on the floor unaccounted for.
Visscher pinned on his shirt-bosom and said he was a peaceable man, but if
the custom seemed to demand four fights in one day, he would try to
conform to any local usage of the city. Wherever he went, he wanted to
fall right into line and be one of the party.
When he got well he was employed on the _Herald_, and for four years
edited the amnesty column of the paper successfully.
Biography of Spartacus.
Spartacus, whose given name seems to have been torn off in its passage
down through the corridors of time, was born in Thrace and educated as a
shepherd. While smearing the noses of the young lambs with tar one spring,
in order to prevent the snuffies among them, he thought that he would
become a robber. It occurred to him that this calling was the only one he
knew of that seemed to be open to the young man without means.
He had hardly got started, however, in the “hold up” industry, when he was
captured by the Romans, sold at cost and trained as a gladiator, in a
school at Capua. Here he succeeded in stirring up a conspiracy and uniting
two hundred or more of the grammar department of the school in a general
ruction, as it was then termed.
The scheme was discovered and only seventy of the number escaped, headed
by Spartacus. These snatched cleavers from the butcher shops, pickets from
the Roman fences and various other weapons, and with them fought their way
to the foot hill where they met a wagon train loaded with arms and
supplies. They secured the necessary weapons whereby to go into a general
war business and established themselves in the crater of Mount Vesuvius.
Spartacus was a man of wonderful carriage and great physical strength. It
had always been his theory that a man might as well die of old age as to
feed himself to a Roman menagerie. He maintained that he would rather die
in a general free fight, where he had a chance, than to be hauled around
over the arena by one leg behind a Numidian lion.
So he took his little band and fought his way to Vesuvius. There they had
a pleasant time camping out nights and robbing the Roman's daytimes. The
excitement of sleeping in a crater, added a wonderful charm to their
lives. While others slept cold in Capua, Spartacus cuddled up to the
crater and kept comfortable.
For a long time the little party had it all their own way. They sniffed
the air of freedom and lived on Roman spring chicken on the half shell,
and it beat the arena business all hollow.
At last, however, an army of 3,000 men was sent against them, and
Spartacus awoke one morning to find himself blocked up in his crater. For
a time the outlook was not cheering. Spartacus thought of telegraphing the
war department for reinforcements, but finally decided not to do so.
Finally, with ladders made of wild vines, the little garrison slipped out
through what had seemed an impassable fissure in the crater, got in the
rear of the army and demolished it completely. That's the kind of man that
Spartacus was. Fighting was his forte.
Spartacus was also a good public speaker. One of his addresses to the
gladiators has been handed down to posterity through the medium of the
Fifth Reader, a work that should be in every household. In his speech he
states that he was not always thus. But since he is thus, he believes that
he has not yet been successfully outthussed by any body.
He speaks of his early life in the citron groves of Syrsilla, and how
quiet and reserved he had been, never daring to say “gosh” within a mile
of the house; but finally how the Romans landed on his coast and killed
off his family. Then he desired to be a fighter. He had killed more lions
than any other man in Italy. He kept a big crew of Romans busy, winter and
summer, catching fresh lions for him to stick. He had killed a large
number of men also. At one matinee for ladies and children he had killed a
prominent man from the north, and had done it so fluently that he was
encored three times. The stage manager then came forward and asked that
the audience would please refrain from another encore as he had run out of
men, but if the ladies and children would kindly attend on the following
Saturday he hoped to be prepared with a good programme. In fact, he had
just heard from his agent who wrote him that they had purchased two big
lions and also had a robust gladiator up a tree. He hoped that he could
get into town in a day or two with both attractions.
Spartacus finally stood at the head of an army of 100,000 men, all
starting out from the little band of 70 that cut loose from Capua with
borrowed cleavers and axhandles. This war lasted but two years, during
which time Spartacus made Rome howl. Spartacus had too much sense to
attack Rome. But at last his army was betrayed and disorganized. With
nothing but death or capture for him, he rode out between the two
contending armies, shot his war horse in order to save expenses, and on
foot rushed into the thickest of the fight. This was positively his last
appearance. He killed a large number of people, but at last he yielded to
the great pressure that was brought to bear upon him and died.
Probably no man not actually engaged in the practice of medicine ever
killed so many people as Spartacus. He did not kill them because he
disliked them personally, but because he thought it advisable to do so.
Had he lived till the present time he would have done well as a lecturer.
“Ten Years in the Arena, with Illustrations,” would draw first-rate at
this time among a certain class of people. The large number of people
still living in this country, who will lay aside their work and go twenty
miles to attend a funeral, no matter whose funeral it is, would, no doubt,
enjoy a bull fight or the cairn and refining joy that hovered over the
arena. Those who have paid $175,000 to see Colonel John L. Sullivan
disfigure a friend, would, no doubt, have made it $350,000 if the victim
could have been killed and dragged around over the ring by the leg.
Two thousand years have not refined us so much that we need be puffed up
with false pride about it.
Concerning Book Publishing.
“Amateur” writes me that he is about to publish a book, and asks me if I
will be kind enough to suggest some good, reliable publisher for him.
This would suggest that “Amateur” wishes to confer his book on some
deserving publisher with a view to building him up and pouring a golden
stream of wealth into his coffers. “Amateur” already, in his mind's eye,
sees the eager millions of readers knocking each other down and trampling
upon one another in the mad rush for his book. In my mind, I see his eye,
lighted up with hope, and, though he lives in New Jersey, I fancy I can
hear his quickened breath as his bosom heaves.
[Illustration: WISHES TO CONFER HIS BOOK ON SOME DESERVING PUBLISHER.]
Evidently he has never published a book. There is a good deal of fun ahead
of him that he does not wot of. I used to think that when I got the last
page of my book ready for press, the front yard would be full of
publishers tramping down the velvet lawn and the meek-eyed pansies in
their crazy efforts to get hold of the manuscript, but when I had written
the last word of my first volume of soul-throb, and had opened the
casement to look out on the howling, hungry mob of publishers, with
checkbooks in one hand and a pillow-case full of scads in the other, I was
a little puzzled to notice the abrupt and pronounced manner in which they
were not there.
All of us have to struggle before we can catch the eye of the speaker.
Milton didn't get one-fiftieth as much for “Paradise Lost” as I got for my
first book, and yet you will find people to-day who claim that if Milton
had lived he could have knocked the socks off of me with one hand tied
behind him. Recollect, however, that I am not here to open a discussion on
this matter. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion in relation to
authors. People cannot agree on the relative merits of literature. Now,
for instance, last summer I met a man over in South Park, Col., who could
repeat page after page of Shakespeare, and yet, when I asked him if he was
familiar with the poems of the “Sweet Singer of Michigan,” he turned upon
me a look of stolid vacancy, and admitted that he had never heard of her
in his life.
A Calm.
The old Greeley Colony in Colorado, a genuine oasis in the desert, with
its huge irrigating canals of mountain water running through the mighty
wheat fields, glistening each autumn at the base of the range, affords a
good deal that is curious, not only to the mind of the gentleman from the
States, but even to the man who lives at Cheyenne, W.T., only a few hours'
journey to the north.
You could hardly pick out two cities so near each other and yet so unlike
as Cheyenne and Greeley. The latter is quiet, and even accused of being
dull, and yet everybody is steadily getting rich. It is a town of readers,
thinkers and mental independents. It is composed of the elements of New
England shrewdness and Western push, yet Greeley as compared with Cheyenne
would be called a typical New England town in the midst of the active,
fluctuating, booming West.
Cheyenne is not so tame. With few natural advantages the reputation of
Cheyenne is that, in commercial parlance, she is “A 1” for promptness in
paying her debts and absence of failures. There is more wealth there in
proportion to the number of inhabitants than elsewhere in the civilized
world, no doubt. The people take special pleasure in surprising Eastern
people who visit them by a reception very often that they will long
remember for cordiality, hospitality, and even magnificence.
Still I didn't start out to write up either Cheyenne or Greeley. I
intended to mention casually Dr. Law, of the latter place, who acted as my
physician for a few months and coaxed me back from the great hereafter. I
had been under the hands of a physician just before, who was also coroner,
and who, I found afterward, was trying to treat me professionally as long
as the lamp held out to burn, intending afterward to sit upon me
officially. He had treated me professionally until he was about ready to
summon his favorite coroner's jury. Then I got irritated and left the
county of his jurisdiction.
Learning that Dr. Law was relying solely on the practice of medicine for a
livelihood, I summoned him, and after explaining the great danger that
stood in the way of harmonizing the practice of medicine and the official
work of the inquest business, I asked him if he had any business
connection with any undertaking establishment or _hic jacet_ business, and
learning from him that he had none, I engaged him to solder up my
vertebrae and reorganize my spinal duplex.
Sometimes it isn't entirely the medicine you swallow that paralyzes pain
so much as it is the quiet magnetism of a good story and the snap of a
pleasant eye. I had one physician who tried to look joyous when he came
into the room, but he generally asked me to run my tongue out till he
could see where it was tied on, then he would feel my pulse with his cold
finger and time it with a $6 watch, and after that he would write a new
prescription for horse medicine and heave a sigh, look at me as he might
if it had been the last time he ever expected to see me on earth, and then
he would sigh and go away. When he came back he generally looked shocked
and grieved to find me alive. This was the _pro tem_ physician and
_ex-officio_ coroner. I always felt as though I ought to apologize to him
for clinging to life so, when no doubt he had the jury in the hall waiting
to “view” me.
Dr. Law used to tell me of the early history of the Greeley Colony, and
how the original cranks of the community used to be in session most of the
time, and how they sometimes neglected to do their planting to do
legislating, and how they overdid the council work and neglected to “bug”
their potatoes. I remember, also, of his description of how the crew,
working on the original big irrigating canal, struck when it was about
half done, and swore that from the Poudre the ditch was going to run up
hill, and would, therefore, be a failure. The engineer didn't know at
first what was best to do with the belligerent laborers, but finally he
took the leader away from the rest of the crew and said, “Now, I tell you
this in confidence, because of course I know perfectly well that the
stockholders may kick on it if they hear it, but I'm building the blamed
thing as level as I can and putting one end of it in the Poudre and one
end in the Platte. Now, if I'm building it up hill the water'll run down
from the Platte into the Poudre, and if not it'll run from the Poudre into
the Platte. Sabe?”
The ditch was built, and now a deep, still river runs from the Poudre to
the Platte, according to advertisement.
Greeley is also noted for its watchmakers. I sent my watch to the first
one I heard of, and he said it needed cleaning. He cleaned it. I paid him
$2 and took it home, when it ran two hours and then suspended. Then I took
it to another watchmaker who said that the first man had used machine oil
on its works, and had heated the wheels so as to gum the oil on the cogs.
He would have to eradicate the cooked oil from the watch, and it would
cost me $3. I paid it, and joyfully took the watch home. The next day I
found that it had gained time enough to pay for itself. By noon, it had
fatigued itself so that it was losing terribly, and by the day following
had folded its still hands across its pale face in the sleep that knows no
waking. I took it to the third and last jeweler in the town. Everyone said
he was a good workman, but a trifle slow. In the afternoon I went in to
see how he was getting along with it. He was sitting at his bench with a
dice cup in his eye, apparently looking into the digestive economy of the
watch.
I looked at him some time, not wishing to disturb him and interfere with
his diagnosis. He did not move or say anything. Several people came in to
trade and get the correct time, but he paid no attention to them.
I got tired and changed from one foot to the other several times. Then I
asked him how he got along, or something of that kind, but he never opened
his head. He was the most preoccupied watch savant I ever saw. No outside
influence could break up his chain of thought when he got after a diseased
watch.
I finally got around on the outside of the shop and looked in the window,
where I could get a good view of his face.
He was asleep.
The Story of a Struggler.
My name is Kaulbach. William J. Kaulbach is my name, and I am spending the
summer in Canada. I may remain here during the winter, also. My parents
are very poor. They had never been wealthy, and at the time of my birth
they were even less wealthy than they had been before. As soon as I was
born the poverty of my parents attracted my attention. I decided at once
to relieve their distress. I intended to aid them from my own pocket, but
found upon examination that I had no funds in my pocket; also, no pocket;
also, no place to put a pocket if I had brought one with me. So my parents
continued to be poor, and to put by a little poverty for a rainy day. I
was sole heir to the poverty they had acquired in all these years.
Nature did not do much for me in the way of beauty, either. I was quite
plain when born and may still be identified by that peculiarity. Plainess
with me is not only a characteristic, but it is a passion. My whole being
is wrapped up in it. My hair is a sort of neutral brindle, such as grows
upon the top of a retired hair trunk, and my freckles are olive green,
fading into a delicate, crushed-bran color. They are very large, and
actually pain me at times.
My teacher tried to encourage me by telling me of other poor boys who had
grown up to be president of the United States, and he tried to get me to
consent to having my name used as a candidate; but I refrained from doing
so. I knew that, although I was deserving of the place, I could not endure
the bitterness of a campaign, and that the illustrated papers would
enlarge upon my personal appearance and bring out my freckles till you
could hang your hat on them.
So I grew up to be a stage robber.
When I have my mask on my freckles do not show. I lectured on phrenology
at first to get means to prosecute my studies as a stage robber, and when
I had perfected myself as a burglar I went abroad to study the methods of
the Italian banditti. I was two years under the teaching of the old
masters, and acquired great fluency as a robber while there. I studied
from nature all the time, and some of my best work was taken from life. I
had an opportunity to observe all the methods of the most celebrated
garroting maestro and stilletto virtuoso. He was an enthusiast and
thoroughly devoted to his art. He had a large price on his head, also.
Aside from that he went bareheaded winter and summer.
[Illustration: MAKING HIS DEBUT.]
Finally I returned to my own native land, poor, but fired with a mighty
ambition. I went west and proceeded at once to _debut_. I went west to
hold up the country. I was very successful, indeed, and have had my hands
in the pockets of our most eminent men.
We were isolated from society a good deal, but we met the better class of
people now and then in the course of our business. I did not like so much
night work, and sometimes we had to eat raw pork because we did not wish
to build a fire that would attract mosquitoes and sheriffs. So we were
liable more or less to trichina and insomnia, but still we were free from
sewer gas and poll tax. We did not get our mail with much regularity, but
we got a lick at some mighty fine scenery.
But all this is only incidental. What I desired to say was this: Fame and
distinction come high, and when we have them in our grasp at last we find
that they bring their resultant sorrows. I worked long and hard for fame,
and sat up nights and rode through alkali dust for thousands of miles,
that I might be known as the leading robber of the age in which I lived,
only to find at last that my great fame was the source of my chief
annoyance. It made me so widely known that I felt, as Christine Nilsson
says, “as though I lived in a glass case.” Everyone wanted to see me.
Everyone wanted my autograph. Everyone wanted my skeleton to hang up in
the library.
I could have traveled with a show and drawn a large salary, but I hated to
wear a boiler iron overcoat all through the hot weather, after having
lived so wild and free. But all this attention worried me so that I could
not sleep, and many a night I would arise from the lava bed on which I had
reclined, and putting on my dressing-gown and slippers, I would wander
about under the stars and wish that I could be an unknown boy again in my
far away home. But I could not. I often wished that I could die a natural
death, but that was out of the question.
Finally, it got so that I did not dare to take a chew of tobacco, unless I
did so under an assumed name. I hardly dared to let go of my six-shooter
long enough to wipe my nose, for fear that someone might get the drop on
me.
That is the reason why I came to Canada. Here among so many criminals, I
do not attract attention, but I use a _nom de plume_ all the time, even
here, and all these hot nights, while others take off their clothing, I
lie and swelter in my heavy winter _nom de plume_.
The Old Subscriber.
At this season of the year, we are forcibly struck with the earnest and
honest effort that is being made by the publisher of the American
newspaper. It is a healthy sign and a hopeful one for the future of our
country. It occurs to me that with the great advancement of the newspaper,
and the family paper, and the magazine, we do not expect leaders and
statesmen to think for us so much as we did fifty years ago. We do not
allow the newspaper to mold us so much as we did. We enjoy reading the
opinion of a bright, brave, and cogent editor because we know that he sits
where he can acquire his facts in a few hours from all quarters of the
globe, and speak truly to his great audience in relation to those facts,
but we have ceased to allow even that man to think for us.
What then is to be the final outcome of all this? Is it not that the
average American is going to use, and is using, his thinker more than he
ever did before? Will not that thinker then, like the muscle of the
blacksmith's arm, or the mule's hind foot, grow to a wondrous size as a
result? Most assuredly.
The day certainly is not far distant, when the American can not only
out-fight, out-row, out-bat, out-run, out-lie, and out-sail all other
nationalities; but he will also be able to out-think them. We already
point with pride to some of the wonderful thoughts that our leading
thinkists, with their thinkers, have thunk. There are native born
Americans now living, who have thought of things that would make the head
of the amateur thinker ache for a week.
All this is largely due to the free use of the newspaper as a home
educator. The newspaper is growing more and more ubiquitous, if I may be
allowed the expression. Many poor people, who, a few years ago, could not
afford the newspaper, now have it scolloped and put it on their pantry
shelves every year.
But I did not start out to enlarge upon the newspaper. I would like to say
a word or two more, however, on that general subject. Very often we hear
some wise man with the responsibility of the universe on his shoulders, the
man who thinks he is the censor of the human race now, and that he will be
foreman of the grand jury on the Judgment Day--we hear this kind of man
say every little while:
“We've got too many papers. We are loaded down with reading matter. Can't
read all my paper every day. Lots of days I throw my paper aside before I
get it all read through, and never have a chance to finish it. All that is
dead loss.”
It is, of course, a dead loss to that kind of a man. He is the kind of man
that expects his family to begin at one side of the cellar and eat right
straight across, it--cabbages, potatoes, turnips, pickles, apples,
pumpkins, etc., etc.,--without stopping to discriminate. There are none
too many papers, so far as the subscriber is concerned. Looking at it from
the publisher's standpoint sometimes, there are too many.
To the man who has inherited too large, wide, sinewy hands, and a brain
that under the microscope looks like a hepatized lung, it seems some days
as though the field had been over-crowded when he entered it. To the young
man who was designed to maul rails or sock the fence-post into the bosom
of the earth, and who has evaded that sphere of action and disregarded the
mandate to maul rails, or to take a coal-pick and toy with the bowels of
the earth, hoping to win an easier livelihood by feeding sour paste to
village cockroaches, and still poorer pabulum to his subscribers, the
newspaper field seems to be indeed jam full.
But not so the man who is tall enough to see into the future about nine
feet. He still remembers that he must live in the hearts of his
subscribers, and he makes their wants his own. He is not to proud to
listen to suggestions from the man who works. He recognizes that it is not
the man with the diamond-mounted stomach who has contributed most to his
success, but the man who never dips into society much with the exception
of his family, perhaps, and that ought to be good society. A man ought not
to feel too good to associate with his wife and children. Generally my
sympathies are with his wife and children, if they have to associate with
him very much.
But if I could ever get down to it, I would like to say a word on behalf
of the old subscriber. Being an old subscriber myself, I feel an interest
in his cause; and as he rarely rushes into print except to ask why the
police contrive to keep aloof from anything that might look like a fight,
or to inquire why the fire department will continue year after year to run
through the streets killing little children who never injured the
department in any way, just so that they will be in time to chop a hole in
the roof of a house that is not on fire, and pour some water down into the
library, then whoop through an old tin dipper a few times and go away--as
the old subscriber does not generally say much in print except on the
above subjects, I make bold to say on his behalf that as a rule, he is not
treated half as well as the prodigal son, who has been spending his
substance on a rival paper, or stealing his news outright from the old
subscriber.
Why should we pat the new subscriber on the back, and give him a new album
that will fall to pieces whenever you laugh in the same room? Why should
you forget the old love for the new? Do we not often impose on the old
subscriber by giving up the space he has paid for to flaming
advertisements to catch the coy and skittish gudgeon who still lurks
outside the fold? Do we not ofttimes offer a family Bible for a new
subscriber when an old subscriber may be in a lost and undone state?
Do we not again and again offer to the wife of our new subscriber a
beautiful, plain gold ring, or a lace pin for a year's subscription and
$1, while the wife of our old subscriber is just in the shank of a long,
hard, cold winter, without a ring or a pin to her back?
We ought to remember that the old subscriber came to us with his money
when we most needed it. He bore with us when we were new in the business,
and used such provincialisms as “We have saw” and “If we had knew.” He
bore with us when the new column rules were so sharp that they chawed the
paper all up, and the office was so cold, waiting for wood to come in on
subscription, that the “color” was greasy and reluctant. He took our paper
and paid for it, while the new subscriber was in the penitentiary for all
we know. He made a mild kick sometimes when he “didn't git his paper
reggler;” but he paid on the first day of January every year in advance,
out of an old calfskin wallet that opened out like a concertina, and had a
strap that went around it four times, and looked as shiny, and sweaty, and
good-natured as the razor-strop that might have been used by Noah.
The old subscriber never asked any rebate, or requested a prize volume of
poetry with a red cover, because he had paid for another year; but he
simply warmed his numb fingers, so that he could loosen his overalls and
lower one side enough to let his hand into the pocket of his best
pantaloons underneath, and there he always found the smooth wallet, and
inside of it there was always a $2 bill, that had been put there to pay
for the paper. Then the old subscriber would warm his hands some more, ask
“How's tricks?” but never begin to run down the paper, and then he would
go away to work for another year.
[Illustration: THE RIGHT SORT OF SUBSCRIBER.]
I want to say that this country rests upon a great, solid foundation of
old, paid-up subscribers. They are the invisible, rock-ribbed
resting-place for the dazzling superstructure and the slim and peaked
spire. Whether we procure a new press or a new dress, a new contributor or
a new printers' towel, we must bank on the old subscriber; for the new one
is fickle, and when some other paper gives him a larger or a redder
covered book, he may desert our standard. He yearns for the flesh-pots and
the new scroll saws of other papers. He soon wearies of a uniformly good
paper, with no chance to draw a town lot or a tin mine--in Montana.
Let us, therefore, brethren of the press, cling to the old subscriber as
he has clung to us. Let us say to him, on this approaching Christmas Eve,
“Son, thou art always with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet
that we should make merry, that this, thy brother, who had been a
subscriber for our vile contemporary many years, but is alive again, and
during a lucid interval has subscribed for our paper; but, after all, we
would not go to him if we wanted to borrow a dollar. Remember that you
still have our confidence, and when we want a good man to indorse our note
at the bank, you will find that your name in our memory is ever fresh and
green.”
Looking this over, I am struck with the amount of stuff I have
successfully said, and yet there is a paucity of ideas. Some writers would
not use the word paucity in this place without first knowing the meaning
of it, but I am not that way. There are thousands of words that I now use
freely, but could not if I postponed it until I could learn their meaning.
Timidity keeps many of our authors back, I think. Many are more timid
about using big words than they are about using other people's ideas.
A friend of mine wanted to write a book, but hadn't the time to do it. So
he asked me if I wouldn't do it for him. He was very literary, he said,
but his business took up all his time, so I asked him what kind of a book
he wanted. He said he wanted a funny book, with pictures in it and a blue
cover. I saw at once that he had fine literary taste and delicate
discrimination, but probably did not have time to give it full swing. I
asked him what he thought it would be worth to write such a book. “Well,”
he said, he had always supposed that I enjoyed it myself, but if I thought
I ought to have pay besides, he would be willing to pay the same as he did
for his other writing--ten cents a folio.
He is worth $50,000, because he has documentary evidence to show that a
man who made that amount out of deceased hogs, had the misfortune to be
his father and then die.
It was a great triumph to be born under such circumstances, and yet the
young man lacks the mental stamina necessary to know how to successfully
eat common mush and milk in such a low key that will not alarm the police.
I use this incident more as an illustration than anything else. It
illustrates how anything may be successfully introduced into an article of
this kind without having any bearing whatever upon it.
I like to close a serious essay, or treatise, with some humorous incident,
like the clown in the circus out West last summer, who joked along through
the performance all the afternoon till two or three children went into
convulsions, and hypochondria seemed to reign rampant through the tent.
All at once a bright idea struck him. He climbed up on the flying trapeze,
fell off, and broke his neck. He was determined to make that audience
laugh, and he did it at last. Every one felt repaid for the trouble of
going to the circus.
My Dog.
I have owned quite a number of dogs in my life, but they are all dead now.
Last evening I visited my dog cemetery--just between the gloaming and the
shank of the evening. On the biscuit-box cover that stands at the head of
a little mound fringed with golden rod and pickle bottles, the idler may
still read these lines, etched in red chalk by a trembling hand:
LITTLE KOSCIUSKO,--NOT DEAD,--BUT JERKED HENCE
By Request.
S.Y.L.
(See you Later.)
I do not know why he was called Kosciusko. I do not care. I only know that
his little grave stands out there while the gloaming gloams and the
soughing winds are soughing.
Do you ask why I am alone here and dogless in this weary world?