Crowns and Crowned Heads.
During the hot weather very few crowns are worn this season, and a few
hints as to the care of the crown itself may not be out of place.
The crown should not be carelessly hung on the hat rack in the royal hall
for the flies to roost upon, but it should be thoroughly cleaned and put
away as soon as the weather becomes too hot to wear it comfortably.
Great care should be used in cleaning a gold-plated crown, to avoid
wearing out the plate. Take a good stiff tooth brush, with a little
soapsuds, and clean the crown thoroughly at first, drying it on a clean
towel and taking care not to drop it on the floor and thus knock the
moss-agate diadem loose. Next, get a sleeve of the royal undershirt, or,
in case you can not procure one readily, the sleeve of a duke or
right-bower may be used. Soak this in vinegar, and, with a coat of
whiting, polish the crown thoroughly, wrap it in cotton-flannel and put in
the bureau. Sometimes, the lining of the crown becomes saturated with
hair-oil from constant use and needs cleaning. In such cases the lining
may be removed, boiled in concentrated lye two hours, or until tender, and
then placed on the grass to bleach in the sun.
Most crowns are size six-and-seven-eights, and they are therefore
frequently too large for the number six head of royalty. In such cases a
newspaper may be folded lengthwise and laid inside the sweat-band of the
crown, thus reducing the size and preventing any accident by which his or
her majesty might lose the crown in the coal-bin while doing chores.
After the Fourth of July and other royal holidays, this newspaper may be
removed, and the crown will be found none too large for the imperial dome
of thought.
Sceptres may be cleaned and wrapped in woolen goods during the hot months.
The leg of an old pair of pantaloons makes a good retort to run a sceptre
into while not in use. Never try to kill flies or drive carpet tacks with
the sceptre. It is an awkward tool at best, and you might 'easily knock a
thumb nail loose. Great care should also be taken of the royal robe. Do
not use it for a lap robe while dining, nor sleep in it at night. Nothing
looks more repugnant than a king on the throne, with little white feathers
all over his robe.
It is equally bad taste to govern a kingdom in a maroon robe with white
horse hairs all over it.
[Illustration: A HARD-WORKING MONARCH.]
I once knew a king who invariably curried his horses in his royal robes;
and if the steeds didn't stand around to suit him, he would ever and anon
welt them in the pit of the stomach with his cast-iron sceptre. It was
greatly to the interest of his horses not to incur the royal displeasure,
as the reader has no doubt already surmised.
The robe of the king should only be worn while his majesty is on the
throne. When he comes down at night, after his day's work, and goes out
after his coal and kindling-wood, he may take off his robe, roll it up
carefully, and stick it under the throne, where it will be out of sight.
Nothing looks more untidy than a fat king milking a bobtail cow in a
Mother Hubbard robe trimmed with imitation ermine.
My Physician.
[An Open Letter.]
Dear Sir: I have seen recently an open letter addressed to me, and written
by you in a vein of confidence and strictly sub rosa. What you said was so
strictly confidential, in fact, that you published the letter in New York,
and it was copied through the press of the country. I shall, therefore,
endeavor to be equally careful in writing my reply.
You refer in your kind and confidential note to your experience as an
invalid, and your rapid recovery after the use of red-hot Mexican pepper
tea in a molten state.
But you did not have such a physician as I did when I had spinal
meningitis. He was a good doctor for horses and blind staggers, but he was
out of his sphere when he strove to fool with the human frame. Change of
scene and rest were favorite prescriptions of his. Most of his patients
got both, especially eternal rest. He made a specialty of eternal rest.
He did not know what the matter was with me, but he seemed to be willing
to learn.
My wife says that while he was attending me I was as crazy as a loon, but
that I was more lucid than the physician. Even with my little, shattered
wreck of mind, tottering between a superficial knowledge of how to pound
sand and a wide, shoreless sea of mental vacuity, I still had the edge on
my physician, from an intellectual point of view. He is still practicing
medicine in a quiet kind of way, weary of life, and yet fearing to die and
go where his patients are.
He had a sabre wound on one cheek that gave him a ferocious appearance. He
frequently alluded to how he used to mix up in the carnage of battle, and
how he used to roll up his pantaloons and wade in gore. He said that if
the tocsin of war should sound even now, or if he were to wake up in the
night and hear war's rude alarum, he would spring to arms and make tyranny
tremble till its suspender buttons fell off.
Oh, he was a bad man from Bitter Creek.
One day I learned from an old neighbor that this physician did not have
anything to do with preserving the Union intact, but that he acquired the
scar on his cheek while making some experiments as a drunk and disorderly.
He would come and sit by my bedside for hours, waiting for this mortality
to put on immortality, so that he could collect his bill from the estate,
but one day I arose during a temporary delirium, and extracting a slat
from my couch I smote him across the pit of the stomach with it, while I
hissed through my clenched teeth:
“Physician, heal thyself.”
[Illustration: “PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF.”]
I then tottered a few minutes, and fell back into the arms of my
attendants. If you do not believe this, I can still show you the clenched
teeth. Also the attendants.
I had a hard time with this physician, but I still live, contrary to his
earnest solicitations.
I desire to state that should this letter creep into the press of the
country, and thus become in a measure public, I hope that it will create
no ill-feeling on your part.
Our folks are all well as I write, and should you happen to be on Lake
Superior this winter, yachting, I hope you will drop in and see us. Our
latch string is hanging out most all the time, and if you will pound on
the fence I will call off the dog.
I frequently buy a copy of your paper on the streets. Do you get the
money?
Are you acquainted with the staff of _The Century_, published in New York?
I was in _The Century_ office several hours last spring, and the editors
treated me very handsomely, but, although I have bought the magazine ever
since, and read it thoroughly, I have not seen yet where they said that
“they had a pleasant call from the genial and urbane William Nye.” I do
not feel offended over this. I simply feel hurt.
Before that I had a good notion to write a brief epic on the “Warty Toad,”
and send it to _The Century_ for publication, but now it is quite
doubtful.
_The Century_ may be a good paper, but it does not take the press
dispatches, and only last month I saw in it an account of a battle that to
my certain knowledge occurred twenty years ago.
All About Oratory.
Twenty centuries ago last Christmas there was born in Attica, near Athens,
the father of oratory, the greatest orator of whom history has told us.
His name was Demosthenes. Had he lived until this spring he would have
been 2,270 years old; but he did not live. Demosthenes has crossed the
mysterious river. He has gone to that bourne whence no traveler returns.
Most of you, no doubt, have heard about it. On those who may not have
heard it, the announcement will fall with a sickening thud.
This sketch is not intended to cast a gloom over your hearts. It was
designed to cheer those who read it and make them glad they could read.
Therefore, I would have been glad if I could have spared them the pain
which this sudden breaking of the news of the death of Demosthenes will
bring. But it could not be avoided. We should remember the transitory
nature of life, and when we are tempted to boast of our health, and
strength, and wealth, let us remember the sudden and early death of
Demosthenes.
Demosthenes was not born an orator. He struggled hard and failed many
times. He was homely, and he stammered in his speech; but before his death
they came to him for hundreds of miles to get him to open their county
fairs and jerk the bird of freedom bald-headed on the Fourth of July.
When Demosthenes' father died, he left fifteen talents to be divided
between Demosthenes and his sister. A talent is equal to about $1,000. I
often wish I had been born a little more talented.
Demosthenes had a short breath, a hesitating speech, and his manners were
very ungraceful. To remedy his stammering, he filled his mouth full of
pebbles and howled his sentiments at the angry sea. However, Plutarch says
that Demosthenes made a gloomy fizzle of his first speech. This did not
discourage him. He finally became the smoothest orator in that country,
and it was no uncommon thing for him to fill the First Baptist Church of
Athens full. There are now sixty of his orations extant, part of them
written by Demosthenes and part of them written by his private secretary.
When he started in, he was gentle, mild and quiet in his manner; but later
on, carrying his audience with him, he at last became enthusiastic. He
thundered, he roared, he whooped, he howled, he jarred the windows, he
sawed the air, he split the horizon with his clarion notes, he tipped over
the table, kicked the lamps out of the chandeliers and smashed the big
bass viol over the chief fiddler's head.
Oh, Demosthenes was business when he got started. It will be a long time
before we see another off-hand speaker like Demosthenes, and I, for one,
have never been the same man since I learned of his death.
“Such was the first of orators,” says Lord Brougham. “At the head of all
the mighty masters of speech, the adoration of ages has consecrated his
place, and the loss of the noble instrument with which he forged and
launched his thunders, is sure to maintain it unapproachable forever.”
I have always been a great admirer of the oratory of Demosthenes, and
those who have heard both of us, think there is a certain degree of
similarity in our style.
And not only did I admire Demosthenes as an orator, but as a man; and,
though I am no Vanderbilt, I feel as though I would be willing to head a
subscription list for the purpose of doing the square thing by his
sorrowing wife, if she is left in want, as I understand that she is.
I must now leave Demosthenes and pass on rapidly to speak of Patrick
Henry.
Mr. Henry was the man who wanted liberty or death. He preferred liberty,
though. If he couldn't have liberty, he wanted to die, but he was in no
great rush about it. He would like liberty, if there was plenty of it; but
if the British had no liberty to spare, he yearned for death. When the
tyrant asked him what style of death he wanted, he said that he would
rather die of extreme old age. He was willing to wait, he said. He didn't
want to go unprepared, and he thought it would take him eighty or ninety
years more to prepare, so that when he was ushered into another world he
wouldn't be ashamed of himself.
One hundred and ten years ago, Patrick Henry said: “Sir, our chains are
forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is
inevitable, and let it come. I repeat it, sir, let it come!”
In the spring of 1860, I used almost the same language. So did Horace
Greeley. There were four or five of us who got our heads together and
decided that the war was inevitable, and consented to let it come.
Then it came. Whenever there is a large, inevitable conflict loafing
around waiting for permission to come, it devolves on the great statesmen
and bald-headed _literati_ of the nation to avoid all delay. It was so
with Patrick Henry. He permitted the land to be deluged in gore, and then
he retired. It is the duty of the great orator to howl for war, and then
hold some other man's coat while he fights.
Strabusmus and Justice.
Over in St. Paul I met a man with eyes of cadet blue and a terra cotta
nose. His eyes were not only peculiar in shape, but while one seemed to
constantly probe the future, the other was apparently ransacking the
dreamy past. While one rambled among the glorious possibilities of the
remote yet golden ultimately, the other sought the somber depths of the
previously.
He told me that years ago he had a mild case of strabismus and that both
eyes seemed to glare down his nose till he got restless and had them
operated on. Those were the days when they used to fasten a crochet hook
under the internal rectus muscle and cut it a little with a pair of
optical sheep shears. The effect of this course was to allow the eye to
drift back to a direct line; but this man fell into the hands of a drunken
surgeon who cut the muscle too much, and thereby weakened it so that it
gradually swung past the point it ought to have stopped at, and he saw
with horror that his eye was going to turn out and protrude, as it were,
so that a man could hang his hat on it. The other followed suit, and the
two orbs that had for years looked along the bridge of the terra cotta
nose, gradually separated, and while one looked toward next Christmas with
fond anticipations, the other loved to linger over the remembrances of
last fall.
This thing continued till he had to peer into the future with his off eye
closed, and vice versa.
It is needless to say that he hungered for the blood of that physician and
surgeon. He tried to lay violent hands on him and wipe up the ground with
him and wear him out across a telegraph pole. But the authorities always
prevented the administration of swift and lawful justice.
Time passed on, till one night the abnormal wall-eyed man loosened a board
in the sidewalk up town so that the physician and surgeon caught his foot
in it and caused an oblique fracture of the scapula, pied his dura mater,
busted his cornucopia and wrecked his sarah-bellum.
Perhaps I am in error as to some of these medical terms and their
orthography, but that is about the way the man with the divergent orbs
told it to me.
The physician and surgeon was quite a ruin. He had to wear clapboards on
himself for months, and there were other doctors, and laudable pus and
threatened gangrene and doctors' bills, with the cemetery looming up in
the near future. Day after day he took his own anti-febrile drinks, and
rammed his busted system full of iron and strychnine and beef tea and
dover's powders and hypodermic squirt till he wished he could die, but
death would not come. He pawed the air and howled. They fed him his own
nux vomica, tincture of rhubarb and phosphates and gruel, and brought him
back to life with a crooked collar bone, a shattered shoulder blade and a
look of woe.
Then he sued the town for $50,000 damages because the sidewalk was
imperfect, and the wild-eyed man with the inflamed nose got on the jury.
I will not explain how it was done, but there was a verdict for defendant
with costs on the Esculapian wreck. The man with the crooked vision is not
handsome, but he is very happy. He says the mills of the gods grind
slowly, but they pulverise middling fine.
A Spencerian Ass.
After I had accumulated a handsome competence as city editor of the old
Morning _Sentinel_ at Laramie City, and had married and gone to
housekeeping with a gas stove and other luxuries, my place on the
_Sentinel_ was taken by a newspaper man named Hopkins, who had just
graduated from a business college, and who brought a nice glazed grip
sack and a diploma with him that had never been used.
Hopkins wrote a fine Spencerian hand and wore a black and tan dog
where-ever he went. The boys were willing to overlook his copper-plate
hand, but they drew the line at the dog. He not only wrote in beautiful
style, but he copied his manuscript, so that when it went in to the
printer it was as pretty as a wedding invitation.
[Illustration: HE THREW ME OUT.]
Hopkins ran the city page nine days, and then he came into the city hall
where I was trying a simple drunk and bade me adieu.
I just say this to show how difficult it is for a fine penman to get ahead
as a journalist. Of course good, readable writers like Knox and John
Hancock may become great, but they have to be men of sterling ability to
start with.
I have some of the most bloodcurdling horrors preserved for the purpose of
showing Hopkins' wonderful and vivid style. I will throw them in.
“A little son of our esteemed fellow townsman, J.H. Hayford, suffered
greatly last evening with virulent colic, but this A.M., as we go to
press, is sleeping easily.”
Think of shaking the social foundations of a mountain mining and stock
town with such grim, nervous prostrators as that! The next day he startled
Southern Wyoming and Northern Colorado and Utah with the maddening
statement that “our genial friend, Leopold Gussenhoven's fine, yellow dog,
Florence Nightingale, had been seriously threatened with insomnia.”
That was the style of mental calisthenics he gave us in a town where death
by opium and ropium was liable to occur, and where five men with their
Mexican spurs on climbed one telegraph pole in one night and sauntered
into the remote indefinitely. Hopkins told me that he had tried to do what
was right, but that he had not succeeded very well. He wrung my hand and
said:
“I have tried hard to make the _Sentinel_ fill a long want felt, but I
have not been fortunate. The foreman over there is a harsh man. He used to
come in and intimate in a frowning and erect tone of voice, that if I did
not produce that copy p.d.q., or some other abbreviation or other, that he
would bust my crust, or words of like import.
“Now that's no way to talk to a man of a nervous temperament who is
engaged in copying a list of hotel arrivals, and shading the capitals as I
was. In the business college it was not that way. Everything was quiet,
and there was nothing to jar a man like that.
“Of course I would like to stay on the _Sentinel_ and draw the princely
salary, but there are two hundred reasons why I cannot do it. So far as
the physical effort is concerned, I could draw the salary with one hand
tied behind me, but there is too much turmoil and mad haste in daily
journalism to suit me, and another thing, the proprietor of the _Sentinel_
this morning stole up behind me and struck me over the head with a
wrought-iron side stick weighing ten pounds. If I had not concealed a coil
spring in my plug hat, the blow would have been deleterious to me.
“Then he threw me out of the door against a total stranger, and flung
pieces of coal at me and called me a copper-plate ass, and said that if I
ever came into the office again he would assassinate me.
“That is the principal reason why I have severed my connection with the
_Sentinel_.”
As he said this, Mr. Hopkins took out a polka-dot handkerchief wiped away
a pearly tear the size of a walnut, wrung my hand, also the polka-dot
wipe, and stole out into the great, horrid hence.
Anecdotes of Justice.
The justice of the peace is sometimes a peculiarity, and if someone does
not watch him he will exceed his jurisdiction. It took a constable, a
sheriff, a prosecuting attorney and a club to convince a Wyoming justice
of the peace that he had no right to send a man to the penitentiary for
life. Another justice in Utah sentenced a criminal to be hung on the
following Friday between twelve and one o'clock of said day, but he
couldn't enforce the sentence. A Wisconsin justice of the peace granted a
divorce and in two weeks married the couple over again--ten dollars for
the divorce and two dollars for the relapse. Another Badger justice bound
a young man over to appear and answer at the next term of the Circuit
Court for the crime of chastity, and the evidence was entirely
circumstantial, too.
Another one, when his first case came up, jerked a candle box around
behind the dining-room table, put his hat on the back of his head,
borrowed a chew of tobacco from the prisoner and said: “Now, boys, the
court's open. The first feller that says a word unless I speak to him will
get paralyzed. Now tell your story.” Then each witness and the defendant
reeled off his yarn without being sworn. The justice fined the defendant
ten dollars and made the complaining witness pay half the costs. The
justice then took the fine and put it in his pocket, adjourned court, and
in an hour was so full that it took six men to hold his house still long
enough for him to get into the doors.
A North Park justice of the peace and under-sheriff formed a partnership
years ago for the purpose of supplying people with justice at New York
prices, and by doing a strictly cash business they dispensed with a good
deal of justice, such as it was.
It was a misdemeanor to kill game and ship it out of the State, and as
there was a good deal killed there, consisting of elk, antelope and black
tail deer especially, and as it could not be hauled out of the Park at
that season without going across the Wyoming line and back again into the
State of Colorado, the under-sheriff would load himself down with
warrants, signed in blank, and station himself on horseback at the foot of
the pass to the North. He would then arrest everybody indiscriminately who
had any fraction of a deer, antelope or elk on his wagon, try the case
then and there, put on a fine of $25 to $75, which if paid never reached
the treasury, and then he would wait for another victim. The average man
would rather pay the fine than go back a hundred miles through the
mountains to stand trial, so the under-sheriff and justice thrived for
some time. But one day the under-sheriff served his patent automatic
warrant on a young man who refused to come down. The officer then drew one
of those large baritone instruments that generally has a coward at one end
and a corpse at the other. He pointed this at the young man and assessed a
fine of $50 and costs. Instead of paying this fine, the youth, who was
quite nimble, but unarmed, knocked the bogus officer down with the butt
end of his six-mule whip, took his self-cocking credentials away and lit
out. In less than a week the justice and his copper were in the
refrigerator.
I was once a justice of the peace, and a good many funny little incidents
occurred while I held that office. I do not allude to my official life
here in order to call attention to my glowing career, for thousands of
others, no doubt, could have administered the affairs of the office as
well as I did, but rather to speak of one incident which took place while
I was a J.P.
One night after I had retired and gone to sleep a milkman, called Bill
Dunning, rang the bell and got me out of bed. Then he told me that a man
who owed him a milk bill of $35 was all loaded up and prepared to slip
across the line overland into Colorado, there to grow up with the country
and acquire other indebtedness, no doubt. Bill desired an attachment for
the entire wagon-load of goods and said he had an officer at hand to serve
the writ.
“But,” said I, as I wrapped a “welcome” husk door mat around my glorious
proportions, “how do you know while we converse together he is not winging
his way down the valley of the Paudre?”
“Never mind that, jedge,” says William. “You just fix the dockyments and
I'll tend to the defendant.”
In an hour Bill returned with $35 in cash for himself and the entire costs
of the court, and as we settled up and fixed the docket I asked Bill
Dunning how he detained the defendant while we made out the affidavit bond
and writ of attachment.
“You reckollect, jedge,” says William, “that the waggin wheel is held onto
the exle with a big nut. No waggin kin go any length of time without that
there nut onto the exle. Well, when I diskivered that what's-his-name was
packed up and the waggin loaded, I took the liberty to borrow one o' them
there nuts fur a kind of momento, as it were, and I kept that in my pocket
till we served the writ and he paid my bill and came to his milk, if
you'll allow me that expression, and then I says to him, 'Pardner,' says
I, you are going far, far away where I may never see you again. Take this
here nut,' says I, 'and put it onto the exle of the oft hind wheel of your
waggin, and whenever you look at it hereafter, think of poor old Bill
Dunning, the milkman.'”
The Chinese God.
I presume that I shall not be accused of sacrilege in referring to the
Chinese god as an inferior piece of art. Viewed simply from an artistic
and economical standpoint, it seems to me that the Chinaman should have
less pride in his bow-legged and inefficient god than in any other
national institution.
I do not wish to be understood as interfering with any man's religious
views; but when polygamy is made a divine decree, or a basswood deity is
whittled out and painted red, to look up to and to worship, I cannot treat
that so-called religious belief with courtesy and reverence. I am quite
liberal in all religious matters. People have noticed that and remarked
it, but the Oriental god of commerce seems to me to be greatly over-rated.
He seems to lack that genuine decision of character which should be a
feature of an over-ruling power.
I ask the phrenologist to come with me and examine the head of the alleged
Josh, and to state whether or not he believes that the properly balanced
head of a successful god should not have a more protuberant knob of
spirituality, and a less pronounced alimentiveness. Should the bump of
combativeness hang out over the ear, while time, tune and calculation are
noticeably reticent? I certainly wot not.
Again, how can the physiognomy of the Celestial Josh be consistent with a
moral and temperate god? The low brow would not indicate a pronounced
omniscience, and the Jumbo ears and the copious neck would not impress me
with the idea of purity and spirituality.
It is, no doubt, wrong to attack sacred matters for the purpose of gaining
notoriety; but I believe I am right, when I assert that the Chinese god
must go. We should not be Puritanical, but we might safely draw the line
at the bow-legged and sedentary goddess of leprosy.
If Confucius bowed the suppliant knee to that goggle-eyed jim-jam Josh,
I am grieved to know it. If such was the case, the friends of Confucius
should keep the matter from me. I cannot believe that the great
philosopher wallowed in the dust at the feet of such a polka-dot
carricature of a gorilla's horrid dream.
I bought a Chinese god once, for four bits. He was not successful in
the profession which he aimed to follow. Whatever he may have been in
China, he was not a very successful god in the English language. I put
him upon the mantel, and the clock stopped, the servant girl sent in
her resignation, and a large dog jumped through the parlor-window. All
this happened within two hours from the time I erected the lop-eared,
knocked-kneed and club-footed Oolong in my household.
[Illustration: THE DOG EXITS.]
Perhaps this may have been largely due to my ignorance of his habits.
Possibly if I had been more familiar with his eccentricities, it would
have been all right; but as it was, there was no book of instructions
given with him, and I couldn't seem to make him work.
During the week following, the prospect shaft of the New Jerusalem mine
struck a subterranean gulf-stream and water-logged the stock, a tall
yellow dog, under the weight of a great woe, picked out my cistern to
suicide in, and I skated down the cellar-stairs on my shoulder-blades
and the phrenological location known as Love of Home, in such a terrible
manner as to jar the foundations of the earth, and kick a large hole out
of the bosom of the night.
I then met with a change of heart, and overthrew the warty heathen god,
and knocked him galley west. My hens at once began to watch the produce
market, and, noticing the high price of eggs, commenced to orate with
great zeal instead of standing around with their hands in their pockets. I
saw the new moon over my right shoulder, and all nature seemed gay once
more.
The above are a few of my reasons for believing that the Chinese god is
either greatly over-estimated, or else shippers and producers are flooding
the market with fraudulent gods.
A Great Spiritualist.
I have an uncle who is a physician, and a very busy one at that. He is a
very active man, and allows himself very little relaxation indeed. How
many times he has said to me, “Well, I can't stand here and fool away my
time with you. I've got a typhoid fever patient down in the lower end of
town who will get well if I don't get over there this forenoon.”
He never allows himself any relaxation to speak of, except to demonstrate
the truth of spiritualism. He does love to monkey with the supernatural,
and he delights in getting hold of some skeptical friend and convincing
him of the presence of spirits beyond a doubt. I've known him to ignore
two cases of croup and one case of twins to attend a seance and help
convince a doubting Thomas on the spirit question.
I believe that he and I, together with a little time in which to prepare,
could convince the most skeptical. He says that with a friend to assist
him, who is _en rapport_, and who has a little practice, he can reach the
stoniest heart. He is a very susceptible medium indeed, and created a
great furore in his own town. He said it was a great comfort to him to
converse with his former patients, and he felt kind of attached to them,
so that he hated to be separated from them, even in death.
Spiritualism had quite a run in his neighborhood at one time, as I have
said. Even his own family yielded to the convincing proof and the
astounding phenomena. If his wife hadn't found some of his spiritual
tracks down cellar, she would have remained firm, no doubt, but the doctor
forgot and left his step-ladder down there, and that showed where the hole
in the floor opened into his mysterious cabinet.
He said if he had been a little more careful, no doubt he could have
convinced anybody of the presence of spirits or anything else. He said he
didn't intend to give up as long as there was anything left in the cellar.
He had such unwavering confidence in the phenomena that all he asked of
anybody was faith and a buckskin string about two feet long.
He and his brother, a reformed member of Congress, read the inmost
thoughts of a skeptical friend all one evening by the aid of supernatural
powers and a tin tube. The reformed member of Congress acted as medium,
and the doctor, who was unfortunately and ostensibly called away into the
country early in the evening, remained at the window outside, where he
could read the queries written by the victim on a slip of paper. Then he
would run around the house and murmur the same through a tin tube at
another window by the medium's ear.
It was astounding. The skeptical man would write some deep question on a
slip of paper, and after the medium had felt of his brow, and groaned a
few hollow groans, and rolled his eyes up, he would answer it without
having been within twenty feet of the question or the questioner. The
victim said he would never doubt again.
What a comfort it was to know that immortality was an established fact. If
he could have heard a man talking in a low tone of voice through an old
tin dipper handle, at the south window on the ground floor, and
occasionally swearing at a mosquito on the back of his neck, he would have
hesitated.
An old-timer over there said that Woodworth would be a mighty good
physician if he would let spiritualism alone. He claimed that no man could
be a great physician and surgeon and still be a fanatic on spiritualism.
General Sheridan's Horse.
I have always taken a great interest in war incidents, and more so,
perhaps, because I wasn't old enough to put down the rebellion myself. I
have been very eager to get hold of and hoard up in my memory all its
gallant deeds of both sides, and to know the history of those who figured
prominently in that great conflict has been one of my ambitions.
I have also watched with interest the steady advancement of Phil Sheridan,
the black-eyed warrior with the florid face and the Winchester record. I
have also taken some pains to investigate the later history of the old
Winchester war horse.
“Old Rienzi died in our stable a few years after the war,” said a Chicago
livery man to me, a short time ago. “General Sheridan left him with us and
instructed us to take good care of him, which we did, but he got old at
last, and his teeth failed upon him, and that busted his digestion, and he
kind of died of old age, I reckon.”
“How did General Sheridan take it?”
“Oh, well, Phil Sheridan is no school girl. He didn't turn away when old
Rienzi died and weep the manger full of scalding regret. If you know
Sheridan, you know that he don't rip the blue dome of heaven wide open
with unavailing wails. He just told us to take care of its remains, patted
the old cuss on the head a little and walked off. Phil Sheridan don't go
around weeping softly into a pink bordered wipe when a horse dies. He
likes a good horse, but Rienzi was no Jay-Eye-See for swiftness, and he
wasn't the purtiest horse you ever see, by no means.”
“Did you read lately how General Sheridan don't ride on horseback since
his old war horse died, and seems to have lost all interest in horses?”
“No, I never did. He no doubt would rather ride in a cable car or a
carriage than to jar himself up on a horse. That's all likely enough,
but, as I say, he's a matter of fact little fighter from Fighttown. He
never stopped to snoot and paw up the ground and sob himself into
bronchitis over old Rienzi. He went right on about his business, and,
like old King What's-His-name he hollered for another hoss, and the War
Department never slipped a cog.”
Later on I read that the old war horse was called Winchester and that he
was still alive in a blue grass pasture in Kentucky. The report said that
old Winchester wasn't very coltish, and that he was evidently failing. I
gathered the idea that he was wearing store teeth, and that his memory was
a little deficient, but that he might live yet for years. After that I met
a New York livery stable prince, at whose palace General Sheridan's
well-known Winchester war horse died of botts in '71. He told me all
about it and how General Sheridan came on from Chicago at the time, and
held the horse's head in his lap while the fleet limbs that flew from
Winchester down and saved the day, stiffened in the great, mysterious
repose of death. He said Sheridan wept like a child, and as he told the
touching tale to me I wept also. I say I wept. I wept about a quart, I
would say. He said also that the horse's name wasn't Winchester nor
Rienzi; it was Jim.
I was sorry to know it. Jim is no name for a war horse who won a victory
and a marble bust and a poem. You can't respect a horse much if his name
was Jim.
After that I found out that General Sheridan's celebrated Winchester horse
was raised in Kentucky, also in Pennsylvania and Michigan; that he went
out as a volunteer private; that he was in the regular service prior to
the war, and that he was drafted, and that he died on the field of battle,
in a sorrel pasture, in '73, in great pain on Governor's Island; that he
was buried with Masonic honors by the Good Templars and the Grand Army of
the Republic; that he was resurrected by a medical college and dissected;
that he was cremated in New Orleans and taxidermed for the Military Museum
at New York. Every little while I run up against a new fact relative to
this noted beast. He has died in nine different States, and been buried in
thirteen different styles, while his soul goes marching on. Evidently we
live in an age of information. You can get more information nowadays, such
as it is, than you know what to do with.
A Circular.
To my friends, regardless of party.--Many friends having solicited me to
apply for a foreign mission under the present administration, I have
finally consented to do so, and last week filed my application for such
missions as might still remain vacant.
To insure my appointment, much will remain for you to do. I now call upon
my friends to aid me by their united effort. I especially solicit the aid
of my friends who have repeatedly heretofore promised it to me while
drunk.
[Illustration: PLENTY OF CORRESPONDENCE.]
You will see at a glance that I can only make the application. You must
support it by your petitions and letters. It would be of little use for
one man to write five thousand letters to the president, but if five
thousand people each write him a letter in which casual reference is made
to my social worth and 7-1/3 octave brain, it will make him pay attention.
My idea would be for each of my friends to set aside one day in each week
to write to the president, opening it in a chatty way by asking him if he
does not think we are having rather a backward spring, and what he is
doing for his cut worms now, and how his folks are, etc., etc. Then
gradually lead up to the statement that you think I would be an ornament
to the administration if I should go abroad and linger on a foreign strand
at $2,000 per linger and stationery.
This will keep the president properly stirred up, and cause him to earn
his salary. The effect will be to secure the appointment at last, as you
will see if you persevere.
I need not add that I will do what is right by my friends upon receiving
my commission.
Do not neglect this suggestion because it comes to you in the form of a
circular, but remember it and act upon it. Remember that, although the
president is stubborn as Sam Hill, he will at last yield to fatigue, and
when tired nature can hold out no longer, the last letter will drop from
his nerveless hand and he will surrender.
[Illustration: NURSING THE FIERY STEED.]
Some of you will urge that I have been an offensive partisan, but when you
come to think it over I have not been so all-fired partisan. There have
been days and days when it did not show itself very much. However, that is
not the point. I want your hearty indorsement and I want it to be entirely
voluntary, and if you do not give it, and give it freely and voluntarily,
you hadn't better ask me for any more favors.
All the newspapers most heartily indorse me. The _Rocky Mountain Whoop_
very truthfully says:
“Mr. Nye called at our office yesterday and subscribed for our paper. We
are proud to add him to our list of paid-up subscribers, and should he
renew his subscription next year, paying in advance, we will cheerfully
refer to it among other startling news.”
I have a scrap-book full of such indorsements as this, and now, if my
friends will peel their coats and write as they should, I can make this
administration open its eyes.
Several papers in Iowa have alluded to my being in town, and referred to
the fact that I had paid my bills while there. But press indorsements
alone are not sufficient. What is needed is the written testimony of
friends and neighbors. No matter how poor or humble or worthless you may
be, write to Mr. Cleveland and tell him how much confidence you have in
me, and if you can call to mind any little acts of kindness, or any times
when I have got up in the night to give you a dollar, or nurse a colicky
horse for you, throw that in. Throw it in anyhow. It will do no harm, and
may do much good.
I can solemnly promise all my friends that if they will secure my
appointment to a foreign country for four years, I will not return during
that time. What more can I offer? I will stay longer if I am reappointed.
I would do anything for my friends.
Do not throw this circular carelessly aside. Read it carefully over and
act upon it. Some of you are poor spellers, and will try to get out of it
in that way. Others are in the penitentiary and cannot spare the time. But
to one and all I say, write, and write regularly, to the president. Do not
wait for a reply from him, because he is pretty busy now; but he will be
tickled to death to hear from you, and anything you say about me will give
him great pleasure.
N.B.--Please be careful not to inclose this circular in your letter to the
president.
The Photograph Habit.
No doubt the photograph habit, when once formed, is one of the most
baneful, and productive of the most intense suffering in after years, of
any with which we are familiar. Some times it seems to me that my whole
life has been one long, abject apology for photographs that I have shed
abroad throughout a distracted country.
Man passes through seven distinct stages of being photographed, each one
exceeding all previous efforts in that line.
First he is photographed as a prattling, bald-headed baby, absolutely
destitute of eyes, but making up for this deficiency by a wealth of mouth
that would make a negro minstrel olive green with envy. We often wonder
what has given the average photographer that wild, hunted look about the
eyes and that joyless sag about the knees. The chemicals and the indoor
life alone have not done all this. It is the great nerve tension and
mental strain used in trying to photograph a squirming and dark red child
with white eyes, in such a manner as to please its parents.
An old-fashioned dollar store album with cerebro-spinal meningitis, and
filled with pictures of half-suffocated children in heavily-starched white
dresses, is the first thing we seek on entering a home, and the last thing
from which we reluctantly part.
The second stage on the downward road is the photograph of the boy with
fresh-cropped hair, and in which the stiff and protuberant thumb takes a
leading part.
Then follows the portrait of the lad, with strongly marked freckles and a
look of hopeless melancholy. With the aid of a detective agency, I have
succeeded in running down and destroying several of these pictures which
were attributed to me.
Next comes the young man, 21 years of age, with his front hair plastered
smoothly down over his tender, throbbing dome of thought. He does not care
so much about the expression on the mobile features, so long as his left
hand, with the new ring on it, shows distinctly, and the string of
jingling, jangling charms on his watch chain, including the cute little
basket cut out of a peach stone, stand out well in the foreground. If the
young man would stop to think for a moment that some day he may become
eminent and ashamed of himself, he would hesitate about doing this.
Soon after, he has a tintype taken in which a young lady sits in the
alleged grass, while he stands behind her with his hand lightly touching
her shoulder as though he might be feeling of the thrilling circumference
of a buzz saw. He carries this picture in his pocket for months, and looks
at it whenever he may be unobserved.
Then, all at once, he discovers that the young lady's hair is not done up
that way any more, and that her hat doesn't seem to fit her. He then, in a
fickle moment, has another tintype made, in which another young woman,
with a more recent hat and later coiffure, is discovered holding his hat
in her lap.
This thing continues, till one day he comes into the studio with his wife,
and tries to see how many children can be photographed on one negative by
holding one on each knee and using the older ones as a back-ground.
The last stage in his eventful career, the old gentleman allows himself to
be photographed, because he is afraid he may not live through another
long, hard winter, and the boys would like a picture of him while he is
able to climb the dark, narrow stairs which lead to the artist's room.
Sadly the thought comes back to you in after years, when his grave is
green in the quiet valley, and the worn and weary hands that have toiled
for you are forever at rest, how patiently he submitted while his daughter
pinned the clean, stiff, agonizing white collar about his neck, and
brushed the velvet collar of his best coat; how he toiled up the long,
dark, lonesome stairs, not with the egotism of a half century ago, but
with the light of anticipated rest at last in his eyes--obediently, as he
would have gone to the dingy law office to have his will drawn--and meekly
left the outlines of his kind old face for those he loved and for whom he
had so long labored.
It is a picture at which the thoughtless may smile, but it is full of
pathos, and eloquent for those who knew him best. His attitude is stiff
and his coat hunches up in the back, but his kind old heart asserts itself
through the gentle eyes, and when he has gone away at last we do not
criticise the picture any more, but beyond the old coat that hunches up in
the back, and that lasted him so long, we read the history of a noble
life.
Silently the old finger-marked album, lying so unostentatiously on the
gouty centre table, points out the mile-stones from infancy to age, and
back of the mistakes of a struggling photographer is portrayed the
laughter and the tears, the joy and the grief, the dimples and the gray
hairs of one man's life-tine.
Rosalinde.
In answer to a former article relative to the dearth of woman here, we are
now receiving two to five letters per day from all classes and styles of
young, middle-aged and old women who desire to come to Wyoming.
Some of them would like to come here to work and obtain an honest
livelihood, and some of them desire to come here and marry cattle kings.
A recent letter from Michigan, written in lead pencil, and evidently
during hours when the writer should have been learning her geography
lesson, is very enthusiastic over the prospect of coming out here where
one girl can have a lover for every day in the week. She signs herself
Rosalinde, with a small r, and adds in a postscript that she “means
business.”
Yes, Rosalinde, that's what we are afraid of. We had a kind of a vague
fear that you meant business, so we did not reply to your letter. Wyoming
already has women enough who write with a lead pencil. We are also pretty
well provided with poor spellers, and we do not desire to ransack Michigan
for affectionate but sap-headed girls.
Stay in Michigan, Rosalinde, until we write to you, and one of these days
when you have been a mother eight or nine times, and as you stand in the
golden haze in the back yard, hanging out damp shirts on an uncertain
line, while your ripe and dewy mouth is stretched around a bass-wood
clothes pin, you will thank us for this advice.
Michigan is the place for you. It is the home of the Sweet Singer and the
abiding place of the Detroit _Free Press_. We can't throw any such
influences around you here as those you have at your own door.
Do not despair, Rosalinde. Some day a man, with a great, warm, manly heart
and a pair of red steers, will see you and love you, and he will take you
in his strong arms and protect you from the Michigan climate, just as
devotedly as any of our people here can. We do not wish to be
misunderstood in this matter. It is not as a lover that we have said so
much on the girl question, but in the domestic aid department, and when we
get a long letter from a young girl who eats slate pencils and reads Ouida
behind her atlas, we feel like going over there to Michigan with a trunk
strap and doing a little missionary work.
The Church Debt.
I have been thinking the matter over seriously and I have decided that if
I had my life to live over again, I would like to be an eccentric
millionaire.
I have eccentricity enough, but I cannot successfully push it without more
means.
I have a great many plans which I would like to carry out, in case I could
unite the two necessary elements for the production of the successful
eccentric millionaire.
Among other things, I would be willing to bind myself and give proper
security to any one who would put in money to offset my eccentricity, that
I would ultimately die. We all know how seldom the eccentric millionaire
now dies. I would be willing to inaugurate a reform in that direction.
I think now that I would endow a home for men whose wives are no longer
able to support them. In many cases the wife who was at first able to
support her husband comfortably, finally shoulders a church debt, and in
trying to lift that she overworks and impairs her health so that she
becomes an invalid, while hor husband is left to pine away in solitude or
dependent on the cold charities of the world.
My heart goes out toward those men even now, and in case I should fill the
grave of the eccentric millionaire, I am sure that I would do the square
thing by them.
The method by which our wives in America are knocking the church debt
silly, by working up their husbands' groceries into “angel food” and
selling them below actual cost, is deserving of the attention of our
national financiers.
The church debt itself is deserving of notice in this country. It
certainly thrives better under a republican form of government than any
other feature of our boasted civilization. Western towns spring up
everywhere, and the first anxiety is to name the place, the second to
incur a church debt and establish a roller rink.
After that a general activity in trade is assured. Of course the general
hostility of church and rink will prevent _ennui_ and listlessness, and
the church debt will encourage a business boom. Naturally the church debt
cannot be paid without what is generally known through the West as the
“festival and hooraw.” This festival is an open market where the ladies
trade the groceries of their husbands to other ladies' husbands, and
everybody has a “perfectly lovely time.” The church clears $2.30, and
thirteen ladies are sick all the next day.
This makes a boom for the physicians and later on for the undertaker and
general tombist. So it will be seen that the Western town is right in
establishing a church debt as soon as the survey is made and the town
properly named. After the first church debt has been properly started,
others will rapidly follow, so that no anxiety need be felt if the church
will come forward the first year and buy more than it can pay for.
[Illustration: PUGILISM IN RELIGION.]
The church debt is a comparatively modern appliance, and yet it has been
productive of many peculiar features. For instance, we call to mind the
clergyman who makes a specialty of going from place to place as a
successful debt demolisher. He is a part of the general system, just as
much as the ice cream freezer or the buttonhole bouquet.
Then there is a row or social knock-down-and-drag-out which goes along
with the church debt. All these things add to the general interest, and to
acquire interest in one way or another is the mission of the c.d.
I once knew a most exemplary woman who became greatly interested in the
wiping out of a church debt, and who did finally succeed in wiping out the
debt, but in its last expiring death struggle it gave her a wipe from
which she never recovered. She had succeeded in begging the milk and the
cream, and the eggs and the sandwiches, and the use of the dishes and the
sugar, and the loan of an oyster, and the use of a freezer and fifty
button-hole bouquets to be sold to men who were not in the habit of wearing
bouquets, but she could not borrow a circular artist to revolve the crank
of the freezer, so she agitated it herself. Her husband had to go away
prior to the festivities, but he ordered her not to crank the freezer. He
had very little influence with her, however, and so to-day he is a
widower. The church debt was revived in the following year, and now there
isn't a more thriving church debt anywhere in the country. Only last week
that church traded off $75 worth of groceries, in the form of asbestos
cake and celluloid angel food, in such a way that if the original cost of
the groceries and the work were not considered, the clear profit was $13,
after the hall rent was paid. And why should the first cost of the
groceries be reckoned, when we stop to think that they were involuntarily
furnished by the depraved husband and father.
I must add, also, that in the above estimate doctors' bills and funeral
expenses are not reckoned.
[Illustration]
A Collection of Keys.
I'm getting to be quite a connoisseur of hotel keys as I get older. For
ten years I have been collecting these mementoes of travel and cording
them away in my key cabinet. Some have square brass tags attached to them,
others have round ones. Still others affect the octagonal, the fluted, the
hexagonal, the scalloped, the plain, the polished, the docorated, the
chaste, the Etruscan, the metropolitan, the rural, the cosmopolitan, the
shirred, the tucked, the biased, the high neck and long sleeve or the
_decolette_ style of brass check.
I have, so far, paid my bills, but I have not returned the keys to my
room. Hotel proprietors will please take notice and govern themselves
accordingly. When my visit to a pleasant city has become a beautiful
memory only, I all at once sit down on something hard and find that it is
the key to my former room at the hotel. Sitting down on a key tag of
corrugated brass, as big as a buckwheat pancake, would remind most anyone
of something or other.
I generally leave my tooth-brush in my room and carry off the key as a
kind of involuntary swap, so far as the hotel proprietor is concerned, but
I do not think it is a mutual benefit, particularly. I cannot use the key
to a hotel 500 miles away, and so far as a tooth-brush is concerned, it
generally has pleasant associations only for the owner. A man is fond of
his own toothbrush, but it takes years for him to love the tooth-brush of
a stranger.
There are a good many associations attached to these keys, like the tags.
They point backward to the rooms to which the keys belong. Here is a fat
one that led to room number 33-1/2 in the Synagogue hotel. It was a
cheerful room, where the bell boy said an old man had asphyxiated himself
with gas the previous week. I had never met the old man before, but that
night, about 1 o'clock A.M., I had the pleasure of his acquaintance. He
came in a sad and reproachful way, and showed me how the post-mortem
people had disfigured him. Of course it was a little tough to be mutilated
by an inquest, but that's no reason why he should come back there and
occupy a room that I was paying for so that I could be alone. He showed me
how he blew out the gas, and told me how a man could successfully blow
down the muzzle of a shot-gun or a gas jet, but both of these weapons had
a way of blowing back.
I have a key that brings back to me the memory of a room that I lived in
two days at one time. I do not mean that I lived the two days at once, but
that at one period I occupied that room, partially, for two days and two
nights, I say I partially occupied it, because I used to occupy it days
and share it nights with others; that is, I tried to occupy it nights. I
tried to get the clerk to throw off something because I didn't have the
exclusive use of the room. He wouldn't throw off anything. He even wanted
to fight me because I said that the room was occupied before I got it and
after I left it. Finally, I told him that if he would throw a bed quilt
over his diamond, so I could see him, I would fight him with buckwheat
cakes at five-hundred miles. I took my position the next morning at the
place appointed, but he did not appear.
Extracts from a Queen's Diary.
January 1.--I awoke late this forenoon with a pain through the head and a
taste of ennui in the mouth, which I can hardly account for. Can it be a
result of the party last evening? I ween it may be so. We had a lovely
card party last evening. It was very enjoyable, indeed. Whist was the
game.
January 3.--Yesterday all day I was unable to leave my room, owing to a
headache and nervous prostration, caused by late hours and too much
company, the doctor said. It is too bad, and yet I do so much enjoy our
card parties and the excitement of the game. To-night I am to take part in
a little quiet game of draw poker, I think they call it. I have not had
any experience heretofore in the game, but trust I shall soon learn it.
There has been some talk about £1 ante and £5 limit. I do not exactly
understand the terms. I hope it does not mean anything wrong.
January 4.--Poker is an odd game, indeed. I think it quite exciting,
though at first the odd terms rather confused me. I had not been
accustomed to such phrases as “show down,” “bob-tail flush,” and “King
full.” I must ask Brown, as soon as his knees are able to be out, to
explain the meaning of these terms a little more fully to me. If poor
Brown's knees are not better soon, I shall be on kneesy about him. [Here
the diary has the appearance of being blurred with tears.] A bob-tail
flush, I learn, is something very disagreeable to have. One gentleman said
last evening that another bob-tail flush would certainly paralyze him. I
gather from that that it is something like a hectic flush. I can
understand the game called “old sledge,” and have become quite familiar
with such terms as “beg,” “gimmeone,” “I've got the thin one,” “how high
is that?” “one horse on me,” “saw-off,” etc., etc., but poker is full of
surprises. It seems so odd to see a gentleman “show out on a pair of
deuces” and gather in upward of two pounds with great merriment, while the
remainder of the party seem quite bored. One gentleman last evening showed
out on a full hand with “treys at the head,” putting £3 12s. in his purse
with great glee, while another one of the party who had not shown up, but
I am positive had a better hand, became so angered that he got up and
kicked four front teeth out of the mouth of a favorite dog worth £20. I
took part in a spade flush during the evening and was quite successful, so
that I can easily pay my traveling expenses and have a few shillings to
buy ointment for poor Brown. It was my first winning, and made me quiver
all over with excitement. The game is already very fascinating to me, and
I am becoming passionately fond of it.
January 6.--I have just learned fully what a bob-tail flush is. It cost me
£50. I like information, but I do not like to buy it when it comes so
high. I drew two to fill in a heart flush last evening, and advanced the
money to back up my judgment; but one of the hearts I drew was a club,
which was entirely useless to me. I have sent out a sheriff with a bulldog
to ascertain if he can find the whereabouts of the party who started this
poker game, I do not know when I have felt so bored. After that I was so
timid that I allowed a friend to walk off with £2 on a pair of deuces. I
said to him that I called that a deuced bore, and he laughed heartily.
I find that you should not be too ready to show by your countenance
whether you are bored or pleased in poker. Tour opponent will take
advantage of it and play accordingly. It cost me £8 10s. to acquire a
knowledge of this fact. If all the information I ever got had cost me as
much as this poker wisdom, I would not now have two pennies to jingle
together in my purse. Still, we have had a good time, take it all in all,
and I shall not soon forget the evenings we have spent here together
buying knowledge regardless of cost. I think I shall try to control my
wild thirst for information awhile, however, till I can get some more
funds.
[Here the diary breaks off abruptly, and on turning the book over we find
the royal signature at the foot of the last page, “The Queen of Spades.”]
Shorts.
A Colorado burro has been shipped across the Atlantic and presented to the
Prince of Wales. It is a matter of profound national sorrow that this was
not the first American jackass presented to his Tallness, the Prince.
At Omaha last week a barrel of sauer kraut rolled out of a wagon and
struck O'Leary H. Oleson, who was trying to unload it, with such force as
to kill him instantly and to flatten him out like a kiln-dried codfish.
Still, after thousands of such instances on record, there are many
scientists who maintain that sauer kraut is conducive to longevity.
As an evidence of the healthfulness of mountain climate, the people of
Denver point to a man who came there in '77 without flesh enough to bait a
trap, and now he puts sleeves in an ordinary feather-bed and pulls it on
over his head for a shirt. People in poor health who wish to communicate
with the writer in relation to the facts above stated, are requested to
enclose two unlicked postage stamps to insure a reply.
At Ubet, M.T., during the cold snap in January, one of the most inhuman
outrages known in the annals of crime was perpetrated upon a young man who
went West in the fall, hoping to make his pile in time to return in May
and marry the New York heiress selected before he went.
While stopping at the hotel, two frolicsome young women hired the porter
to procure the young man's pantaloons at dead of night They then sewed up
the bottoms of the legs, threw the doctored garment back through the
transom and squealed “Fire!”
When he got into the hall he was vainly trying to stab one foot through
the limb of his pantaloons while he danced around on the other and joined
in the general cry of “Fire!” The hall seemed filled with people, who were
running this way and that, ostensibly seeking a mode of egress from the
flames, but in reality trying to dodge the mad efforts of the young man,
who was trying to insert himself in his obstinate pantaloons.
He did not tumble, as it were, until the night watchman got a Babcock fire
extinguisher and played on him. I do not know what he played on him. Very
likely it was, “Sister, what are the wild waves saying?”
Anyway, he staggered into his room, and although he could hear the
audience outside in their wild, tumultuous encore, he refused to come
before the curtain, but locked his door and sobbed himself to sleep,
How often do we forget the finer feelings of others and ignore their
sorrow while we revel in some great joy.
“We.”
The world is full of literary people to-day, and they are divided into
three classes, viz: Those who have written for the press, those who are
writing for the press, and those who want to write for the press. Of the
first, there are those who tried it and found that they could make more in
half the time at something else, and so quit the field, and those who
failed to touch the great heart and pocketbook of the public, and
therefore subsided. Those who are writing for the press now, whether
putting together copy by the mile within the sound of the rumbling engine
and press, or scattered through the country writing more at their leisure,
find that they have to lay aside every weight and throw off all the
incumbrances of the mossy past.
One thing, however, still clings to the editor like a dab of paste on a
white vest or golden fleck of scrambled egg on a tawny moustache. One
relic of barbarism rears in gaunt form amid the clash and hurry and rush
of civilization, and in the dazzling light of science and smartness.
It is “we.”
The budding editor of the rural civilizer for the first time peels his
coat and sharpens his pencil to begin the work of changing the great
current of public opinion. He is strong in his desire to knock error and
wrong galley west. He has buckled on his armor to paralyze monopoly and
purify the ballot He has hitched up his pantaloons with a noble resolve
and covered his table with virgin paper.
He is young, and he is a little egotistical, also. He wants to say, “I
believe” so and so, but he can't. Perspiration breaks out all over him. He
bites his pencil, and looks up with his clenched hand in his hair. The
slimy demon of the editor's life is there, sitting on the cloth bound
volume containing the report of the United States superintendent of swine
diseases.
Wherever you find a young man unloading a Washington hand press to fill a
long-felt want, there you will find the ghastly and venomous “we,” ready
to look over the shoulder of the timid young mental athlete. Wherever you
find a ring of printer's ink around the door knob, and the snowy towel on
which the foreman wipes the pink tips of his alabaster fingers, you will
find the slimy, scaly folds of “we” curled up in some neighboring corner.
From the huge metropolitan journal, whose subscribers could make or bust a
president, or make a blooming king wish he had never been born, down to
the obscure and unknown dodger whose first page is mostly electrotype
head, whose second and third pages are patent, whose news is eloquent of
the dear dead past, whose fourth page ushers in a new baby, or heralds the
coming of the circus, or promulgates the fact that its giant editor has a
felon on his thumb, the trail of the serpent “we” is over them all. It is
all we have to remind us of royalty in America, with the exception,
perhaps, of the case now and then where a king full busts a bob-tail
flush.
A Mountain Snowstorm.
September does not always indicate golden sunshine, and ripening corn, and
old gold pumpkin pies on the half-shell. We look upon it as the month of
glorious perfection in the handiwork of the seasons and the time when the
ripened fruits are falling; when the red sun hides behind the bronze and
misty evening, and says good night with reluctance to the beautiful
harvests and the approaching twilight of the year.
It was on a red letter day of this kind, years ago, that Wheeler and
myself started out under the charge of Judge Blair and Sheriff Baswell to
visit the mines at Last Chance, and more especially the Keystone, a gold
mine that the Judge had recently become president of. The soft air of
second summer in the Rocky Mountains blew gently past our ears as we rode
up the valley of the Little Laramie, to camp the first night at the head
of the valley behind Sheep Mountain. The whole party was full of joy. Even
Judge Blair, with the frosts of over sixty winters in his hair, broke
forth into song. That's the only thing I ever had against Judge Blair. He
would forget himself sometimes and burst forth into song.
The following day we crossed the divide and rode down the gulch into the
camp on Douglass Creek, where the musical thunder of the stamp mills
seemed to jar the ground, and the rapid stream below bore away on its
turbid bosom the yellowish tinge of the golden quartz. It was a perfect
day, and Wheeler and I blessed our stars and, instead of breathing the air
of sour paste and hot presses in the newspaper offices, away in the
valley, we were sprawling in the glorious sunshine of the hills, playing
draw poker with the miners in the evening, and forgetful of the daily
newspaper where one man does the work and the other draws the salary. It
was heaven. It was such luxury that we wanted to swing our hats and yell
like Arapahoes.
The next morning we were surprised to find that it had snowed all night
and was snowing still. I never saw such flakes of snow in my life. They
came sauntering through the air like pure, white Turkish towels falling
from celestial clothes-lines. We did not return that day. We played a few
games of chance, but they were brief. We finally made it five cent ante,
and, as I was working then for an alleged newspaper man who paid me $50
per month to edit his paper nights and take care of his children daytimes,
I couldn't keep abreast of the Judge, the Sheriff and the Superintendent
of the Keystone.
The next day we had to go home. The snow lay ankle-deep everywhere and the
air was chilly and raw. Wheeler and I tried to ride, but the mountain road
was so rough that the horses could barely move through the snow, dragging
the buggy after them. So we got out and walked on ahead to keep warm. We
gained very fast on the team, for we were both long-legged and measured
off the miles like a hired man going to dinner. I wore a pair of
glove-fitting low shoes and lisle-thread socks. I can remember that yet. I
would advise anyone going into the mines not to wear lisle-thread socks
and low shoes. You are liable to stick your foot into a snow-bank or a mud
hole and dip up too much water. I remember that after we had walked
through the pine woods down the mountain road a few miles, I noticed that
the bottoms of my pantaloons looked like those of a drowned tramp I saw
many years ago in the morgue. We gave out after a while, waited for the
team, but decided that it had gone the other road. All at once it flashed
over us that we were alone in the woods and the storm, wet, nearly
starved, ignorant of the road and utterly worn out!
[Illustration: IT WAS TOUGH.]
It was tough!
I never felt so blue, so wet, so hungry, or so hopeless in my life. We
moved on a little farther. All at once we came out of the timber. There
was no snow whatever! At that moment the sun burst forth, we struck a
deserted supply wagon, found a two-pound can of Boston baked beans, got an
axe from the load, chopped open the can, and had just finished the
tropical fruit of Massachusetts when our own team drove up, and joy and
hope made their homes once more in our hearts.
We may learn from this a valuable lesson, but at this moment I do not know
exactly what it is.
Lost Money.
Most anyone could collect and tell a good many incidents about lost money
that has been found, if he would try, but these cases came under my own
observation and I can vouch for their truth.
A farmer in the Kinnekinnick Valley was paid $1,000 while he was loading
hay. He put it in his vest pocket, and after he had unloaded the hay he
discovered that he had lost it, and no doubt had pitched the whole load
into the mow on top of it. He went to work and pitched it all out, a
handful at a time, upon the barn floor, and when the hired man's fork tine
came up with a $100 bill on it he knew they had struck a lead. He got it
all.
A man gave me two $5 bills once to pay a balance on some store teeth and
asked me to bring the teeth back with me. The dentist was fifteen miles
away and when I got there I found I had lost the money. That was before I
had amassed much of a fortune, so I went to the tooth foundry and told the
foreman that I had started with $10 to get a set of teeth for an intimate
friend, but had lost the funds. He said that my intimate friend would, no
doubt, have to gum it awhile. Owing to the recent shrinkage in values he
was obliged to sell teeth for cash, as the goods were comparatively
useless after they had been used one season. I went back over the same
road the next day and found the money by the side of the road, although a
hundred teams had passed by it.
A young man, one spring, plowed a pocket-book and $30 in greenbacks under,
and by a singular coincidence the next spring it was plowed out, and,
though rotten clear through, was sent to the Treasury, where it was
discovered that the bills were on a Michigan National Bank, whither they
were sent and redeemed.
I lost a roll of a hundred dollars the spring of '82, and hunted my house
and the office through, in search for it, in vain. I went over the road
between the office and the house twenty times, but it was useless. I then
advertised the loss of the money, giving the different denominations of
the bills and stating, as was the case, that there was an elastic band
around the roll when lost. The paper had not been issued more than an hour
before I got my money, every dollar of it. It was in the pocket of my
other vest.
This should teach us, first, the value of advertising, and, secondly, the
utter folly of two vests at the same time.
Apropos of recent bank failures, I want to tell this one on James S.
Kelley, commonly called “Black Jim.” He failed himself along in the
fifties, and by a big struggle had made out to pay everybody but Lo
Bartlett, to whom he was indebted in the sum of $18. He got this money,
finally, and as Lo wasn't in town, Black Jim put it in a bank, the name of
which has long ago sunk into oblivion. In fact, it began the oblivion
business about forty-eight hours after Jim had put his funds in there.
Meeting Lo on the street, Jim said:
“Your money is up in the Wild Oat Bank, Lo. I'll give you a check for it.”
“No use, old man, she's gone up.”
“No!!”
“Yes, she's a total wreck.”
Jim went over to the president's room. He knocked as easy as he could,
considering that his breath was coming so hard.
“Who's there?”
“It's Jim Kelley, Black Jim, and I'm in something of a hurry.”
“Well, I'm very busy, Mr. Kelley. Come again this afternoon.”
“That will be too remote. I am very busy myself. Now is the accepted time.
Will you open the door or shall I open it.”
The president opened it because it was a good door and he wanted to
preserve it.
Black Jim turned the key in the door and sat down.
“What did you want of me?” says the president
“I wanted to see you about a certificate of deposit I've got here on your
bank for eighteen dollars.”
“We can't pay it. Everything is gone.”
“Well, I am here to get $18 or to leave you looking like a giblet pie.
Eighteen dollars will relieve you of this mental strain, but if you do not
put up I will paper this wall with your classic features and ruin the
carpet with what remains.”
The president hesitated a moment. Then he took a roll out of his boot and
paid Jim eighteen dollars.
“You will not mention this on the street, of course,” said the president.
“No,” says Jim, “not till I get there.”
When the crowd got back, however, the president had fled and he has
remained fled ever since. The longer he remained away and thought it over,
the more he became attached to Canada, and the more of a confirmed and
incurable fugitive he became.
I saw Black Jim last evening and he said he had passed through two bank
failures, but had always realized on his certificates of deposit. One
cashier told Jim that he was the homeliest man that ever looked through
the window of a busted bank. He said Kelley looked like a man who ate bank
cashiers on toast and directors raw with a slice of lemon on top.
Dr. Dizart's Dog.
A man whose mother-in-law had been successfully treated by the doctor, one
day presented him with a beautiful Italian hound named Nemesis.
When I say that the able physician had treated the mother-in-law
successfully, I mean successfully from her son-in-law's standpoint, and
not from her own, for the doctor insisted on treating her for small-pox
when she had nothing but an attack of agnostics. She is now sitting on the
front stoop of the golden whence.
So, after the last sad rites, the broken-hearted son-in-law presented the
physician with a handsome hound with long, slender legs and a wire tail,
as a token of esteem and regard.
The dog was young and playful, as all young dogs are, so he did many
little tricks which amused almost everyone.
One day, while the doctor was away administering a subcutaneous injection
of morphine to a hay-fever patient, he left Nemesis in the office alone
with a piece of rag-carpet and his surging thoughts.
At first Nemesis closed his eyes and breathed hard, then he arose and ate
part of an ottoman, then he got up and scratched the paper off the office
wall and whined in a sad tone of voice.
A young Italian hound has a peculiarly sad and depressing song.
Then Nemesis got up on the desk and poured the ink and mucilage into one
of the drawers on some bandages and condition-powders that the doctor used
in his horse-practice.
Nemesis then looked out of the window and wailed. He filled the room with
robust wail and unavailing regret.
After that he tried to dispel his _ennui_ with one of the doctor's old
felt hats that hung on a chair; but the hair oil with which it was
saturated changed his mind.
The doctor had magenta hair, and to tone it down so that it would not
raise the rate of fire insurance on his office, he used to execute some
studies on it in oil--bear's oil.