[Footnote 2: _From the Chicago Rambler_.]
Those were troublesome times, indeed. All wool justice in the courts was
impossible. The vigilance committee, or Salvation Army as it called
itself, didn't make much fuss about it, but we all knew that the best
citizens belonged to it and were in good standing.
It was in those days when young Stewart was short-handed for a sheep
herder, and had to take up with a sullen, hairy vagrant, called by the
other boys “Esau.” Esau hadn't been on the ranch a week before he made
trouble with the proprietor and got the red-hot blessing from Stewart he
deserved.
Then Esau got madder and sulked away down the valley among the little sage
brush hummocks and white alkali waste land to nurse his wrath. When
Stewart drove into the corral at night, from town, Esau raised up from
behind an old sheep dip tank, and without a word except what may have
growled around in his black heart, he raised a leveled Spencer and shot
his young employer dead.
That was the tragedy of the week only. Others had occurred before and
others would probably occur again. It was getting too prevalent for
comfort. So, as soon as a quick cayuse and a boy could get down into
town, the news spread and the authorities began in the routine manner to
set the old legal mill to running. Someone had to go down to “The Tivoli”
and find the prosecuting attorney, then a messenger had to go to “The
Alhambra” for the justice of the peace. The prosecuting attorney was
“full” and the judge had just drawn one card to complete a straight flush,
and had succeeded.
In the meantime the Salvation Army was fully half way to Clugston's ranch.
They had started out, as they said, “to see that Esau didn't get away.”
They were going out there to see that Esau was brought into town.
[Illustration: THE SALVATION ARMY.]
What happened after they got there I only know from hearsay, for I was not
a member of the Salvation Army at that time. But I got it from one of
those present, that they found Esau down in the sage brush on the bottoms
that lie between the abrupt corner of Sheep Mountain and the Little
Laramie River. They captured him, but he died soon after, as it was told
me, from the effects of opium taken with suicidal intent. I remember
seeing Esau the next morning and I thought there were signs of ropium, as
there was a purple streak around the neck of deceased, together with other
external phenomena not peculiar to opium.
But the great difficulty with the Salvation Army was that it didn't want
to bring Esau into town. A long, cold night ride with a person in Esau's
condition was disagreeable. Twenty miles of lonely road with a deceased
murderer in the bottom of the wagon is depressing. Those of my readers who
have tried it will agree with me that it is not calculated to promote
hilarity. So the Salvation Army stopped at Whatley's ranch to get warm,
hoping that someone would steal the remains and elope with them. They
stayed some time and managed to “give away” the fact that there was a
reward of $5,000 out for Esau, dead or alive. The Salvation Army even went
so far as to betray a great deal of hilarity over the easy way it had
nailed the reward, or would as soon as said remains were delivered up and
identified.
Mr. Whatley thought that the Salvation Army was having a kind of walkaway,
so he slipped out at the back door of the ranch, put Esau into his own
wagon and drove away to town. Remember, this is the way it was told to me.
Mr. Whatley hadn't gone more than half a mile when he heard the wild and
disappointed yells of the Salvation Army. He put the buckskin on the backs
of his horses without mercy, driven on by the enraged shouts and yells of
his infuriated pursuers. He reached town about midnight, and his pursuers
disappeared. But what was he to do with Esau?
He drove around all over town, trying to find the official who signed for
the deceased. Mr. Whatley went from house to house like a vegetable man,
seeking sadly for the party who would give him a $5,000 check for Esau.
Nothing could be more depressing than to wake up one man after another out
of a sound sleep and invite him to come out to the buggy and identify the
remains. One man went out and looked at him. He said he didn't know how
others felt about it, but he allowed that anybody who would pay $5,000 for
such a remains as Esau's could not have very good taste.
Gradually it crept through Mr. Whatley's wool that the Salvation Army had
been working him, so he left Esau at the engine house and went home. On
his ranch he nailed up a large board on which had been painted in antique
characters with a paddle and tar the following stanzas:
Vigilance Committees, Salvation Armies, Morgues, or young physicians who
may have deceased people on their hands, are requested to refrain from
conferring them on to the undersigned.
People who contemplate shuffling off their own or other people's mortal
coils, will please not do so on these grounds.
The Salvation Army of the Rocky Mountains is especially hereby warned to
keep off the grass!
James Whatley.
The Indian Orator.
I like to read of the Indian orator in the old school books. Most everyone
does. It is generally remarkable that the American Demosthenes, so far,
has dwelt in the tepee, and lived on the debris of the deer and the
buffalo. I mean to say that the school readers have impressed us with the
great magnetism of the crude warrior who dwelt in the wilderness and ate
his game, feathers and all, while he studied the art of swaying the
audience by his oratorical powers.
I am inclined to think that Black Hawk and Logan must have been fortunate
in securing mighty able private secretaries, or that they stood in with
the stenographers of their day. At least, the Blue Juniata warriors of our
time, from Little Crow, Red Iron, Standing Buffalo, Hole-in-the-Day and
Sitting Bull, to Victoria, Colorow, Douglas, Persume, Captain Jack and
Shavano, seem to do better as lobbyists than they do as orators. They may
be keen, logical and shrewd, but they are not eloquent. In some minds,
Black Hawk will ever appear as the Patrick Henry of his people; but I
prefer to honor his unknown, unhonored and unsung amanuensis. Think what a
godsend such a man would have been to Senator Tabor.
The Indian orator of to-day is not scholarly and grand. He is soiled,
ignorant and sedentary in his habits. An orator ought to take care of his
health. He cannot overload his stomach and make a bronze Daniel Webster of
himself. He cannot eat a raw buffalo for breakfast and at once attack the
question of tariff for revenue only. His brain is not clear enough. He
cannot digest the mammalia of North America and seek out the delicate
intricacies of the financial problem at the same time. All scientists and
physiologists will readily see why this is true.
It is quite popular to say that the modern Indian has seen too much of
civilization. This may be true. Anyhow, civilization has seen too much of
him. I hope the day will never come when the pale face and the White
Father will have to stay on their reservation, whether the red man does or
not.
Indian eloquence, toned down by the mellow haze of a hundred years, sounds
very well, but the clarion voice of the red orator has died away. The
stony figure, the eagle eye, the matchless presence, have all ceased to
palpitate.
He does not say: “I am an aged hemlock. I am dead at the top. The forest
is filled with the ghosts of my people. I hear their moans on the night
winds and in the sighing pines.” He does not talk in the blank verse of a
century ago. He uses a good many blanks, but it is not blank verse. Even
the Indian's friend would admit that it was not blank verse. Perhaps it
might be called blankety verse.
Once he pleaded for the land of his fathers. Now he howls for grub, guns
and fixed ammunition.
I tried to interview a big Crow chief once. I had heard some Sioux, and
learned a few irrelevant and disconnected Ute phrases. I connected these
with some Spanish terms and hoped to get a reply, and keep up a kind of
running conversation that might mislead a friend who was with me, into the
belief that I was as familiar with the Indian tongue as with my own. I
began conversing with him in my polyglot manner. I did not get a reply. I
conversed with him some more in a desultory way, for I had heard that he
was a great orator in his tribe, and I wanted to get his views on national
affairs. Still he was silent. He would not even answer me. I got hostile
and used some badly damaged Spanish on him. Then I used some sprained and
dislocated German on him, but he didn't seem to wot whereof I spoke.
Then my friend, with all the assurance of a fresh young manhood, began to
talk with the great warrior in the English language, and incidentally
asked him about a new Indian agent, who had the name of being a bogus
Christian with an eye to the main chance.
My friend talked very loud, with the idea that the chieftain could
understand any language if spoken so that you could hear it in the next
Territory. At the mention of the Indian agent's name, the Crow statesman
brightened up and made a remark. He simply said: “Ugh! too much God and no
flour.”
You Heah Me, Sah!
Col. Visscher, of Denver, who is delivering his lecture, “Sixty Minutes in
the War,” tells a good story on himself of an episode, or something of
that nature, that occurred to him in the days when he was the amanuensis
of George D. Prentice.
Visscher, in those days, was a fair-haired young man, with pale blue eyes,
and destitute of that wealth of brow and superficial area of polished dome
which he now exhibits on the rostrum. He was learning the lesson of life
then, and every now and then he would bump up against an octagonal mass of
cold-pressed truth of the never-dying variety that seemed to kind of stun
and concuss him.
One day Mr. Visscher wandered into a prominent hotel in Louisville, and,
observing with surprise and pleasure that “boiled lobster” was one of the
delicacies on the bill of fare, he ordered one.
He never had seen lobster, and a rare treat seemed to be in store for him.
He breathed in what atmosphere there was in the dining-room, and waited
for his bird. At last it was brought in. Mr. Visscher took one hasty look
at the great scarlet mass of voluptuous limbs and oceanic nippers, and
sighed. The lobster was as large as a door mat, and had a very angry and
inflamed appearance. Visscher ordered in a powerful cocktail to give him
courage, and then he tried to carve off some of the breast.
The lobster is honery even in death. He is eccentric and trifling. Those
who know him best are the first to evade him and shun him. Visscher had
failed to straddle the wish bone with his fork properly, and the talented
bird of the deep rolling sea slipped out of the platter, waved itself
across the horizon twice, and buried itself in the bosom of the eminent
and talented young man. The eminent and talented young man took it in his
napkin, put it carefully on the table, and went away.
As he passed out, the head waiter said:
“Mr. Visscher, was there anything the matter with your lobster?”
Visscher is a full-blooded Kentuckian, and answered in the courteous
dialect of the blue-grass country.
“Anything the matter with my lobster, sah? No, sah. The lobster is very
vigorous, sah. If you had asked me how I was, sah, I should have answered
you very differently, sah. I am not well at all, sah. If I were as well,
and as ruddy, and as active as that lobster, sah, I would live forever,
sah. You heah me, sah?
“Why, of course, I am not familiar with the habits of the lobster, sah,
and do not know how to kearve the bosom of the bloomin' peri of the summer
sea, but that's no reason why the inflamed reptile should get up on his
hind feet and nestle up to me, sah, in that earnest and forthwith manner,
sah.
“I love dumb beasts, sah, and they love me, sah; but when they are dead,
sah, and I undertake to kearve them, sah, I desiah, sah, that they should
remain as the undertakah left them, sah. You doubtless heah me, sah!”
Plato.
Plato was a Greek philosopher who flourished about 426 B.C., and kept on
flourishing for eighty-one years after that, when he suddenly ceased do so.
He early took to poetry, but when he found that his poems were rejected by
the Greek papers, he ceased writing poetry and went into the philosophy
business. At that time Greece had no regular philosopher, and so Plato
soon got all he could do.
Plato was a pupil of Socrates, who was himself no slouch of a
philosopher. Many and many a day did Socrates take his little class of
kindergarten philosophers up the shady banks of the Ilissus, and sit all
day discoursing to his pupils on deep and difficult doctrines, while his
unsandaled feet were bathed in the genial tide. Many happy hours were
thus spent. Socrates would take his dinner or tell some wonderful tale
to his class, whereby he would win their dinner himself. Then in the
deep Athenian shade, with his bare, Gothic feet in the clear, calm
waters of the Ilissus, he would eat the Grecian doughnut of his pupils,
and while he spoke in poetic terms of his belief, he would dig his heel
in the mud and heave a heart-broken sigh.
Such was Socrates, the great teacher. He got a small salary, and went
barefoot till after Thanksgiving. He was a great tutor, and boarded
around, teaching in the open air while the mosquitos bit his bare feet.
No tutor ever tuted with a more unselfish purpose or a smaller salary.
Plato maintained, among other things, that evil is connected with matter,
and aside from matter we do not find evil existing. That is true. At
least, such evil as we might find apart from matter would be outside the
jurisdiction of a police court. I think Plato was correct. Evil and
matter are inseparable. That's what's the matter.
It is quite common for us to say that virtue is its own reward. Plato
held that, while it was better to be virtuous as a matter of economy and
ultimate peace than not to be virtuous at all, he believed in being
virtuous for a higher reason. Probably it was notoriety. He would rather
be right than be president. He believed in being good just for the
excitement of it, and the notice it would attract, and not because it
paid. Plato was a great virtuoso.
Socrates would have been called a crank if he had lived in our day and
age, and if Plato were to go into London or New York and talk of
organizing a society for the encouragement of virtue among adult male
taxpayers he would have a lonesome time of it. Be virtuous and you will
be happy was a favorite motto with Plato. The legend is still quoted by
those who love to ransack the dead past.
[Illustration: NEPTUNE TAKING A RIDE.]
Pluto was quite another party, and some get him mixed up with Plato.
They were not related in any way, Pluto being a son of Saturn and Rhea,
who flourished at about the same time as Plato. Pluto was a brother of
Jupiter and Neptune, and when the estate of Saturn was wound up, Jupiter
wanted the earth, and he got it. Neptune wanted the codfish conservatory
and the mermaid's home, so he took the deep, deep sea, and even yet he
rides around in a gold spangled stone boat on the pale green billows of
the summer sea, jabbing a pickerel ever and anon with a three pronged
fork. He leads a gay life, going to picnics with the mermaids in their
coral caves, or attending their full evening dress parties, clad in a
trident and a fall beard. He loves the sea, the lone, blue sea, and
those who have seen him turning handsprings on a sponge lawn, or riding
in his water-tight chariot with his feet over the dash-board, beside a
slim young mermaid with Paris green hair, and dressed in a
tight-fitting, low-neck dorsal fin, say he is a lively old party.
But Pluto was different. He stood around till the estate was all closed
up, and it looked as though he had got left. Just then the administrator
says: “Why, here's Pluto. He is going to come out of the little end of
the horn. He will have to hustle for himself,” Pluto resented this and
clinched with the administrator. They fought till each had a watch pocket
on the brow and an Irish sunset symphony in green under the eye, while
Jupiter and Neptune stood by and encouraged the fight. Jupiter rather
took sides with his brother, and Neptune stood in with the administrator.
In the midst of the confusion Jupiter speaks up and says: “Swat him under
the ear, Pluto.” Whereupon Neptune says to the administrator. “Give
him--hail.” The administrator paused and said that was a good suggestion.
He would do so. And so he forgave Pluto and gave him--sheol.
The Expensive Word.
Much that is annoying in this life is occasioned by the use of a high
priced word where a cheaper one would do. In these days of failure,
shortage at both ends and financial stringency generally, I often wonder
that some people should go on, day after day, using just as extravagant
language as they did during the flush times. When I get hard up the first
thing I do is to economize in my expressions in every day conversation. If
there is a marked stringency in business, I lay aside first, my French,
then my Latin, and finally my German. Should the times become greatly
depressed and failures and assignments become frequent, I begin to lop off
the large words in my own language, beginning with “incomprehensibility,”
“unconstitutionally,” etc., etc.
Julius Caesar's motto used to be, “Avoid an unusual word as you would a
rock at sea,” and Jule was right about it, too. Large and unusual words,
especially in the mouths of ignorant people, are worse than “Rough on
Rats” in a boarding-house pie.
Years ago there used to be a pompous cuss in southern Wisconsin, who was a
self-made man. Extremely so. Those who used to hear him assert again and
again that he was a self-made man always felt renewed confidence in the
Creator.
He rose one evening in a political meeting, and swelling out his bosom, as
his eagle eye rested on the chairman, he said:
“Mr. Cheerman! I move you that the cheer do appoint a committee of three
to attend to the matter under discussion, and that sayed committee be
clothed by the cheer with ominiscient and omnipotent powers.”
The motion was duly seconded and the cheerman said he guessed that it
wouldn't be necessary to put it to a vote.
“I guess it will be all right, Mr. Pinkham. I guess there'll be no
declivity to that.”
And so the committee was appointed and clothed with omniscient and
omnipotent powers, there being no declivity to it.
We had a self-made lawyer at one time in the northern part of the State
who would rather find a seventy-five cent word and use it in a speech
where it did not belong than to eat a good square meal. He was more fatal
to the King's English than O'Dynamite Rossa. One day he was telling how
methodical one of the county officials was.
“Why,” said he, “I never saw a man do so much and do it so easy. But the
secret of it is plain enough. You see, he has a regular rotunda of
business every day.”
If he meant anything, I suppose he meant a routine of business, but a man
would have to be a mind reader to follow him some days when he had about
six fingers of cough medicine aboard and began to paw around in the dark
and musty garret of his memory for moth-eaten words that didn't mean
anything.
A neighbor of mine went to Washington during the Guiteau trial and has
been telling us about it ever since. He is one of those people who don't
want to be close and stingy about what they know. He likes to go through
life shedding information right and left. He likes to get a crowd around
him and then tell how he was in Washington at the time of the “post
mortise examination.” “Boys, you may talk all your a mind to, but the
greatest thing I saw in Washington,” said he, “was Dr. Mary Walker on the
street every morning riding one of these philosophers.”
[Illustration: HE PAINTED THE FENCE GREEN.]
He painted the top of his fence green, last year, so it would “kind of
combinate with his blinds.”
If he would make his big words “combinate” with what he means a little
better, he would not attract so much attention. But he don't care. He
hates to see a big, fat word loafing around with nothing to do, so he
throws one in occasionally for exercise, I guess.
In the Minnesota legislature, in 1867, they had under discussion a bill to
increase the per diem of members from three dollars to five dollars. A
member of the lower house, who voted for the measure, was hauled over the
coals by one of his constituents and charged with corruption in no
unmeasured terms. To all this the legislator calmly answered that when he
got down to the capital and found out the awful price of board, he
concluded that his “per diadem” ought to be increased, and so he supported
the measure. Then the belligerent constituent said:
“I beg your pardon and acquit you of all charges of corruption, for a
legislator who does not know the difference between a crown of glory and
the price of a day's work is too big a blankety blanked fool to be
convicted of an intentional wrong.”
Petticoats at the Polls.
There have been many reasons given, first and last, why women should not
vote, but I desire to say, in the full light of a ripe experience, that
some of them are fallacious. I refer more particularly to the argument
that it will degrade women to go to the polls and vote like a little man.
While I am not and have never been a howler for female suffrage, I must
admit that it is much more of a success than prohibition and speculative
science.
My wife voted eight years with my full knowledge and consent, and to-day I
cannot see but that she is as docile and as tractable as when she won my
trusting heart.
Now those who know me best will admit that I am not a ladies' man, and,
therefore, what I may say here is not said to secure favor and grateful
smiles. I am not attractive and I am not in politics. I believe that I am
homelier this winter than usual. There are reasons why I believe that what
I may say on this subject will be sincere and not sensational or selfish.
It has been urged that good women do not generally exercise the right of
suffrage, when they have the opportunity, and that only those whose social
record has been tarnished a good deal go to the polls. This is not true.
It is the truth that a good full vote always shows a list of the best
women and the wives of the best men. A bright day makes a better showing
of lady voters than a bad one, and the weather makes a more perceptible
difference in the female vote than the male, but when things are exciting
and the battle is red-hot, and the tocsin of war sounds anon, the wife and
mother puts on her armor and her sealskin sacque and knocks things
cross-eyed.
It is generally supposed that the female voter is a pantaloonatic, a half
horse, half alligator kind of woman, who looks like Dr. Mary Walker and
has the appearance of one who has risen hastily in the night at the alarm
of fire and dressed herself partially in her own garments and partially in
her husband's. This is a popular error. In Wyoming, where female suffrage
has raged for years, you meet quiet, courteous and gallant gentlemen, and
fair, quiet, sensible women at the polls, where there isn't a loud or
profane word, and where it is an infinitely more proper place to send a
young lady unescorted than to the postoffice in any city in the Union. You
can readily see why this is so. The men about the polls are always
candidates and their friends. That is the reason that neither party can
afford to show the slightest rudeness toward a voter. The man who on
Wednesday would tell her to go and soak her head, perhaps, would stand
bareheaded to let her pass on Tuesday. While she holds a smashed ballot
shoved under the palm of her gray kid glove she may walk over the
candidate's prostrate form with impunity and her overshoes if she chooses
to.
Weeks and months before election in Wyoming, the party with the longest
purse subsidizes the most livery stables and carriages. Then, on the
eventful day, every conveyance available is decorated with a political
placard and driven by a polite young man who is instructed to improve the
time. Thus every woman in Wyoming has a chance to ride once a year, at
least. Lately, however, many prefer to walk to the polls, and they go in
pairs, trios and quartettes, voting their little sentiments and calmly
returning to their cookies and crazy quilts as though politics didn't jar
their mental poise a minute.
It is possible, and even probable, that a man and his wife may disagree on
politics as they might on religion. The husband may believe in Andrew
Jackson and a relentless hell, while his wife may be a stalwart and rather
liberal on the question of eternal punishment. If the husband manages his
wife as he would a clothes-wringer, and turns her through life by a crank,
he will, no doubt, work her politically; but if she has her own ideas
about things, she will naturally act upon them, while the man who is
henpecked in other matters till he can't see out of his eyes, will be
henpecked, no doubt, in the matter of national and local politics.
These are a few facts about the actual workings of female suffrage, and I
do not tackle the great question of the ultimate results upon the
political machinery if woman suffrage were to become general. I do not
pretend to say as to that. I know a great deal, but I do not know that.
There are millions of women, no doubt who are better qualified to vote,
and yet cannot, than millions of alleged men who do vote; but no one can
tell now what the ultimate effect of a change might be.
So far as Wyoming is concerned, the Territory is prosperous and happy. I
see, also, that a murderer was hung by process of law there the other day.
That looks like the onward march of reform, whether female suffrage had
anything to do with it or not. And they're going to hang another in March
if the weather is favorable and executive clemency remains dormant, as I
think it will.
All these things look hopeful. We can't tell what the Territory would have
been without female suffrage, but when they begin to hang men by law
instead of by moonlight, the future begins to brighten up. When you have
to get up in the night to hang a man every little while and don't get any
per diem for it, you feel as though you were a good way from home.
The Sedentary Hen.
Though generally cheerful and content with her lot, the hen at times
becomes moody, sullen and taciturn. We are often called upon to notice and
profit by the genial and sunny disposition of the hen, and yet there are
times in her life when she is morose, cynical, and the prey of consuming
melancholy. At such times not only her own companions, but man himself
shuns the hen.
At first she seems to be preoccupied only. She starts and turns pale when
suddenly spoken to. Then she leaves her companions and seems to be the
victim of hypochondria. Then her mind wanders. At last you come upon her
suddenly some day, seated under the currant bushes. You sympathize with
her and you seek to fondle her. She then picks a small memento out of the
back of your hand. You then gently but firmly coax her out of there with a
hoe, and you find that she has been seated for some time on an old croquet
ball, trying to hatch out a whole set of croquet balls. This shows that
her mind is affected. You pick up the croquet ball, and find it hot and
feverish, so you throw it into the shade of the woodshed. Anon, you find
your demented hen in the loft of the barn hovering over a door knob and
trying by patience and industry to hatch out a hotel.
When a hen imagines that she is inspired to incubate, she at once ceases
to be an ornament to society and becomes a crank. She violates all the
laws and customs of nature and society in trying to hatch a conservatory
by setting through the long days and nights of summer on a small flower
pot.
Man may win the affections of the tiger, the lion, or the huge elephant,
and make them subservient to his wishes, but the setting hen is not
susceptible to affection. You might as well love the Manitoba blizzard or
try to quell the cyclone by looking calmly in its eye. The setting hen is
filled with hatred for every living thing. She loves to brood over her
wrongs or anything else she can find to squat on.
I once owned a hen that made a specialty of setting. She never ceased to
be the proud anonymous author of a new, warm egg, but she yearned to be a
parent. She therefore seated herself on a nest where other hens were in
the habit of leaving their handiwork for inspection. She remained there
during the summer hatching steadily on while the others laid, until she
filled my barnyard with little orphaned henlets of different ages. She
remained there night and day, patiently turning out poultry for me to be a
father to. I brought up on the bottle about one hundred that summer that
had been turned out by this morbidly maternal hen. All she seemed to ask
in return was my kind regards and esteem. I fed her upon the nest and
humored her in every way. Every day she became a parent, and every day
added to my responsibility.
[Illustration: SUCCESS WITH CHICKENS.]
One day I noticed that she seemed weak and there was a far away look in
her eye. For the first time the horrible truth burst upon my mind. I
buried my face in the haymow and I am not ashamed to say that I wept.
Strong man as I am, I am not too proud to say that I soaked that haymow
through with unavailing tears.
My hen was dying even then. Her breath came hot and quick like the swift
rush of a hot ball that caves in the short-stop and speeds away to
center-field.
The next morning one hundred chickens of various sizes were motherless,
and if anything had happened to me they would have been fatherless.
For many years I have made a close study of the setting hen, but I am
still unsettled as to what is best to do with her. She is a freak of
nature, a disagreeable anomaly, a fussy phenomenon. Logic, rhetoric and
metaphor are all alike to the setting hen. You might as well go down into
the bosom of Vesuvius and ask it to postpone the next eruption.
A Bright Future for Pugilism.
The recent prominence of Mr. John E. Dempsey, better known as Jack
Dempsey, of New York, brings to mind a four days' trip taken in his
company from Portland, Oregon, to St. Paul, over the Northern Pacific.
There were three pugilists in the party besides myself, viz. Dempsey, Dave
Campbell and Tom Cleary. We made a grand, triumphant tour across the
country together, and I may truthfully state that I never felt so free to
say anything I wanted to--to other passengers--as I did at that time. I
wish I could afford to take at least one pugilist with me all the time. In
traveling about the country lecturing, a good pugilist would be of great
assistance. I would like to set him on the man who always asks: “Where do
you go to from here, Mr. Nye?” He does not ask because he wants to know,
for the next moment he asks right over again. I do not know why he asks,
but surely it is not for the purpose of finding out.
Well, throughout our long journey across the State of Oregon and the
Territories of Idaho, Montana and Dakota, and the State of Minnesota, it
was one continual ovation. Dempsey had a world-wide reputation, I found,
co-extensive with the horizon, as I may say, and bounded only by the
zodiac.
In my great forthcoming work, entitled “Half-Hours with Great Men, or
Eminent People Which I Have Saw,” I shall give a fuller description of
this journey. The book will be a great boon.
Mr. Dempsey is not a man who would be picked out as a great man. You might
pass by him two or three times without recognizing his eminence, and yet,
at a scrapping matinee or swatting recital, he seems to hold his audiences
at his own sweet will--also his antagonist.
Mr. Dempsey does not crave notoriety. He seems rather to court seclusion.
This is characteristic of the man. See how he walked around all over the
State of New York last week--in the night, too--in order to evade the
crowd.
His logic, however, is wonderful. Though quiet and unassuming in his
manner, his arguments are powerful and generally make a large protuberance
wherever they alight.
Nothing is more pleasing than the sight of a man who has risen by his own
unaided effort, fought his way up, as it were, and yet who is not vain.
Mr. Dempsey conversed with me frequently during our journey, and did not
seem to feel above me.
I opened the conversation by telling him that I had seen a number of his
works. Nothing pleases a young author so much as a little friendly remark
in relation to his work. I had seen a study of his one day in New York
last spring. It was an italic nose with quotation marks on each side.
It was a very happy little bon mot on Mr. Dempsey's part, and attracted a
good deal of notice at the time.
Mr. Dempsey is not a college graduate, as many suppose. He is a self-made
man. This should be a great encouragement to our boys who are now unknown,
and whose portraits have not as yet appeared in the sporting papers.
But Mr. Dempsey's great force as a debater is less, perhaps, in the matter
than in the manner. His delivery is good and his gestures cannot fail to
convince the most skeptical. Striking in appearance, aggressive in his
nature, and happy in his gestures, he is certain to attract the attention
of the police, and he cannot fail to rivet the eye of his adversary. I saw
one of his adversaries, not long ago, whose eye had been successfully
riveted in that way.
And yet, John E. Dempsey was once a poor boy. He had none of the
advantages which wealth and position bring. But, confident of his latent
ability as a middle-weight convincer, he toiled on, ever on, sitting up
until long after other people had gone to bed, patiently knocking out
those who might be brought to him for that purpose. He never hung back
because the way looked long and lonely. And what is the result? To-day, in
the full vigor of manhood, he is sought out and petted by everyone who
takes an interest in the onward march of pugilism.
It is a wonderful record, though brief. It shows what patient industry
will accomplish unaided. Had John E. Dempsey hesitated to enter the ring
and said that he would rather go to school, where he would be safe, he
might to-day be an educated man; but what does that amount to here in
America, where everybody can have an education? He would have lost his
talent as a slugger, and drifted steadily downward, perhaps, till he
became a school-teacher or a narrow-chested editor, writing things day
after day just to gratify the morbid curiosity of a sin-cursed world.
In closing, I would like to say that I hope I have not expressed an
opinion in the above that may hereafter be used against me. Do not
understand me to be the foe of education. Education and refinement are
good enough in their places, but how shall we attract attention by trying
to become refined and educated in a land where, as I say, education and
refinement seem almost to run rampant.
Heretofore, in America, pugilism has been made subservient to the common
schools. Pugilism and polygamy have both been crowded to the wall. Now
pugilism is about to assert itself. The tin ear and the gory nose will
soon come to the front, and the day is not far distant when progressive
pugilism and the prize-ring will take the place of the poorly ventilated
common school and the enervating prayer meeting.
The Snake Indian.
There are about 5,000 Snake or Shoshone Indians now extant, the greater
part being in Utah and Nevada, though there is a reservation in Idaho and
another in Wyoming.
The Shoshone Indian is reluctant to accept of civilization on the European
plan. He prefers the ruder customs which have been handed down from father
to son along with other hairlooms. I use the word hairlooms in its
broadest sense.
There are the Shoshones proper and the Utes or Utahs, to which have been
added by some authorities the Comanches, and Moquis of New Mexico and
Arizona, the Netelas and other tribes of California. The Shoshone,
wherever found, is clothed in buckskin and blanket in winter, but dressed
more lightly in summer, wearing nothing but an air of intense gloom in
August. To this he adds on holidays a necklace made from the store teeth
of the hardy pioneer.
[Illustration: HOLIDAY COSTUME.]
The Snake or Shoshone Indian is passionately fond of the game known as
poker among us, and which, I learn, is played with cards. It is a game of
chance, though skill and a thorough knowledge of firearms are of great
use. The Indians enter into this game with great zeal, and lend to it the
wonderful energy which they have preserved from year to year by abstaining
from the debilitating effects of manual labor. All day long the red
warrior sits in his skin boudoir, nursing the sickly and reluctant
“flush,” patient, silent and hopeful. Through the cold of winter in the
desolate mountains, he continues to
“Hope on, hope ever,”
that he will “draw to fill.” Far away up the canyon he hears the sturdy
blows of his wife's tomahawk as she slaughters the grease wood and the
sage brush for the fire in his gilded hell where he sits and woos the lazy
Goddess of Fortune.
With the Shoshone, poker is not alone a relaxation, the game wherewith to
wear out a long and listless evening, but it is a passion, a duty and a
devotion. He has a face designed especially for poker. It never shows a
sign of good or evil fortune. You might as well try to win a smile from a
railroad right of way. The full hand, the fours, threes, pairs and
bob-tail flushes are all the same to him, if you judge by his face.
When he gets hungry he cinches himself a little tighter and continues to
“rastle” with fate. You look at his smoky, old copper cent of a face, and
you see no change. You watch him as he coins the last buckshot of his
tribe and later on when he goes forth a pauper, and the corners of his
famine-breeding mouth have never moved, His little black, smoke-inflamed
eyes have never lighted with triumph or joy. He is the great aboriginal
stoic and sylvan dude. He does not smile. He does not weep. It certainly
must be intensely pleasant to be a wild, free, lawless, irresponsible,
natural born fool.
[Illustration: GOING AWAY BROKE.]
The Shoshones proper include the Bannocks, which are again subdivided into
the Koolsitakara or Buffalo Eaters, on Wind River, the Tookarika or
Mountain Sheep Eaters, on Salmon or Suabe Eivers, the Shoshocas or White
Knives, sometimes called Diggers, of the Humbolt Eiver and the Great Salt
Lake basin. Probably the Hokandikahs, Yahooskins and the Wahlpapes are
subdivisions of the Digger tribe. I am 'not sure of this, but I shall not
suspend my business till I can find out about it. If I cannot get at a
great truth right off I wait patiently and go right on drawing my salary.
The Shoshones live on the government and other small game. They will eat
anything when hungry, from a buffalo down to a woodtick. The Shoshone does
not despise small things. He loves insects in any form. He loves to make
pets of them and to study their habits in his home life.
[Illustration: THE HOME CIRCLE.]
Formerly, when a great Shoshone warrior died, they killed his favorite
wife over his grave, so that she could go to the happy hunting grounds
with him, but it is not so customary now. I tried to impress on an old
Shoshone brave once that they ought not to do that. I tried to show him
that it would encourage celibacy and destroy domestic ties in his tribe.
Since then there has been quite a stride toward reform among them. Instead
of killing the widow on the death of the husband, the husband takes such
good care of his health and avoids all kinds of intellectual strain or
physical fatigue, that late years there are no widows, but widowers just
seem to swarm in the Shoshone tribe. The woods are full of them.
Now, if they would only kill the widower over the grave of the wife, the
Indian's future would assume a more definite shape.
Roller Skating.
I have once more tried to ride a pair of roller skates. That is the reason
I got down on the rink and down on roller skates. That is the reason
several people got down on me. That is also the reason why I now state in
a public manner, to a lost and undone race, that unless the roller-rink is
at once abolished, the whole civilized race will at once be plunged into
arnica.
I had tried it once before, but had not carried my experiments to a
successful termination. I made a trip around the rink last August, but was
ruled out by the judges for incompetency, and advised to skate among the
people who were hostile to the government of the United States, while the
proprietors repaired the rink.
On the 9th of June I nestled in the bosom of a cyclone to excess, and it
has required the bulk of the succeeding months for nature to glue the bone
of my leg together in proper shape. That is the reason I have not given
the attention to roller-skating that I should.
A few weeks ago I read what Mr. Talmage said about the great national
vice. It was his opinion that, if we skated in a proper spirit, we could
leave the rink each evening with our immortal souls in good shape.
Somehow it got out that on Thursday evening I would undertake the feat of
skating three rounds in three hours with no protection to my scruples, for
one-half the gate money, Talmage rules. So there was quite a large
audience present with opera glasses. Some had umbrellas, especially on the
front rows. These were worn spread, in order to ward off fragments of the
rink which might become disengaged and set in motion by atmospheric
disturbances.
In obedience to a wild, Wagnerian snort from the orchestra, I came into
the arena with my skates in hand. I feel perfectly at home before an
audience when I have my skates in hand. It is a morbid desire to wear the
skates on my feet that has always been my _bete noire_. Will the office
boy please give me a brass check for that word so that I can get it when I
go away?
My first thought, after getting myself secured to the skates, was this:
“Am I in the proper frame of mind? Am I doing this in the right spirit? Am
I about to skate in such a way as to lift the fog of unbelief which now
envelopes a sinful world, or shall I deepen the opaque night in which my
race is wrapped?”
Just then that end of the rink erupted in a manner so forthwith and so
_tout ensemble_ that I had to push it back in place with my person. I
never saw anything done with less delay or less languor.
The audience went wild with enthusiasm, and I responded to the encore by
writing my name in the air with my skates.
This closed the first seance, and my trainer took me in the dressing-room
to attend a consultation of physicians. After the rink carpenter had
jacked up the floor a little I went out again. I had no fears about my
ability to perform the mechanical part assigned me, but I was still
worried over the question of whether it would or would not be of lasting
benefit to mankind.
Those who have closely scrutinized my frame in repose have admitted that I
am fearfully and wonderfully made. Students of the human frame say that
they never saw such a wealth of looseness and limberness lavished upon one
person. They claim that nature bestowed upon me the hinges and joints
intended for a whole family, and therefore when I skate the air seems to
be perfectly lurid with limbs. I presume that this is true; though I have
so little leisure while skating in which to observe the method itself, the
plot or animus of the thing, as it were, that my opinion would be of
little value to the scientist.
I am led to believe that the roller skate is certainly a great civilizer
and a wonderful leveler of mankind. If we so skate that when the summons
comes to seek our ward in the general hospital, where each shall heal his
busted cuticle within the walls where rinkists squirm, we go not like the
moral wreck, morally paralyzed, but like a hired man taking his medicine,
and so forth--we may skate with perfect impunity, or anyone else to whom
we may be properly introduced by our cook.
No More Frontier.
The system of building railroads into the wilderness, and then allowing
the wilderness to develop afterward, has knocked the essential joy out of
the life of the pioneer. At one time the hardy hewer of wood and drawer of
water gave his lifetime willingly that his son might ride in the
“varnished cars.” Now the Pullman palace car takes the New Yorker to the
threshold of the sea, or to the boundary line between the United States
and the British possessions.
It has driven out the long handled frying pan and the flapjack of twenty
years ago, and introduced the condensed milk and canned fruit of commerce.
Along the highways, where once the hopeful hundreds marched with long
handled shovel and pick and pan, cooking by the way thin salt pork and
flapjacks and slumgullion, now the road is lined with empty beer bottles
and peach cans that have outlived their usefulness. No landscape can be
picturesque with an empty peach can in the foreground any more than a lion
would look grand in a red monogram horse blanket and false teeth.
[Illustration]
The modern camp is not the camp of the wilderness. It wears the
half-civilized and shabby genteel garments of a sawed-off town. You know
that if you ride a day you will be where you can get the daily papers and
read them under the electric light. That robs the old canyons of their
solemn isolation and peoples each gulch with the odor of codfish balls and
civilization. Civilization is not to blame for all this, and yet it seems
sad.
Civilization could not have done all this alone. It had to call to its aid
the infernal fruit can that now desolates the most obscure trail in the
heart of the mountains. You walk over chaos where the “hydraulic” has
plowed up the valley like a convulsion, or you tread the yielding path
across the deserted dump, and on all sides the rusty, neglected and
humiliated empty tin can stares at you with its monotonous, dude-like
stare.
An old timer said to me once: “I've about decided, Bill, that the West is
a matter of history. When we cooked our grub over a sage brush fire we
could get fat and fight Indians, but now we fill our digesters with the
cold pizen and pewter of the canned peach; we go to a big tavern and stick
a towel under our chins and eat pie with a fork and heat up our carkisses
with antichrist coal, and what do we amount to? Nuthin! I used to chase
Injuns all day and eat raw salt pork at night, bekuz I dassent build a
fire, and still I felt better than I do now with a wad of tin-can solder
in my stummick and a homesick feeling in my weather-beaten breast.
“No, we don't have the fun we used to. We have more swarrees and sciatica
and one bloomin' thing and another of that kind, but we don't get one
snort of pure air and appetite in a year. They're bringin' in their blamed
telephones now and malaria and aigue and old sledge, and fun might as well
skip out. There ain't no frontier any more. All we've got left is the
old-fashioned trantler joos and rhumatiz of '49.”
Behind the red squaw's cayuse plug,
The hand-car roars and raves,
And pie-plant pies are now produced
Above the Indian graves.
I hear the oaths of pioneers,
The caucus yet to be,
The first low hum where soon will
The fuzzy bumble bee.
A Letter of Regrets.
My dear Princess Beatrice--I received your kind invitation to come up to
Whippingham on the 23d inst. and see you married, but I have not been able
to get there. The weather has been so hot this month, that, to tell you
the truth, Beatrice, I haven't been going anywhere to speak of. At first I
thought I would go anyhow, and even went so far as to pick out a nice
corner bracket to take along for a wedding present. Not so much for its
intrinsic value, of course, but so you would have something with my name
to it on a card that you could show to those English dudes, and let them
know that you had influential friends, even in America. But when I thought
what a long, hard trip it would be, and how I would probably mash that
bracket on the cars before I got half way there, I gave it up.
I am not personally acquainted with your inamorato, if that's all right,
never having met him in our set; but I understand you have done well, and
that your husband is a rising young man of good family, and that he will
never allow you to put your hands into dishwater. I hope this is true and
that he does not drink. Rum has certainly paralyzed more dukes and such
things than war has. I attribute this to the fact that princes and dukes
are generally more reckless about exposing themselves to the demon rum
than to the rude alarums and one thing another of war.
If you keep a girl I hope you will get a good one who knows her business.
A green girl in the house of a newly-married princess is a great source of
annoyance. A friend of mine who got married last winter got a girl whose
mind had been eaten by cut-worms and she had not discovered it. All the
faculty that had been spared her was that power of the mind which enabled
her to charge $3 a week. She lubricated the buckwheat pancake griddle for
a week with soap grease and a dash of castor oil, and when she was
discharged she wept bitterly because capital with the iron heel ground the
poor servant girl into the dust.
Probably you will take a little tour after the wedding is over. They are
doing that way a good deal in Boston this season. I thought you would like
a pointer in the very lum-tumest thing to do, and so I write this. So long
as you have the means to do this thing right, I think you ought to do so.
You may never be married again, princess, and now is the time to paint the
British Isles red.
You can also get more concessions from your husband now, while he is a
little rattled, and temporarily knocked silly by the pomp and pageant of
marrying into your family, and if you work it right you can maintain this
supremacy for years. Treat him with a gentle firmness, and do not weep on
his bosom if you detect the aroma of beer and bologna sausage on his young
breath. Bologna and royalty do not seem to harmonize first-rate, but
remember you can harass your husband if you choose, so that he will fall
to even lower depths than bologna and Milwaukee beer. Do not aggravate him
when he comes home tired, but help him do the chores and greet him with a
smile.
I'd just as soon tell you, Beatrice, that this smile racket is not
original with me. I read it in a paper. This paper went on to say that a
young wife should always greet her husband with a smile on his return. I
showed the article to my wife and suggested that it was a good scheme, and
hoped she would try it on me sometime. She said if I would like to change
off awhile, and take my smile when I got home instead of taking it down
town, we would make the experiment. The trouble with the average woman of
the age in which we live, Beatrice, is that she is above her business. She
tries to be superior to her husband, and in many instances she succeeds.
That is the bane of wedded life. Do not strive to be superior to your
husband, Beatrice. If you do, it is good-bye, John.
Treat him well at all times, whether he treats you well or not; then when
your mother gets tired of reigning and wants to come down and spend the
hot weather with you, she will be kindly greeted by her son-in-law.
Do not allow the fact that you belong to the royal family to interfere
with your fun, Beatrice. If you want to wear a Mother Hubbard dress on the
throne during hot weather, or mash a mosquito with your mother's sceptre,
do so. Conventionality is a humbug and a nuisance, and I'd just as soon
tell you right here that if I could have gone to your wedding and worn a
linen coat and a perspiration, I would have gone; but to stand around
there all day in a tight black suit of clothes, in a mixed crowd of dukes,
and counts, and princes of high degree, most of whom are total strangers
to me, is more than I can stand.
I wish you would give my love to your mother and tell her just how it was.
Make it as smooth as you can and break it to her gently. Tell her that the
royal family is spreading out so that I can't leave my work every time one
of its members gets married. Remember me to the Waleses, the Darmstadts,
Princess Irene and Victoria, Mr. and Mrs. Prince Alexander of Bulgaria,
also Prince Francis of Battenberg and the Countess Erbach Schomberg. They
will all be there probably, and so will Lord Latham and Lord Edgcumbe. I
know just how Edgcumbe will snort around there when he finds that I can't
be there. Give my kind regards to any other lords, dukes, duchesses,
dowagers or marchionesses who may inquire for me, and tell them all that I
will be in London next year if the Prince of Wales will drop me a line
stating that the moral tone of the city is such that it would be safe for
me to come.
[Illustration]
Venice.
We arrived in Venice last evening, latitude 45 deg. 25 min, N., longitude
12 deg. 19 min. E.
Venice is the home of the Venetian, and also where the gondola has its
nest and rears its young. It is also the headquarters for the paint known
as Venetian red. They use it in painting the town on festive occasions.
This is the town where the Merchant of Venice used to do business, and the
home of Shylock, a broker, who sheared the Venetian lamb at the corner of
the Rialto and the Grand Canal. He is now no more. I couldn't even find an
old neighbor near the Rialto who remembered Shylock. From what I can learn
of him, however, I am led to believe that he was pretty close in his
deals, and liked to catch a man in a tight place and then make him squirm.
Shylock, during the great panic in Venice, many years ago, it is said, had
a chattel mortgage on more lives than you could shake a stick at. He would
loan a small amount to a merchant at three per cent, a month, and secure
it on a pound of the merchant's liver, or by a cut-throat mortgage on his
respiratory apparatus. Then, when the paper matured, he would go up to the
house with a pair of scales and a pie knife and demand a foreclosure.
Venice is one of the best watered towns in Europe. You can hardly walk a
block without getting your feet wet, unless you ride in a gondola.
The gondola is a long, slim hack without wheels and is worked around
through the damp streets by a brunette man whose breath should be a sad
framing to us all. He is called the gondolier. Sometimes he sings in a low
tone of voice and in a foreign tongue. I do not know where I have met so
many foreigners as I have here in Europe, unless it was in New York, at
the polls. Wherever I go, I hear a foreign tongue. I do not know whether
these people talk in the Italian language just to show off or not. Perhaps
they prefer it. London is the only place I have visited where the Boston
dialect is used. London was originally settled by adventurers from Boston.
The blood of some of the royal families of Massachusetts may be found in
the veins of London people.
Wealthy young ladies in Venice do not run away with the coachman. There
are no coaches, no coachmen and no horses in Venice. There are only four
horses in Venice and they are made of copper and exhibited at St Mark's as
curiosities.
The Accademia delle Belle Arti of Venice is a large picture store where I
went yesterday to buy a few pictures for Christmas presents. A painting by
Titian, the Italian Prang, pleased me very much, but I couldn't beat down
the price to where it would be any object for me to buy it. Besides, it
would be a nuisance to carry such a picture around with me all over the
Alps, up the Rhine and through St. Lawrence county. I finally decided to
leave it and secure something less awkward to carry and pay for.
The Italians are quite proud of their smoky old paintings. I have often
thought that if Venice would run less to art and more to soap, she would
be more apt to win my respect. Art is all right to a certain extent, but
it can be run in the ground. It breaks my heart to know how lavish nature
has been with water here, and yet how the Venetians scorn to investigate
its benefits. When a gondolier gets a drop of water on him, he swoons.
Then he lies in a kind of coma till another gondolier comes along to
breathe in his face and revive him.
She Kind of Coaxed Him.
I never practiced law very much, but during the brief period that my
sheet-iron sign was kissed by the Washoe zephyr, I had several odd
experiences. I'm sure that lawyers who practice for forty years,
especially on the frontier or in a new country, could write a large book
that would make mighty interesting reading.
One day I was figuring up how much a man could save in ten years, paying
forty dollars a month rent, and taking in two dollars and fifty cents per
month, when a large man with a sad eye and an early purple tumor on the
side of his head, came in and asked me if my name was Nye. I told him it
was and asked him to take a chair and spit on the stove a few times, and
make himself entirely at home.
He did so.
After answering in a loud, tremulous tone of voice that we were having
rather a backward spring, he produced a red cotton handkerchief and took
out of it a deed which he submitted to my ripe and logical legal mind.
I asked him if that was his name that appeared in the body of the deed as
grantor. He said it was. I then asked him why his wife had not signed it,
as it seemed to be the homestead, and her name appeared in the instrument
with that of her husband, but her signature wasn't at the foot, though his
name was duly signed, witnessed and acknowledged.
“Well,” said he, “there's where the gazelle comes in.” He then took a bite
off the corner of a plug of tobacco about as big as a railroad land grant,
and laid two twenty dollar gold pieces on the desk near my arm. I took
them and tapped them together like the cashier of the Bank of England,
and, disguising my annoyance over the little episode, told him to go on.
“Well,” said the large man, fondling the wen which nestled lovingly in his
faded Titian hair, “my wife has conscientious scruples against signing
that deed. We have been married about a year now, but not actively for the
past eleven months. I'm kind of _ex-officio_ husband, as you might say.
After we'd been married about a month a little incident occurred which
made a riffle, as you might say, in our domestic tide. I was division
master on the U.P., and one night I got an order to go down towards
Sidney and look at a bridge. Of course I couldn't get back till the next
evening. So I sighed and switched off to the superintendent's office,
expecting to go over on No. 4 and look at the bridge. At the office they
told me that I needn't go till Tuesday, so I strolled up town and got home
about nine o'clock, went in with a latch key, just as a mutual friend went
out through the bed-room window, taking a sash that I paid two dollars
for. I didn't care for the sash, because he left a pair of pantaloons
worth twelve dollars and some silver in the pockets, but I thought it was
such odd taste for a man to wear a sash without his uniform.
“Well, as I had documentary evidence against my wife, I told her she could
take a vacation. She cried a good deal, but it didn't count I suffered a
good deal, but tears did not avail. It takes a good deal of damp weather
to float me out of my regular channel. She spent the night packing her
trousseau, and in the morning she went away. Now, I could get a divorce and
save all this trouble of getting her signature, but I'd rather not tell
this whole business in court, for the little woman seems to be trying to
do better, and if it wasn't for her blamed old hyena of a mother, would
get along tip-top. She's living with her mother now and if a lawyer would
go to the girl and tell her how it is, and that I want to sell the
property and want her signature, in place of getting a divorce, I believe
she'd sign. Would you mind trying it?”
[Illustration: “COAXING.”]
I said if I could get time I would go over and talk with her and see what
she said. So I did. I got along pretty well, too. I found the young woman
at home, and told her the legal aspects of the case. She wouldn't admit
any of the charges, but after a long parley agreed to execute the deed and
save trouble. She came to my office an hour later, and signed the
instrument I got two witnesses to the signature and had just put the
notarial seal on it when the girl's mother came in. She asked her daughter
if she had signed the deed and was told that she had. She said nothing,
but smiled in a way that made my blood run cold. If a woman were to smile
on me that way every day, I should certainly commit some great crime.
I was just congratulating myself on the success of the business, and was
looking at the two $20 gold pieces and trying to get acquainted with them,
as it were, after the two women had gone away; when they returned with the
husband and son-in-law at the head of the procession. He looked pale and
careworn to me. He asked me in a low voice if I had a deed there, executed
by his wife. I said yes. He then asked me if I would kindly destroy it. I
said I would. I would make deeds and tear them up all day at $40 apiece. I
said I liked the conveyancing business very much, and if a client felt
like having a grand, warranty deed debauch, I was there to furnish the raw
material.
I then tore up the deed and the two women went quietly away. After they
had gone, my client, in an absent-minded way, took out a large quid that
had outlived its usefulness, laid it tenderly on the open page of Estey's
Pleadings, and said:
“You doubtless think I am a singular organization, and that my ways are
past finding out. I wish to ask you if I did right a moment ago?” Here he
took out another $20 and put it under the paper weight. “When I went down
stairs I met my mother-in-law. She always looked to me like a firm woman,
but I did not think she was so unswerving as she really was. She asked me
in a low, musical voice to please destroy the deed, and then she took one
of them Smith & Wesson automatic advance agents of death out from under
her apron and kind of wheedled me into saying I would. Now, did I do
right? I want a candid, legal opinion, and I'm ready to pay for it.”