Transcriber’s Note: Readers may wish to be warned that the Colonel’s
tales, and the accompanying illustrations, contain outdated racial
stereotyping and language.
TOLD BY THE COLONEL.
BY
W. L. ALDEN,
_Author of “A Lost Soul,” “Adventures of Jimmy Brown,”
“Trying to Find Europe,” etc., etc._
ILLUSTRATED BY
RICHARD JACK AND HAL HURST.
NEW YORK
J. SELWIN TAIT & SONS
COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
J. SELWIN TAIT & SONS
CONTENTS.
PAGE
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL ROMANCE, 1
JEWSEPPY, 12
THAT LITTLE FRENCHMAN, 26
THOMPSON’S TOMBSTONE, 38
A UNION MEETING, 52
A CLERICAL ROMANCE, 63
A MYSTERY, 80
MY BROTHER ELIJAH, 93
THE ST. BERNARD MYTH, 108
A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE, 124
HOSKINS’ PETS, 139
THE CAT’S REVENGE, 153
SILVER-PLATED, 168
TOLD BY THE COLONEL.
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL ROMANCE.
Four Americans were sitting in the smoking-room of a Paris hotel. One
of them was a grizzled, middle-aged man, who sat silent and apart from
the others and consumed his heavy black cigar with a somewhat gloomy
air. The other three were briskly talking. They had been three days in
Paris, and had visited the Moulin Rouge, the tomb of Napoleon, and the
sewers, and naturally felt that they were thoroughly acquainted with
the French capital, the French government, and the French people. They
were unanimously of the opinion that Paris was in all things fifty years
behind the age, and at least sixty behind Chicago. There was nothing
fit to eat, drink, or smoke in Paris. The French railway carriages were
wretched and afforded no facilities for burning travellers in case of
an accident. The morals of French society—as studied at the Moulin
Rouge—were utterly corrupt, owing possibly to that absence of free trade
in wives and husbands which a liberal system of divorce permits. The
French people did not understand English, which was alone sufficient to
prove them unfit for self-government, and their preference for heavy
five-franc pieces when they might have adopted soft and greasy dollar
bills showed their incurable lack of cleanliness.
Suddenly the silent man touched the bell and summoned a waiter.
“Waiter,” he said, as that functionary entered the room, “bring me an
owl.”
“If you please, sir?” suggested the waiter, timidly.
“I said, bring me an owl! If you pretend to talk English you ought to
understand that.”
“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. How would you please to have the nowl?”
“Never you mind. You go and bring me an owl, and don’t be too long about
it.”
The waiter was gone some little time, and, then returning, said, “I am
very sorry, sir, but we cannot give you a nowl to-night. The barkeeper is
out of one of the materials for making nowls. But I can bring you a very
nice cocktail.”
“Never mind,” replied the American. “That’ll do. You can go now.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said one of the three anatomizers of the French
people, speaking with that air of addressing a vast popular assemblage
which is so characteristic of dignified American conversationalists.
“Would you do me the favor to tell me and these gentlemen why you ordered
an owl?”
“I don’t mind telling you,” was the answer, “but I can’t very well do it
without telling you a story first.”
“All right, Colonel. Give us the story, by all means.”
The elderly American leaned back in his chair searching for inspiration
with his gaze fixed on the chandelier. He rolled his cigar lightly from
one corner of his mouth to the other and back again, and presently began:
“A parrot, gentlemen, is the meanest of all creation. People who are
acquainted with parrots, and I don’t know that you are, generally admit
that there is nothing that can make a parrot ashamed of himself. Now this
is a mistake, for I’ve seen a parrot made ashamed of himself, and he was
the most conceited parrot that was ever seen outside of Congress. It
happened in this way.
“I came home one day and found a parrot in the house. My daughter Mamie
had bought him from a sailor who was tramping through the town. Said he
had been shipwrecked, and he and the parrot were the only persons saved.
He had made up his mind never to part with that bird, but he was so
anxious to get to the town where his mother lived that he would sell him
for a dollar. So Mamie she buys him, and hangs him up in the parlor and
waits for him to talk.
[Illustration: “ASKING THE CAT IF HE HAD EVER SEEN A MOUSE.”]
“It turned out that the parrot couldn’t talk anything but Spanish, and
very little of that. And he wouldn’t learn a word of English, though my
daughter worked over him as if he had been a whole Sunday-school. But one
day he all at once began to teach himself English. Invented a sort of
Ollendorff way of studying, perhaps because he had heard Mamie studying
French that way. He’d begin by saying, ‘Does Polly want a cracker?’ and
then he’d go on and ring the changes. For example, just to give you an
idea of the system, he’d say, ‘Does Polly want the lead cracker of the
plumber or the gold cracker of the candlestick maker?’ and then he’d
answer, ‘No, Polly does not want the lead cracker of the plumber nor the
gold cracker of the candlestick maker, but the large steel cracker of the
blacksmith.’ He used to study in this way three hours every morning and
three every afternoon, and never stop for Sundays, being, as I suppose,
a Roman Catholic, and not a Sabbath-keeping bird. I never saw a bird
so bent on learning a language as this one was, and he fetched it. In
three months’ time that parrot could talk English as well as you or I,
and a blamed sight better than that waiter who pretends that he talks
English. The trouble was the parrot would talk all the time when he was
not asleep. My wife is no slouch at talking, but I’ve seen her burst into
tears and say, ‘It’s no use, I can’t get in a word edgewise.’ And no
more could she. That bird was just talking us deaf, dumb, and blind. The
cat, he gave it up at an early stage of the proceedings. The parrot was
so personal in his remarks—asking the cat if he had ever seen a mouse in
his whole life, and wanting to know who it was that helped him to paint
the back fence red the other night, till the cat, after cursing till all
was blue, went out of the house and never showed up again. He hadn’t the
slightest regard for anybody’s feelings, that bird hadn’t. No parrot ever
has.
“He wasn’t content with talking three-fourths of the time, but he had a
habit of thinking out loud which was far worse than his conversation.
For instance, when young Jones called of an evening on my daughter, the
parrot would say, ‘Well, I suppose that young idiot will stay till
midnight, and keep the whole house awake as usual.’ Or when the Unitarian
minister came to see my wife the parrot would just as likely as not
remark, ‘Why don’t he hire a hall if he must preach, instead of coming
here and wearing out the furniture?’ Nobody would believe that the parrot
made these remarks of his own accord, but insisted that we must have
taught them to him. Naturally, folks didn’t like this sort of thing, and
after a while hardly anybody came inside our front door.
“And then that bird developed a habit of bragging that was simply
disgusting. He would sit up by the hour and brag about his superiority
to other birds, and the beauty of his feathers, and his cage, and the
gorgeousness of the parlor, and the general meanness of everything except
himself and his possessions. He made me so tired that I sometimes wished
I were deaf. You see, it was the infernal ignorance of the bird that
aggravated me. He didn’t know a thing of the world outside of our parlor;
and yet he’d brag and brag till you couldn’t rest.
[Illustration: “THE PARROT BEGAN BY TRYING TO DAZZLE THE OWL WITH HIS
CONVERSATION, BUT IT WOULDN’T WORK.”]
“You may ask why didn’t we kill him, or sell him, or give him to the
missionaries, or something of that sort. Well, Mamie, she said it would
be the next thing to murder if we were to wring his neck; and that
selling him would be about the same as the slave-trade. She wouldn’t let
me take the first step toward getting rid of the parrot, and the prospect
was that he’d drive us clean out of the house.
“One day a man who had had considerable experience of parrots happened to
come in, and when I complained of the bird he said, ‘Why don’t you get
an owl? You get an owl and hang him up close to that parrot’s cage, and
in about two days you’ll find that your bird’s dead sick of unprofitable
conversation.’
“Well, I got a small owl and put him in a cage close to the parrot’s
cage. The parrot began by trying to dazzle the owl with his conversation,
but it wouldn’t work. The owl sat and looked at the parrot just as solemn
as a minister whose salary has been cut down, and after a while the
parrot tried him with Spanish. It wasn’t of any use. Not a word would
the owl let on to understand. Then the parrot tried bragging, and laid
himself out to make the owl believe that of all the parrots in existence
he was the ablest. But he couldn’t turn a feather of the owl. That noble
bird sat silent as the grave, and looked at the parrot as if to say,
‘This is indeed a melancholy exhibition of imbecility!’ Well, before
night that parrot was so ashamed of himself that he closed for repairs,
and from that day forth he never spoke an unnecessary word. Such,
gentlemen, is the influence of example even on the worst of birds.”
The American lit a fresh cigar, and pulling his hat over his eyes, fell
into profound meditation. His three auditors made no comment on his
story, and did not repeat the inquiry why he had asked the waiter for
an owl. They smoked in silence for some moments, and then one of them
invited the other two to step over to Henry’s and take something—an
invitation which they promptly accepted, and the smoking-room knew them
no more that night.
JEWSEPPY.
“Yes, sir!” said the Colonel. “Being an American, I’m naturally in favor
of elevating the oppressed and down-trodden, provided, of course, they
live in other countries. All Americans are in favor of Home Rule for
Ireland, because it would elevate the Irish masses and keep them at home;
but if I were living in Ireland, perhaps I might prefer elevating Russian
Jews or Bulgarian Christians. You see, the trouble with elevating the
oppressed at home is that the moment you get them elevated they begin to
oppress you. There is no better fellow in the world than the Irishman, so
long as you govern him; but when he undertakes to govern you it’s time to
look out for daybreak to westward. You see, we’ve been there and know all
about it.
“Did I ever tell you about Jewseppy? He was an organ-grinder, and,
take him by and large, he was the best organ-grinder I ever met. He
could throw an amount of expression into ‘Annie Rooney,’ or, it might
be, ‘The Old Folks at Home,’ that would make the strongest men weep and
heave anything at him that they could lay their hands to. He wasn’t a
Jew, as you might suppose from his name, but only an Italian—‘Jewseppy’
being what the Italians would probably call a Christian name if they
were Christians. I knew him when I lived in Oshkosh, some twenty years
ago. My daughter, who had studied Italian, used to talk to him in his
native language; that is, she would ask him if he was cold, or hungry,
or ashamed, or sleepy, as the books direct, but as he never answered in
the way laid down in the books, my daughter couldn’t understand a word he
said, and so the conversation would begin to flag. I used to talk to him
in English, which he could speak middling well, and I found him cranky,
but intelligent.
“He was a little, wizened, half-starved-looking man, and if he had only
worn shabby black clothes, you would have taken him for a millionaire’s
confidential clerk, he was so miserable in appearance. He had two
crazes—one was for monkeys, who were, he said, precisely like men, only
they had four hands and tails, which they could use as lassoes, all of
which were in the nature of modern improvements, and showed that they
were an advance on the original pattern of men. His other craze was his
sympathy for the oppressed. He wanted to liberate everybody, including
convicts, and have every one made rich by law and allowed to do anything
he might want to do. He was what you would call an Anarchist to-day, only
he didn’t believe in disseminating his views by dynamite.
[Illustration: “SHE WOULD ASK HIM IF HE WAS COLD OR HUNGRY.”]
“He had a monkey that died of consumption, and the way that Jewseppy
grieved for the monkey would have touched the heart of an old-fashioned
Calvinist, let alone a heart of ordinary stone. For nearly a month he
wandered around without his organ, occasionally doing odd jobs of work,
which made most people think that he was going out of his mind. But one
day a menagerie came to town, and in the menagerie was what the show-bill
called a gorilla. It wasn’t a genuine gorilla, as Professor Amariah G.
Twitchell, of our university, proved after the menagerie men had refused
to give him and his family free tickets. However, it was an animal to
that effect, and it would probably have made a great success, for our
public, though critical, is quick to recognize real merit, if it wasn’t
that the beast was very sick. This was Jewseppy’s chance, and he went for
it as if he had been a born speculator. He offered to buy the gorilla
for two dollars, and the menagerie men, thinking the animal was as good
as dead, were glad to get rid of it, and calculated that Jewseppy would
never get the worth of the smallest fraction of his two dollars. There is
where they got left, for Jewseppy knew more about monkeys than any man
living, and could cure any sick monkey that called him in, provided, of
course, the disease was one which medical science could collar. In the
course of a month he got the gorilla thoroughly repaired, and was giving
him lessons in the theory and practice of organ-grinding.
“The gorilla didn’t take to the work kindly, which, Jewseppy said, was
only another proof of his grand intellect, but Jewseppy trained him so
well that it was not long before he could take the animal with him when
he went out with the organ, and have him pass the plate. The gorilla
always had a line round his waist, and Jewseppy held the end of it, and
sort of telegraphed to him through it when he wanted him to come back
to the organ. Then, too, he had a big whip, and he had to use it on the
gorilla pretty often. Occasionally he had to knock the animal over the
head with the butt end of the whip-handle, especially when he was playing
something on the organ that the gorilla didn’t like, such as ‘Marching
through Georgia,’ for instance. The gorilla was a great success as a
plate-passer, for all the men were anxious to see the animal, and all
the women were afraid not to give something when the beast put the plate
under their noses. You see, he was as strong as two or three men, and
his arms were as long as the whole of his body, not to mention that his
face was a deep blue, all of which helped to make him the most persuasive
beast that ever took up a collection.
“Jewseppy had so much to say to me about the gorilla’s wonderful
intelligence that he made me tired, and one day I asked him if he thought
it was consistent with his principles to keep the animal in slavery.
‘You say he is all the same as a man,’ said I. ‘Then why don’t you give
him a show? You keep him oppressed and down-trodden the whole time. Why
don’t you let him grind the organ for a while, and take up the collection
yourself? Turn about is fair play, and I can’t see why the gorilla
shouldn’t have his turn at the easy end of the business.’ The idea seemed
to strike Jewseppy where he lived. He was a consistent idiot. I’ll give
him credit for that. He wasn’t ready to throw over his theories every
time he found they didn’t pay. Now that I had pointed out to him his duty
toward the gorilla, he was disposed to do it.
[Illustration: “THE GORILLA WAS A GREAT SUCCESS.”]
“You see, he reasoned that while it would only be doing justice to the
beast to change places with him, it would probably increase the receipts.
When a man can do his duty and make money by it his path is middling
plain; and after Jewseppy had thought it over he saw that he must do
justice to the gorilla without delay.
“It didn’t take the beast long to learn the higher branches of
hand-organing.
“He saw the advantages of putting the money in his own pocket instead
of collecting it and handing it over to Jewseppy, and he grasped the
idea that when he was pushing the little cart that carried the organ and
turning the handle, he was holding a much better place in the community
than when he was dancing and begging at the end of a rope. I thought, a
day or two after I had talked to Jewseppy, that there was considerable
uproar in town, but I didn’t investigate it until toward evening, when
there seemed to be a sort of riot or temperance meeting, or something
of the kind, in front of my house, and I went out to see about it.
There were nearly two thousand people there watching Jewseppy and his
gorilla, or rather the gorilla and his Jewseppy. The little man had been
elevating the oppressed with great success. A long rope was tied around
his waist, and he was trotting around among the people, taking up the
collection and dancing between times.
“The gorilla was wearing Jewseppy’s coat, and was grinding away at the
organ with one hand and holding Jewseppy’s rope with the other. Every few
minutes he would haul in the rope, hand over hand, empty all the money
out of Jewseppy’s pocket, and start him out again. If the man stopped to
speak to anybody for a moment the gorilla would haul him in and give him
a taste of the whip, and if he didn’t collect enough money to suit the
gorilla’s idea, the animal would hold him out at arm’s length with one
hand and lay into him with the other till the crowd were driven wild with
delight. Nothing could induce them to think that Jewseppy was in earnest
when he begged them to protect him. They supposed it was all a part of
the play, and the more he implored them to set him free, the more they
laughed and said that ‘thish yer Eyetalian was a bang-up actor.’
“As soon as Jewseppy saw me he began to tell me of his sufferings.
His story lacked continuity, as you might say, for he would no sooner
get started in his narrative than the gorilla would jerk the rope as a
reminder to him to attend strictly to business if he wanted to succeed in
his profession. Jewseppy said that as soon as he tied the rope around his
waist and put the handle of the organ in the gorilla’s hand the beast saw
his chance and proceeded to take advantage of it. He had already knocked
the man down twice with the handle of the whip, and had lashed him till
he was black and blue, besides keeping him at work since seven o’clock
that morning without anything to eat or drink.
[Illustration: “WEARING JEWSEPPY’S COAT, AND WAS GRINDING AWAY AT THE
ORGAN.”]
“At this point the gorilla hauled Jewseppy in and gave him a fairly good
thrashing for wasting his time in conversation. When the man came around
again with the plate I told him that he was taking in more money than he
had ever taken in before, and that this ought to console him, even if the
consciousness that he was doing justice to the oppressed had no charms
for him. I’m sorry to say that Jewseppy used such bad language that I
really couldn’t stay and listen to him any longer. I understood him to
say that the gorilla took possession of every penny that was collected,
and would be sure to spend it on himself, but as this was only what
Jewseppy had been accustomed to do it ought not to have irritated a man
with a real sense of justice. Of course I was sorry that the little man
was being ill treated, but he was tough, and I thought that it would not
hurt him if the gorilla were to carry out his course of instruction in
the duty of elevating the oppressed a little longer. I have always been
sort of sorry that I did not interfere, for although Jewseppy was only a
foreigner who couldn’t vote, and was besides altogether too set in his
ideas, I didn’t want him to come to any real harm. After that day no man
ever saw Jewseppy, dead or alive. He was seen about dusk two or three
miles from town on the road to Sheboygan. He was still tied to the rope
and was using a lot of bad language, while the gorilla was frequently
reminding him with the whip of the real duties of his station and the
folly of discontent and rebellion. That was the last anybody ever saw
of the Italian. The gorilla turned up the next day at a neighboring town
with his organ, but without anybody to take up the collection for him,
and as the menagerie happened to be there the menagerie men captured
him and put him back in his old cage, after having confiscated the
organ. No one thought of making any search for Jewseppy, for, as I have
said, he had never been naturalized and had no vote, and there were not
enough Italians in that part of the country to induce any one to take an
interest in bringing them to the polls. It was generally believed that
the gorilla had made away with Jewseppy, thinking that he could carry
on the organ business to more advantage without him. It’s always been
my impression that if Jewseppy had lived he would have been cured of
the desire to elevate the down-trodden, except, of course, in foreign
countries. He was an excellent little man—enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and
really believing in his talk about the rights of monkeys and the duty
of elevating everybody. But there isn’t the least doubt that he made a
mistake when he tried to do justice to that gorilla.”
THAT LITTLE FRENCHMAN.
“Does anybody doubt my patriotism?” asked the Colonel. We all hastened
to say that we should as soon doubt our own existence. Had he not made a
speech no longer ago than last Fourth of July, showing that America was
destined to have a population of 1,000,000,000 and that England was on
the verge of extinction? Had he not perilled his life in the cause of
freedom, and was he not tireless in insisting that every Chinaman should
be driven out of the United States? If there ever was one American more
patriotic than another it was the Colonel.
“Well, then,” continued the speaker, “you won’t misunderstand me when
I say that the American railroad car is a hundred times more dangerous
than these European compartment cars. In thirty years there have been
just four felonious assaults in English railroad cars. There have been
a few more than that in France, but not a single one in Germany. Now, I
admit that you are in no danger of being shot in an American car, unless,
of course, two gentlemen happen to have a difficulty and shoot wild, or
unless the train is held up by train robbers who are a little too free
with their weapons. But I do say that the way in which we heat our cars
with coal-stoves kills thousands of passengers with pneumonia and burns
hundreds alive when the trains are wrecked.
“You see, I’ve looked into this thing and I’ve got the statistics down
fine. I’m the only man I know who ever had any trouble with a passenger
while travelling in Europe, and I don’t mind telling you about it,
although it will be giving myself away. Kindly push me over those
matches, will you? These French cigars take a lot of fuel, and you have
to encourage them with a match every three minutes if you expect them to
burn.
“When I was over here in Paris, ten years ago, there was a fellow here
from Chicago who was trying to introduce American cars, and he gave
me a pamphlet he had got up showing the horrors of the compartment
system. It told of half a dozen murders, fifteen assaults, eleven cases
of blackmail, and four cases in which a solitary traveller was shut up
in a compartment with a lunatic—all these incidents having occurred on
European railways. I was on my way to Egypt, and when I had read the
pamphlet I began to wonder if I should ever manage to live through the
railroad journey without being killed, or blackmailed, or lunaticked, or
something of the kind. You see, I believed the stories then, though I
know now that about half of them were false.
“I took the express train—the Peninsular and Oriental they call it—from
Paris about twelve o’clock one night. I went early to the train,
and until just before we started I thought I was going to have the
compartment to myself. All at once a man very much out of breath jumped
in, the door was slammed, and we were off.
[Illustration: “‘DOES ANYBODY DOUBT MY PATRIOTISM?’ ASKED THE COLONEL.”]
“I didn’t like the looks of the fellow. He was a Frenchman, though
of course that wasn’t his fault. He was small but wiry-looking, and
his sharp black eyes were not the style of eyes that inspires me with
confidence. Then he had no baggage except a small paper parcel, which
was queer, considering that the train was a long-distance one. I kept
a close watch on him for a while, thinking that he might be one of the
professional lunatics that, according to the Chicago chap’s pamphlet, are
always travelling in order to frighten solitary passengers; but after a
while I became so sleepy that I decided to lie down and take a nap and my
chances of being killed at the same time. Just then the man gets up and
begins to talk to me in French.
“Now, I needn’t say that I don’t speak French nor any of those fool
languages. Good American is good enough for me. One reason why these
Europeans have been enslaved for centuries is that they can’t make each
other understand their views without shouting at the top of their lungs,
and so bringing the police about their ears. But I did happen to know,
or thought I did, the French word for going to sleep, and so I thought
I would just heave it at this chap so that he would understand that I
didn’t require his conversation. I have always found that if you talk
to a Frenchman in English very slowly and impressively he will get the
hang of what you say. That is, if he isn’t a cabman. You can’t get an
idea into a French cabman’s head unless you work it in with a club. So I
said to the fellow in the train: ‘My friend! I haven’t any time to waste
in general conversation. I’m going to sleep, and I advise you to do the
same. You can tell me all about your institutions and your revolutions
and things in the morning.’ And then I hove in the French word ‘cochon,’
which I supposed meant something like ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’
“The fellow staggered back as if I had hit him, and then he began to
sling the whole French language at me. I calculate that he could have
given Bob Ingersoll fifty points in a hundred and beaten him, and, as you
know, Bob is the ablest vituperator now in the business. The Frenchman
kept on raving and getting madder and madder every minute, and I saw
that there wasn’t the least doubt that he was a dangerous lunatic.
“I stood up and let him talk for a while, occasionally saying ‘non
comprenny’ and ‘cochon,’ just to soothe him, but presently he came close
to me and shook his fist in my face. This was too much, so I took him
by the shoulders and slammed him down in a corner seat, and said, ‘You
sit there, sonny, and keep quiet, or you’ll end by getting me to argue
with you.’ But the minute I let go of him he bounced up again as if he
was made of India-rubber, and came at me just as a terrier will come at
a horse, pretending that he is going to tear him into small pieces. So I
slammed him down into his corner again, and said, ‘This foolishness has
gone far enough, and we’ll have it stopped right here. Didn’t you hear me
say cochon? I’m going to cochon, and you’d better cochon, too, or I’ll
make you.’
“This time he jumped up as soon as I had let go of him and tried to hit
me. Of course I didn’t want to hit so small a chap, letting alone that
he knew no more about handling his fists than the angel Gabriel, so
I just took and twisted his arms behind his back and tied them with a
shawl-strap. Then, seeing as he showed a reprehensible disposition to
kick, I put another strap around his legs and stretched him on the seat
with his bundle under his head. But kindness was thrown away on that
Frenchman. He tried to bite me, and not content with spitting like a cat,
he set up a yell that was the next thing to the locomotive whistle, and
rolling off the seat tried to kick at me with both legs.
“I let him exercise himself for a few minutes, while I got my hair-brush
and some twine out of my bag. Then I put him back on the seat, gagged
him with the handle of the hair-brush, and lashed him to the arm of the
seat so that he couldn’t roll off. Then I offered him a drink, but he
shook his head, not having any manners, in spite of what people say about
the politeness of Frenchmen. Having secured my own safety and made the
lunatic reasonably comfortable, I turned in and went to sleep. I must
have slept very sound, for although the train stopped two or three times
during the night, I never woke up until we pulled up for breakfast
about eight o’clock the next morning. I sat up and looked at my lunatic,
who was wide awake and glaring at me. I wished him good-morning, for I
couldn’t bear any grudge against a crazy man; but he only rolled his eyes
and seemed madder than ever, so I let him lie and got out of the train.
“Two policemen were walking up and down the platform, and I took one of
them by the arm and led him to the car, explaining what had happened. I
don’t know whether he understood or not, but he pretended that he didn’t.
“As soon as he saw the lunatic there was a pretty row. He called two
more policemen, and after they had ungagged the fellow they hauled us
both before a magistrate who had his office in the railroad station.
At least he acted like a magistrate, although he wore the same uniform
as the policemen. Here the fellow I had travelled with was allowed to
speak first, and he charged me, as I afterward found, with having first
insulted and then assaulted him. He said he rather thought I was a
lunatic, but at any rate he must have my blood. Then an interpreter was
sent for, and I told my story, but I could see that nobody believed me.
[Illustration: “THEY HAULED US BOTH BEFORE A MAGISTRATE.”]
“‘Accused,’ said the magistrate very sternly, ‘you called this gentleman
a pig. What was your motive?’
“Of course I swore that I had never called him a pig, that I hardly knew
half a dozen words of his infamous language, and that I had used only one
of those. Being asked what it was, I said ‘cochon.’ And then that idiot
ordered me to be locked up.
“By rare good luck there happened to be an American secretary of legation
on the train. You know him. It was Hiram G. Trask, of West Centreopolis.
He recognized me, and it didn’t take him very long to explain the
whole affair. It seems that the Frenchman had asked me if I objected
to smoking, and when I tried to tell him that we ought to go to sleep,
I said ‘cochon,’ which means pig, instead of ‘couchons,’ which was the
word I ought to have used. He was no more of a lunatic than a Frenchman
naturally is, but he was disgusted at being carried two hundred miles
beyond his destination, which was the first stopping-place beyond Paris,
and I don’t know that I blame him very much. And then, too, he seemed to
feel that his dignity had been some ruffled by being gagged and bound.
However, both he and the policemen listened to reason, and the man agreed
to compromise on my paying him damages and withdrawing the assertion that
he was morally or physically a pig. The affair cost considerable, but
it taught me a lesson, and I have quit believing that you can’t travel
in a European railroad car without being locked up with a lunatic or a
murderer. I admit that the whole trouble was due to my foolishness. When
the Frenchman began to make a row, I ought to have killed him and dropped
the body out of the door, instead of fooling with him half the night and
trying to make him comfortable. But we can’t always command presence of
mind or see just where our duty lies at all times.”
THOMPSON’S TOMBSTONE.
We had just dined in the little Parisian restaurant where Americans are
in the habit of going in order to obtain those truly French delicacies,
pork and beans, buckwheat cakes, corned beef, apple pie, and overgrown
oysters. I knew a man from Chicago who dined at this restaurant every
day during the entire month spent by him in Paris, and who, at the end
of that time, said that he was heartily sick of French cookery. Thus
does the profound study of the manners and customs of foreign nations
enlighten the mind and ripen the judgment.
The Colonel had finished his twelfth buckwheat cake and had lighted his
cigar, when he casually and reprovingly remarked to young Lathrop, who,
on principle, was disputing the bill with the waiter, that “he was making
more trouble than Thompson’s tombstone.” Being called upon to explain
this dark saying, he stretched his legs to their limit, tipped back his
chair, knocked the ashes of his cigar among the remnants of his pork and
beans, and launched into his story.
“In the town where I was raised—and I’m not going to give away the name
of it at present—there were two brothers, James and John Thompson. They
were twins and about forty years old, as I should judge. James was a
bachelor and John he was a widower, and they were both pretty well to do
in the world, for those times at least. John was a farmer and James was
a wagon maker and owned the village hearse besides, which he let out for
funerals, generally driving it himself, so that any profit that was to be
made out of a melancholy occasion he could make without sharing it with
anybody. Both the men were close-fisted, and would look at a dollar until
their eyesight began to fail before they could bring themselves to spend
it. It was this miserly spirit that brought about the trouble that I’m
going to tell you of.
“After John Thompson had been a widower so long that the unmarried
women had given up calling on him to ask his advice about the best way
of raising money for the heathen, and had lost all expectation that any
one of them would ever gather him in, he suddenly ups and marries Maria
Slocum, who used to keep a candy store next door to the school-house and
had been a confirmed old maid for twenty years. She had a little money,
though, and folks did say that she could have married James Thompson if
she had been willing to take the risk; but the fact that James always had
the hearse standing in his carriage-house made him unpopular with the
ladies. She took John because his views on infant baptism agreed with
hers, and he took her because she had a good reputation for making pies
and was economical and religious.
“The Thompson brothers owned burial lots in the new cemetery that were
close together. James, of course, had, so far, no use for his lot, but
John had begun to settle his by burying his first wife in about the
middle of it. The lot was a good-sized one, with accommodation for a
reasonably large family without crowding them, and without, at the same
time, scattering them in any unsocial way. I don’t know how it came
about, but no sooner was John married than he took a notion to put up a
tombstone over his first wife. He thought that as he was going to incur
such an expense he would manage it so that he wouldn’t have to incur it
again; and so he got up a design for a combination family tombstone, and
had it made, and carved, and lettered, and set up in his burial lot.
“Near the top of the stone was John Thompson’s name, the date of his
birth, and a blank space for the date of his death. Next came the name of
‘Sarah Jane, beloved wife of the above,’ and the date of her birth and
death. Then came the name of ‘Maria, beloved and lamented wife of the
above John Thompson,’ with the date of her birth and a space for the date
of her death. You see, John worked in this little compliment about Maria
being ‘lamented’ so as to reconcile her to having the date of her birth
given away to the public. The lower half of the tombstone was left vacant
so as to throw in a few children should any such contingency arise, and
the whole advertisement ended with a verse of a hymn setting forth that
the entire Thompson family was united in a better land above.
“The cost of the affair was about the same as that of one ordinary
tombstone, the maker agreeing to enter the dates of John’s death and of
his wife’s death free of charge whenever the time for so doing might
arrive; and also agreeing to enter the names of any children that might
appear at a very low rate. The tombstone attracted a great deal of
attention, and the summer visitors from the city never failed to go
and see it. John was proud of his stroke of economy, and used to say
that he wasn’t in danger of being bankrupted by any epidemic, as those
people were who held that every person must have his separate tombstone.
Everybody admitted that the Thompson tombstone gave more general
amusement to the public than any other tombstone in the whole cemetery.
Every summer night John used to walk over to his lot and smoke his pipe,
leaning on the fence and reading over the inscriptions. And then he
would go and take a fresh look at the Rogers’ lot, where there were nine
different tombstones, and chuckle to think how much they must have cost
old man Rogers, who had never thought of a combination family tomb. In
the course of about three years the inscriptions had grown, for there
had been added the names of Charles Henry and William Everett Thompson,
‘children of the above John and Maria Thompson,’ and John calculated
that with squeezing he could enter four more children on the same stone,
though he didn’t really think that he would ever have any call so to do.
“Well, a little after the end of the third year John’s troubles began.
He took up with Second Advent notions and believed that the end of the
world would arrive, as per schedule, on the 21st of November, at 8:30
A.M. Maria said that this was not orthodox and that she wouldn’t allow
any such talk around her house. Both of them were set in their ways,
and what with John expressing his views with his whip-handle and Maria
expressing hers with the rolling-pin, they didn’t seem to get on very
well together, and one day Maria left the house and took the train to
Chicago, where she got a divorce and came back a free and independent
woman. That wasn’t all: James Thompson now saw his chance. He offered to
sell out the hearse business, and after waiting ten months, so as to give
no opportunity for scandal, Maria married him.
“John didn’t seem to mind the loss of his wife very much until it
happened to occur to him that his combination family tombstone would
have to be altered, now that Maria was not his wife any longer. He was
a truthful man, and he felt that he couldn’t sleep in peace under a
tombstone that was constantly telling such a thumping lie as that Maria
was resting in the same burying-lot and that she was his beloved wife,
when, in point of fact, she was another man’s wife and would be, at
the proper time, lying in that other man’s part of the cemetery. So he
made up his mind to have the marble-cutter chisel out Maria’s name and
the date of her birth. But before this was done he saw that it wouldn’t
be the square thing so far as Charles Henry and William Everett were
concerned. It would be playing it low down on those helpless children
to allow that tombstone to assert that they were the children of John
Thompson and some unspecified woman called Maria, who, whatever else
she may have been, was certainly not John Thompson’s wife. Matters would
not be improved if the name of Maria were to be cut out of the line
which stated the parentage of the children, for in that case it would
appear that they had been independently developed by John, without the
intervention of any wife, which would be sure to give rise to gossip and
all sorts of suspicions.
[Illustration: “DIDN’T SEEM TO GET ON VERY WELL TOGETHER.”]
“Of course the difficulty could have been settled by erasing from the
tombstone all reference to Maria and her two children, but in that case
a separate stone for the children would some day become necessary,
and, what was of more consequence, John’s grand idea of a combination
tombstone would have to be completely abandoned. John was not a hasty
man, and after thinking the matter over until the mental struggle turned
his hair gray, he decided to compromise the matter by putting a sort of
petticoat around the lower half of the tombstone, which would hide all
reference to Maria and the children. This was easily done with the aid of
an old pillow-case, and the tombstone became more an object of interest
to the public than ever, while John, so to speak, sat down to wait for
better times.
[Illustration: “THE TOMBSTONE BECAME MORE AN OBJECT OF INTEREST TO THE
PUBLIC THAN EVER.”]
“Now, James had been thinking over the tombstone problem, and fancied
that he had found a solution of it that would put money in his own pocket
and at the same time satisfy his brother. He proposed to John that the
inscription should be altered so as to read: ‘Maria, formerly wife of
John and afterward of James Thompson,’ and that a hand should be carved
on the stone with an index-finger pointing toward James’ lot, and a line
in small type saying, ‘See small tombstone.’ James said that he would
pay the cost of putting up a small uninscribed stone in his own lot over
the remains of Maria—waiting, of course, until she should come to be
remains—and that John could pay the cost of altering the inscriptions on
the large stone. The two brothers discussed this scheme for months, each
of them being secretly satisfied with it, but John maintaining that James
should pay all the expenses.
“This James would not do, for he reasoned that unless John came to his
terms the combination tombstone would be of no good to anybody, and that
if he remained firm John would come round to his proposal in time.
“There isn’t the least doubt that this would have been the end of the
affair, if it had not been that James chuckled over it so much that one
day he chuckled a fishbone into his throat and choked to death on the
spot. He was buried in his own lot, with nothing but a wooden headboard
to mark the spot. His widow said that if he had been anxious to have
a swell marble monument he would have made provision for it in his
lifetime, and as he had done nothing of the kind, she could not see that
she had any call to waste her money on worldly vanities.
“How did this settle the affair of the combination tombstone? I’m just
telling you. You see, by this time the world had not come to an end, and
John, who always hated people who didn’t keep their engagements, seeing
that the Second Adventists didn’t keep theirs, left them and returned to
the regular Baptist fold. When his brother died he went to the funeral,
and did what little he could, in an inexpensive way, to comfort the
widow. The long and short of it was that they became as friendly as they
ever had been, and John finally proposed that Maria should marry him
again. ‘You know, Maria,’ he said, ‘that we never disagreed except about
that Second Advent nonsense. You were right about that and I was wrong,
as the event has proved, and now that we’re agreed once more, I don’t see
as there is anything to hinder our getting married again.’
“Maria said that she had a comfortable support, and she couldn’t feel
that it was the will of Providence for her to be married so often,
considering how many poor women there were who couldn’t get a single
husband.
“‘Well,’ continued John, ‘there is that there tombstone. It always
pleased you and I was always proud of it. If we don’t get married again
that tombstone is as good as thrown away, and it seems unchristian to
throw away a matter of seventy-five dollars when the whole thing could be
arranged so easy.’
“The argument was one which Maria felt that she could not resist, and
so, after she had mourned James Thompson for a fitting period, she
married John a second time, and the tombstone’s reputation for veracity
was restored. John and Maria often discussed the feasibility of selling
James’ lot and burying him where the combination tombstone would take
him in, but there was no more room for fresh inscriptions, and besides,
John didn’t see his way clear to stating in a short and impressive way
the facts as to the relationship between James and Maria. So, on the
whole, he judged it best to let James sleep in his own lot, and let
the combination tombstone testify only to the virtues of John Thompson
and his family. That’s the story of Thompson’s tombstone, and if you
don’t believe it I can show you a photograph of the stone with all the
inscriptions. I’ve got it in my trunk at this very moment, and when we go
back to the hotel, if you remind me of it, I’ll get it out.”
A UNION MEETING.
“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, “since you ask me what struck me most
forcibly during my tour of England, and supposing that you want a civil
answer to a civil question, I will say that the thing that astonished me
more than anything else was the lack of religious enterprise in England.
[Illustration: “THE LACK OF RELIGIOUS ENTERPRISE IN ENGLAND.”]
“I have visited nearly every section of your country, and what did I
find? Why, sir, in every town there was a parish church of the regulation
pattern and one other kind of church, which was generally some sort of
Methodist in its persuasion. Now, in America there is hardly a village
which hasn’t half a dozen different kinds of churches, and as a rule at
least one of them belongs to some brand-new denomination, one that has
just been patented and put on the market, as you might say. When I lived
in Middleopolis, Iowa, there were only fifteen hundred people in the
place, but we had six kinds of churches. There was the Episcopalian,
the Methodist, the Congregational, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, the
Unitarian, and the Unleavened Disciples church, not to mention the
colored Methodist church, which, of course, we didn’t count among
respectable white denominations. All these churches were lively and
aggressive, and the Unleavened Disciples, that had just been brought
out, was as vigorous as the oldest of them. All of them were furnishing
good preaching and good music, and striving to outdo one another in
spreading the Gospel and raising the price of pew-rents. I could go for
two or three months to the Presbyterian church, and then I could take a
hack at the Baptists and pass half a dozen Sundays with the Methodists,
and all this variety would not cost me more than it would have cost to
pay pew-rent all the year round in any one church. And then, besides the
preaching, there were the entertainments that each church had to get up
if it didn’t want to fall behind its rivals. We had courses of lectures,
and returned missionaries, and ice-cream festivals till you couldn’t
rest. Why, although I am an old theatrical manager, I should not like
to undertake to run a first-class American church in opposition to one
run by some young preacher who had been trained to the business and knew
just what the popular religious taste demanded. I never was mixed up in
church business but once, and then I found that I wasn’t in my proper
sphere.”
The Colonel chuckled slowly to himself, as his custom was when anything
amused him, and I asked him to tell me his ecclesiastical experience.
“Well, this was the way of it,” he replied. “One winter the leading
citizens of the place decided to get up a series of union meetings.
Perhaps you don’t know what a union meeting is? I thought so. It bears
out what I was saying about your want of religious enterprise. Well, it’s
a sort of monster combination, as we would say in the profession. All the
churches agree to hold meetings together, and all the preaching talent of
the whole of them is collected in one pulpit, and each man preaches in
turn. Of course every minister has his own backers, who are anxious to
see him do himself and his denomination credit, and who turn out in full
force so as to give him their support. The result is that a union meeting
will always draw, even in a town where no single church can get a full
house, no matter what attractions it may offer.
“Now, a fundamental rule of a union meeting is that no doctrines are
to be preached to which any one could object. The Baptist preacher is
forbidden to say anything about baptism, and the Methodist can’t allude
to falling from grace in a union meeting. This is supposed to keep things
peaceful and to avoid arguments and throwing of hymn-books and such-like
proceedings, which would otherwise be inevitable.