chickens? I had very nearly forgotten it. This was what I was referring
to. A chicken will draw a darky just as a dead sheep will draw vultures
in Egypt, though there may have been no vultures within twenty miles
when the sheep was killed. You may be living in a town where there isn’t
a single darky within ten miles, but if you put up a chicken-house and
stock it there will be darkies in the town within twenty-four hours, and
just so long as your chicken-house has a chicken in it fresh darkies
will continue to arrive from all sections of the country. This beats any
trick that I ever saw a spiritual medium perform, and I can’t see the
explanation of it. You may say that some one carries word to the darkies
that there is a new chicken-house waiting to be visited, but the answer
to this is that it isn’t true. My own idea is that it is a matter of
instinct. When you carry a cat twenty miles away from home in a bag and
let her out, we all know that her instinct will show her the way home
again before you can get there yourself. Just in the same way instinct
will draw a darky to a chicken-house he has never seen or heard of.
You’ll say that to talk about instinct doesn’t explain the matter. That
is true enough, but it makes you feel as if you had struck the trail,
which is some satisfaction at any rate. So far as I can see, that is
about all that scientific theories ever do.
[Illustration: “PREACH A SERMON WITH A CHICKEN UNDER HIS VEST.”]
“If you care to listen, I’ll tell you what happened within my knowledge
in connection with darkies and chickens. I was located a little after the
war in the town of South Constantinople, in the western part of Illinois,
and my next-door neighbor was Colonel Ephraim J. Hickox, who commanded
the 95th Rhode Island Regiment. The town was a growing place, and it had
the peculiarity that there wasn’t a darky in it. The nearest one lived
over at West Damascus, seven miles away, and there was only two of him—he
and his wife. Another curious thing about the place was the scarcity
of labor. There weren’t above a dozen Irishmen in the place, and they
wouldn’t touch a spade or a hoe under three dollars a day, and wouldn’t
work more than four days in a week. You see, a certain amount of digging
and gardening had to be done, and there wasn’t anybody to do it except
these Irishmen, so they naturally made a good thing of it, working half
the time and holding meetings for the redemption of Ireland the rest of
the time in the bar-room of the International Hotel.
“One day Colonel Ephraim, as I always used to call him, wanted to drain
his pasture lot, and he hired the Irishmen to dig a ditch about a quarter
of a mile long. They would dig for a day, and then they would knock off
and attend to suffering Ireland, till Ephraim, who was a quick-tempered
man, was kept in a chronic state of rage. He had no notion of going
into politics, so he didn’t care a straw what the Irishmen thought of
him, and used to talk to them as free as if they couldn’t vote. Why, he
actually refused to subscribe to a dynamite fund and for a gold crown to
be presented to Mr. Gladstone, and you can judge how popular he was in
Irish circles. I used to go down to Ephraim’s pasture every once in a
while to see how his ditch was getting along, and one afternoon I found
the whole lot of Irishmen lying on the grass smoking instead of working,
and Ephraim in the very act of discharging them.
“‘Perhaps it’s “nagurs” that you’d be preferring,’ said one of the men,
as they picked themselves up and made ready to leave.
“‘You bet it is,’ said Ephraim, ‘and, what’s more, I’ll have that ditch
finished by darkies before the week is out.’ This seemed to amuse the
Irishmen, for they went away in good spirits, in spite of the language
that had been hove at them, and it amused me too, for I knew that there
were no darkies to be had, no matter what wages a man might be willing to
pay. I said as much to Ephraim, who, instead of taking it kindly, grew
madder than ever, and said, ‘Colonel! I’ll bet you fifty dollars that
I’ll have that ditch finished by darkies inside of four days, and that
they’ll do all the digging without charging me a dollar.’
“‘If you’re going to send over into Kentucky and import negro labor,’
said I, ‘you can do it, and get your ditch dug, but you’ll have to pay
either the darkies or the contractor who furnishes them.’
“‘I promise you not to pay a dollar to anybody, contractor or nigger.
And I won’t ask anybody to send me a single man. What I’m betting on is
that the darkies will come to my place of their own accord and work for
nothing. Are you going to take the bet or ain’t you?’
“I didn’t hesitate any longer, but I took the bet, thinking that
Ephraim’s mind was failing, and that it was a Christian duty in his
friends to see that if he did fool away his money, it should go into
their pockets instead of the pockets of outsiders. But, as you will see,
Ephraim didn’t lose that fifty dollars.
“Early the next morning Ephraim had a couple of masons employed in
turning his brick smoke-house into a chicken-house, and he had two
dozen chickens with their legs tied lying on the grass waiting for the
chicken-house to be finished. The masons broke a hole through the side
of the house and lined it with steel rods about four feet long, which
Ephraim had bought to use in some experiments in gun-making that he was
always working at. The rods were set in a circle which was about a foot
and a half wide at one end and tapered to about four inches at the other
end. The arrangement was just like the wire entrance to a mouse-trap,
of the sort that is meant to catch mice alive and never does it. It was
nothing less than a darky-trap, although Ephraim pretended that it was a
combined ventilator and front door for the chickens. The masons, so far
as I could judge, thought that Ephraim’s mind was going fast, and I made
up my mind that it would be a sin to let the man bet with anybody who
would be disposed to take advantage of his infirmity.
[Illustration: “‘DUNNO!’”]
“The trap was finished before dark, and baited with two dozen young
chickens. I came by the place a second time about sunset, just as
Ephraim was locking up his chicken-house, and I saw a small darky boy
leaning on the fence. I asked him where he came from, but he only said
‘Dunno.’ I found out afterward that he came from a house at least ten
miles away, and that those two dozen chickens had drawn him there wasn’t
a shadow of doubt in my mind. At the time, however, I was a little
afraid that Ephraim had begun to import colored labor, and that there
was some trick about his bet that might prove that his mind was all
right. Two days afterward I went down to the pasture and found sixteen
darkies digging away at that ditch and Ephraim superintending with a
twenty-five-cent cigar in his mouth. ‘Come to pay that fifty dollars,
I suppose!’ he said when he saw me. ‘You can wait till the ditch is
finished, which will be some time to-day. You see I was as good as my
word.’
“I asked him to explain how he had collected his darkies, and being in
unusually good spirits he told me about it.
“He had made his trap just large enough to admit a good-sized darky, who
could push the steel rods apart as he crawled in but who couldn’t crawl
out again, no matter how hard he might try. The morning after he had set
the trap Ephraim took his shot-gun and went down to his chicken-house.
He found that the night’s catch had been larger than he had hoped. There
were sixteen colored men of different sizes sitting on the ground or
leaning up against the side of the house. There was a good deal of wool
and cloth sticking to the ends of the steel rods, and some of the younger
darkies looked as if they had been fighting with wild-cats, but they
didn’t try to explain things. Besides the darkies, there were two white
tramps in the trap, but Ephraim just kicked them into the streets without
even proposing work to them. Then he came back and told the darkies that
the legislature had just passed a bill making it felony to break into a
chicken-house, and that he was very much afraid that they would be hung
and dissected, unless they could show him some reason for being merciful
to them.
“The darkies were frightened, besides being hungry and cold, and when
Ephraim said that he had a job of ditching to be done, and that if
they would do it for him he would let them off scot-free, they were
delighted, and the whole chicken-house was lit up with their teeth. They
went into that ditch a happy and contented gang and finished it before
night. Ephraim was a liberal man, and considering that he had won fifty
dollars and had got his ditch finished for nothing, he was disposed to be
generous. So he gave the darkies a lot of good advice and informed them
that, with a view of removing temptation from their way, he should sell
his chickens and go out of the business. The darkies went away as happy
as if they had been well paid, and the next morning there wasn’t a darky
in the whole town. They had gone back to their homes, or else they had
been drawn somewhere else by other chickens.
“Do I mean to say that Ephraim had not made arrangements with some one
to send him those sixteen darkies? That is just what I do mean to say.
When he fitted up his chicken-house he had no more idea where his darkies
would come from than I had, but he knew that the chickens would draw
darkies and that his trap would hold them, so he felt that he had a sure
thing. I have no more doubt that those darkies were drawn to Ephraim’s
place by those chickens than I have that a magnet will draw a needle. I
can’t explain how it was done, but I believe it all the same. It is what
is called a mystery, and the good book says that the less you try to
explain mysteries the better.”
MY BROTHER ELIJAH.
“I never told you about my brother, the inventor, did I?” asked the
Colonel. “Speaking of flying-machines reminds me of him, for he invented
seven of them, and one of the lot was a stunning success. Stunned one
darky and came very near stunning a whole camp-meeting of darkies. My
brother Lije—his name was Elijah—was what you might call a general
inventor. He didn’t stick to any one line, such as electricity, for
example, but he would invent anything, from a woman’s pocket to a new
motive power. He invented a pocket for a woman’s skirt that was warranted
never to be found by the most expert pickpocket, and he put the pocket
in the skirt of his wife’s dress on trial. She searched for it for about
a month—not all the time, you understand, but on an average three or
four hours a day—and then gave it up. She said she could always find
her usual old-fashioned pocket in the course of a week or ten days, and
that was as much time as she could afford to waste on the subject. As for
Elijah’s perpetual-motion machines, he invented a new one at least every
year, and the loft in our barn was always full of them. Of course they
were failures, but that did not discourage Lije. You can’t discourage
a born inventor—that is, unless he is in the chemical line and blows
himself up with some new kind of dynamite. Lije’s inventions were, to my
mind, as smart as those of Edison, but the trouble with them was that for
the most part they wouldn’t work. However, they amused him and did no
harm to anybody.
[Illustration: “ELIJAH.”]
“My brother was not in the least like me in anything. He was short and
stout and the best-tempered man in the State. Everybody liked him,
especially the darkies, who said that there was no more harm in him
than if he was a child. I’ve seen him when he had just accidentally
chopped off a finger or had burnt all his hair off, and I never heard
him use the smallest swear-word. I never could see why he got married.
A man with that sort of heavenly temper doesn’t need the discipline
that other folks need, and he was too much absorbed in science to have
any time to associate with a wife. He spent nearly all his time in his
workshop monkeying with his inventions, and his only companion was a
darky boy, about twelve years old, named Aristophanes, who waited on him
and was so fond of him that there is nothing that Lije told him to do
that Aristophanes wouldn’t do. If Lije had invented a new guillotine and
wanted to try it on Aristophanes’ neck, the boy would have consented to
have his head chopped off, and would never have doubted that Massa Lije
would put it on again without even leaving a scar.
“You were speaking of this new flying-machine that somebody had just
invented and that acts on the principle of a kite. ‘Resistance of an
inclined plane to the air’ is what you called it, but that means kite,
and nothing else. Why, Elijah invented that machine forty years ago, and
it was one of his greatest successes, the only one, in fact, that I ever
remember his making. When I say that it was successful, I don’t mean to
say that it was practicable. It would rise and it would carry a man with
it, but it never came into general use, for it was about impossible to
get the man down again without killing him. Next to a Swiss excursion
steamboat, it was the riskiest mode of locomotion ever invented.
“The way in which Lije’s machine was constructed was very simple. You
must have seen what we boys used to call a spider-web kite. If you
haven’t, I might as well tell you that it is made with three sticks that
cross one another at the same point in about the middle of the kite, or
rather a little above the middle, and gave the kite something the shape
and look of a big spider-web. Lije was fond of kite-flying, and was
always trying to make improvements in kite-building, which were naturally
failures, for you can be sure that the millions of boys that have been
making kites ever since boys were first invented know a great sight more
about kites than any scientific man knows.
“Elijah’s flying-machine was nothing more or less than the biggest
spider-web kite that was ever built. The sticks were ash poles an inch
in diameter, and they were covered with silk instead of paper. I forget
the exact dimensions of the kite, but according to Lije’s calculations
it would sustain a hundred and fifty pounds of human being, in addition
to its own weight and the weight of its tail. The question of the exact
amount of tail that the kite would require gave Lije a good deal of
trouble, but he solved it like a man of science by sending up an ordinary
kite and finding by experiment how much tail it needed, after which he
calculated by the rule of three how much tail to give his flying-machine.
In order to get the necessary weight without too great length, the tail
of the flying-machine was made of light iron chain, and at the end of
it there was an iron hook, so that a lantern could be attached to it at
night. As for the string that was to hold the kite, it was about the size
of a ship’s signal-halyards, and Lije calculated that it would bear twice
the amount of any strain that could possibly be put on it.
“Aristophanes was to make the trial trip, and he was perfectly willing
to go, never having the least doubt that Massa Lije would secure him a
safe and pleasant trip to the moon or thereabouts. Lije fastened the boy
in the centre of the kite, in about the position of some celebrated
Scotchman—St. Andrew, wasn’t it?—whose picture is in Fox’s ‘Book of
Martyrs.’ Aristophanes’ arms and legs were lashed to the kite sticks, and
he had a sort of rest for each foot, so as to take the strain from off
the lashings. In order to make him comfortable, Lije fastened a pillow
under the boy’s head, so that he could go to sleep in case he should
feel sleepy, which he nearly always did. If Aristophanes could only have
managed to take his dinner with him and eat it in the air, he would have
been about as happy as a darky can be, and an average darky can hold more
happiness to the square inch than any white man.
“The trial trip was made from the back yard of our house, and nobody was
present except Lije and Aristophanes, for my brother was a little shy
of exhibiting his inventions in public, owing to their habit of proving
failures. The kite was laid on the ground, and Aristophanes was strapped
to it and told that he must keep perfectly cool and remember everything
that he might see in the clouds. When all was ready, the kite was leaned
up against the side of the barn, with the tail neatly coiled so that it
would not foul anything, and then Elijah, taking a good run with the
string over his shoulder, had the satisfaction of making the kite climb
up as if it had been made by the best boy kite-builder in town.
“Holding the string was rather a tough job, for the kite pulled
tremendously, and Lije was not a strong man. However, he paid out the
line as fast as he could, and so managed to keep the kite steady. He was
a little afraid that it would accidentally get away from him, so he tied
the end of the string round his waist. There was where he made his great
mistake.
[Illustration: “ELIJAH’S FLYING-MACHINE.”]
“The kite attracted a good deal of attention in the town, and everybody
agreed that the figure in the middle of the kite was a remarkably good
representation of a darky, but nobody thought for a moment that it was
a genuine darky. Lije had forgotten, in estimating the amount of tail
that the kite required, the fact that the wind might rise while the kite
was in the air, and that in such case the amount of tail might not be
enough to keep it from diving. That is just what happened. After the kite
had run out all the string and was as high as the string would let it
go, the wind increased and the kite began to dive. Now, everybody knows
that diving is one of the most dangerous things a kite can do, and that
unless it can be stopped it is sure to bring the kite down and smash it
to pieces. Moreover, in this particular case there was Aristophanes,
who was pretty sure to be frightened by the diving of the kite—that is,
supposing that he was awake. When a kite dives the only remedy is to
give it string. As Lije had no more string to let out he was obliged to
do the next best thing, which was to slack the string by running with it
toward the kite. That stopped the diving, but only for a moment. Every
time that Lije tried to stop running and managed to hold back a little
against the kite, it would begin to dive again, and about half the time
was describing circles in the air and turning Aristophanes upside down.
However, Lije knew that so long as he could keep the kite from dashing
itself to the ground the darky would come to no harm.
“The wind kept on increasing and the kite pulled harder than ever. Even
if Lije had not wanted to run, the kite would have dragged him. He went
through the town at about eight miles an hour, yelling to everybody he
met, ‘Gimme some string!’ But nobody understood what he said, and they
all thought that it was a good joke to see a fat little man careering
over the country in tow of a big kite. Of course they supposed that
Lije was acting of his own free will and accord. They knew that he was
peculiar in his ways, and they fancied that he was taking a little
holiday after his hard work. So beyond encouraging him to keep it up and
remarking to one another that ‘Lije was the most amusing darned fool in
the county,’ they paid no attention to his outcries.
“My brother was not used to active exercise and had next to no wind. The
longer he ran with the kite, the more he felt convinced that a tragedy
was about to happen. If he kept on running he believed he would drop dead
with stoppage of the heart, and if he stopped running he knew that the
kite would dash Aristophanes to pieces; and though, of course, it was not
as if Aristophanes had been a white boy, still there was the chance that
his parents would be disagreeable if he were killed. They were ordinary
ignorant darkies, with no sort of love for science. But Lije had grit in
him, in spite of all the science that he had pumped into his head. He
stuck to the kite-string, and ran his level best until the moment came
when he was unable to catch another breath. Then he threw himself against
a telegraph pole and clung to it with all his might. The kite couldn’t
drag him away from it, and so it gave one tremendous dive, and Lije felt
by the sudden slackening of the string that the kite had reached the
ground.
[Illustration: “HIT THE REV. JULIUS CÆSAR WASHINGTON ON THE SIDE OF THE
HEAD.”]
“It came down in the middle of a negro camp-meeting that was in progress
about a quarter of a mile away. The spot was a sandy one, and the kite,
which naturally fell head downward, buried the ends of its upper sticks
in the sand, and did no injury whatever to Aristophanes. The chain tail,
however, damaged the eye of the Rev. Hannibal Blue, and then hit the
Rev. Julius Cæsar Washington on the side of the head and stunned him
for half an hour. There was a good deal of excitement in the camp when
Aristophanes descended. Most of the colored people were of the opinion
that he was an angel who had come down to express his satisfaction with
the services, though the Rev. Mr. Blue was strongly of the opinion that
Aristophanes was the devil in person, who was seeking to buffet the
faithful. In time, however, Aristophanes was recognized as the private
servant of Massa Lije, and was released from the kite and allowed to
return to Lije’s workshop to report the result of his voyage in the
flying-machine.
“The flying-machine was never tried again. Lije had had enough of it,
and besides, some of the Rev. Mr. Blue’s friends, who were not exactly
what you would call law-abiding citizens, sent Lije word that they
rather thought that if he quit inventing things he would live longer
than he otherwise might. Aristophanes didn’t seem to think anything of
his adventure, and said he was ready to go up again whenever Massa Lije
should want to send him. But Lije told him that he intended to make a
little modification in his flying-machine before using it again. That
was what he always said when he gave an invention up as a bad job, and
accordingly nobody ever saw or heard of the flying-machine again. He was
a remarkable man, was my brother, and the doctor of the asylum where he
spent his declining years said that he was the most interesting lunatic
that he had ever met.”
THE ST. BERNARD MYTH.
Some one had told a dog-story showing the miraculous intelligence
and profound piety of a French poodle. The Colonel listened with an
incredulous smile on his grim face. When the story was ended and we
had all expressed our surprise and admiration, as is the custom when
dog-stories are told, and had carefully suppressed our conviction that
the man who told the story was as impudent as he was mendacious—as is
also the custom on these occasions—I asked the Colonel to favor us with
his views in regard to canine sagacity.
“There are dogs that show signs of good sense now and then,” he replied.
“Even human beings do that occasionally. But as to these yarns about dogs
who calculate eclipses and have conscientious objections to chasing cats
on Sunday, I don’t believe a word of them. Talk about fish-stories!
Why, there isn’t a fish caught or uncaught that can begin to stimulate
the imagination to the extent that a dog will stimulate it. I have
known fishermen who could convert two minnows into a string of thirty
trout, averaging two pounds each, and I have seen these men slink away
crestfallen before a man who told stories of what his fox-terrier had
done the day before. What I don’t understand is why people pretend to
believe dog-stories. We all know that the dog is a well-meaning, stupid,
parish-vestry sort of an animal, but we listen to the thumpers that some
men tell about him without even a cough.
[Illustration: “THE MONKS SHIED PRAYER-BOOKS AND WOODEN SANDALS AT THEM.”]
“Look at the lies that have been told for the last hundred years about
the St. Bernard dogs! People really believe that when a snow-storm comes
on the St. Bernard dog goes out with a blanket, a flask of whiskey, a
spirit-lamp, a box of matches, some mustard plasters, and a foot-bath
strapped on his back. When he meets a frozen traveller we are told that
he sits down and lights his spirit-lamp, mixes some hot-whiskey and
pours it down the traveller’s throat, gives him a hot foot-bath, puts
mustard plasters on the soles of his feet, rubs him down and wraps him
up in the blanket, and then hoists him on his back and brings him to the
convent, where the monks put him to bed and read prayers to him till he
feels strong enough to put some money in the contribution-box and to
continue his journey. Now, I’ve been to the St. Bernard Convent. I went
there just to meet one of these dogs and see for myself what he could
do. There was a pack of about forty of them, but the only thing they
did was to sit up all night and bark at the moon, while the monks shied
prayer-books and wooden sandals at them out of the windows. I wanted to
see a few travellers rescued from the snow, but the monks said the supply
of travellers had been running low of late years; still, they added, if
I’d go and sleep in a snow-bank a mile or two from the convent, they
would see what could be done. I wasn’t going to risk the forfeiture of
my life-insurance policy by any such foolishness as that, so I came away
without seeing any dog performance. However, I saw enough, a little later
on, to convince me that the St. Bernard dog is about the biggest kind of
canine fool that ever imposed on credulous people.