I bought one. I am ashamed to tell you how much I paid for it.
I could hire an army mule to kick me every time I think of the
transaction. I took the puppy to the States with me—I was living at
New Berlinopolisville, in the State of Iowa, at the time—and brought
him up as carefully as if he had been my own son. He grew to be a big,
rough-haired dog—one of the biggest I ever saw. And I can’t say that
the monks cheated me in respect to his breed. Of course it was all a
matter of luck that he didn’t turn out to be a poodle or a black and
tan terrier. The fact is that no man or monk knows what one of those
pure-blooded St. Bernard pups that are sold at the convent will turn out
to be when he gets his growth. He is liable to be anything in the line of
dog, from a yellow cur up to a Siberian bloodhound. I once knew a man who
bought a St. Bernard pup from one of the very holiest of the entire gang
of monks, and that puppy grew up to be a red fox. But you all know of the
St. Bernard puppy lottery, and I won’t take up your time commenting on it.
[Illustration: “SAID THE DOG HAD PROMISED THEM A DRINK.”]
“The monks told me that the puppy would not need the least training. His
instinct was so wonderful that the moment he should catch a glimpse of
snow on the ground he would rush off to rescue travellers. ‘You just
load him up with blankets and things,’ said the monk, ‘and send him out
in the snow, and he’ll rescue travellers till you can’t rest.’ The dog
was nearly a year old before I had a chance to try his powers, but one
November we had a regular blizzard, and when the snow quit falling it
was at least two feet deep on a level, not to speak of the drifts.
“After breakfast I tied a whiskey-flask around the dog’s neck and put a
blanket on his back, and told him to go out and begin his blessed work
of mercy. I was alone in the house at the time, for my wife had gone on
a visit to her mother and the cook had got herself arrested for being
drunk and disorderly, so there was no one to make any objection to my use
of one of my wife’s best blankets. The dog barked with delight when he
saw the snow, and rolled in it for a few moments just so as to get the
blanket good and wet, and then he started down the street at a gallop.
I lived something more than a mile from the village, and there were no
houses nearer than half a mile, and as the dog took the road leading
away from the village, I did not think that he would stand much chance
of picking up any travellers. He didn’t return until noon, and then he
didn’t bring anybody home on his back. He did, however, bring six tramps
with him, three of whom were pretty drunk, they having drank all the
whiskey in the flask. The other three said that the dog had promised
them a drink if they would follow him, and they hoped that I would be
as good as the dog’s word. As I wasn’t armed, and as the tramps carried
big sticks and evidently meant business, I judged it best to sustain the
dog’s character for veracity and get rid of them peaceably. They went
away after wrestling with a pint of good whiskey, and all the time that
idiotic dog was wagging his tail as if he deserved the Humane Society’s
medal, instead of deserving a thrashing for trying to rescue tramps when
Nature had taken the trouble to furnish a blizzard expressly to thin them
out.
“I explained to the dog with my riding-whip the view that he must take
of tramps in the future, and then I sent him out again, after filling up
his whiskey-flask and giving him another blanket in the place of the one
that the tramps had stolen. I told him that in future I should prefer to
have him rescue women and children, especially the latter, and that if he
found a frozen male traveller he had better confine himself to giving
information to the police, instead of lavishing whiskey on possibly
undeserving people. He went off, somewhat humbled, but still in excellent
spirits, and in a short time rushed up my front steps, dropped something
on the door-mat, and rushed off again. At first I thought that the idiot
had been rescuing somebody’s linen that had been hung out to dry, but
when the linen began to make remarks in a loud voice, I found that it was
a particularly lively baby.
“Of course I couldn’t let the little innocent lie and freeze on my
doorstep, so I brought it into the house and did my best to quiet it. As
I had never had much experience with babies, I found myself in a pretty
tight place. I had no milk to give the baby, so I mixed a little flour
and water till it looked like milk and got a little of it down the baby’s
throat. Then I shook it on my knee till it dropped asleep. I put it in my
bed, intending to go out and find some woman who would come and attend
to it, when I heard the dog barking, and on opening the front door saw
his tail disappearing down the street, and saw that he had left another
infant on the door-mat.
“The first baby was a saint in comparison with this one, which was a
sort of infantile tramp in appearance and was as noisy as it was dirty.
It would not have anything to do with the flour and water, and though I
shook it on my knee till I must have loosened all its organs, it refused
to go to sleep. So I finally gave it a rubber overshoe to bite on, and
put it in a bureau drawer in the spare room and told it to howl its head
off if it felt that such was its duty toward mankind. Then I started a
second time to search for a woman, and I nearly fell over a third baby
on the doorstep. That infernal dog had brought it while I was struggling
with the infantile tramp, and he was now off searching for more infants.
I wrapped this one up in a blanket and sat down on the doorstep with it,
resolved to wait till that dog came back and to lock him up till I could
get enough babies off my hands to give me a chance to kill him. I was
bound not to miss him, for if I did he would probably keep on till he
had brought me all the babies in the county. This baby was the best of
the lot, for it slept in my arms without saying a word or expressing the
slightest desire to be shaken. In about twenty minutes the dog reappeared
with another invoice of babies. This time he brought a brace of twins,
as nearly as I could judge, but it was his last exploit that day. I got
him by the collar before he could start out again and locked him up in
the cellar. The babies I put in a heap in a big clothes-basket that they
could not climb out of, and left them to have a crying-match for the
championship till I could find a nurse.
“I didn’t have as much trouble in that matter as I had anticipated, for
before I could get out of the house some one rang the front-door bell and
pounded and yelled as if it was a matter of life and death that the door
should be opened instantly. I opened it, and there was a woman who called
me every name she could lay her tongue to, and wanted me to give her back
her baby instantly. I showed her the babies and told her to take her
choice. In fact, I begged her to take away the whole lot, but she said I
was worse than a murderer, and after selecting one of the least desirable
of the babies, she rushed off with it, promising to send me a policeman
immediately. I had never expressed the least desire to see a policeman,
but such is female gratitude! I had offered that woman five babies, free,
gratis, and for nothing, and instead of being grateful she wanted to get
me into trouble.
“I had still four babies on my hands, and as they were now all awake
and making all the noise they knew how to make, I put them all in the
clothes-basket together, so they could enjoy one another’s society. It
wasn’t a bad plan, and I recommend it to any mother with a noisy pair of
twins, as it is certain to reduce the noise by one-half. Two of my babies
were so occupied with putting their fingers in the other babies’ eyes and
in investigating their hair that they had no time to cry. I admit that
the two who were undergoing investigation did their best to make a riot,
but even then there was only half as much noise as there would have been
had the other two joined the concert.
“I thought it so probable that the mother who had visited me was only the
first of a procession of mothers, that I gave up the idea of going out
to look for a nurse, and stayed at home to receive the mothers politely.
It was not long before one presented herself. She was an Irishwoman and
the only sensible one of the lot. When she saw that her baby was safe and
contented and had a good grip on the hair of a black-eyed baby, she sat
down and laughed, and said that she never saw anything so sweet before.
According to her account, she lived about a mile from my house, and she
was standing at her front door looking at the landscape, when the dog
bounded in, caught up the baby out of the cradle, and carried it off. At
first she thought the dog was the devil, but presently she remembered
that the devil’s time was too much occupied with Irish affairs to permit
him to steal babies in Iowa, so she followed the dog as rapidly as she
could make her way through the snow. She tracked him by the prints of his
paws until she came to my door, and instead of calling me a kidnapper and
talking about the police, she was full of pity for me, and volunteered
to stay and take care of the whole menagerie until the last of the babies
should be called for and taken away.
“The remaining mothers arrived in the course of an hour. I locked myself
in the top of the house and left the Irishwoman to explain things. As I
afterward learned, the intelligent dog had knocked two women down in the
street and stolen their babies out of their arms, and had also broken
into two houses, in the last one of which he had bagged his brace of
twins. All the mothers, except the Irishwoman, were as unreasonable as
they could possibly be. They insisted that I deliberately trained dogs
to steal babies, and they had no doubt that my object in stealing them
was to vivisect them. As for the dog, they were convinced that he was mad
and that their babies would be sure to die of hydrophobia. Two of the
women brought their husbands with them, who asked to see me, explaining
that they desired to blow my head off. The Irishwoman nobly lied to them,
telling them that she had driven me out of the house with a club, and
that I was on my way to Chicago and far out of reach. The mothers and
their husbands went away at last, and as soon as it was dark I stole out
of the back door and took the first train for St. Paul. I didn’t show
myself in New Berlinopolisville for the next year.
“What became of the dog? Oh! I forgot to say that the Irishwoman promised
to take care of him and to cure him of his passion for babies. I am sorry
to say that she did not succeed. She kept him tied up for six weeks, but
one day he broke loose and captured a baby out of a baby-wagon in the
park. But the baby’s father happened to be with it, and he was one of the
best pistol-shots in town, having been a judge of the Montana Supreme
Court. He got the drop on the dog before the beast had gone ten feet away
with the baby, and though they afterward had to pry the dog’s jaws open
in order to get the baby loose, no harm was done to the latter. I settled
all the lawsuits without letting them go to trial, although it cost me
considerable and I finally judged it best to remove to another State.
“Now, I suppose that some one will be enough of an idiot to repeat this
story with variations as a proof of the wonderful intelligence of the
St. Bernard dog. If it is intelligence that leads a dog to steal other
people’s babies and dump them on a respectable man, I’d like to see what
idiocy would do for such a dog. No, sir! depend upon it, the stories
about St. Bernard dogs are invented by the monks after stimulating their
minds by reading the ‘Lives of the Saints’ and by going trout-fishing.
Probably the monks have gradually brought themselves to believe most
of the stories. They look like a credulous set of people, and I should
rather like to try them with a good American political speech, full of
campaign statistics, and see if they could believe it. I shouldn’t be in
the least surprised if they could.”
A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
“And by the way,” continued the Colonel, “a curious thing about this
Josiah Wilson was that he was married for fifteen years and never had any
wife whatever.”
The Colonel had begun a story concerning one Josiah Wilson which
promised to be interesting, but his incidental allusion to Mr. Wilson’s
matrimonial experience awakened our curiosity, and we begged him to
interrupt his narrative long enough to tell us how it came to pass that
Josiah was a married man who never had a wife.
[Illustration: “HOWLED FOR HELP WHEN HE WASN’T SWEARING.”]
“The marriage laws in the United States,” said the Colonel, giving his
chair an increased tilt backward, which was his usual way of beginning a
fresh anecdote, “are as peculiar in their way as are the divorce laws.
You would think to look at them that they would permit anybody to marry
anybody else in any way that either of them might choose; but for all
that they sometimes make it impossible for a man or a woman to get
married. There was a couple who intended to be married in a balloon,
which is a style of lunacy that is quite fashionable in some parts of the
country, though I can’t see why a man should want to risk his neck in a
balloon on his wedding-day, unless it is that it takes so much courage
to be married at all that a man forgets all about such minor dangers as
are connected with ballooning. The bride, the minister, and two witnesses
of assorted sexes went up in the balloon at the appointed time, and,
naturally, the bridegroom intended to go with them, but he accidentally
caught his foot in a neglected guy-rope and went up head downward about
twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon could not haul him
up because they could not get hold of the rope, and the bride would not
consent to give up the trip because the groom had always been a little
shy, and she was afraid that if she let him go this time she might not
be able to land him again. So the parson went on with the ceremony, and
the groom made most of his responses in bad language, and howled for help
when he wasn’t swearing. When the ceremony was over the aeronaut managed
to land the balloon without seriously damaging the bridegroom, but when,
a year or two afterward, the bride wanted to get her divorce, the court
held that there had never been any marriage, for the reason that both
the groom and the bride had not appeared together in the presence of the
officiating minister, and that, furthermore, there was no provision in
the law which would permit a man to be married upside down.
“But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to the
boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted Melinda
Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountain-side with
her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be married,
but her family were dead against it. You see, Josiah was a Republican
and a Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and Baptists, and,
naturally, they hated each other like poison; and one night as old man
Smith and Josiah met on their way to rival prayer-meetings they exchanged
revolver-shots, without, however, doing any harm. Then, once Josiah had
most of the calf of his leg taken off by the Smiths’ bull-dog, and twice
the Smith boys came into the sitting-room where Josiah was calling on
Melinda, and suggested to him with their shot-guns that he had better go
home. Gradually Josiah and Melinda came to the conclusion that her family
were resolved to discourage the match, so they determined to elope and be
married without the knowledge or consent of anybody.
“One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under Melinda’s
window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door, which was
always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that if she was
going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and that if Josiah had
no respect for her she had some little respect for herself. She climbed
down the ladder with a good deal of difficulty, because she insisted that
Josiah should help her, and also that he should stand forty yards away,
for reasons connected with her ankles, and he found it rather trying
to follow out these contradictory orders. However, Melinda reached the
ground at last, and the pair started in a carriage that had been waiting
just around a bend in the road, in company with the Methodist minister.
Their plan was to drive to the next town and there to be married, but it
happened that one of the Smith boys, being restless, got up in the night,
and, looking out of the window, saw the ladder standing at Melinda’s
window. In about twenty minutes after the young people had started, the
whole Smith family and their shot-guns were following the runaways in a
wagon and gaining on them fast.
“The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard the
sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young people
that there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and would
be overtaken in a very few minutes. ‘And then, you know,’ he added,
‘the chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first and ask
for explanations afterward. The only thing for us to do is to get the
marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will see that
opposition is of no use and will listen to reason.’
“Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a little
clearing in the woods on the left-hand side of the road and a flat sort
of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he would stand on
that stone and marry his young friends so quick that it would make their
hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with a handy tombstone, for
he said that a tombstone was the next thing to a church, and that to be
married by the side of a tomb would be almost as solemn as to be married
in a minister’s study. So the party hastily descended, the parson mounted
the stone, Josiah and Melinda joined hands in front of him, and they were
married and the parson had kissed the bride and pocketed his fee just
as the Smiths’ wagon drove up and the Smith boys cocked their guns and
covered the party. But the parson was wide awake. He had his revolver
out and old man Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at him, but
instead of shooting he remarked that he was a minister of the blessed
gospel of peace, that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and that he
would blow a hole through old Smith unless the Smith boys lowered their
weapons and consented to argue the matter. ‘The fact is, Colonel Smith,’
said the parson, ‘you’re too late. The young people are legally married,
and the sooner you accept the situation the better. I married them not
two minutes ago, standing on that identical tombstone.’
[Illustration: “‘YOU’LL COME STRAIGHT HOME WITH ME.’”]
“Colonel Smith was a lawyer, and the sharpest one in that part of the
country. He saw the force of the minister’s remarks, so he told the
boys to put up their guns and he shook hands with the minister. Then he
inquired, in a careless sort of way, where Josiah and Melinda had stood
while they were being married. The parson showed the footprints of the
bride and groom, and then Colonel Smith turned to Melinda and said,
‘You’ll come straight home with me. There hasn’t been any marriage yet.
That stone is the boundary mark between Indiana and Illinois, and you
were standing in Indiana and that other idiot was standing in Illinois
when the parson tried to marry you. Nobody can marry in two States at the
same time, and I shan’t recognize the pretended marriage till a court
of law compels me to do so, which will be never. I hope this will teach
you the folly of fooling with Methodism. When you want to get married
next time try a Baptist minister, who will know the difference between a
tombstone and a boundary mark.’ There were too many Smiths and they were
too well armed to be reasoned with successfully, so the upshot was that
Melinda went home with her family and Josiah and the parson went to see a
lawyer.
“The next day Josiah brought a suit for divorce against Melinda. It was
a friendly suit, you understand, and his only object was to test the
question of the validity of his marriage, for, of course, no man can
get a divorce unless he first proves that he is married. Old man Smith
conducted the case on his side, and a lawyer named Starkweather, who is
now a member of the Illinois Legislature, appeared for Josiah Wilson.
Colonel Smith argued that while the parson who conducted the alleged
marriage ceremony could undoubtedly have married a couple in the State
of Indiana, he could not marry a woman in Indiana to a man in Illinois,
for the reason that the man and the woman could not be in the same place
while they were in two different commonwealths, and that hence Josiah
and Melinda had not legally appeared together before the officiating
minister. Furthermore, he argued that the minister at the time of the
pretended marriage was standing neither in Indiana nor in Illinois,
but on the boundary line; that the statute defined the boundary line as
‘an imaginary line’ running from such and such a point to such and such
a point, and that a minister who stands in a purely imaginary locality
stands virtually nowhere, and hence cannot perform any function of his
calling.
“On the other hand, Josiah’s lawyer claimed that the minister had married
Melinda Smith in the State of Indiana; that consequently she must have
been married to somebody, and that that somebody was unquestionably
Josiah Wilson. As to the point that the minister stood in an imaginary
locality because, as was alleged, he stood on the boundary line, the
lawyer maintained that it was a physical impossibility that a minister
weighing two hundred and fifty pounds could stand in a purely imaginative
place. Moreover, he was prepared to prove that while performing the
ceremony at least one of the minister’s feet was in the State of Indiana,
which was sufficient to make him legally present in that State.
“The arguments lasted three days, and the court before which it was
tried, consisting of three judges, took all the third day to deliver its
verdict. It decided that Melinda Smith was legally married to some person
unknown, though not to Josiah Wilson, and that Josiah Wilson was also
married to some unknown woman, who was not Melinda Smith, whoever else
she might be; that no marriage between the plaintiff and the defendant
had ever taken place; and that no divorce could be granted, but that if
either of them married any one else he or she would be guilty of bigamy.
“The Smiths, with the exception of Melinda, were delighted with the
decision, for it made it reasonably certain that Josiah could never be
recognized as her husband. She was a good deal cast down about it, for,
like every other Indiana girl, she had looked forward to being married
and divorced as the natural lot of woman. Now it appeared that she was
married, but in such an unsatisfactory way that she could never have
a husband and never be divorced from any one. As for Josiah, he was
furious, but there was no help for it; the law was against him, and, as a
law-abiding man, he was obliged to respect it, especially as he could not
hope to kill off all four of the Smiths if he decided to make a family
feud of it; he himself having no family whatever, and no one to help him
to keep up his end of the feud.