Melinda mourned her hard fate and kept house for her father and brothers;
but one day Josiah’s lawyer, who was by this time in the legislature,
came to him and offered to have his marriage to Melinda made legal in
all respects for five hundred dollars. The lawyer was so certain that
he could do this that he was willing to wait for his pay until after
he had gained a verdict, and Josiah, after a little bargaining such as
every self-respecting man would have made in his place, consented to the
lawyer’s terms. It seems that the lawyer had accidentally discovered
that there had been a mistake in the survey of part of the boundary line
between Indiana and Illinois, and at the very place where Josiah and
Melinda were married. A rectification of this mistake would move the line
ten feet west, and so place the spot where the pair stood during their
wedding entirely within the State of Indiana. The proper steps to obtain
the rectification of the boundary were taken, and it was rectified.
Then Melinda in her turn began a suit for divorce against Josiah, and
had no difficulty in proving the marriage and in obtaining a decree.
Josiah paid the lawyer his five hundred dollars and was overjoyed at
being finally able to call his Melinda his own. But he met with a little
disappointment. Now that Melinda had obtained her divorce, she thought
she might as well live up to it and marry a fresh husband. So she married
the Methodist minister, who had just lost his third wife, and lived
happily ever afterward.
“It was just after this that Josiah, being perhaps made a little reckless
by his disappointment, became involved in the affair that I was going
to tell you about when you interrupted me and wanted to hear about his
marriage. Matrimony is a mighty curious thing, and you can never tell
precisely how it is going to turn out. That is one reason why I was never
married but once, though I spent ten years of my life in Chicago, and
had friends at the bar who stood ready to obtain divorces for me at any
moment and without a dollar of expense.”
HOSKINS’ PETS.
“Yes!” said the Colonel reflectively, “I’ve been almost everywhere in my
time except in jail, and I’ve been in a great deal worse places than a
first-class American jail with all the modern improvements. The fact is
that philanthropic people have gone so far in improving the condition of
prisoners that most of our prisons are rather better than most of our
hotels. At any rate, they are less expensive and the guests are treated
with more respect.
“I never could understand a craze that some people have for prisoners.
For instance, in New York and Chicago the young ladies have a society
for giving flowers to murderers. Whenever a man is convicted of murder
and sentenced to be hanged, the girls begin to heave flowers into his
cell till he can’t turn round without upsetting a vase of roses or a big
basinful of pansies and getting his feet wet. I once knew a murderer who
told me that if anything could reconcile him to being hung it would be in
getting rid of the floral tributes that the girls lavished on him. You
see, he was one of the leading murderers in that section of country, and
consequently he received about a cart-load of flowers every day.
[Illustration: “HEAVE FLOWERS INTO HIS CELL.”]
“I had a neighbor when I lived in New Berlinopolisville who was President
of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, and he
was the craziest man on the subject that I ever met. His name was
Hoskins—Colonel Uriah Hoskins. He was the author of the Hoskins Bill
that attracted so much attention when it was before the legislature,
though it never became law. The hill provided that every prisoner should
have a sitting-room as well as a sleeping-room, and that it should be
furnished with a piano, a banjo, a library, a typewriter, a wine-cooler,
and a whist-table; that the prisoner should be permitted to hold two
weekly receptions, to which everybody should be allowed to come, and that
he should be taught any branch of study that he might care to take up,
books and masters being, of course, supplied free. Colonel Hoskins used
to insist that the only thing that made a man go wrong was the lack of
kindness, and that the sure way to reform a criminal was to treat him
with so much kindness that he would grow ashamed of being wicked, and
would fall on everybody’s neck and devote the rest of his life to weeping
tears of repentance and singing hymns of joy.
“While Colonel Hoskins was fond of all styles of criminals, burglars were
his particular pets. According to him, a burglar was more deserving of
kindness than any other man. ‘How would you like it,’ he used to say, ‘if
you had to earn your living by breaking into houses in the middle of the
night, instead of sleeping peacefully in your bed? Do you think you would
be full of good thoughts after you had been bitten by the watch-dog and
fired at by the man of the house, and earned nothing by your labor except
a bad cold and the prospect of hydrophobia? There is nothing more brutal
than the way in which society treats the burglar; and so long as society
refuses to put him in the way of earning an easier and less dangerous
living, he cannot be blamed if he continues to practise his midnight
profession.’
“I must say this for Colonel Hoskins. He did not confine himself to talk,
like many other philanthropists, but was always trying to carry out his
principles. He really meant what he said about burglars, and there isn’t
the least doubt that he had more sympathy for them than he had for the
honest men of his acquaintance.
“When people asked him what he would do if he woke up in the night and
found a burglar in his house, and whether or not he would shoot at him,
he said that he would as soon think of shooting at his own wife, and that
he would undertake to reform that burglar, then and there, by kindness
alone. Once somebody said to Hoskins that he ought really to let the
burglars know his feelings toward them, and Hoskins said that he would do
it without delay.
“That same day he drew up a beautiful ‘Notice to Burglars,’ and had it
printed in big letters and framed and hung up in the dining-room of his
house. It read in this way: ‘Burglars are respectfully informed that the
silverware is all plated, and that the proprietor of this house never
keeps ready money on hand. Cake and wine will be found in the dining-room
closet, and burglars are cordially invited to rest and refresh
themselves. Please wipe your feet on the mat, and close the window when
leaving the house.’
“Colonel Hoskins took a good deal of pride in that notice. He showed it
to every one who called at the house, and said that if other people would
follow his example and treat burglars like Christians and gentlemen,
there would soon be an end of burglary, for the burglars would be so
touched by the kindness of their treatment that they would abandon the
business and become honored members of society—insurance presidents,
or bank cashiers, or church treasurers. He didn’t say how the reformed
burglars were to find employment in banks and insurance offices and such,
but that was a matter of detail, and he always preferred to devise large
and noble schemes, and leave the working details of them to other men.
“One morning Colonel Hoskins, who was an early riser, went down to the
dining-room before breakfast, and was surprised to find that he had had a
midnight visit from burglars. Two empty wine-bottles stood on the table,
and all the cake was eaten, which showed that the burglars had accepted
the invitation to refresh themselves. But they did not seem to have
accepted it in quite the right spirit. All Hoskins’ spoons and forks lay
in a heap in the middle of the floor, and every one was twisted or broken
so as to be good for nothing. The window had been left open and the rain
had ruined the curtains, and on a dirty piece of paper the burglars had
scrawled with a lead-pencil the opinion that ‘Old Hoskins is the biggest
fule and the gol-darndest skinflint in the country. You set out whiskey
next time, or we’ll serve you out.’
“Hoskins was not in the least cast down by the rudeness of the burglars.
‘Poor fellows,’ he said, ‘they have been so used to bad treatment that
they don’t altogether appreciate kindness at first. But they will learn.’
So he laid in some new spoons and forks and added a bottle of whiskey
to the wine that he kept in the closet for the burglars, and was as
confident as ever that the next gang that might break into his house
would be melted into tears and repentance and would call him their best
and dearest friend.
“A week or two later Mrs. Hoskins was awakened by a noise in the
dining-room, and after waking up her husband told him that there were
burglars in the house, and that he must get out of the back window and
go for the police. He told her that he was sorry to see her manifest
such an unchristian spirit, and he would show her how burglars ought to
be treated. There was not the least doubt that there were burglars in
the house, and they were making a good deal more noise than was strictly
consistent with the prospect of rising in their profession, for no able
burglar ever makes any unnecessary noise while engaged in business,
unless, of course, he falls over a coal-scuttle, and then he naturally
uses language. St. Paul himself would probably say something pretty
strong in similar circumstances. Hoskins was sincerely delighted to have
the opportunity to meet his burglarious friends, and he lost no time in
dressing and descending to the dining-room.
“He wore his slippers, and the burglars—there were two of them—did not
hear him until he was fairly in the dining room. They were seated at
the table, with their feet on the damask table-cloth, and the bottle of
whiskey was nearly empty. The Colonel was much pleased to see that they
had not damaged his silverware, and he was just about to thank them when
they saw him. They started up, and one of them caught him by the throat,
while the other held a pistol to his head and promised to blow out his
brains if he made the slightest noise. Then they tied him hand and foot,
gagged him, and laid him on the floor, and then sat down to finish the
whiskey.
“Both the burglars were partly drunk, which accounted for the
unprofessional noise they had been making. They talked in rather a
low tone, but Hoskins could hear everything they said, and it was not
particularly encouraging to a gagged and bound philanthropist. They
agreed that he was a fool, and a stingy fool, or else he would have kept
money in the house, and would have set out lemons and sugar as well as
plain whiskey. They said that any man who treated poor working-men in
that way wasn’t fit to live, and that Hoskins would have to be killed,
even if it was not necessary—as it plainly was in this case—to kill him
in order to prevent him from appearing at any future time as a witness
against them. They admitted that the whiskey was not bad of its kind, but
they were of the opinion that Hoskins had left it in their way so that
they might get drunk and be caught by the police.
“Colonel Hoskins listened to this conversation with horror, and the
prospect that the drunken rascals would be as good as their word, and
kill him before they left the house, was only a little more painful
than the conviction that his method, appealing to the better nature of
burglars, had failed for the second time. When the whiskey was exhausted
the men rose up and looked at Hoskins, and a happy thought struck one of
them. ‘Thishyer idiot,’ he said, ‘may not have any money in the house,
but he’s bound to have some in the bank, and he’s going to write us a
check for a thousand dollars, provided we let him off and don’t kick his
brains out this time.’ The other burglar, who was in that benevolent
frame of mind that Irish whiskey and conscious virtue sometimes produce,
agreed to the suggestion, and Hoskins was therefore unbound and seated at
the table, and told to draw a check at once if he had the least regard
for his life. As he was gagged he could not explain to the burglars the
kind feelings that he still had toward them, and the fact that they could
not draw the money on the check without being captured by the police. So
he simply signed the check, and groaned to think that the poor burglars
were so slow to be reformed in the way that he had hoped they would be.
[Illustration: “TIED HIM IN A CHAIR.”]
“When this business was over, the burglars tied Hoskins’ wrists together
again and then tied him in a chair. Then they set to work to do all
the damage they could do without making too much noise. They tore the
curtains and hacked the piano with knives, and poured a jug of golden
syrup over the carpet. Then they plastered Colonel Hoskins’ face with
raspberry jam and emptied a sack of flour over his head, and went away,
telling him that if he ever again ventured to trifle with the feelings
of poor but self-respecting men, they would put him to death by slow
tortures.
“Hoskins sat in the chair for a couple of hours, till his wife timidly
crept downstairs and released him. It took him a good hour to get the jam
and the flour out of his hair and whiskers, and as Mrs. Hoskins said that
he was in no state to enter a decent bedroom and made him wash at the
pump in the back yard, he found it a rather cold operation. Perhaps it
was the remarks that Mrs. Hoskins addressed to him during the operation
that irritated him, for she intimated very plainly that he was no better
than a professional idiot, and when a man’s hair is stuck together with
jam, remarks of this sort from the wife of his bosom seem to be lacking
in tenderness. However that may be, Colonel Hoskins had no sooner got
himself into what his wife condescended to call a state of comparative
decency, than he took down his ‘Notice to Burglars’ and tore it into a
thousand pieces. That day he had an electric burglar-alarm put into his
house, he bought the savagest dog that he could find, and he stopped the
payment of the check, which, however, was never presented. He continued
to be the President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of
Prisoners, but he steadily refused to ameliorate a single prisoner
convicted of burglary, and while he was always a lunatic in regard to
other criminals, he openly maintained that a burglar was the worst of
men and that kindness was utterly thrown away upon him. He never had any
more burglars in his house, though the dog now and then lunched off warm
leg when some stranger to that part of the country ventured into the
Hoskins premises at night. Hoskins was very fond of the animal, which was
quite right, but his practice of leaving a bottle of whiskey, with an
ounce of strychnine in it, on the dining-room table every night, in case
a burglar should succeed in getting into the house, was, in my opinion,
going a little too far. Antimonial wine would have been much more humane
and sufficiently effective. But there is no man who is more severe than a
philanthropist who has been turned sour.”
THE CAT’S REVENGE.
We had been discussing the Darwinian hypothesis, and the Colonel had
maintained a profound silence, which was sufficient evidence that he did
not believe in the development of man from the lower animals. Some one,
however, asked him plumply his opinion of Darwinism, and he sententiously
replied, “Darned nonsense!”
Feeling that this view of the matter possibly merited expansion, the
Colonel caused his chair to assume its customary oratorical attitude on
its two rear legs, and began to discourse.
“There are some things,” he remarked, “which do look as if there might
be a grain of truth in this monkey theory. For instance, when I was in
France I was pretty nearly convinced that the monkey is the connecting
link between man and the Frenchmen, but after all there is no proof
of it. That’s what’s the matter with Darwinism. When you produce a man
who can remember that his grandfather was a monkey, or when you show me
a monkey that can produce papers to prove that he is my second cousin,
I’ll believe all Darwin said on the subject; but as the thing stands
I’ve nothing but Darwin’s word to prove that men and monkeys are near
relations. So far as I can learn, Darwin didn’t know as much about
animals as a man ought to know who undertakes to invent a theory about
them. He never was intimate with dogs and he never drove an army mule. He
had a sort of bowing acquaintance with monkeys and a few other animals of
no particular standing in the community, but he couldn’t even understand
a single animal language. Now, if he had gone to work and learned to read
and write and speak the monkey language, as that American professor that
you were just speaking of has done, he might have been able to give us
some really valuable information.
“Do I believe that animals talk? I don’t simply believe it, I know
it. When I was a young man I had a good deal to do with animals, and
I learned to understand the cat language just as well as I understood
English. It’s an easy language when once you get the hang of it, and
from what I hear of German the two are considerably alike. You look as
if you didn’t altogether believe me, though why you should doubt that a
man can learn cat language when the world is full of men that pretend to
have learned German, and nobody calls their word in question, I don’t
precisely see.
“Of course, I don’t pretend to understand all the cat dialects. For
example, I don’t know a word of the Angora dialect and can only
understand a sentence here and there of the tortoise-shell dialect; but
so far as good, pure standard cat language goes, it’s as plain as print
to me to-day, though I haven’t paid any attention to it for forty years.
I don’t want you to understand that I ever spoke it. I always spoke
English when I was talking with cats. They all understand English as well
as you do. They pick it up just as a child picks up a language from
hearing it spoken.
“Forty years ago I was a young man, and, like most young men, I fancied
that I was in love with a young woman of our town. There isn’t the least
doubt in my mind that I should have married her if I had not known the
cat language. She afterward married a man whom she took away to Africa
with her as a missionary. I knew him well, and he didn’t want to go to
Africa. Said he had no call to be a missionary, and that all he wanted
was to live in a Christian country where he could go and talk with the
boys in the bar-room evenings. But his wife carried him off, and it’s my
belief that if I had married her she would have made me turn missionary,
or pirate, or anything else that she thought best. I shall never cease to
be grateful to Thomas Aquinas for saving me from that woman.
[Illustration: “I HAD AN OLD NEGRO HOUSEKEEPER AND TWO CATS.”]
“This was the way of it. I was living in a little cottage that belonged
to my uncle, and that he let me have rent free on condition that I should
take care of it and keep the grounds in an attractive state until he
could sell it. I had an old negro housekeeper and two cats. One of them,
Martha Washington by name, was young and handsome, and about as bright
a cat as I ever knew. She had a strong sense of humor, too, which is
unusual with cats, and when something amused her she would throw back her
head and open her mouth wide, and laugh a silent laugh that was as hearty
and rollicking as a Methodist parson’s laugh when he hears a gray-haired
joke at a negro minstrel show. Martha was perhaps the most popular cat in
the town, and there was scarcely a minute in the day when there wasn’t
some one of her admirers in the back yard. As for serenades, she had
three or four every night that it didn’t rain. There was a quartette
club formed by four first-class feline voices, and the club used to give
Martha and me two or three hours of music three times a week. I used
sometimes to find as many as six or seven old boots in the back yard of
a morning that had been contributed by enthusiastic neighbors. As for
society, Martha Washington was at the top of the heap. There wasn’t a
more fashionable cat in the whole State of Ohio—I was living in Ohio at
the time—and in spite of it all she was as simple and unaffected in her
ways as if she had been born and bred in a Quaker meeting-house.
“One afternoon Martha was giving a four-o’clock milk on the veranda
next to my room. I always gave her permission to give that sort of
entertainment whenever she wanted to, for the gossip of her friends used
to be very amusing to me. Among the guests that afternoon was Susan’s
Maltese cat. Susan was the young lady I wanted to marry. Now, this cat
had always pretended to be very fond of me, and Susan often said that
her cat never made a mistake in reading character, and that the cat’s
approval of me was equivalent to a first-class Sunday-school certificate
of moral character. I didn’t care anything about the cat myself, for
somehow I didn’t place any confidence in her professions. There was an
expression about her tail which, to my mind, meant that she was insincere
and treacherous. The Maltese cat had finished her milk, when the
conversation drifted around to the various mistresses of the cats, and
presently some one spoke of Susan. Then the Maltese began to say things
about Susan that made my blood boil. It was not only what she said, but
what she insinuated, and according to her Susan was one of the meanest
and most contemptible women in the whole United States. I stood it as
long as I could, and then I got up and said to Martha Washington, ‘I
think your Maltese friend is needed at her home, and the sooner she goes
the better if she doesn’t want to be helped home with a club.’ That was
enough. The Maltese, who was doing up her back fur when I spoke, stopped,
looked at me as if she could tear me into pieces, and then flounced out
of the house without saying a word. I understood that there was an end to
her pretence of friendship for me, and that henceforth I should have an
enemy in Susan’s house who might, perhaps, be able to do me a good deal
of harm.
[Illustration: “POOR PUSSY’S NERVES ARE THOROUGHLY UPSET.”]
“The next time I called to see Susan the Maltese was in the room, and she
instantly put up her back and tail and swore at me as if I was a Chinaman
on the lookout for material for a stolen dinner. ‘What can be the matter
with poor pussy?’ said Susan. ‘She seems to be so terribly afraid of
you all of a sudden. I hope it doesn’t mean that you have been doing
something that she doesn’t approve of.’ I didn’t make any reply to this
insinuation, except to say that the cat might perhaps be going mad, but
this didn’t help me any with Susan, who was really angry at the idea that
her cat could be capable of going mad.
“The same sort of thing happened every time I went to the house. The cat
was always in the room, and always expressed, in the plainest way, the
opinion that I was a thief and a murderer and an enemy of the temperance
society. When I asked her what she meant to do, she would give me no
reply except a fresh oath or other bad language. Threats had no effect on
her, for she knew that I could not touch her in Susan’s house, and she
didn’t intend that I should catch her outside of the house. Nothing was
clearer than that the Maltese was bound to make a quarrel between me and
Susan, in revenge for what I had said at Martha’s four-o’clock milk.
“Meanwhile Susan began to take the thing very seriously, and hinted that
the cat’s opposition to me might be a providential warning against me.
‘I never knew her to take such a prejudice against any one before,’ she
said, ‘except against that converted Jew who afterward turned out to be
a burglar, and nearly murdered poor dear Mr. Higby, the Baptist preacher,
the night he broke into Mr. Higby’s house and stole all his hams.’ Once
when I did manage to give the Maltese a surreptitious kick, and she
yelled as if she was half-killed, Susan said, ‘I am really afraid I shall
have to ask you to leave us now. Poor pussy’s nerves are so thoroughly
upset that I must devote all my energies to soothing her. I do hope she
is mistaken in her estimate of you.’ This was not very encouraging, and I
saw clearly that if the Maltese kept up her opposition the chances that
Susan would marry me were not worth a rush.
“Did I tell you that I had a large gray cat by the name of Thomas
Aquinas? He was in some respects the most remarkable cat I ever met.
Most people considered him rather a dull person, but among cats he was
conceded to have a colossal mind. Cats would come from miles away to
ask his advice about things. I don’t mean such trifling matters as his
views on mice-catching—which, by the way, is a thing that has very
little interest for most cats—or his opinion of the best way in which
to get a canary bird through the bars of a cage. They used to consult
him on matters of the highest importance, and the opinions that he used
to give would have laid over those of Benjamin Franklin himself. Why,
Martha Washington told me that Thomas Aquinas knew more about bringing up
kittens than the oldest and most experienced feline matron that she had
ever known. As for common sense, Thomas Aquinas was just a solid chunk of
it, as you might say, and I get into the habit of consulting him whenever
I wanted a good, safe, cautious opinion. He would see at a glance where
the trouble was, and would give me advice that no lawyer could have
beaten, no matter how big a fee he might have charged.