Of Mackerel,
Upon the air arose;
Each hungry guest
Great joy expressed,
And "sniff!" went every nose.
With glutton look
The Lion took
The spiced and sav'ry dish.
Without a pause
He worked his jaws,
And gobbled all the fish.
Then ate the roast,
The quail on toast,
The pork, both fat and lean;
The jam and lamb,
The potted ham,
And drank the kerosene.
He raised his voice:
"Come, all rejoice,
You've seen your monarch dine."
"Never again,"
Clucked the Hen,
And all sang _Old Lang Syne_.
THE BILLVILLE SPIRIT MEETING
BY FRANK L. STANTON
We had a sperrit meetin' (we'll never have no more!)
To call up all the sperrits of them that's "gone before."
A feller called a "medium" (he wuz of medium size),
Took the contract fer the fetchin' o' them sperrits from the skies.
The mayor--the town council--the parson an' his wife,
Come to shake han's with them sperrits what had left the other life;
The Colonel an' the Major--the coroner, an' all
Wuz waitin' an' debatin' in the darkness o' the hall.
The medium roared, "Silence! Amanda Jones appears!
Is her husband present?" ("No, sir--he's been restin' twenty years!")
"Here's the ghost of Sally Spilkins, from the lan' whar' glories glow:
Would her husband like to see her?" (An' a feeble voice said, "_No_!")
"Here's the wife of Colonel Buster; she wears a heavenly smile:
She wants to see the Colonel, an' she's comin' down the aisle!"
Then all wuz wild confusion--it warn't a bit o' fun!--
With "Lord, have mercy on me," the Colonel broke an' run!
Then the coroner got skeery an' scampered fer his life!
"Stop--stop him!" said the medium; "here comes his second wife!"
But thar' warn't a man could stop him in that whole blame settlement.--
He turned a double summersault an' out the winder went!
Then, the whole town council follered an' hollered all the way;
The parson said he had a call 'bout ten miles off, to pray!
He didn't preach nex' Sunday, an' they tell it roun' a bit,
Accordin' to the best reports the parson's runnin' yit!
A CRY FROM THE CONSUMER
BY WILBUR D. NESBIT
Grasshoppers roam the Kansas fields and eat the tender grass--
A trivial affair, indeed, but what then comes to pass?
You go to buy a panama, or any other hat;
You learn the price has been advanced a lot because of that.
A glacier up in Canada has slipped a mile or two--
A little thing like this can boost the selling price of glue.
Occurrences so tragic always thrill me to the core;
I hope and pray that nothing ever happens any more.
Last week the peaceful Indians went a-searching after scalps,
And then there was an avalanche 'way over in the Alps;
These diametric happenings seem nothing much, but look--
We had to add a dollar to the wages of the cook.
The bean-crop down at Boston has grown measurably less,
And so the dealer charges more for goods to make a dress.
Each day there is some incident to make a man feel sore,
I'm on my knees to ask that nothing happens any more.
It didn't rain in Utah and it did in old Vermont--
Result: it costs you fifty more to take a summer's jaunt;
Upon the plains of Tibet some tornadoes took a roll--
Therefore the barons have to charge a higher price for coal.
A street-car strike in Omaha has cumulative shocks--
It boosted huckleberries up to twenty cents a box.
No matter what is happening it always finds your door--
Give us a rest! Let nothing ever happen any more.
Mosquitoes in New Jersey bite a magnate on the wing--
Result: the poor consumer feels that fierce mosquito's sting:
The skeeter's song is silenced, but in something like an hour
The grocers understand that it requires a raise in flour.
A house burns down in Texas and a stove blows up in Maine,
Ten minutes later breakfast foods in prices show a gain.
Effects must follow causes--which is what I most deplore;
I hope and pray that nothing ever happens any more.
A DISAPPOINTMENT
BY JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
Her hair was a waving bronze, and her eyes
Deep wells that might cover a brooding soul;
And who, till he weighed it, could ever surmise
That her heart was a cinder instead of a coal!
THE BRITISH MATRON
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies
retain their personal beauty to a late period of life; but (not to
suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation, before it can
quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me
that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined
and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that we Western
people class under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of
frame, not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but
massive with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling
manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of
steaks and sirloins. When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When
she sits down it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool,
where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and
respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you
probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than
she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom
positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth
and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much
well-defined self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils,
troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a
foe. Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, or,
indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a
seventy-four-gun ship in time of peace; for, while you assure yourself
that there is no real danger, you can not help thinking how tremendous
would be her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort
to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold--nay, a
hundredfold--better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed
and haggard womankind; but I have not found reason to suppose that the
English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, and
strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher
physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, only in
society, and in the common routine of social affairs, and would be found
powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy
outside of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up.
You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the
recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny
arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding
development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle
to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose as this.
Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest,
slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has
unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very
seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a
certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender
womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other,
our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable
moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an
outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder
whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married
to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride,
since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he
ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder view of the case, that the
matrimonial bond can not be held to include the three-fourths of the
wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And as a
matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair
to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of
twenty-five years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that
corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into
possession since they were pronounced one flesh?
THE TRAGEDY OF IT
BY ALDEN CHARLES NOBLE
Alas for him, alas for it,
Alas for you and I!
When this I think I raise my mitt
To dry my weeping eye.
STAGE WHISPERS
BY CAROLYN WELLS
Deadheads tell no tales.
Stars are stubborn things.
All's not bold that titters.
Contracts make cowards of us all.
One good turn deserves an encore.
A little actress is a dangerous thing.
It's a long skirt that has no turning.
Stars rush in where angels fear to tread.
Managers never hear any good of themselves.
A manager is known by the company he keeps.
A plot is not without honor save in comic opera.
Take care of the dance and the songs will take care of themselves.
THE PETTIBONE LINEAGE
BY JAMES T. FIELDS
My name is Esek Pettibone, and I wish to affirm in the outset that it is
a good thing to be well-born. In thus connecting the mention of my name
with a positive statement, I am not aware that a catastrophe lies coiled
up in the juxtaposition. But I can not help writing plainly that I am
still in favor of a distinguished family-tree. ESTO PERPETUA! To have
had somebody for a great-grandfather that was somebody is exciting. To
be able to look back on long lines of ancestry that were rich, but
respectable, seems decorous and all right. The present Earl of Warwick,
I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done _him_ in
the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of
Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described Mount Washington,
I thought the Duke felt a propensity to "hunch up some." Somehow it is
pleasant to look down on the crowd and have a conscious right to do so.
Left an orphan at the tender age of four years, having no brothers or
sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell
into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar.
Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's
side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan looked
about for protection; but Patience Pettibone, in her stately way,
said,--"The boy belongs to a good family, and he shall never want while
his three aunts can support him." So I went to live with my plain, but
benignant protectors, in the state of New Hampshire.
During my boyhood the best-drilled lesson that fell to my keeping was
this: "Respect yourself. We come of more than ordinary parentage.
Superior blood was probably concerned in getting up the Pettibones. Hold
your head erect, and some day you shall have proof of your high
lineage."
I remember once, on being told that I must not share my juvenile sports
with the butcher's three little beings, I begged to know why not. Aunt
Eunice looked at Patience, and Mary Ann knew what she meant.
"My child," slowly murmured the eldest sister, "our family, no doubt,
came of a very old stock; perhaps we belong to the nobility. Our
ancestors, it is thought, came over laden with honors, and no doubt were
embarrassed with riches, though the latter importation has dwindled in
the lapse of years. Respect yourself, and when you grow up you will not
regret that your old and careful aunt did not wish you to play with the
butcher's offspring."
I felt mortified that I ever had a desire to "knuckle up" with any but
kings' sons, or sultans' little boys. I longed to be among my equals in
the urchin line, and fly my kite with only high-born youngsters.
Thus I lived in a constant scene of self-enchantment on the part of the
sisters, who assumed all the port and feeling that properly belonged to
ladies of quality. Patrimonial splendor to come danced before their dim
eyes; and handsome settlements, gay equipages, and a general grandeur of
some sort loomed up in the future for the American branch of the House
of Pettibone.
It was a life of opulent self-delusion, which my aunts were never tired
of nursing; and I was too young to doubt the reality of it. All the
members of our little household held up their heads, as if each said, in
so many words, "There is no original sin in _our_ composition, whatever
of that commodity there may be mixed up with the common clay of
Snowborough."
Aunt Patience was a star, and dwelt apart. Aunt Eunice looked at her
through a determined pair of spectacles, and worshiped while she gazed.
The youngest sister lived in a dreamy state of honors to come, and had
constant zoölogical visions of lions, griffins, and unicorns, drawn and
quartered in every possible style known to the Heralds' College. The
Reverend Hebrew Bullet, who used to drop in quite often and drink
several compulsory glasses of home-made wine, encouraged his three
parishoners in their aristocratic notions, and extolled them for what he
called their "stooping-down to every-day life." He differed with the
ladies of our house only on one point. He contended that the unicorn of
the Bible and the rhinoceros of to-day were one and the same animal. My
aunts held a different opinion.
In the sleeping-room of my Aunt Patience reposed a trunk. Often during
my childish years I longed to lift the lid and spy among its contents
the treasures my young fancy conjured up as lying there in state. I
dared not ask to have the cover raised for my gratification, as I had
often been told I was "too little" to estimate aright what that armorial
box contained. "When you grow up, you shall see the inside of it," Aunt
Mary used to say to me; and so I wondered, and wished, but all in vain.
I must have the virtue of _years_ before I could view the treasures of
past magnificence so long entombed in that wooden sarcophagus. Once I
saw the faded sisters bending over the trunk together, and, as I
thought, embalming something in camphor. Curiosity impelled me to
linger, but, under some pretext, I was nodded out of the room.
Although my kinswomen's means were far from ample, they determined that
Swiftmouth College should have the distinction of calling me one of her
sons, and accordingly I was in due time sent for preparation to a
neighboring academy. Years of study and hard fare in country
boarding-houses told upon my self-importance as the descendant of a
great Englishman, notwithstanding all my letters from the honored three
came with counsel to "respect myself and keep up the dignity of the
family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of
respectability is apt to give place to the levity of football and other
low-toned accomplishments. The book of life, at that period, opens
readily at fun and frolic, and the insignia of greatness give the
school-boy no envious pangs.
I was nineteen when I entered the hoary halls of Swiftmouth. I call them
hoary, because they had been built more than fifty years. To me they
seemed uncommonly hoary, and I snuffed antiquity in the dusty purlieus.
I now began to study, in good earnest, the wisdom of the past. I saw
clearly the value of dead men and mouldy precepts, especially if the
former had been entombed a thousand years, and if the latter were well
done in sounding Greek and Latin. I began to reverence royal lines of
deceased monarchs, and longed to connect my own name, now growing into
college popularity, with some far-off mighty one who had ruled in pomp
and luxury his obsequious people. The trunk in Snowborough troubled my
dreams. In that receptacle still slept the proof of our family
distinction. "I will go," quoth I, "to the home of my aunts next
vacation and there learn _how_ we became mighty, and discover precisely
why we don't practice to-day our inherited claims to glory."
I went to Snowborough. Aunt Patience was now anxious to lay before her
impatient nephew the proof he burned to behold. But first she must
explain. All the old family documents and letters were, no doubt,
destroyed in the great fire of '98, as nothing in the shape of parchment
or paper implying nobility had ever been discovered in Snowborough, or
elsewhere. _But_ there had been preserved, for many years, a suit of
imperial clothes that had been worn, by their great-grandfather in
England, and, no doubt, in the New World also. These garments had been
carefully watched and guarded, for were they not the proof that their
owner belonged to a station in life second, if second at all, to the
royal court of King George itself? Precious casket, into which I was
soon to have the privilege of gazing! Through how many long years these
fond, foolish virgins had lighted their unflickering lamps of
expectation and hope at this cherished old shrine!
I was now on my way to the family repository of all our greatness. I
went up stairs "on the jump." We all knelt down before the
well-preserved box; and my proud Aunt Patience, in a somewhat reverent
manner, turned the key. My heart,--I am not ashamed to confess it now,
although it is forty years since the quartet, in search of family
honors, were on their knees that summer afternoon in Snowborough,--my
heart beat high. I was about to look on that which might be a duke's or
an earl's regalia. And I was descended from the owner in a direct line!
I had lately been reading Shakespeare's _Titus Andronicus_; and I
remembered, there before the trunk, the lines:
"O sacred receptacle of my joys,
Sweet cell of virtue and nobility!"
The lid went up, and the sisters began to unroll the precious garments,
which seemed all enshrined in aromatic gums and spices. The odor of that
interior lives with me to this day; and I grow faint with the memory of
that hour. With pious precision the clothes were uncovered, and at last
the whole suit was laid before my expectant eyes.
Reader! I am an old man now, and have not long to walk this planet. But
whatever dreadful shock may be in reserve for my declining years, I am
certain I can bear it; for I went through that scene at Snowborough, and
still live!
When the garments were fully displayed, all the aunts looked at me. I
had been to college; I had studied Burke's _Peerage_; I had been once to
New York. Perhaps I could immediately name the exact station in noble
British life to which that suit of clothes belonged. I could; I saw it
all at a glance. I grew flustered and pale. I dared not look my poor
deluded female relatives in the face.
"What rank in the peerage do these gold-laced garments and big buttons
betoken?" cried all three.
"_It is a suit of servant's livery!_" gasped I, and fell back with a
shudder.
That evening, after the sun had gone down, we buried those hateful
garments in a ditch at the bottom of the garden. Rest there perturbed
body-coat, yellow trousers, brown gaiters, and all!
"Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!"
WHY MOLES HAVE HANDS
BY ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON
One day the children came running to Aunt Nancy with a mole which one of
the dogs had just killed. They had never seen one before and were very
curious as to what it might be.
"Well, befo' de king!" said Nancy, "whar y'all bin livin' dat you nuver
seed a mole befo'? Whar you come f'um mus' be a mighty cur'ous spot ef
dey ain' have no moleses dar; mus' be sump'n wrong wid dat place. I bin
mos' all over dish yer Sussex kyounty endurin' er my time, an' I ain'
nuver come 'cross no place yit whar dey ain' have moleses.
"Moleses is sut'n'y cur'ous li'l creeturs," she continued. "I bin
teckin' tickler notuss un 'em dis long time, an' dey knows mo'n you'd
think fer, jes' ter look at 'em. Dough dey lives down un'need de groun',
yit dey is fus'class swimmers; I done seed one, wid my own eyes,
crossin' de branch, an' dey kin root 'long un'need de yearf mos' ez fas'
ez a hoss kin trot on top uv hit. Y'all neenter look dat-a-way, 'kase
hit's de trufe; dey's jes' built fer gittin' 'long fas' unner groun'.
Der han's is bofe pickaxes an' shovels fer 'em; dey digs an' scoops wid
der front ones an' kicks de dirt out de way wid der behime ones. Der
strong snouts he'ps 'em, too, ter push der way thu de dirt."
"Their fur is just as soft and shiny as silk," said Janey.
"Yas," said Aunt Nancy, "hit's dat sof an' shiny dat, dough dey live
all time in de dirt, not a speck er dirt sticks to 'em. You ses 'sof an'
shiny ez silk,' but I tell you hit _is_ silk; silk clo'es, dat 'zackly
w'at 'tis."
Ned laughed. "Who ever heard of an animal dressed in silk clothes?" he
said.
"Nemmine," she answered, "you talks mighty peart, but I knows w'at I
knows, an' dish yer I bin tellin' you is de sho'-'nuff trufe."
"Just see its paws," Janey went on, "why, they look exactly like hands."
"Look lak _han's_! _look_ lak han's! umph! dey _is_ han's, all thumbered
an' fingered jes lak yo'n; an', w'at's mo', dey wuz onct human ban's;
_human_, dey wuz so!"
"How could they ever have been human hands and then been put on a mole's
body?" asked Ned. "I believe most things you say, Aunt Nancy, but I
can't swallow that."
"Dar's a li'l boy roun' dese diggin's whar talkin' mighty sassy an'
rambunkshus, seem ter me. I am' ax you ter swoller nuttin' 't all, but
'pears ter me y'all bin swollerin' dem 'ar ol' tales right an' lef,
faster'n' I kin call 'em ter min', an' I am' seed none er you choke on
'em yit, ner cry, 'nuff said. I'se 'tickler saw'y 'bout dis, 'kase I
done had hit in min' ter tell you a tale 'bout huccome moleses have
han'ses, whar I larn f'um a ooman dat come f'um Fauquier kyounty, but
now dat Mars' Ned 'pear ter be so jubous 'bout hit, I ain' gwine was'e
my time on folks whar ain' gwine b'lieve me, nohows. Nemmine, de chillen
over on de Thompson place gwine baig me fer dat tale w'en I goes dar
ag'in, an', w'at's mo', dey gwine git hit; fer dey b'lieves ev'y wu'd
dat draps f'um my mouf, lak 'twuz de law an' de gospil."
Of course, the children protested that they were as ready to hang upon
her words as the Thompson children could possibly be, and presented
their prior claim to the tale in such moving fashion that Aunt Nancy was
finally prevailed upon to come down from her high horse and tell the
story.
"I done tol' you," she said, "dat dem 'ar han's is human, an' I mean
jes' w'at I ses, 'kase de moleses useter be folks, sho'-'nuff folks,
dough dey is all swunk up ter dis size an' der han's is all dat's lef
ter tell de tale. Yas, suh, in de ol' days, so fur back dat you kain't
kyount hit, de moleses wuz folks, an' mighty proud an' biggitty folks at
dat. Dey wan't gwine be ketched wearin' any er dish yer kaliker, er
linsey-woolsey, er homespun er sech ez dat, ner even broadclawf, ner
bombazine, naw suh! Dey jes' tricked derse'fs out in de fines' an'
shinies' er silk, nuttin' mo' ner less, an' den dey went a-traipsin' up
an' down an' hether an' yon, fer tu'rr folks ter look at an' mek
'miration over. Mo'n dat, dey 'uz so fine an' fiddlin' dey oon set foot
ter de groun' lessen dar wuz a kyarpet spread down fer 'em ter walk on.
Dey tells me hit sut'n'y wuz a sight in de worl' ter see dem 'ar folks
walkin' up an' down on de kyarpets, trailin' an' rus'lin' der silk
clo'es, an' curchyin' an' bobbin' ter one nu'rr w'en dey met up, but
nuver speakin' ter de common folks whar walkin' on de groun', ner even
so much ez lookin' at 'em. W'ats mo', dey wuz so uppish dey thought de
yearf wuz too low down fer 'em even ter run der eyes over, so dey went
'long wid der haids r'ared an' der eyes all time lookin' up, stidder
down. You kin be sho' dem gwines-on ain' mek 'em pop'lous wid tu'rr
folks, 'kase people jes' natchelly kain't stan' hit ter have you
th'owin' up to 'em dat you is better'n w'at dey is, w'en all de time dey
knows you're nuttin' but folks, same 'z dem.
"Dey kep' gwine on so-fashion, an' gittin' mo' an' mo' pompered an'
uppish, 'twel las' dey 'tracted de 'tention er de Lawd, an' He say ter
Hisse'f, He do, 'Who is dese yer folks, anyhows, whar gittin' so airish,
walkin' up an' down an' back an' fo'th on my yearf an' spurnin' hit
so's't dey spread kyarpets 'twix' hit an' der footses, treatin' my
yearf, w'at I done mek, lak 'twuz de dirt un'need der footses, an'
'spisin' der feller creeturs an' excusin' 'em er bein' common, an'
keepin' der eyes turnt up all de time, ez ef dey wuz too good ter look
at de things I done mek an' putt on my yearf? I mus' see 'bout dis; I
mus' punish dese 'sumptious people an' show 'em dat one'r my creeturs is
jez' ez low down ez tu'rr, in my sight.'