the editor, but he was still slumbering. He shook him mildly, but he did
not wake. Then Elijah took him by the collar and lifted him up so that
he could see the editor's face.
It was a pale, still face, firm in its new resolution to forever "let it
alone." On the temple and under the heavy sweep of brown hair there was
a powder-burned spot and the cruel affidavit of the "Smith & Wesson"
that our wife had obtained her decree.
The editor of the _Pizenweed_ had demonstrated at he could drink or he
could let it alone.
My Bachelor Chum
O a corpulent man is my bachelor chum,
With a neck apoplectic and thick,
And an abdomen on him as big as a drum,
And a fist big enough for the stick;
With a walk that for grace is clear out of the case,
And a wobble uncertain--as though
His little bow-legs had forgotten the pace
That in youth used to favor him so.
He is forty, at least; and the top of his head
Is a bald and a glittering thing;
And his nose and his two chubby cheeks are as red
As three rival roses in spring.
His mouth is a grin with the corners tucked in
And his laugh is so breezy and bright
That it ripples his features and dimples his chin
With a billowy look of delight.
He is fond of declaring he "don't care a straw"--
That "the ills of a bachelor's life
Are blisses compared with a mother-in-law,
And a boarding-school miss for a wife!"
So he smokes, and he drinks, and he jokes and he winks,
And he dines, and he wines all alone,
With a thumb ever ready to snap as he thinks
Of the comforts he never has known.
But up in his den--(Ah, my bachelor chum!)
I have sat with him there in the gloom,
When the laugh of his lips died away to become
But a phantom of mirth in the room!
And to look on him there you would love him, for all
His ridiculous ways, and be dumb
As the little girl-face that smiles down from the wall
On the tears of my bachelor chum.
The Philanthropical Jay
It had been ten long years since I last met Jay Gould until I called
upon him yesterday to renew the acquaintance and discuss the happy past.
Ten years of patient toil and earnest endeavor on my part, ten years of
philanthropy on his, have been filed away in the grim and greedy
heretofore. Both of us have changed in that time, though Jay has changed
more than I have. Perhaps that is because he has been thrown more in
contact with change than I have.
Still, I had changed a good deal in those years, for when I called at
Irvington yesterday Mr. Gould did not remember me. Neither did the
watchful but overestimated dog in the front yard. Mr. Gould lives in
comfort, in a cheery home, surrounded by hired help and a barbed-wire
fence.
By wearing ready-made clothes, instead of having his clothing made
especially for himself, he has been enabled to amass a good many
millions of dollars with which he is enabled to buy things.
Carefully concealing the fact that I had any business relations with the
press, I gave my card to the person who does chores for Mr. Gould, and,
apologizing for not having dropped in before, I took a seat in the spare
room to wait for the great railroad magnate.
Mr. Gould entered the room with a low, stealthy tread, and looked me
over in a cursory way and yet with the air of a connoisseur.
"I believe that I have never had the pleasure of meeting you before,
sir," said the great railroad swallower and amateur Philanthropist with
a tinge of railroad irony.
[Illustration]
"Yes, sir, we met some ten years ago," said I, lightly running my
fingers over the keys of the piano in order to show him that I was
accustomed to the sight of a piano. "I was then working in the rolling
mill at Laramie City, Wyo., and you came to visit the mill, which was
then operated by the Union Pacific Railroad Company. You do not remember
me because I have purchased a different pair of trousers since I saw
you, and the cane which I wear this season changes my whole appearance
also. I remember you, however, very much."
"Well, if we grant all that, Mr. Nye, will you excuse me for asking you
to what I am indebted for this call?"
[Illustration]
"Well, Mr. Gould," said I, rising to my full height and putting my soft
hat on the brow of the Venus de Milo, after which I seated myself
opposite him in a _degage_ Western way, "you are indebted to _me_ for
this call. That's what you're indebted to. But we will let that pass.
We are not here to talk about indebtedness, Jay. If you are busy you
needn't return this call till next winter. But I am here just to
converse in a quiet way, as between man and man; to talk over the past,
to ask you how your conduct is and to inquire if I can do you any good
in any way whatever. This is no time to speak pieces and ask in a
grammatical way, 'To what you are indebted for this call.' My main
object in coming up here was to take you by the hand and ask you how
your memory is this spring? Judging from what I could hear, I was led to
believe that it was a little inclined to be sluggish and atrophied days
and to keep you awake nights. Is that so, Jay?"
"No, sir; that is not so."
"Very well, then I have been misled by the reports in the papers, and I
am glad it is all a mistake. Now one thing more before I go. Did it ever
occur to you that while you and your family are all out in your yacht
together some day, a sudden squall, a quick lurch of the lee scuppers, a
tremulous movement of the main brace, a shudder of the spring boom might
occur and all be over?"
"Yes, sir. I have often thought of it, and of course such a thing might
happen at any time; but you forget that while we are out on the broad
and boundless ocean we enjoy ourselves. We are free. People with morbid
curiosity cannot come and call on us. We cannot get the daily
newspapers, and we do not have to meet low, vulgar people who pay their
debts and perspire."
"Of course, that is one view to take of it; but that is only a selfish
view. Supposing that you have made no provision for the future in case
of accident, would it not be well for you to name some one outside of
your own family to take up this great burden which is now weighing you
down--this money which you say yourself has made a slave of you--and
look out for it? Have you ever considered this matter seriously and
settled upon a good man who would be willing to water your stock for
you, and so conduct your affairs that nobody would get any benefit from
your vast accumulations, and in every way carry out the policy which you
have inaugurated?
"If you have not thoroughly considered this matter I wish that you would
do so at an early date. I have in my mind's eye just such a man as you
need. His shoulders are well fitted for a burden of this kind, and he
would pick it up cheerfully any time you see fit to lay it down. I will
give you his address."
"Thank you," said Mr. Gould, as the thermometer in the next room
suddenly froze up and burst with a loud report. "And now, if you will
excuse me from offsetting my time, which is worth $500 a minute, against
yours, which I judge to be worth about $1 per week, I will bid you good
morning."
He then held the door open for me, and shortly after that I came away.
There were three reasons why I did not remain, but the principal reason
was that I did not think he wanted me to do so.
And so I came away and left him. There was little else that I could say
after that.
It is not the first time that a Western man has been treated with
consideration in his own section, only to be frowned upon and frozen
when he meets the same man in New York.
Mr. Gould is below the medium height, and is likely to remain so through
life. His countenance wears a crafty expression, and yet he allowed
himself to be April-fooled by a genial little party of gentlemen from
Boston, who salted the Central Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad by
holding back all the freight for two weeks in order to have it on the
road while Jay was examining the property.
Jay Gould would attract very little attention here on the streets, but
he would certainly be looked upon with suspicion in Paradise. A man who
would fail to remember that he had $7,000,000 that belonged to the Erie
road, but who does not forget to remember whenever he paid his own hotel
bills at Washington, is the kind of man who would pull up and pawn the
pavements of Paradise within thirty days after he got there.
After looking over the above statement carefully, I feel called upon, in
justice to myself, to state that Dr. Burchard did not assist me in
constructing the last sentence.
For those boys who wish to emulate the example of Jay Gould, the example
of Jay Gould is a good example for them to emulate.
If any little boy in New York on this beautiful Sabbath morning desires
to jeopardize his immortal soul in order to be beyond the reach of want,
and ride gayly over the sunlit billows where the cruel fangs of the
Excise law cannot reach him, let him cultivate a lop-sided memory, swap
friends for funds and wise counsel for crooked consols.
If I had thought of all this as I came down the front steps at Irvington
the other day, I would have said it to Mr. Gould; but I did not think of
it until I got home. A man's best thoughts frequently come to him too
late for publication.
[Illustration]
But the name of Jay Gould will not go down to future generations linked
with those of Howard and Wilberforce. It will not go very far anyway. In
this age of millionaires, a millionaire more or less does not count very
much, and only the good millionaires who baptize and beautify their
wealth in the eternal sunlight of unselfishness will have any claim on
immortality.
In this period of progress and high-grade civilization, when Satan takes
humanity up to the top of a high mountain and shows his railroads and
his kerosene oil and his distilleries and his coffers filled with pure
leaf lard, and says: "All this will I give for a seat in the Senate," a
common millionaire with no originality of design does not excite any
more curiosity on Broadway than a young man who is led about by a little
ecru dog.
I do not wish to crush capital with labor, or to further intensify the
feeling which already exists between the two, for I am a land-holder and
taxpayer myself, but I say that the man who never mixes up with the
common people unless he is summoned to explain something and shake the
moths out of his memory will some day, when the grass grows green over
his own grave, find himself confronted by the same kind of a memory on
the part of mankind.
I do not say all this because I was treated in an off-hand manner by Mr.
Gould, but because I think it ought to be said.
As I said before, Jay Gould is considerably below the medium height, and
I am not going to take it back.
He is a man who will some day sit out on the corner of a new-laid planet
with his little pink railroad maps on his knees and ask, "Where am I?"
and the echoes from every musty corner of miasmatic oblivion will take
up the question and refer it to the judiciary committee; but it will
curl up and die like the minority report against a big railroad land
grant.
[Illustration: "A Brave Refrain."]
When snow is here, and the trees look weird,
And the knuckled twigs are gloved with frost;
When the breath congeals in the drover's beard,
And the old pathway to the barn is lost:
When the rooster's crow is sad to hear,
And the stamp of the stabled horse is vain,
And the tone of the cow-bell grieves the ear--
O then is the time for a brave refrain!
When the gears hang stiff on the harness-peg,
And the tallow gleams in frozen streaks:
And the old hen stands on a lonesome leg,
And the pump sounds hoarse and the handle squeaks;
When the woodpile lies in a shrouded heap,
And the frost is scratched from the window-pane,
And anxious eyes from the inside peep--
O then is the time for a brave refrain!
When the ax-helve warms at the chimney-jamb!
And hob-nailed boots on the hearth below,
And the house cat curls in a slumber calm,
And the eight-day clock ticks loud and slow;
When the harsh broom-handle jabs the ceil
'Neath the kitchen-loft, and the drowsy brain
Sniffs the breath of the morning meal--
O then is the time for a brave refrain!
'ENVOI.
When the skillet seethes, and a blubbering hot
Tilts the lid of the coffee-pot,
And the scent of the buckwheat cake grows plain--
O then is the time for a brave refrain!
A Blasted Snore
Sleep, under favorable circumstances, is a great boon. Sleep, if natural
and undisturbed, is surely as useful as any other scientific discovery.
Sleep, whether administered at home or abroad, under the soporific
influences of an under-paid preacher or the unyielding wooden cellar
door that is used as a blanket in the sleeping car, is a harmless
dissipation and a cheerful relaxation.
Let me study a man for the first hour after he has wakened and I will
judge him more correctly than I would to watch him all winter in the
Legislature. We think we are pretty well acquainted with our friends,
but we are not thoroughly conversant with their peculiarities until we
have seen them wake up in the morning.
I have often looked at the men I meet and thought what a shock it must
be to the wives of some of them to wake up and see their husbands before
they have had time to prepare, and while their minds are still chaotic.
The first glimpse of a large, fat man, whose brain has drooped down
behind his ears, and whose wheezy breath wanders around through the
catacombs of his head and then emerges from his nostrils with a shrill
snort like the yelp of the damned, must be a charming picture for the
eye of a delicate and beautiful second wife: one who loves to look on
green meadows and glorious landscapes; one who has always wakened with
a song and a ripple of laughter that fell on her father's heart like
shower of sunshine in the somber green of the valley.
It is a pet theory of mine that to be pleasantly wakened is half the
battle for the day. If we could be wakened by the refrain of a joyous
song, instead of having our front teeth knocked out by one of those
patent pillow-sham holders that sit up on their hind feet at the head of
the bed, until we dream that we are just about to enter Paradise and
have just passed our competitive examination, and which then swoop down
and mash us across the bridge of the nose, there would be less insanity
in our land and death would be regarded more in the light of a calamity.
When you waken a child do it in a pleasant way. Do not take him by the
ear and pull him out of bed. It is disagreeable for the child, and
injures the general _tout ensemble_ of the ear. Where children go to
sleep with tears on their cheeks and are wakened by the yowl of
dyspeptic parents, they have a pretty good excuse for crime in after
years. If I sat on the bench in such cases I would mitigate the
sentence.
It is a genuine pleasure for me to wake up a good-natured child in a
good-natured way. Surely it is better from those dimpled lids to chase
the sleep with a caress than to knock out slumber with a harsh word and
a bed slat.
No one should be suddenly wakened from a sound sleep. A sudden awaking
reverses the magnetic currents, and makes the hair pull, to borrow an
expression from Dante. The awaking should be natural, gradual, and
deliberate.
A sad thing occurred last summer on an Omaha train. It was a very warm
day, and in the smoking car a fat man, with a magenta fringe of whiskers
over his Adam's apple, and a light, ecru lambrequin of real camel's hair
around the suburbs of his head, might have been discovered.
He could have opened his mouth wider, perhaps, but not without injuring
the mainspring of his neck and turning his epiglottis out of doors.
He was asleep.
He was not only slumbering, but he was putting the earnestness and
passionate devotion of his whole being into it. His shiny, oilcloth
grip, with the roguish tip of a discarded collar just peeping out at the
side, was up in the iron wall-pocket of the car. He also had, in the
seat with him, a market basket full of misfit lunch and a two-bushel bag
containing extra apparel. On the floor he had a crock of butter with a
copy of the Punkville _Palladium_ and _Stock Grower's Guardian_ over the
top.
He slumbered on in a rambling sort of way, snoring all the time in
monosyllables, except when he erroneously swallowed his tonsils, and
then he would struggle awhile and get black in the face, while the
passengers vainly hoped that he had strangled.
While he was thus slumbering, with all the eloquence and enthusiasm of a
man in the full meridian of life, the train stopped with a lurch, and
the brakeman touched his shoulder.
"Here's your town," he said. "We only stop a minute. You'll have to
hustle."
The man, who had been far away, wrestling with Morpheus, had removed his
hat, coat, and boots, and when he awoke his feet absolutely refused to
go back into the same quarters.
[Illustration]
At first he looked around reproachfully at the people in the car. Then
he reached up and got his oilcloth grip from the bracket. The bag was
tied together with a string, and as he took it down the string untied.
Then we all discovered that this man had been on the road for a long
time, with no object, apparently, except to evade laundries. All kinds
of articles fell out in the aisle. I remember seeing a chest-protector
and a linen coat, a slab of seal-brown gingerbread and a pair of stoga
boots, a hairbrush and a bologna sausage, a plug of tobacco and a porous
plaster.
He gathered up what he could in both arms, made two trips to the door
and threw out all he could, tried again to put his number eleven feet
into his number nine boots, gave it up, and socked himself out of the
car as it began to move, while the brakeman bombarded him through the
window for two miles with personal property, groceries, dry-goods, boots
and shoes, gents' furnishing goods, hardward, notions, _bric-a-brac_,
red herrings, clothing, doughnuts, vinegar bitters, and facetious
remarks.
Then he picked up the retired snorer's railroad check from the seat, and
I heard him say: "Why, dog on it, that wasn't his town after all."
Good-bye er Howdy-do
[Illustration]
Say good-bye er howdy-do--
What's the odds betwixt the two?
Comin'--goin'--every day
Best friends first to go away--
Grasp of hands you druther hold
Than their weight in solid gold,
Slips their grip while greetin' you.--
Say good-bye er howdy-do?
Howdy-do, and then, good-bye--
Mixes jest like laugh and cry;
Deaths and births, and worst and best
Tangled their contrariest;
Ev'ry jinglin' weddin'-bell
Skeerin' up some funeral knell.--
Here's my song, and there's your sigh:
Howdy-do, and then, good-bye!
Say good-bye er howdy-do--
Jest the same to me and you;
'Taint worth while to make no fuss,
'Cause the job's put up on us!
Some one's runnin' this concern
That's got nothin' else to learn--
If he's willin', we'll pull through.
Say good-bye or howdy-do!
[Illustration: SOCIETY GURGS From SANDY MUSH]
The following constitute the items of great interest occurring on the
East Side among the colored people of Blue Ruin:
Montmorency Tousley of Pizen Ivy avenue cut his foot badly last week
while chopping wood for a party on Willow street. He has been warned
time and again not to chop wood when the sign was not right, but he
would not listen to his friends. He not only cut off enough of his foot
to weigh three or four pounds, but completely gutted the coffee sack in
which his foot was done up at the time. It will be some time before he
can radiate around among the boys on Pizen avenue again.
Plum Beasley's house caught on fire last Tuesday night. He reckons it
was caused by a defective flue, for the fire caught in the north wing.
This is one of Plum's bon mots, however. He tries to make light of it,
but the wood he has been using all winter was white birch, and when he
got a big dose of hickory at the same place last week it was so dark
that he didn't notice the difference, and before he knew it he had a
bigger fire than he had allowed. In the midst of a pleasant flow of
conversation gas collected in the wood and caused an explosion which
threw a passel of live coals on the bed. The house was soon a solid mass
of flame. Mr. Beasley is still short two children.
Mr. Granulation Hicks, of Boston, Mass., who has won deserved
distinction in advancing the interests of Sir George Pullman, of
Chicago, is here visiting his parents, who reside on Upper Hominy. We
are glad to see Mr. Hicks and hope he may live long to visit Blue Ruin
and propitiate up and down our streets.
Miss Roseola Cardiman has just been the recipient of a beautiful pair of
chaste ear-bobs from her brother, who is a night watchman in a jewelry
store run by a man named Tiffany in New York. Roseola claims that
Tiffany makes a right smart of her brother, and sets a heap by him.
Whooping cough and horse distemper are again making fearful havoc among
the better classes at the foot of Pizen Ivy avenue.
We are pained to learn that the free reading room, established over
Amalgamation Brown's store, has been closed up by the police. Blue Ruin
has clamored for a free temperance reading room and brain retort for ten
years, and now a ruction between two of our best known citizens, over
the relative merits of a natural pair and a doctored flush, has called
down the vengeance of the authorities, and shut up what was a credit to
the place and a quiet resort, where young men could come night after
night and kind of complicate themselves at. There are two or three men
in this place that will bully or bust everything they can get into, and
they have perforated more outrages on Blue Ruin than we are entitled to
put up with.
There was a successful doings at the creek last Sabbath, during which
baptism was administered to four grown people and a dude from Sandy
Mush. The pastor thinks it will take first-rate, though it is still too
soon to tell.
Surrender Adams got a letter last Friday from his son Gladstone, who
filed on a homestead near Porcupine, Dak., two years ago. He says they
have had another of those unprecedented winters there for which Dakota
is so justly celebrated. He thinks this one has been even more so that
any of the others. He wishes he was back here at Blue Ruin, where a man
can go out doors for half an hour without getting ostracized by the
elements. He says they brag a good deal on their ozone there, but he
allows that it can be overdone. He states that when the ozone in Dakota
is feeling pretty well and humping itself and curling up sheet-iron
roofs and blowing trains of the track, a man has to tie a clothes-line
to himself, with the other end fastened to the door knob, before it is
safe to visit his own hen-house. He says that his nearest neighbor is
seventeen miles away, and a man might as well buy his own chickens as to
fool his money away on seventeen miles of clothes-line.
It is a first-rate letter, and the old man wonders who Gladstone got to
write it for him.
The valuable ecru dog of our distinguished townsman, Mr. Piedmont
Babbit, was seriously impaired last Saturday morning by an east-bound
freight.
He will not wrinkle up his nose at another freight train.
George Wellington, of Hickory, was in town the front end of the week. He
has accepted a position in the livery, feed and sale stable at Sandy
Mush. Call again, George.
Gabriel Brant met with a sad mishap a few days since while crossing the
French Broad river, by which he lost his leg.
Any one who may find an extra leg below where the accident occurred will
confer a favor on Mr. Brant by returning same to No. 06-1/2 Pneumonia
street. It may be readily identified by any one, as it is made of an old
pickhandle and weighs four pounds.
J. Quincy Burns has written a war article for the Century Magazine,
regarding a battle where he was at. In this article he aims to describe
the sensations of a man who is ignorant of physical fear and yet yearns
to have the matter submitted to arbitration. He gives a thorough expose
of his efforts in trying to find a suitable board of arbitration as soon
as he saw that the enemy felt hostile and eager for the fray.
The forthcoming number of the Century will be eagerly snapped up by Mr.
Burns' friends who are familiar with his pleasing and graphic style of
writing. He describes with wonderful power the sense of utter exhaustion
which came over him and the feeling of bitter disappointment when he
realized that he was too far away to participate in the battle and too
fatigued to make a further search for suitable arbitrators.
While Cigarettes to Ashes Turn
I.
"He smokes--and that's enough," says Ma--
"And cigarettes, at that!" says Pa.
"He must not call again," says she--
"He _shall_ not call again!" says he.
They both glare at me as before--
Then quit the room and bang the door,--
While I, their willful daughter, say,
"I guess I'll love him, anyway!"
II.