A fearful tale conies to us from Columbus. A party of prominent citizens
of that place took a trip to the Dells of Wisconsin one day last week. It
was composed of ladies and gentlemen of both political parties, and it was
hoped that nothing would occur to mar the pleasure of the excursion.
When the party visited the Dells, Mr. Chapin, a lawyer of Democratic
proclivities, went out upon a rock overhanging a precipice, or words to
that effect, and he became so absorbed in the beauty of the scene that he
did not notice a Republican lady who left the throng and waltzed softly up
behind him. She had blood in her eye and gum in her mouth, and she grasped
the lawyer, who is a weak man, by the arms, and hissed in his ear:
"Hurrah for Garfield, or I will plunge you headlong into the yawning gulf
below!"
It was a trying moment. Chapin rather enjoyed being held by a woman, but
not in such a position that, if she let go her hold to spit on her hands,
he would go a hundred feet down, and become as flat as the Greenback
party, and have to be carried home in a basket.
In a second he thought over all the sins of his past life, which was
pretty quick work, as anybody will admit who knows the man. He thought of
how he would be looked down upon by Gabe Bouck, and all the fellows, if it
once got out that he had been frightened into going back on his party.
He made up his mind that he would die before he would hurrah for Garfield,
but when the merciless woman pushed him towards the edge of the rock, and,
"Last call! Yell, or down you go!" he opened his mouth and yelled so they
heard it in Kilbourn City:
"Hurrah for Garfield! Now lemme go!"
Though endowed with more than ordinary eloquence, no remarks that he had
ever made before brought the applause that this did. Everybody yelled, and
the woman smiled as pleasantly as though she had not crushed the young
life out of her victim, and left him a bleeding sacrifice on the altar of
his country, but when she had realized what she had done her heart smote
her, and she felt bad.
[Illustration: "YELL, OR GO DOWN!"]
Chapin will never be himself again. From that moment his proud spirit was
broken, and all during the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud. He
leaned listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned himself with a
skimmer. When the party had spread the lunch on the ground and gathered
around, sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them mechanically, but
his appetite was gone, and when that is gone there is not enough
of him left for a quorum.
Friends rallied around him, passed the pickles, and drove the antmires out
of a sandwich, and handed it to him on a piece of shingle, but he either
passed or turned it down. He said he couldn't take a trick. Later on, when
the lemonade was brought on, the flies were skimmed off of some of it, and
a little colored water was put in to make it look inviting, but his eyes
were sot. He said they couldn't fool him. After what had occurred, he
didn't feel as though any Democrat was safe. He expected to be poisoned on
account of his politics, and all he asked was to live to get home.
Nothing was left undone to rally him, and cause him to forget the fearful
scene through which he had passed. Only once did he partially come to
himself, and show an interest in worldly affairs, and that was when it was
found that he had sat down on some raspberry jam with his white pants on.
When told of it, he smiled a ghastly smile, and said they were all welcome
to his share of the jam.
They tried to interest him in conversation by drawing war maps with
three-tined folks on the jam, but he never showed that he knew what they
were about until Mr. Moak, of Watertown, took a brush, made of cauliflower
preserved in mustard, and shaded the lines of the war map on Mr. Chapin's
trousers, which Mr. Butterfield had drawn in the jam. Then his artistic
eye took in the incongruity of the colors, and he gasped for breath, and
said:
"Moak, that is played out. People will notice it."
But he relapsed again into semi-unconsciousness, and never spoke again,
not a great deal, till he got home.
He has ordered that there be no more borrowing of sugar and drawings of
tea back and forth between his house and that of the lady who broke his
heart, and be has announced that he will go without saurkraut all
winter rather than borrow a machine for cutting cabbage of a woman that
would destroy the political prospects of a man who had never done a wrong
in his life.
He has written to the chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee
to suspend judgment on his case, until he can explain how it happened that
a dyed-in-the-wood Democrat hurrahed for Garfield.