Last week a train load of insane persons were removed from the Oshkosh
Asylum to the Madison Asylum. As the train was standing on the sidetrack
at Watertown Junction it created considerable curiosity. People who have
ever passed Watertown Junction have noticed the fine old gentleman who
comes into the car with a large square basket, peddling popcorn. He is one
of the most innocent and confiding men in the world. He is honest, and he
believes that everybody else is honest.
He came up to the depot with his basket, and seeing the train he asked
Pierce, the landlord there, what train it was. Pierce, who is a most
diabolical person, told the old gentleman that it was a load of members of
the legislature and female lobbyists going to Madison. With that beautiful
confidence which the pop corn man has in all persons, he believed the
story, and went into the car to sell pop corn.
Stopping at the first seat, where a middle-aged lady was sitting alone,
the pop corn man passed out his basket and said, "fresh pop corn." The
lady took her foot down off the stove, looked at the man a moment with
eyes glaring and wild, and said, "It is--no, it cannot be--and yet it _is_
me long lost Duke of Oshkosh," and she grabbed the old man by the necktie
with one hand and pulled him down into the seat, and began to mow away
corn into her mouth. The pop corn man blushed, looked at the rest of the
passengers to see if they were looking, and said, as he replaced the
necktie knot from under his left ear and pushed his collar down, "Madame,
you are mistaken. I never have been a duke in Oshkosh. I live here at the
Junction." The woman looked at him as though she doubted his statement,
but let him go.
He proceeded to the next seat, when a serious looking man rose up and
bowed; the pop corn man also bowed and smiled as though he might
have met him before. Taking a paper of popcorn and putting it in his coat
tail pocket, the serious man said, "I was honestly elected President of
the United States in 1876, but was counted out by the vilest conspiracy
that ever was concocted on earth, and I believe you are one of the
conspirators," and he spit on his hands and looked the pop corn man in the
eye. The pop corn man said he never took any active part in politics, and
had nothing to do with that Hayes business at all. Then the serious man
sat down and began eating the pop corn, while two women on the other side
of the car helped themselves to the corn in the basket.
[Illustration: ME LONG LOST DUKE.]
The pop corn man held out his hand for the money, when a man two seats
back came forward and shook hands with him, saying: "They told me you
would not come, but you have come, Daniel, and now we will fight
it out. I will take this razor, and you can arm yourself at your leisure."
The man reached into an inside pocket of his coat, evidently for a razor,
when the pop corn man started for the door, his eyes sticking out two
inches. Every person he passed took a paper of pop corn, one man grabbed
his coat and tore one tail off, another took his basket away and as he
rushed out on the platform the basket was thrown at his head, and a female
voice said, "I will be ready when the carriage calls at 8."
As the old gentleman struck the platform and began to arrange his toilet
he met Fitzgerald, the conductor, who asked him what was the matter. He
said Pierce told him that crowd was going to the legislature, "but," says
he, as he picked some pieces of paper collar out of the back of his neck,
"if those people are not delegates to a Democratic convention, then I have
been peddling pop corn on this road ten years for nothing, and don't know
my business." Fitz told him they were patients going to the Insane Asylum.
The old man thought it over a moment, and then he picked up a coupling pin
and went looking for Pierce. He says he will kill him. Pierce has not been
out of the house since. This Pierce is the same man that lent us a runaway
horse once.