gals as I ever met. It is troo they was dressed in meal bags like the
old one I’d met previsly, and their shiny, silky har was hid from sight
by long white caps, sich as I spose female Josts wear; but their eyes
sparkled like diminds, their cheeks was like roses, and they was charmin
enuff to make a man throw stuns at his granmother, if they axed him to.
They commenst clearin away the dishes, castin shy glances at me all the
time. I got excited. I forgot Betsy Jane in my rapter, and sez I, “My
pretty dears, how air you?”
“We air well,” they solumly sed.
“Whar’s the old man?” sed I, in a soft voice.
“Of whom dost thow speak—Brother Uriah?”
“I mean the gay and festiv cuss who calls me a man of sin. Shouldn’t
wonder if his name was Uriah.”
“He has retired.”
“Wall, my pretty dears,” sez I, “let’s have sum fun. Let’s play puss in
the corner. What say?”
“Air you a Shaker, sir?” they axed.
“Wall, my pretty dears, I havn’t arrayed my proud form in a long weskit
yit, but if they was all like you perhaps I’d jine ’em. As it is, I’m a
Shaker pro-temporary.”
They was full of fun. I seed that at fust, only they was a leetle
skeery. I tawt ’em Puss in the corner and sich like plase, and we had a
nice time, keepin quiet of course so the old man shouldn’t hear. When we
broke up, sez I, “My pretty dears, ear I go you hav no objections, hav
you, to a innersent kiss at partin?”
[Illustration: “‘YAY,’ THEY SED, AND I YAY’D.”]
“Yay,” they sed, and I _yay’d_.
I went up stairs to bed. I spose I’d been snoozin half a hour when I was
woke up by a noise at the door. I sot up in bed, leanin on my elbers and
rubbin my eyes, and I saw the follerin picter: The Elder stood in the
doorway, with a taller candle in his hand. He hadn’t no wearin appeerel
on except his night close, which fluttered in the breeze like a Seseshun
flag. He sed, “You’re a man of sin!” then groaned and went away.
I went to sleep agin, and drempt of runnin orf with the pretty little
Shakeresses, mounted on my Californy Bar. I thawt the Bar insisted on
steerin strate for my dooryard in Baldinsville, and that Betsy Jane cum
out and giv us a warm recepshun with a panfull of bilin water. I was
woke up arly by the Elder. He sed refreshments was reddy for me down
stairs. Then sayin I was a man of sin, he went groanin away.
As I was goin threw the entry to the room where the vittles was, I cum
across the Elder and the old female I’d met the night before, and what
d’ye spose they was up to? Huggin and kissin like young lovers in their
gushingist state. Sez I, “My Shaker frends, I reckon you’d better
suspend the rules, and git marrid!”
“You must excoos Brother Uriah,” sed the female; “he’s subjeck to fits,
and hain’t got no command over hisself when he’s into ’em.”
“Sartinly,” sez I, “I’ve bin took that way myself frequent.”
“You’re a man of sin!” sed the Elder.
Arter breakfust my little Shaker frends cum in agin to clear away the
dishes.
“My pretty dears,” sez I, “shall we _yay_ agin?”
“Nay,” they sed, and I _nay’d_.
The Shakers axed me to go to their meetin, as they was to hav sarvices
that mornin, so I put on a clean biled rag and went. The meetin house
was as neat as a pin. The floor was white as chalk and smooth as glass.
The Shakers was all on hand, in clean weskits and meal bags, ranged on
the floor like milingtery companies, the mails on one side of the room,
and the females on tother. They commenst clappin their hands and singin
and dancin. They danced kinder slow at fust, but as they got warmed up
they shaved it down very brisk, I tell you. Elder Uriah, in particler,
exhiberted a right smart chance of spryness in his legs, considerin his
time of life, and as he cum a double shuffle near where I sot, I
rewarded him with a approvin smile and said, “Hunky boy! Go it, my gay
and festiv cuss.”
“You’re a man of sin!” he said, continnering his shuffle.
The Sperret, as they called it, then moved a short fat Shaker to say a
few remarks. He sed they was Shakers, and all was ekal. They was the
purest and seleckest peple on the yearth. Other peple was sinful as they
could be, but Shakers was all right. Shakers was all goin kerslap to the
Promist Land, and nobody want goin to stand at the gate to bar ’em out,
if they did they’d git run over.
The Shakers then danced and sung agin, and arter they was threw, one of
’em axed me what I thawt of it.
Sez I, “What does it siggerfy?”
“What?” sez he.
“Why this jumpin up and singin? This long weskit bizniss, and this
anty-matrimony idee? My frends, you air neat and tidy. Your lands is
flowin with milk and honey. Your brooms is fine, and your apple sass is
honest. Wehn a man buys a kag of apple sass of you he don’t find a grate
many shavins under a few layers of sass—a little Game I’m sorry to say
sum of my New Englan ancesters used to practiss. Your garding seeds is
fine, and if I should sow ’em on the rock of Gibralter probly I should
raise a good mess of garding sass. You air honest in your dealins. You
air quiet and don’t distarb nobody. For all this I givs you credit. But
your religion is small pertaters, I must say. You mope away your lives
here in single retchidness, and as you air all by yourselves nothing
ever conflicts with your pecooler idees, except when Human Nater busts
out among you, as I understan she sumtimes do. [I give Uriah a sly wink
here, which made the old feller squirm like a speared Eel.] You wear
long weskits and long faces, and lead a gloomy life indeed. No
children’s prattle is ever hearn around your harthstuns—you air in a
dreary fog all the time, and you treat the jolly sunshine of life as
tho’ it was a thief, drivin it from your doors by them weskits, and meal
bags, and pecooler noshuns of yourn. The gals among you, sum of which
air as slick pieces of caliker as I ever sot eyes on, air syin to place
their heds agin weskits which kiver honest, manly harts, while you old
heds fool yerselves with the idee that they air fulfillin their mishun
here, and air contented. Here you air, all pend up by yerselves, talkin
about the sins of a world you don’t know nothin of. Meanwhile said world
continners to resolve round on her own axeltree onct in every 24 hours,
subjeck to the Constitution of the United States, and is a very plesant
place of residence. It’s a unnatral, onreasonable, and dismal life
you’re leadin here. So it strikes me. My Shaker friends, I now bid you a
welcome adoo. You hav treated me exceedin well. Thank you kindly, one
and all.”
“A base exhibiter of depraved monkeys and onprincipled wax works!” sed
Uriah.
“Hello, Uriah,” sez I, “I’d most forgot you. Wall, look out for them
fits of yourn, and don’t catch cold and die in the flour of your youth
and beauty.”
And I resoomed my jerney.
_Artemus Ward._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“_EARLY RISING._”
“GOD bless the man who first invented sleep!”
So Sancho Panza said, and so say I:
And bless him also that he didn’t keep
His great discovery to himself; nor try
To make it—as the lucky fellow might—
A close monopoly by patent right.
Yes—bless the man who first invented sleep
(I really can’t avoid the iteration);
But blast the man with curses loud and deep,
Whate’er the rascal’s name, or age, or station,
Who first invented, and went round advising,
That artificial cut-off—Early Rising!
“Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,”
Observes some solemn sentimental owl.
Maxims like these are very cheaply said;
But, ere you make yourself a fool or fowl,
Pray, just inquire about his rise and fall,
And whether larks have any beds at all!
“The time for honest folks to be abed”
Is in the morning, if I reason right;
And he who cannot keep his precious head
Upon his pillow till it’s fairly light,
And so enjoy his forty morning winks,
Is up to knavery; or else—he drinks.
Thomson, who sung about the “Seasons,” said
It was a glorious thing to _rise_ in season;
But then he said it—lying—in his bed,
At ten o’clock A.M.—the very reason
He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is,
His preaching wasn’t sanctioned by his practice.
’Tis, doubtless, well to be sometimes awake,—
Awake to duty, and awake to truth,—
But when, alas! a nice review we take
Of our best deeds and days, we find in sooth,
The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep
Are those we passed in childhood or asleep!
’Tis beautiful to leave the world awhile
For the soft visions of the gentle night;
And free, at last, from mortal care or guile,
To live as only in the angels’ sight,
In sleep’s sweet realm so cosily shut in,
Where, at the worst, we only _dream_ of sin.
So, let us sleep, and give the Maker praise,—
I like the lad who, when his father thought
To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase
Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,
Cried, “Served him right! it’s not at all surprising;
The worm was punished, sir, for early rising.”
_John G. Saxe._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO SIMPSON’S BAR._
IT had been raining in the valley of Sacramento. The North Fork had
overflowed its banks and Rattlesnake Creek was impassable.
The few boulders that had marked the summer ford at Simpson’s Crossing
were obliterated by a vast sheet of water stretching to the foothills.
The up stage was stopped at Granger’s; the last mail had been abandoned
in the _tules_, the rider swimming for his life.
“An area,” remarked the _Sierra Avalanche_ with pensive local pride, “as
large as the State of Massachusetts is now under water.”
Nor was the weather any better in the foothills.
The mud lay deep on the mountain road; waggons that neither physical
force nor moral objurgation could move from the evil ways into which
they had fallen, encumbered the track, and the way to Simpson’s Bar was
indicated by broken-down teams and hard swearing.
And farther on, cut-off and inaccessible, rained upon and bedraggled,
smitten by high winds and threatened by high water, Simpson’s Bar, on
the eve of Christmas Day, 1862, clung like a swallow’s nest to the rocky
entablature and splintered capitals of Table Mountain, and shook in the
blast.
As night shut down on the settlement, a few lights gleamed through the
mist from the windows of cabins on either side of the highway now
crossed and gullied by lawless streams and swept by marauding winds.
Happily most of the population were gathered at Thompson’s store,
clustered around a red-hot stove, at which they silently spat in some
accepted sense of social communion that perhaps rendered conversation
unnecessary.
Indeed most methods of diversion had long since been exhausted on
Simpson’s Bar; high water had suspended the regular occupations on gulch
and on river, and a consequent lack of money and whisky had taken the
zest from most illegitimate recreation.
Even Mr. Hamlin was fain to leave the Bar with fifty dollars in his
pocket—the only amount actually realised of the large sums won by him in
the successful exercise of his arduous profession.
“Ef I was asked,” he remarked somewhat later—“ef I was asked to pint out
a purty little village where a retired sport as didn’t care for money
could exercise hisself frequent and lively, I’d say Simpson’s Bar; but
for a young man with a large family depending on his exertions, it don’t
pay.”
As Mr. Hamlin’s family consisted mainly of female adults, this remark is
quoted rather to show the breadth of his humour than the exact extent of
his responsibilities.
Howbeit, the unconscious objects of this satire sat that evening in the
listless apathy begotten of idleness and lack of excitement.
Even the sudden splashing of hoofs before the door did not arouse them.
Dick Bullen alone paused in the act of scraping out his pipe, and lifted
his head; but no other one of the group indicated any interest in, or
recognition of, the man who entered.
It was a figure familiar enough to the company, and known in Simpson’s
Bar as “The Old Man.”
A man of perhaps fifty years, grizzled and scant of hair, but still
fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of ready, but not very
powerful sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude for taking on the
shade and colour of contiguous moods and feelings.
He had evidently just left some hilarious companions, and did not at
first notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the
nearest man jocularly, and threw himself into a vacant chair.
“Jest heard the best thing out, boys! Ye know Smiley, over yar—Jim
Smiley—funniest man in the Bar? Well, Jim was jest telling the richest
yarn about——”
“Smiley’s a —— fool,” interrupted a gloomy voice.
“A particular —— skunk,” added another, in sepulchral accents.
A silence followed these positive statements.
The Old Man glanced quickly around the group. Then his face slowly
changed.
“That’s so,” he said reflectively, after a pause; “certainly a sort of a
skunk and suthin’ of a fool. In course.”
He was silent for a moment, as in painful contemplation of the
unsavouriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley.
“Dismal weather, ain’t it?” he added, now fully embarked on the current
of prevailing sentiment. “Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show
for money this season. And to-morrow’s Christmas.”
There was a movement among the men at this announcement, but whether of
satisfaction or disgust was not plain.
“Yes,” continued the Old Man in the lugubrious tone he had within the
last few moments unconsciously adopted—“yes, Christmas, and to-night’s
Christmas-eve. Ye see, boys, I kinder thought—that is, I sorter had an
idee, jest passin like you know—that may be ye’d all like to come over
to my house to-night and have a sort of tear round. But I suppose, now,
you wouldn’t? Don’t feel like it, may be?” he added, with anxious
sympathy, peering into the faces of his companions.
“Well, I don’t know,” responded Tom Flynn, with some cheerfulness.
“P’r’aps we may. But how about your wife, Old Man? What does she say to
it?”
The Old Man hesitated.
His conjugal experience had not been a happy one, and the fact was known
to Simpson’s Bar.
His first wife, a delicate, pretty little woman, had suffered keenly and
secretly from the jealous suspicions of her husband, until one day he
invited the whole Bar to his house to expose her infidelity.
On arriving, the party found the shy, _petite_ creature quietly engaged
in her household duties, and retired abashed and discomfited.
But the sensitive woman did not easily recover from the shock of this
extraordinary outrage.
It was with difficulty she regained her equanimity sufficiently to
release her lover from the closet in which he was concealed, and escape
with him.
She left a boy of three years to comfort her bereaved husband.
The Old Man’s present wife had been his cook. She was large, loyal, and
aggressive.
Before he could reply, Joe Dimmick suggested with great directness that
it was the “Old Man’s house,” and that, invoking the Divine Power, if
the case were his own, he would invite who he pleased, even if in so
doing he imperilled his salvation. The Powers of Evil, he further
remarked, should contend against him vainly.
All this delivered with a terseness and vigour lost in this necessary
translation.
“In course. Certainly. Thet’s it,” said the Old Man with a sympathetic
frown. “Thar’s no trouble about thet. It’s my own house, built every
stick on it myself. Don’t you be afeared o’ her, boys. She may cut up a
trifle rough—ez wimmin do—but she’ll come round.”
Secretly the Old Man trusted to the exultation of liquor and the power
of a courageous example to sustain him in such an emergency.
As yet, Dick Bullen, the oracle and leader of Simpson’s Bar, had not
spoken. He now took his pipe from his lips.
“Old Man, how’s that yer Johnny gettin’ on? Seems to me he didn’t look
so peart the last time I seed him on the bluff heavin’ rocks at
Chinamen. Didn’t seem to take much interest in it. Thar was a gang of
’em by yar yesterday—drownded out up the river—and I kinder thought o’
Johnny, and how he’d miss ’em! May be now, we’d be in the way ef he was
sick?”
The father, evidently touched not only by this pathetic picture of
Johnny’s deprivation, but by the considerate delicacy of the speaker,
hastened to assure him that Johnny was better, and that a “little fun
might ’liven him up.”
Whereupon Dick arose, shook himself, and saying, “I’m ready. Lead the
way, Old Man: here goes,” himself led the way with a leap, a
characteristic howl, and darted out into the night.
As he passed through the outer room he caught up a blazing brand from
the hearth.
The action was repeated by the rest of the party, closely following and
elbowing each other, and before the astonished proprietor of Thompson’s
grocery was aware of the intention of his guests, the room was deserted.
The night was pitchy dark. In the first gust of wind their temporary
torches were extinguished, and only the red brands dancing and flitting
in the gloom like drunken will-o’-the-wisps indicated their whereabouts.
Their way led up Pine Tree Cañon, at the head of which a broad, low
bark-thatched cabin burrowed in the mountainside.
It was the home of the Old Man, and the entrance to the tunnel in which
he worked, when he worked at all.
Here the crowd paused for a moment, out of delicate deference to their
host, who came up panting in the rear.
“P’r’aps ye’d better hold on a second out yer, whilst I go in and see
thet things is all right,” said the Old Man, with an indifference he was
far from feeling.
The suggestion was graciously accepted, the door opened and closed on
the host, and the crowd, leaning their backs against the wall, and
cowering under the eaves, waited and listened.
For a few moments there was no sound but the dripping of water from the
eaves, and the stir and rustle of wrestling boughs above them.
Then the men became uneasy, and whispered suggestion and suspicion
passed from the one to the other.
“Reckon she’s caved in his head the first lick!”
“Decoyed him inter the tunnel, and barred him up, likely.”
“Got him down, and sittin’ on him.”
“Prob’ly biling suthing to heave on us; stand clear the door, boys!”
For just then the latch clicked, the door slowly opened, and a voice
said—
“Come in out o’ the wet.”
The voice was neither that of the Old Man nor of his wife. It was the
voice of a small boy, its weak treble broken by that preternatural
hoarseness which only vagabondage and the habit of premature
self-assertion can give.
It was the face of a small boy that looked up at theirs—a face that
might have been pretty and even refined, but that it was darkened by
evil knowledge from within, and dirt and hard experience from without.
He had a blanket around his shoulders, and had evidently just risen from
his bed.
“Come in,” he repeated, “and don’t make no noise. The Old Man’s in there
talking to mar,” he continued, pointing to an adjacent room which seemed
to be a kitchen, from which the Old Man’s voice came in deprecating
accents.
“Let me be,” he added, querulously to Dick Bullen, who had caught him
up, blanket and all, and was affecting to toss him into the fire; “let
go o’ me, you d—d old fool, d’ye hear?”
Thus adjured, Dick Bullen lowered Johnny to the ground with a smothered
laugh, while the men, entering quietly, ranged themselves around a long
table of rough boards which occupied the centre of the room.
Johnny then gravely proceeded to a cupboard, and brought out several
articles which he deposited on the table.
[Illustration: “‘NOW WADE IN, AND DON’T BE AFEARED.’”]
“Thar’s whisky and crackers, and red herons and cheese.” He took a bite
of the latter on his way to the table. “And sugar.” He scooped up a
mouthful _en route_ with a small and very dirty hand. “And terbacker.
Thar’s dried appils too on the shelf, but I don’t admire ’em. Appils is
swellin’. Thar,” he continued; “now wade in, and don’t be afeared. I
don’t mind the old woman. She don’t b’long to me. S’long.”
He had stepped to the threshold of a small room, scarcely larger than a
closet, partitioned off from the main apartment, and holding in its dim
recess a small bed.
He stood there a moment looking at the company, his bare feet peeping
from the blanket, and nodded.
“Hello, Johnny! You ain’t goin’ to turn in agin, are ye?” said Dick.
“Yes, I are,” responded Johnny, decidedly.
“Why, wot’s up, old fellow?”
“I’m sick.”
“How sick?”
“I’ve got a fevier. And childblains. And roomatiz,” returned Johnny, and
vanished within. After a moment’s pause, he added in the dark,
apparently from under the bedclothes—“And biles!”
There was an embarrassing silence. The men looked at each other and at
the fire.
Even with the appetising banquet before them, it seemed as if they might
again fall into the despondency of Thompson’s grocery, when the voice of
the Old Man, incautiously lifted, came deprecatingly from the kitchen.
“Certainly! Thet’s so. In course they is. A gang o’ lazy drunken
loafers, and that ar Dick Bullen’s the ornariest of all. Didn’t hev no
more sabe than to come round yar with sickness in the house and no
provision. Thet’s what I said: ‘Bullen,’ sez I, ‘it’s crazy drunk you
are, or a fool,’ sez I, ‘to think o’ such a thing.’ ‘Staples,’ I sez,
‘be you a man, Staples, and ’spect to raise h—ll under my roof and
invalids lyin’ round?’ But they would come—they would. Thet’s wot you
must ’spect o’ such trash as lays round the Bar.”
A burst of laughter from the men followed this unfortunate exposure.
Whether it was overheard in the kitchen, or whether the Old Man’s irate
companion had just then exhausted all other modes of expressing her
contemptuous indignation, I cannot say, but a back door was suddenly
slammed with great violence.
A moment later and the Old Man reappeared, haply unconscious of the
cause of the late hilarious outburst, and smiled blandly.
“The old woman thought she’d jest run over to Mrs. McFadden’s for a
sociable call,” he explained, with jaunty indifference, as he took a
seat at the board.
Oddly enough, it needed this untoward incident to relieve the
embarrassment that was beginning to be felt by the party, and their
natural audacity returned with their host.
I do not propose to record the convivialities of that evening. The
inquisitive reader will accept the statement that the conversation was
characterised by the same intellectual exaltation, the same cautious
reverence, the same fastidious delicacy, the same rhetorical precision,
and the same logical and coherent discourse somewhat later in the
evening, which distinguish similar gatherings of the masculine sex in
more civilised localities, and under more favourable auspices.
No glasses were broken in the absence of any; no liquor was uselessly
spilt on floor or table in the scarcity of that article.
It was nearly midnight when the festivities were interrupted.
“Hush,” said Dick Bullen, holding up his hand.
It was the querulous voice of Johnny from his adjacent closet.
“Oh, dad.”
The Old Man arose hurriedly and disappeared in the closet. Presently he
reappeared.
“His rheumatiz is coming on agin bad,” he explained, “and he wants
rubbin’.”
He lifted the demijohn of whisky from the table and shook it. It was
empty.
Dick Bullen put down his tin cup with an embarrassed laugh. So did the
others.
The Old Man examined their contents, and said, hopefully—
“I reckon that’s enough; he don’t need much. You hold on all o’ you for
a spell, and I’ll be back;” and vanished in the closet with an old
flannel shirt and the whisky.
The door closed but imperfectly, and the following dialogue was
distinctly audible:—
“Now, sonny, whar does she ache worst?”
“Sometimes over yar and sometimes under yer; but it’s most powerful from
yer to yer. Rub yer, dad.”
A silence seemed to indicate a brisk rubbing. Then Johnny—
“Hevin’ a good time out yer, dad?”
“Yes, sonny.”
“To-morrer’s Chrismiss, ain’t it?”
“Yes, sonny. How does she feel now?”
“Better. Rub a little furder down. Wot’s Chrismiss, anyway? Wot’s it all
about?”
“Oh, it’s a day.”
This exhaustive definition was apparently satisfactory, for there was a
silent interval of rubbing. Presently Johnny again—
“Mar sez that everywhere else but yer everybody gives things to
everybody Chrismiss, and then she just waded inter you. She sez thar’s a
man they call Sandy Claws, not a white man, you know, but a kind o’
Chinemin, comes down the chimbley night afore Chrismiss and gives things
to chillern—boys likes me. Puts ’em in their butes! Thet’s what she
tried to play upon me. Easy now, pop; whar are you rubbin’ to—thet’s a
mile from the place. She jest made that up, didn’t she, jest to
aggrewate me and you? Don’t rub thar——Why, dad!”
In the great quiet that seemed to have fallen upon the house the sigh of
the near pines and the drip of leaves without was very distinct.
Johnny’s voice, too, was lowered as he went on—
“Don’t you take on now, fur I’m gettin’ all right fast. Wot’s the boys
doin’ out thar?”