defendant had inflicted upon you—the lady, I should say, the plaintiff?”
Miss Garr feigned an uneasy look.
“Must I tell?” she demanded, dropping her eyes.
“I am sorry, madam, it is absolutely necessary, since the whole case
seems to hang upon that injury, or those injuries alone.”
“Well, then,” said Sophia, riveting her maidenly orbs meekly upon a
broken coal-scuttle; “well, then, sir, he kissed her in the dark!”
“Is that all?”
“Is it not enough, sir?”
“It might have been enough,” replied Mr. Beanson, in the stumbling
innocence which had been the bane of his life; “it might have been
enough, madam, for the defendant, or for the plaintiff even, but it is
hardly enough to ground an action of breach of promise upon.”
Miss Garr was angry; Mr. Beanson puzzled; and both were silent. If he
had seen a possible chance of securing his first brief in any other way,
Mr. Archibald Beanson would most certainly have dismissed Sophia
instanter.
Running his long fingers inanely through his red hair, “Madam!” he said
at last, “I think I shall be obliged to consult Bishop on Marriage.”
“Now look here, sir,” observed Miss Sophia, wrapping her ready-made
cloak tighter around her, “if you keep on, I shall lose my patience and
my good manners. Who in the world wants to consult the bishop on
marriage? An ordinary minister, or even a justice of the peace, will do
me. I am not proud, sir.”
Mr. Beanson, trying to look learned, succeeded in looking confused.
Undoubling himself again—this time with abstruse deliberation—he went to
a meagre bookcase, and returned to his desk. “It was this book,” said
he, “that I had reference to—‘Bishop on Marriage and Divorce!’”
“Well, now you begin to get sensible,” remarked Miss Garr, in a tone and
manner which, expressed in words, would have read, “I grant your pardon,
sir, for your trivial mistake about ministers and bishops.”
Mr. Beanson opened the book, and, glancing over the table of contents,
his eye rested on the heading of a chapter, which read thus—“Want of
age.”
In his utter helplessness, Archibald looked up again at Sophia and
asked, “Is there any want of age in the parties?”
“Now look here, sir; I did not come here to be insulted. You think I do
not understand your irony. I would have you to know that I do.”
“I asked that question,” said Mr. Beanson, soothingly, “with all due
reverence for your age. This is the first time you have openly
acknowledged that you are the plaintiff in the contemplated suit. I have
known it all along, however; and I therefore assure you that the
question about age was suggested wholly by my ignorance as to the other
party—the defendant.”
Mr. Beanson, without perusing the commentary on this speech written in
the face of his client, now glanced his eye back to the table of
contents again. The question suggested this time seemed to that astute
pundit an honest one, and based on sufficient grounds. “Want of mental
capacity,” he read. “That’s it,” he exclaimed.
“There may be a want of mental capacity in one of the parties. Do you
think the defence would make that out?” inquired Mr. Beanson.
“It might be,” replied Miss Garr, still pursuing the thought into which
she had been drifted, and in which she had gradually drowned some of her
indignation at the unsuspecting Archibald. Lang’s late conduct may have
been dictated by insanity—proposing to Amelia after engaging himself to
her, Sophia Garr! “Really, Mr. Beanson, it might be.”
“Indeed, madam? Then we must guard against that!”
The client looked inquiringly at the lawyer, who was for a moment
wrapped in a mute study. “Can the defence, madam,” demanded Mr. Beanson
at last, “can—can they prove that you have ever been in Stockton, or any
private insane asylum?”
Here the reader who has visited the Sandwich Islands may pause to
congratulate himself. Remembering the crater of Mauna Loa, he will have
a more vivid idea of Miss Garr’s feelings than anything but that molten
sea of lava could possibly suggest. Sophia jumped indignantly to her
feet, and poured a tide of epithets, so seething-hot, over the head of
the astonished Archibald, that for a moment he succumbed before it,
blank and still as some patriarchal porpoise, lava-cooked and cast upon
the beach of Hawaii.
[Illustration: “‘YOU WRETCH!’”]
“You wretch!” was the comparatively calm peroration of Miss Garr,
“you—you horrid wretch! I have a mind to sue you for slander. How dare
you put such a stigma on my character when you know, or ought to know,
that George Lang is the one that is insane!”
“Oh, ah! George Lang, my employer?” exclaimed Mr. Beanson, coming to
life. “That’s the gentleman you would prosecute. Well, now!”
To the intense astonishment of Archibald an increasing bitterness of
manner succeeded, and he said, “If you are not insane, madam, you are
certainly in your dotage. Why, look at this desk, here! Every one of
these papers is a deed made out by order of the gentleman you would rob.
Go along with your breach of promise! The court would send you to an
asylum as sure as guns!”
Mr. Beanson’s face grew brighter as his indignation grew, and his entire
head was girt about with an unwonted appearance of youth. Sophia’s rough
handling, like sandpaper upon an antique bust, had rubbed some of the
yellow mould away—had lifted that mysterious veil woven by the semblance
of years, and had opened up to her eyes and ours, the perfect glories of
Mr. Beanson’s Golden Age.
“You came here, no doubt, madam,” continued Archibald, with no such
interruption as the foregoing paragraph; “in fact, I feel sure, madam,
you came here to prevail on me to enter into a plot against my only
present employer, and may be (here Mr. Beanson was very bitter in the
curl of his lip and his general tone), may be?—no, I am sure, too, that
you would attempt to marry me at last, as a meet punishment for being
your accomplice. Oh! I see it in your eye, madam; you need not deny it!”
Miss Garr, at one time or another, since she had read Mr. Beanson’s name
on his card, might have thought vaguely of “prospecting” him for a
husband, in case of the failure of all other claims; but to do her
justice, it was only ineffable rage that Archibald saw in her eye, as he
repeated—though Sophia had not attempted to speak—“You need not deny it,
for I tell you I see it in your eye! and as for Mr. Lang, I am doing his
notary business, and a great deal of it, too, especially of late. He is
selling hosts of property—hosts of property, madam, in the name and with
the written consent of the Claytons. Why, the very heaviest sale is to
be made to-day. Now what does this mutual confidence presuppose? Madam,”
said Mr. Beanson, rising and assuming an air of mock politeness, “if you
were as sure that you are sane, as I am that he is going to marry the
daughter of Mrs. Clayton, you would not have taken up so much of my
valuable time from Mr. Lang’s business. But, madam, this is the door,”
concluded Mr. Beanson with an urbane wave of the hand, as he resumed his
seat and began silently to arrange the papers before him.
Miss Sophia, white with rage, did not stir or speak.
Involuntarily the hands of Mr. Beanson paused in the labours they had
undertaken, and fell heavily, one on each side of his chair, almost to
the floor. As he sat and gazed at the still shape before him, the idea
of the ghost in _Hamlet_ was suddenly suggested to the fertile mind of
Mr. Beanson. This was not a remarkable conception, taken apart from its
consequences; yet Mr. Beanson, forgetting the matter of gender, not only
congratulated himself on the aptness of the allusion, though not
expressed in words, but actually chuckled, and at last, laughed
outright, as an encouragement to his own genius.
Had it not been for this fatal laugh, Miss Garr could have spoken, and
her speech might have been terrible. But something came perversely up
into her throat. Turning briskly upon her heel, she darted through the
door to be in advance of her own tears; and she and the first brief of
Mr. Archibald Beanson disappeared together.
_Ralph Keeler._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_EPITAPH FOR HIMSELF._
THE BODY
OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK,
ITS CONTENTS TORN OUT,
AND STRIPT OF ITS LETTERING AND GILDING)
LIES HERE FOOD FOR WORMS;
YET THE WORK ITSELF SHALL NOT BE LOST,
FOR IT WILL (AS HE BELIEVED) APPEAR ONCE MORE
IN A NEW
AND MORE BEAUTIFUL EDITION,
CORRECTED AND AMENDED
BY
THE AUTHOR.
_Benjamin Franklin._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE DUKE OF BRIDGEWATER._
ONE of these fellows was about seventy, or upwards, and had a bald head
and very grey whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a
greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed
into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses—no, he only had one. He had
an old long-tailed blue jeans coat, with slick brass buttons, flung over
his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags.
The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. After
breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out
was that these chaps didn’t know one another.
“What got you into trouble?” says the bald-head to t’other chap.
“Well, I’d been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth—and
it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it—but I
stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act
of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and
you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I
told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out _with_
you. That’s the whole yarn—what’s yourn?”
“Well, I’d ben a-runnin’ a little temperance revival thar, ’bout a week,
and was the pet of the women-folks, big and little, for I was makin’ it
mighty warm for the rummies, I _tell_ you, and takin’ as much as five or
six dollars a night—ten cents a head, children and niggers free—and
business a growin’ all the time; when somehow or another a little report
got around, last night, that I had a way of puttin’ in my time with a
private jug, on the sly. A nigger rousted me out this mornin’, and told
me the people was getherin’ on the quiet, with their dogs and horses,
and they’d be along pretty soon and give me ’bout half-an-hour’s start,
and then run me down, if they could; and if they got me they’d tar and
feather me, and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn’t wait for no
breakfast—I warn’t hungry.”
“Old man,” says the young one, “I reckon we might double-team it
together; what do you think?”
“I ain’t undisposed. What’s your line—mainly?”
“Jour printer, by trade; do a little in patent medicines;
theatre-actor—tragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology
when there’s a chance; teach singing geography school for a change;
sling a lecture, sometimes—oh, I do lots of things—most anything that
comes handy, so it ain’t work. What’s your lay?”
“I’ve done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. Layin’ on o’
hands is my best holt—for cancer, and paralysis, and sich things; and I
k’n tell a fortune pretty good, when I’ve got somebody along to find out
the facts for me. Preachin’s my line, too; and workin’ camp meetin’s;
and missionaryin’ around.”
Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh
and says—
“Alas!”
“What’re you alassin’ about?” says the bald-head.
“To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded
down into such company.” And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with
a rag.
“Dern your skin, ain’t the company good enough for you?” says the
bald-head, pretty pert and uppish.
“Yes, it _is_ good enough for me; it’s as good as I deserve; for who
fetched me so low, when I was so high? _I_ did myself. I don’t blame
_you_, gentlemen—far from it; I don’t blame anybody. I deserve it all.
Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know—there’s a grave
somewhere for me. The world may go on just as it’s always done, and take
everything from me—loved ones, property, everything—but it can’t take
that. Some day I’ll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken
heart will be at rest.” He went on a-wiping.
“Drot your pore broken heart,” says the bald-head; “what are you heaving
your pore broken heart at _us_ f’r? _We_ hain’t done nothing.”
“No, I know you haven’t. I ain’t blaming you, gentlemen. I brought
myself down—yes, I did it myself. It’s right I should suffer—perfectly
right—I don’t make any moan.”
“Brought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?”
“Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes—let it pass—’tis
no matter. The secret of my birth——”
“The secret of your birth? Do you mean to say——”
“Gentlemen,” says the young man, very solemn, “I will reveal it to you,
for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!”
Jim’s eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too.
Then the bald-head says: “No! you can’t mean it?”
“Yes. My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled
to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure
air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father
dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke seized the
title and estates—the infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal
descendant of that infant—I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and
here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by
the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the
companionship of felons on a raft!”
Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but
he said it warn’t much use, he couldn’t be much comforted; said if we
was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most
anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we
ought to bow, when we spoke to him, and say, “Your Grace,” or “My Lord,”
or “Your Lordship”—and he wouldn’t mind it if we called him plain
“Bridgewater,” which he said was a title, anyway, and not a name; and
one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for
him he wanted done.
Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood
around and waited on him, and says, “Will yo’ Grace have some o’ dis, or
some o’ dat?” and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to
him.
But the old man got pretty silent, by-and-by—didn’t have much to say,
and didn’t look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going
on around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind. So, along
in the afternoon, he says—
“Looky here, Bilgewater,” he says, “I’m nation sorry for you, but you
ain’t the only person that’s had troubles like that.”
“No?”
“No, you ain’t. You ain’t the only person that’s ben snaked down
wrongfully out’n a high place.”
“Alas!”
“No, you ain’t the only person that’s had a secret of his birth.” And by
jings, _he_ begins to cry.
“Hold! What do you mean?”
“Bilgewater, kin I trust you?” says the old man, still sort of sobbing.
“To the bitter death!” He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it,
and says, “The secret of your being: speak!”
[Illustration: “‘BILGEWATER, I AM THE LATE DAUPHIN!’”]
“Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!”
You bet you Jim and me stared, this time. Then the duke says—
“You are what?”
“Yes, my friend, it is too true—your eyes is lookin’ at this very moment
on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the
Sixteen and Marry Antonette.”
“You! At your age! No! You mean you’re the late Charlemagne; you must be
six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.”
“Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung
these grey hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see
before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin’, exiled,
trampled-on, and sufferin’ rightful King of France.”
Well, he cried and took on so, that me and Jim didn’t know hardly what
to do, we was so sorry—and so glad and proud we’d got him with us, too.
So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort
_him_. But he said it warn’t no use, nothing but to be dead and done
with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel
easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his
rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him
“Your Majesty,” and waited on him first at meals, and didn’t set down in
his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him,
and doing this and that and t’other for him, and standing up till he
told us we might set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got
cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didn’t
look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king
acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke’s great-grandfather
and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by
_his_ father, and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but
the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by-and-by the king says—
“Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time, on this h-yer
raft, Bilgewater, and so what’s the use o’ your bein’ sour? It’ll only
make things oncomfortable. It ain’t my fault I warn’t born a duke, it
ain’t your fault you warn’t born a king—so what’s the use to worry? Make
the best o’ things the way you find ’em, says I—that’s my motto. This
ain’t no bad thing that we’ve struck here—plenty grub and an easy
life—come, give us your hand, Duke, and less all be friends.”
The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away
all the uncomfortableness, and we felt mighty good over it, because it
would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the
raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody
to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.
It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no
kings nor dukes, at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I
never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it’s the best way;
then you don’t have no quarrels, and don’t get into no trouble. If they
wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn’t no objections, ‘long as
it would keep peace in the family; and it warn’t no use to tell Jim, so
I didn’t tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt
that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them
have their own way.
_Samuel L. Clemens_ (“_Mark Twain_”).
(_From “Huckleberry Finn_.”)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_A VISIT TO BRIGHAM YOUNG._
[Illustration: “‘WILTIST THOU NOT TARRY HEAR IN THE PROMIST LAND?’”]
IT is now goin on 2 (too) yeres, as I very well remember, since I
crossed the Planes for Kaliforny, the Brite land of Jold. While crossin
the Planes all so bold I fell in with sum noble red men of the forest
(N.B. This is rote Sarcastical. Injins is Pizin, whar ever found), which
thay Sed I was their Brother, & wantid for to smoke the Calomel of Peace
with me. Thay than stole my jerkt beef, blankits, etsettery, skalpt my
orgin grinder & scooted with a Wild Hoop. Durin the Cheaf’s techin
speech he sed he shood meet me in the Happy Huntin Grounds. If he duz
thare will be a fite. But enuff of this ere. _Reven Noose Muttons_, as
our skoolmaster who has got Talent into him, cussycally obsarves.
I arrove at Salt Lake in doo time. At Camp Scott there was a lot of U.S.
sojers, hosstensibly sent out thare to smash the mormins but really to
eat Salt vittles & play poker & other beautiful but sumwhat onsartin
games. I got acquainted with sum of the officers. Thay lookt putty
scrumpshus in their Bloo coats with brass buttings onto um & ware very
talented drinkers, but so fur as fitin is consarned I’d willingly put my
wax figgers agin the hull party.
My desire was to exhibit my grate show in Salt Lake City, so I called on
Brigham Yung, the grate mogull amung the mormins, and axed his permishun
to pitch my tent and onfurl my banner to the gintle breezis. He lookt at
me in a austeer manner for a few minits, and sed—
“Do you bleeve in Solomon, Saint Paul, the immaculateness of the Mormin
Church and the Latter-day Revelashuns?”
Sez I, “I’m on it!” I make it a pint to git along plesunt, tho I didn’t
know what under the Son the old feller was drivin at. He sed I mite
show.
“You air a marrid man, Mister Yung, I bleeve?” sez I, preparin to rite
him som free parsis.
“I hev eighty wives, Mister Ward. I sertinly am marrid.”
“How do you like it as far as you hev got?” sed I.
He sed “middlin,” and axed me wouldn’t I like to see his famerly, to
which I replide that I wouldn’t mind minglin with the fair Seck &
Barskin in the winnin smiles of his interestin wives. He accordingly tuk
me to his Scareum. The house is powerful big & in an exceedin large room
was his wives and children, which larst was squawkin and hollerin enuff
to take the roof rite orf the house. The wimin was of all sizes and
ages. Sum was pretty & sum was plane—sum was helthy and sum was on the
Wayne—which is verses, tho sich was not my intentions, as I don’t ’prove
of puttin verses in Proze rittins, tho ef occashun requires I can jerk a
Poim ekal to any of them Atlantic Munthly fellers.
“My wives, Mister Ward,” sed Yung.
“Your sarvant, marms,” sed I, as I sot down in a cheer which a red-heded
female brawt me.
“Besides these wives you see here, Mister Ward,” sed Yung, “I hav eighty
more in varis parts of this consecrated land which air Sealed to me.”
“Which,” sez I, gittin up & starin at him.
“Sealed, Sir! sealed.”
“Whare bowts?” sez I.
“I sed, Sir, that they was sealed!” He spoke in a traggerdy voice.
“Will they probly continner on in that stile to any great extent, Sir,”
I axed.
“Sir,” sed he, turnin as red as a biled beet, “don’t you know that the
rules of our Church is that I, the Profit, may hev as meny wives as I
wants?”
“Jes so,” I sed. “You are old pie, ain’t you?”
“Them as is Sealed to me—that is to say, to be mine when I wants um—air
at present my sperretooul wives,” sed Mister Yung.
“Long may thay wave!” sez I, seein I shood git into a scrape ef I didn’t
look out.
In a privit conversashun with Brigham I learnt the follerin fax:—It
takes him six weeks to kiss his wives. He don’t do it only onct a yere,
& sez it is wuss nor cleanin house. He don’t pretend to know his
children, thare is so many of um, tho they all know him. He sez about
every child he meats call him Par, and he takes it for grantid it is so.
His wives air very expensive. They allers want suthin & ef he don’t buy
it for um they set the house in a uproar. He sez he don’t have a minit’s
peace. His wives fite amung theirselves so much that he has bilt a fitin
room for thare speshul benefit, & when too of em get into a row he has
em turned loose into that place, whare the dispoot is settled a cordin
to the rules of the London prize ring. Sumtimes thay abooz hisself
individooally. Thay hev pulled the most of his hair out at the roots &
he wares meny a horrible scar upon his body, inflicted with mop-handles,
broomsticks and sich. Occashunly they git mad & scald him with bilin hot
water. When he got eny waze cranky thay’d shut him up in a dark closit,
previsly whippin him arter the stile of muthers when thare orfsprings
git onruly. Sumtimes when he went in swimmin thay’d go to the banks of
the Lake and steal all his close, thereby compellin him to sneek home by
a sircootius rowt, drest in the Skanderlus stile of the Greek Slaiv. “I
find that the keers of a marrid life way hevy onto me,” sed the Profit,
“& sumtimes I wish I’d remained singel.” I left the Profit and startid
for the tavern whare I put up to. On my way I was overtuk by a lurge
krowd of Mormons, which they surrounded me & statid that they were goin
into the Show free.
“Wall,” sez I, “ef I find a individooal who is goin’ round lettin folks
into his show free, I’ll let you know.”
“We’ve had a Revelashun biddin us go into A. Ward’s Show without payin
nothin!” thay showtid.
“Yes,” hollered a lot of femaile Mormonesses, ceasin me by the cote
tales & swingin me round very rapid, “we’re all goin in free! So sez the
Revelashun!”