"Do you sleep in this store--live here?"
"No, sir, we don't," was our answer.
"Where do you lodge and get your eating?"
"First house up the road."
"How far is it?" says he.
"Half a mile or less."
"Well, close up your shop, and come along with me!" says the fellow.
Now we were coming to the _tableaux!_ He wanted us to step outside in
order that the business could be done for us, with more haste and
certainty, and we really felt as good as assassinated and hid in the
bushes! It was quite astonishing how our visual organs intensified! We
could see every wrinkle and line in the fellow's face, could almost
count the stitches in his coat, and the more we looked, and the keener
and more searching became our observation, the more atrocious and subtle
became the fellow and his purpose. With a firmness that astonished
ourself, we said--
"_No, Sir_; if _you_ have business there or elsewhere, you had better
_go!_" and with this determined speech, we walked up to the desk, and
with the air of a "man of business" or the nonchalance of a hero, says
we--
"What are you after--have you any business with _us_?"
"You're kind of crusty, Mister," says he. "I'm canvassing this
State,--_wouldn't you like to subscribe for a first-rate map of
Missouri_, OR A NEW EDITION OF JOSEPHUS?"
We felt too mean all over to "subscribe," but we found a light, and soon
found in the stranger one of the best sort of fellows, a man of
information and morality, and, though he had _looked_ dangerous, he
turned out harmless as a lamb, and we got intimate as brothers before
Captain V---- returned that night.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Of all the public lecturers of our time and place, none have attracted
more attention from the press, and consequently the people, than RALPH
WALDO EMERSON.
Lecturing has become quite a fashionable science--and now, instead of
using the old style phrases for illustrating facts, we call travelling
preachers perambulating showmen, and floating politicians, _lecturers_.
As a lecturer, Ralph Waldo Emerson is extensively known around these
parts; but whether his lectures come under the head of law, logic,
politics, Scripture, or the show business, is a matter of much
speculation; for our own part, the more we read or hear of Ralph, the
more we don't know what it's all about.
Somebody has said, that to his singularity of style or expression,
Carlyle and his works owe their great notoriety or fame--and many
compare Ralph Waldo to old Carlyle. They cannot trace exactly any great
affinity between these two great geniuses of the flash literary school.
Carlyle writes vigorously, quaintly enough, but almost always speaks
when he says something; on the contrary, our flighty friend Ralph speaks
vigorously, yet says nothing! Of all men that have ever stood and
delivered in presence of "a reporter," none surely ever led these
indefatigable knights of the pen such a wild-goose chase over the
verdant and flowery pastures of King's English, as Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In ordinary cases, a reporter well versed in his art, catches a sentence
of a speaker, and goes on to fill it out upon the most correct
impression of what was intended, or what is implied. But no such
license follows the outpourings of Mr. Emerson; no thought can fathom
his intentions, and quite as bottomless are even his finished sentences.
We have known "old stagers," in the newspaporial line, veteran
reporters, so dumbfounded and confounded by the first fire of Ralph, and
his grand and lofty acrobating in elocution, that they up, seized their
hat and paper, and sloped, horrified at the prospect of an attempt to
"take down" Mr. Emerson.
If Roaring Ralph touches a homely mullen weed, on a donkey heath,
straightway he makes it a full-blown rose, in the land of Ophir,
shedding an odor balmy as the gales of Arabia; while with a facility the
wonderful London auctioneer Robbins might envy, Ralph imparts to a
lime-box, or pig-sty, a negro hovel, or an Irish shanty, all the
romance, artistic elegance and finish of a first-class manor-house, or
Swiss cottage, inlaid with alabaster and fresco, surrounded by elfin
bowers, grand walks, bee hives, and honeysuckles.
Ralph don't group his metaphorical beauties, or dainties of Webster,
Walker, &c., but rushes them out in torrents--rattles them down in
cataracts and avalanches--bewildering, astounding, and incomprehensible.
He hits you upon the left lug of your knowledge box with a metaphor so
unwieldy and original, that your breath is soon gone--and before it is
recovered, he gives you another _rhapsody_ on t'other side, and as you
try to steady yourself, _bim_ comes another, heavier than the first two,
while a fourth batch of this sort of elocution fetches you a bang over
the eyes, giving you a vertigo in the ribs of your bewildered senses,
and before you can say "God bless us!" down he has you--_cobim!_ with a
deluge of high-heeled grammar and three-storied Anglo Saxon, settling
your hash, and brings you to the ground by the run, as though you were
struck by lightning, or in the way of a 36-pounder! Ralph Waldo is death
and an entire _stud_ of pale horses on flowery expressions and
japonica-domish flubdubs. He revels in all those knock-kneed, antique,
or crooked and twisted words we used all of us to puzzle our brains over
in the days of our youth, and grammar lessons and rhetoric exercises. He
has a penchant as strong as cheap boarding-house butter, for
mystification, and a free delivery of hard words, perfectly and
unequivocally wonderful. We listened one long hour by the clock of
Rumford Hall, one night, to an outpouring of _argumentum ad hominem_ of
Mr. Emerson's--at what? A boy under an apple tree! If ten persons out of
the five hundred present were put upon their oaths, they could no more
have deciphered, or translated Mr. Ralph's argumentation, than they
could the hieroglyphics upon the walls of Thebes, or the sarcophagus of
old King Pharaoh! When Ralph Waldo opens, he may be as calm as a May
morn--he may talk for five minutes, like a book--we mean a
common-sensed, understandable book; but all of a sudden the fluid will
strike him--up he goes--down he fetches them. He throws a double
somerset backwards over Asia Minor--flip-flaps in Greece--wings
Turkey--and _skeets_ over Iceland; here he slips up with a flower
garden--a torrent of gilt-edged metaphors, that would last a country
parson's moderate demand a long lifetime, are whirled with the fury and
fleetness of Jove's thunderbolts. After exhausting his sweet-scented
receiver of this floral elocution, he pauses four seconds; pointing to
vacuum, over the heads of his audience, he asks, in an anxious tone, "Do
you see that?" Of course the audience are not expected to be so
unmannerly as to ask "What?" If they were, Ralph would not give them
time to "go in," for after asking them if they see _that_, he
continues--
"There! Mark! Note! It is a malaria prism! Now, then; here--there; see
it! Note it! Watch it!"
During this time, half of the audience, especially the old women and the
children, look around, fearful of the ceiling falling in, or big bugs
lighting on them. But the pause is for a moment, and anxiety ceases when
they learn it was only a false alarm, only--
"Egotism! The lame, the pestiferous exhalation or concrete malformation
of society!"
You breathe freer, and Ralph goes in, gloves on.
"Egotism! A metaphysical, calcareous, oleraceous amentum of--society!
The mental varioloid of this sublunary hemisphere! One of its worst
feelings or features is, the craving of sympathy. It even loves
sickness, because actual pain engenders signs of sympathy. All
cultivated men are infected more or less with this dropsy. But they are
still the leaders. The life of a few men is the life of every place. In
Boston you hear and see a few, so in New York; then you may as well die.
Life is very narrow. Bring a few men together, and under the spell of
one calm genius, what frank, sad confessions will be made! Culture is
the suggestion from a few best thoughts that a man should not be a
charlatan, but temper and subdue life. Culture redresses his balance,
and puts him among his equals. It is a poor compliment always to talk
with a man upon his _specialty_, as if he were a cheese-mite, and was
therefore strong on Cheshire and Stilton. Culture takes the grocer out
of his molasses and makes him genial. We pay a heavy price for those
fancy goods, Fine Arts and Philosophy. No performance is worth loss of
geniality. That unhappy man called of genius, is an unfortunate man.
Nature always carries her point despite the means!"
If that don't convince you of Ralph's high-heeled, knock-kneed logic, or
_au fait_ dexterity in concocting flap-doodle mixtures, you're ahead of
ordinary intellect as far as this famed lecturer is in advance of gin
and bitters, or opium discourses on--delirium tremens!
In short, Ralph Waldo Emerson can wrap up a subject in more mystery and
science of language than ever a defunct Egyptian received at the hands
of the mummy manufacturers! In person, Mr. Ralph is rather a pleasing
sort of man; in manners frank and agreeable; about forty years of age,
and a native of Massachusetts. As a lawyer, he would have been the
horror of jurors and judges; as a lecturer, he is, as near as possible,
what we have described him.
Humbug.
There is no end to the humbug in life. About half we say, and more than
half we do, is tinged with humbug. "My Dear Sir," we say, when we
address a letter to a fellow we have never seen, and if seen, perhaps
don't care a continental cent for him; _dear_ sir! what a humbug
expression! "Good morning," (what a lie!) says one, as he meets another
_one_, on a stormy and nasty day, "quite a disagreeable wet day!" What's
the use of such a humbug expression as that? If it's a disagreeable and
stormy day, every body finds it out, naturally. Full half of the people
who appear solicitous about your _health_, display a gratuitous amount
of humbug, for your pocket-book is more beloved than your health; and we
have often wondered why matter-of-fact people don't out with it, when
they meet, and say--"How's your pocket to-day? Sorry to hear you're out
of _money!_" Or, instead of soft soap, when they meet, why not discard
humbug, and say, "Sorry to see you--was blackguarding you all day!"
instead of "Glad to see you--have been _thinking_ of you to-day!" or,
"I'm glad to see you've been elected Mayor of the city!" when in fact
they mean, "Curse you, I wish you had been defeated!" Compliments
_pass_, they say, when _gentlemen_ meet, but, as there are so many
counterfeit gentry around, now-a-days, you may bet high that half the
_compliments_ that _pass_ are--_mere bogus!_
Hotel Keeping.
Fortunes are made--very readily, it is said, in our large cities, by
Hotel keeping. It does look money-making business to a great many
people, who stop in a large hotel a day or two, and perhaps, after
eating about two meals out of six--walking in quietly and walking out
quietly--no fuss, no feathers, find themselves _taxed_ four or five
dollars!
We have had occasion to know something of travel and travellers, hotels,
hotel-keepers and their bills, and it _has_ now and then entered our
head that money was or could be made--in the hotel business. We _have_
stopped in houses where we honestly concluded--we got our money's worth,
and we have again had reason to believe ourselves grossly shaved, in a
"first-class" hotel, at two dollars a day--all hurry-scurry, poked up in
the cock-loft, mid bugs, dirt, heat and effluvia, very little better
than a Dutch tavern in fly time.
We did not fail to observe at the same time, that cool impudence and
clamor had a most mollifying effect upon landlord and his _attaches_,
the tinsel and mere electrotypes passing for real bullion, galvanized
_hums_ by their noise and pretensions faring fifty per cent. better for
the same _price_--than the more republican, quiet and human wayfarer.
Under such auspices, it is not at all wonderful that ourself and scores
of others, paying two dollars and a half per diem, got what we could
catch, while Kossuth, and a score of his followers, fared and were
favored like princes of a monarchical realm--"though all _dead heads!_"
Hotels now-a-days must be _showy_, abounding in tin foil, Dutch metal
and gamboge, a thousand of the "modern improvements"--mere clap-trap,
and as foreign to the solid comforts of solid people, as icebergs to
Norwegians or "east winds" to the consumptive. Without the show, they
would be quite deserted; men will pay for this _show_, must pay for it,
and all this show costs money; Turkey carpets, life-size mirrors,
ottomans and marble slabs, from dome to kitchen, _draw well_, and those
who indulge in the dance, must pay the piper.
The fact is, most people understand these things about as well as we do,
and it but remains for us to give a daguerreotype of a _few customers_
which landlords or their clerks and servants now and then meet. The
conductor of one of our first-class houses, gives us such a truly
piquant and matter-of-fact picture of _his_ experience, that we _up_ and
copy it, believing, as we do, that the reader will see some information
and amusement in the subject.
A fussy fellow takes it into his head that he will go on a little tour,
he pockets a few dollars and a clean dickey or two, and--comes to town.
He's no green horn--O! no, he ain't, he has been around some--he has,
and knows a thing or two, and something over. He is dumped out of the
cars with hundreds of others, in the great depots, and is assailed by
vociferous _whips_ who, in quest of stray dimes, watch the incoming
_trains_ and shout and bawl--
"Eh 'up! Tremont House!"
"Up--_a!_ American House--right away!"
"Ha! _up!_ Right off for the Revere!"
"Here's the coach--already for the United States!"
"Yee 'up! now we go, git in, best house in town, all ready for the
Winthrop House!"
"Eh 'up, _ha!_ now we are off, for the Pavilion!"
"Exchange Coffee House--dollar a day, four meals, no extra charge--right
along this way, sir!"
"Hoo-_ray_, this coach--take you right up, Exchange Hotel!"
"Jump in, tickets for your baggage, sir, take you up--right off, best
house in town, hot supper waitin'--way for the Adams House!"
And so they yell and grab at you, and our fussy friend, having heard of
the tall arrangements and great doings of the _American_, he hands
himself over to the coachman, and with a load of others he is rolled
over to that institution, in a jiffy. Our fussy friend is slightly "took
down" at the idea of paying for the hauling up, having a notion that
that was a part of the accommodation! However, he ain't a going to look
small or verdant; so he pays the coachman, grabs his valise, and rushes
into the long colonnaded office; and making his way to the _register_,
slams down his baggage, and in a dignified, authoritative manner, says--
"A room!"
"Yes, sir," responds the Colonel, or some of the clerks--who may be
officiating.
"Supper!" says Capt. Fussy, in the same tone of command.
"Certainly, sir--please register your name, sir!"
Captain Fussy off's gloves, seizes the pen, and down goes his autograph,
Captain Fussy, Thumperstown, N. H.
"Now, I want a hot steak!" says he.
"You can have it, sir!" blandly replies the Colonel.
"Hot chocolate," continues Fussy.
"Certainly, sir!"
"Eggs, poached, and a--hot roll!"
"They'll be all ready, sir."
"How soon?"
"Five minutes, sir," says the Colonel, talking to a dozen at the same
time.
"Ah, well--show me my room!" says Captain Fussy.
The bells are ringing--servants running to and fro, like witches in a
whirlwind; fifty different calls--tastes--orders and fancies, are being
served, but Capt. Fussy is attended to, a servant seizes his valise and
a taper, and in the most winning way, cries--
"This way, sir, _right along!_" With a measured tread and the air of a
man who knew what it was all about, the Captain follows the _garcon_ and
mounts one flight of the broad stairs, and is about to ascend another,
when it strikes him that he's not going up to the top of the house,
nohow!
"Where are you going to take me to--up into the garret?"
"Oh! no, sir; your room's only 182; that's only on the third floor!"
"Third floor!" cries Capt. Fussy, "take _me_ up into the third story?"
"Plenty of gentlemen on the fifth and sixth floors, sir," says the
servant, and he goes ahead, Capt. Fussy following, muttering--
"Pooty doin's this, taking a _gentleman_ up three of these cussed long
stairs, to room 182! I'll see about this, I will; mus'n't come no gammon
over me; I'm able to pay, and want the worth of my money!"
The third floor is reached, and after a brief meandering along the
halls, 182 is arrived at, the door thrown open and Capt. Fussy is
ushered in; his first effort is to find fault with the carpets,
furniture, bedding or something, but as he had never probably seen such
a general arrangement for ease, comfort and convenience--he caved in and
merely gave a deep-toned--
"_Ah._ Got better rooms than this, ain't you?"
"There may be, sir, a few better rooms in the house, not many," said the
servant.
"Well, you may go--but stop--how soon'll my supper be ready?"
"There'll be a supper set at eight, another at nine, sir."
"Ah, four minutes of eight," says Fussy, pulling out a "bull's eye"
watch, with as much flourish as if it was a premium eighteen-_carat
lever_. "Well, call me when you've got supper ready, do you hear?"
"Yes, sir; but you'll hear the gong."
"The gong--what's that? Ain't you got no bells?"
"The gong is used, sir, instead of bells," says the servant.
"_Ah_, well, clear out--but say, I want a fire in here."
"Yes, sir; I'll send up a fireman."
"A fireman? What do I want with _firemen_? Bring in some wood, and,
stranger--start up--a hello! thunder and saw mills, what's all that
racket about--house a-fire?"
"No, _sir!_" says the grinning servant--"the _gong_--supper's on the
table!"
"_Ah_, very well; go ahead; where's the room?"
Conducted to the dining-room, Capt. Fussy's eyes stretch at the
wholesale display of table-cloths, arm-chairs, "crockery" and cutlery,
mirrors and white-aproned waiters. A seat is offered him, he dumps
himself down, amazed but determined to look and act like one used to
these affairs, from the hour of his birth!
"I ordered hot steak, poached eggs--hain't you got 'em?"
"Certainly, sir!" says the waiter, and the steak and eggs are at hand.
"Coffee or tea, sir?" another servant inquires.
"Coffee and tea! Humph, I ordered chocolate--hain't you got chocolate?"
"Oh, yes, sir; there it is."
"_Ah_, umph!" and Fussy gazes around and turns his nose slightly up, at
the whole concern, waiters, guests, table, steak, eggs, chocolate,
and--even the tempting hot rolls--before him.
Fussy calls for a glass of water, wants to know if there's fried oysters
on the table; he finds there is not, and Fussy frowns and asks for a
lobster salad, which the waiter informs him is never used at supper, in
that hotel.
Eventually, Capt. Fussy being _crammed_, after an hour's diligent
feeding, fuss and feathers, retires, asks all sorts of questions about
people and places, at the _office_; what time trains start and steamers
come, omnibuses here and stages there, all of which he is politely
answered, of course, and he finally goes to his room, rings his bell
every ten minutes, for an hour, and then--goes to bed; next day puts the
servants and clerks over another course, and on the third day--calls for
his bill, finds but few extras charged, hands over a _five_, puts on his
gloves, seizes his valise, looks savagely dignified and stalks out, big
as two military officers in regimentals!
"_Ah_," says Fussy, as he reaches the street, "_I_ put 'em through--_I
guess I got the worth of my money!_"
We calculate he did!
"According to Gunter."
Old Gunter was going home t'other night with a very heavy "turkey
on"--about a forty-four pounder. Gunter accused the pavements of being
icy, and down he came--_kerchug!_ A "young lady" coming along,
fidgetting and finiking, she made a very sudden and opposite _ricochet_,
on seeing Gunter feeling the ground, and making abortive attempts to
"riz." Gunter's gallantry was "up;" he knew his own weakness, and saw
the difficulty with the "young lady;" so making a very determinate
effort to get on his pins, Gunter elevated his head and then his voice,
and says he: "My de-dea-dear ma'm, do-do-don't pu-pu-put yourself out of
th-th-the way, on my account!" Tableaux--"young lady" quick-step, and
Gunter playing all-fours in the _mud!_
Quartering upon Friends.
City-bred people have a pious horror of the country in winter, and no
great regard for country visitors at any time, however much they may
"let on" to the contrary.
In rushing hot weather, when the bricks and mortar, the stagnated,
oven-like air of the crowded city threatens to bake, parboil, or give
the "citizens" the yellow fever, then we are very apt to think of plain
Aunt Polly, rough-hewed Uncle John, and the bullet-headed, uncombed,
smock-frocked cousins, nephews, and nieces, at their rural homes, amid
the fragrant meadows and umbrageous woods; the cool, silver streams and
murmuring brooks of the glorious country. Then, the poetic sunbeams and
moonshine of fancy bring to the eye and heart all or a part of the
glories and beauties, uses and purposes in which God has invested the
ruraldom.
Now, our country friends are mostly desirous, candidly so, to have their
city friends come and see them--not merely pop visits, but bring your
whole family, and stay a month! This they may do, and will do, and can
afford it, as it is more convenient to one's pocket-book, on a farm, to
_quarter_ a platoon of your friends than to perform the same operation
in the city, where it is apt to give your purse the tick-dollar-owe in
no time.
It was not long since, during the prevalence of a hot summer, that Mrs.
Triangle one morning said to her stewing husband, who was in no wise
troubled with a surplus of the circulating medium--
"Triangle, it's on-possible for us to keep the children well and quiet
through this dreadful hot weather. We must go into the country. The
Joneses and Pigwigginses and Macwackinses, and--and--everybody has gone
out into the country, and we must go, too; why can't we?"
"Why can't we?" mechanically echoed Triangle, who just then was deeply
absorbed in a problem as to whether or not, considering the prices of
coal, potatoes, house-rents, leather, and "dry goods," he would fetch up
in prison or the poor-house first! It was a momentous question, and to
his wife's proposal of a fresh detail of domestic expense, Triangle
responded--
"Why can't we?"
"Yes, that's what I'd like to know--why can't _we_?"
"We _can't_, Mrs. Triangle," decidedly answered her lord and master.
Now Mrs. T., being but a woman, very naturally went on to give Mr. T. a
Caudle lecture half an hour long, winding up with one of those
time-honored perquisites of the female sex--a good cry.
Poor Triangle put on his hat and marched down to his bake-oven of an
"office," to plan business and smoke his cigar. Triangle came home to
tea, and saw at a glance that something must be done. Mrs. Triangle was
to be "compromised," or far hotter than even the hot, hot weather would
be his domicile for the balance of the season. Triangle thought it over,
as he nibbled his toast and sipped his hot Souchong.
"My dear," said he, pushing aside his cup, and tilting himself upon the
"hind legs" of his chair--"business is very dull, the weather is
intolerable, I know you and the children would be much benefitted by a
trip into the country--why can't we go?"
"Why can't we?--that's what I'd like to know!" was the ready response of
Mrs. T.
"Well, we can go. My friend Jingo has as fine a place in the country as
ever was, anywhere; he has asked me again and again to come down in the
summer, and bring all the family. Now we'll go; Jingo will be delighted
to see us; and we'll have a good, pleasant time, I'll warrant."
Mrs. Triangle was delighted; soon all the clouds of her temper were
dispersed, and like people "cut out for each other," Triangle and his
wife sat and planned the details of the tour to Jingo Hill Farm.
Frederic Antonio Gustavus was to be rigged out in new boots, hat, and
breeches. Maria Evangeline Roxana Matilda was to be fitted out in Polka
boots, gipsey bonnet, and Bloomer pantalettes, with an entire invoice of
handkerchiefs, scarfs, ribbons, gloves, and hosiery for "mother," little
Georgiana Victorine Rosa Adelaide, and _the baby_, Henry Rinaldo
Mercutio. After three days' onslaught upon poor Triangle's pockets, with
any quantity of "fuss and feathers," Mrs. Triangle pronounced the
caravan ready to move. But just as all was ready, Bridget Durfy, the
maid-of-all-work, who was to accompany them on the expedition as
supervisor of the children, threw up her engagement.
"Plaze the pigs," said Biddy; "it's mesilf as niver likes the counthry,
at all; an' I'll jist be afther not goin', ma'm, wid yez!"
Here was a go--or rather a "no go!" Triangle had bought tickets for all,
and ordered the carriage at four; it was now three P. M., of a hot,
roasting day. It would be "on-possible," as Mrs. T. said, to go without
a girl; so poor, sweltering Triangle rushed down to the "Intelligence
Office," where, from the sweating mass of female humanity awaiting a
market for their time and labor, Triangle selected a stout, hearty Irish
_blonde_, warranted perfect, capable, kind, honest, and the Lord only
knows how many virtues the keeper of an "Intelligence Office" will not
swear belong to one of their stock in trade.
Away went Triangle, sweating and swearing; the Irish maiden, swinging a
bundle in one hand and a flaring _bandanna_ in the other, following
after her patron with a duck-waddle; and finally the carriage came; all
got in but Triangle, who started on foot to the depot, carrying his
double-barrelled gun and leading an ugly dog, which he rejoiced in
believing was a full-blooded _setter_, though the best posted
dog-fanciers assured him it was a cross between a tan-yard cur and a
sheep-stealer! But, after a world of motion and commotion--on the part
of Triangle, about the dog, tickets and baggage, and Mrs. Triangle,
about the children, satchels, her new gown, and the sleepy Irish
girl--they found themselves whisked over the rails, and after some three
hours' carriage, they were dumped down in the vicinity of Jingo Hall,
where they found the "private conveyance" of the proprietor of Jingo
Hill Farm waiting to carry them, bandbox and bundle, rag-tag and
bobtail, to Jingo Hall.
The carriage being overfull, Triangle concluded to walk up, stretch his
legs, try his dog and gun, and have a pop at the game. But, alas, for
the villanous dog; no sooner had he got loose and scampered off up the
road, than he sees a flock of sheep some distance across the fields, and
away he pitched. The sheep ran, he after the sheep; and poor Triangle
after his dog.
"Hay! you Ponto--here--hay--Ponto-o-o! Hey, boy, come here, you dog--hi!
hi!--do you hear-r-r?"
But Ponto was off, and after a run of half a mile, he came up with a
lamb, and before Triangle could come to the rescue, Ponto had opened the
campaign by killing sheep! Triangle was so put out about it that in
wrath he up with his gun and was about to terminate the existence of the
dog, but compromised the matter by hitting him a whack across the back
with the barrels of his shooting-iron; in doing so, he broke off the
stock, clean as a whistle! It is useless to deny that Triangle _was_
mad; that he swore equal to an Erie Canal boatman; and that his fury so
alarmed the dog that he took to his heels and went--as Triangle
hoped--anywhere, head foremost.
[Illustration: "With a presence of mind truly unparalleled, she laid
down 'baby' upon the grass, and made fight with 'the spiteful
craturs.'"--_Page_ 169.]
With a face as long as a boot-jack, quite tuckered out and disgusted
with things as far as he had got, Triangle reached Jingo Hall, where he
met the warm welcome of his friend, Major Jingo, and soon recuperated
his good humor and physical activity by the contents of the Major's
"well-stocked" _wine-cellar_. Ashamed of the facts of the case, Triangle
trumped up a cock-and-bull story about the dog and gun.
After a season, the Triangles got settled away, and the first day or two
passed without anything extraordinary turning up, if we may except the
upturning of several flower-pots and hen's nests by the children. But
the third day opened ominously. Triangle's dog was found with one of the
Major's dead lambs under convoy, and the Irish hostler had caught him,
tied him up in the stable, and given him such a dressing that Ponto's
soul-case was nearly beaten out of him!
The next item was a yowl in the garden! Everybody rushed out--Mrs.
Triangle in her excitement, lest something had happened to "baby," and
Nora, the girl, struck the centre-table, upset the "Astral," and not
only demolished that ancient piece of furniture, but spilled enough
thick oil over the gilt-edged literature, table-cloth, and carpet, to
make a barrel of soft soap.
The Irish girl came bounding, screeching forth! She had been sauntering
through the garden, and ran against the bee-hives, when a bee up and at
her. With a presence of mind truly unparalleled, she laid down "baby"
upon the grass, and made fight with "the spiteful craturs;" and of
course she got her hands full, was beset by tens and hundreds, and was
stung in as many places by the pugnacious "divils." Nora was done for.
She went to bed; "baby" was found all right, laughing "fit to break its
yitty hearty party, at naughty Nora Dory," as Mrs. Triangle very
naturally expressed it.
These two tableaux had hardly reached their climax, when in rushed
Frederic Antonio Gustavus, with his capacious apron full of "birds he
killed in the yard, down by the barns." Poor Jingo! and we may add, poor
Mrs. Jingo! for a favorite brood of the finest fowls in the country had
been exterminated by the chivalrous young Triangle, and in the bloom of
his heroic act he dropped the dead game at the feet of his
horror-stricken mother, and astonished father, and the Jingos.
That night the effect of stuffing with green fruit to utter suffocation
manifested itself in a general and alarming cholera-morbus among the
junior Triangles, and the whole house was up in arms.
In the midst of this, a fresh clamor broke out in Nora's chamber. A huge
bat had got into her room, and so alarmed her, that she yelled worse,
louder, and longer than seven evil ones.
It was a night of horror to the whole family--to everybody in and about
Jingo Hall. The dogs set up a howl; the children bawled, cried, and took
on; the Irish girl screeched; gin and laudanum, peppermint and
"lollypops," the de'il to pay and no pitch hot.
Triangle felt relieved when daylight came, and had it not been Sunday,
he would have packed up and put back for the prosy office and stagnated
quietude of the city. But it was Sunday, and after the children, Irish
girl, and dogs had been partially quieted, down the carriage came to the
door, and as many as could get into it of the Jingos and Triangles,
rolled off to meeting.
Triangle and Jingo went to escape the din and noise of dressing "the
babies," &c.; and after the service was over, poor Triangle was taken
aside by a tall, bony man, who reported himself in no very ceremonious
manner as the proprietor of a flock of sheep scared to death, and one
rare lamb killed--"by your dog!" Triangle owned to the soft impeachment,
and "compromised" for a V.
Returned to Jingo Hall, another _coup d'etat_ all around the lot had
broken out. Evangeline Roxana Matilda Triangle had disappeared. The
baby, Georgiana Victorine Rosa Adelaide, had fallen from a swing in the
grove and dislocated her wrist, and flattened her pretty nose quite to
her pretty face. Baby was very ill, and from the groans issuing from
Nora's attic, it was not _on-possible_ that she was sick as she could
be. A general search took place for Evangeline Roxana Matilda, while
Maj. Jingo mounted a horse and rode over to the village, to bring down a
doctor for Georgiana Victorine Rosa Adelaide, "the baby," and--Nora
Dougherty.
A glance at the Irish girl convinced poor _tried_ Triangle that she was
a case--of small-pox.
Maj. Jingo returned, but without a medical adviser; the village
Esculapius having gone off to the city. Things looked gloomy enough.
Triangle felt "chawed up," and wished he had been roasted alive in the
city before venturing upon such a trip. But he felt he had a duty to
perform, and he determined to put it through.
"Major, I'm very sorry, but the fact is"----
"Never mind, never mind, my dear fellow--no trouble to us."
"But," chokingly continued poor Triangle, "but, Major, the fact is,
I--a--you've got a large family"----
"Never mind, my dear boy; don't say any more about it."
"But to have the--a--the--small-pox"----
"What?" gasped the Major--"the--a"----
"Small-pox!" seriously enough responded Triangle.
"Small-pox! Who? Where?"
"Our Irish girl--up stairs--awful!"
"O, good Lord! Irish--up stairs--small-pox!" reiterated the really
alarmed proprietor of Jingo Hall.
"I wouldn't have"--said Triangle.
"The small-pox in my house"--echoed Jingo.
"For all the blessed countries in the world!" passionately exclaimed
Triangle.
"Heavens!" exclaimed the Major; "my wife has a greater dread of
small-pox than yellow fever, or death itself!"
"What's to be done?" said poor Triangle.
"Remove the girl to an out-house, instantly!" said the Major, pacing up
and down, in great _furore_.
"That's best, Major; go move her, at once."
"Me? Me move her, sir?" said Jingo.
"Why who will, Major?" responded Triangle.
"Who? Why, you, of course."
"Me?" exclaimed Triangle--"me? endanger my life, and the lives of all my
family--me? No, sir, I'll--I'll--I'll be hanged if I do!"
"Blur a' nouns, zur!" bawled the Irish hostler, as he came trotting up
to the front veranda, where Triangle and Jingo were discussing the
transportation of small-pox--
"Blur a' nouns--the dog's loose!"
"Curse the dog!" said the Major.
"But, zur, it's raving mad, he is!"
"Mad! my dog?" cries Triangle.
"A mad dog, too!" exclaims the Major, in horror.
"O, too bad--horrible--wish I'd never seen"----
"Get your gun, quick--come on!" cried the Major.
"But, my dear Major, my gun's broke all to smash. O! that I had shot the
blasted brute instead of breaking my gun!"
"Come on--never mind--seize a club, fork, or anything, and hunt around
for the cursed dog. He'll bite some of our people, horses, or cattle."
And away ran the Major, with a bit of stick about the size of a
fence-rail. Paddy made himself scarce, and Triangle, in agony, flew
around to hunt up his daughter, whom they found asleep in a
summer-house.
Mrs. Major Jingo, when she heard that the Irish girl had introduced the
small-pox on Jingo Hill, liked to have fainted away; but, conquering her
weakness, she ordered the carriage, and bundled herself and four
children into it, so full of terror and alarm that she never so much as
said--"Take care of yourself, Mrs. Triangle!" Maj. Jingo returned, after
a fruitless search for Triangle's mad dog, and just as he entered the
hall, the Irish girl came rushing down stairs, crying--
"O! murther, murther! I'm dead as a door-nail, entirely, wid dese pains
in my face. Be gorra! O, murther!"
One look at the swollen and truly frightful face of the girl put the
Major to his _taps_; and stopping but a moment to tell Triangle to make
out the best he could, he left.
Next morning, bag and baggage, the Triangles _vamosed_. The poor girl
having recovered from her attack of the bees, which had led to the alarm
of small-pox, looked quite respectable. Never did a party enjoy _home_
more completely than the Triangles after that. Triangle has a holy
horror of trips to the country, and the Jingos are down on visitors from
the city.
Jake Hinkle's Failings.
In the village of Washington, Fayette Co., Ohio, there was a transient
sort of a personage, a kind of floating farmer, named Hinkle,--Jacob
Hinkle,--commonly called _Old Jake Hinkle_. Jake was, originally, a
Dutchman, a Pennsylvania, Lancaster County Dutchman; and that was about
_as_ Dutch as Holland and Sour Krout could well make a human "critter."
Well, Jake Hinkle owned, or had squatted on, a small patch of land, just
beyond old Mother Rodger's "bottom," that is, about a mile east of the
"Rattle Snake Fork" of Paint Creek, which, every thundering fool out
West knows, empties itself into--"Big Paint," which finally rolls out
into the Muskingum, and thence into the Ohio. Very well, having settled
the geographical position of Jake Hinkle, let me go on to state what
kind of a critter Jake was, and how it came about that he was pronounced
dead, one cold morning, and how he came up to town and denied the
assertion.
Jake Hinkle loved corn, lived on it, as most people do in the interior
of Ohio and Kentucky; he loved _corn_, but loved corn whiskey more, and
this love, many a time, brought Jake up to "the Court House" of
Washington, through rain, hail and snow, to get a nipper, fill his jug,
and go home. Now, in the West it is a custom more honored in the breach
than in the observance, perhaps, for grog shops of the village to play
all sorts of fantastic tricks upon old codgers who come up to town, or
down to town, hitch their horses to the fence, and there let the
"critters" stand, from 10 A. M. to 12 P. M., more or less, and longer.
The most popular dodge is, to shave the horse's tail, turn it loose,
and let it go home. Of course, _that_ horse is not soon seen in the
village again, as a horse with a shored tail is about the meanest thing
to look at, except a singed possum, or a dandy--you ever did see.
One very cold night, in January, '39, Jake Hinkle came down to the
"Court House," hitched his horse to the Court Square fence, and made a
straight bend for Sanders' "Grocery," and began to "wood up." Old Jake's
tongue was a perfect bell-clapper, and when well oiled with corn juice,
could rip into the high and low Dutch like a nor'easter into a field of
broom corn. Jake talked and talked, and drank and talked, and about
midnight, the cocks crowing, the stars winking and blinking, and the
wind nipping and whistling around the grocery, Sanders notified Jake and
others that he was going to shut up the concern, and the crowd must be
"putting out." Jake made a break for his nag, but she was gone. "Why,"
says Jake, "she's broke der pridle and gone home, and by skure I shall
walk,"--and off Jake put, through the cold and mud.
Next morning, when the Circleville stage came along between old Marm
Rodger's "bottom," and the Rattle Snake Fork of Paint, the driver
discovered poor old Jake laid out, stiff and cold as a wedge! Alas, poor
old Jake! Gone! Quite a gloom hung over the "grocery;" Jake was an
inoffensive, good old fellow, nobody denied that, and certain young
"fellers" who had shaved the tail of Jake's mare the night previous, and
set her loose, now felt sort of sorry for the deed. The editor of the
"Argus of Freedom" came down to the "grocery," to get his morning "nip,"
heard the news, went back to his office, "set up" Jake's obituary
notice, pitched in a few sorrowful phrases, and then put his paper to
press; that afternoon, the whole edition, of some two hundred copies,
were distributed around among the subscribers and "dead heads," and Jake
Hinkle was pronounced stone dead--_pegged out!_
Two or three days afterwards, a man covered with mud and sweat, came
rushing into Washington. He paused not, nor turned not right or left,
until he found the office of the "Argus of Freedom," where he rushed in,
and confronting the editor, he spluttered forth:--
"You der printer of dish paper,--der noosh paper?"
"Yes," says the 'responsible,' "I am the man," looking a little wild.
"Vell, bine de great Jehosaphat, what for you'n make me deat?"
"Me? Make you dead?" says the no little astonished editor.
"Yaas!" bawled old Jake, for it was he--"You'n tell de people I diet;
_it's a lie!_ And do you neber do it again, and fool de peeples, _witout
you git a written order from me!_"
That editor, ever afterwards, insisted on seeing the funeral before he
recorded an obituary notice.
What's Going to Happen.
In fifty years the steam engine will be as old a notion, and as queer an
invention, as the press Ben. Franklin worked is now. In fifty years,
copper-plate, steel-plate, lithography, and other fine engravings, will
be multiplied for a mere song, in a beautiful manner, by the now
infantile art of _Daguerreotyping_. A passage to California will then be
accomplished in twenty-four hours, by air carriages and electricity; or,
perhaps, they'll go in buckets down Artesian holes, _clean through the
earth!_ The arts of agriculture and horticulture will produce hams ready
roasted, natural pies, baked with all sorts of _cookies_. About that
time, a man may live forever at a cent a day, and sell for all he's
worth at last--for soap fat!
The Washerwoman's Windfall.
Some years ago, there lived, dragged and toiled, in one of our "Middle
States," or Southern cities, and old lady, named Landon, the widow of a
lost sea captain; and as a dernier resort, occurring in many such cases,
with a family of children to provide for,--the father and husband cut
off from life and usefulness, leaving his family but a stone's cast from
indigence,--the mother, to keep grim poverty from famishing her hearth
and desolating her home, took in gentlemen's washing. Her eldest child,
a boy of some twelve years old, was in the habit of visiting the largest
hotels in the city, where he received the finer pieces of the gentlemen's
apparel, and carried them to his mother. They were done up, and returned
by the lad again.
It was in mid-winter, cold and dreary season for the poor--travel was
slack, and few and far between were the poor widow's receipts from her
drudgery.
"To-morrow," said the widow, as she sat musing by her small fire,
"to-morrow is Saturday; I have not a stick of wood, pound of meal, nor
dollar in the world, to provide food or warmth for my children over
Sunday."
"But, mother," responded her 'main prop,' George, the eldest boy, "that
gentleman who gave me the half dollar for going to the bank for him,
last week,--you know him we washed for at the United States Hotel,--said
he was to be here again to-morrow. I was to call for his clothes; so I
will go, mother, to-morrow; maybe he will have another errand for me, or
some money--he's got so much money in his trunk!"
"So, indeed, you said, good child; it's well you thought of it," said
the poor woman.
Next day the lad called at the hotel, and sure enough, the strange
gentleman had arrived again. He appeared somewhat bothered, but quickly
gathering up some of his soiled clothes, gave them to the lad, and bade
him tell his mother to wash and return them that evening by all means.
"Alas! that I cannot do," said the widow, as her son delivered the
message. "My dear child, I have neither fire to dry them, nor money to
procure the necessary fuel."
"Shall I take the clothes back again, mother, and tell the gentleman you
can't dry them in time for him?"
"No, son. I must wash and dry them--we must have money to-day, or we'll
freeze and starve--I must wash and dry these clothes," said the
disconsolate widow, as she immediately went about the performance, while
her son started to a neighboring coopering establishment, to get a
basket of chips and shavings to make fire sufficient to dry and iron the
clothes.
The clothes were duly tumbled into a great tub of water, and the poor
woman began her manipulations. After a time, in handling a vest, the
widow felt a knot of something in the breast pocket. She turned the
pocket, and out fell a little mass of almost pulpy paper. She carefully
unrolled the saturated bunch--she started--stared; the color from her
wan cheeks went and came! Her two little children, observing the wild
looks and strange actions of the mother, ran to her, screaming:
"Dear--dear mother! Mother, what's the matter?"
"Hush-h-h!" said she; "run, dear children--lock the door--lock the door!
no, no, never mind. I a--I a--feel--dizzy!"
The alarmed children clung about the mother's knees in great affright,
but the widow, regaining her composure, told them to sit down and play
with their little toys, and not mind her. The cause of this sudden
emotion was the unrolling of five five hundred dollar bills. They were
very wet--nearly "used up," in fact--but still significant of vast,
astounding import to the poor and friendless woman. She was
amazed--honor and poverty were struggling in her breast. Her poverty
cried out, "You are made up--rich--wash no more--fly!" But then the poor
woman's honor, more powerful than the tempting wealth in her
hands--triumphed! She laid the wet notes in a book, and again set about
her washing.
About this time, quite a different scene was being enacted at the hotel.
The gentleman so anxious that his clothes should be returned that
evening, was no other than a famous counterfeiter and forger; and it
happened, that the day previous, in a neighboring city, he had committed
a forgery, drawn some four or five thousand dollars, had the greater
part of the notes exchanged--and, with the exception of the five large
bills hurriedly thrust into the vest pocket, and which he had sent to
the poor laundress, there was little available evidence of the forgery
in his possession. The widow's son had scarcely left the traveller's
room with the clothes, when in came two policemen. The forger was not
arrested as a principal, but certain barely suspicious circumstances had
led to an investigation of him and his effects.
"You are our prisoner, sir!" said one of the policemen, as a servant
opened the door to let them in.
"Me! What for?" was the quick response of the forger.
"That you will learn in due season; at present we wish to examine your
person and effects."
The forger started--his heart beat with the rapidity of galvanic
pulsation--the evidence of part of his villany was, as he supposed,
among his effects. It was a moment of terror to him, but it passed like
a flash, and in a gay and careless tone, he quickly replied:
"O, very well, gentlemen--go ahead. There are my keys and
baggage--search, and look around. I have no idea what you are
after--probably you'll find." In a low tone, he continued, to himself,
"By heavens, how lucky! that boy has saved me!"
A considerable amount of money was found upon the forger, but none that
could be identified, and after a long and wearisome private examination
at the police court, he was discharged. He returned to the hotel, and
shortly afterwards the lad made his appearance with the clothes,
presenting him with a small roll of damp paper, saying:
"Here, sir, is something mother found in one of your pockets. She thinks
it may be valuable to you, sir, and she is sorry it was wet."
The forger started, as though the little roll of wet money had been a
serpent the lad was holding towards him.
"No, no, my little man; return it to your mother; tell her to dry it
carefully, and that I will call and see her to-night, when she can
return the little parcel."
George stood, his cap in one hand, and the other upon the door-knob; the
man was much agitated, and perceiving the lad lingered, he thrust his
hand into a carpet-bag, and hauling forth an old-fashioned wallet, he
opened it, and taking thence a coin, put it in the hands of the lad and
requested him to run home to his mother and deliver the message
immediately. The lad did as he was ordered; and the poor washerwoman,
the while, sat in her humble and ill-provided home, patiently awaiting
the return of her boy, and fearing the anger of the gentleman at the
hotel, when he should find his bank notes nearly, if not quite
destroyed, would probably so indispose him towards the child that he
would return empty-handed. But no; as the quick tread of the blithesome
lad smote upon the widow's ear, she rushed to the door to receive him.
"Dear son, was the gentleman very angry?"
"Angry, dear mother? No! he was far from angry. He said you must dry
these papers, and he would call to-night for them. And here, dear
mother, he gave me a large piece of beautiful yellow money!" And the
dutiful boy placed a golden doubloon in the trembling hand of the
overjoyed mother. They were saved--the golden coin soon made the widow's
domicil cheerful and happy.
It is almost needless to say, the five notes were not called for. They
laid in the widow's bureau drawer two entire years, when a friend to the
poor woman negotiated for their exchange into a dwelling-house and small
store. And to this little incident does a certain elderly lady and her
family owe their present prosperous and perfectly honorable position in
the respectable society of the city of ----.
We don't Wonder at It.
In the city, we get so many new _kicks_, and put on so many new ways of
living and doing up things, that no wonder the quiet and matter-of-fact
country folks make awkward mistakes, and get mixed up with our
conventionalities, and other doings. Dining at the American, last week,
we sat _vis-a-vis_ with an old-fashioned agricultural gent, whose plate
of mock turtle remained cooling for some time, while he was busy
thinking over a silver four-pronged fork in his hand. At length a broad
smile played over his manly features, as the novel-makers say, and he
opened--
"Well, I'm jiggered!--ha! ha! _they've got to eating soup with split
spoons, too!_"
Old Maguire and his Horse Bonny Doon.
Few animals possess the sagacity of the horse; passive and obedient,
they are easily trained; bring them up the way you want them to go, and
they'll go it! The horse in his old age does not forget the precepts of
his youth. A very touching anecdote is told of a horse, in the cavalry
service of the British army, during Napoleon's time. After the battle of
Waterloo, when the combined force of Europe, through chicanery--not
valor--defeated the greatest soldier the world ever saw, the British
army was cut down, rank and file--Napoleon having promised to "be a good
boy," and let 'em alone in future. Among the _cut offs_, was a troop of
horse, and in this troop was an old veteran Bucephalus, who had stood
and made charges, smelt fire and brimstone, faced phalanxes of bayonets,
and clashed rough-shod over many bloody fields, besides Waterloo,--this
old fellow was turned out to grass--cashiered. When the balance of his
retained companions in saddle were leaving the town where the
dismemberment had taken place, the old war horse was quietly grazing in
a field; the troop passed--the bugler "sounded his horn," and in less
than forty winks the old old horse was up, off, over fences, and in the
front ranks! The tenacity with which he clung to his place in the column
caused--says the historian--the officers and men to shed tears.
So much by way of a prelude. Now for old Maguire and his horse. Some
years ago, in the interior of Ohio, there did live an old Irish
jintleman, who not only had a fine estate, but likewise a saw-mill, and
as fine an old black mare as ever the rays of a noonday's sun lit down
upon. "Bonny Doon," Maguire's old mare, was a wonderful "critter;" she
opened gates, let down bars, seized the pump handle by her teeth, and
actually extracted water from the barn-yard well, with all the facility
of a regular double-fisted _genus homo_. As a sly old joker, she had
performed various tricks, such as nipping off the tails of sucking
calves, catching chickens in her manger, and making various pieces of
them, and kicking in the ribs of strange dogs and horned cattle. But to
the eccentric habits and bacchanalian customs of her ex-military master,
the old mare's dormant talents owed their "fetching out."
Old "Captain Maguire" had served with credit to himself and honor to the
State, in her early struggles against the Indians and French Canadians.
"Bonny Doon" was then in her "fille"-hood, and probably the most
beautiful, as well as the most saucy jade, in the frontier army. Some
twenty-five years had passed, and still the old captain and the mare
were about, every-day cronies, for the old man no more thought of
walking fifty rods, premeditatedly, than a South Carolina dandy would
dream of the possibility of getting a glass of water without the
immediate assistance of a son of Ethiopia! The old man had become
possessed of wealth as well as years--was likewise the progenitor of a
large and flourishing family, of the finest looking men and women in the
State, and having gotten all things in this pleasant kind of train, he
"laid off" in perfect lavender. The old captain's farm was about four
miles from the large and flourishing town of Z----, and here the captain
spent most of his time. Riding in on "Bonny Doon," in the morning, and
hitching her to the sign-post, the poor beast would stand there--unless
taken in by the ostler or others--until midnight, while the captain
swigged whiskey, and smoked his pipe in the tavern. Yet "Bonny Doon's"
affection for her old master did not flag; she waited patiently until he
came--her mane and long tail would then switch about, while she'd
"snigger eout" with gladness at his coming, and carry the old man
through rain or snow, moonshine, or total darkness, over corduroy
railroads, bridges, ravines, and last, though by no means least, over
the narrow plank-way of Captain Maguire's saw-mill dam, while the waters
on each side foamed and roared like a mountain torrent, and while the
old man was either asleep or his hat so full of "bricks," that he was
about as difficult to balance in the saddle as a sack of potatoes or
Turk's Island salt! A better citizen, when sober, never paid taxes or
trod sole leather in that State, than old Captain Maguire; but when he
was "up the tree," a little sprung, or _tight_, as you may say, he was
ugly enough, and chock full of wolf and brimstone! One day the captain
was summoned to attend court, and testify in a case wherein his evidence
was to give a lift to the suit of a neighbor, for whom the old man
entertained a most lively disgust and very unchristianly hate. The old
man, finding that he must go, went. He wet his whistle several times
before starting, repeated the dose several times before he reached the
Court House, and about the time he supposed he was wanted, he mounted
"Bonny Doon," and started, full chisel, up the steps, through the entry,
and into the crowded Court room, just in the nick of time.
"Robert Maguire! Robert Maguire! Robert----"
"Be the help o' Moses, _I'm here!_" roared the captain, in response to
the crier.
And sure enough, he wasn't anywhere else! There he sat, stiff, and
formal as a bronze statue of some renowned military chieftain, on a
pot-metal war steed. Some laughed, others stepped out of the way of the
mare's heels, judge and jury "riz," some of the oldest sinners in law
practice looked quite "skeery," doubtless taking the old captain and his
black charger for quite a different individual! It was some time before
order and decorum were restored, as it was much easier for the judge to
_order_ Captain Maguire to be arrested for his freak, than to do it,
"Bonny Doon" not being disposed to let any man approach her head or
heels. They shut the captain up, finally, for contempt of court, and
fined him twenty dollars, but he escaped the disagreeable attitude of
sustaining the suit of an enemy. At another time, the captain, being on
a _time_, dashed into a meeting-house, running in at one door, and slap
bang out at the other! This feat of Camanche horsemanship rather alarmed
the whole congregation, and cost the captain five twenties! Riding into
bar rooms and stores was a common performance of "Bonny Doon" and her
master; and he had even gone so far as to run the mare up two entire
flights of stairs of the principal hotel, dashing into a room where "a
native" was shivering in bed with the fever and ague; but the noise and
sudden appearance of a man and horse in such high latitudes effected a
permanent and speedy cure; the fright like to have destroyed the
sufferer's crop of hair, but the "a-gy" was skeered clean out of his
emaciated body.
After a variety of adventures by flood and field, of hair-breadth
'scapes, and eccentricities of man and beast, they parted! "Bonny Doon"
being about the only living spectator of her master's end. This tragic
denouement came about one cold, stormy and snowy night, when few men,
and as few beasts, would willingly or without pressing occasion, expose
themselves to the pitiless storm. The old captain had been in town all
day, with "Bonny Doon" hitched to the horse block, and being full of
"distempering draughts," as Shakspeare modestly terms it, and malicious
bravery in the midst of the great storm, late in the evening he mounted
his half-starved and as near frozen mare, to go home.
"Better stay all night, captain," coaxed some friend.
"Hills are icy, and hollows filled with snow," suggested the landlord.
"I wouldn't ride out to your place to-night, captain, for a seat in
Congress!" rejoined the first speaker.
"Ye wouldn't?" replied the captain. "And--and no wonder ye wouldn't, fer
not a divil iv ye's iver had the horse as could carry ye's over me road
th' night. Look at that! There's the baste can do it!--d'ye see that?"
and as the old man, reeling in the saddle, jammed the rowels of his
heavy spurs into the flanks of the mare, she nearly stood erect, and
chafed her bits as fiery and mettled as though just from her oats and
warm stable, and fifteen years kicked off.
"Boys," bawled the captain, "here's the ould mare that can thravel up a
frozen mountain, slide down a greased rainbow, and carry ould Captain
Maguire where the very ould divil himsilf couldn't vinture his dirty
ould body. Hoo-o-oo-oop! I'm gone, boys!"
And he was off, gone, too; for the old man never reached the threshold
of his domicil.--Next morning Captain Maguire was found in the mill-dam,
entirely dead, with poor "Bonny Doon," nearly frozen, and scarcely able
to walk or move, standing near him. But there she stood, upon the narrow
icy way over the dam, and from appearances of the snow and planks of the
little bridge, the faithful mare had pawed, scraped, and endeavored by
various means to rescue her master. The manner of the catastrophe was
evident; the old man had become sleepy, and frozen, and while the poor
mare was feeling her way over the icy and snow-covered bridge, her
master had slipped off into the frozen dam, and no doubt she would have
dragged him out, could she have reached him. As it was, she stood a
faithful sentinel over her lost master, and did not survive him
long,--the cold and her evident sorrow ended the eventful life of "Bonny
Doon."