“One More Unfortunate.”
It was midnight—a black, wet, midnight—in a great city by the sea. The
church clocks were booming the hour, in tones half-smothered by the
marching rain, when an officer of the watch saw a female figure glide
past him like a ghost in the gloom, and make directly toward a wharf.
The officer felt that some dreadful tragedy was about to be enacted,
and started in pursuit. Through the sleeping city sped those two dark
figures like shadows athwart a tomb. Out along the deserted wharf to
its farther end fled the mysterious fugitive, the guardian of the night
vainly endeavouring to overtake, and calling to her to stay. Soon she
stood upon the extreme end of the pier, in the scourging rain which
lashed her fragile figure and blinded her eyes with other tears than
those of grief. The night wind tossed her tresses wildly in air, and
beneath her bare feet the writhing billows struggled blackly upward for
their prey. At this fearful moment the panting officer stumbled and
fell! He was badly bruised; he felt angry and misanthropic. Instead of
rising to his feet, he sat doggedly up and began chafing his abraded
shin. The desperate woman raised her white arms heavenward for the
final plunge, and the voice of the gale seemed like the dread roaring
of the waters in her ears, as down, down, she went—in imagination—to a
black death among the spectral piles. She backed a few paces to secure
an impetus, cast a last look upon the stony officer, with a wild shriek
sprang to the awful verge and came near losing her balance. Recovering
herself with an effort, she turned her face again to the officer, who
was clawing about for his missing club. Having secured it, he started
to leave.
In a cosy, vine-embowered cottage near the sounding sea, lives and
suffers a blighted female. Nothing being known of her past history, she
is treated by her neighbours with marked respect. She never speaks of
the past, but it has been remarked that whenever the stalwart form of a
certain policeman passes her door, her clean, delicate face assumes an
expression which can only be described as frozen profanity.
The Strong Young Man of Colusa.
Professor Dramer conducted a side-show in the wake of a horse-opera,
and the same sojourned at Colusa. Enters unto the side show a powerful
young man of the Colusa sort, and would see his money’s worth. Blandly
and with conscious pride the Professor directs the young man’s
attention to his fine collection of living snakes. Lithely the
blacksnake uncoils in his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves
before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the
spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful
rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently
absorbed. The fangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays
clammy coils about his neck, and pokes a flattened head curiously into
his open mouth. The young man of Colusa is interested; his feelings
transcend expression. Not a syllable breathes he, but with a deep-drawn
sigh he turns his broad back upon the astonishing display, and goes
thoughtfully forth into his native wild. Half an hour later might have
been seen that brawny Colusan, emerging from an adjacent forest with a
strong faggot.
Then this Colusa young man unto the appalled Professor thus: “Ther
ain’t no good place yer in Kerloosy fur fittin’ out serpence to be
subtler than all the beasts o’ the field. Ther’s enmity atween our seed
and ther seed, an’ it shell brooze ther head.” And with a singleness of
purpose and a rapt attention to detail that would have done credit to a
lean porker garnering the strewn kernels behind a deaf old man who
plants his field with corn, he started in upon that reptilian host, and
exterminated it with a careful thoroughness of extermination.
The Glad New Year.
A poor brokendown drunkard returned to his dilapidated domicile early
on New Year’s morn. The great bells of the churches were jarring the
creamy moonlight which lay above the soggy undercrust of mud and snow.
As he heard their joyous peals, announcing the birth of a new year, his
heart smote his old waistcoat like a remorseful sledge-hammer.
“Why,” soliloquized he, “should not those bells also proclaim the
advent of a new resolution? I have not made one for several weeks, and
it’s about time. I’ll swear off.”
He did it, and at that moment a new light seemed to be shed upon his
pathway; his wife came out of the house with a tin lantern. He rushed
frantically to meet her. She saw the new and holy purpose in his eye.
She recognised it readily—she had seen it before. They embraced and
wept. Then stretching the wreck of what had once been a manly form to
its full length, he raised his eyes to heaven and one hand as near
there as he could get it, and there in the pale moonlight, with only
his wondering wife, and the angels, and a cow or two, for witnesses, he
swore he would from that moment abstain from all intoxicating liquors
until death should them part. Then looking down and tenderly smiling
into the eyes of his wife, he said: “Is it not well, dear one?” With a
face beaming all over with a new happiness, she replied:
“Indeed it is, John—let’s take a drink.” And they took one, she with
sugar and he plain.
The spot is still pointed out to the traveller.