unctuous and oppressive. He affected the "honest farmer," but so badly
that the poorest husbandman would have resented it. There was a
suggestion of a cheap lawyer about him that would have justified any
self-respecting judge in throwing him over the bar at once. There was
a military suspicion about him that would have entitled him to a
court-martial on the spot. There was an introduction, from which I
learned that my office-seeking friend's name was Expectant Dobbs. And
then Gashwiler addressed me:--
"Our young friend here is waiting, waiting. Waiting, I may say, on the
affairs of State. Youth," continued the Hon. Mr. Gashwiler, addressing
an imaginary constituency, "is nothing but a season of waiting--of
preparation--ha, ha!"
As he laid his hand in a fatherly manner--a fatherly manner that was as
much of a sham as anything else about him--I don't know whether I was
more incensed at him or his victim, who received it with evident pride
and satisfaction. Nevertheless he ventured to falter out:--
"Has anything been done yet?"
"Well, no; I can't say that anything--that is, that anything has been
COMPLETED; but I may say we are in excellent position for an
advance--ha, ha! But we must wait, my young friend, wait. What is it
the Latin philosopher says? 'Let us by all means hasten slowly'--ha,
ha!" and he turned to me as if saying confidentially, "Observe the
impatience of these boys!" "I met, a moment ago, my old friend and
boyhood's companion, Jim McGlasher, chief of the Bureau for the
Dissemination of Useless Information, and," lowering his voice to a
mysterious but audible whisper, "I shall see him again to-morrow."
The "All aboard!" of the railway omnibus at this moment tore me from
the presence of this gifted legislator and his protege; but as we drove
away I saw through the open window the powerful mind of Gashwiler
operating, so to speak, upon the susceptibilities of Mr. Dobbs.
I did not meet him again for a week. The morning of my return I saw
the two conversing together in the hall, but with the palpable
distinction between this and their former interviews, that the gifted
Gashwiler seemed to be anxious to get away from his friend. I heard him
say something about "committees" and "to-morrow," and when Dobbs turned
his freckled face toward me I saw that he had got at last some
expression into it--disappointment.
I asked him pleasantly how he was getting on.
He had not lost his pride yet. He was doing well, although such was
the value set upon his friend Gashwiler's abilities by his brother
members that he was almost always occupied with committee business. I
noticed that his clothes were not in as good case as before, and he
told me that he had left the hotel, and taken lodgings in a by-street,
where it was less expensive. Temporarily of course.
A few days after this I had business in one of the great departments.
From the various signs over the doors of its various offices and
bureaus it always oddly reminded me of Stewart's or Arnold and
Constable's. You could get pensions, patents, and plants. You could
get land and the seeds to put in it, and the Indians to prowl round it,
and what not. There was a perpetual clanging of office desk bells, and
a running hither and thither of messengers strongly suggestive of "Cash
47."
As my business was with the manager of this Great National Fancy Shop,
I managed to push by the sad-eyed, eager-faced crowd of men and women
in the anteroom, and entered the secretary's room, conscious of having
left behind me a great deal of envy and uncharitableness of spirit. As
I opened the door I heard a monotonous flow of Western speech which I
thought I recognized. There was no mistaking it. It was the voice of
the Gashwiler.
"The appointment of this man, Mr. Secretary, would be most acceptable
to the people in my deestrict. His family are wealthy and influential,
and it's just as well in the fall elections to have the supervisors and
county judge pledged to support the administration. Our delegates to
the State Central Committee are to a man"--but here, perceiving from
the wandering eye of Mr. Secretary that there was another man in the
room, he whispered the rest with a familiarity that must have required
all the politician in the official's breast to keep from resenting.
"You have some papers, I suppose?" asked the secretary, wearily.
Gashwiler was provided with a pocketful, and produced them. The
secretary threw them on the table among the other papers, where they
seemed instantly to lose their identity, and looked as if they were
ready to recommend anybody but the person they belonged to. Indeed, in
one corner the entire Massachusetts delegation, with the Supreme Bench
at their head, appeared to be earnestly advocating the manuring of Iowa
waste lands; and to the inexperienced eye, a noted female reformer had
apparently appended her signature to a request for a pension for wounds
received in battle.
"By the way," said the secretary, "I think I have a letter here from
somebody in your district asking an appointment, and referring to you?
Do you withdraw it?"
"If anybody has been presuming to speculate upon my patronage," said
the Hon. Mr. Gashwiler, with rising rage.
"I've got the letter somewhere here," said the secretary, looking
dazedly at his table. He made a feeble movement among the papers, and
then sank back hopelessly in his chair, and gazed out of the window as
if he thought and rather hoped it might have flown away. "It was from a
Mr. Globbs, or Gobbs, or Dobbs, of Remus," he said finally, after a
superhuman effort of memory.
"Oh, that's nothing--a foolish fellow who has been boring me for the
last month."
"Then I am to understand that this application is withdrawn?"
"As far as my patronage is concerned, certainly. In fact, such an
appointment would not express the sentiments--indeed, I may say, would
be calculated to raise active opposition in the deestrict."
The secretary uttered a sigh of relief, and the gifted Gashwiler passed
out. I tried to get a good look at the honorable scamp's eye, but he
evidently did not recognize me.
It was a question in my mind whether I ought not to expose the
treachery of Dobbs's friend, but the next time I met Dobbs he was in
such good spirits that I forebore. It appeared that his wife had
written to him that she had discovered a second cousin in the person of
the Assistant Superintendent of the Envelope Flap Moistening Bureau of
the Department of Tape, and had asked his assistance; and Dobbs had
seen him, and he had promised it. "You see," said Dobbs, "in the
performance of his duties he is often very near the person of the
secretary, frequently in the next room, and he is a powerful man,
sir--a powerful man to know, sir--a VERY powerful man."
How long this continued I do not remember. Long enough, however, for
Dobbs to become quite seedy, for the giving up of wrist cuffs, for the
neglect of shoes and beard, and for great hollows to form round his
eyes, and a slight flush on his cheek-bones. I remember meeting him in
all the departments, writing letters or waiting patiently in anterooms
from morning till night. He had lost all his old dogmatism, but not
his pride. "I might as well be here as anywhere, while I'm waiting,"
he said, "and then I'm getting some knowledge of the details of
official life."
In the face of this mystery I was surprised at finding a note from him
one day, inviting me to dine with him at a certain famous restaurant.
I had scarce got over my amazement, when the writer himself overtook me
at my hotel. For a moment I scarcely recognized him. A new suit of
fashionably-cut clothes had changed him, without, however, entirely
concealing his rustic angularity of figure and outline. He even
affected a fashionable dilettante air, but so mildly and so innocently
that it was not offensive.
"You see," he began, explanatory-wise, "I've just found out the way to
do it. None of these big fellows, these cabinet officers, know me
except as an applicant. Now, the way to do this thing is to meet 'em
fust sociably; wine 'em and dine 'em. Why, sir,"--he dropped into the
schoolmaster again here,--"I had two cabinet ministers, two judges, and
a general at my table last night."
"On YOUR invitation?"
"Dear, no! all I did was to pay for it. Tom Soufflet gave the dinner
and invited the people. Everybody knows Tom. You see, a friend of
mine put me up to it, and said that Soufflet had fixed up no end of
appointments and jobs in that way. You see, when these gentlemen get
sociable over their wine, he says carelessly, 'By the way, there's
So-and-so--a good fellow--wants something; give it to him.' And the
first thing you know, or they know, he gets a promise from them. They
get a dinner--and a good one--and he gets an appointment."
"But where did you get the money?"
"Oh,"--he hesitated,--"I wrote home, and Fanny's father raised fifteen
hundred dollars some way, and sent it to me. I put it down to
political expenses." He laughed a weak, foolish laugh here, and added,
"As the old man don't drink nor smoke, he'd lift his eyebrows to know
how the money goes. But I'll make it all right when the office
comes--and she's coming, sure pop."
His slang fitted as poorly on him as his clothes, and his familiarity
was worse than his former awkward shyness. But I could not help asking
him what had been the result of this expenditure.
"Nothing just yet. But the Secretary of Tape and the man at the head
of the Inferior Department, both spoke to me, and one of them said he
thought he'd heard my name before. He might," he added, with a forced
laugh, "for I've written him fifteen letters."
Three months passed. A heavy snow-storm stayed my chariot wheels on a
Western railroad, ten miles from a nervous lecture committee and a
waiting audience; there was nothing to do but to make the attempt to
reach them in a sleigh. But the way was long and the drifts deep, and
when at last four miles out we reached a little village, the driver
declared his cattle could hold out no longer, and we must stop there.
Bribes and threats were equally of no avail. I had to accept the fact.
"What place is this?"
"Remus."
"Remus, Remus," where had I heard that name before? But while I was
reflecting he drove up before the door of the tavern. It was a dismal,
sleep-forbidding place, and only nine o'clock, and here was the long
winter's night before me. Failing to get the landlord to give me a
team to go further, I resigned myself to my fate and a cigar, behind
the red-hot stove. In a few moments one of the loungers approached me,
calling me by name, and in a rough but hearty fashion condoled with me
for my mishap, advised me to stay at Remus all night, and added: "The
quarters ain't the best in the world yer at this hotel. But thar's an
old man yer--the preacher that was--that for twenty years hez taken in
such fellers as you and lodged 'em free gratis for nothing, and hez
been proud to do it. The old man used to be rich; he ain't so now;
sold his big house on the cross roads, and lives in a little cottage
with his darter right over yan. But ye couldn't do him a better turn
than to go over thar and stay, and if he thought I'd let ye go out o'
Remus without axing ye, he'd give me h-ll. Stop, I'll go with ye."
I might at least call on the old man, and I accompanied my guide
through the still falling snow until we reached a little cottage. The
door opened to my guide's knock, and with the brief and discomposing
introduction, "Yer, ole man, I've brought you one o' them snow-bound
lecturers," he left me on the threshold, as my host, a kindly-faced,
white-haired man of seventy, came forward to greet me.
His frankness and simple courtesy overcame the embarrassment left by my
guide's introduction, and I followed him passively as he entered the
neat, but plainly-furnished sitting-room. At the same moment a pretty,
but faded young woman arose from the sofa and was introduced to me as
his daughter. "Fanny and I live here quite alone, and if you knew how
good it was to see somebody from the great outside world now and then,
you would not apologize for what you call your intrusion."
During this speech I was vaguely trying to recall where and when and
under what circumstances I had ever before seen the village, the house,
the old man or his daughter. Was it in a dream, or in one of those dim
reveries of some previous existence to which the spirit of mankind is
subject? I looked at them again. In the careworn lines around the
once pretty girlish mouth of the young woman, in the furrowed seams
over the forehead of the old man, in the ticking of the old-fashioned
clock on the shelf, in the faint whisper of the falling snow outside, I
read the legend, "Patience, patience; Wait and Hope."
The old man filled a pipe, and offering me one, continued, "Although I
seldom drink myself, it was my custom to always keep some nourishing
liquor in my house for passing guests, but to-night I find myself
without any." I hastened to offer him my flask, which, after a
moment's coyness, he accepted, and presently under its benign influence
at least ten years dropped from his shoulders, and he sat up in his
chair erect and loquacious.
"And how are affairs at the National Capital, sir?" he began.
Now, if there was any subject of which I was profoundly ignorant, it
was this. But the old man was evidently bent on having a good
political talk. So I said vaguely, yet with a certain sense of
security, that I guessed there wasn't much being done.
"I see," said the old man, "in the matters of resumption; of the
sovereign rights of States and federal interference, you would imply
that a certain conservative tentative policy is to be promulgated until
after the electoral committee have given their verdict." I looked for
help towards the lady, and observed feebly that he had very clearly
expressed my views.
The old man, observing my look, said: "Although my daughter's husband
holds a federal position in Washington, the pressure of his business is
so great that he has little time to give us mere gossip--I beg your
pardon, did you speak?"
I had unconsciously uttered an exclamation. This, then, was Remus--the
home of Expectant Dobbs--and these his wife and father; and the
Washington banquet-table, ah me! had sparkled with the yearning heart's
blood of this poor wife, and had been upheld by this tottering Caryatid
of a father.
"Do you know what position he has?"
The old man did not know positively, but thought it was some general
supervising position. He had been assured by Mr. Gashwiler that it was
a first-class clerkship; yes, a FIRST class.
I did not tell him that in this, as in many other official regulations
in Washington, they reckoned backward, but said:--
"I suppose that your M. C., Mr.--Mr. Gashwiler--"
"Don't mention his name," said the little woman, rising to her feet
hastily; "he never brought Expectant anything but disappointment and
sorrow. I hate, I despise the man."
"Dear Fanny," expostulated the old man, gently, "this is unchristian
and unjust. Mr. Gashwiler is a powerful, a very powerful man! His
work is a great one; his time is preoccupied with weightier matters."
"His time was not so preoccupied but he could make use of poor
Expectant," said this wounded dove, a little spitefully.
Nevertheless it was some satisfaction to know that Dobbs had at last
got a place, no matter how unimportant, or who had given it to him; and
when I went to bed that night in the room that had been evidently
prepared for their conjugal chamber, I felt that Dobbs's worst trials
were over. The walls were hung with souvenirs of their ante-nuptial
days. There was a portrait of Dobbs, aetat. 25; there was a faded
bouquet in a glass case, presented by Dobbs to Fanny on
examination-day; there was a framed resolution of thanks to Dobbs from
the Remus Debating Society; there was a certificate of Dobbs's election
as President of the Remus Philomathean Society; there was his
commission as Captain in the Remus Independent Contingent of Home
Guards; there was a Freemason's chart, in which Dobbs was addressed in
epithets more fulsome and extravagant than any living monarch. And yet
all these cheap glories of a narrow life and narrower brain were upheld
and made sacred by the love of the devoted priestess who worshiped at
this lonely shrine, and kept the light burning through gloom and doubt
and despair. The storm tore round the house, and shook its white fists
in the windows. A dried wreath of laurel that Fanny had placed on
Dobbs's head after his celebrated centennial address at the
school-house, July 4, 1876, swayed in the gusts, and sent a few of its
dead leaves down on the floor, and I lay in Dobbs's bed and wondered
what a first-class clerkship was.
I found out early the next summer. I was strolling through the long
corridors of a certain great department, when I came upon a man
accurately yoked across the shoulders, and supporting two huge pails of
ice on either side, from which he was replenishing the pitchers in the
various offices. As I passed I turned to look at him again. It was
Dobbs!
He did not set down his burden; it was against the rules, he said. But
he gossiped cheerily, said he was beginning at the foot of the ladder,
but expected soon to climb up. That it was Civil Service Reform, and
of course he would be promoted soon.
"Had Gashwiler procured the appointment?"
No. He believed it was ME. I had told his story to
Assistant-secretary Blank, who had, in turn related it to
Bureau-director Dash--both good fellows--but this was all they could
do. Yes, it was a foothold. But he must go now.
Nevertheless, I followed him up and down, and, cheered up with a
rose-colored picture of his wife and family, and my visit there, and
promising to come and see him the next time I came to Washington, I
left him with his self-imposed yoke.
With a new administration, Civil Service Reform came in, crude and
ill-digested, as all sudden and sweeping reforms must be; cruel to the
individual, as all crude reforms will ever be; and among the list of
helpless men and women, incapacitated for other work by long service in
the dull routine of federal office, who were decapitated, the weak,
foolish, emaciated head of Expectant Dobbs went to the block. It
afterward appeared that the gifted Gashwiler was responsible for the
appointment of twenty clerks, and that the letter of poor Dobbs, in
which he dared to refer to the now powerless Gashwiler, had sealed his
fate. The country made an example of Gashwiler and--Dobbs.
From that moment he disappeared. I looked for him in vain in
anterooms, lobbies, and hotel corridors, and finally came to the
conclusion that he had gone home.
How beautiful was that July Sabbath, when the morning train from
Baltimore rolled into the Washington depot. How tenderly and chastely
the morning sunlight lay on the east front of the Capitol until the
whole building was hushed in a grand and awful repose. How difficult it
was to think of a Gashwiler creeping in and out of those enfiling
columns, or crawling beneath that portico, without wondering that yon
majestic figure came not down with flat of sword to smite the fat
rotundity of the intruder. How difficult to think that parricidal
hands have ever been lifted against the Great Mother, typified here in
the graceful white chastity of her garments, in the noble tranquillity
of her face, in the gathering up her white-robed children within her
shadow.
This led me to think of Dobbs, when, suddenly a face flashed by my
carriage window. I called to the driver to stop, and, looking again,
saw that it was a woman standing bewildered and irresolute on the
street corner. As she turned her anxious face toward me I saw that it
was Mrs. Dobbs.
What was she doing here, and where was Expectant?
She began an incoherent apology, and then burst into explanatory tears.
When I had got her in the carriage she said, between her sobs, that
Expectant had not returned; that she had received a letter from a
friend here saying he was sick,--oh very, very sick,--and father could
not come with her, so she came alone. She was so frightened, so
lonely, so miserable.
Had she his address?
Yes, just here! It was on the outskirts of Washington, near
Georgetown. Then I would take her there, if I could, for she knew
nobody.
On our way I tried to cheer her up by pointing out some of the children
of the Great Mother before alluded to, but she only shut her eyes as we
rolled down the long avenues, and murmured, "Oh, these cruel, cruel
distances!"
At last we reached the locality, a negro quarter, yet clean and neat in
appearance. I saw the poor girl shudder slightly as we stopped at the
door of a low, two-story frame house, from which the unwonted spectacle
of a carriage brought a crowd of half-naked children and a comely,
cleanly, kind-faced mulatto woman.
Yes, this was the house. He was upstairs, rather poorly, but asleep,
she thought.
We went upstairs. In the first chamber, clean, though poorly
furnished, lay Dobbs. On a pine table near his bed were letters and
memorials to the various departments, and on the bed-quilt, unfinished,
but just as the weary fingers had relaxed their grasp upon it, lay a
letter to the Tape Department.
As we entered the room he lifted himself on his elbow. "Fanny!" he
said, quickly, and a shade of disappointment crossed his face. "I
thought it was a message from the secretary," he added, apologetically.
The poor woman had suffered too much already to shrink from this last
crushing blow. But she walked quietly to his side without a word or
cry, knelt, placed her loving arms around him, and I left them so
together.
When I called again in the evening he was better; so much better that,
against the doctor's orders, he had talked to her quite cheerfully and
hopefully for an hour, until suddenly raising her bowed head in his two
hands, he said, "Do you know, dear, that in looking for help and
influence there was one, dear, I had forgotten; one who is very potent
with kings and councilors, and I think, love, I shall ask Him to
interest Himself in my behalf. It is not too late yet, darling, and I
shall seek Him to-morrow."
And before the morrow came he had sought and found Him, and I doubt not
got a good place.
A SLEEPING-CAR EXPERIENCE
It was in a Pullman sleeping-car on a Western road. After that first
plunge into unconsciousness which the weary traveler takes on getting
into his berth, I awakened to the dreadful revelation that I had been
asleep only two hours. The greater part of a long winter night was
before me to face with staring eyes.
Finding it impossible to sleep, I lay there wondering a number of
things: why, for instance, the Pullman sleeping-car blankets were
unlike other blankets; why they were like squares cut out of cold
buckwheat cakes, and why they clung to you when you turned over, and
lay heavy on you without warmth; why the curtains before you could not
have been made opaque, without being so thick and suffocating; why it
would not be as well to sit up all night half asleep in an ordinary
passenger-car as to lie awake all night in a Pullman. But the snoring
of my fellow-passengers answered this question in the negative.
With the recollection of last night's dinner weighing on me as heavily
and coldly as the blankets, I began wondering why, over the whole
extent of the continent, there was no local dish; why the bill of fare
at restaurant and hotel was invariably only a weak reflex of the
metropolitan hostelries; why the entrees were always the same, only
more or less badly cooked; why the traveling American always was
supposed to demand turkey and cold cranberry sauce; why the pretty
waiter-girl apparently shuffled your plates behind your back, and then
dealt them over your shoulder in a semicircle, as if they were a hand
at cards, and not always a good one? Why, having done this, she
instantly retired to the nearest wall, and gazed at you scornfully, as
one who would say, "Fair sir, though lowly, I am proud; if thou dost
imagine that I would permit undue familiarity of speech, beware!" And
then I began to think of and dread the coming breakfast; to wonder why
the ham was always cut half an inch thick, and why the fried egg always
resembled a glass eye that visibly winked at you with diabolical
dyspeptic suggestions; to wonder if the buckwheat cakes, the eating of
which requires a certain degree of artistic preparation and
deliberation, would be brought in as usual one minute before the train
started. And then I had a vivid recollection of a fellow-passenger who,
at a certain breakfast station in Illinois, frantically enwrapped his
portion of this national pastry in his red bandana handkerchief, took
it into the smoking-car, and quietly devoured it en route.
Lying broad awake, I could not help making some observations which I
think are not noticed by the day traveler. First, that the speed of a
train is not equal or continuous. That at certain times the engine
apparently starts up, and says to the baggage train behind it, "Come,
come, this won't do! Why, it's nearly half-past two; how in h-ll shall
we get through? Don't you talk to ME. Pooh, pooh!" delivered in that
rhythmical fashion which all meditation assumes on a railway train.
Exempli gratia: One night, having raised my window-curtain to look
over a moonlit snowy landscape, as I pulled it down the lines of a
popular comic song flashed across me. Fatal error! The train
instantly took it up, and during the rest of the night I was haunted by
this awful refrain: "Pull down the bel-lind, pull down the bel-lind;
simebody's klink klink, O don't be shoo-shoo!" Naturally this differs
on the different railways. On the New York Central, where the road-bed
is quite perfect and the steel rails continuous, I have heard this
irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after
this fashion: "Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still.
Wave the swish swash back from klinky, klinky klanky kill." On the New
York and New Haven, where there are many switches, and the engine
whistles at every cross road, I have often heard, "Tommy make room for
your whooopy! that's a little clang; bumpity, bumpity, boopy, clikitty,
clikitty, clang." Poetry, I fear, fared little better. One starlit
night, coming from Quebec, as we slipped by a virgin forest, the
opening lines of Evangeline flashed upon me. But all I could make of
them was this: "This is the forest primeval-eval; the groves of the
pines and the hemlocks-locks-locks-locks-loooock!" The train was only
"slowing" or "braking" up at a station. Hence the jar in the metre.
I had noticed a peculiar Aeolian harp-like cry that ran through the
whole train as we settled to rest at last after a long run--an almost
sigh of infinite relief, a musical sigh that began in C and ran
gradually up to F natural, which I think most observant travelers have
noticed day and night. No railway official has ever given me a
satisfactory explanation of it. As the car, in a rapid run, is always
slightly projected forward of its trucks, a practical friend once
suggested to me that it was the gradual settling back of the car body
to a state of inertia, which, of course, every poetical traveler would
reject. Four o'clock the sound of boot-blacking by the porter faintly
apparent from the toilet-room. Why not talk to him? But, fortunately,
I remembered that any attempt at extended conversation with conductor
or porter was always resented by them as implied disloyalty to the
company they represented. I recalled that once I had endeavored to
impress upon a conductor the absolute folly of a midnight inspection of
tickets, and had been treated by him as an escaped lunatic. No, there
was no relief from this suffocating and insupportable loneliness to be
gained then. I raised the window-blind and looked out. We were
passing a farm-house. A light, evidently the lantern of a farm-hand,
was swung beside a barn. Yes, the faintest tinge of rose in the far
horizon. Morning, surely, at last.
We had stopped at a station. Two men had got into the car, and had
taken seats in the one vacant section, yawning occasionally and
conversing in a languid, perfunctory sort of way. They sat opposite
each other, occasionally looking out of the window, but always giving
the strong impression that they were tired of each other's company. As
I looked out of my curtains at them, the One Man said, with a feebly
concealed yawn:--
"Yes, well, I reckon he was at one time as poplar an ondertaker ez I
knew."
The Other Man (inventing a question rather than giving an answer, out
of some languid, social impulse): "But was he--this yer ondertaker--a
Christian--hed he jined the church?"
The One Man (reflectively): "Well, I don't know ez you might call him a
purfessin' Christian; but he hed--yes, he hed conviction. I think Dr.
Wylie hed him under conviction. Et least that was the way I got it
from HIM."
A long, dreary pause. The Other Man (feeling it was incumbent upon him
to say something): "But why was he poplar ez an ondertaker?"
The One Man (lazily): "Well, he was kinder poplar with widders and
widderers--sorter soothen 'em a kinder, keerless way; slung 'em suthin'
here and there, sometimes outer the Book, sometimes outer hisself, ez a
man of experience as hed hed sorror. Hed, they say (VERY CAUTIOUSLY),
lost three wives hisself, and five children by this yer new
disease--dipthery--out in Wisconsin. I don't know the facts, but
that's what's got round."
The Other Man: "But how did he lose his poplarity?"
The One Man: "Well, that's the question. You see he interduced some
things into ondertaking that waz new. He hed, for instance, a way, as
he called it, of manniperlating the features of the deceased."
The Other Man (quietly): "How manniperlating?"
The One Man (struck with a bright and aggressive thought): "Look yer,
did ye ever notiss how, generally speakin', onhandsome a corpse is?"
The Other Man had noticed this fact.
The One Man (returning to his fact): "Why there was Mary Peebles, ez
was daughter of my wife's bosom friend--a mighty pooty girl and a
professing Christian--died of scarlet fever. Well, that gal--I was one
of the mourners, being my wife's friend--well, that gal, though I
hedn't, perhaps, oughter say--lying in that casket, fetched all the way
from some A1 establishment in Chicago, filled with flowers and
furbelows--didn't really seem to be of much account. Well, although my
wife's friend, and me a mourner--well, now, I was--disappointed and
discouraged."
The Other Man (in palpably affected sympathy): "Sho! now!"
"Yes, SIR! Well, you see, this yer ondertaker, this Wilkins, hed a way
of correctin' all thet. And just by manniperlation. He worked over
the face of the deceased ontil he perduced what the survivin' relatives
called a look of resignation,--you know, a sort of smile, like. When
he wanted to put in any extrys, he perduced what he called--hevin'
reglar charges for this kind of work--a Christian's hope."
The Other Man: "I want to know."
"Yes. Well, I admit, at times it was a little startlin'. And I've
allers said (a little confidentially) that I had my doubts of its being
Scriptoorl, or sacred, we being, ez you know, worms of the yearth; and
I relieved my mind to our pastor, but he didn't feel like interferin',
ez long ez it was confined to church membership. But the other day,
when Cy Dunham died--you disremember Cy Dunham?"
A long interval of silence. The Other Man was looking out of the
window, and had apparently forgotten his companion completely. But as
I stretched my head out of the curtain I saw four other heads as
eagerly reached out from other berths to hear the conclusion of the
story. One head, a female one, instantly disappeared on my looking
around, but a certain tremulousness of her window-curtain showed an
unabated interest. The only two utterly disinterested men were the One
Man and the Other Man.
The Other Man (detaching himself languidly from the window): "Cy
Dunham?"
"Yes; Cy never hed hed either convictions or purfessions. Uster get
drunk and go round with permiscous women. Sorter like the prodigal
son, only a little more so, ez fur ez I kin judge from the facks ez
stated to me. Well, Cy one day petered out down at Little Rock, and
was sent up yer for interment. The fammerly, being proud-like, of
course didn't spare no money on that funeral, and it waz--now between
you and me--about ez shapely and first-class and prime-mess affair ez I
ever saw. Wilkins hed put in his extrys. He hed put onto that
prodigal's face the A1 touch,--hed him fixed up with a 'Christian's
hope.' Well, it was about the turning-point, for thar waz some of the
members and the pastor hisself thought that the line oughter to be
drawn somewhere, and thar was some talk at Deacon Tibbet's about a
reg'lar conference meetin' regardin' it. But it wasn't thet which made
him onpoplar."
Another silence; no expression nor reflection from the face of the
Other Man of the least desire to know what ultimately settled the
unpopularity of the undertaker. But from the curtains of the various
berths several eager and one or two even wrathful faces, anxious for
the result.
The Other Man (lazily recurring to the fading topic): "Well, what made
him onpoplar?"
The One Man (quietly): "Extrys, I think--that is, I suppose, not
knowin'" (cautiously) "all the facts. When Mrs. Widdecombe lost her
husband, 'bout two months ago, though she'd been through the valley of
the shadder of death twice--this bein' her third marriage, hevin' been
John Barker's widder--"
The Other Man (with an intense expression of interest): "No, you're
foolin' me!"
The One Man (solemnly): "Ef I was to appear before my Maker to-morrow,
yes! she was the widder of Barker."
The Other Man: "Well, I swow."
The One Man: "Well, this Widder Widdecombe, she put up a big funeral
for the deceased. She hed Wilkins, and thet ondertaker just laid
hisself out. Just spread hisself. Onfort'natly,--perhaps fort'natly
in the ways of Providence,--one of Widdecombe's old friends, a doctor
up thar in Chicago, comes down to the funeral. He goes up with the
friends to look at the deceased, smilin' a peaceful sort o' heavinly
smile, and everybody sayin' he's gone to meet his reward, and this yer
friend turns round, short and sudden on the widder settin' in her pew,
and kinder enjoyin, as wimen will, all the compliments paid the corpse,
and he says, says he:--
"'What did you say your husband died of, marm?'
"'Consumption,' she says, wiping her eyes, poor critter.
'Consumption--gallopin' consumption.'
"'Consumption be d--d,' sez he, bein' a profane kind of Chicago doctor,
and not bein' ever under conviction. 'Thet man died of strychnine.
Look at thet face. Look at thet contortion of them fashal muscles.
Thet's strychnine. Thet's risers Sardonikus' (thet's what he said; he
was always sorter profane).
"'Why, doctor,' says the widder, 'thet--thet is his last smile. It's a
Christian's resignation.'
"'Thet be blowed; don't tell me,' sez he. 'Hell is full of thet kind
of resignation. It's pizon. And I'll--' Why, dern my skin, yes we
are; yes, it's Joliet. Wall, now, who'd hey thought we'd been nigh
onto an hour."
Two or three anxious passengers from their berths: "Say; look yer,
stranger! Old man! What became of--"
But the One Man and the Other Man had vanished.
MORNING ON THE AVENUE
NOTES BY AN EARLY RISER.
I have always been an early riser. The popular legend that "Early to
bed and early to rise," invariably and rhythmically resulted in
healthfulness, opulence, and wisdom, I beg here to solemnly protest
against. As an "unhealthy" man, as an "unwealthy" man, and doubtless
by virtue of this protest an "unwise" man, I am, I think, a glaring
example of the untruth of the proposition.
For instance, it is my misfortune, as an early riser, to live upon a
certain fashionable avenue, where the practice of early rising is
confined exclusively to domestics. Consequently, when I issue forth on
this broad, beautiful thoroughfare at six A. M., I cannot help thinking
that I am, to a certain extent, desecrating its traditional customs.
I have more than once detected the milkman winking at the maid with a
diabolical suggestion that I was returning from a carouse, and
Roundsman 9999 has once or twice followed me a block or two with the
evident impression that I was a burglar returning from a successful
evening out. Nevertheless, these various indiscretions have brought me
into contact with a kind of character and phenomena whose existence I
might otherwise have doubted.
First, let me speak of a large class of working-people whose presence
is, I think, unknown to many of those gentlemen who are in the habit of
legislating or writing about them. A majority of these early risers in
the neighborhood of which I may call my "beat" carry with them
unmistakable evidences of the American type. I have seen so little of
that foreign element that is popularly supposed to be the real working
class of the great metropolis, that I have often been inclined to doubt
statistics. The ground that my morning rambles cover extends from
Twenty-third Street to Washington Park, and laterally from Sixth Avenue
to Broadway. The early rising artisans that I meet here, crossing
three avenues,--the milkmen, the truck-drivers, the workman, even the
occasional tramp,--wherever they may come from or go to, or what their
real habitat may be,--are invariably Americans. I give it as an honest
record, whatever its significance or insignificance may be, that during
the last year, between the hours of six and eight A. M., in and about
the locality I have mentioned, I have met with but two unmistakable
foreigners, an Irishman and a German. Perhaps it may be necessary to
add to this statement that the people I have met at those early hours I
have never seen at any other time in the same locality.
As to their quality, the artisans were always cleanly dressed,
intelligent, and respectful. I remember, however, one morning, when
the ice storm of the preceding night had made the sidewalks glistening,
smiling and impassable, to have journeyed down the middle of Twelfth
Street with a mechanic so sooty as to absolutely leave a legible track
in the snowy pathway. He was the fireman attending the engine in a
noted manufactory, and in our brief conversation he told me many facts
regarding his profession which I fear interested me more than the
after-dinner speeches of some distinguished gentlemen I had heard the
preceding night. I remember that he spoke of his engine as "she," and
related certain circumstances regarding her inconsistency, her
aberrations, her pettishnesses, that seemed to justify the feminine
gender. I have a grateful recollection of him as being one who
introduced me to a restaurant where chicory, thinly disguised as
coffee, was served with bread at five cents a cup, and that he
honorably insisted on being the host, and paid his ten cents for our
mutual entertainment with the grace of a Barmecide. I remember, in a
more genial season,--I think early summer,--to have found upon the
benches of Washington Park a gentleman who informed me that his
profession was that of a "pigeon catcher"; that he contracted with
certain parties in this city to furnish these birds for what he called
their "pigeon-shoots"; and that in fulfilling this contract he often
was obliged to go as far west as Minnesota. The details he gave--his
methods of entrapping the birds, his study of their habits, his evident
belief that the city pigeon, however well provided for by parties who
fondly believed the bird to be their own, was really ferae naturae, and
consequently "game" for the pigeon-catcher--were all so interesting
that I listened to him with undisguised delight. When he had finished,
however, he said, "And now, sir, being a poor man, with a large family,
and work bein' rather slack this year, if ye could oblige me with the
loan of a dollar and your address, until remittances what I'm expecting
come in from Chicago, you'll be doin' me a great service," etc., etc.
He got the dollar, of course (his information was worth twice the
money), but I imagine he lost my address. Yet it is only fair to say
that some days after, relating his experience to a prominent sporting
man, he corroborated all its details, and satisfied me that my
pigeon-catching friend, although unfortunate, was not an impostor.
And this leads me to speak of the birds. Of all early risers, my most
importunate, aggressive, and obtrusive companions are the English
sparrows. Between six and seven A. M. they seem to possess the avenue,
and resent my intrusion. I remember, one chilly morning, when I came
upon a flurry of them, chattering, quarreling, skimming, and alighting
just before me. I stopped at last, fearful of stepping on the nearest.
To my great surprise, instead of flying away, he contested the ground
inch by inch before my advancing foot, with his wings outspread and
open bill outstretched, very much like that ridiculous burlesque of the
American eagle which the common canary-bird assumes when teased. "Did
you ever see 'em wash in the fountain in the square?" said Roundsman
9999, early one summer morning. I had not. "I guess they're there
yet. Come and see 'em," he said, and complacently accompanied me two
blocks. I don't know which was the finer sight,--the thirty or forty
winged sprites, dashing in and out of the basin, each the very
impersonation of a light-hearted, mischievous puck, or this grave
policeman, with badge and club and shield, looking on with delight.
Perhaps my visible amusement, or the spectacle of a brother policeman
just then going past with a couple of "drunk and disorderlies,"
recalled his official responsibilities and duties. "They say them
foreign sparrows drive all the other birds away," he added, severely;
and then walked off with a certain reserved manner, as if it were not
impossible for him to be called upon some morning to take the entire
feathered assembly into custody, and if so called upon he should do it.
Next, I think, in procession among the early risers, and surely next in
fresh and innocent exterior, were the work-women or shop-girls. I have
seen this fine avenue on gala afternoons bright with the beauty and
elegance of an opulent city, but I have see no more beautiful faces
than I have seen among these humbler sisters. As the mere habits of
dress in America, except to a very acute critic, give no suggestion of
the rank of the wearer, I can imagine an inexperienced foreigner
utterly mystified and confounded by these girls, who perhaps work a
sewing-machine or walk the long floors of a fashionable dry-goods shop.
I remember one face and figure, faultless and complete,--modestly yet
most becomingly dressed,--indeed, a figure that Compte-Calix might have
taken for one of his exquisite studies, which, between seven and eight
A. M. passed through Eleventh Street, between Sixth Avenue and
Broadway. So exceptionally fine was her carriage, so chaste and
virginal her presence, and so refined and even spiritual her features,
that, as a literary man, I would have been justified in taking her for
the heroine of a society novel. Indeed, I had already woven a little
romance about her, when one morning she overtook me, accompanied by
another girl--pretty, but of a different type--with whom she was
earnestly conversing. As the two passed me, there fell from her
faultless lips the following astounding sentence: "And I told him, if
he didn't like it he might lump it, and he traveled off on his left
ear, you bet!" Heaven knows what indiscretion this speech saved me
from; but the reader will understand what a sting the pain of rejection
might have added to it by the above formula.
The "morning-cocktail" men come next in my experience of early rising.
I used to take my early cup of coffee in the cafe of a certain
fashionable restaurant that had a bar attached. I could not help
noticing that, unlike the usual social libations of my countrymen, the
act of taking a morning cocktail was a solitary one. In the course of
my experience I cannot recall the fact of two men taking an
ante-breakfast cocktail together. On the contrary, I have observed the
male animal rush savagely at the bar, demand his drink of the
bar-keeper, swallow it, and hasten from the scene of his early
debauchery, or else take it in a languid, perfunctory manner, which, I
think, must have been insulting to the bar-keeper. I have observed two
men, whom I had seen drinking amicably together the preceding night,
standing gloomily at the opposite corners of the bar, evidently trying
not to see each other and making the matter a confidential one with the
bar-keeper. I have seen even a thin disguise of simplicity assumed. I
remember an elderly gentleman, of most respectable exterior, who used
to enter the cafe as if he had strayed there accidentally. After
looking around carefully, and yet unostentatiously, he would walk to
the bar, and, with an air of affected carelessness, state that "not
feeling well this morning, he guessed he would take--well, he would
leave it to the bar-keeper." The bar-keeper invariably gave him a
stiff brandy cocktail. When the old gentleman had done this half a
dozen times, I think I lost faith in him. I tried afterwards to glean
from the bar-keeper some facts regarding those experiences, but I am
proud to say that he was honorably reticent. Indeed, I think it may be
said truthfully that there is no record of a bar-keeper who has been
"interviewed." Clergymen and doctors have, but it is well for the
weakness of humanity that the line should be drawn somewhere.
And this reminds me that one distressing phase of early rising is the
incongruous and unpleasant contact of the preceding night. The social
yesterday is not fairly over before nine A. M. to-day, and there is
always a humorous, sometimes a pathetic, lapping over the edges. I
remember one morning at six o'clock to have been overtaken by a
carriage that drew up beside me. I recognized the coachman, who
touched his hat apologetically, as if he wished me to understand that
he was not at all responsible for the condition of his master, and I
went to the door of the carriage. I was astonished to find two young
friends of mine, in correct evening dress, reclining on each other's
shoulders and sleeping the sleep of the justly inebriated. I stated
this fact to the coachman. Not a muscle of his well-trained face
answered to my smile. But he said: "You see, sir, we've been out all
night, and more than four blocks below they saw you, and wanted me to
hail you, but you know you stopped to speak to a gentleman, and so I
sorter lingered, and I drove round the block once or twice, and I guess
I've got 'em quiet again." I looked in the carriage door once more on
these sons of Belial. They were sleeping quite unconsciously. A
bouttonniere in the lappel of the younger one's coat had shed its
leaves, which were scattered over him with a ridiculous suggestion of
the "Babes in the Wood," and I closed the carriage door softly. "I
suppose I'd better take 'em home, sir?" queried the coachman, gravely.
"Well, yes, John, perhaps you had."
There is another picture in my early rising experience that I wish was
as simply and honestly ludicrous. It was at a time when the moral
sentiment of the metropolis, expressed through ordinance and special
legislation, had declared itself against a certain form of "variety"
entertainment, and had, as usual, proceeded against the performers, and
not the people who encouraged them. I remember, one frosty morning, to
have encountered in Washington Park my honest friend Sergeant X. and
Roundsman 9999 conveying a party of these derelicts to the station.
One of the women, evidently, had not had time to change her apparel,
and had thinly disguised the flowing robe and loose cestus of Venus
under a ragged "waterproof"; while the other, who had doubtless posed
for Mercury, hid her shapely tights in a plaid shawl, and changed her
winged sandals for a pair of "arctics." Their rouged faces were
streaked and stained with tears. The man who was with them, the male
of their species, had but hastily washed himself of his Ethiopian
presentment, and was still black behind the ears; while an exaggerated
shirt collar and frilled shirt made his occasional indignant profanity
irresistibly ludicrous. So they fared on over the glittering snow,
against the rosy sunlight of the square, the gray front of the
University building, with a few twittering sparrows in the foreground,
beside the two policemen, quiet and impassive as fate. I could not help
thinking of the distinguished A., the most fashionable B., the wealthy
and respectable C., the sentimental D., and the man of the world E.,
who were present at the performance, whose distinguished patronage had
called it into life, and who were then resting quietly in their beds,
while these haggard servants of their pleasaunce were haled over the
snow to punishment and ignominy.
Let me finish by recalling one brighter picture of that same season.
It was early; so early that the cross of Grace Church had, when I
looked up, just caught the morning sun, and for a moment flamed like a
crusader's symbol. And then the grace and glory of that exquisite
spire became slowly visible. Fret by fret the sunlight stole slowly
down, quivering and dropping from each, until at last the whole church
beamed in rosy radiance. Up and down the long avenue the street lay in
shadow; by some strange trick of the atmosphere the sun seemed to have
sought out only that graceful structure for its blessing. And then
there was a dull rumble. It was the first omnibus,--the first throb in
the great artery of the reviving city. I looked up. The church was
again in shadow.
WITH THE ENTREES
"Once, when I was a pirate--!"
The speaker was an elderly gentleman in correct evening dress, the room
a tasteful one, the company of infinite respectability, the locality at
once fashionable and exclusive, the occasion an unexceptionable dinner.
To this should be added that the speaker was also the host.
With these conditions self-evident, all that good breeding could do was
to receive the statement with a vague smile that might pass for
good-humored incredulity or courteous acceptation of a simple fact.
Indeed, I think we all rather tried to convey the impression that our
host, when he WAS a pirate,--if he ever really was one,--was all that a
self-respecting pirate should be, and never violated the canons of good
society. This idea was, to some extent, crystallized by the youngest
Miss Jones in the exclamation, "Oh, how nice!"
"It was, of course, many years ago, when I was quite a lad."
We all murmured "Certainly," as if piracy were a natural expression of
the exuberance of youth.
"I ought, perhaps, explain the circumstances that led me into this way
of life."
Here Legrande, a courteous attache of the Patagonian legation,
interposed in French and an excess of politeness, "that it was not of a
necessity," a statement to which his English neighbor hurriedly
responded, "Oui, oui."
"There ess a boke," he continued, in a well-bred, rapid whisper, "from
Captain Canot,--a Frenchman,--most eenteresting--he was--oh, a fine man
of education--and what you call a 'slavair,'" but here he was quietly
nudged into respectful silence.
"I ran away from home," continued our host. He paused, and then added,
appealingly, to the two distinguished foreigners present: "I do not
know if I can make you understand that this is a peculiarly American
predilection. The exodus of the younger males of an American family
against the parents' wishes does not, with us, necessarily carry any
obloquy with it. To the average American the prospect of fortune and a
better condition lies OUTSIDE of his home; with you the home means the
estate, the succession of honors or titles, the surety that the
conditions of life shall all be kept intact. With us the children who
do not expect, and generally succeed in improving the fortunes of the
house, are marked exceptions. Do I make myself clear?"
The French-Patagonian attache thought it was "charming and progressif."
The Baron Von Pretzel thought he had noticed a movement of that kind in
Germany, which was expressed in a single word of seventeen syllables.
Viscount Piccadilly said to his neighbor: "That, you know now, the
younger sons, don't you see, go to Australia, you know in some beastly
trade--stock-raising or sheep--you know; but, by Jove! them fellahs--"
"My father always treated me well," continued our host. "I shared
equally with my brothers the privileges and limitations of our New
England home. Nevertheless, I ran away and went to sea--"
"To see--what?" asked Legrande.
"Aller sur mer," said his neighbor, hastily.
"Go on with your piracy!" said Miss Jones.
The distinguished foreigners looked at each other and then at Miss
Jones. Each made a mental note of the average cold-blooded ferocity of
the young American female.
"I shipped on board of a Liverpool 'liner,'" continued our host.
"What ess a 'liner'?" interrupted Legrande, sotto voce, to his next
neighbor, who pretended not to hear him.
"I need not say that these were the days when we had not lost our
carrying trade, when American bottoms--"
"Que est ce, 'bot toom'?" said Legrande, imploringly, to his other
friend.
"When American bottoms still carried the bulk of freight, and the
supremacy of our flag--"
Here Legrande recognized a patriotic sentiment and responded to it with
wild republican enthusiasm, nodding his head violently. Piccadilly
noticed it, too, and, seeing an opening for some general discussion on
free trade, began half audibly to HIS neighbor: "Most extraordinary
thing, you know, your American statesmen--"
"I deserted the ship at Liverpool--"
But here two perfunctory listeners suddenly turned toward the other end
of the table, where another guest, our Nevada Bonanza lion, was
evidently in the full flood of pioneer anecdote and narration. Calmly
disregarding the defection, he went on:--
"I deserted the ship at Liverpool in consequence of my ill-treatment by
the second mate,--a man selected for his position by reason of his
superior physical strength and recognized brutality. I have been since
told that he graduated from the state prison. On the second day out I
saw him strike a man senseless with a belaying pin for some trifling
breach of discipline. I saw him repeatedly beat and kick sick men--"
"Did you ever read Dana's 'Two Years before the Mast'?" asked
Lightbody, our heavy literary man, turning to HIS neighbor, in a
distinctly audible whisper. "Ah! there's a book! Got all this sort of
thing in it. Dev'lishly well written, too."
The Patagonian (alive for information): "What ess this Dana, eh?"
His left hand neighbor (shortly): "Oh, that man!"
His right hand neighbor (curtly): "The fellah who wrote the
Encyclopaedia and edits 'The Sun'? that was put up in Boston for the
English mission and didn't get it."
The Patagonian (making a mental diplomatic note of the fact that the
severe discipline of the editor of "The Sun," one of America's
profoundest scholars, while acting from patriotic motives, as the
second mate of an American "bottom," had unfitted him for diplomatic
service abroad): "Ah, ciel!"
"I wandered on the quays for a day or two, until I was picked up by a
Portuguese sailor, who, interesting himself in my story, offered to
procure me a passage to Fayal and Lisbon, where, he assured me, I could
find more comfortable and profitable means of returning to my own land.
Let me say here that this man, although I knew him afterward as one of
the most unscrupulous and heartless of pirates,--in fact the typical
buccaneer of the books,--was to me always kind, considerate, and, at
times, even tender. He was a capital seaman. I give this evidence in
favor of a much ridiculed race, who have been able seamen for
centuries."
"Did you ever read that Portuguese Guide-book?" asked Lightbody of his
neighbor; "it's the most exquisitely ridiculous thing--"
"Will the great American pirate kindly go on, or resume his original
functions," said Miss Jones, over the table, with a significant look in
the direction of Lightbody. But her anxiety was instantly
misinterpreted by the polite and fair-play loving Englishman: "I say,
now, don't you know that the fact is these Portuguese fellahs are
always ahead of us in the discovery business? Why, you know--"
"I shipped with him on a brig, ostensibly bound to St. Kitts and a
market. We had scarcely left port before I discovered the true
character of the vessel. I will not terrify you with useless details.
Enough that all that tradition and romance has given you of the
pirate's life was ours. Happily, through the kindness of my Portuguese
friend, I was kept from being an active participant in scenes of which
I was an unwilling witness. But I must always bear my testimony to one
fact. Our discipline, our esprit de corps, if I may so term it, was
perfect. No benevolent society, no moral organization, was ever so
personally self-sacrificing, so honestly loyal to one virtuous purpose,
as we were to our one vice. The individual was always merged in the
purpose. When our captain blew out the brains of our quartermaster,
one day--"
"That reminds me--DID you read of that Georgia murder?" began
Lightbody; "it was in all the papers I think. Oh, I beg pardon--"
"For simply interrupting him in a conversation with our second
officer," continued our host, quietly. "The act, although harsh and
perhaps unnecessarily final, was, I think, indorsed by the crew.
James, pass the champagne to Mr. Lightbody."
He paused a moment for the usual casual interruption, but even the
active Legrande was silent.
Alas! from the other end of the table came the voice of the Bonanza
man:--
"The rope was around her neck. Well, gentlemen, that Mexican woman
standing there, with that crowd around her, eager for her blood, dern
my skin! if she didn't call out to the sheriff to hold on a minit. And
what fer? Ye can't guess! Why, one of them long braids she wore was
under the noose, and kinder in the way. I remember her raising her
hand to her neck and givin' a spiteful sort of jerk to the braid that
fetched it outside the slip-knot, and then saying to the sheriff:
'There, d--n ye, go on.' There was a sort o' thoughtfulness in the
act, a kind o' keerless, easy way, that jist fetched the boys--even
them thet hed the rope in their hands, and they--" (suddenly
recognizing the silence): "Oh, beg pardon, old man; didn't know I'd
chipped into your yarn--heave ahead; don't mind me."
"What I am trying to tell you is this: One night, in the Caribbean
Sea, we ran into one of the Leeward Islands, that had been in olden
time a rendezvous for our ship. We were piloted to our anchorage
outside by my Portuguese friend, who knew the locality thoroughly, and
on whose dexterity and skill we placed the greatest reliance. If
anything more had been necessary to fix this circumstance in my mind,
it would have been the fact that two or three days before he had
assured me that I should presently have the means of honorable
discharge from the pirate's crew, and a return to my native land. A
launch was sent from the ship to communicate with our friends on the
island, who supplied us with stores, provisions, and general
information. The launch was manned by eight men, and officered by the
first mate,--a grim, Puritanical, practical New Englander, if I may use
such a term to describe a pirate, of great courage, experience, and
physical strength. My Portuguese friend, acting as pilot, prevailed
upon them to allow me to accompany the party as coxswain. I was
naturally anxious, you can readily comprehend, to see--"
"Certainly," "Of course," "Why shouldn't you?" went round the table.
"Two trustworthy men were sent ashore with instructions. We,
meanwhile, lay off the low, palm-fringed beach, our crew lying on their
oars, or giving way just enough to keep the boat's head to the
breakers. The mate and myself sat in the stern sheets, looking
shoreward for the signal. The night was intensely black. Perhaps for
this reason never before had I seen the phosphorescence of a tropical
sea so strongly marked. From the great open beyond, luminous crests
and plumes of pale fire lifted themselves, ghost-like, at our bows,
sank, swept by us with long, shimmering, undulating trails, broke on
the beach in silvery crescents, or shattered their brightness on the
black rocks of the promontory. The whole vast sea shone and twinkled
like another firmament, against which the figures of our men, sitting
with their faces toward us, were outlined darkly. The grim, set
features of our first mate, sitting beside me, were faintly
illuminated. There was no sound but the whisper of passing waves
against our lap-streak, and the low, murmuring conversation of the men.
I had my face toward the shore. As I looked over the glimmering
expanse, I suddenly heard the whispered name of our first mate. As
suddenly, by the phosphorescent light that surrounded it, I saw the
long trailing hair and gleaming shoulders of a woman floating beside
us. Legrande, you are positively drinking nothing. Lightbody, you are
shirking the Burgundy--you used to like it!"
He paused, but no one spoke.
"I--let me see! where was I? Oh, yes! Well, I saw the woman, and when
I turned to call the attention of the first mate to this fact, I knew
instantly, by some strange instinct, that he had seen and heard her,
too. So, from that moment to the conclusion of our little drama, we
were silent, but enforced spectators.
"She swam gracefully--silently! I remember noticing through that odd,
half-weird, phosphorescent light which broke over her shoulders as she
rose and fell with each quiet stroke of her splendidly rounded arms,
that she was a mature, perfectly-formed woman. I remember, also, that
when she reached the boat, and, supporting herself with one small hand
on the gunwale, she softly called the mate in a whisper by his
Christian name, I had a boyish idea that she was--the--er--er--female
of his species--his--er--natural wife! I'm boring you--am I not?"
Two or three heads shook violently and negatively. The youngest, and,
I regret to say, the OLDEST, Miss Jones uttered together
sympathetically, "Go on--please; do!"
"The--woman told him in a few rapid words that he had been betrayed;
that the two men sent ashore were now in the hands of the authorities;
that a force was being organized to capture the vessel; that instant
flight was necessary, and that the betrayer and traitor was--my friend,
the Portuguese, Fernandez!
"The mate raised the dripping, little brown hand to his lips, and
whispered some undistinguishable words in her ear. I remember seeing
her turn a look of ineffable love and happiness upon his grim, set
face, and then she was gone. She dove as a duck dives, and I saw her
shapely head, after a moment's suspense, reappear a cable's length away
toward the shore.
"I ventured to raise my eyes to the mate's face; it was cold and
impassive. I turned my face toward the crew; they were conversing in
whispers with each other, with their faces toward us, yet apparently
utterly oblivious of the scene that had just taken place in the stern.
There was a moment of silence, and then the mate's voice came out quite
impassively, but distinctly:--
"'Fernandez!'
"'Aye, aye, sir!'
"'Come aft and--bring your oar with you.'
"He did so, stumbling over the men, who, engaged in their whispered
yarns, didn't seem to notice him.
"'See if you can find soundings here.'
"Fernandez leaned over the stern and dropped his oar to its shaft in
the phosphorescent water. But he touched no bottom; the current
brought the oar at right angles presently to the surface.
"'Send it down, man,' said the mate, imperatively; 'down, down. Reach
over there. What are you afraid of? So; steady there; I'll hold you.'
"Fernandez leaned over the stern and sent the oar and half of his bared
brown arm into the water. In an instant the mate caught him with one
tremendous potential grip at his elbows, and forced him and his oar
head downward in the waters. The act was so sudden, yet so carefully
premeditated, that no outcry escaped the doomed man. Even the launch
scarcely dipped her stern to the act. In that awful moment I heard a
light laugh from one of the men in response to a wanton yarn from his
comrade,--James, bring the vichy to Mr. Lightbody! You'll find that a
dash of cognac will improve it wonderfully.
"Well--to go on--a few bubbles arose to the surface. Fernandez seemed
unreasonably passive, until I saw that when the mate had gripped his
elbows with his hands he had also firmly locked the traitor's knees
within his own. In a few moments--it seemed to me, then, a
century--the mate's grasp relaxed; the body of Fernandez, a mere limp,
leaden mass, slipped noiselessly and heavily into the sea. There was
no splash. The ocean took it calmly and quietly to its depths. The
mate turned to the men, without deigning to cast a glance on me.
"'Oars!' The men raised their oars apeak.
"'Let fall!' There was a splash in the water, encircling the boat in
concentric lines of molten silver.
"'Give way!'
"Well, of course, that's all. WE got away in time. I knew I bored you
awfully! Eh? Oh, you want to know what became of the woman--really, I
don't know! And myself--oh, I got away at Havana! Eh? Certainly;
James, you'll find some smelling salts in my bureau. Gentlemen, I fear
we have kept the ladies too long."
But they had already risen, and were slowly filing out of the room.
Only one lingered--the youngest Miss Jones.
"That was a capital story," she said, pausing beside our host, with a
special significance in her usual audacity. "Do you know you
absolutely sent cold chills down my spine a moment ago. Really, now,
you ought to write for the magazines!"
Our host looked up at the pretty, audacious face. Then he said, sotto
voce,--
"I do!"