generous foresight of Mr. Pansley, the heathen's friend. I had seen the
place before, but not in the autumn.
Oh, no, I had not saw it in the hectic of the dying year! I had not saw
it when the squirrel, the comic lecturer, and the Italian go forth to
gather their winter hoard of chestnuts. I had not saw it as the god of
day paints the royal mantle of the year's croaking monarch and the crow
sinks softly onto the swelling bosom of the dead horse. I had only saw
it in the wild, wet spring. I had only saw it when the frost and the
bullfrog were heaving out of the ground.
[Illustration: _Then rolling my trousers up a yard or two, I struck off
into the scrub pine, carrying with me a large board_ (Page 74)]
I strolled out there. I rode on the railroad for a couple of hours
first, I think. Then I got off at a tank, where I got a nice, cool,
refreshing drink of as good, pure water as I ever flung a lip over. Then
rolling my trousers up a yard or two, I struck off into the scrub pine,
carrying with me a large board on which I had painted in clear,
beautiful characters:
FOR SALE.
The owner finding it necessary to go to Europe for eight or nine
years, in order to brush up on the languages of the continent and
return a few royal visits there, will sell all this suburban
property. Terms reasonable. No restrictions except that street-cars
shall not run past these lots at a higher rate of speed than sixty
miles per hour without permission of the owner.
I think that the property looks better in the autumn even than it does
in spring. The autumn leaves are falling. Also the price on this piece
of property. It would be a good time to buy it now. Also a good time to
sell. I shall add nothing because it has been associated with me. That
will cut no figure, for it has not been associated with me so very long,
or so very intimately.
The place, with advertising and the free use of capital, could be made a
beautiful rural resort, or it could be fenced off tastefully into a
cheap commodious place in which to store bears for market.
But it has grown. It is wider, it seems to me, and there is less to
obstruct the view. As soon as commutation or dining trains are put on
between Minneapolis and Sitka, a good many pupils will live on my
property and go to school at Sitka.
Trade is quiet in that quarter at present, however, and traffic is
practically at a standstill. A good many people have written to me
asking about my subdivision and how various branches of industry would
thrive there. Having in an unguarded moment used the stamps, I hasten to
say that they would be premature in going there now, unless in pursuit
of rabbits, which are extremely prevalent.
Trade is very dull, and a first or even a second national bank in my
subdivision of the United States would find itself practically out of a
job. A good newspaper, if properly conducted, could have some fun and
get a good many advertisements by swopping kind words at regular
catalogue prices for goods. But a theater would not pay. I write this
for the use of a man who has just written to know if a good opera-house
with folding seats would pay a fair investment on capital. No, it would
not. I will be fair and honest. Smarting as I do yet under the cruel
injustice done me by the meek and gentle groceryman, who, while he wept
upon my corrugated bosom with one hand, softly removed my pelt with the
other and sprinkled Chili sauce all over me, I will not betray my own
friends. Even with my still bleeding carcass quivering under the Halford
sauce of Mr. Pansley, the "skin" and hypocrite, the friend of the
far-distant savage and the foe of those who are his unfortunate
neighbors, I will not betray even a stranger. Though I have used his
postage-stamp I shall not be false to him. An opera-house this fall
would be premature. Most everybody's dates are booked, anyhow. We could
not get Francis Wilson or Nat C. Goodwin or Lillian Russell or Henry
Irving or Mr. Jefferson, for they are all too busy turning people away,
and I would hate to open with James Owen O'Connor or any other
mechanical appliance.
No. Wait another year at least. At present an opera-house in my
subdivision of the solar system would be as useless as a Dull Thud in
the state of New York.
One drawback to the immediate prosperity of the place is that
commutation rates are yet in their infancy. Eighty-seven and one-half
cents per ride on trains which run only on Tuesdays and Fridays is not
sufficient compensation for the long and lonely walk and the paucity of
some suitable cottages when one gets there.
So I will sell the dear old place, with all its associations and the
good-will of a thriving young frog conservatory, at the buyer's price.
As I say, there has been since I was last there a steady growth, which
is mostly noticeable on the mortgage that I secured along with the
property. It was on there when I bought it, and as it could not be
removed without injury to the realty, according to an old and
established law of Justinian or Coke or Littleton, Mr. Pansley ruled
that it was part of the property and passed with its conveyance. It is
looking well, with a nice growth of interest around the edges and its
foreclosure clause fully an inch and a half long.
I shall be willing, in case I do not find a cash buyer, to exchange the
property for almost anything I can eat, except Paris green. Nor should I
hesitate to swap the whole thing, to a man whom I
felt that I could respect, for a good bird dog. I am also willing to
trade the lots for a milk route or a cold storage. It would be a good
site for some gentleman in New York to build a country cottage.
I should also swap the estate to a man who really means business for a
second-hand cellar. Call on or address the undersigned early, and please
do not push or rudely jostle those in the line ahead of you.
Cast-off clothing, express prepaid, and free from all contagious
diseases, accepted at its full value. Anything left by mistake in the
pockets will be taken good care of, and, possibly, returned in the
spring.
Gunnysack Oleson, who lives eight miles north of the county line, will
show you over the grounds. Please do not hitch horses to the trees. I
will not be responsible for horses injured while tied to my trees.
A new railroad track is thinking of getting a right of way next year,
which may be nearer by two miles than the one that I have to take,
provided they will let me off at the right place.
I promise to do all that I can conscientiously for the road, to aid any
one who may buy the property, and I will call the attention of all
railroads to the advisability of a road in that direction. All that I
can honorably do, I will do. My honor is as dear to me as my gas bill
every year I live.
N. B.--The dead horse on lot 9, block 21, Nye's Addition to the Solar
System, is not mine. Mine died before I got there.
A SINGULAR "HAMLET"
IX
The closing debut of that great Shakespearian humorist and emotional
ass, Mr. James Owen O'Connor, at the Star Theater, will never be
forgotten. During his extraordinary histrionic career he gave his
individual and amazing renditions of Hamlet, Phidias, Shylock, Othello,
and Richelieu. I think I liked his Hamlet best, and yet it was a
pleasure to see him in anything wherein he killed himself.
Encouraged by the success of beautiful but self-made actresses, and
hoping to win a place for himself and his portrait in the great soap and
cigarette galaxy, Mr. O'Connor placed himself in the hands of some
misguided elocutionist, and then sought to educate the people of New
York and elocute them out of their thralldom up into the glorious light
of the O'Connor school of acting.
The first week he was in the hands of the critics, and they spoke quite
serenely of his methods. Later, it was deemed best to place his merits
in the hands of a man who would be on an equal footing with him. What
O'Connor wanted was one of his peers, who would therefore judge him
fairly. I was selected because I know nothing whatever about acting and
would thus be on an equality with Mr. O'Connor.
After seeing his Hamlet I was of the opinion that he did wisely in
choosing New York for debutting purposes, for had he chosen Denver,
Colorado, at the end of the third act kind hands would have removed him
from the stage by means of benzine and a rag.
I understand that Mr. O'Connor charged Messrs. Henry E. Abbey and Henry
Irving with using their influence among the masses in order to prejudice
said masses against Mr. O'Connor, thus making it unpleasant for him to
act, and inciting in the audience a feeling of gentle but evident
hostility, which Mr. O'Connor deprecated very much whenever he could
get a chance to do so. I looked into this matter a little and I do not
think it was true. Until almost the end of Mr. O'Connor's career,
Messrs. Abbey and Irving were not aware of his great metropolitan
success, and it is generally believed among the friends of the two
former gentlemen that they did not feel it so keenly as Mr. O'Connor was
led to suppose.
But James Owen O'Connor did one thing which I take the liberty of
publicly alluding to. He took that saddest and most melancholy bit of
bloody history, trimmed with assassinations down the back and looped up
with remorse, insanity, duplicity and unrequited love, and he filled it
with silvery laughter and cauliflower and mirth, and various other
groceries which the audience throw in from time to time, thus making it
more of a spectacular piece than under the conservative management of
such old-school men as Booth, who seem to think that Hamlet should be
soaked full of sadness.
I went to see Hamlet, thinking that I would be welcome, for my
sympathies were with James when I heard that Mr. Irving was picking on
him and seeking to injure him. I went to the box office and explained
who I was, and stated that I had been detailed to come and see Mr.
O'Connor act; also that in what I might say afterwards my instructions
were to give it to Abbey and Irving if I found that they had tampered
with the audience in any way.
The man in the box office did not recognize me, but said that Mr. Fox
would extend to me the usual courtesies. I asked where Mr. Fox could be
found, and he said inside. I then started to go inside, but ran against
a total stranger, who was "on the door," as we say. He was feeding red
and yellow tickets into a large tin oven, and looking far, far away. I
conversed with him in low, passionate tones, and asked him where Mr. Fox
could be found. He did not know, but thought he was still in Europe. I
went back and told the box office that Mr. Fox was in Europe. He said
No, I would find him inside. "Well, but how shall I get inside?" I asked
eagerly, for I could already, I fancied, hear the orchestra beginning
to twang its lyre.
"Walk in," said he, taking in $2 and giving back 50 cents in change to a
man with a dead cat in his overcoat pocket.
I went back, and springing lightly over the iron railing while the
gatekeeper was thinking over his glorious past, I went all around over
the theater looking for Mr. Fox. I found him haggling over the price of
some vegetables which he was selling at the stage door and which had
been contributed by admirers and old subscribers to Mr. O'Connor at a
previous performance.
When Mr. Fox got through with that I presented to him my card, which is
as good a piece of job work in colors as was ever done west of the
Missouri river, and to which I frequently point with pride.
Mr. Fox said he was sorry, but that Mr. O'Connor had instructed him to
extend no courtesies whatever to the press. The press, he claimed, had
said something derogatory to Mr. O'Connor as a tragedian, and while he
personally would be tickled to death to give me two divans and a
folding-bed near the large fiddle, he must do as Mr. O'Connor had
bid--or bade him, I forget which; and so, restraining his tears with
great difficulty, he sent me back to the entrance and although I was
already admitted in a general way, I went to the box office and
purchased a seat. I believe now that Mr. Fox thought he had virtually
excluded me from the house when he told me I should have to pay in order
to get in.
I bought a seat in the parquet and went in. The audience was not large
and there were not more than a dozen ladies present.
Pretty soon the orchestra began to ooze in through a little opening
under the stage. Then the overture was given. It was called "Egmont."
The curtain now arose on a scene in Denmark. I had asked an usher to
take a note to Mr. O'Connor requesting an audience, but the boy had
returned with the statement that Mr. O'Connor was busy rehearsing his
soliloquy and removing a shirred egg from his outer clothing.
He also said he could not promise an audience to any one. It was all he
could do to get one for himself.
So the play went on. Elsinore, where the first act takes place, is in
front of a large stone water tank, where two gentlemen armed with
long-handled hay knives are on guard.
All at once a ghost who walks with an overstrung Chickering action and
stiff, jerky, Waterbury movement, comes in, wearing a dark mosquito net
over his head--so that harsh critics can not truly say there are any
flies on him, I presume. When the ghost enters most every one enjoys it.
Nobody seems to be frightened at all. I knew it was not a ghost as quick
as I looked at it. One man in the gallery hit the ghost on the head with
a soda cracker, which made him jump and feel of his ear; so I knew then
that it was only a man made up to look like a presence.
One of the guards, whose name, I think, was Smith, had a droop to his
legs and an instability about the knees which were highly enjoyable. He
walked like a frozen-toed hen, and stood first on one foot and then on
the other, with almost human intelligence. His support was about as
poor as O'Connor's.
After awhile the ghost vanished with what is called a stately tread, but
I would regard it more as a territorial tread. Horatio did quite well,
and the audience frequently listened to him. Still, he was about the
only one who did not receive crackers or cheese as a slight testimonial
of regard from admirers in the audience.
Finally, Mr. James Owen O'Connor entered. It was fully five minutes
before he could be heard, and even then he could not. His mouth moved
now and then, and a gesture would suddenly burst forth, but I did not
hear what he said. At least I could not hear distinctly what he said.
After awhile, as people got tired and went away, I could hear better.
Mr. O'Connor introduced into his Hamlet a set of gestures evidently
intended for another play. People who are going to act out on the stage
can not be too careful in getting a good assortment of gestures that
will fit the play itself. James had provided himself with a set of
gestures which might do for Little Eva, or "Ten Nights in a Bar-room,"
but they did not fit Hamlet. There is where he makes a mistake. Hamlet
is a man whose victuals don't agree with him. He feels depressed and
talks about sticking a bodkin into himself, but Mr. O'Connor gives him a
light, elastic step, and an air of persiflage, _bonhomie_, and frisk,
which do not match the character.
Mr. O'Connor sought in his conception and interpretation of Hamlet to
give it a free and jaunty Kokomo flavor--a nameless twang of tansy and
dried apples, which Shakespeare himself failed to sock into his great
drama.
James did this, and more. He took the wild-eyed and morbid Blackwell's
Island Hamlet, and made him a $2 parlor humorist who could be the life
of the party, or give lessons in elocution, and take applause or
crackers and cheese in return for the same.
There is really a good lesson to be learned from the pitiful and
pathetic tale of James Owen O'Connor. Injudicious friends, doubtless,
overestimated his value, and unduly praised his Smart Aleckutionary
powers. Loving himself unwisely but too extensively, he was led away
into the great, untried purgatory of public scrutiny, and the general
indictment followed.
The truth stands out brighter and stronger than ever that there is no
cut across lots to fame or success. He who seeks to jump from mediocrity
to a glittering triumph over the heads of the patient student, and the
earnest, industrious candidate who is willing to bide his time, gets
what James Owen O'Connor received--the just condemnation of those who
are abundantly able to judge.
In seeking to combine the melancholy beauty of Hamlet's deep and earnest
pathos with the gentle humor of "A Hole in the Ground," Mr. O'Connor
evidently corked himself, as we say at the Browning Club, and it was but
justice after all. Before we curse the condemnation of the people and
the press, let us carefully and prayerfully look ourselves over, and see
if we have not overestimated ourselves.
There are many men alive to-day who do not dare say anything without
first thinking how it will read in their memoirs--men whom we can not,
therefore, thoroughly enjoy until they are dead, and yet whose graves
will be kept green only so long as the appropriation lasts.
MY MATRIMONIAL BUREAU
X
The following matrimonial inquiries are now in my hands awaiting
replies, and I take this method of giving them more air. A few months
ago I injudiciously stated that I should take great pleasure in booming,
or otherwise whooping up, everything in the matrimonial line, if those
who needed aid would send me twenty-five cents, with personal
description, lock of hair, and general outline of the style of husband
or wife they were yearning for. As a result of thus yielding to a blind
impulse and giving it currency through the daily press, I now have a
huge mass of more or less soiled postage stamps that look as though they
had made a bicycle tour around the world, a haymow full of letters
breathing love till you can't rest, and a barrel of calico-colored hair.
It is a rare treat to look at this assortment of hair of every hue and
degree of curl and coarseness. When I pour it out on the floor it looks
like the interior of a western barber shop during a state fair. When I
want fun again I shall not undertake to obtain it by starting a
matrimonial agency.
I have one letter from a man of twenty-seven summers, who pants to
bestow himself on some one at as early a date as possible. He tells me
on a separate slip of paper, which he wishes destroyed, that he is a
little given to "bowling up," a term with which I am not familiar, but
he goes on to say that a good, noble woman, with love in her heart and
an earnest desire to save a soul, could rush in and gather him in in
good shape. He says that he is worthy, and that if he could be snatched
from a drunkard's grave in time he believes he would become eminent. He
says that several people have already been overheard to say: "What a
pity he drinks." From this he is led to believe that a good wife, with
some means, could redeem him. He says it is quite a common thing for
young women where he lives to marry young men for the purpose of saving
them.
I think myself that some young girl ought to come forward and snatch
this brand at an early date.
The great trouble with men who form the bowl habit is that, on the
morrow, after they have been so bowling, they awake with a distinct and
well-defined sensation of soreness and swollenness about the head,
accompanied by a strong desire to hit some living thing with a stove
leg. The married man can always turn to his wife in such an emergency,
smite her and then go to sleep again, but to one who is doomed to wander
alone through life there is nothing to do but to suffer on, or go out
and strike some one who does not belong to his family, and so lay
himself liable to arrest.
This letter is accompanied by a tin-type picture of a young man who
shaves in such a way as to work in a streak of whiskers by which he
fools himself into the notion that he has a long and luxuriant mustache.
He looks like a person who, under the influence of liquor, would weep
on the bosom of a total stranger and then knock his wife down because
she split her foot open instead of splitting the kindling.
He is not a bad-looking man, and the freckles on his hands do not hurt
him as a husband. Any young lady who would like to save him from a
drunkard's grave can address him in my care, inclosing twenty-five
cents, a small sum which goes toward a little memorial fund I am getting
up for myself. My memory has always been very poor, and if I can do it
any good with this fund I shall do so. The lock of hair sent with this
letter may be seen at any time nailed up on my woodshed door. It is a
dull red color, and can be readily cut by means of a pair of tinman's
shears.
The two following letters, taken at random from my files, explain
themselves:
"BURNT PRAIRIE, NEAR THE JUNCTION,}
"ON THE ROAD TO THE COURT HOUSE,}
"TENNESSEE, January 2.}
"DEAR SIR--I am in search of a wife and would be willing to settle
down if I could get a good wife. I was but twenty-six years of age
when my mother died and I miss her sadly for she was oh so good and
kind to me her caring son.
"I have been wanting for the past year to settle down, but I have
not saw a girl that I thought would make me a good, true wife. I
know I have saw a good deal of the world, and am inclined to be
cynical for I see how hollow everything is, and how much need there
is for a great reform. Sometimes I think that if I could express
the wild thoughts that surges up and down in my system, I could win
a deathless name. When I get two or three drinks aboard I can think
of things faster than I can speak them, or draw them off for the
paper. What I want is a woman that can economize, and also take the
place of my lost mother, who loved me and put a better polish on my
boots than any other living man.
"I know I am gay and giddy in my nature, but if I could meet a
joyous young girl just emerging upon life's glad morn, and she had
means, I would be willing to settle down and make a good, quiet,
every-day husband.
"A. J."
"ASHMEAD, LEDUC CO., I.T.,}
"December 20.}
"DEAR SIR--I have very little time in which to pencil off a few
lines regarding a wife. I am a man of business, and I can't fool
around much, but I would be willing to marry the right kind of a
young woman. I am just bursting forth on the glorious dawn of my
sixty-third year. I have been married before, and as I might almost
say, I have been in that line man and boy for over forty years. My
pathway has been literally decorated with wives ever since I was
twenty years old.
"I ain't had any luck with my wives heretofore, for they have died
off like sheep. I've treated all of them as well as I knew how,
never asking of them to do any more than I did, and giving of 'em
just the same kind of vittles that I had myself, but they are all
gone now. There was a year or two that seemed just as if there was
a funeral procession stringing out of my front gate half the time.
"What I want is a young woman that can darn a sock without working
two or three tumors into it, cook in a plain economical way without
pampering the appetites of hired help, do chores around the barn
and assist me in accumulating property.
I. D. P."
This last letter contains a small tress of dark hair that feels like a
bunch of barbed wire when drawn through the fingers, and has a tendency
to "crock."
THE HATEFUL HEN
XI
The following inquiries and replies have been awaiting publication and I
shall print them here if the reader has no objections. I do not care to
keep correspondents waiting too long for fear they will get tired and
fail to write me in the future when they want to know anything. Mr.
Earnest Pendergast writes from Puyallup as follows:
"Why do you not try to improve your appearance more? I think you could
if you would, and we would all be so glad. You either have a very
malicious artist, or else your features must pain you a good deal at
times. Why don't you grow a mustache?"
These remarks, of course, are a little bit personal, Earnest, but still
they show your goodness of heart. I fear that you are cursed with the
fatal gift of beauty yourself and wish to have others go with you on
the downward way. You ask why I do not grow a mustache, and I tell you
frankly that it is for the public good that I do not. I used to wear a
long, drooping and beautiful mustache, which was well received in
society, and, under the quiet stars and opportune circumstances, gave
good satisfaction; but at last the hour came when I felt that I must
decide between this long, silky mustache and soft-boiled eggs, of which
I am passionately fond. I hope that you understand my position, Earnest,
and that I am studying the public welfare more than my own at all times.