especially the method of coloring and enameling. It is a secret
possessed by duly authorized artists. The name of the town is pronounced
Save.
Mme. Pompadour is said to have been the natural daughter of a butcher,
which I regard as being more to her own credit than though she had been
an artificial one. Her name was Jeanne Antoinette Poisson Le Normand
d'Etioles, Marchioness de Pompadour, and her name is yet used by the
authorities of Versailles as a fire escape, so I am told.
She was the mistress of Louis XV, who never allowed her to put her hands
in dishwater during the entire time she visited at his house.
D'Etioles was her first husband, but she left him for a gay but rather
reprehensible life at court, where she was terribly talked about, though
she is said not to have cared a cent.
She developed into a marvelous politician, and early seeing that the
French people were largely governed by the literary lights of that time,
she began to cultivate the acquaintance of the magazine writers, and
tried to join the Authors' Club.
She then became prominent by originating a method of doing up the hair,
which has since grown popular among people whose hair has not, like my
own, been already "done up."
This style of Mme. Pompadour's was at once popular with the young men
who ran the throttles of the soda fountains of that time, and is still
well spoken of. A young friend of mine trained his hair up from his
forehead in that way once and could not get it down again. During his
funeral his hair, which had been glued down by the undertaker, became
surprised at something said by the clergyman and pushed out the end of
his casket.
The king tired in a few years of Mme. Pompadour and wished that he had
not encouraged her to run away from her husband. She, however, retained
her hold upon the blase and alcoholic monarch by her wonderful
versatility and genius.
When all her talents as an artiste and politician palled upon his old
rum-soaked and emaciated brain, and ennui, like a mighty canker, ate
away large corners of his moth-eaten soul, she would sit in the gloaming
and sing to him, "Hard Times, Hard Times, Come Again No More," meantime
accompanying herself on the harpsichord or the sackbut or whatever they
played in those days. Then she instituted theatricals, giving, through
the aid of the nobility, a very good version of "Peck's Bad Boy" and
"Lend Me Five Centimes."
She finally lost her influence over Looey the XV, and as he got to be an
old man the thought suddenly occurred to him to reform, and so he had
Mme. Pompadour beheaded at the age of forty-two years. This little story
should teach us that no matter how gifted we are, or how high we may
wear our hair, our ambitions must be tempered by honor and integrity;
also that pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a
plunk.
A SCAMPER THROUGH THE PARK
XIX
Last week Colonel Bill Root, formerly Duke of Council Bluffs, paid me a
visit, and as I desired to show him Central Park, I took him to
Fifty-Eighth street and hired a carriage, my own team being at my
country place. I also engaged the services of a dark-eyed historical
student, who is said to know more about Central Park than any other man
in New York, having driven through it, as he has, for years. He was a
plain, sad man, with a mustache which was mostly whiskers. He dressed
carelessly in a neglige suit of neutral-tinted clothes, including a pair
of trousers which seemed to fit him in that shy and reluctant manner
which characterized the fit of the late lamented Jumbo's clothes after
he had been indifferently taxidermed.
Colonel Root and I called him "Governor," and thereby secured knowledge
which could not be obtained from books. Colonel Root is himself no
kindergarten savant, being the author and discoverer of a method of
breaking up a sitting-hen by first calling her away from her deep-seated
passion, tying a red-flannel rag around her leg, and then still further
turning her attention from her wild yearning to hatch out a flock of
suburban villas by sitting on a white front-door knob. This he does by
deftly inserting the hen into a joint of stove-pipe and then cementing
both ends of the same. Colonel Root is also the discoverer of a cipher
which shows that Julius Caesar's dying words were: "Et tu Brute. Verily
the tail goeth with the hide."
After a while the driver paused. Colonel Root asked him why he tarried.
"I wanted to call your attention," said the Governor, "to the Casino, a
place where you can provide for the inner man or any other man. You can
here secure soft-shell crabs, boiled lobster, low-neck clams, Hamburger
steaks, chicken salad, miscellaneous soups, lobster salad with
machine-oil on it, Neapolitan ice-cream, Santa Cruz rum, Cincinnati
Sec, pie, tooth-picks, and finger-bowls."
[Illustration: _Said the Governor as he swung around with his feet over
in our part of the carriage and asked me for a light_ (Page 181)]
"How far does the waiter have to go to get these things cooked?"
inquired Colonel Root, looking at his valuable watch.
"That," said the Governor, as he swung around with his feet over in our
part of the carriage and asked me for a light, "depends on how you
approach him. If you slip a half dollar up his coat-sleeve without his
knowledge he will get your twenty-five cent meal cooked somewhere near
by, but otherwise I have known him to go away and come back with gray
side-whiskers and cobwebs on the pie instead of the wine."
We went in and told the proprietor to see that our driver had what he
wanted. He did not want much, aside from a whisky sour, a plate of
terrapin, a pint of Mr. Pommery's secretary's beverage, and a baked
duck. We had a little calves' liver and custard pie. Then we visited
Cleopatra's Needle.
"And who in creation was Cleopatra?" asked Colonel Root.
"Cleopatra," said the driver, "was a goodlooking Queen of Egypt. She
was eighteen years old when her father left the throne, as it was
screwed down to the dais, and died. He left the kingdom to Cleopatra, in
partnership with Ptolemy, her brother. Ptolemy, in 51 B. C., deprived
her of the throne, leaving Cleopatra nothing but the tidy. She appealed
to Julius Caesar, who hired a man to embalm Ptolemy, and restored Egypt
to his sister, who was as likely a girl as Julius had ever met with. She
accompanied him to Rome in 46 B. C., and remained there a couple of
years. When Caesar was assassinated by a delegation of Roman tax-payers
who desired a change, Cleopatra went back and began to reign over Egypt
again. She also attracted the attention of Antony. He thought so much of
her that he would frequently stay away from a battle and deny himself
the joys of being split open with a dull stab-knife in order to hang
around home and hold Cleopatra's hand, and, though she was a widow
practically, she was the Amelie Rives style of widow, and he said that
it had to be an all-fired good battle that could make him put on his
iron ulster and fight all day on the salary he was getting. She pizened
herself thirty years before Christ, at the age of thirty-nine years,
rather than ride around Rome in a gingham dress as a captive of
Augustus. She died right in haying time, and Augustus said he'd ruther
of lost the best horse in Rome. This is her needle. It was brought to
New York mostly by water, and looks well here in the park. She was said
to be as likely a queen as ever jerked a sceptre over Egypt or any other
place. Everybody that saw her reign said that the country never had a
magneticker queen."
As we rode swiftly along, the slight, girlish figure of a middle-aged
woman might have been seen striving hurriedly to cross the driveway. She
screamed and beckoned to a park policeman, who rushed leisurely in and
caught her by the arm, rescuing her from the cruel feet of our mad
chargers, and then led her to a seat. As we paused to ask the policeman
if the lady had been injured, he came up to the side of the carriage and
whispered to me behind his hand: "That woman I have rescued between
thirty and forty times this year, and it is only the first of July.
Every pleasant day she comes here to be rescued. One day, when business
was a little dull and we didn't have any teams on the drive, and time
seemed to hang heavy on her hands, she told me her sad history. Before
she was eighteen years of age she had been disappointed in love and
prevented from marrying her heart's choice, owing to the fact that the
idea of the union did not occur to him. He was not, in fact, a union
man. Time passed on, from time to time, glad spring, and bobolinks, and
light underwear succeeded stern winter, frost, and heavy flannels, and
yet he cometh not, she sayed. No one had ever caught her in his great
strong arms in a quick embrace that seemed to scrunch her whole being.
Summer came and went. The dews on the upland succeeded the frost on the
pumpkin. The grand ratification of the partridge ushered in the wail of
the turtle dove and the brief plunk of the muskrat in the gloaming. And
yet no man had ever dast to come right out and pay attention to her or
keep company with her. She had an emotional nature that just seemed to
get up on its hind feet and pant for recognition and love. She could
have almost loved a well-to-do man who had, perhaps, sinned a few times,
but even the tough and erring went elsewhere to repent. One day she came
to town to do some trading. She had priced seven dollars and fifty
cents' worth of goods, and was just crossing Broadway to price some
more, when the gay equipage of a wealthy humorist, with silver chains on
the neck-yoke and foam-flecks acrost the bosom of the nigh
hoss, came plunging down the street.
"The red nostrils of the spirited brutes were above her. Their hot
breath scorched the back of her neck and swayed the red-flannel
pompon on her bonnet. Every one on Broadway held his
breath, with the exception of a man on the front stoop of the Castor
House, whose breath had got beyond his control. Every one was horrified
and turned away with a shudder, which rattled the telegraph wires for
two blocks.
"Just then a strong, brave policeman rushed in and knocked down both
horses and the driver, together with his salary. He caught the woman up
as though she had been no more than a feather's weight. He bore her away
to the post-office pavement, where it is still the custom to carry
people who are run over and mangled. He then sought to put her down,
but, like a bad oyster, she would not be put down. She still clung about
his neck, like the old party who got acquainted with Sinbad the Sailor,
though, of course, in a different manner. It took quite a while to shake
her off. The next day she came back and was almost killed at the same
crossing. It went on that way until the policeman had his beat changed
to another part of town. Finally, she came up here to get her summer
rescuing done. I do it when it falls to my lot, but my heart is not in
the work. Sometimes the horrible thought comes over me that I may be too
late. Several times I have tried to be too late, but I haven't the heart
to do it."
He then walked to a sparrow that refused to keep off the grass and
brained it with his club.
HINTS TO THE TRAVELER
XX
Every thinkful student has doubtless noticed that when he enters the
office, or autograph department, of an American inn, a lithe and alert
male person seizes his valise or traveling-bag with much earnestness. He
then conveys it to some sequestered spot and does not again return. He
is the porter of the hotel or inn. He may be a modest porter just
starting out, or he may be a swollen and purse-proud porter with silver
in his hair and also in his pocket.
I speak of the porter and his humble lot in order to show the average
American boy who may read these lines that humor is not the only thing
in America which yields large dividends on a very small capital. To be a
porter does not require great genius, or education, or intellectual
versatility; and yet, well attended to, the business is remunerative in
the extreme and often brings excellent returns. It shows that any
American boy who does faithfully and well the work assigned to him may
become well-to-do and prosperous.
Recently I shook hands with a conductor on the Milwaukee and St. Paul
Railroad, who is the president of a bank. There is a general impression
in the public mind that conductors all die poor, but here is "Jerry," as
everybody calls him, a man of forty-five years of age, perhaps, with a
long head of whiskers and the pleasant position of president of a bank.
As he thoughtfully slams the doors from car to car, collecting fares on
children who are no longer young and whose parents seek to conceal them
under the seats, or as he goes from passenger to passenger sticking
large blue checks in their new silk hats, and otherwise taking advantage
of people, he is sustained and soothed by the blessed thought that he
has done the best he could, and that some day when the summons comes to
lay aside his loud-smelling lantern and make his last run, he will leave
his dear ones provided for. Perhaps I ought to add that during all
these years of Jerry's prosperity the road has also managed to keep the
wolf from the door. I mention it because it is so rare for the conductor
and the road to make money at the same time.
I knew a conductor on the Union Pacific railroad, some years ago, who
used to make a great deal of money, but he did not invest wisely, and so
to-day is not the president of a bank. He made a great deal of money in
one way or another while on his run, but the man with whom he was wont
to play poker in the evening is now the president of the bank. The
conductor is in the puree.
It was in Minneapolis that Mr. Cleveland was once injudicious. He and
his wife were pained to read the following report of their conversation
in the paper on the day after their visit to the flour city:
"Yes, I like the town pretty well, but the people, some of 'em, are too
blamed fresh."
"Do you think so, Grover? I thought they were very nice, indeed, but
still I think I like St. Paul the best. It is so old and respectable."
"Oh, yes, respectability is good enough in its place, but it can be
overdone. I like Washington, where respectability is not made a hobby."
"But are you not enjoying yourself here, honey?"
"No, I am not. To tell you the truth, I am very unhappy. I'm so scared
for fear I'll say something about the place that will be used against me
by the St. Paul folks, that I most wish I was dead, and everybody wants
to show me the new bridge and the waterworks, and speak of 'our great
and phenomenal growth,' and show me the population statistics, and the
school-house, and the Washburn residence, and Doc Ames and Ole
Forgerson, and the saw-mill, and the boom, and then walk me up into the
thirteenth story of a flour mill and pour corn meal down my back, and
show me the wonderful increase of the city debt and the sewerage, and
the West Hotel, and the glorious ozone and things here, that it makes me
tired. And I have to look happy and shake hands and say it knocks St.
Paul silly, while I don't think so at all, and I wish I could do
something besides be president for a couple of weeks, and quit lying
almost entirely, except when I go a-fishing."
"But don't you think the people here are very cordial, dawling?"
"Yes, they're too cordial for me altogether. Instead of talking about
the wonderful hit I have made as a president and calling attention to my
remarkable administration, they talk about the flour output and the
electric plant and other crops here, and allude feelingly to 'number one
hard' and chintz bugs and other flora and fauna of this country, which,
to be honest with you, I do not and never did give a damn for."
"Grover!"
"Well, I beg your pardon, dear, and I oughtn't to speak that way before
you, but if you knew how much better I feel now you would not speak so
harshly to me. It is indeed hard to be ever gay and joyous before the
great masses who as a general thing, do not know enough to pound sand,
but who are still vested with the divine right of suffrage, and so must
be treated gently, and loved and smiled at till it makes me ache."
Mr. Cleveland was greatly annoyed by the publication of this
conversation, and could not understand it until this fall, when a
Minneapolis man told him that the pale, haughty coachman who drove the
presidential carriage was a reporter. He could handle a team with one
hand and remember things with the other.
And so I say that as a president we can not be too careful what we say.
I hope that the little boys and girls who read this, and who may
hereafter become presidents or wives of presidents, will bear this in
mind, and always have a kind word for one and all, whether they feel
that way or not.
But I started out to speak of porters and not reporters. I carry with
me, this year, a small, sorrel bag, weighing a little over twenty
ounces. It contains a slight bottle of horse medicine and a powder rag.
Sometimes it also contains a costly robe de nuit, when I do not forget
and leave said robe in a sleeping car or hotel. I am not overdrawing
this matter, however, when I say honestly that the shrill cry of fire at
night in most any hotel in the United States would now bring to the
fire-escape from one to six employes of said hotel wearing these costly
vestments with my brief but imperishable name engraven on the bosom.
This little traveling bag, which is not larger than a man's hand, is
rudely pulled out of my grasp as I enter an inn, and it has cost me $29
to get it back again from the porter. Besides, I have paid $8.35 for new
handles to replace those that have been torn off in frantic scuffles
between the porter and myself to see which would get away with it.
Yesterday I was talking with a reformed lecturer about this peculiarity
of the porters. He said he used to lecture a great deal at moderate
prices throughout the country, and after ten years of earnest toil he
was enabled to retire with a rich experience and $9 in money. He
lectured on phrenology and took his meals with the chairman of the
lecture committee. In Ouray, Colorado, the baggageman allowed his trunk
to fall from a great height, and so the lid was knocked off and the bust
which the professor used in his lecture was busted. He therefore had to
borrow a bald-headed man to act as bust for him in the evening. After
the close of the lecture the professor found that the bust had stolen
the gross receipts from his coat tail pocket while he was lecturing. The
only improbable feature about this story is the implication that a
bald-headed man would commit a crime.
But still he did not become soured. He pressed on and lectured to the
gentle janitors of the land in piercing tones. He was always kind to
every one, even when people criticised his lecture and went away before
he got through. He forgave them and paid his bills just the same as he
did when people liked him.
Once a newspaper man did him a great wrong by saying that "the lecture
was decayed, and that the professor would endear himself to every one
if some night at his hotel, instead of blowing out the gas and turning
off his brains as he usually did, he would just turn off the gas and
blow out his brains." But the professor did not go to the newspaper
man's office and shoot holes in his person. He spoke kindly to him
always, and once when the two met in a barber shop, and it was doubtful
which was "next," as they came in from opposite ends of the room, the
professor gently yielded the chair to the man who had done him the great
wrong, and while the barber was shaving him eleven tons of ceiling
peeled off and fell on the editor who had been so cruel and so rude, and
when they gathered up the debris, a day or two afterward, it was almost
impossible to tell which was ceiling and which was remains.
[Illustration: _He therefore had to borrow a bald-headed man to act as
bust for him in the evening_ (Page 194)]
So it is always best to deal gently with the erring, especially if you
think it will be fatal to them.
The reformed lecturer also spoke of a discovery he made, which I had
never heard of before. He began, during the closing years of his tour,
to notice mysterious marks on his trunk, made with chalk generally, and
so, during his leisure hours, he investigated them and their cause and
effect. He found that they were the symbols of the Independent Order of
Porters and Baggage Bursters. He discovered that it was a species of
language by which one porter informed the next, without the expense of
telegraphing, what style of man owned the trunk and the prospects for
"touching" him, as one might say.
The professor gave me a few of these signs from an old note-book,
together with his own interpretation after years of close study. I
reproduce them here, because I know they will interest the reader as
they did me.
[Illustration]
This trunk, if handled gently and then carefully unstrapped in the
owner's room, so as to open comfortably without bursting the wall or
giving the owner vertigo, is good for a quarter.
[Illustration]
This man is a good, kind-hearted man generally, but will sometimes
escape. Better not let him have his hand baggage till he puts up.
[Illustration]
This trunk belongs to a woman who may possibly thank you if you handle
the baggage gently and will weep if you knock the lid off. Kind words
can never die. (N. B. Nyether can they procure groceries.)
[Illustration]
This trunk belongs to a traveling man who weighs 211 pounds. If you have
no respect for the blamed old fire-proof safe itself, please respect it
for its gentle owner's sake. He can not bear to have his trunk harshly
treated, and he might so far forget himself as to kill you. It is better
to be alive and poor than it is to be wealthy and dead. It is better to
do a kind act for a fellow-being than it is to leave a desirable widow
for some one else to marry.
[Illustration]
If you will knock the top off this trunk you will discover the clothing
of a mean man. In case you can not knock the lid entirely off, burst it
open a little so that the great, restless, seething traveling public can
see how many hotel napkins and towels and cakes of soap he has stolen.
[Illustration]
This is the trunk of a young girl, and contains the poor but honest garb
she wore when she ran away from home. Also the gay clothes she bought
after a wicked ambition had poisoned her simple heart. They are the
gaudy garments and flashy trappings for which she exchanged her honest
laugh and her bright and beautiful youth. Handle gently the poor little
trunk, as you would touch her sad little history, for her father is in
the second-class coach, weeping softly into his coarse red handkerchief,
and she, herself, is going home on the same train in her cheap little
coffin in the baggage car to meet her sorrowing mother, who will go up
into the garret many rainy afternoons in the days to come, to cry over
this poor little trunk and no one will know about it. It will be a
secret known only to her sorrowing heart and to God.
A MEDIEVAL DISCOVERER
XXI
Galilei, commonly called Galileo, was born at Pisa on the 14th day of
February, 1564. He was the man who discovered some of the fundamental
principles governing the movements, habits, and personal peculiarities
of the earth. He discovered things with marvelous fluency. Born as he
was, at a time when the rotary motion of the earth was still in its
infancy and astronomy was taught only in a crude way, Galileo started in
to make a few discoveries and advance some theories of which he was very
fond.
He was the son of a musician and learned to play several instruments
himself, but not in such a way as to arouse the jealousy of the great
musicians of his day. They came and heard him play a few selections, and
then they went home contented with their own music. Galileo played for
several years in a band at Pisa, and people who heard him said that his
manner of gazing out over the Pisan hills with a far-away look in his
eye after playing a selection, while he gently up-ended his alto horn
and worked the mud-valve as he poured out about a pint of moist melody
that had accumulated in the flues of the instrument, was simply grand.
At the age of twenty Galileo began to discover. His first discoveries
were, of course, clumsy and poorly made, but very soon he commenced to
turn out neat and durable discoveries that would stand for years.