with a pair of dark, reserved chairs, waiting for some one to come and
fall off them. In hotels they go in larger flocks, and graze together in
the parlor.
THE THOUGHT CLOTHIER
XXV
General Dado has been sharply criticised--roundly abused, even--for
making a claim against the Grant estate for alleged assistance in
preparing the "Memoirs" that have added to that estate some half-million
of dollars. The Philadelphia _Bulletin_ says:--"There is no mark of
contempt so strong that it ought not to be fixed on so shameless and
unblushing an ingrate." And it is this--the man's ingratitude--that most
offends. General Grant's unswerving loyalty to Dado, his zeal in giving
places to him so long as he had them to give, and in soliciting others
to give them when it was no longer in his own power to do so, was an
offense in the nostrils of most Americans. His intimacy with Dado was
one of the causes of Grant's being in bad odor, as it were, at a certain
period of his career; and the present unpleasantness is a part of the
penalty for taking such a man into his bosom. The claimant is getting
the worst of it, however, and we are tempted to overlook his ingratitude
for the sake of the following skit called forth by his appearance as a
thinker and clothier of thoughts.--_The Critic_.
There is something slightly pathetic in the delayed statement that some
of General Grant's best thoughts were supplied by General Adam Dado.
While it is a great credit to any man to do the meditating, pondering,
and word-painting necessary for a book which can attain such a sale as
Grant's "Memoirs," it shows a condition of affairs which every literary
man or woman must sadly deplore. Who of us is now safe?
While the warrior, as a warrior, has nothing to do but continue
victorious through life, he can not safely write a book for posterity.
Literature is at all times more or less hazardous under present
copyright regulations, but it becomes doubly so when our estates have to
reimburse some silent thinker who thought things for us while
amanuensing in our employ. Even though we may have told him not to think
thoughts for us, even though we asked him as a special favor to avoid
putting his own clothing on our poor, little, shivering, naked facts,
there is no law which can prevent his making that claim after we are
dead.
And how can a court of law or an intelligent jury judge such a matter? A
great man thinks a thought in the presence of two amanuenses, provided I
am right in spelling the plural in that way. He thinks a thought, I say,
surrounded by those two gentlemen and an improved typewriter. He gives
utterance to the thought and dies. One of the amanuensisters then states
to the jury that he thought it himself, and that his comrade clothed it.
The estate is then asked to pay so much per think for the thoughts and
so much at war prices for clothing the ideas. Who is able, unless it be
an intelligent jury, to arrive at the truth?
The first question to ask ourselves is this: Was General Grant in the
habit of calling in a thinker whenever he wanted anything done in that
line? He says distinctly in his letter that he was not. He could not do
it. It was impracticable. Supposing in the crash of battle and in the
moment of victory your short, hard thinker has his head shot off and it
falls in a pumpkin orchard, where there is naturally more or less delay
in identifying it, what can you do? Suppose that you were the president
of the United States, and your think-supply got snow-bound at Newark in
a vestibule train, and congress were waiting for you to veto a bill. You
could not think the thought in the first place, and even if you could
you would hate to send it to congress until it was properly clothed. I
am told that nothing shocks congress so much as the sudden appearance
"in its midst" of a naked and new-born thought.
But General Dado has the advantage over General Grant in one respect. He
can not be injured much. Otherwise the case is against him. But the
matter will be watched with careful interest by literary people
generally, and especially by soldiers and magazines with a war history.
It is a warning to those who think their thoughts in unguarded moments
while stenographers may be near to take them down and claim them
afterwards. It is also a warning to people who thoughtlessly expose
naked facts in the presence of word-painters and thought-clothiers, who
may decorate and outfit these children of the brain and charge it up to
the estate.
Is the time coming when general dealers in apparel and gents' furnishing
goods for the use of bare facts, and men who attend to the costuming,
draping, and swaddling of nude ideas, will compete so closely with each
other that, before a think has its eyes fairly open, one of these
gentlemen will slap a suit of clothes on it, with a Waterbury watch in
each pocket, and have a boy half way to the office with the bill?
A RUBBER ESOPHAGUS.
XXVI
Puget Sound is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful sheets of water in
the world. Its bosom is as unruffled as that of an angel who is opposed
to ruffles on general principles.
To say that real estate was once active at certain places on its shores
is just simply about as powerful as the remark made by the frontiersman
who came home from his haying one afternoon and found that the Indians
had burned up his buildings, massacred his wife, driven off his milch
cows and killed his children. He looked over the bloody scene and then
said to himself with great feeling; "This, it seems to me, is perfectly
ridiculous."
I once drove about Seattle for two days with a real estate man, not
buying, but just riding and enjoying the scenery while we allowed
prices gently to advance and our whiskers to grow. Finally I asked him
if he knew of a real "snap," as Herbert Spencer would call it, within
the reach of a poor man. He said that there was a bargain out towards
Lake Washington, and if I wanted to see it we could go out there. I said
I should like to see it, for, if really desirable, I might buy some
outside property. We drove quite awhile through the primeval forest, and
after baiting our team and eating some lunch which we had with us, we
resumed our journey, scaring up a bear on the way, which I was assured,
however, was a tame bear. At last we tied the team, and, walking over
the ridge, we found a lot facing west, seventy-three feet front, which
could be had then at $1,500. I don't suppose you could get it at that
price now, for it is within a stone's throw of the power house and cable
running from the city to Lake Washington.
A friend of mine once told me how he lost a trade in Spokane Falls. He
had the refusal for a week of a twenty-four-foot business lot "at $500."
He thought and worried and prayed over it, and wrote home about it, and
finally decided to take it. On the last day of grace he counted up his
money and finding that he had just the amount, he went over to the
agent's office with it to close the trade.
"Have you the currency with you to make the trade all cash?" asked the
agent.
"Yes, sir, I have the whole $500 in currency," said my friend, drawing
himself up to his full height and putting his cigar back a little
further in his cheek.
"Five hundred dollars!" exclaimed the agent with a low, gurgling laugh;
"the lot is $500 per front foot. I didn't suppose you were Pan-American
ass enough to think you could get a business lot in Spokane for $500.
You can't get a load of sand for your children to play in at that rate."
Once as my train passed a little red depot I saw a young squaw leaning
up against the building, and crying. As we moved along I saw a plain
black coffin--a cheap affair of pine, daubed with walnut stain to make
it look still cheaper, I presume. I had never seen an Indian--even a
squaw--weeping before, and so the picture remained with me a long time,
and may for a long time yet to come.
I've never been a pronounced friend of the Indian, as those who know me
best will agree. I have claimed that though he was first to locate in
this country, he did not develop the lead or do assessment work even, so
the thing was open to re-location. The white man has gone on and found
mineral in many places, made a big output, and is still working day and
night shifts, while the Indian is shiftless day and night, so far as I
have observed.
But when we see the poor devils buying our coffins for their dead, even
though they may go very hungry for days afterwards, and, as they fade
away forever as a people, striving to conform to our customs and wear
suspenders and join in prayer, common humanity leads us to think
solemnly of their melancholy end.
On that trip I met with a medical and surgical curiosity while on the
cars. It consisted of a young man who was compelled to take his
nourishment through a rubber tube which led directly into his stomach
through his side. I had heard of something like it and in my extensive
medical library had read of cases resembling it, but not entirely the
same. The conductor, who had shown me a great many little courtesies
already, invited me into the baggage car, where he had the young man, in
order that I might see him.
The subject was a German about twenty years of age, of dark complexion
and phlegmatic temperament. He stood probably about five feet four
inches high in his stocking feet and did not attract me as a person of
prominence until the conductor informed me that he ate through the side
of his vest.
It seems that about two years ago the boy had some little gastric
disturbance resulting from eating a nocturnal watermelon or callow
cucumber. As I understand it, he, in an unguarded moment, called a
physician who aimed to be his own worst enemy, but who contrived to work
in the public on the same basis, using no favoritism whatever. He was a
doctor who has since gone into the gibbering industry in alcoholic
circles.
So it happened that on the day he was called to the bedside of this
plain, juvenile colic, the enemy he had taken into his mouth the evening
before had, as a matter of fact, rifled his pseudo-brains, and being
bitterly disappointed in them, had no doubt failed to return them.
Therefore "Doc," as he was affectionately called by the widowers
throughout the neighborhood, was entirely unfit to prescribe. He did so,
however, just the same. That kind of a doctor is generally willing to
rush in where angels fear to tread. He cheerfully prescribed for the
boy, and, in fact, filled the prescription himself. The principal
ingredient of this compound was carbolic acid. A man who can, by
mistake, administer carbolic acid and not even smell it, must do his
thinking by means of a sort of intellectual wart.
But he did it, anyhow.
So, after great suffering, the young fellow lost the use of his entire
esophagus, the lining coming off as a result of this liquid holocaust,
and then afterwards growing together again.
The parents now decided to change physicians. So after giving "Doc" a
cow and settling up with him, another physician was called in. He said
there was no way to reach the stomach but from the exterior, and,
although hazardous, it might save the patient's life. Speedy action must
be taken, however, as the young man was already getting up quite an
appetite.
I can imagine Old Man Gastric waiting there patiently, day after day,
every little while looking at his watch, wondering, and singing:
We are waiting, waiting, waiting,
Finally, as he sits near the cardial orifice, where the sign has been
recently put up,
THE ELEVATOR IS NOT RUNNING,
a light bursts through the walls of his house and he hears voices.
Hastily throwing one of the coats of the stomach over his shoulders, he
springs to his feet just in time to catch about a nickel's worth of
warm beef tea down the back of his neck.
The patient now wears about two feet of inch hose, one end of which is
introduced into the upper and anterior lobe of the stomach. The other he
has embellished with a plain cork stopper. I asked him if he would join
me in a drink of water from the ice-cooler, and he said he would, under
the circumstances. He said that he had just taken one, but would not
mind taking one more with me. He then removed the stopper from his new
Goodyear esophagus, inserted a neat little tin funnel, with which he was
able to introduce the water. It gently settled down and disappeared in
his depths, and then, putting away the garden hose, he accepted a dollar
and gave me a history of the case as I have set it forth above, or
substantially so, at least.
I could not help thinking of him afterward. I tried to imagine him on
his way to Europe over a stormy sea; the surprise of his stomach when it
found itself frustrated and beaten at its own game, and all that. Then I
thought of him as the honored guest of some great corporation or club,
and at the banquet, when the president, in a few well-chosen words,
apparently born of the moment but really wearing trousers, says,
"Gentlemen, we have with us this evening," etc., etc.; and then rising,
all the members join in a toast to the guest. Touching his glass to
theirs, and then gracefully unreeling his garden hose, he takes from his
pocket the small funnel, and, gently sipping the generous wine through
his tin pharynx, he begins his well-digested response.
Nature did not do much for this poor lad, but science has stepped in and
made him a man of mark. He went to bed unknown. He awoke to find himself
noted. He went to sleep with ordinary tastes. He arose with no taste at
all. Thus, through the medical treatment of a typhoid idiot, for a
disease which was in no way malignant, or, as I might say, therapeutic,
he became a man of parts and stands next to the nobility of Europe, not
having to work.
Afterward, in Paris, I saw on the street a man who played the trombone
by means of a bullet-hole in his trachea, but I do not think it
elevated me and spurred me on to nobler endeavor and made a better man
of me, as did this simple-hearted young gentleman who made a living by
eating publicly through a tin horn, and who actually earned his bread by
eating it. I hope that the medical fraternity will make his case a study
and try to do better next time. That is the only moral I can think of in
connection with this story.
ADVICE TO A SON
XXVII
MY DEAR SON: I just came here to New York on business, and thought I
would write to you a few lines, as I have a little time that is not
taken up. I came here on a train from Chicago the other day. Before I
started, I got a lower berth in a sleeping car, but when I went to put
my sachel in it, before I left Chicago, there were two women and a
little girl there, and so I told the porter I would wait until they
moved before I put my baggage in the section, for of course I thought
they were just sitting there for a minute to rest.
Hours rolled by and they did not move. I kept on sitting in the
smoking-room, but they stayed. By and by the porter came and asked me if
I had "lower four." I said yes--I paid for it, but I couldn't really say
I had it in my possession. He then said that two ladies and a little
girl had "upper four," and asked if I would mind swapping with them. I
said that I would do so, for I didn't see how a whole family circle
could climb up into the upper berth and remain there, and I would rather
give them the lower one than spend the night picking up different
members of the family and replacing them in the home nest after they had
fallen out.
I had a bad cold, and though I knew that sleeping in the upper berth
would add to it, I did not murmur. But little did I realize that they
would hold the whole thing all of two days, and fill it full of broken
crackers and banana peels, and leave me to ride backward in the
smoking-room from Chicago to New York, after I had paid five dollars for
a seat and lower berth.
Woman is a poor, frail vessel, Henry, but she manages to arrive at her
destination all right. She buys an upper berth and then swaps it with an
old man for his lower berth, giving to boot a half-smothered sob and two
scalding tears. Then she says "Thank you," if she feels like it at the
end of the road, though these women did not. I have pneuemonia in its
early stages, but I have done a kind act, which I shall probably have
to do over again when I return.
If you ever become the parent of a daughter, Henry, and you like her
pretty well, I hope you will teach her to acknowledge a courtesy,
instead of looking upon the earth and the fullness thereof as a
partnership property, owned jointly by herself and the Lord.
A woman who has traveled a good deal is generally polite, and knows how
to treat her fellow passengers and the porter, but people who are making
their first or second trip, I notice, most generally betray the fact by
tramping all over the other passengers.
Another mistake, Henry, which I hope you will not make, is that of
taking very small children to travel. Children should remain at home
until they are at least two or three days old, otherwise they are
troublesome to their parents and also bother the other passengers. There
ought to be a law, too, that would prevent parents from taking larger
children who should be in the reform school. Some parents seem to think
that what their children do is funny, when, instead of humor, it is
really felony. It does not entirely set matters right, for instance,
when a child has torn off a gentleman's ear, merely to make the child
return it to the owner, for you can never put an ear back in its place
after it has been torn off and stepped on, in such a way as to make it
look the same as it did at first.
I heard a mother say on the train that her little boy never was quite
himself while traveling, because he wasn't well. She feared it was the
change in the water that made him sick. He had then drank a whole
ice-water tank empty, and was waiting impatiently till we got to
Pittsburg, so that he could drink out of the hydrant.
Queer people also ride on the elevated trains here in New York. It is a
singular experience to a stranger to ride on these cars. It made me ill
at first, but after awhile I got so mad that I forgot about it. For
instance, at places like Fourteenth street, and Twenty-third street, and
Park Place, there are generally several people who want to get aboard a
little before the passengers get off. Two or three times I was carried
by because the guards wouldn't enforce the rule, and I had a good deal
of trouble, till I took an old pair of Mexican spurs out of my trunk and
strapped them on my elbows. After that I could stroll along Broadway, or
get off a train when I got ready, and have some comfort.
The gates on the elevated trains get shet rather sudden
sometimes, and once they shet in a part of a man, I was
told, and left the rest of him on the outside, so that after a while he
fell off over the trestle, because there was more of him on the outside
than on the inside, and he didn't seem to balance somehow. It was rare
sport for the guards to watch the man scraping along the side of the
road and sweeping off the right of way.
One day, when I was on board, there was a crowd at one of the stations,
and an old man and a little girl tried to get on. She was looking out
for the old man, and seemed to kind of steer him on the platform. Just
as he stepped on the train, the guard shut the gate and left the little
girl outside. She looked so scart and pitiful, as the train left her,
that I'll never forget it to my dying day, and as we left the platform I
saw her wring her poor little hands, and I heard her cry, "Oh, mister,
let me go with him. My poor grandpa is blind."
Sure enough, the old man groped around almost crazy on that swaying
train, without knowing where he was, and feeling through the empty air
for the gentle hand of the little girl who had been left behind. Two or
three of us took care of the old man and got him off at the next
station, where we waited till she came; but it was the most touching
thing I ever saw outside of a book.
Another day the cars were full till you couldn't seem to get even an
umbrella into the aisle, I thought, but yet the guards told people to
step along lively, and encouraged them by prodding and pinching till
most everybody was fighting mad.
Then a pale girl, with a bundle of sewing in her hand, and a hollow
cough that made everybody look that way, got into the aisle. She could
just barely get hold of the strap, and that was all. She wore a poor,
black cotton jersey, and when she reached up so high, the jersey part
would not stay where it belonged, and at the waist seemed to throw off
all responsibility. She realized it, and bit her lips, and two red spots
came on her pale face, and the tears came into her eyes, but she
couldn't let go of her bundle, and she couldn't let go of the strap, for
already the train threw her against a soiled man on one side and a tough
on the other. It was pitiful enough, so that men who had their seats
began to read advertisements and other things with their papers wrong
side up, in order to seem thoroughly engrossed in their business.
But two pretty young men, with real good clothes, and white, soft hands,
had a great deal of fun over it, and every time the train would lurch
and throw the poor girl's jersey a little more out of plumb, they would
jab each other in the ribs, and laugh very hearty. I felt sorry that I
wasn't young again, so that I could go over there and kick both of
them. Henry, if I thought you would do a thing like that, or allow it
done on the same block where you happened to be, I would give my estate
to a charitable object, and refuse to recognize you in Paradise.
Just then an oldish man of a chunky build, and with an eye as black as
the driven tomcat, reached through the crowded aisle with his umbrella
and touched the girl. She looked around, and he told her to come and
take his seat. As she squeezed through, and he rose to seat her, a large
man with black whiskers gently dropped into the vacant seat with a sigh
of relief, and began to read a two-year-old paper with much earnestness,
just as if he hadn't noticed the whole performance. The stout man was
thunderstruck. He said:
"Excuse me, sir; I didn't leave my seat."
"Yes, you did," says the black-whiskered pachyderm. "You can't expect to
keep a seat here and leave it too."
"Well, but I rose to put this young lady in it, and I must ask you to be
kind enough to let her have it."
"Excuse me," said the microbe, with a little chuckle of cussedness,
"you will have to take your chances, and wait for a vacant seat, same as
I did."
That was all the conversation there was, but just then the short fat man
ran his thumb down inside the shirt collar of the yellow fever germ, and
jerked him so high that I could see the nails on the bottoms of his
boots. Then, with the other hand, he socked the young lady into his
seat, and took hold of a strap, where he hung on white and mad, but
victorious.
After that there was a loud hurrah, and general enthusiasm and hand
clapping, and cries of "Good!" "Good!" and in the midst of it the
sporadic hog and the two refined young men got off the train.
As the black and white Poland swine went out the door I noticed that
there was blood on the back of his neck, and later on I saw the short,
stout old gentleman remove a large mole or birthmark, which he really
had no use for, from under his thumb nail.
On a Harlem train, as they call it, I saw a drunken young man in one of
the seats yesterday. He wasn't noisy, but he felt pretty fair. Next to
him was a real good young man, who seemed to feel his superiority a
great deal. Very soon the car got jammed full, and an old lady, poorly
dressed, but a mighty good, motherly old woman, I'll bet a hundred
dollars, got in. Her husband asked the good young man if he would kindly
give his wife a seat. He did not apparently hear at all, but got all
wrapped up in his paper, just as every man in a car does when he is
ashamed of himself. But the inebriated young man heard, and so he said:
"Here, mister, take my seat for the old lady; any seat is good enough
for me." Whereupon he sat down in the lap of the good young man, and so
remained till he got to his station.