A QUAINT EPISTLE, IN WHICH THE HUMORIST GIVES HIS EXPERIENCE WITH
RAILROAD OFFICIALS--HOW HE SECURED PAY FOR A COW.
DEAR HENRY: Your letter stating that you had just succeeded in running
your face for a new curriculum is at hand and contents noted, as the
feller said when I wrote to him two years ago and told him that his
cussed railroad had mashed old Brin. You remember that just as you
entered on what you called your junior year, old Brin remained out all
night, and your mother and me took our coffee milkless in the morning.
Well, I went down to the pound to see if she had registered there, but
she hadn't been stopping there, the night clerk said. He maintained,
however, that "number two-aught-eight"--as he called it--had come in
half an hour late with a cow's head on the pilot and brindle hair on the
runnin' gears of the tender.
So I went over to the station and found Brin's head there, whereupon I
went down the track in search of her, though I feared it would be
futile, as you once said about administering a half sole to your summer
pantaloons. Well, I was right about it, Henry. If I'd been in the futile
business for years I couldn't have been more so than I was on this
occasion. The old cow was dead and so identified with the right of way,
that her own mother would not have known her.
I spoke to the conductor about it and he said it wasn't on his run and
for me to see the other conductor. Time I found him he was on another
road and killed in a collision with a lumber train. Then I wrote to the
general traffic manager, using great care to spell all the words as near
right as possible, and he didn't reply at all. His hired man wrote me,
however, with a printing press, that my letter had been received and
contents duly noted. In reply would say that the general traffic manager
was then attending a tripartite reunion at Chicago, at which meeting
the subject of cows would come up. He said that there had been such
competition between the Milwaukee, the Northwestern and the Rock Island
in the matter of prices paid for shattered cows, that farmers got to
dragging their debilitated stock on the track at night and selling it to
the roads, after which they would retire from business on their
ill-gotten gains.
When the general traffic manager got back I went in to see him. He was
very pleasant with me, but said he had nothing to do with the dead cow
industry. "Go to the auditor or the general solicitor," said he, "they
run the morgue." But they were both away attending a large Eastern mass
meeting of auditors and general solicitors, where they where discussing
the practicability of a new garnishee-proof pay-car, that some party had
patented, they said.
So I went home and wrote to the auditor a nice, long, fluent letter in
relation to the cow and her merits. I told him that it wasn't the
intrinsic value of the cow that I cared about. Intrinsic value is a term
that I found in one of your letters and liked very much. I wrote him
that old Brin was an heir-loom and a noble brute. I said among other
things that she had never been antagonistic to railroads. She had rather
favored them; also that her habits and tastes were simple and that she
had never aspired to rise above her station in life, and why she should
rise higher than the station when she was injured I could not
understand. I told him what a good milkster she was, and also that she
came up every night as regular as an emetic.
I then wrote my name with a little ornamental squirm to it, added a
postscript in which I said that you was now in your junior year, and I
thought that about seventy-five dollars would be a fair quotation on
such a cow as I had feebly described, and said good-by to him, hoping he
would remit at a prior date if possible.
I got a letter after awhile, stating that my favor of the 25th ult. or
prox. or something of that nature, had been duly received and contents
noted. This was no surprise to me, because that is too often the sad
fate of a letter. In fact the same thing had happened to the other one I
had previously sent.
I was mad, and wrote to the president of the company stating in crisp
language that if his company would pay more cash for cows and do less in
the noting and contents business, he would be more apt to endear himself
to those who reside along his line and who had their horses scared to
death twice a day by his arrogant and bellering besom of destruction.
"If you will deal more in scads and less in stenography and monkey
business," says I, in closing, "you will warm yourself into the hearts
of the plain people. Otherwise," I says, "we will arise in our might and
walk."
I then, in a humorsome way, marked it "dictated letter" and sent it
away.
I got it back in the face by way of the dead-letter office where they
know me. I'll bet they had a good laugh over it, for they opened it and
read it while it was there. I wouldn't be surprised if every man in
Congress had a good hearty laugh over that letter. Congressmen enjoy a
good thing once in a while, Henry. They ain't so dumb as they look.
But I finally got my pay for old Brin, to make a long story short. They
cut me down some on the price, but I finally got my money. No railroad
company can run over a cow of mine and mix her up with a trestle
three-quarters of a mile long, without paying for it, and favors
received and contents duly noted don't go with
Your father,