with matchless intrepidity, stepped into the vacated spot; and without a
sign of fear carried on the contest against the Arch Fiend, whose great
ally had been so recently overthrown--i.e., Goliath, (not Mr. Ham). Yet
excited, as evidently was this veteran, he still could not forego his
usual introduction, stating how old he was; where he was born; where he
obtained religion; how long he had been a preacher; how many miles he
had traveled in a year; and when he buried his wife--all of which
edifying truths were received with the usual applauses of a devout and
enlightened assembly. But this introduction over--which did not occupy
more than fifteen or twenty minutes--he began his attack in fine style,
waxing louder and louder as he proceeded, till he exceeded all the old
gentlemen to "holler" I ever heard, and indeed old ladies either.
EXTRACT FROM HIS DISCOURSE
"... Yes, sinners! you'll all have to fall and be knock'd down some time
or nuther, like the great giant we've heern tell on, when the Lord's
sarvints come and fight agin you! Oho! sinner! sinner!--oh!--I hope you
may be knock'd down to-night--now!--this moment--and afore you die and
go to judgment! Yes! oho! yes! oh!--I say judgment--for it's appinted
once to die and then the judgment--oho! oh! And what a time ther'll be
then! You'll see all these here trees--and them 'are stars, and yonder
silver moon afire!--and all the alliments a-meltin and runnin down with
fervent heat-ah!"--(I have elsewhere stated that the _unlearned_
preachers out there (?) are by the vulgar--(not the _poor_)--but the
_vulgar_, supposed to be more favored in preaching than man-made
preachers; and that the sign of an unlearned preacher's inspiration
being in full _blast_ is his inhalations, which puts an ah! to
the end of sentences, members, words, and even exclamations, till
his breath is all gone, and no more can be _sucked_ in)--"Oho!
hoah! fervent heat-ah! and the trumpit a-soundin-ah!--and the dead
arisin-ah!--and all on us a-flyin-ah!--to be judged-ah!--O-hoah!
sinner--sinner--sinner--sinner-ah! And what do I see away
thar'-ah!--down the Mississippi-ah!--thar's a man jist done a-killin-ah
another-ah!--and up he goes with his bloody dagger-ah! And what's that I
see to the East-ah! where proud folks live clothed in purple-ah! and
fine linen-ah!--I see 'em round a table a drinkin a decoction of Indian
herb-ah!--and up they go with cups in thar hands-ah! and
see--ohoah!--see! in yonder doggery some a dancin-ah! and
fiddlin-ah!--and up they go-ah! with cards-ah! and fiddle-ah!" etc.,
etc.
Here the tempest around drowned the voice of the old hero; although,
from the frantic violence of his gestures, the frightful distortion of
his features, and the Pythonic foam of his mouth, he was plainly blazing
away at the enemy. The uproar, however, so far subsided as to allow my
hearing his closing exhortation, which was this:
"... Yes, I say--fall down--fall down all of you, on your
knees!--shout!--cry aloud!--spare not!--stamp with the _foot_!--smite
with the _hand_!--down! _down!_--that's it--down brethren!--down
preachers!--down _sisters_!--pray away!--take it by storm!--_fire_ away!
fire _away_! not one at a time! not two together-ah!--a single shot the
devil will _dodge-ah_!--give it to him _all at once_--fire a _whole
platoon_!--at him!!"
And then such platoon firing as followed! If Satan stood that, he can
stand much more than the worthy folks thought he could. And, indeed, the
effect was wonderful!--more than forty thoughtless sinners that came for
fun, and twice as many backsliders were instantly knocked over!--and
there all lay, some with violent jerkings and writhings of body, and
some uttering the most piercing and dismaying shrieks and groans! The
fact is, I was nearly knocked down myself--
"You?--Mr. Carlton!!"
Yes--indeed--but not by the hail of spiritual shot falling so thick
around me; it was by a sudden rush towards my station, where I stood
mounted on a stump. And this rush was occasioned by a wish to see a
stout fellow lying on the straw in the pen, a little to my left,
groaning and praying, and yet kicking and pummelling away as if
scuffling with a sturdy antagonist. Near him were several men and women
at prayer, and one or more whispering into his ear; while on a small
stump above stood a person superintending the contest, and so as to
insure victory to the right party. Now the prostrate man, who like a
spirited tom-cat seemed to fight best on his back, was no other than our
celebrated New Purchase bully--Rowdy Bill! And this being reported
through the congregation, the rush had taken place by which I was so
nearly overturned. I contrived, however, to regain my stand, shared
indeed now with several others, we hugging one another and standing on
tip-toes and our necks elongated as possible; and thus we managed to
have a pretty fair view of matters.
About this time the Superintendent in a very loud voice cried out--"Let
him alone, brothers! let him alone sisters! keep on praying!--it's a
hard fight--the devil's got a tight grip yet! He don't want to lose poor
Bill--but he'll let go soon--Bill's gittin the better on him fast!--Pray
away!"
Rowdy Bill, be it known, was famous as a gouger, and so expert was he in
his antioptical vocation, that in a few moments he usually bored out an
antagonist's eyes, or made him cry _peccavi_. Indeed, could he, on the
present occasion, have laid hold of his unseen foe's head--spiritually
we mean--he would--figuratively, of course--soon have caused him to ease
off or let go entirely his metaphorical grip. So, however, thought one
friend in the assembly--Bill's wife. For Bill was a man after her own
heart; and she often said that "with fair play she sentimentally allowed
her Bill could lick ary a man in the 'varsal world, and his weight in
wild cats to boot." Hence, the kind-hearted creature, hearing that Bill
was actually fighting with the evil one, had pressed in from the
outskirts to see fair play; but now hearing Bill was in reality down,
and apparently undermost, and above all, the words of the
Superintendent, declaring that the fiend had a tight grip of the poor
fellow, her excitement would no longer be controlled; and, collecting
her vocal energies, she screamed out her common exhortation to Bill, and
which, when heeded, had heretofore secured him immediate
victories--"Gouge him, Billy!--gouge him, _Billy!--gouge_ him!"
This spirited exclamation was instantly shouted by Bill's cronies and
partizans--mischievously, _maybe_, for we have no right to judge of
men's motives, in meetings:--but a few--_friends_, doubtless, of the old
fellow--cried out in very irreverent tone--"Bite him! devil--_bite_
him!" Upon which the faithful wife, in a tone of voice that beggars
description, reiterated her--"Gouge him," etc.--in which she was again
joined by her husband's allies, and that to the alarm of his invisible
foe; for Bill now rose to his knees, and on uttering some mystic jargon
symptomatic of conversion, he was said to have "got religion";--and then
all his new friends and spiritual guides united in fresh prayers and
shouts of thanksgiving.
It was now very late at night; and joining a few other citizens of
Woodville, we were soon in our saddles and buried in the darkness of the
forest. For a long time, however, the uproar of the spiritual elements
at the camp continued at intervals to swell and diminish on the hearing;
and, often came a yell that rose far above the united din of other
screams and outcries. Nay, at the distance of nearly two miles, could be
distinguished a remarkable and sonorous _oh_!--like the faintly heard
explosion of a mighty elocutional class, practising under a master. And
yet my comrades, who had heard this peculiar cry more than once, all
declared that this wonderful _oh_-ing was performed by the separate
voice of our townsman, Eolus Letherlung, Esq.!
CONCLUSION
A camp-meeting of _this sort_ is, all things considered, the very best
contrivance for making the largest number of converts in the shortest
possible time; and also for enlarging most speedily the bounds of a
Church _Visible_ and _Militant_.
A RHYME FOR CHRISTMAS
BY JOHN CHALLING
Publication delayed by the author's determined but futile attempt to
find the rhyme
If _Browning_ only were here,
This yule-ish time o' the year--
This mule-ish time o' the year,--
Stubbornly still refusing
To add to the rhymes we've been using
Since the first Christmas-glee
(One might say) chantingly
Rendered by rudest hinds
Of the pelt-clad shepherding kinds
Who didn't know Song from b-
U-double-l's-foot!--Pah!--
(Haply the old Egyptian _ptah_--
Though I'd hardly wager a baw-
Bee--or a _bumble_, for that--
And that's flat!)....
But the thing that I want to get at
Is a rhyme for _Christmas_--
Nay! nay! nay! nay! not _isthmus_--
The t- and the h- sounds covertly are
Gnawing the nice auracular
Senses until one may hear them gnar--
And the terminal, too, for m_a_s, is m_u_s,
So _that_ will not do for us.
Try for it--sigh for it--cry for it--die for it!
O _but_ if Browning were here to apply for it,
_He'd_ rhyme you _Christmas_--
_He'd_ make a _mist pass_
Over--something o' ruther--
Or find you the rhyme's very brother
In lovers that _kissed fast_
_To baffle the moon_,--as he'd lose the _t_-final
In fas-t as it blended with _to_ (mark the spinal
Elision--tip-clipt as exquisitely nicely
And hyper-exactingly sliced to precisely
The extremest technical need): Or he'd _twist glass_,
Or he'd have a _kissed lass_,
Or shake neath our noses some great giant _fist-mass_--
No matter! If Robert were here, _he_ could do it,
Though it took us till Christmas next year to see through it.
MY CIGARETTE[1]
BY CHARLES F. LUMMIS
My cigarette! The amulet
That charms afar unrest and sorrow;
The magic wand that far beyond
To-day can conjure up to-morrow.
Like love's desire, thy crown of fire
So softly with the twilight blending,
And ah! meseems, a poet's dreams
Are in thy wreaths of smoke ascending.
My cigarette! Can I forget
How Kate and I, in sunny weather,
Sat in the shade the elm-tree made
And rolled the fragrant weed together?
I at her side beatified,
To hold and guide her fingers willing;
She rolling slow the paper's snow,
Putting my heart in with the filling.
My cigarette! I see her yet,
The white smoke from her red lips curling,
Her dreaming eyes, her soft replies,
Her gentle sighs, her laughter purling!
Ah, dainty roll, whose parting soul
Ebbs out in many a snowy billow,
I, too, would burn if I might earn
Upon her lips so soft a pillow!
Ah, cigarette! The gay coquette
Has long forgot the flames she lighted,
And you and I unthinking by
Alike are thrown, alike are slighted.
The darkness gathers fast without,
A raindrop on my window plashes;
My cigarette and heart are out,
And naught is left me but the ashes.
[Footnote 1: By permission of Life Publishing Company.]
IT IS TIME TO BEGIN TO CONCLUDE
BY A.H. LAIDLAW
Ye Parsons, desirous all sinners to save,
And to make each a prig or a prude,
If two thousand long years have not made us behave,
It is time you began to conclude.
Ye Husbands, who wish your sweet mates to grow mum,
And whose tongues you have never subdued,
If ten years of your reign have not made them grow dumb,
It is time to begin to conclude.
Ye Matrons of men whose brown meerschaum still mars
The sweet kiss with tobacco bedewed,
After pleading nine years, if they still puff cigars,
It is time you began to conclude.
Ye Lawyers, who aim to reform all the land,
And your statutes forever intrude,
If five thousand lost years have not worked as you planned,
It is time to begin to conclude.
Ye Lovers, who sigh for the heart of a maid,
And forty-four years have pursued,
If two scores of young years have not taught you your trade,
It is time you began to conclude.
Ye Doctors, who claim to cure every ill,
And so much of mock learning exude,
If the _Comma Bacillus_ still laughs at your pill,
It is time to begin to conclude.
Ye Maidens of Fifty, who lonely abide,
Yet who heartily scout solitude,
If Jack with his whiskers is not at your side,
It is time to begin to conclude.
NOTHIN' DONE[2]
BY SAM S. STINSON
Winter is too cold fer work;
Freezin' weather makes me shirk.
Spring comes on an' finds me wishin'
I could end my days a-fishin'.
Then in summer, when it's hot,
I say work kin go to pot.
Autumn days, so calm an' hazy,
Sorter make me kinder lazy.
That's the way the seasons run.
Seems I can't git nothin' done.
[Footnote 2: Lippincott's Magazine.]
MARGINS
BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE
My dreams so fair that used to be,
The promises of youth's bright clime,
So changed, alas; come back to me
Sweet memories of that hopeful time
Before I learned, with doubt oppressed,
There are no birds in next year's nest.
The seed I sowed in fragrant spring
The summer's sun to vivify
With his warm kisses, ripening
To golden harvest by and by,
Got caught by drought, like all the rest--
There are no birds in next year's nest.
The stock I bought at eighty-nine,
Broke down next day to twenty-eight;
Some squatters jumped my silver mine,
My own convention smashed my slate;
No more in "futures" I'll invest--
There are no birds in next year's nest.
THE DUBIOUS FUTURE
BY BILL NYE
Without wishing to alarm the American people, or create a panic, I
desire briefly and seriously to discuss the great question, "Whither are
we drifting, and what is to be the condition of the coming man?" We can
not shut our eyes to the fact that mankind is passing through a great
era of change; even womankind is not built as she was a few brief years
ago. And is it not time, fellow citizens, that we pause to consider what
is to be the future of the American?
Food itself has been the subject of change both in the matter of
material and preparation. This must affect the consumer in such a way as
to some day bring about great differences. Take, for instance, the
oyster, one of our comparatively modern food and game fishes, and watch
the effects of science upon him. At one time the oyster browsed around
and ate what he could find in Neptune's back-yard, and we had to eat him
as we found him. Now we take a herd of oysters off the trail, all run
down, and feed them artificially till they swell up to a fancy size, and
bring a fancy price. Where will this all lead at last, I ask as a
careful scientist? Instead of eating apples, as Adam did, we work the
fruit up into apple-jack and pie, while even the simple oyster is
perverted, and instead of being allowed to fatten up in the fall on
acorns and ancient mariners, spurious flesh is put on his bones by the
artificial osmose and dialysis of our advanced civilization. How can
you make an oyster stout or train him down by making him jerk a health
lift so many hours every day, or cultivate his body at the expense of
his mind, without ultimately not only impairing the future usefulness of
the oyster himself, but at the same time affecting the future of the
human race who feed upon him?
I only use the oyster as an illustration, and I do not wish to cause
alarm, but I say that if we stimulate the oyster artificially and swell
him up by scientific means, we not only do so at the expense of his
better nature and keep him away from his family, but we are making our
mark on the future race of men. Oyster-fattening is now, of course, in
its infancy. Only a few years ago an effort was made at St. Louis to
fatten cove oysters while in the can, but the system was not well
understood, and those who had it in charge only succeeded in making the
can itself more plump. But now oysters are kept on ground feed and given
nothing to do for a few weeks, and even the older and overworked
sway-backed and rickety oysters of the dim and murky past are made to
fill out, and many of them have to put a gore in the waistband of their
shells. I only speak of the oyster incidentally, as one of the objects
toward which science has turned its attention, and I assert with the
utmost confidence that the time will come, unless science should get a
set-back, when the present hunting-case oyster will give place to the
open-face oyster, grafted on the octopus and big enough to feed a hotel.
Further than that, the oyster of the future will carry in a hip-pocket a
flask of vinegar, half a dozen lemons and two little Japanese bottles,
one of which will contain salt and the other pepper, and there will be
some way provided by which you can tell which is which. But are we
improving the oyster now? That is a question we may well ask ourselves.
Is this a healthy fat which we are putting on him, or is it bloat? And
what will be the result in the home-life of the oyster? We take him from
all domestic influences whatever in order to make a swell of him by our
modern methods, but do we improve his condition morally, and what is to
be the great final result on man?
The reader will see by the questions I ask that I am a true scientist.
Give me an overcoat pocket full of lower-case interrogation marks and a
medical report to run to, and I can speak on the matter of science and
advancement till Reason totters on her throne.
But food and oysters do not alone affect the great, pregnant future. Our
race is being tampered with not only by means of adulterations,
political combinations and climatic changes, but even our methods of
relaxation are productive of peculiar physical conditions, malformations
and some more things of the same kind.
Cigarette smoking produces a flabby and endogenous condition of the
optic nerve, and constant listening at a telephone, always with the same
ear, decreases the power of the other ear till it finally just stands
around drawing its salary, but actually refusing to hear anything.
Carrying an eight-pound cane makes a man lopsided, and the muscular and
nervous strain that is necessary to retain a single eyeglass in place
and keep it out of the soup, year after year, draws the mental stimulus
that should go to the thinker itself, until at last the mind wanders
away and forgets to come back, or becomes atrophied, and the great
mental strain incident to the work of pounding sand or coming in when it
rains is more than it is equal to.
Playing billiards, accompanied by the vicious habit of pounding on the
floor with the butt of the cue ever and anon, produces at last optical
illusions, phantasmagoria and visions of pink spiders with navy-blue
abdomens. Baseball is not alone highly injurious to the umpire, but it
also induces crooked fingers, bone spavin and hives among habitual
players. Jumping the rope induces heart disease. Poker is unduly
sedentary in its nature. Bicycling is highly injurious, especially to
skittish horses. Boating induces malaria. Lawn tennis can not be played
in the house. Archery is apt to be injurious to those who stand around
and watch the game, and pugilism is a relaxation that jars heavily on
some natures.
Foot-ball produces what may be called the endogenous or ingrowing
toenail, stringhalt and mania. Copenhagen induces a melancholy, and the
game of bean bag is unduly exciting. Horse racing is too brief and
transitory as an outdoor game, requiring weeks and months for
preparation and lasting only long enough for a quick person to ejaculate
"Scat!" The pitcher's arm is a new disease, the outgrowth of base-ball;
the lawn-tennis elbow is another result of a popular open-air amusement,
and it begins to look as though the coming American would hear with one
overgrown telephonic ear, while the other will be rudimentary only. He
will have an abnormal base-ball arm with a lawn-tennis elbow, a powerful
foot-ball-kicking leg with the superior toe driven back into the palm of
his foot. He will have a highly trained biceps muscle over his eye to
retain his glass, and that eye will be trained to shoot a curved glance
over a high hat and witness anything on the stage.
Other features grow abnormal, or shrink up from the lack of use, as a
result of our customs. For instance, the man whose business it is to get
along a crowded street with the utmost speed will have, finally, a hard,
sharp horn growing on each elbow, and a pair of spurs growing out of
each ankle. These will enable him to climb over a crowd and get there
early. Constant exposure to these weapons on the part of the pedestrian
will harden the walls of the thorax and abdomen until the coming man
will be an impervious man. The citizen who avails himself of all modern
methods of conveyance will ride from his door on the horse car to the
elevated station, where an elevator will elevate him to the train and a
revolving platform will swing him on board, or possibly the street car
will be lifted from the surface track to the elevated track, and the
passenger will retain his seat all the time. Then a man will simply hang
out a red card, like an express card, at his door, and a combination car
will call for him, take him to the nearest elevated station, elevate
him, car and all, to the track, take him where he wants to go, and call
for him at any hour of the night to bring him home. He will do his
exercising at home, chiefly taking artificial sea baths, jerking a
rowing machine or playing on a health lift till his eyes hang out on his
cheeks, and he need not do any walking whatever. In that way the coming
man will be over-developed above the legs, and his lower limbs will look
like the desolate stems of a frozen geranium. Eccentricities of limb
will be handed over like baldness from father to son among the dwellers
in the cities, where every advantage in the way of rapid transit is to
be had, until a metropolitan will be instantly picked out by his able
digestion and rudimentary legs, just as we now detect the gentleman from
the interior by his wild endeavors to overtake an elevated train.
In fact, Mr. Edison has now perfected, or announced that he is on the
road to the perfection of, a machine which I may be pardoned for calling
a storage think-tank. This will enable a brainy man to sit at home, and,
with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into a
tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a new
style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal,
so that when any one says to him, "A penny for your thoughts," he can go
to his valise and give him a piece of his mind. Thus the man who has
such wild and beautiful thoughts in the night and never can hold on to
them long enough to turn on the gas and get his writing materials, can
set this thing by the head of his bed, and, when the poetic thought
comes to him in the stilly night, he can think into a hopper, and the
genius of Franklin and Edison together will enable him to fire it back
at his friends in the morning while they eat their pancakes and glucose
syrup from Vermont, or he can mail the sheet of tinfoil to absent
friends, who may put it into their phonographs and utilize it. In this
way the world may harness the gray matter of its best men, and it will
be no uncommon thing to see a dozen brainy men tied up in a row in the
back office of an intellectual syndicate, dropping pregnant thoughts
into little electric coffee mills for a couple of hours a day, after
which they can put on their coats, draw their pay, and go home.