Till then I had no notion that it was five minutes since I w_The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.)

the closet. When she told me the time, five in the afternoon, I groaned

in the lowest depths. For, in my breast pocket in that innocent coat,

which I could now see lying on the window-seat, were the duplicate

despatches to Mr. Mason, for which, late the night before, I had got the

Secretary's signature. They were to go at ten that morning to

Wilmington, by the Navy Department's special messenger. I had taken them

to insure care and certainty. I had worked on them till midnight, and

they had not been signed till near one o'clock. Heavens and earth, and

here it was five o'clock! The man must be half-way to Wilmington by this

time. I sent the doctor for Lafarge, my clerk. Lafarge did his prettiest

in rushing to the telegraph. But no! A freshet on the Chowan River, or a

raid by Foster, or something, or nothing, had smashed the telegraph wire

for that night. And before that despatch ever reached Wilmington the

navy agent was in the offing in the Sea Maid.

"But perhaps the duplicate got through?" No, breathless reader, the

duplicate did not get through. The duplicate was taken by Faucon, in the

Ino. I saw it last week in Dr. Lieber's hands, in Washington. Well, all

I know is, that if the duplicate had got through, the Confederate

government would have had in March a chance at eighty-three thousand two

hundred and eleven muskets, which, as it was, never left Belgium. So

much for my treading into that blessed piece of wire on the shelf of the

cedar closet, up stairs.

"What was the bit of wire?"

Well, it was not telegraph wire. If it had been, it would have broken

when it was not wanted to. Don't you know what it was? Go up in your own

cedar closet, and step about in the dark, and see what brings up round

your ankles. Julia, poor child, cried her eyes out about it. When I got

well enough to sit up, and as soon as I could talk and plan with her,

she brought down seven of these old things, antiquated Belmontes and

Simplex Elliptics, and horrors without a name, and she made a pile of

them in the bedroom, and asked me in the most penitent way what she

should do with them.

"You can't burn them," said she; "fire won't touch them. If you bury

them in the garden, they come up at the second raking. If you give them

to the servants, they say, 'Thank-e, missus,' and throw them in the back

passage. If you give them to the poor, they throw them into the street

in front, and do not say, 'Thank-e.' Sarah sent seventeen over to the

sword factory, and the foreman swore at the boy, and told him he would

flog him within an inch of his life if he brought any more of his sauce

there; and so--and so," sobbed the poor child, "I just rolled up these

wretched things, and laid them in the cedar closet, hoping, you know,

that some day the government would want something, and would advertise

for them. You know what a good thing I made out of the bottle corks."

In fact, she had sold our bottle corks for four thousand two hundred and

sixteen dollars of the first issue. We afterward bought two umbrellas

and a cork-screw with the money.

Well, I did not scold Julia. It was certainly no fault of hers that I

was walking on the lower shelf of her cedar closet. I told her to make a

parcel of the things, and the first time we went to drive I hove the

whole shapeless heap into the river, without saying mass for them.

But let no man think, or no woman, that this was the end of troubles. As

I look back on that winter, and on the spring of 1865 (I do not mean the

steel spring), it seems to me only the beginning. I got out on crutches

at last; I had the office transferred to my house, so that Lafarge and

Hepburn could work there nights, and communicate with me when I could

not go out; but mornings I hobbled up to the Department, and sat with

the Chief, and took his orders. Ah me! shall I soon forget that damp

winter morning, when we all had such hope at the office. One or two of

the army fellows looked in at the window as they ran by, and we knew

that they felt well; and though I would not ask Old Wick, as we had

nicknamed the Chief, what was in the wind, I knew the time had come, and

that the lion meant to break the net this time. I made an excuse to go

home earlier than usual; rode down to the house in the Major's

ambulance, I remember; and hopped in, to surprise Julia with the good

news, only to find that the whole house was in that quiet uproar which

shows that something bad has happened of a sudden.

"What is it, Chloe?" said I, as the old wench rushed by me with a bucket

of water.

"Poor Mr. George, I 'fraid he's dead, sah!"

And there he really was,--dear handsome, bright George Schaff,--the

delight of all the nicest girls of Richmond; he lay there on Aunt

Eunice's bed on the ground floor, where they had brought him in. He was

not dead,--and he did not die. He is making cotton in Texas now. But he

looked mighty near it then. "The deep cut in his head" was the worst I

then had ever seen, and the blow confused everything. When McGregor got

round, he said it was not hopeless; but we were all turned out of the

room, and with one thing and another he got the boy out of the swoon,

and somehow it proved his head was not broken.

No, but poor George swears to this day it were better it had been, if it

could only have been broken the right way and on the right field. For

that evening we heard that everything had gone wrong in the surprise.

There we had been waiting for one of those early fogs, and at last the

fog had come. And Jubal Early had, that morning, pushed out every man he

had, that could stand; and they lay hid for three mortal hours, within I

don't know how near the picket line at Fort Powhatan, only waiting for

the shot which John Streight's party were to fire at Wilson's Wharf, as

soon as somebody on our left centre advanced in force on the enemy's

line above Turkey Island stretching across to Nansemond. I am not in the

War Department, and I forget whether he was to advance _en barbette_ or

by _échelon_ of infantry. But he was to advance somehow, and he knew

how; and when he advanced, you see, that other man lower down was to

rush in, and as soon as Early heard him he was to surprise Powhatan, you

see; and then, if you have understood me, Grant and Butler and the whole

rig of them would have been cut off from their supplies, would have had

to fight a battle for which they were not prepared, with their right

made into a new left, and their old left unexpectedly advanced at an

oblique angle from their centre, and would not that have been the end of

them?

Well, that never happened. And the reason it never happened was, that

poor George Schaff, with the last fatal order for this man whose name I

forget (the same who was afterward killed the day before High Bridge),

undertook to save time by cutting across behind my house, from Franklin

to Green Streets. You know how much time he saved,--they waited all day

for that order. George told me afterward that the last thing he

remembered was kissing his hand to Julia, who sat at her bedroom window.

He said he thought she might be the last woman he ever saw this side of

heaven. Just after that, it must have been, his horse--that white

Messenger colt old Williams bred--went over like a log, and poor George

was pitched fifteen feet head-foremost against a stake there was in that

lot. Julia saw the whole. She rushed out with all the women, and had

just brought him in when I got home. And that was the reason that the

great promised combination of December, 1864, never came off at all.

I walked out in the lot, after McGregor turned me out of the chamber, to

see what they had done with the horse. There he lay, as dead as old

Messenger himself. His neck was broken. And do you think I looked to see

what had tripped him? I supposed it was one of the boys' bandy holes. It

was no such thing. The poor wretch had tangled his hind legs in one of

those infernal hoop-wires that Chloe had thrown out in the piece when I

gave her her new ones. Though I did not know it then, those fatal scraps

of rusty steel had broken the neck that day of Robert Lee's army.

That time I made a row about it. I felt too badly to go into a passion.

But before the women went to bed,--they were all in the sitting-room

together,--I talked to them like a father. I did not swear. I had got

over that for a while, in that six weeks on my back. But I did say the

old wires were infernal things, and that the house and premises must be

made rid of them. The aunts laughed,--though I was so serious,--and

tipped a wink to the girls. The girls wanted to laugh, but were afraid

to. And then it came out that the aunts had sold their old hoops, tied

as tight as they could tie them, in a great mass of rags. They had made

a fortune by the sale,--I am sorry to say it was in other rags, but the

rags they got were new instead of old,--it was a real Aladdin bargain.

The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty

dollars. The rag-man had been in a hurry, and had not known what made

the things so heavy. I frowned at the swindle, but they said all was

fair with a peddler,--and I own I was glad the things were well out of

Richmond. But when I said I thought it was a mean trick, Lizzie and

Sarah looked demure, and asked what in the world I would have them do

with the old things. Did I expect them to walk down to the bridge

themselves with great parcels to throw into the river, as I had done by

Julia's? Of course it ended, as such things always do, by my taking the

work on my own shoulders. I told them to tie up all they had in as small

a parcel as they could, and bring them to me.

Accordingly, the next day, I found a handsome brown paper parcel, not so

very large, considering, and strangely square, considering, which the

minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great

frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official

it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and

most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh

over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next

time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one

evening with young Norton of our gallant little navy, and a very curious

thing he told us.

We were talking about the disappointment of the combined land attack. I

did not tell what upset poor Schaff's horse; indeed, I do not think

those navy men knew the details of the disappointment. O'Brien had told

me, in confidence, what I have written down probably for the first time

now. But we were speaking, in a general way, of the disappointment.

Norton finished his cigar rather thoughtfully, and then said: "Well,

fellows, it is not worth while to put in the newspapers, but what do

you suppose upset our grand naval attack, the day the Yankee gunboats

skittled down the river so handsomely?"

"Why," said Allen, who is Norton's best-beloved friend, "they say that

you ran away from them as fast as they did from you."

"Do they?" said Norton, grimly. "If you say that, I'll break your head

for you. Seriously, men," continued he, "that was a most extraordinary

thing. You know I was on the Ram. But why she stopped when she stopped I

knew as little as this wineglass does; and Callender himself knew no

more than I. We had not been hit. We were all right as a trivet for all

we knew, when, skree! she began blowing off steam, and we stopped dead,

and began to drift down under those batteries. Callender had to

telegraph to the little Mosquito, or whatever Walter called his boat,

and the spunky little thing ran down and got us out of the scrape.

Walter did it right well; if he had had a monitor under him he could not

have done better. Of course we all rushed to the engine-room. What in

thunder were they at there? All they knew was they could get no water

into her boiler.

"Now, fellows, this is the end of the story. As soon as the boilers

cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged

if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth,

and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that

French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the

Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have

such a chance again!"

Some of the men thought Norton lied. But I never was with him when he

did not tell the truth. I did not mention, however, what I had thrown

into the water the last time I had gone over to Manchester. And I

changed my mind about Sarah's "secret-service" parcel. It remained on

my table.

That was the last dinner our old club had at the Spotswood, I believe.

The spring came on, and the plot thickened. We did our work in the

office as well as we could; I can speak for mine, and if other

people--but no matter for that! The third of April came, and the fire,

and the right wing of Grant's army. I remember I was glad then that I

had moved the office down to the house, for we were out of the way

there. Everybody had run away from the Department; and so, when the

powers that be took possession, my little sub-bureau was unmolested for

some days. I improved those days as well as I could,--burning carefully

what was to be burned, and hiding carefully what was to be hidden. One

thing that happened then belongs to this story. As I was at work on the

private bureau,--it was really a bureau, as it happened, one I had made

Aunt Eunice give up when I broke my leg,--I came, to my horror, on a

neat parcel of coast-survey maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. They

were not the same Maury stole when he left the National Observatory, but

they were like them. Now I was perfectly sure that on that fatal Sunday

of the flight I had sent Lafarge for these, that the President might use

them, if necessary, in his escape. When I found them, I hopped out and

called for Julia, and asked her if she did not remember his coming for

them. "Certainly," she said, "it was the first I knew of the danger.

Lafarge came, asked for the key of the office, told me all was up,

walked in, and in a moment was gone."

And here, on the file of April 3d, was Fafarge's line to me:

"I got the secret-service parcel myself, and have put it in the

President's own hands. I marked it, 'Gulf coast,' as you bade me."

What could Lafarge have given to the President? Not the soundings of

Hatteras Bar. Not the working-drawings of the first monitor. I had all

these under my hand. Could it be,--"Julia, what did we do with that

stuff of Sarah's that she marked _secret service_?"

As I live, we had sent the girls' old hoops to the President in his

flight.

And when the next day we read how he used them, and how Pritchard

arrested him, we thought if he had only had the right parcel he would

have found the way to Florida.

That is really the end of this memoir. But I should not have written it,

but for something that happened just now on the piazza. You must know,

some of us wrecks are up here at the Berkeley baths. My uncle has a

place near here. Here came to-day John Sisson, whom I have not seen

since Memminger ran and took the clerks with him. Here we had before,

both the Richards brothers, the great paper men, you know, who started

the Edgerly Works in Prince George's County, just after the war began.

After dinner, Sisson and they met on the piazza. Queerly enough, they

had never seen each other before, though they had used reams of

Richards' paper in correspondence with each other, and the treasury had

used tons of it in the printing of bonds and bank-bills. Of course we

all fell to talking of old times,--old they seem now, though it is not a

year ago. "Richards," said Sisson at last, "what became of that last

order of ours for water-lined, pure linen government calendered paper of

_sureté_? We never got it, and I never knew why."

"Did you think Kilpatrick got it?" said Richards, rather gruffly.

"None of your chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in

the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of

the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue

of ten per cent., convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country

cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers

ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really

very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new

they were, made by some Frenchman we got, who had worked for the Bank of

France. I was so anxious to have the thing well done, that I waited

three weeks for that paper, and, by Jove, I waited just too long. We

never got one of the bonds off, and that was why we had no money in

March."

Richards threw his cigar away. I will not say he swore between his

teeth, but he twirled his chair round, brought it down on all fours,

both his elbows on his knees and his chin in both hands.

"Mr. Sisson," said he, "if the Confederacy had lived, I would have died

before I ever told what became of that order of yours. But now I have no

secrets, I believe, and I care for nothing. I do not know now how it

happened. We knew it was an extra nice job. And we had it on an elegant

little new French Fourdrinier, which cost us more than we shall ever

pay. The pretty thing ran like oil the day before. That day, I thought

all the devils were in it. The more power we put on the more the rollers

screamed; and the less we put on, the more sulkily the jade stopped. I

tried it myself every way; back current, I tried; forward current; high

feed; low feed; I tried it on old stock, I tried it on new; and, Mr.

Sisson, I would have made better paper in a coffee-mill! We drained off

every drop of water. We washed the tubs free from size. Then my

brother, there, worked all night with the machinists, taking down the

frame and the rollers. You would not believe it, sir, but that little

bit of wire,"--and he took out of his pocket a piece of this hateful

steel, which poor I knew so well by this time,--"that little bit of wire

had passed in from some hoop-skirt, passed the pickers, passed the

screens, through all the troughs, up and down through what we call the

lacerators, and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a

Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the

cross-bar, and there this cursed little knife--for you see it was a

knife by that time--had been cutting to pieces the endless wire web

every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson,

because some Yankee woman cheated one of my rag-men."

On that story I came up stairs. Poor Aunt Eunice! She was the reason I

got no salary on the 1st of April. I thought I would warn other women by

writing down the story.

That fatal present of mine, in those harmless hourglass parcels, was the

ruin of the Confederate navy, army, ordinance, and treasury; and it led

to the capture of the poor President, too.

But, Heaven be praised, no one shall say that my office did not do its

duty!

THE LOST INVENTOR[4]

BY WALLACE IRWIN

Patriotic fellow-citizens, and did you ever note

How we honor Mr. Fulton, who devised the choo-choo boat?

How we glorify our Edison, who made the world to go

By the bizzy-whizzy magic of the little dynamo?

Yet no spirit-thrilling tribute has been ever heard or seen

For the fellow who invented our Political Machine.

Sure a fine, inventive genius, who has labored long and hard,

Till success has crowned his research, should receive a just reward.

The Machine's a great invention, that's continually clear,

Out of nothing but corruption making millions every year--

Out of muck and filth of cities making dollars neat and clean--

Where's the fellow who invented the Political Machine?

Hail the complex mechanism, full of cranks and wires and wheels,

Fed by graft and loot and patronage, as noiselessly it reels.

Press the button, pull the lever, clickety-click, and set the vogue

For the latest thing in statesmen or the newest kind of rogue.

Who's the man behind the throttle? Who's the Engineer unseen?

"Ask me nothin'! Ask me nothin'!" clicks that wizard, the Machine.

[Footnote 4: From "At the Sign of the Dollar," by Wallace Irwin.

OMAR IN THE KLONDYKE

BY HOWARD V. SUTHERLAND

"This Omar seems a decent chap," said Flapjack Dick one night,

When he had read my copy through and then blown out the light.

"I ain't much stuck on poetry, because I runs to news,

But I appreciates a man that loves his glass of booze.

"And Omar here likes a good red wine, although he's pretty mum;

On liquors, which is better yet, like whisky, gin, or rum;

Perhaps his missus won't allow him things like that to touch,

And he doesn't like to own it. Well, I don't blame Omar much.

"Then I likes a man what's partial to the ladies, young or old,

And Omar seems to seek 'em much as me and you seek gold;

I only hope for his sake that his wife don't learn his game

Or she'll put a chain on Omar, and that would be a shame.

"His language is some florid, but I guess it is the style

Of them writer chaps that studies and burns the midnight ile;

He tells us he's no chicken; so I guess he knows what's best,

And can hold his own with Shakespeare, Waukeen Miller, and the rest.

"But I hope he ain't a thinkin' of a trip to this yere camp,

For our dancin' girls is ancient, and our liquor's somewhat damp

By doctorin' with water, and we ain't got wine at all,

Though I had a drop of porter--but that was back last fall.

"And he mightn't like our manners, and he mightn't like the smell

Which is half the charm of Dawson; and he mightn't live to tell

Of the acres of wild roses that grows on every street;

And he mightn't like the winter, or he mightn't like the heat.

"So I guess it's best for Omar for to stay right where he is,

And gallivant with Tottie, or with Flossie, or with Liz;

And fill himself with claret, and, although it ain't like beer,

I wish he'd send a bottle--just one bottle--to us here."

THE HAPPY LAND[5]

BY FRANK ROE BATCHELDER