The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II.
(of X.), by Various
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Title: The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.)
Author: Various
Editor: Marshall P. Wilder
Release Date: May 28, 2006 [EBook #18465]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WIT AND HUMOR II. ***
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Library Edition
THE WIT AND HUMOR OF AMERICA
In Ten Volumes
VOL. II
[Illustration: JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY]
THE WIT AND HUMOR OF AMERICA
EDITED BY MARSHALL P. WILDER
_Volume II_
Funk & Wagnalls Company
New York and London
Copyright MDCCCCVII, BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
Copyright MDCCCCXI, THE THWING COMPANY
CONTENTS
PAGE
Archæological Congress, An Robert J. Burdette 390
Aunt Dinah's Kitchen Harriet Beecher Stowe 335
Ballad Charles Godfrey Leland 355
Barney McGee Richard Hovey 223
Beecher Beached, The John B. Tabb 232
Boy's View of It, A Frank L. Stanton 393
Budd Wilkins at the Show S.E. Kiser 352
Colonel's Clothes, The Caroline Howard Gilman 396
Comin' Thu Anne Virginia Culbertson 333
Dutchman Who Had the "Small Pox," The Henry P. Leland 295
Evening Musicale, An May Isabel Fisk 325
Familiar Authors at Work Hayden Carruth 289
Fascination John B. Tabb 222
Golfer's Rubaiyat, The H.W. Boynton 319
Go Lightly, Gal (The Cake Walk) Anne Virginia Culbertson 317
Grandma Keeler Gets Grandpa Ready
for Sunday-School Sarah P. McLean Greene 266
Hoosier and the Salt Pile, The Danforth Marble 357
How "Ruby" Played George W. Bagby 311
Letter, A Petroleum V. Nasby 282
Lost Word, The John Paul 293
Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum Wallace Irwin 307
Mr. Dooley on Gold-Seeking Finley Peter Dunne 304
Mr. Dooley on Reform Candidates Finley Peter Dunne 321
Natural Perversities James Whitcomb Riley 350
Nautical Ballad, A Charles E. Carryl 348
Old Deacon's Version of the Story
of the Rich Man and Lazarus, The Frank L. Stanton 227
Our Best Society George William Curtis 233
Plagiarism John B. Tabb 316
Recruit, The Robert W. Chambers 230
"Ringworm Frank" James Whitcomb Riley 395
Rival Entertainment, A Kate Field 362
Samuel Brown Phoebe Cary 259
Seffy and Sally John Luther Long 372
She Talked Sam Walter Foss 264
Strike at Hinman's, The Robert J. Burdette 342
Two Brothers, The Carolyn Wells 281
Two Farmers, The Carolyn Wells 258
Two New Houses, The Carolyn Wells 221
Two Suitors, The Carolyn Wells 229
Vive La Bagatelle Gelett Burgess 280
Walk William Devere 300
Way it Wuz, The James Whitcomb Riley 261
Yawcob Strauss Charles Follen Adams 370
Yes? John Boyle O'Reilly 222
COMPLETE INDEX AT THE END OF VOLUME X.
THE TWO NEW HOUSES
BY CAROLYN WELLS
Once on a Time, there were Two Men, each of whom decided to build for
himself a Fine, New House.
One Man, being of an Arrogant and Conceited Nature, took counsel of
Nobody, but declared that he would build his House to suit himself.
"For," said he, "since it is My House and I am to Live in It, why should
I ask the Advice of my Neighbors as to its Construction?"
While the House was Building, the Neighbors came often and Looked at it,
and went away, Whispering and Wagging their Heads in Derision.
But the Man paid no Heed, and continued to build his House as he Would.
The Result was that, when completed, his House was lacking in Symmetry
and Utility, and in a Hundred ways it was Unsatisfactory, and for each
Defect there was a Neighbor who said, "Had you asked Me, I would have
Warned you against that Error."
The Other Man, who was of a Humble and Docile Mind, went to Each of his
Neighbors in Turn, and asked Advice about the Building of his House.
His Friends willingly and at Great Length gave him the Benefit of their
Experiences and Opinions, and the Grateful Man undertook to Follow Out
all their Directions.
The Result was that his House, when finished, was a Hodge-Podge of
Varying Styles and Contradictory Effects, and Exceedingly Uncomfortable
and Inconvenient to Live In.
MORALS:
This Fable teaches that In a Multitude of Counselors there is Safety,
and that Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth.
YES?
BY JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
The words of the lips are double or single,
True or false, as we say or sing:
But the words of the eyes that mix and mingle
Are always saying the same old thing.
FASCINATION
BY JOHN B. TABB
Among your many playmates here,
How is it that you all prefer
Your little friend, my dear?
"Because, mamma, tho' hard we try,
Not one of us can spit so high,
And catch it in his ear."
BARNEY MCGEE
BY RICHARD HOVEY
Barney McGee, there's no end of good luck in you,
Will-o'-the-wisp, with a flicker of Puck in you,
Wild as a bull-pup, and all of his pluck in you--
Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see!
Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity,
Nose that turns up without any vulgarity,
Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty--
Whoop, you're a rarity, Barney McGee!
Mellow as Tarragon,
Prouder than Aragon--
Hardly a paragon,
You will agree--
Here's all that's fine to you!
Books and old wine to you!
Girls be divine to you,
Barney McGee!
Lucky the day when I met you unwittingly,
Dining where vagabonds came and went flittingly.
Here's some _Barbera_ to drink it befittingly,
That day at Silvio's, Barney McGee!
Many's the time we have quaffed our Chianti there,
Listened to Silvio quoting us Dante there--
Once more to drink Nebiolo spumante there,
How we'd pitch Pommery into the sea!
There where the gang of us
Met ere Rome rang of us,
They had the hang of us
To a degree.
How they would trust to you!
That was but just to you.
Here's o'er their dust to you,
Barney McGee!
Barney McGee, when you're sober you scintillate,
But when you're in drink you're the pride of the intellect;
Divil a one of us ever came in till late,
Once at the bar where you happened to be--
Every eye there like a spoke in you centering,
You with your eloquence, blarney, and bantering--
All Vagabondia shouts at your entering,
King of the Tenderloin, Barney McGee!
There's no satiety
In your society
With the variety
Of your esprit.
Here's a long purse to you,
And a great thirst to you!
Fate be no worse to you,
Barney McGee!
Och, and the girls whose poor hearts you deracinate,
Whirl and bewilder and flutter and fascinate!
Faith, it's so killing you are, you assassinate--
Murder's the word for you, Barney McGee!
Bold when they're sunny, and smooth when they're showery--
Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery!
Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery!
How would they silence you, Barney machree?
Naught can your gab allay,
Learned as Rabelais
(You in his abbey lay
Once on the spree).
Here's to the smile of you,
(Oh, but the guile of you!)
And a long while of you,
Barney McGee!
Facile with phrases of length and Latinity,
Like honorificabilitudinity,
Where is the maid could resist your vicinity,
Wiled by the impudent grace of your plea?
Then your vivacity and pertinacity
Carry the day with the divil's audacity;
No mere veracity robs your sagacity
Of perspicacity, Barney McGee.
When all is new to them,
What will you do to them?
Will you be true to them?
Who shall decree?
Here's a fair strife to you!
Health and long life to you!
And a great wife to you, Barney McGee!
Barney McGee, you're the pick of gentility;
Nothing can phase you, you've such a facility;
Nobody ever yet found your utility--
There is the charm of you, Barney McGee;
Under conditions that others would stammer in,
Still unperturbed as a cat or a Cameron,
Polished as somebody in the Decameron,
Putting the glamour on price or Pawnee.
In your meanderin',
Love and philanderin',
Calm as a mandarin
Sipping his tea!
Under the art of you,
Parcel and part of you,
Here's to the heart of you,
Barney McGee!
You who were ever alert to befriend a man,
You who were ever the first to defend a man,
You who had always the money to lend a man,
Down on his luck and hard up for a V!
Sure, you'll be playing a harp in beatitude
(And a quare sight you will be in that attitude)--
Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude,
You'll find your latitude, Barney McGee.
That's no flim-flam at all,
Frivol or sham at all,
Just the plain--Damn it all,
Have one with me!
Here's one and more to you!
Friends by the score to you,
True to the core to you,
Barney McGee!
THE OLD DEACON'S VERSION OF THE STORY OF THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS
BY FRANK L. STANTON
I s'pose yo' know de story, O my brotherin', er de man
Dat wuz rich ez cream, en livin' on de fatness er de lan'?
How he sot dar eatin' 'possum, en when Laz'rus ax fer some,
He tell 'im: "Git erway, dar! fer you'll never git a crumb!"
De rich man wuz a feastin' f'um his chiny plate en cup,
Kaze he 'fraid his po' relations come en eat his wittles up;
I spec' he had _two_ 'possums on de table long en wide,
En a jimmyjohn er cane juice wuz a-settin' by his side.
En he say: "Dis heah des suits me, en I gwine ter eat my fill;
But I'll sic de dogs on Laz'rus, ef he waitin' roun' heah still."
En de dogs commence dey barkin', raise a racket high en low,
En when Laz'rus see 'em comin' he decide 'twuz time ter go.
So, he limp off on his crutches, en de rich man think it's fun,
But I reckon Laz'rus answer: "I'll git even wid you, son!"
De rich man so enjoy hisse'f he laugh hisse'f ter bed,
En, brotherin', when he wake up he wuz stiff, stone dead!
En den he raise a racket, en he holler out: "What dis?
De place is onfamiliar, en I wonder whar' I is?"
Den Satan, he mek answer: "I'm de man ter tell you dat:
You's in de fire department er de place I livin' at!"
Den de rich man say: "Whar' Laz'rus dat wuz beggin' at my gate?"
En Satan tell him: "Yander, wid a silver spoon en plate;
En he eatin' fit ter kill hisse'f! He spendin' er de day
Wid good ol' Mister Abra'm, but he mighty fur away!"
"Will you please, suh," say de rich man, "ax him bring a drink ter me,
Wid a li'l' ice ter cool it? Kaze I hot ez hot kin be!"
But Satan fall ter laughin', whilst he stir de fire roun':--
"De ice would melt, my brother, 'fo' it ever hit de groun'!"
Den he fill a cup wid brimstone--fill it steamin' ter de top;
But de rich man say he swear off, dat he never tech a drop!
But Satan grab his pitchfork whilst de rich man give a squall,
En in 'bout a half a second he had swallered cup en all!
Now, dat's erbout de story er de rich man at de feas',
What wouldn't pass de 'possum roun' when Laz'rus want a piece.
De 'possum means yo' pocketbook, de moral's plain ez day:
Shake de dollars in de basket 'fo' you go de rich man's way!
THE TWO SUITORS
BY CAROLYN WELLS
Once on a Time there was a Charming Young Maiden who had Two Suitors.
One of These, who was of a Persistent and Persevering Nature, managed to
be Continually in the Young Lady's Company.
He would pay her a visit in the Morning, Drop In to Tea in the
Afternoon, and Call on her Again in the Evening.
He took her Driving, and he Escorted her to the Theater. He would take
her to a Party, and then he would Dance, or Sit on the Stairs, or Flit
into the Conservatory with her.
The Young Lady admired this man but she Wearied of his never-ceasing
Presence, and she Said to Herself, "If he were not Always at my Elbow I
should Better Appreciate his Good Qualities."
The Other Suitor, who considered himself a Man of Deep and Penetrating
Cleverness, said to himself, "I will Go Away for a Time, and then my
Fair One will Realize my Worth and Call Me Back to Her."
With a sad Visage he made his Adieus, and he Exacted her Pledge to Write
to him Occasionally. But after he had Gone she Forgot her Promise, and
Soon she Forgot his Very Existence.
MORALS:
This Fable teaches that Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder, and that
Out of Sight is Out of Mind.
THE RECRUIT
BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Sez Corporal Madden to Private McFadden:
"Bedad, yer a bad 'un!
Now turn out yer toes!
Yer belt is unhookit,
Yer cap is on crookit,
Ye may not be dhrunk,
But, be jabers, ye look it!
Wan--two!
Wan--two!
Ye monkey-faced divil, I'll jolly ye through!
Wan--two!
Time! Mark!
Ye march like the aigle in Cintheral Parrk!"
Sez Corporal Madden to Private McFadden:
"A saint it ud sadden
To dhrill such a mug!
Eyes front! ye baboon, ye!
Chin up! ye gossoon, ye!
Ye've jaws like a goat--
Halt! ye leather-lipped loon, ye!
Wan--two!
Wan--two!
Ye whiskered orang-outang, I'll fix you!
Wan--two!
Time! Mark!
Ye've eyes like a bat! can ye see in the dark?"
Sez Corporal Madden to Private McFadden:
"Yer figger wants padd'n--
Sure, man, ye've no shape!
Behind ye yer shoulders
Stick out like two bowlders;
Yer shins is as thin
As a pair of pen-holders!
Wan--two!
Wan--two!
Yer belly belongs on yer back, ye Jew!
Wan--two!
Time! Mark!
I'm dhry as a dog--I can't shpake but I bark!"
Sez Corporal Madden to Private McFadden:
"Me heart it ud gladden
To blacken yer eye.
Ye're gettin' too bold, ye
Compel me to scold ye--
'T is halt! that I say--
Will ye heed what I told ye?
Wan--two
Wan--two!
Be jabers, I'm dhryer than Brian Boru!
Wan--two!
Time! Mark!
What's wur-ruk for chickens is sport for the lark!"
Sez Corporal Madden to Private McFadden:
"I'll not stay a gadd'n
Wid dagoes like you!
I'll travel no farther,
I'm dyin' for--wather;
Come on, if ye like--
Can ye loan me a quarther?
Ya-as, you,
What--two?
And ye'll pay the potheen? Ye're a daisy!
Whurroo!
You'll do!
Whist! Mark!
The Rigiment's flatthered to own ye, me spark!"
THE BEECHER BEACHED
BY JOHN B. TABB
Were Harriet Beecher well aware
Of what was done in Delaware,
Of that unwholesome smell aware,
She'd make all heaven and hell aware,
And ask John Brown to tell her where
Henceforth she best might sell her ware.
OUR BEST SOCIETY
BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
If gilt were only gold, or sugar-candy common sense, what a fine thing
our society would be! If to lavish money upon _objets de vertu_, to wear
the most costly dresses, and always to have them cut in the height of
the fashion; to build houses thirty feet broad, as if they were palaces;
to furnish them with all the luxurious devices of Parisian genius; to
give superb banquets, at which your guests laugh, and which make you
miserable; to drive a fine carriage and ape European liveries, and
crests, and coats-of-arms; to resent the friendly advances of your
baker's wife, and the lady of your butcher (you being yourself a
cobbler's daughter); to talk much of the "old families" and of your
aristocratic foreign friends; to despise labor; to prate of "good
society"; to travesty and parody, in every conceivable way, a society
which we know only in books and by the superficial observation of
foreign travel, which arises out of a social organization entirely
unknown to us, and which is opposed to our fundamental and essential
principles; if all this were fine, what a prodigiously fine society
would ours be!
This occurred to us upon lately receiving a card of invitation to a
brilliant ball. We were quietly ruminating over our evening fire, with
Disraeli's Wellington speech, "all tears," in our hands, with the
account of a great man's burial, and a little man's triumph across the
channel. So many great men gone, we mused, and such great crises
impending! This democratic movement in Europe; Kossuth and Mazzini
waiting for the moment to give the word; the Russian bear watchfully
sucking his paws; the Napoleonic empire redivivus; Cuba, and annexation,
and Slavery; California and Australia, and the consequent considerations
of political economy; dear me! exclaimed we, putting on a fresh hodful
of coal, we must look a little into the state of parties.
As we put down the coal-scuttle, there was a knock at the door. We said,
"come in," and in came a neat Alhambra-watered envelope, containing the
announcement that the queen of fashion was "at home" that evening week.
Later in the evening, came a friend to smoke a cigar. The card was lying
upon the table, and he read it with eagerness. "You'll go, of course,"
said he, "for you will meet all the 'best society.'"
Shall we, truly? Shall we really see the "best society of the city," the
picked flower of its genius, character and beauty? What makes the "best
society" of men and women? The noblest specimens of each, of course. The
men who mould the time, who refresh our faith in heroism and virtue, who
make Plato, and Zeno, and Shakespeare, and all Shakespeare's gentlemen,
possible again. The women, whose beauty, and sweetness, and dignity, and
high accomplishment, and grace, make us understand the Greek mythology,
and weaken our desire to have some glimpse of the most famous women of
history. The "best society" is that in which the virtues are most
shining, which is the most charitable, forgiving, long-suffering,
modest, and innocent. The "best society" is, by its very name, that in
which there is the least hypocrisy and insincerity of all kinds, which
recoils from, and blasts, artificiality, which is anxious to be all that
it is possible to be, and which sternly reprobates all shallow pretense,
all coxcombry and foppery, and insists upon simplicity as the
infallible characteristic of true worth. That is the "best society,"
which comprises the best men and women.
Had we recently arrived from the moon, we might, upon hearing that we
were to meet the "best society," have fancied that we were about to
enjoy an opportunity not to be overvalued. But unfortunately we were not
so freshly arrived. We had received other cards, and had perfected our
toilette many times, to meet this same society, so magnificently
described, and had found it the least "best" of all. Who compose it?
Whom shall we meet if we go to this ball? We shall meet three classes of
persons: first, those who are rich, and who have all that money can buy;
second, those who belong to what are technically called "the good old
families," because some ancestor was a man of mark in the state or
country, or was very rich, and has kept the fortune in the family; and,
thirdly, a swarm of youths who can dance dexterously, and who are
invited for that purpose. Now these are all arbitrary and factitious
distinctions upon which to found so profound a social difference as that
which exists in American, or, at least in New York, society. First, as a
general rule, the rich men of every community, who make their own money,
are not the most generally intelligent and cultivated. They have a
shrewd talent which secures a fortune, and which keeps them closely at
the work of amassing from their youngest years until they are old. They
are sturdy men, of simple tastes often. Sometimes, though rarely, very
generous, but necessarily with an altogether false and exaggerated idea
of the importance of money. They are a rather rough, unsympathetic, and,
perhaps, selfish class, who, themselves, despise purple and fine linen,
and still prefer a cot-bed and a bare room, although they may be worth
millions. But they are married to scheming, or ambitious, or
disappointed women, whose life is a prolonged pageant, and they are
dragged hither and thither in it, are bled of their golden blood, and
forced into a position they do not covet and which they despise. Then
there are the inheritors of wealth. How many of them inherit the valiant
genius and hard frugality which built up their fortunes; how many
acknowledge the stern and heavy responsibility of their opportunities
how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite luxury; how many
are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an enduring name by
works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle into dainty
dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious sentimentality
instead of a hearty, human sympathy; how many are not satisfied with
having the fastest horses and the "crackest" carriages, and an unlimited
wardrobe, and a weak affectation and puerile imitation of foreign life?
And who are these of our secondly, these "old families?" The spirit of
our time and of our country knows no such thing, but the habitue of
"society" hears constantly of "a good family." It means simply, the
collective mass of children, grand-children, nephews, nieces, and
descendants, of some man who deserved well of his country, and whom his
country honors. But sad is the heritage of a great name! The son of
Burke will inevitably be measured by Burke. The niece of Pope must show
some superiority to other women (so to speak), or her equality is
inferiority. The feeling of men attributes some magical charm to blood,
and we look to see the daughter of Helen as fair as her mother, and the
son of Shakespeare musical as his sire. If they are not so, if they are
merely names, and common persons--if there is no Burke, nor Shakespeare,
nor Washington, nor Bacon, in their words, or actions, or lives, then we
must pity them, and pass gently on, not upbraiding them, but regretting
that it is one of the laws of greatness that it dwindles all things in
its vicinity, which would otherwise show large enough. Nay, in our
regard for the great man, we may even admit to a compassionate honor, as
pensioners upon our charity, those who bear and transmit his name. But
if these heirs should presume upon that fame, and claim any precedence
of living men and women because their dead grandfather was a hero--they
must be shown the door directly. We should dread to be born a Percy, or
a Colonna, or a Bonaparte. We should not like to be the second Duke of
Wellington, nor Charles Dickens, Jr. It is a terrible thing, one would
say, to a mind of honorable feeling, to be pointed out as somebody's
son, or uncle, or granddaughter, as if the excellence were all derived.
It must be a little humiliating to reflect that if your great-uncle had
not been somebody, you would be nobody--that, in fact, you are only a
name, and that, if you should consent to change it for the sake of a
fortune, as is sometimes done, you would cease to be anything but a rich
man. "My father was President, or Governor of the State," some pompous
man may say. But, by Jupiter! king of gods and men, what are _you_? is
the instinctive response. Do you not see, our pompous friend, that you
are only pointing your own unimportance? If your father was Governor of
the State, what right have you to use that fact only to fatten your
self-conceit? Take care, good care; for whether you say it by your lips
or by your life, that withering response awaits you--"then what are
_you_?" If your ancestor was great, you are under bonds to greatness. If
you are small, make haste to learn it betimes, and, thanking heaven that
your name has been made illustrious, retire into a corner and keep it,
at least, untarnished.
Our thirdly, is a class made by sundry French tailors, bootmakers,
dancing-masters, and Mr. Brown. They are a corps-de-ballet, for use of
private entertainments. They are fostered by society for the use of
young debutantes, and hardier damsels, who have dared two or three years
of the "tight" polka. They are cultivated for their heels, not their
heads. Their life begins at ten o'clock in the evening, and lasts until
four in the morning. They go home and sleep until nine; then they reel,
sleepy, to counting-houses and offices, and doze on desks until
dinnertime. Or, unable to do that, they are actively at work all day,
and their cheeks grow pale, and their lips thin, and their eyes
bloodshot and hollow, and they drag themselves home at evening to catch
a nap until the ball begins, or to dine and smoke at their club, and the
very manly with punches and coarse stories; and then to rush into hot
and glittering rooms, and seize very _décolleté_ girls closely around
the waist, and dash with them around an area of stretched linen, saying
in the panting pauses, "How very hot it is!" "How very pretty Miss Podge
looks!" "What a good redowa!" "Are you going to Mrs. Potiphar's?"
Is this the assembled flower of manhood and womanhood, called "best
society," and to see which is so envied a privilege? If such are the
elements, can we be long in arriving at the present state, and necessary
future condition of parties?
_Vanity Fair_ is peculiarly a picture of modern society. It aims at
English follies, but its mark is universal, as the madness is. It is
called a satire, but, after much diligent reading, we can not discover
the satire. A state of society not at all superior to that of _Vanity
Fair_ is not unknown to our experience; and, unless truth-telling be
satire; unless the most tragically real portraiture be satire; unless
scalding tears of sorrow, and the bitter regret of a manly mind over the
miserable spectacle of artificiality, wasted powers, misdirected
energies, and lost opportunities, be satirical; we do not find satire in
that sad story. The reader closes it with a grief beyond tears. It
leaves a vague apprehension in the mind, as if we should suspect the air
to be poisoned. It suggests the terrible thought of the enfeebling of
moral power, and the deterioration of noble character, as a necessary
consequence of contact with "society." Every man looks suddenly and
sharply around him, and accosts himself and his neighbors, to ascertain
if they are all parties to this corruption. Sentimental youths and
maidens, upon velvet sofas, or in calf-bound libraries, resolve that it
is an insult to human nature--are sure that their velvet and calf-bound
friends are not like the _dramatis personæ_ of _Vanity Fair_, and that
the drama is therefore hideous and unreal. They should remember, what
they uniformly and universally forget, that we are not invited, upon the
rising of the curtain, to behold a cosmorama, or picture of the world,
but a representation of that part of it called Vanity Fair. What its
just limits are--how far its poisonous purlieus reach--how much of the
world's air is tainted by it, is a question which every thoughtful man
will ask himself, with a shudder, and look sadly around, to answer. If
the sentimental objectors rally again to the charge, and declare that,
if we wish to improve the world, its virtuous ambition must be piqued
and stimulated by making the shining heights of "the ideal" more
radiant; we reply, that none shall surpass us in honoring the men whose
creations of beauty inspire and instruct mankind. But if they benefit
the world, it is no less true that a vivid apprehension of the depths
into which we are sunken or may sink, nerves the soul's courage quite as
much as the alluring mirage of the happy heights we may attain. "To
hold the mirror up to Nature," is still the most potent method of
shaming sin and strengthening virtue.
If _Vanity Fair_ be a satire, what novel of society is not? Are _Vivian
Grey_, and _Pelham_, and the long catalogue of books illustrating
English, or the host of Balzacs, Sands, Sues, and Dumas, that paint
French society, less satires? Nay, if you should catch any dandy in
Broadway, or in Pall-Mall, or upon the Boulevards, this very morning,
and write a coldly true history of his life and actions, his doings and
undoings, would it not be the most scathing and tremendous satire?--if
by satire you mean the consuming melancholy of the conviction that the
life of that pendant to a mustache is an insult to the possible life of
a man.
We have read of a hypocrisy so thorough, that it was surprised you
should think it hypocritical: and we have bitterly thought of the
saying, when hearing one mother say of another mother's child, that she
had "made a good match," because the girl was betrothed to a stupid boy
whose father was rich. The remark was the key of our social feeling.
Let us look at it a little, and, first of all, let the reader consider
the criticism, and not the critic. We may like very well, in our
individual capacity, to partake of the delicacies prepared by our
hostess's _chef_, we may not be averse to _paté_ and myriad _objets de
goût_, and if you caught us in a corner at the next ball, putting away a
fair share of _dinde aux truffes_, we know you would have at us in a
tone of great moral indignation, and wish to know why we sneaked into
great houses, eating good suppers, and drinking choice wines, and then
went away with an indigestion, to write dyspeptic disgusts at society.
We might reply that it is necessary to know something of a subject
before writing about it, and that if a man wished to describe the habits
of South Sea Islanders, it is useless to go to Greenland; we might also
confess a partiality for _paté_, and a tenderness for _truffes_, and
acknowledge that, considering our single absence would not put down
extravagant, pompous parties, we were not strong enough to let the
morsels drop into unappreciating mouths; or we might say, that if a man
invited us to see his new house, it would not be ungracious nor
insulting to his hospitality, to point out whatever weak parts we might
detect in it, nor to declare our candid conviction, that it was built
upon wrong principles and could not stand. He might believe us, if we
had been in the house, but he certainly would not, if we had never seen
it. Nor would it be a very wise reply upon his part, that we might build
a better if we didn't like that. We are not fond of David's pictures,
but we certainly could never paint half so well; nor of Pope's poetry,
but posterity will never hear of our verses. Criticism is not
construction, it is observation. If we could surpass in its own way
everything which displeased us, we should make short work of it, and
instead of showing what fatal blemishes deform our present society, we
should present a specimen of perfection, directly.
We went to the brilliant ball. There was too much of everything. Too
much light, and eating, and drinking, and dancing, and flirting, and
dressing, and feigning, and smirking, and much too many people. Good
taste insists first upon fitness. But why had Mrs. Potiphar given this
ball? We inquired industriously, and learned it was because she did not
give one last year. Is it then essential to do this thing biennially?
inquired we with some trepidation. "Certainly," was the bland reply, "or
society will forget you." Everybody was unhappy at Mrs. Potiphar's,
save a few girls and boys, who danced violently all the evening. Those
who did not dance walked up and down the rooms as well as they could,
squeezing by non-dancing ladies, causing them to swear in their hearts
as the brusque broadcloth carried away the light outworks of gauze and
gossamer. The dowagers, ranged in solid phalanx, occupied all the chairs
and sofas against the wall, and fanned themselves until supper-time,
looking at each other's diamonds, and criticizing the toilettes of the
younger ladies, each narrowly watching her peculiar Polly Jane, that she
did not betray too much interest in any man who was not of a certain
fortune.--It is the cold, vulgar truth, madam, nor are we in the
slightest degree exaggerating.--Elderly gentlemen, twisting single
gloves in a very wretched manner, came up and bowed to the dowagers, and
smirked, and said it was a pleasant party, and a handsome house, and
then clutched their hands behind them, and walked miserably away,
looking as affable as possible. And the dowagers made a little fun of
the elderly gentlemen, among themselves, as they walked away.
Then came the younger non-dancing men--a class of the community who wear
black cravats and waistcoats, and thrust their thumbs and forefingers in
their waistcoat-pockets, and are called "talking men." Some of them are
literary, and affect the philosopher; have, perhaps, written a book or
two, and are a small species of lion to very young ladies. Some are of
the _blasé_ kind; men who affect the extremest elegance, and are reputed
"so aristocratic," and who care for nothing in particular, but wish they
had not been born gentlemen, in which case they might have escaped
ennui. These gentlemen stand with hat in hand, and their coats and
trousers are unexceptionable. They are the "so gentlemanly" persons of
whom one hears a great deal, but which seems to mean nothing but
cleanliness. Vivian Grey and Pelham are the models of their ambition,
and they succeed in being Pendennis. They enjoy the reputation of being
"very clever," and "very talented fellows," and "smart chaps"; but they
refrain from proving what is so generously conceded. They are often men
of a certain cultivation. They have traveled, many of them--spending a
year or two in Paris, and a month or two in the rest of Europe.
Consequently they endure society at home, with a smile, and a shrug, and
a graceful superciliousness, which is very engaging. They are perfectly
at home, and they rather despise Young America, which, in the next room,
is diligently earning its invitation. They prefer to hover about the
ladies who did not come out this season, but are a little used to the
world, with whom they are upon most friendly terms, and they criticize
together, very freely, all the great events in the great world of
fashion.
These elegant Pendennises we saw at Mrs. Potiphar's, but not without a
sadness which can hardly be explained. They had been boys once, all of
them, fresh and frank-hearted, and full of a noble ambition. They had
read and pondered the histories of great men; how they resolved, and
struggled, and achieved. In the pure portraiture of genius, they had
loved and honored noble women, and each young heart was sworn to truth
and the service of beauty. Those feelings were chivalric and fair. Those
boyish instincts clung to whatever was lovely, and rejected the specious
snare, however graceful and elegant. They sailed, new knights, upon that
old and endless crusade against hypocrisy and the devil, and they were
lost in the luxury of Corinth, nor longer seek the difficult shores
beyond. A present smile was worth a future laurel. The ease of the
moment was worth immortal tranquillity. They renounced the stern
worship of the unknown God, and acknowledged the deities of Athens. But
the seal of their shame is their own smile at their early dreams, and
the high hopes of their boyhood, their sneering infidelity of
simplicity, their skepticism of motives and of men. Youths, whose
younger years were fervid with the resolution to strike and win, to
deserve, at least, a gentle remembrance, if not a dazzling fame, are
content to eat, and drink, and sleep well; to go to the opera and all
the balls; to be known as "gentlemanly," and "aristocratic," and
"dangerous," and "elegant"; to cherish a luxurious and enervating
indolence, and to "succeed," upon the cheap reputation of having been
"fast" in Paris. The end of such men is evident enough from the
beginning. They are snuffed out by a "great match," and become an
appendage to a rich woman; or they dwindle off into old _roués_, men of
the world in sad earnest, and not with elegant affectation, _blasé_; and
as they began Arthur Pendennises, so they end the Major. But, believe
it, that old fossil heart is wrung sometimes by a mortal pang, as it
remembers those squandered opportunities and that lost life.
From these groups we passed into the dancing-room. We have seen dancing
in other countries, and dressing. We have certainly never seen gentlemen
dance so easily, gracefully, and well, as the American. But the _style_
of dancing, in its whirl, its rush, its fury, is only equaled by that of
the masked balls at the French opera, and the balls at the _Salle
Valentino_, the _Jardin Mabille_, the _Château Rôuge_, and other
favorite resorts of Parisian grisettes and lorettes. We saw a few young
men looking upon the dance very soberly, and, upon inquiry, learned that
they were engaged to certain ladies of the corps-de-ballet. Nor did we
wonder that the spectacle of a young woman whirling in a _décolleté_
state, and in the embrace of a warm youth, around a heated room, induced
a little sobriety upon her lover's face, if not a sadness in his heart.
Amusement, recreation, enjoyment! There are no more beautiful things.
But this proceeding falls under another head. We watched the various
toilettes of these bounding belles. They were rich and tasteful. But a
man at our elbow, of experience and shrewd observation, said, with a
sneer, for which we called him to account, "I observe that American
ladies are so rich in charms that they are not at all chary of them. It
is certainly generous to us miserable black coats. But, do you know, it
strikes me as a generosity of display that must necessarily leave the
donor poorer in maidenly feeling." We thought ourselves cynical, but
this was intolerable; and in a very crisp manner we demanded an apology.
"Why," responded our friend with more of sadness than of satire in his
tone, "why are you so exasperated? Look at this scene! Consider that
this is, really, the life of these girls. This is what they 'come out'
for. This is the end of their ambition. They think of it, dream of it,
long for it. Is it amusement? Yes, to a few, possibly. But listen and
gather, if you can, from their remarks (when they make any), that they
have any thought beyond this, and going to church very rigidly on
Sunday. The vigor of polkaing and church-going are proportioned; as is
the one so is the other. My young friend, I am no ascetic, and do not
suppose a man is damned because he dances. But life is not a ball
(more's the pity, truly, for these butterflies), nor is its sole duty
and delight dancing. When I consider this spectacle--when I remember
what a noble and beautiful woman is, what a manly man,--when I reel,
dazzled by this glare, drunken by these perfumes, confused by this
alluring music, and reflect upon the enormous sums wasted in a pompous
profusion that delights no one--when I look around upon all this rampant
vulgarity in tinsel and Brussels lace, and think how fortunes go, how
men struggle and lose the bloom of their honesty, how women hide in a
smiling pretense, and eye with caustic glances their neighbor's newer
house, diamonds or porcelain, and observe their daughters, such as
these--why, I tremble, and tremble, and this scene to-night, every
'crack' ball this winter, will be, not the pleasant society of men and
women, but--even in this young country--an orgie such as rotting Corinth
saw, a frenzied festival of Rome in its decadence."
There was a sober truth in this bitterness, and we turned away to escape
the sombre thought of the moment. Addressing one of the panting houris
who stood melting in a window, we spoke (and confess how absurdly) of
the Düsseldorf Gallery. It was merely to avoid saying how warm the room
was, and how pleasant the party was, facts upon which we had already
enlarged. "Yes, they are pretty pictures; but la! how long it must have
taken Mr. Düsseldorf to paint them all;" was the reply.
By the Farnesian Hercules! no Roman sylph in her city's decline would
ever have called the sun-god, Mr. Apollo. We hope that houri melted
entirely away in the window; but we certainly did not stay to see.
Passing out toward the supper-room we encountered two young men. "What,
Hal," said one, "_you_ at Mrs. Potiphar's?" It seems that Hal was a
sprig of one of the "old families." "Well, Joe," said Hal, a little
confused, "it _is_ a little strange. The fact is I didn't mean to be
here, but I concluded to compromise by coming, _and not being introduced
to the host_." Hal could come, eat Potiphar's supper, drink his wines,
spoil his carpets, laugh at his fashionable struggles, and affect the
puppyism of a foreign lord, because he disgraced the name of a man who
had done some service somewhere, while Potiphar was only an honest man
who made a fortune.
The supper-room was a pleasant place. The table was covered with a chaos
of supper. Everything sweet and rare, and hot and cold, solid and
liquid, was there. It was the very apotheosis of gilt gingerbread. There
was a universal rush and struggle. The charge of the guards at Waterloo
was nothing to it. Jellies, custard, oyster-soup, ice-cream, wine and
water, gushed in profuse cascades over transparent precipices of
_tulle_, muslin, gauze, silk and satin. Clumsy boys tumbled against
costly dresses and smeared them with preserves; when clean plates
failed, the contents of plates already used were quietly "chucked" under
the table--heel-taps of champagne were poured into the oyster tureens or
overflowed upon plates to clear the glasses--wine of all kinds flowed in
torrents, particularly down the throats of very young men, who evinced
their manhood by becoming noisy, troublesome, and disgusting, and were
finally either led, sick, into the hat room, or carried out of the way,
drunk. The supper over, the young people, attended by their matrons,
descended to the dancing-room for the "German." This is a dance
commencing usually at midnight or a little after, and continuing
indefinitely toward daybreak. The young people were attended by their
matrons, who were there to supervise the morals and manners of their
charges. To secure the performance of this duty, the young people took
good care to sit where the matrons could not see them, nor did they, by
any chance, look toward the quarter in which the matrons sat. In that
quarter, through all the varying mazes of the prolonged dance, to two
o'clock, to three, to four, sat the bediamonded dowagers, the mothers,
the matrons--against nature, against common sense. They babbled with
each other, they drowsed, they dozed. Their fans fell listless into
their laps. In the adjoining room, out of the waking sight, even, of the
then sleeping mamas, the daughters whirled in the close embrace of
partners who had brought down bottles of champagne from the supper-room,
and put them by the side of their chairs for occasional refreshment
during the dance. The dizzy hours staggered by--"Azalia, you _must_ come
now," had been already said a dozen times, but only as by the scribes.
Finally it was declared with authority. Azalia went--Amelia--Arabella.
The rest followed. There was prolonged cloaking, there were lingering
farewells. A few papas were in the supper-room, sitting among the
_débris_ of game. A few young non-dancing husbands sat beneath gas
unnaturally bright, reading whatever chance book was at hand, and
thinking of the young child at home waiting for mama who was dancing the
"German" below. A few exhausted matrons sat in the robing-room, tired,
sad, wishing Jane would come up; assailed at intervals by a vague
suspicion that it was not quite worth while; wondering how it was they
used to have such good times at balls; yawning, and looking at their
watches; while the regular beat of the music below, with sardonic
sadness, continued. At last Jane came up, had had the most glorious
time, and went down with mamma to the carriage, and so drove home. Even
the last Jane went--the last noisy youth was expelled--and Mr. and Mrs.
Potiphar, having duly performed their biennial social duty, dismissed
the music, ordered the servants to count the spoons, and an hour or two
after daylight went to bed. Enviable Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar!
We are now prepared for the great moral indignation of the friend who
saw us eating our _dinde aux truffes_ in that remarkable supper-room.
We are waiting to hear him say in the most moderate and "gentlemanly"
manner, that it is all very well to select flaws and present them as
specimens, and to learn from him, possibly with indignant publicity,
that the present condition of parties is not what we have intimated. Or,
in his quiet and pointed way, he may smile at our fiery assault upon
edged flounces, and nuga pyramids, and the kingdom of Lilliput in
general.
Yet, after all, and despite the youths who are led out, and carried
home, or who stumble through the "German," this is a sober matter. My
friend told us we should see the "best society." But he is a prodigious
wag. Who make this country? From whom is its character of unparalleled
enterprise, heroism, and success derived? Who have given it its place in
the respect and the fear of the world? Who, annually, recruit its
energies, confirm its progress, and secure its triumph? Who are its
characteristic children, the pith, the sinew, the bone, of its
prosperity? Who found, and direct, and continue its manifold
institutions of mercy and education? Who are, essentially, Americans?
Indignant friend, these classes, whoever they may be, are the "best
society," because they alone are the representatives of its character
and cultivation. They are the "best society" of New York, of Boston, of
Baltimore, of St. Louis, of New Orleans, whether they live upon six
hundred or sixty thousand dollars a year--whether they inhabit princely
houses in fashionable streets (which they often do), or not--whether
their sons have graduated at Celarius's and the _Jardin Mabille_, or
have never been out of their father's shops--whether they have "air" and
"style," and are "so gentlemanly" and "so aristocratic," or not. Your
shoemaker, your lawyer, your butcher, your clergyman--if they are
simple and steady, and, whether rich or poor, are unseduced by the
sirens of extravagance and ruinous display, help make up the "best
society." For that mystic communion is not composed of the rich, but of
the worthy; and is "best" by its virtues, and not by its vices. When
Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, and their friends, met at
supper in Goldsmith's rooms, where was the "best society" in England?
When George the Fourth outraged humanity in his treatment of Queen
Caroline, who was the first scoundrel in Europe?
Pause yet a moment, indignant friend. Whose habits and principles would
ruin this country as rapidly as it has been made? Who are enamored of a
puerile imitation of foreign splendors? Who strenuously endeavor to
graft the questionable points of Parisian society upon our own? Who pass
a few years in Europe and return skeptical of republicanism and human
improvement, longing and sighing for more sharply emphasized social
distinctions? Who squander, with profuse recklessness, the hard-earned
fortunes of their sires? Who diligently devote their time to nothing,
foolishly and wrongly supposing that a young English nobleman has
nothing to do? Who, in fine, evince by their collective conduct, that
they regard their Americanism as a misfortune, and are so the most
deadly enemies of their country? None but what our wag facetiously
termed "the best society."
If the reader doubts, let him consider its practical results in any
great emporiums of "best society." Marriage is there regarded as a
luxury, too expensive for any but the sons of rich men, or fortunate
young men. We once heard an eminent divine assert, and only half in
sport, that the rate of living was advancing so incredibly, that
weddings in his experience were perceptibly diminishing. The reasons
might have been many and various. But we all acknowledge the fact. On
the other hand, and about the same time, a lovely damsel (ah! Clorinda!)
whose father was not wealthy, who had no prospective means of support,
who could do nothing but polka to perfection, who literally knew almost
nothing, and who constantly shocked every fairly intelligent person by
the glaring ignorance betrayed in her remarks, informed a friend at one
of the Saratoga balls, whither he had made haste to meet "the best
society," that there were "not more than three good matches in society."
_La Dame aux Camélias_, Marie Duplessis, was to our fancy a much more
feminine, and admirable, and moral, and human person, than the adored
Clorinda. And yet what she said was the legitimate result of the state
of our fashionable society. It worships wealth, and the pomp which
wealth can purchase, more than virtue, genius or beauty. We may be told
that it has always been so in every country, and that the fine society
of all lands is as profuse and flashy as our own. We deny it, flatly.
Neither English, nor French, nor Italian, nor German society, is so
unspeakably barren as that which is technically called "society" here.
In London, and Paris, and Vienna, and Rome, all the really eminent men
and women help make up the mass of society. A party is not a mere ball,
but it is a congress of the wit, beauty, and fame of the capital. It is
worth while to dress, if you shall meet Macaulay, or Hallam, or Guizot,
or Thiers, or Landseer, or Delaroche--Mrs. Norton, the Misses Berry,
Madame Recamier, and all the brilliant women and famous foreigners. But
why should we desert the pleasant pages of those men, and the recorded
gossip of those women, to be squeezed flat against a wall, while young
Doughface pours oyster-gravy down our shirt-front, and Caroline
Pettitoes wonders at "Mr. Düsseldorf's" industry?
If intelligent people decline to go, you justly remark, it is their own
fault. Yes, but if they stay away, it is very certainly their great
gain. The elderly people are always neglected with us, and nothing
surprises intelligent strangers more than the tyrannical supremacy of
Young America. But we are not surprised at this neglect. How can we be,
if we have our eyes open? When Caroline Pettitoes retreats from the
floor to the sofa, and, instead of a "polker," figures at parties as a
matron, do you suppose that "tough old Joes" like ourselves are going to
desert the young Caroline upon the floor, for Madame Pettitoes upon the
sofa? If the pretty young Caroline, with youth, health, freshness, a
fine, budding form, and wreathed in a semi-transparent haze of flounced
and flowered gauze, is so vapid that we prefer to accost her with our
eyes alone, and not with our tongues, is the same Caroline married into
a Madame Pettitoes, and fanning herself upon a sofa--no longer
particularly fresh, nor young, nor pretty, and no longer budding, but
very fully blown--likely to be fascinating in conversation? We can not
wonder that the whole connection of Pettitoes, when advanced to the
matron state, is entirely neglected. Proper homage to age we can all pay
at home, to our parents and grandparents. Proper respect for some
persons is best preserved by avoiding their neighborhood.
And what, think you, is the influence of this extravagant expense and
senseless show upon these same young men and women? We can easily
discover. It saps their noble ambition, assails their health, lowers
their estimate of men, and their reverence for women, cherishes an eager
and aimless rivalry, weakens true feeling, wipes away the bloom of true
modesty, and induces an ennui, a satiety, and a kind of dilettante
misanthropy, which is only the more monstrous because it is undoubtedly
real. You shall hear young men of intelligence and cultivation, to whom
the unprecedented circumstances of this country offer opportunities of a
great and beneficent career, complaining that they were born within this
blighted circle; regretting that they were not bakers and
tallow-chandlers, and under no obligation to keep up appearances;
deliberately surrendering all the golden possibilities of that future
which this country, beyond all others, holds before them; sighing that
they are not rich enough to marry the girls they love, and bitterly
upbraiding fortune that they are not millionaires; suffering the vigor
of their years to exhale in idle wishes and pointless regrets;
disgracing their manhood by lying in wait behind their "so gentlemanly"
and "aristocratic" manners, until they can pounce upon a "fortune" and
ensnare an heiress into matrimony: and so, having dragged their
gifts--their horses of the sun--into a service which shames all their
native pride and power, they sink in the mire; and their peers and
emulators exclaim that they have "made a good thing of it."
Are these the processes by which a noble race is made and perpetuated?
At Mrs. Potiphar's we heard several Pendennises longing for a similar
luxury, and announcing their firm purpose never to have wives nor houses
until they could have them as splendid as jewelled Mrs. Potiphar, and
her palace, thirty feet front. Where were their heads, and their hearts,
and their arms? How looks this craven despondency, before the stern
virtues of the ages we call dark? When a man is so voluntarily imbecile
as to regret he is not rich, if that is what he wants, before he has
struck a blow for wealth; or so dastardly as to renounce the prospect of
love, because, sitting sighing, in velvet dressing-gown and slippers, he
does not see his way clear to ten thousand a year: when young women
coiffed _à merveille_, of unexceptionable "style," who, with or without
a prospective penny, secretly look down upon honest women who struggle
for a livelihood, like noble and Christian beings, and, as such, are
rewarded; in whose society a man must forget that he has ever read,
thought, or felt; who destroy in the mind the fair ideal of woman, which
the genius of art, and poetry, and love, their inspirer has created;
then, it seems to us, it is high time that the subject should be
regarded, not as a matter of breaking butterflies upon the wheel, but as
a sad and sober question, in whose solution, all fathers and mothers,
and the state itself, are interested. When keen observers, and men of
the world, from Europe, are amazed and appalled at the giddy whirl and
frenzied rush of our society--a society singular in history for the
exaggerated prominence it assigns to wealth, irrespective of the talents
that amassed it, they and their possessor being usually hustled out of
sight--is it not quite time to ponder a little upon the Court of Louis
XIV, and the "merrie days" of King Charles II? Is it not clear that, if
what our good wag, with caustic irony, called "best society," were
really such, every thoughtful man would read upon Mrs. Potiphar's
softly-tinted walls the terrible "mene, mene" of an imminent
destruction?
Venice in her purple prime of luxury, when the famous law was passed
making all gondolas black, that the nobles should not squander fortunes
upon them, was not more luxurious than New York to-day. Our hotels have
a superficial splendor, derived from a profusion of gilt and paint, wood
and damask. Yet, in not one of them can the traveler be so quietly
comfortable as in an English inn, and nowhere in New York can the
stranger procure a dinner, at once so neat and elegant, and economical,
as at scores of cafés in Paris. The fever of display has consumed
comfort. A gondola plated with gold was no easier than a black wooden
one. We could well spare a little gilt upon the walls, for more
cleanliness upon the public table; nor is it worth while to cover the
walls with mirrors to reflect a want of comfort. One prefers a wooden
bench to a greasy velvet cushion, and a sanded floor to a soiled and
threadbare carpet. An insipid uniformity is the Procrustes-bed, upon
which "society" is stretched. Every new house is the counterpart of
every other, with the exception of more gilt, if the owner can afford
it. The interior arrangement, instead of being characteristic, instead
of revealing something of the tastes and feelings of the owner, is
rigorously conformed to every other interior. The same hollow and tame
complaisance rules in the intercourse of society. Who dares say
precisely what he thinks upon a great topic? What youth ventures to say
sharp things, of slavery, for instance, at a polite dinner-table? What
girl dares wear curls, when Martelle prescribes puffs or bandeaux? What
specimen of Young America dares have his trousers loose or wear straps
to them? We want individuality, heroism, and, if necessary, an
uncompromising persistence in difference.
This is the present state of parties. They are wildly extravagant, full
of senseless display; they are avoided by the pleasant and intelligent,
and swarm with reckless regiments of "Brown's men." The ends of the
earth contribute their choicest products to the supper, and there is
everything that wealth can purchase, and all the spacious splendor that
thirty feet front can afford. They are hot, and crowded, and glaring.
There is a little weak scandal, venomous, not witty, and a stream of
weary platitude, mortifying to every sensible person. Will any of our
Pendennis friends intermit their indignation for a moment, and consider
how many good things they have said or heard during the season? If Mr.
Potiphar's eyes should chance to fall here, will he reckon the amount of
satisfaction and enjoyment he derived from Mrs. Potiphar's ball, and
will that lady candidly confess what she gained from it beside weariness
and disgust? What eloquent sermons we remember to have heard in which
the sins and the sinners of Babylon, Jericho and Gomorrah were scathed
with holy indignation. The cloth is very hard upon Cain, and completely
routs the erring kings of Judah. The Spanish Inquisition, too, gets
frightful knocks, and there is much eloquent exhortation to preach the
gospel in the interior of Siam. Let it be preached there and God speed
the Word. But also let us have a text or two in Broadway and the Avenue.
The best sermon ever preached upon society, within our knowledge, is
_Vanity Fair_. Is the spirit of that story less true of New York than of
London? Probably we never see Amelia at our parties, nor Lieutenant
George Osborne, nor good gawky Dobbin, nor Mrs. Rebecca Sharp Crawley,
nor old Steyne. We are very much pained, of course, that any author
should take such dreary views of human nature. We, for our parts, all go
to Mrs. Potiphar's to refresh our faith in men and women. Generosity,
amiability, a catholic charity, simplicity, taste, sense, high
cultivation, and intelligence, distinguish our parties. The statesman
seeks their stimulating influence; the literary man, after the day's
labor, desires the repose of their elegant conversation; the
professional man and the merchant hurry up from down town to shuffle off
the coil of heavy duty, and forget the drudgery of life in the agreeable
picture of its amenities and graces presented by Mrs. Potiphar's ball.
Is this account of the matter, or _Vanity Fair_, the satire? What are
the prospects of any society of which that tale is the true history?
There is a picture in the Luxembourg gallery at Paris, _The Decadence of
the Romans_, which made the fame and fortune of Couture, the painter. It
represents an orgie in the court of a temple, during the last days of
Rome. A swarm of revellers occupy the middle of the picture, wreathed in
elaborate intricacy of luxurious posture, men and women intermingled;
their faces, in which the old Roman fire scarcely flickers, brutalized
with excess of every kind; their heads of dishevelled hair bound with
coronals of leaves, while, from goblets of an antique grace, they drain
the fiery torrent which is destroying them. Around the bacchanalian
feast stand, lofty upon pedestals, the statues of old Rome, looking,
with marble calmness and the severity of a rebuke beyond words, upon the
revellers. A youth of boyish grace, with a wreath woven in his tangled
hair, and with red and drowsy eyes, sits listless upon one pedestal,
while upon another stands a boy insane with drunkenness, and proffering
a dripping goblet to the marble mouth of the statue. In the corner of
the picture, as if just quitting the court--Rome finally departing--is a
group of Romans with care-worn brows, and hands raised to their faces in
melancholy meditation. In the foreground of the picture, which is
painted with all the sumptuous splendor of Venetian art, is a stately
vase, around which hangs a festoon of gorgeous flowers, its end dragging
upon the pavement. In the background, between the columns, smiles the
blue sky of Italy--the only thing Italian not deteriorated by time. The
careful student of this picture, if he have been long in Paris, is some
day startled by detecting, especially in the faces of the women
represented, a surprising likeness to the women of Paris, and perceives,
with a thrill of dismay, that the models for this picture of decadent
human nature are furnished by the very city in which he lives.
THE TWO FARMERS
BY CAROLYN WELLS
Once on a Time there were Two Farmers who wished to Sell their Farms.
To One came a Buyer who offered a Fair Price, but the Farmer refused to
Sell, saying he had heard rumors of a Railroad which was to be Built in
his Vicinity, and he hoped The Corporation would buy his Farm at a Large
Figure.
The Buyer therefore went Away, and as the Railroad never Materialized,
the Farmer Sorely Regretted that he lost a Good Chance.
The Other Farmer Sold his Farm to the First Customer who came Along,
although he Received but a Small Price for it. Soon Afterward a Railroad
was Built right through the Same Farm, and The Railroad Company paid an
Enormous Sum for the Land.
MORALS:
This Fable teaches that a Bird In The Hand is worth Two In The Bush, and
The Patient Waiter Is No Loser.
SAMUEL BROWN
BY PHOEBE CARY
It was many and many a year ago,
In a dwelling down in town,
That a fellow there lived whom you may know,
By the name of Samuel Brown;
And this fellow he lived with no other thought
Than to our house to come down.
I was a child, and he was a child,
In that dwelling down in town,
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Samuel Brown,--
With a love that the ladies coveted,
Me and Samuel Brown.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
To that dwelling down in town,
A girl came out of her carriage, courting
My beautiful Samuel Brown;
So that her high-bred kinsmen came,
And bore away Samuel Brown,
And shut him up in a dwelling house,
In a street quite up in town.
The ladies, not half so happy up there,
Went envying me and Brown;
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this dwelling down in town),
That the girl came out of the carriage by night,
Coquetting and getting my Samuel Brown.
But our love is more artful by far than the love
If those who are older than we,--
Of many far wiser than we,--
And neither the girls that are living above,
Nor the girls that are down in town,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Samuel Brown.
For the morn never shines, without bringing me lines,
From my beautiful Samuel Brown;
And the night's never dark, but I sit in the park
With my beautiful Samuel Brown.
And often by day, I walk down in Broadway,
With my darling, my darling, my life and my stay,
To our dwelling down in town,
To our house in the street down town.
THE WAY IT WUZ
BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
Las' July--an', I presume
'Bout as hot
As the ole Gran'-Jury room
Where they sot!--
Fight 'twixt Mike an' Dock McGriff--
'Pears to me jes' like as if
I'd a dremp' the whole blame thing--
Allus ha'nts me roun' the gizzard
When they're nightmares on the wing,
An' a feller's blood 's jes' friz!
Seed the row from a to izzard--
'Cause I wuz a-standin' as clost to 'em
As me an' you is!
Tell you the way it wuz--
An' I don't want to see,
Like _some_ fellers does,
When they're goern to be
Any kind o' fuss--
On'y makes a rumpus wuss
Fer to interfere
When their dander's riz--
But I wuz a-standin' as clost to 'em
As me an' you is!
I wuz kind o' strayin'
Past the blame saloon--
Heerd some fiddler playin'
That "ole hee-cup tune!"
Sort o' stopped, you know,
Fer a minit er so,
And wuz jes' about
Settin' down, when--_Jeemses whizz_!
Whole durn winder-sash fell out!
An' there laid Dock McGriff, and Mike
A-straddlin' him, all bloody-like,
An' both a-gittin' down to biz!--
An' I wuz a-standin' as clost to 'em
As me an' you is!
I wuz the on'y man aroun'--
(Durn old-fogy town!
'Peared more like, to me,
_Sund'y_ 'an _Saturd'y!_)
Dog come 'crost the road
An' tuck a smell
An' put right back;
Mishler driv by 'ith a load
O' cantalo'pes he couldn't sell--
Too mad, 'y jack!
To even ast
What wuz up, as he went past!
Weather most outrageous hot!--
Fairly hear it sizz
Roun' Dock an' Mike--till Dock he shot,
An' Mike he slacked that grip o' his
An' fell, all spraddled out. Dock riz
'Bout half up, a-spittin' red,
An' shuck his head--
An' I wuz a-standin' as clost to 'em
As me an' you is!
An' Dock he says,
A-whisperin'-like,--
"It hain't no use
A-tryin'!--Mike
He's jes' ripped my daylights loose!--
Git that blame-don fiddler to
Let up, an' come out here--You
Got some burryin' to do,--
Mike makes _one_, an' I expects
In ten seconds I'll make _two_!"
And he drapped back, where he riz,
'Crost Mike's body, black and blue,
Like a great big letter X!--
An' I wuz a-standin' as clost to 'em
As me an' you is!
SHE TALKED
BY SAM WALTER FOSS
She talked of Cosmos and of Cause,
And wove green elephants in gauze,
And while she frescoed earthen jugs,
Her tongue would never pause:
On sages wise and esoteric,
And bards from Wendell Holmes to Herrick:
Thro' time's proud Pantheon she walked,
And talked and talked and talked and talked!
And while she talked she would crochet,
And make all kinds of macrame,
Or paint green bobolinks upon
Her mother's earthen tray;
She'd decorate a smelling bottle
While she conversed on Aristotle;
While fame's proud favorites round her flocked,
She talked and talked and talked and talked!
She talked and made embroidered rugs,
She talked and painted 'lasses jugs,
And worked five sea-green turtle doves
On papa's shaving mugs;
With Emerson or Epictetus,
Plato or Kant, she used to greet us:
She talked until we all were shocked,
And talked and talked and talked and talked!
She had a lover, and he told
The story that is never old,
While she her father's bootjack worked
A lovely green and gold.
She switched off on Theocritus,
And talked about Democritus;
And his most ardent passion balked,
And talked and talked and talked and talked.
He begged her to become his own;
She talked of ether and ozone,
And painted yellow poodles on
Her brother's razor hone;
Then talked of Noah and Neb'chadnezzar,
And Timon and Tiglath-pileser--
While he at her heart portals knocked,
She talked and talked and talked and talked!
He bent in love's tempestuous gale,
She talked of strata and of shale,
And worked magenta poppies on
Her mother's water pail;
And while he talked of passion's power,
She amplified on Schopenhauer--
A pistol flashed: he's dead! Unshocked,
She talked and talked and talked and talked!
GRANDMA KEELER GETS GRANDPA READY FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL
BY SARAH P. McLEAN GREENE
Sunday morning nothing arose in Wallencamp save the sun.
At least, that celestial orb had long forgotten all the roseate flaming
of his youth, in an honest, straightforward march through the heavens,
ere the first signs of smoke came curling lazily up from the Wallencamp
chimneys.
I had retired at night, very weary, with the delicious consciousness
that it wouldn't make any difference when I woke up the next morning, or
whether, indeed, I woke at all. So I opened my eyes leisurely and lay
half-dreaming, half-meditating on a variety of things.
I deciphered a few of the texts on the scriptural patchwork quilt which
covered my couch. There were--"Let not your heart be troubled,"
"Remember Lot's wife," and "Philander Keeler," traced in inky
hieroglyphics, all in close conjunction.
Finally I reached out for my watch, and, having ascertained the time of
day, I got up and proceeded to dress hastily enough, wondering to hear
no signs of life in the house.
I went noiselessly down the stairs. All was silent below, except for the
peaceful snoring of Mrs. Philander and the little Keelers, which was
responded to from some remote western corner of the Ark by the
triumphant snores of Grandma and Grandpa Keeler.
I attempted to kindle a fire in the stove, but it sizzled a little
while, spitefully, as much as to say, "What, Sunday morning? Not I!" and
went out. So I concluded to put on some wraps and go out and warm myself
in the sun.
I climbed the long hill back of the Ark, descended, and walked along the
bank of the river. It was a beautiful morning. The air was--everything
that could be desired in the way of air, but I felt a desperate need of
something more substantial.
Standing alone with nature, on the bank of the lovely river, I thought,
with tears in my eyes, of the delicious breakfast already recuperating
the exhausted energies of my far-away home friends.
When I got back to the house, Mrs. Philander, in simple and unaffected
attire, was bustling busily about the stove.
The snores from Grandma and Grandpa's quarter had ceased, signifying
that they, also, had advanced a stage in the grand processes of Sunday
morning.
The children came teasing me to dress them, so I fastened for them a
variety of small articles which I flattered myself on having combined in
a very ingenious and artistic manner, though I believe those infant
Keelers went weeping to Grandma afterward, and were remodeled by her
all-comforting hand with much skill and patience.
In the midst of her preparations for breakfast, Madeline abruptly
assumed her hat and shawl, and was seen from the window, walking
leisurely across the fields in the direction of the woods. She returned
in due time, bearing an armful of fresh evergreens, which she twisted
around the family register.
When the ancient couple made their appearance, I remarked silently, in
regard to Grandma Keeler's hair, what proved afterward to be its usual
holiday morning arrangement. It was confined in six infinitesimal braids
which appeared to be sprouting out, perpendicularly, in all directions
from her head. The effect of redundancy and expansiveness thus
heightened and increased on Grandma's features was striking in the
extreme.
While we were eating breakfast, that good soul observed to Grandpa
Keeler: "Wall, pa, I suppose you'll be all ready when the time comes to
take teacher and me over to West Wallen to Sunday-school, won't ye?"
Grandpa coughed, and coughed again, and raised his eyes helplessly to
the window.
"Looks some like showers," said he. "A-hem! a-hem! Looks mightily to me
like showers, over yonder."
"Thar', r'aly, husband! I must say I feel mortified for ye," said
Grandma. "Seein' as you're a perfessor, too, and thar' ain't been a
single Sunday mornin' since I've lived with ye, pa, summer or winter,
but what you've seen showers, and it r'aly seems to me it's dreadful
inconsistent when thar' ain't no cloud in the sky, and don't look no
more like rain than I do." And Grandma's face, in spite of her
reproachful tones, was, above all, blandly sunlike and expressive of
anything rather than deluge and watery disaster.
Grandpa was silent a little while, then coughed again. I had never seen
Grandpa in worse straits.
"A-hem! a-hem! 'Fanny' seems to be a little lame, this mornin'," said
he. "I shouldn't wonder. She's been goin' pretty stiddy this week."
"It does beat all, pa," continued Grandma Keeler, "how 't all the horses
you've ever had since I've known ye have always been took lame Sunday
mornin'. Thar' was 'Happy Jack,' he could go anywhers through the week,
and never limp a step, as nobody could see, and Sunday mornin' he was
always took lame! And thar' was 'Tantrum'--"
"Tantrum" was the horse that had run away with Grandma when she was
thrown from the wagon, and generally smashed to pieces. And now, Grandma
branched off into the thrilling reminiscences connected with this
incident of her life, which was the third time during the week that the
horrible tale had been repeated for my delectation.
When she had finished, Grandpa shook his head with painful earnestness,
reverting to the former subject of discussion.
"It's a long jaunt!" said he; "a long jaunt!"
"Thar's a long hill to climb before we reach Zion's mount," said Grandma
Keeler, impressively.
"Wall, there's a darned sight harder one on the road to West Wallen!"
burst out the old sea-captain desperately; "say nothin' about the
devilish stones!"
"Thar' now," said Grandma, with calm though awful reproof; "I think
we've gone fur enough for one day; we've broke the Sabbath, and took the
name of the Lord in vain, and that ought to be enough for perfessors."
Grandpa replied at length in a greatly subdued tone: "Wall, if you and
the teacher want to go over to Sunday-school to-day, I suppose we can go
if we get ready," a long submissive sigh--"I suppose we can."
"They have preachin' service in the mornin', I suppose," said Grandma.
"But we don't generally git along to that. It makes such an early start.
We generally try to get around, when we go, in time for Sunday-school.
They have singin' and all. It's just about as interestin', I think, as
preachin'. The old man r'aly likes it," she observed aside to me; "when
he once gets started, but he kind o' dreads the gittin' started."
When I beheld the ordeal through which Grandpa Keeler was called to
pass, at the hands of his faithful consort, before he was considered in
a fit condition of mind and body to embark for the sanctuary, I marveled
not at the old man's reluctance, nor that he had indeed seen clouds and
tempest fringing the horizon.
Immediately after breakfast, he set out for the barn, ostensibly to "see
to the chores;" really, I believe, to obtain a few moments' respite,
before worse evil should come upon him.
Pretty soon Grandma was at the back door calling in firm though
persuasive tones:
"Husband! husband! come in, now, and get ready."
No answer. Then it was in another key, weighty, yet expressive of no
weak irritation, that Grandma called "Come, pa! pa-a! pa-a-a!" Still no
answer.
Then that voice of Grandma's sung out like a trumpet, terrible with
meaning--"Bijonah Keeler!"
But Grandpa appeared not. Next, I saw Grandma slowly but surely
gravitating in the direction of the barn, and soon she returned,
bringing with her that ancient delinquent, who looked like a lost sheep
indeed and a truly unreconciled one.
"Now the first thing," said Grandma, looking her forlorn captive over;
"is boots. Go and get on yer meetin' gaiters, pa."
The old gentleman, having dutifully invested himself, with those sacred
relics, came pathetically limping into the room.
"I declare, ma," said he; "somehow these things--phew! Somehow they
pinch my feet dreadfully. I don't know what it is,--phew! They're
dreadful oncomf'table things somehow."
"Since I've known ye, pa," solemnly ejaculated Grandma Keeler, "you've
never had a pair o' meetin' boots that set easy on yer feet. You'd ought
to get boots big enough for ye, pa," she continued, looking down
disapprovingly on the old gentleman's pedal extremities, which resembled
two small scows at anchor in black cloth encasements: "and not be so
proud as to go to pinchin' yer feet into gaiters a number o' sizes too
small for ye."
"They're number tens, I tell ye!" roared Grandpa nettled outrageously by
this cutting taunt.
"Wall, thar', now, pa," said Grandma, soothingly; "if I had sech feet as
that, I wouldn't go to spreadin' it all over town, if I was you--but
it's time we stopped bickerin' now, husband, and got ready for meetin';
so set down and let me wash yer head."
"I've washed once this mornin'. It's clean enough," Grandpa protested,
but in vain. He was planted in a chair, and Grandma Keeler, with rag and
soap and a basin of water, attacked the old gentleman vigorously, much
as I have seen cruel mothers wash the faces of their earth-begrimed
infants. He only gave expression to such groans as:
"Thar', ma! don't tear my ears to pieces! Come, ma! you've got my eyes
so full o' soap now, ma, that I can't see nothin'. Phew, Lordy! ain't ye
most through with this, ma?"
Then came the dyeing process, which Grandma Keeler assured me, aside,
made Grandpa "look like a man o' thirty;" but to me, after it he looked
neither old nor young, human nor inhuman, nor like anything that I had
ever seen before under the sun.
"There's the lotion, the potion, the dye-er, and the setter," said
Grandma, pointing to four bottles on the table. "Now whar's the
directions, Madeline?"
These having been produced from between the leaves of the family Bible,
Madeline read, while Grandma made a vigorous practical application of
the various mixtures.
"This admirable lotion"--in soft ecstatic tones Madeline rehearsed the
flowery language of the recipe--"though not so instantaneously startling
in its effect as our inestimable dyer and setter, yet forms a most
essential part of the whole process, opening, as it does, the dry and
lifeless pores of the scalp, imparting to them new life and beauty, and
rendering them more easily susceptible to the applications which follow.
But we must go deeper than this; a tone must be given to the whole
system by means of the cleansing and rejuvenating of the very centre of
our beings, and, for this purpose, we have prepared our wonderful
potion." Here Grandpa, with a wry face, was made to swallow a spoonful
of the mixture. "Our unparalleled dyer," Madeline continued, "restores
black hair to a more than original gloss and brilliancy, and gives to
the faded golden tress the sunny flashes of youth." Grandpa was dyed.
"Our world-renowned setter completes and perfects the whole process by
adding tone and permanency to the efficacious qualities of the lotion,
potion, and dyer, etc.;" while on Grandpa's head the unutterable dye was
set.
"Now, read teacher some of the testimonials, daughter," said Grandma
Keeler, whose face was one broad, generous illustration of that rare and
peculiar virtue called faith.
So Madeline continued: "Mrs. Hiram Briggs, of North Dedham, writes: 'I
was terribly afflicted with baldness, so that, for months, I was little
more than an outcast from society, and an object of pity to my most
familiar friends. I tried every remedy in vain. At length I heard of
your wonderful restorative. After a week's application, my hair had
already begun to grow in what seemed the most miraculous manner. At the
end of ten months it had assumed such length and proportions as to be a
most luxurious burden, and where I had before been regarded with pity
and aversion, I became the envied and admired of all beholders.'"
"Just think!" said Grandma Keeler, with rapturous sympathy and
gratitude, "how that poor creetur must a' felt!"
"'Orion Spaulding, of Weedsville, Vermont,'" Madeline went on--but,
here, I had to beg to be excused, and went to my room to get ready for
the Sunday-school.
When I came down again, Grandpa Keeler was seated, completely arrayed in
his best clothes, opposite Grandma, who held the big family Bible in her
lap, and a Sunday-school question book in one hand.
"Now, pa," said she; "what tribe was it in sacred writ that wore
bunnits?"
I was compelled to infer from the tone of Grandpa Keeler's answer that
his temper had not undergone a mollifying process during my absence.
"Come, ma," said he; "how much longer ye goin' to pester me in this
way?"
"Why, pa," Grandma rejoined calmly; "until you git a proper
understandin' of it. What tribe was it in sacred writ that wore
bunnits?"
"Lordy!" exclaimed the old man. "How d'ye suppose I know! They must 'a'
been a tarnal old womanish lookin' set anyway."
"The tribe o' Judah, pa," said Grandma, gravely. "Now, how good it is,
husband, to have your understandin' all freshened up on the scripters!"
"Come, come, ma!" said Grandpa, rising nervously. "It's time we was
startin'. When I make up my mind to go anywhere I always want to git
there in time. If I was goin' to the Old Harry, I should want to git
there in time."
"It's my consarn that we shall git thar' before time, some on us," said
Grandma, with sad meaning, "unless we larn to use more respec'ful
language."
I shall never forget how we set off for church that Sabbath morning, way
out at one of the sunny back doors of the Ark: for there was Madeline's
little cottage that fronted the highway, or lane, and then there was a
long backward extension of the Ark, only one story in height. This
belonged peculiarly to Grandma and Grandpa Keeler. It contained the
"parlor" and three "keepin'" rooms opening one into the other, all of
the same size and general bare and gloomy appearance, all possessing the
same sacredly preserved atmosphere, through which we passed with
becoming silence and solemnity into the "end" room, the sunny kitchen
where Grandma and Grandpa kept house by themselves in the summer time,
and there at the door, her very yellow coat reflecting the rays of the
sun, stood Fanny, presenting about as much appearance of life and
animation as a pensive summer squash.
The carriage, I thought, was a fac-simile of the one in which I had been
brought from West Wallen on the night of my arrival. One of the most
striking peculiarities of this sort of vehicle was the width at which
the wheels were set apart. The body seemed comparatively narrow. It was
very long, and covered with white canvas. It had neither windows nor
doors, but just the one guarded opening in front. There were no steps
leading to this, and, indeed, a variety of obstacles before it. And the
way Grandma effected an entrance was to put a chair on a mound of earth,
and a cricket on top of the chair, and thus, having climbed up to
Fanny's reposeful back, she slipped passively down, feet foremost, to
the whiffle-tree; from thence she easily gained the plane of the
carriage floor.
Grandpa and I took a less circuitous, though, perhaps, not less
difficult route.
I sat with Grandpa on the "front" seat--it may be remarked that the
"front" seat was very much front, and the "back" seat very much
back--there was a kind of wooden shelf built outside as a resting-place
for the feet, so that while our heads were under cover, our feet were
out, utterly exposed to the weather, and we must either lay them on the
shelf or let them hang off into space.
Madeline and the children stood at the door to see us off.
"All aboard! ship ballasted! wind fa'r! go ahead thar', Fanny!" shouted
Grandpa, who seemed quite restored in spirits, and held the reins and
wielded the whip with a masterful air.
He spun sea-yarns, too, all the way--marvelous ones, and Grandma's
reproving voice was mellowed by the distance, and so confusedly mingled
with the rumbling of the wheels, that it seemed hardly to reach him at
all. Not that Grandma looked discomfited on this account, or in bad
humor. On the contrary, as she sat back there in the ghostly shadows,
with her hands folded, and her hair combed out in resplendent waves on
either side of her head, she appeared conscious that every word she
uttered was taking root in some obdurate heart. She was, in every
respect, the picture of good-will and contentment.
But the face under Grandpa's antiquated beaver began to give me a fresh
shock every time I looked up at him, for the light and the air were
rapidly turning his rejuvenated locks and his poor, thin fringe of
whiskers to an unnatural greenish tint, while his bushy eyebrows,
untouched by the hand of art, shone as white as ever.
In spite of the old sea-captain's entertaining stories, it seemed,
indeed, "a long jaunt" to West Wallen.
To say that Fanny was a slow horse would be but a feeble expression of
the truth.
A persevering "click! click! click!" began to arise from Grandma's
quarter. This annoyed Grandpa exceedingly.
"Shet up, ma!" he was moved to exclaim at last. "I'm steerin' this
craft."
"Click! click! click!" came perseveringly from behind.
"Dum it, ma! thar', ma!" cried Grandpa, exasperated beyond measure. "How
is this hoss goin' to hear anything that I say ef you keep up such a
tarnal cacklin'?"
Just as we were coming out of the thickest part of the woods, about a
mile beyond Wallencamp, we discovered a man walking in the distance. It
was the only human being we had seen since we started.
"Hullo, there's Lovell!" exclaimed Grandpa. "I was wonderin' why we
hadn't overtook him before. We gin'ally take him in on the road. Yis,
yis; that's Lovell, ain't it, teacher?"
I put up my glasses, helplessly.
"I'm sure," I said, "I can't tell, positively. I have seen Mr. Barlow
but once, and at that distance I shouldn't know my own father."
"Must be Lovell," said Grandpa. "Yis, I know him! Hullo, thar'! Ship
ahoy! ship ahoy!"
Grandpa's voice suggested something of the fire and vigor it must have
had when it rang out across the foam of waves and pierced the tempest's
roar.
The man turned and looked at us, and then went on again.
"He don't seem to recognize us," said Grandma.
"Ship a-hoy! Ship a-hoy!" shouted Grandpa.
The man turned and looked at us again, and this time he stopped and kept
on looking.
When we got up to him we saw that it wasn't Lovell Barlow at all, but a
stranger of trampish appearance, drunk and fiery, and fixed in an
aggressive attitude.
I was naturally terrified. What if he should attack us in that lonely
spot! Grandpa was so old! And moreover, Grandpa was so taken aback to
find that it wasn't Lovell that he began some blunt and stammering
expression of surprise, which only served to increase the stranger's
ire. Grandma, imperturbable soul! who never failed to come to the rescue
even in the most desperate emergencies--Grandma climbed over to the
front, thrust out her benign head, and said in that deep, calm voice of
hers:
"We're a goin' to the house of God, brother; won't you git in and go
too?"
"No!" our brother replied, doubling up his fists and shaking them
menacingly in our faces: "I won't go to no house o' God. What d'ye mean
by overhauling me on the road, and askin' me to git into yer d--d old
traveling lunatic asylum?"
"Drive on, pa," said Grandma, coldly. "He ain't in no condition to be
labored with now. Drive on kind o' quick!"
"Kind o' quick" we could not go, but Fanny was made to do her best, and
we did not pause to look behind.
When we got to the church Sunday-school had already begun. There was
Lovell Barlow looking preternaturally stiff in his best clothes, sitting
with a class of young men. He saw us when we came in, and gave me a look
of deep meaning. It was the same expression--as though there was some
solemn, mutual understanding between us--which he had worn on that night
when he gave me his picture.
"There's plenty of young folks' classes," said Grandma; "but seein' as
we're late maybe you'd jest as soon go right along in with us."
I said that I should like that best, so I went into the "old folks'"
class with Grandma and Grandpa Keeler.
There were three pews of old people in front of us, and the teacher, who
certainly seemed to me the oldest person I had ever seen, sat in an
otherwise vacant pew in front of all, so that, his voice being very thin
and querulous, we could hear very little that he said, although we were
edified in some faint sense by his pious manner of shaking his head and
rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.
The church was a square wooden edifice, of medium size, and contained
three stoves all burning brightly. Against this, and the drowsy effect
of their long drive in the sun and wind, my two companions proved
powerless to struggle.
Grandpa looked furtively up at Grandma, then endeavored to put on as a
sort of apology for what he felt was inevitably coming, a sanctimonious
expression which was most unnatural to him, and which soon faded away as
the sweet unconsciousness of slumber overspread his features. His head
fell back helplessly, his mouth opened wide. He snored, but not very
loudly. I looked at Grandma, wondering why her vigilance had failed on
this occasion, and lo! her head was falling peacefully from side to
side. She was fast asleep, too. She woke up first, however, and then
Grandpa was speedily and adroitly aroused by some means, I think it was
a pin; and Grandma fed him with bits of unsweetened flag-root, which he
munched penitently, though evidently without relish, until he dropped
off to sleep again, and she dropped off to sleep again, and so they
continued.
But it always happened that Grandma woke up first. And whereas Grandpa,
when the avenging pin pierced his shins, recovered himself with a start
and an air of guilty confusion, Grandma opened her eyes at regular
intervals, with the utmost calm and placidity, as though she had merely
been closing them to engage in a few moments of silent prayer.
VIVE LA BAGATELLE
BY GELETT BURGESS
Sing a song of foolishness, laughing stocks and cranks!
The more there are the merrier; come join the ranks!
Life is dry and stupid; whoop her up a bit!
Donkeys live in clover; bray and throw a fit!
Take yourself in earnest, never stop to think,
Strut and swagger boldly, dress in red and pink;
Prate of stuff and nonsense, get yourself abused;
Some one's got to play the fool to keep the crowd amused!
Bully for the idiot! Bully for the guy!
You could be a prig yourself, if you would only try!
Altruistic asses keep the fun alive;
Clowns are growing scarcer; hurry and arrive!
I seen a crazy critic a-writin' of a screed;
"Tendencies" and "Unities"--Maeterlinck indeed!
He wore a paper collar, and his tie was up behind;
If that's the test of Culture, then I'm glad I'm not refined!
Let me laugh at you, then you can laugh at me;
Then we'll josh together everything we see;
Every one's a nincompoop to another's view;
Laughter makes the sun shine! Roop-de-doodle-doo!
THE TWO BROTHERS
BY CAROLYN WELLS
Once on a Time there were Two Brothers who Set Out to make their Way In
The World.
One was of a Roving Disposition, and no sooner had he settled Down to
Live in One Place than he would Gather Up all his Goods and Chattels and
Move to another Place. From here again he would Depart and make him a
Fresh Home, and so on until he Became an Old Man and had gained neither
Fortune nor Friends.
The Other, being Disinclined to Change or Diversity of Scene, remained
all his Life in One Place. He therefore Became Narrow-Minded and
Provincial, and gained None of the Culture and Liberality of Nature
which comes from Contact with various Scenes of Life.
MORALS:
This Fable teaches that a Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss, and a Setting
Hen Never Grows Fat.
A LETTER
FROM PETROLEUM V. NASBY
I AM REQUESTED TO ACT AS CHAPLAIN OF THE CLEVELAND CONVENTION.--THAT
BEAUTIFUL CITY VISITED FOR THAT PURPOSE.
POST OFFIS, CONFEDRIT X ROADS,
(wich is in the Stait uv Kentucky),
September 20, 1866.
I wuz sent for to come to Washington, from my comfortable quarters at
the Post Offis, to attend the convenshun uv sich soldiers and sailors uv
the United States ez bleeve in a Union uv 36 States, and who hev sworn
allejinse to a flag with 36 stars onto it, at Cleveland. My esteemed and
life-long friend and co-laborer, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, wuz to hev bin
the chaplin uv the convenshun, but he failed us, and it wuz decided in a
Cabinet meetin that I shood take his place. I didn't see the necessity
uv hevin a chaplin at every little convenshun uv our party, and so
stated; but Seward remarked, with a groan, that ef ever there wuz a
party, since parties wuz invented, wich needed prayin for, ours wuz that
party. "And, Parson," sed he, glancin' at a list uv delegates, "ef yoo
hev any agonizin petitions, any prayers uv extra fervency, offer em up
for these fellers. Ef there is any efficacy in prayer, it's my honest,
unbiased opinion that there never wuz in the history uv the world, nor
never will be agin, sich a magnificent chance to make it manifest. Try
yoor-self particularly on Custer; tho', after all," continyood he, in a
musin, abstracted sort uv a way, wich he's fallen into lately, "the
fellow is sich a triflin bein, that he reely kin hardly be held
'sponsible for what he's doin; and the balance uv em, good Hevens!
they'r mostly druv to it by hunger." And the Secretary maundered on
suthin about "sixty days" and "ninety days," payin no more attention to
the rest uv us than ez ef we wuzn't there at all.
So, receevin transportashen and suffishent money from the secret service
fund for expenses, I departed for Cleveland, and after a tejus trip
thro' an Ablishn country, I arrived there. My thots were gloomy beyond
expression. I hed recently gone through this same country ez chaplin to
the Presidential tour, and every stashen hed its pecooliar onpleasant
remembrances. Here wuz where the cheers for Grant were vociferous, with
nary a snort for His Eggslency; there wuz where the peasantry laft in
his face when he went thro' with the regler ritooal uv presentin the
constitooshn and the flag with 36 stars onto it to a deestrick assessor;
there wuz--but why recount my sufferins? Why harrow up the public bosom,
or lasserate the public mind? Suffice to say, I endoored it; suffice to
say that I hed strength left to ride up Bank street, in Cleveland, the
seen uv the most awful insult the Eggsecutive ever receeved.
The evenin I arrived, the delegates, sich ez wuz on hand, held a
informal meetin to arrange matters so ez they wood work smooth when the
crowd finally got together. Genral Wool wuz ez gay and frisky ez though
he reely belonged to the last ginerashn. There wuz Custar, uv Michigan,
with his hair freshly oiled and curled, and busslin about ez though he
hed cheated hisself into the beleef that he reely amounted to suthin;
and there wuz seventy-eight other men, who hed distinguished theirselves
in the late war, but who hed never got their deserts, ceptin by brevet,
owin to the fact that the Administrashn wuz Ablishn, which they wuzn't.
They were, in a pekuniary pint uv view, suthin the worse for wear, tho'
why that shood hev bin the case I coodent see (they hevin bin, to an
alarmin extent, quarter-masters and commissaries, and in the recrootin
service), til I notist the prevailin color uv their noses, and heerd one
uv em ask his neighbor ef Cleveland wuz blest with a faro bank! Then I
knowd all about it.
There wuz another pekooliarity about it which for a time amoozed me.
Them ez wuz present wuz divided into 2 classes--those ez hed bin
recently appinted to posishens, and them ez expected to be shortly. I
notist on the countenances uv the first class a look uv releef, sich ez
I hev seen in factories Saturday nite, after the hands wuz paid off for
a hard week's work; and on the other class the most wolfish, hungry,
fierce expression I hev ever witnessed. Likewise, I notist that the
latter set uv patriots talked more hefty uv the necessity uv sustainin
the policy uv our firm and noble President, and damned the Ablishunists
with more emphasis and fervency than the others.
One enthoosiastic individual, who hed bin quartermaster two years, and
hed bin allowed to resign "jest after the battle, mother," wich, hevin
his papers all destroyed, made settlin with the government a easy
matter, wuz so feroshus that I felt called upon to check him. "Gently,
my frend," sed I, "gently! I hev bin thro' this thing; I hev my
commission. It broke out on me jest ez it hez on yoo; but yoo won't git
yoor Assessorship a minit sooner for it."
"It ain't a Assessorship I want," sez he. "I hev devoted myself to the
task uv bindin up the wounds uv my beloved country--"
"Did you stop anybody very much from inflictin them sed wounds?"
murmured I.
"An ef I accept the Post Orfis in my native village,--which I hev bin
solissited so strongly to take that I hev finally yielded,--I do it only
that I may devote my few remainin energies wholly to the great cause uv
restorin the 36 States to their normal posishens under the flag with 36
stars onto it, in spite uv the Joodis Iskariots wich, ef I am whom, wat
is the Savior, and--and where is--"
Perseevin that the unfortunate man hed got into the middle uv a
quotashen from the speech uv our noble and patriotic President, and
knowin his intellek wuzn't hefty enough to git it off jist as it wuz
originally delivered, I took him by the throat, and shet off the flood
uv his elokence.
"Be quiet, yoo idiot!" remarked I, soothingly, to him. "Yoo'll git your
apintment, becoz, for the fust time in the history uv this or any other
Republic, there's a market for jist sich men ez yoo; but all this
blather won't fetch it a minit sooner."
"Good Lord!" tho't I, ez I turned away, "wat a President A.J. is, to hev
to buy up _sich_ cattle! Wat a postmaster he must be, whose gineral
cussedness turns _my_ stummick!"
It wuz deemed necessary to see uv wat we wuz compozed; whatever Kernel
K----, who is now Collector uv Revenue in Illinoy, asked ef there wuz
ary man in the room who hed bin a prizner doorin the late fratricidle
struggle. A gentleman uv, perhaps, thirty aroze, and sed he wuz. He hed
bin taken three times, and wuz, altogether, 18 months in doorance vile
in three diffrent prizns.
Custar fell on his neck, and asked him, aggitatidly, ef he wuz
shoor--quite shoor, after sufferin all that, that he supported the
policy of the President? Are you quite shoor--quite shoor?
"I am," returned the phenomenon. "I stand by Andrew Johnson and his
policy, and I don't want no office!"
"Hev yoo got wun?" shouted they all in korus.
"Nary!" sed he. "With me it is a matter uv principle!"
"Wat prizns wuz yoo incarcerated in?" asked I, lookin at him with
wonder.
"Fust at Camp Morton, then at Camp Douglas, and finally at Johnson's
Island!"
Custar dropt him, and the rest remarked that, while they hed a very
helthy opinion uv him, they guessed he'd better not menshen his
presence, or consider hisself a delegate. Ez ginerous foes they loved
him ruther better than a brother; yet, as the call didn't quite inclood
him, tho' there wuz a delightful oneness between em, yet, ef 'twuz all
the same, he hed better not announce hisself. He wuz from Kentucky, I
afterwards ascertained.
The next mornin, suthin over two hundred more arriv; and the delegashens
bein all in, it wuz decided to go on with the show. A big tent hed bin
brought on from Boston to accommodate the expected crowd, and quite an
animated discussion arose ez to wich corner uv it the Convenshun wuz to
ockepy. This settled, the biznis wuz begun. Genral Wool wuz made
temporary Chairman, to wich honor he responded in a elokent
extemporaneous speech, which he read from manuscript. General Ewing made
another extemporaneous address, which he read from manuscript, and we
adjourned for dinner.
The dinner hour was spent in caucussin privately in one uv the parlors
uv the hotel. The Chairman asked who shood make speeches after dinner,
wen every man uv em pulled from his right side coat pocket a roll uv
manuscript, and sed he hed jotted down a few ijees wich he hed
conclooded to present extemporaneously to the Convenshun. That Babel
over, the Chairman sed he presoomed some one shood be selected to
prepare a address; whereupon every delegate rose, and pulled a roll uv
manuscript from his left side coat pocket, and sed he had jotted down a
few ijees on the situashn, wich he proposed to present, et settry. This
occasioned another shindy; wen the Chairman remarked "Resolushens," wen
every delegate rose, pulled a roll uv manuscript from his right breast
coat pocket, and sed he hed jotted down a few ijees, wich, etc.
I stood it until some one mentioned me ez Chaplin to the expedition
West, when the pressure becum unendurable. They sposed I was keeper uv
the President's conscience, and I hed not a minit's peece after that. In
vain I ashoored em that, there bein no consciences about the White
House, no one could hold sich a offis; in vain I ashoored em that I hed
no influence with His Majesty. Two-thirds uv em pulled applicashens for
places they wanted from the left breast coat pocket, and insistid on my
takin em, and seem that they was appinted. I told em that I cood do
nuthin for em; but they laft me to skorn. "You are jist the style uv
man," said they, "who hez inflooence with His Eggslency, and yoo must do
it." Hemmed in, there wuz but one way uv escape, and that way I took.
Seezin a carpet sack, wich, by the way, belonged to a delegate (I took
it to give myself the look of a traveler), I rushed to the depot, and
startid home, entirely satisfied that ef Cleveland may be taken as a
sample, the less His Majesty depends on soljers, the better.
PETROLEUM V. NASBY, P.M. (wich is Postmaster), and likewise late
Chaplain to the expedishn.
P.S.--I opened the carpet sack on the train, spectin to find a clean
shirt in it, at least. It contained, to my disgust, an address to be
read before the Cleveland Convention, a set uv resolutions, a speech,
and a petition uv the proprietor thereof for a collectorship, signed by
eight hundred names, and a copy uv the Indiana State Directory for 1864.
The names wuz in one hand-writin, and wuz arranged alphabetically.
PETROLEUM V. NASBY.
FAMILIAR AUTHORS AT WORK
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH
MISS TRIPP
Miss Tripp for years has lived alone,
Without display or fuss or pother.
The house she dwells in is her own--
She got it from her dying father.
Miss T. delights in all good works,
She goes to church three times on Sunday,
Her daily duty never shirks,
Nor keeps her goodness for this one day.
She loves to bake and knit and sew,
For wider fields she doesn't hanker;
Yet for the things they have I know
A-many poor folk have to thank her.
The simple life she truly leads,
She loves her small domestic labors;
In spring she plants her garden seeds
And shares the product with her neighbors.
By _Books and Authors_ now I see
In literature she's made a foray:
"The Yellow Shadow"--said to be
"A crackerjack detective-story."
CAPTAIN BROWN
Bluff Captain Brown is somewhat queer,
But of the sea he's very knowing.
I scarcely meet him once a year--
He's off in search of whales a-blowing.
For fifty years--perhaps for more--
He's sailed about upon the ocean.
He thinks that if he lived ashore
He'd die. But this is just a notion.
Still when the Captain comes to port
With barrels of oil from whales caught napping,
He'll pace the deck, and loudly snort,
"This land air is my strength a-sapping.
"I call this living on hard terms;
I wish that I had never seen land;
I wish I were a-chasing sperms
Abaft the nor'east coast of Greenland."
Yet on his latest cruise, 'tween whales
The Captain wrote a book most charming.
It's called--and it is having sales--
"Some Practical Advice on Farming."
T.H. SMITH
Tom Henry Smith I long have known
Although he really is a hermit--
At least, Tom Henry lives alone,
And that's what people always term it.
Tom Henry never is annoyed
By fashion's change. He wears a collar
Constructed out of celluloid.
His hats ne'er cost above a dollar.
Tom loves about his room to mess,
And cook a sausage at the fireplace.
It doesn't serve to help his dress--
Grease spatters over the entire place.
Tom Henry likes to read a book,
And writes a little for the papers,
But scarcely ever leaves his nook,
And takes no part in social capers.
Now Tom has penned a book himself.
I hope he'll never feel compunctions!
Its title is--it's on my shelf--
"Pink Teas and Other Social Functions."
RUTH JONES
I've found the Joneses pleasant folk--
I've watched them all their children fetch up.
Jones loves to have a quiet smoke--
_She's_ famous for tomato catchup.
Ruth is their eldest--now fifteen,
A tallish girl with pleasing features.
Each school-day morn she can be seen
As she trips by to meet her teachers.
A serious-minded miss, you'd say,
Not given much to school-girl follies.
She still sometimes will slip away
To spend a half-hour with her dollies.
She's learned to sweep, to sew, to bake--
She's quite a helpmate to her mother.
On Saturday she loves to take
The go-cart out with little brother.
At writing now she bids for fame--
Her book a great success is reckoned.
"By Right of Flashing Sword," its name,
A strong romance of James the Second.
THE LOST WORD
BY JOHN PAUL
Seated one day at the typewriter,
I was weary of a's and e's,
And my fingers wandered wildly,
Over the consonant keys.
I know not what I was writing,
With that thing so like a pen;
But I struck one word astounding--
Unknown to the speech of men.
It flooded the sense of my verses,
Like the break of a tinker's dam,
And I felt as one feels when the printer
Of your "infinite calm" makes clam.
It mixed up s's and x's
Like an alphabet coming to strife.
It seemed the discordant echo
Of a row between husband and wife.
It brought a perplexed meaning
Into my perfect piece,
And set the machinery creaking
As though it were scant of grease.
I have tried, but I try it vainly,
The one last word to divine
Which came from the keys of my typewriter
And so would pass as mine.
It may be some other typewriter
Will produce that word again,
It may be, but only for others--
_I_ shall write henceforth with a pen.
THE DUTCHMAN WHO HAD THE "SMALL POX"
BY HENRY P. LELAND
Very dry, indeed, is the drive from Blackberry to Squash Point,--dry
even for New Jersey; and when you remember that it's fifty miles between
the two towns, its division into five drinks seems very natural. When
you are packed, three on one narrow seat, in a Jersey stage, it is
necessary.
A Jersey stage! It is not on record, but when Dante winds up his Tenth
"Canter" into the Inferno with--
Each, as his back was laden, came indeed
Or more or less contracted; and it seemed
As he who showed most patience in his look,
Wailing, exclaimed, "I can endure no more!"
the conclusion that he alluded to a crowded Jersey stage-load is
irresistible. A man with long legs, on a back seat, in one of these
vehicles, suffers like a snipe shut up in a snuff-box. For this reason,
the long-legged man should sit on the front seat with the driver; there,
like the hen-turkey who tried to sit on a hundred eggs, he can "spread
himself." The writer sat alongside the driver one morning, just at break
of day, as the stage drove out of Blackberry: he was a through passenger
to Squash Point. It was a very cold morning. In order to break the ice
for a conversation, he praised the fine points of an off horse. The
driver thawed:
"Ya-as; she's a goot hoss, und I knows how to trive him!" It was
evidently a case of mixed breed.
"Where is Wood, who used to drive this stage?"
"He be's lait up mit ter rummatiz sence yesterweek, und I trives for
him. So--" I went on reading a newspaper: a fellow-passenger, on a back
seat, not having the fear of murdered English on his hands, coaxed the
Dutch driver into a long conversation, much to the delight of a very
pretty Jersey-blue belle, who laughed so merrily that it was contagious;
and in a few minutes, from being like unto a conventicle, we were all as
wide awake as one of Christy's audiences. By sunrise we were in
excellent spirits, up to all sorts of fun; and when, a little later on,
our stage stopped at the first watering-place, the driver found himself
the center of a group of treaters to the distilled "juice of apples." It
is just as easy to say "apple-jack," and be done with it; but the
writer, being very anxious to form a style, cribs from all quarters. The
so oft-repeated expression "juice of the grape" has been for a long time
on his hands, and, wishing to work it up, he would have done it in this
case, only he fears the skepticism of his readers. By courtesy, they may
wink at the poetical license of a reporter of a public dinner who calls
turnip-juice and painted whisky "juice of the grape," but they would not
allow the existence, for one minute, of such application to the liquors
of a Jersey tavern. It's out of place.
"Here's a package to leave at Mr. Scudder's, the third house on the
left-hand side after you get into Jericho. What do you charge?" asked a
man who seemed to know the driver.
"Pout a leffy," answered he. Receiving the silver, he gathered up the
reins, and put the square package in the stage-box. Just as he started
the horses, he leaned his head out of the stage, and, looking back to
the man who gave him the package, shouted out the question:
"Ter fird haus on ter lef hant out of Yeriko?" The man didn't hear him,
but the driver was satisfied. On we went at a pretty good rate,
considering how heavy the roads were. Another tavern, more watering,
more apple-jack. Another long stretch of sand, and we were coming into
Jericho.
"Anypotty know ter Miss Scutter haus?" asked the driver, bracing his
feet on the mail-bag which lay in front of him, and screwing his head
round so as to face in. There seemed to be a consultation going on
inside the stage.
"I don't know nobody o' that name in Jericho. Do you, Lishe?" asked a
weather-beaten-looking man, who evidently "went by water," of another
one who apparently went the same way.
"There wos ole Square Gow's da'ter, she marri'd a Scudder; moved up here
some two years back. Come to think on't, guess she lives nigher to
Glass-house," answered Lishe.
The driver, finding he could get no light out of the passengers, seeing
a tall, raw-boned woman washing some clothes in front of a house, and
who flew out of sight as the stage flew in, handed me the reins as he
jumped from his seat and chased the fugitive, hallooing,--
"I'fe got der small pox, I'fe got der--" Here his voice was lost as he
dashed into the open door of the house. But in a minute he reappeared,
followed by a broom with an enraged woman annexed, and a loud voice
shouting out,--
"You git out of this! Clear yourself, quicker! I ain't goin' to have you
diseasin' honest folks, ef you have got the smallpox."
"I dells you I'fe got der small pox. Ton't you versteh? der SMALL POX!"
This time he shouted it out in capital letters!
"Clear out! I'll call the men-folks ef you don't clear;" and at once she
shouted, in a tip-top voice, "Ike, you Ike, where air you?"
Ike made his appearance on the full run.
"W-w-what's the matter, mother?"--_Miss_ Scudder his mother! I should
have been shocked, as I was on my first visit to New Jersey, if I had
not had a key to this. "That is a very pretty girl," I said on that
occasion to a Jersey-man; "who is she?"--"She's old _Miss_ Perrine's
da'ter," was the reply. I looked at the innocent victim of man's
criminal conduct with commiseration. "What a pity!" I remarked.
"Not such a very great pity," said Jersey, eying me very severely. "I
reckon old man Perrine's got as big a cedar-swamp as you, or I either,
would like to own."
"Her grandfather you speak of?"
"No, I don't: I'm talking 'bout her father,--he that married Abe Simm's
da'ter and got a power of land by it; and that gal, their da'ter, one of
these days will step right into them swamps."
"Oh," I replied, "_Mrs._ Perrine's daughter," accenting the "Missis!"
"Mussus or Miss, it's all the same in Jersey," he answered.
Knowing this, Ike's appeal was intelligible. To proceed with our story,
the driver, very angry by this time, shouted,--
"I dells you oonst more for der last dime. I'fe got der small pox! unt
Mishter Ellis he gifs me a leffy to gif der small pox to Miss Scutter;
unt if dat vrow is Miss Scutter, I bromised to gif her ter small pox."
It was _Miss_ Scudder, and I explained to her that it was a _small box_
he had for her. The affair was soon settled as regarded its delivery,
but not as regards the laughter and shouts of the occupants of the old
stage-coach as we rolled away from Jericho. The driver joined in,
although he had no earthly idea as to its cause, and added not a little
to it by saying, in a triumphant tone of voice,--
"I vos pound to gif ter olt voomans ter small pox!"
WALK
BY WILLIAM DEVERE
Up the dusty road from Denver town
To where the mines their treasures hide,
The road is long, and many miles,
The golden styre and town divide.
Along this road one summer's day,
There toiled a tired man,
Begrimed with dust, the weary way
He cussed, as some folks can.
The stranger hailed a passing team
That slowly dragged its load along;
His hail roused up the teamster old,
And checked his merry song.
"Say-y, stranger!" "Wal, whoap."
"Ken I walk behind your load
A spell in this road?"
"Wal, no, yer can't walk, but git
Up on this seat an' ride; git up hyer."
"Nop, that ain't what I want,
Fur it's in yer dust, that's like a smudge,
I want to trudge, for I desarve it."
"Wal, pards, I ain't no hog, an' I don't
Own this road, afore nor 'hind.
So jest git right in the dust
An' walk, if that's the way yer 'clined.
Gee up, ger lang!" the driver said.
The creaking wagon moved amain,
While close behind the stranger trudged,
And clouds of dust rose up again.
The teamster heard the stranger talk
As if two trudged behind his van,
Yet, looking 'round, could only spy
A single lonely man.
Yet heard the teamster words like these
Come from the dust as from a cloud,
For the weary traveler spoke his mind.
His thoughts he uttered loud,
And this the burden of his talk:
"Walk, now, you ----, walk!
Not the way you went to Denver?
Walk, ---- ----! Jest walk!
"Went up in the mines an' made yer stake,
'Nuff to take yer back to ther state
Whar yer wur born.
Whar'n hell's yer corn?
Wal, walk, you ----, walk!
"Dust in yer eyes, dust in yer nose,
Dust down yer throat, and thick
On yer clothes. Can't hardly talk?
I know it, but walk, you ----, walk!
"What did yer do with all yer tin?
Ya-s, blew every cent of it in;
Got drunk, got sober, got drunk agin.
Wal, walk, ----! Jest walk.
"What did yer do? What didn't yer do?
Why, when ye war thar, yer gold-dust flew,
Yer thought it fine to keep op'nin' wine.
Now walk, you ----, walk.
"Stop to drink? What--water?
Why, thar
Water with you warn't anywhere.
'Twas wine, Extra Dry. Oh,
You flew high--
Now walk, you ----, walk.
"Chokes yer, this dust? Wal, that
Ain't the wust,
When yer get back whar the
Diggins are
No pick, no shovel, no pan;
Wal, yer a healthy man,
Walk--jest walk."
The fools don't all go to Denver town,
Nor do they all from the mines come down.
'Most all of us have in our day--
In some sort of shape, some kind of way--
Painted the town with the old stuff,
Dipped in stocks or made some bluff,
Mixed wines, old and new,
Got caught in wedlock by a shrew,
Stayed out all night, tight,
Rolled home in the morning light,
With crumpled tie and torn clawhammer,
'N' woke up next day with a katzenjammer,
And walked, oh ----, how we walked.
Now, don't try to yank every bun,
Don't try to have all the fun,
Don't think that you know it all,
Don't think real estate won't fall,
Don't try to bluff on an ace,
Don't get stuck on a pretty face,
Don't believe every jay's talk--
For if you do you can bet you'll walk!
MR. DOOLEY ON GOLD-SEEKING
BY FINLEY PETER DUNNE
"Well, sir," said Mr. Hennessy, "that Alaska's th' gr-reat place. I
thought 'twas nawthin' but an iceberg with a few seals roostin' on it,
an' wan or two hundherd Ohio politicians that can't be killed on account
iv th' threaty iv Pawrs. But here they tell me 'tis fairly smothered in
goold. A man stubs his toe on th' ground, an' lifts th' top off iv a
goold mine. Ye go to bed at night, an' wake up with goold fillin' in
ye'er teeth."
"Yes," said Mr. Dooley, "Clancy's son was in here this mornin', an' he
says a frind iv his wint to sleep out in th' open wan night, an' whin he
got up his pants assayed four ounces iv goold to th' pound, an' his
whiskers panned out as much as thirty dollars net."
"If I was a young man an' not tied down here," said Mr. Hennessy, "I'd
go there: I wud so."
"I wud not," said Mr. Dooley. "Whin I was a young man in th' ol'
counthry, we heerd th' same story about all America. We used to set be
th' tur-rf fire o' nights, kickin' our bare legs on th' flure an'
wishin' we was in New York, where all ye had to do was to hold ye'er hat
an' th' goold guineas'd dhrop into it. An' whin I got to be a man, I
come over here with a ham and a bag iv oatmeal, as sure that I'd return
in a year with money enough to dhrive me own ca-ar as I was that me name
was Martin Dooley. An' that was a cinch.
"But, faith, whin I'd been here a week, I seen that there was nawthin'
but mud undher th' pavement,--I larned that be means iv a pick-axe at
tin shillin's th' day,--an' that, though there was plenty iv goold, thim
that had it were froze to it; an' I come west, still lookin' f'r mines.
Th' on'y mine I sthruck at Pittsburgh was a hole f'r sewer pipe. I made
it. Siven shillin's th' day. Smaller thin New York, but th' livin' was
cheaper, with Mon'gahela rye at five a throw, put ye'er hand around th'
glass.
"I was still dreamin' goold, an' I wint down to Saint Looey. Th' nearest
I come to a fortune there was findin' a quarther on th' sthreet as I
leaned over th' dashboord iv a car to whack th' off mule. Whin I got to
Chicago, I looked around f'r the goold mine. They was Injuns here thin.
But they wasn't anny mines I cud see. They was mud to be shovelled an'
dhrays to be dhruv an' beats to be walked. I choose th' dhray; f'r I was
niver cut out f'r a copper, an' I'd had me fill iv excavatin'. An' I
dhruv th' dhray till I wint into business.
"Me experyence with goold minin' is it's always in th' nex' county. If I
was to go to Alaska, they'd tell me iv th' finds in Seeberya. So I think
I'll stay here. I'm a silver man, annyhow; an' I'm contint if I can see
goold wanst a year, whin some prominent citizen smiles over his
newspaper. I'm thinkin' that ivry man has a goold mine undher his own
dure-step or in his neighbor's pocket at th' farthest."
"Well, annyhow," said Mr. Hennessy, "I'd like to kick up th' sod, an'
find a ton iv gold undher me fut."
"What wud ye do if ye found it?" demanded Mr. Dooley.
"I--I dinnaw," said Mr. Hennessy, whose dreaming had not gone this far.
Then, recovering himself, he exclaimed with great enthusiasm, "I'd throw
up me job an'--an' live like a prince."
"I tell ye what ye'd do," said Mr. Dooley. "Ye'd come back here an'
sthrut up an' down th' sthreet with ye'er thumbs in ye'er armpits; an'
ye'd dhrink too much, an' ride in sthreet ca-ars. Thin ye'd buy foldin'
beds an' piannies, an' start a reel estate office. Ye'd be fooled a good
deal an' lose a lot iv ye'er money, an' thin ye'd tighten up. Ye'd be in
a cold fear night an' day that ye'd lose ye'er fortune. Ye'd wake up in
th' middle iv th' night, dhreamin' that ye was back at th' gas-house
with ye'er money gone. Ye'd be prisidint iv a charitable society. Ye'd
have to wear ye'er shoes in th' house, an' ye'er wife'd have ye around
to rayciptions an' dances. Ye'd move to Mitchigan Avnoo, an' ye'd hire a
coachman that'd laugh at ye. Ye'er boys'd be joods an' ashamed iv ye,
an' ye'd support ye'er daughters' husbands. Ye'd rackrint ye'er tinants
an' lie about ye'er taxes. Ye'd go back to Ireland on a visit, an' put
on airs with ye'er cousin Mike. Ye'd be a mane, close-fisted,
onscrupulous ol' curmudgeon; an', whin ye'd die, it'd take haf ye'er
fortune f'r rayqueems to put ye r-right. I don't want ye iver to speak
to me whin ye get rich, Hinnissy."
"I won't," said Mr. Hennessy.
LOVE SONNETS OF A HOODLUM
BY WALLACE IRWIN
I
Say, will she treat me white, or throw me down,
Give me the glassy glare, or welcome hand,
Shovel me dirt, or treat me on the grand,
Knife me, or make me think I own the town?
Will she be on the level, do me brown,
Or will she jolt me lightly on the sand,
Leaving poor Willie froze to beat the band,
Limp as your grandma's Mother Hubbard gown?
I do not know, nor do I give a whoop,
But this I know: if she is so inclined
She can come play with me on our back stoop,
Even in office hours, I do not mind--
In fact I know I'm nice and good and ready
To get an option on her as my steady.
VIII
I sometimes think that I am not so good,
That there are foxier, warmer babes than I,
That Fate has given me the calm go-by
And my long suit is sawing mother's wood.
Then would I duck from under if I could,
Catch the hog special on the jump and fly
To some Goat Island planned by destiny
For dubs and has-beens and that solemn brood.
But spite of bug-wheels in my cocoa tree,
The trade in lager beer is still a-humming,
A schooner can be purchased for a V
Or even grafted if you're fierce at bumming.
My finish then less clearly do I see,
For lo! I have another think a-coming.
IX
Last night I tumbled off the water cart--
It was a peacherino of a drunk;
I put the cocktail market on the punk
And tore up all the sidewalks from the start.
The package that I carried was a tart
That beat Vesuvius out for sizz and spunk,
And when they put me in my little bunk
You couldn't tell my jag and me apart.
Oh! would I were the ice man for a space,
Then might I cool this red-hot cocoanut,
Corral the jim-jam bugs that madly race
Around the eaves that from my forehead jut--
Or will a carpenter please come instead
And build a picket fence around my head?
XII
Life is a combination hard to buck,
A proposition difficult to beat,
E'en though you get there Zaza with both feet,
In forty flickers, it's the same hard luck,
And you are up against it nip and tuck,
Shanghaied without a steady place to eat,
Guyed by the very copper on your beat
Who lays to jug you when you run amuck.
O Life! you give Yours Truly quite a pain.
On the T square I do not like your style;
For you are playing favorites again
And you have got me handicapped a mile.
Avaunt, false Life, with all your pride and pelf:
Go take a running jump and chase yourself!
XIV
O mommer! wasn't Mame a looty toot
Last night when at the Rainbow Social Club
She did the bunny hug with every scrub
From Hogan's Alley to the Dutchman's Boot,
While little Willie, like a plug-eared mute,
Papered the wall and helped absorb the grub,
Played nest-egg with the benches like a dub
When hot society was easy fruit!
Am I a turnip? On the strict Q.T.,
Why do my Trilbys get so ossified?
Why am I minus when it's up to me
To brace my Paris Pansy for a glide?
Once more my hoodoo's thrown the game and scored
A flock of zeros on my tally-board.
XXI
At noon to-day Murphy and Mame were tied.
A gospel huckster did the referee,
And all the Drug Clerks' Union loped to see
The queen of Minnie Street become a bride,
And that bad actor, Murphy, by her side,
Standing where Yours Despondent ought to be.
I went to hang a smile in front of me,
But weeps were in my glimmers when I tried.
The pastor murmured, "Two and two make one,"
And slipped a sixteen K on Mamie's grab;
And when the game was tied and all was done
The guests shied footwear at the bridal cab,
And Murphy's little gilt-roofed brother Jim
Snickered, "She's left her happy home for him."
HOW "RUBY" PLAYED
BY GEORGE W. BAGBY
(Jud Brownin, when visiting New York, goes to hear Rubinstein, and gives
the following description of his playing.)
Well, sir, he had the blamedest, biggest, catty-cornerdest pianner you
ever laid eyes on; somethin' like a distracted billiard-table on three
legs. The lid was hoisted, and mighty well it was. If it hadn't been,
he'd 'a' tore the entire inside clean out and shattered 'em to the four
winds of heaven.
_Played well?_ You bet he did; but don't interrupt me. When he first sit
down he 'peared to keer mighty little 'bout playin' and wisht he hadn't
come. He tweedle-leedled a little on a treble, and twoodle-oodled some
on the base,--just foolin' and boxin' the thing's jaws for bein' in his
way. And I says to a man sittin' next to me, says I, "What sort of fool
playin' is that?" And he says, "Heish!" But presently his hands
commenced chasin' one another up and down the keys, like a passel of
rats scamperin' through a garret very swift. Parts of it was sweet,
though, and reminded me of a sugar squirrel turnin' the wheel of a candy
cage.
"Now," I says to my neighbor, "he's showin' off. He thinks he's a-doin'
of it, but he ain't got no idee, no plan of nothin'. If he'd play me a
tune of some kind or other, I'd--"
But my neighbor says, "Heish!" very impatient.
I was just about to git up and go home, bein' tired of that
foolishness, when I heard a little bird waking up away off in the woods
and call sleepy-like to his mate, and I looked up and see that Rubin was
beginning to take some interest in his business, and I sit down again.
It was the peep of day. The light came faint from the east, the breezes
blowed gentle and fresh, some more birds waked up in the orchard, then
some more in the trees near the house, and all begun singin' together.
People began to stir, and the gal opened the shutters. Just then the
first beam of the sun fell upon the blossoms a leetle more, and it techt
the roses on the bushes, and the next thing it was broad day; the sun
fairly blazed, the birds sung like they'd split their little throats;
all the leaves was movin', and flashin' diamonds of dew, and the whole
wide world was bright and happy as a king. Seemed to me like there was a
good breakfast in every house in the land, and not a sick child or woman
anywhere. It was a fine mornin'.
And I says to my neighbor, "That's music, that is."
But he glared at me like he'd like to cut my throat.
Presently the wind turned; it begun to thicken up, and a kind of gray
mist came over things; I got low-spirited directly. Then a silver rain
began to fall. I could see the drops touch the ground; some flashed up
like long pearl ear-rings, and the rest rolled away like round rubies.
It was pretty, but melancholy. Then the pearls gathered themselves into
long strands and necklaces, and then they melted into thin silver
streams, running between golden gravels, and then the streams joined
each other at the bottom of the hill, and made a brook that flowed
silent, except that you could kinder see the music, especially when the
bushes on the banks moved as the music went along down the valley. I
could smell the flowers in the meadow. But the sun didn't shine, nor the
birds sing: it was a foggy day, but not cold.
The most curious thing was the little white angel-boy, like you see in
pictures, that run ahead of the music brook and led it on, and on, away
out of the world, where no man ever was, certain, I could see the boy
just as plain as I see you. Then the moonlight came, without any sunset,
and shone on the graveyards, where some few ghosts lifted their hands
and went over the wall, and between the black, sharp-top trees splendid
marble houses rose up, with fine ladies in the lit-up windows, and men
that loved 'em, but could never get anigh 'em, who played on guitars
under the trees, and made me that miserable I could have cried, because
I wanted to love somebody, I don't know who, better than the men with
the guitars did.
Then the sun went down, it got dark, the wind moaned and wept like a
lost child for its dead mother, and I could 'a' got up then and there
and preached a better sermon than any I ever listened to. There wasn't a
thing in the world left to live for, not a blame thing, and yet I didn't
want the music to stop one bit. It was happier to be miserable than to
be happy without being miserable. I couldn't understand it. I hung my
head and pulled out my handkerchief, and blowed my nose loud to keep me
from cryin'. My eyes is weak anyway; I didn't want anybody to be
a-gazin' at me a-sniv'lin', and it's nobody's business what I do with my
nose. It's mine. But some several glared at me mad as blazes. Then, all
of a sudden, old Rubin changed his tune. He ripped out and he rared, he
tipped and he tared, he pranced and he charged like the grand entry at a
circus. 'Peared to me that all the gas in the house was turned on at
once, things got so bright, and I hilt up my head, ready to look any man
in the face, and not afraid of nothin'. It was a circus and a brass band
and a big ball all goin' on at the same time. He lit into them keys like
a thousand of brick; he give 'em no rest day or night; he set every
livin' joint in me a-goin', and, not bein' able to stand it no longer, I
jumped spang onto my seat, and jest hollered,--
_"Go it, my Rube!"_
Every blame man, woman and child in the house riz on me, and shouted,
"Put him out! put him out!"
"Put your great-grandmother's grizzly gray greenish cat into the middle
of next month!" I says. "Tech me if you dare! I paid my money, and you
jest come anigh me!"
With that some several policemen run up, and I had to simmer down. But I
would 'a' fit any fool that laid hands on me, for I was bound to hear
Ruby out or die.
He had changed his tune again. He hop-light ladies and tip-toed fine
from end to end of the key-board. He played soft and low and solemn. I
heard the church bells over the hills. The candles of heaven was lit,
one by one; I saw the stars rise. The great organ of eternity began to
play from the world's end to the world's end, and all the angels went to
prayers.... Then the music changed to water, full of feeling that
couldn't be thought, and began to drop--drip, drop--drip, drop, clear
and sweet, like tears of joy falling into a lake of glory. It was
sweeter than that. It was as sweet as a sweet-heart sweetened with white
sugar mixed with powdered silver and seed-diamonds. It was too sweet. I
tell you the audience cheered. Rubin he kinder bowed, like he wanted to
say, "Much obleeged, but I'd rather you wouldn't interrup' me."
He stopped a moment or two to catch breath. Then he got mad. He run his
fingers through his hair, he shoved up his sleeve, he opened his
coat-tails a leetle further, he drug up his stool, he leaned over, and,
sir, he just went for that old pianner. He slapped her face, he boxed
her jaws, he pulled her nose, he pinched her ears, and he scratched her
cheeks, until she fairly yelled. He knocked her down and he stamped on
her shameful. She bellowed like a bull, she bleated like a calf, she
howled like a hound, she squealed like a pig, she shrieked like a rat,
and _then_ he wouldn't let her up. He run a quarter stretch down the low
grounds of the base, till he got clean in the bowels of the earth, and
you heard thunder galloping after thunder through the hollows and caves
of perdition; and then he fox-chased his right hand with his left till
he got 'way out of the treble into the clouds, whar the notes was finer
than the p'ints of cambric needles, and you couldn't hear nothin' but
the shadders of 'em. And _then_ he wouldn't let the old pianner go. He
for'ard two'd, he crost over first gentleman, he chassade right and
left, back to your places, he all hands'd aroun', ladies to the right,
promenade all, in and out, here and there, back and forth, up and down,
perpetual motion, double twisted and turned and tacked and tangled into
forty-eleven thousand double bow-knots.
By jinks! it was a mixtery. And then he wouldn't let the old pianner go.
He fetcht up his right wing, he fetcht up his left wing, he fetcht up
his center, he fetcht up his reserves. He fired by file, he fired by
platoons, by company, by regiments, and by brigades. He opened his
cannon,--siege-guns down thar, Napoleons here, twelve-pounders
yonder,--big guns, little guns, middle-sized guns, round shot, shells,
shrapnels, grape, canister, mortar, mines and magazines, every livin'
battery and bomb a-goin' at the same time. The house trembled, the
lights danced, the walls shuk, the floor come up, the ceilin' come down,
the sky split, the ground rocked--heavens and earth, creation, sweet
potatoes, Moses, ninepences, glory, tenpenny nails, Samson in a
'simmon-tree, Tump Tompson in a tumbler-cart, roodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-
ruddle-uddle-uddle-uddle--raddle-addle-eedle--riddle-iddle-iddle-
iddle--reedle-eedle-eedle-eedle--p-r-r-r-rlank! Bang!!! lang! perlang!
p-r-r-r-r-r!! Bang!!!!
With that bang! he lifted himself bodily into the a'r, and he come down
with his knees, his ten fingers, his ten toes, his elbows, and his nose,
striking every single solitary key on the pianner at the same time. The
thing busted and went off into seventeen hundred and fifty-seven
thousand five hundred and forty-two hemi-demi-semi-quivers, and I know'd
no mo'.
When I come to, I were under ground about twenty foot, in a place they
call Oyster Bay, treatin' a Yankee that I never laid eyes on before and
never expect to ag'in. Day was breakin' by the time I got to the St.
Nicholas Hotel, and I pledge you my word I did not know my name. The man
asked me the number of my room, and I told him, "Hot music on the
half-shell for two!"
PLAGIARISM
BY JOHN B. TABB
If Poe from Pike The Raven stole,
As his accusers say,
Then to embody Adam's soul,
God _plagiarised_ the clay.
GO LIGHTLY, GAL
(THE CAKE-WALK)
BY ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON
Sweetes' li'l honey in all dis lan',
Come erlong yer an' gimme yo' han',
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Cawn all shucked an' de barn flo' clear,
Come erlong, come erlong, come erlong, my dear,
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Fiddles dey callin' us high an' fine,
"Time fer de darnsin', come an' jine,"
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
My pooty li'l honey, but you is sweet!
An' hit's clap yo' han's an' shake yo' feet,
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Hit's cut yo' capers all down de line,
Den mek yo' manners an' tiptoe fine,
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Oh, hit's whu'll yo' pardners roun' an' roun',
Twel you hyst dey feet clean off de groun',
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Oh, hit's tu'n an' twis' all roun' de flo',
Fling out yo' feet behime, befo',
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Gre't Lan' o' Goshen! but you is spry!
Kain't none er de urr gals spring so high,
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Oh, roll yo' eyes an' wag yo' haid
An' shake yo' bones twel you nigh most daid,
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Doan' talk ter me 'bout gittin' yo' bref,
Gwine darnse dis out ef hit cause my def!
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Um-humph! done darnse all de urr folks down!
Skip erlong, honey, jes' one mo' roun'!
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Fiddles done played twel de strings all break!
Come erlong, honey, jes' one mo' shake,
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Now teck my arm an' perawd all roun',
So dey see whar de _sho'-nuff_ darnsers foun',
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
Den gimme yo' han' an' we quit dish yer,
Come erlong, come erlong, come erlong, my dear,
Go lightly, gal, go lightly!
THE GOLFER'S RUBAIYAT[1]
BY H.W. BOYNTON
Wake! for the sun has driven in equal flight
The stars before him from the Tee of Night,
And holed them every one without a miss,
Swinging at ease his gold-shod Shaft of Light.
Now the fresh Year, reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Pores on this Club and That with anxious eye,
And dreams of Rounds beyond the Rounds of Liars.
Come, choose your ball, and in the Fire of Spring
Your Red Coat, and your wooden Putter fling;
The Club of Time has but a little while
To waggle, and the Club is on the swing.
Whether at Musselburgh or Shinnecock,
In motley Hose or humbler motley Sock,
The Cup of Life is ebbing Drop by Drop,
Whether the Cup be filled with Scotch or Bock.
A Bag of Clubs, a Silver-Town or two,
A Flask of Scotch, a Pipe of Shag--and Thou
Beside me caddying in the Wilderness--
Ah, Wilderness were Paradise enow.
They say the Female and the Duffer strut
On sacred Greens where Morris used to put;
Himself a natural Hazard now, alas!
That nice hand quiet now, that great Eye shut.
I sometimes think that never springs so green
The Turf as where some Good Fellow has been,
And every emerald Stretch the Fair Green shows
His kindly Tread has known, his sure Play seen.
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Jamie and His, and heard great argument
Of Grip and Stance and Swing; but evermore
Found at the Exit but a Dollar spent.
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand sought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reaped:
"You hold it This Way, and you swing it So."
The swinging Brassie strikes; and, having struck,
Moves on: nor all your Wit or future Luck
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Stroke,
Nor from the Card a single Seven pluck.
And that inverted Ball they call the High--
By which the Duffer thinks to live or die,
Lift not your hands to IT for help, for it
As impotently froths as you or I.
Yon rising Moon that leads us Home again,
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising wait for us
At this same Turning--and for One in vain.
And when, like her, my Golfer, I have been
And am no more above the pleasant Green,
And you in your mild Journey pass the Hole
I made in One--ah! pay my Forfeit then!
[Footnote 1: By permission of Fox, Duffield and Company. From _The
Golfer's Rubaiyat_. Copyright, 1901, by Herbert S. Stone and Company.]
MR. DOOLEY ON REFORM CANDIDATES
BY FINLEY PETER DUNNE
"That frind iv ye'ers, Dugan, is an intilligent man," said Mr. Dooley.
"All he needs is an index an' a few illusthrations to make him a
bicyclopedja iv useless information."
"Well," said Mr. Hennessy, judiciously, "he ain't no Soc-rates an' he
ain't no answers-to-questions colum; but he's a good man that goes to
his jooty, an' as handy with a pick as some people are with a cocktail
spoon. What's he been doin' again ye?"
"Nawthin'," said Mr. Dooley, "but he was in here Choosday. 'Did ye
vote?' says I. 'I did,' says he. 'Which wan iv th' distinguished bunko
steerers got ye'er invalu'ble suffrage?' says I. 'I didn't have none
with me,' says he, 'but I voted f'r Charter Haitch,' says he. 'I've been
with him in six ilictions,' says he, 'an' he's a good man,' he says.
'D'ye think ye're votin' f'r th' best?' says I. 'Why, man alive,' I
says, 'Charter Haitch was assassinated three years ago,' I says. 'Was
he?' says Dugan. 'Ah, well, he's lived that down be this time. He was a
good man,' he says.
"Ye see, that's what thim rayform lads wint up again. If I liked
rayformers, Hinnissy, an' wanted f'r to see thim win out wanst in their
lifetime, I'd buy thim each a suit iv chilled steel, ar-rm thim with
raypeatin' rifles, an' take thim east iv State Sthreet an' south iv
Jackson Bullyvard. At prisint th' opinion that pre-vails in th' ranks
iv th' gloryous ar-rmy iv ray-form is that there ain't anny-thing worth
seein' in this lar-rge an' commodyous desert but th' pest-house an' the
bridewell. Me frind Willum J. O'Brien is no rayformer. But Willum J.
undherstands that there's a few hundherds iv thousands iv people livin'
in a part iv th' town that looks like nawthin' but smoke fr'm th' roof
iv th' Onion League Club that have on'y two pleasures in life, to
wur-ruk an' to vote, both iv which they do at th' uniform rate iv wan
dollar an' a half a day. That's why Willum J. O'Brien is now a sinitor
an' will be an aldherman afther next Thursdah, an' it's why other people
are sinding him flowers.
"This is th' way a rayform candydate is ilicted. Th' boys down town has
heerd that things ain't goin' r-right somehow. Franchises is bein'
handed out to none iv thim; an' wanst in a while a mimber iv th' club,
comin' home a little late an' thryin' to riconcile a pair iv r-round
feet with an embroidered sidewalk, meets a sthrong ar-rm boy that pushes
in his face an' takes away all his marbles. It begins to be talked that
th' time has come f'r good citizens f'r to brace up an' do somethin',
an' they agree to nomynate a candydate f'r aldherman. 'Who'll we put
up?' says they. 'How's Clarence Doolittle?' says wan. 'He's laid up with
a coupon thumb, an' can't r-run.' 'An' how about Arthur Doheny?' 'I
swore an oath whin I came out iv colledge I'd niver vote f'r a man that
wore a made tie.' 'Well, thin, let's thry Willie Boye.' 'Good,' says th'
comity. 'He's jus' th' man f'r our money.' An' Willie Boye, after
thinkin' it over, goes to his tailor an' ordhers three dozen pairs iv
pants, an' decides f'r to be th' sthandard-bearer iv th' people. Musin'
over his fried eyesthers an' asparagus an' his champagne, he bets a polo
pony again a box of golf-balls he'll be ilicted unanimous; an' all th'
good citizens make a vow f'r to set th' alar-rm clock f'r half-past
three on th' afthernoon iv iliction day, so's to be up in time to vote
f'r th' riprisintitive iv pure gover'mint.
"'Tis some time befure they comprehind that there ar-re other candydates
in th' field. But th' other candydates know it. Th' sthrongest iv
thim--his name is Flannigan, an' he's a re-tail dealer in wines an'
liquors, an' he lives over his establishment. Flannigan was nomynated
enthusyastically at a prim'ry held in his bar-rn; an' befure Willie Boye
had picked out pants that wud match th' color iv th' Austhreelyan ballot
this here Flannigan had put a man on th' day watch, tol' him to speak
gently to anny raygistered voter that wint to sleep behind th' sthove,
an' was out that night visitin' his frinds. Who was it judged th' cake
walk? Flannigan. Who was it carrid th' pall? Flannigan. Who was it sthud
up at th' christening? Flannigan. Whose ca-ards did th' grievin' widow,
th' blushin' bridegroom, or th' happy father find in th' hack?
Flannigan's. Ye bet ye'er life. Ye see Flannigan wasn't out f'r th' good
iv th' community. Flannigan was out f'r Flannigan an' th' stuff.
"Well, iliction day come around; an' all th' imminent frinds iv good
gover'mint had special wires sthrung into th' club, an' waited f'r th'
returns. Th' first precin't showed 28 votes f'r Willie Boye to 14 f'r
Flannigan. 'That's my precin't,' says Willie. 'I wondher who voted thim
fourteen?' 'Coachmen,' says Clarence Doolittle. 'There are thirty-five
precin'ts in this ward,' says th' leader iv th' rayform ilimint. 'At
this rate, I'm sure iv 440 meejority. Gossoon,' he says, 'put a keg iv
sherry wine on th' ice,' he says. 'Well,' he says, 'at last th'
community is relieved fr'm misrule,' he says. 'To-morrah I will start in
arrangin' amindmints to th' tariff schedool an' th' ar-bitration
threety,' he says. 'We must be up an' doin',' he says. 'Hol' on there,'
says wan iv th' comity. 'There must be some mistake in this fr'm th'
sixth precin't,' he says. 'Where's the sixth precin't?' says Clarence.
'Over be th' dumps,' says Willie. 'I told me futman to see to that. He
lives at th' cor-ner iv Desplaines an' Bloo Island Av'noo on Goose's
Island,' he says. 'What does it show?' 'Flannigan, three hundherd an'
eighty-five; Hansen, forty-eight; Schwartz, twinty; O'Malley, sivinteen;
Casey, ten; O'Day, eight; Larsen, five; O'Rourke, three; Mulcahy, two;
Schmitt, two; Moloney, two; Riordon, two; O'Malley, two; Willie Boye,
wan.' 'Gintlemin,' says Willie Boye, arisin' with a stern look in his
eyes, 'th' rascal has bethrayed me. Waither, take th' sherry wine off
th' ice. They'se no hope f'r sound financial legislation this year. I'm
goin' home.'
"An', as he goes down th' sthreet, he hears a band play an' sees a
procission headed be a calceem light; an', in a carredge, with his plug
hat in his hand an' his di'mond makin' th' calceem look like a piece iv
punk in a smokehouse, is Flannigan, payin' his first visit this side iv
th' thracks."
AN EVENING MUSICALE
BY MAY ISABEL FISK
Scene--_A conventional, but rather over-decorated, drawing-room. Grand
piano drawn conspicuously to center of floor. Rows of camp-chairs. It is
ten minutes before the hour of invitation._ The Hostess, _a large woman,
is costumed in yellow satin, embroidered in spangles. Her diamonds are
many and of large size. She is seated on the extreme edge of a chair,
struggling with a pair of very long gloves. She looks flurried and
anxious._ Poor Relative, _invited as a "great treat," sits opposite. Her
expression is timid and apprehensive. They are the only occupants of the
room._
HOSTESS--No such thing, Maria. You look all right. Plain black is always
very genteel. Nothing I like so well for evening, myself. Just keep your
face to the wall as much as you can, and the worn places will never
show. You can take my ecru lace scarf, if you wish, and that will cover
most of the spots. I don't mean my new scarf--the one I got two years
ago. It's a little torn, but it won't matter--for you. I think you will
find it on the top shelf of the store-room closet on the third floor. If
you put a chair on one of the trunks, you can easily reach it. Just wait
a minute, till I get these gloves on; I want you to button them. I do
hope I haven't forgotten anything. Baron von Gosheimer has promised to
come. I have told everybody. It would be terrible if he should
disappoint me.
MASCULINE VOICE FROM ABOVE--Sarah, where the devil have you put my
shirts? Everything is upside down in my room, and I can't find them. I
pulled every blessed thing out of the chiffonier and wardrobe, and
they're not there!
HOSTESS--Oh, Henry! You _must_ hurry--I'm going to use your room for the
gentlemen's dressing-room, and it's time now for people to come. You
_must_ hurry.
HOST (_from above, just as front door opens, admitting_ Baron von
Gosheimer _and two women guests_)--Where the devil are my shirts?
HOSTESS (_unconscious of arrivals_)--Under the bed in my room. Hurry!
(HOST, _in bath gown and slippers, dashes madly into wife's room, and
dives under bed as women guests enter. Unable to escape, he crawls
farther beneath bed. His feet remain visible. Women guests discover
them._)
GUESTS (_in chorus_)--Burglars! burglars! Help! help!
(Baron von Gosheimer, _ascending to the next floor, hears them and
hastens to the rescue._)
BARON--Don't be alarmed, ladies. Has either of you a poker? No? That is
to be deplored. (_Catches_ Host _by heels and drags him out. Tableau._)
HOSTESS (to Poor Relative, _giving an extra tug at her gloves_)--There,
it's all burst out on the side! That stupid saleslady said she knew they
would be too small. Oh, dear, I'm that upset! And these Louis Quinze
slippers are just murdering me. I wish it were all over.
(_Enter_ Baron von Gosheimer _and women guests._)
HOSTESS--Dear baron, how good of you! I was just saying, if you didn't
come I should wish my musicale in Jericho. And, now that you are here, I
don't care if any one else comes or not. (_To women guests._) How d'ye
do? I must apologize for Mr. Smythe--he's been detained down-town. He
just telephoned me. He'll be in later. Do sit down; it's just as cheap
as standing, I always say, and it does save your feet. You ladies can
find seats over in the corner. (_Detaining_ Baron.) Dear baron--(_Enter
guests._)
GUEST--So glad you have a clear evening. Now, when _we_ gave _our_
affair, it _poured_. Of course, _we_ had a crowd, just the same. People
_always_ come to _us_, whether it rains or not. (_Takes a seat. Guests
begin to arrive in numbers._)
HOSTESS--So sweet of you to come!
GUEST--So glad you have a pleasant evening. I am sure to have a bad
night whenever I entertain--
HOSTESS--(_to another guest_)--So delightful of you to come!
GUEST--Such a perfect evening! I'm _so_ glad. I said as we started out,
"Now, this time, Mrs. Smythe can't help but have plenty of people.
Whenever I entertain, it's sure to--" (_More guests._)
(_Telegram arrives, announcing that the prima donna has a sore throat,
and will be unable to come. Time passes._)
MALE GUEST (_to another_)--Well, I wish to heaven, something would be
doing soon. This is the deadest affair I was ever up against.
OMNIPRESENT JOKER (_greeting acquaintance_)--Hello, old man!--going to
sing to-night?
ACQUAINTANCE--Oh, yes, going to sing a solo.
JOKER--So low you can't hear it? Ha, ha! (_Guests near by groan._)
VOICE (_overheard_)--Madame Cully? My dear, she always tells you that
you haven't half enough material, and makes you get yards more. Besides,
she never sends your pieces back, though I have--
FAT OLD LADY (_to neighbor_)--I never was so warm in my life! I can't
imagine why people invite you, just to make you uncomfortable. Now, when
I entertain, I have the windows open for hours before any one comes.
JOKER (_aside_)--That's why she always has a frost! Ha, ha!
(HOST _enters, showing traces of hasty toilette--face red, and a
razor-cut on chin._)
HOST (_rubbing his hands, and endeavoring to appear at ease and
facetious_)--Well, how d'ye do, everybody! Sorry to be late on such an
auspicious--
JOKER (_interrupting_)--Suspicious! Ha, ha!
HOST--occasion. I hope you are all enjoying yourselves.
CHORUS OF GUESTS--Yes, indeed!
HOSTESS--'Sh, 'sh, 'sh! I have a great disappointment for you all. Here
is a telegram from my _best_ singer, saying she is sick, and can't come.
Now, we will have the pleasure of listening to Miss Jackson. Miss
Jackson is a pupil of Madame Parcheesi, of Paris. (_Singer whispers to
her._) Oh, I beg your pardon! It's Madame _Mar_cheesi.
DEAF OLD GENTLEMAN (_seated by piano, talking to pretty girl_)--I'd
rather listen to you than hear this caterwauling. (Old Gentleman _is
dragged into corner and silenced._)
YOUNG WOMAN (_singing_)--"Why do I sing? I know not, I know not! I can
not help but sing. Oh, why do I sing?"
(_Guests moan softly and demand of one another_, Why does she sing?)
WOMAN GUEST (_to another_)--Isn't that just the way?--their relatives
are always dying, and it's sure to be wash-day or just when you expect
company to dinner, and off they go to the funeral--
(Butler _appears with trayful of punch-glasses._)
MALE GUEST (_to another_)--Thank the Lord! here's relief in sight. Let's
drown our troubles.
THE OTHER--It's evident you haven't sampled the Smythes' punch before. I
tell you it's a crime to spoil a thirst with this stuff. Well, here's
how.
WOMAN GUEST (_to neighbor_)--I never saw Mrs. Smythe looking quite so
hideous and atrociously vulgar before, did you?
NEIGHBOR--Never! Why did we come?
VOICE (_overheard_)--The one in the white-lace gown and all those
diamonds?
ANOTHER VOICE--Yes. Well, you know it was common talk that before he
married her--
HOSTESS--'Sh, 'sh, 'sh! Signor Padrella has offered to play some of his
own compositions, but I thought you would all rather hear something
familiar by one of the real composers--Rubens or Chopin--Chopinhauer, I
think--
(Pianist _plunges wildly into something._)
VOICE (_during a lull in the music_)--First, you brown an onion in the
pan, then you chop the cabbage--
GUEST (_in the dressing-room, just arriving, to another_)--Yes, we are
awfully late, too, but I always say you never can be too late at one of
the Smythes' horrors.
THIN YOUNG WOMAN (_in limp pink gown and string of huge pearls, who has
come to recite_)--I'm awfully nervous, and I do believe I'm getting
hoarse. Mama, you didn't forget the lemon juice and sugar? (_Drinks from
bottle._) Now, where are my bronchial troches? Don't you think I could
stand just a little more rouge? I think it's a shame I'm not going to
have footlights. Remember, you are not to prompt me, unless I look at
you. You will get me all mixed up, if you do. (_They descend._)
HOSTESS (_to elocutionist_)--Why, I thought you were never coming! I
wanted you to fill in while people were taking their seats. The guests
always make so much noise, and the singers hate it. Now, what did you
say you would require--an egg-beater and a turnip, wasn't it? Oh, no!
That's for the young man who is going to do the tricks. I remember. Are
you all ready?
ELOCUTIONIST (_in a trembling voice_)--Ye-es.
HOSTESS--'Sh, 'sh, 'sh!
ELOCUTIONIST--_Aux Italiens._
"At Paris it was, at the opera there,
And she looked like--"
GUEST (_to another_)--Thirty cents, old chap! I tell you, there's
nothing will knock you out quicker than--
HOSTESS--'Sh, 'sh, 'sh!
(_Young woman finishes, and retires amidst subdued applause. Reappears
immediately and gives "The Maniac."_)
HOSTESS--As I have been disappointed in my best talent for this evening,
Mr. Briggs has kindly consented to do some of his parlor-magic tricks.
(Mr. Briggs _steps forward, a large, florid young man, wearing a "made"
dress-tie, the buckle of which crawls up the back of his collar._)
BRIGGS--Now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall have to ask you all to move
to the other side of the room. (_This is accomplished with muttered
uncomplimentary remarks concerning the magician._)
BRIGGS (_to Hostess_)--I must have the piano pushed to the further end.
I must have plenty of space. (_All the men guests are pressed into
service, and, with much difficulty the piano is moved._)
BRIGGS--Now, I want four large screens.
HOSTESS (_faintly_)--But I have only two!
BRIGGS--Well, then, get me a clothes-horse and a couple of sheets.
POOR RELATIVE--You know, Sarah, I used the last two when I made up my
bed in the children's nursery yesterday. I can easily get--
HOSTESS (_hastily_)--No, Maria, don't trouble. (_To guests_)--Perhaps,
some of you gentlemen wouldn't mind lending us your overcoats to cover
the clothes-horse?
CHORUS (_with great lack of enthusiasm_)--Of course! Delighted! (_They
go for coats._)
HOSTESS (_to Poor Relative_)--Maria, you get the clothes-horse. I think
it's in the laundry, or--Oh, I think it's in the cellar. Well, you look
till you find it. (_To Briggs_)--I got as many of the things you asked
for as I could remember. Will you read the list over?
BRIGGS--Turnip and egg-beater--
HOSTESS--Yes.
BRIGGS--Egg, large clock, jar of gold-fish, rabbit and empty barrel.
HOSTESS--I have the egg.
BRIGGS (_much annoyed_)--I particularly wanted the gold-fish, the clock
and the barrel.
(_Guests grow restless._)
Hostess--Couldn't you do a trick while we are waiting--one with the
egg-beater and turnip?
BRIGGS--No; I don't know one.
HOSTESS--Couldn't you make up one?
BRIGGS (_icily_)--Certainly not.
(_Gloom descends over the company, until the Poor Relative arrives,
staggering under the clothes-horse._)
CHORUS OF MEN GUESTS--Let me help you!
(_Improvised screen is finally arranged._ Briggs _performs "parlor
magic" for an hour. Guests, fidget, yawn and commence to drop away, one
by one._)
GUEST (_to Hostess_)--Really, we must tear ourselves away. Such a
delightful evening!--not a dull moment. And your punch--heavenly! Do ask
us again. Good night.
HOSTESS--Thank you so much! So good of you to come.
ANOTHER GUEST--Yes, we must go. I've had a perfectly dear time.
HOSTESS--So sorry you must go. So good of you to come. Good night.
IN THE DRESSING-ROOM
CHORUS OF GUESTS--Wasn't it awful?--Such low people!--Why did we ever
come--Parvenue!
ELOCUTIONIST--I was all right, wasn't I, mama? You noticed they never
clapped a bit until I'd walked the whole length of the room to my chair.
It just showed how wrought up they were. You nearly mixed me up, though,
prompting me in the wrong place; I--
HOSTESS (_throwing herself on sofa as door closes on last guest_)--Well,
I'm completely done up! (_To Poor Relative_)--Maria, run up to my room,
and get my red worsted bed-slippers. I can't stand these satin tortures
a minute longer. Entertaining is an awful strain. It's so hard trying
not to say the wrong thing at the right place. But, then, it certainly
went off beautifully. I could tell every one had such a good time!
COMIN' THU
BY ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON
Yer's a sinner comin' thu,
Crowd roun', bre'ren, sisters, too,
Sing wid all yo' might an' main,
He'p de sinner out er pain,
He's comin', comin' thu.
He bin "seekin'" dis long time,
He'p him cas' de foe behime,
Clap yo' han's an' sing an' shout,
He'p him cas' de debil out,
Le's wrassel him right thu.
Tu'rr side de Gate er Sin,
Year him kickin' ter git in,
Putt up prayers wid might an' main,
Dat he doesn' kick in vain,
Y'all kin pray him thu.
Heart a-bus'in' fer de right,
Debil hol'in' to him tight,
Year him swish dat forkéd tail,
See de sinner-man turn pale,
Come on an' he'p him thu.
Sinner hangin' 'bove de pit,
By a hya'r strotch over hit,
Debil hol' one eend an' shake,
Y'all kin see de sinner quake,
Quick, he'p dis man come thu.
Seize de ropes, now, ev'y man,
He'p de gospel ship ter lan',
One long pull an' one gre't shout,
Hallelu! We got him out,
De sinner done come thu!
AUNT DINAH'S KITCHEN
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned
logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive
certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No possible amount of
talent, or authority, or explanation could ever make her believe that
any other way was better than her own, or that the course she had
pursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified. This had
been a conceded point with her old mistress, Marie's mother; and "Miss
Marie," as Dinah always called her young mistress, even after her
marriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled
supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that
diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the
utmost inflexibility as to measure.
Dinah was the mistress of the whole art and mystery of excuse-making, in
all its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the cook can do
no wrong, and a cook in a Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and
shoulders on which to lay off every sin and frailty, so as to maintain
her own immaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner was a failure,
there were fifty indisputably good reasons for it, and it was the fault,
undeniably, of fifty other people, whom Dinah berated with unsparing
zeal.
But it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah's last
results. Though her mode of doing everything was peculiarly meandering
and circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to time and
place,--though her kitchen generally looked as if it had been arranged
by a hurricane blowing through it, and she had about as many places for
each cooking utensil as there were days in the year,--yet, if one could
have patience to wait her own good time, up would come her dinner in
perfect order, and in a style of preparation with which an epicure could
find no fault.
It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, who
required large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of
ease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking a
short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she always
kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of an
inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah's mode of invoking the
domestic Muses.
Seated around her were various members of that rising race with which a
Southern household abounds, engaged in shelling peas, peeling potatoes,
picking pin-feathers out of fowls, and other preparatory arrangements,
Dinah every once in a while interrupting her meditations to give a poke,
or a rap on the head, to some of the young operators, with the
pudding-stick that lay by her side. In fact, Dinah ruled over the woolly
heads of the younger members with a rod of iron, and seemed to consider
them born for no earthly purpose but to "save her steps," as she phrased
it. It was the spirit of the system under which she had grown up, and
she carried it out to its full extent.
Miss Ophelia, after passing on her reformatory tour through all the
other parts of the establishment, now entered the kitchen. Dinah had
heard, from various sources, what was going on, and resolved to stand on
defensive and conservative ground,--mentally determined to oppose and
ignore every new measure, without any actual and observable contest.
The kitchen was a large, brick-floored apartment, with a great
old-fashioned fireplace stretching along one side of it,--an arrangement
which St. Clair had vainly tried to persuade Dinah to exchange for the
convenience of a modern cook-stove. Not she. No Pusseyite, or
conservative of any school, was ever more inflexibly attached to
time-honored inconveniences than Dinah.
When St. Clair had first returned from the North, impressed with the
system and order of his uncle's kitchen arrangements, he had largely
provided his own with an array of cupboards, drawers, and various
apparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine illusion
that it would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her
arrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a
magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes
could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old
shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of
_vertu_, wherein her soul delighted.
When Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen, Dinah did not rise, but smoked on
in sublime tranquillity, regarding her movements obliquely out of the
corner of her eye, but apparently intent only on the operations around
her.
Miss Ophelia commenced opening a set of drawers.
"What is this drawer for, Dinah?" she said.
"It's handy for 'most anything, missis," said Dinah. So it appeared to
be. From the variety it contained Miss Ophelia pulled out first a fine
damask table-cloth stained with blood, having evidently been used to
envelop some raw meat.
"What's this, Dinah? You don't wrap up meat in your mistress's best
table-cloth?"
"Oh, Lor', missis, no; the towels was all a-missin', so I just did it. I
laid it out to wash that ar; that's why I put it thar."
"Shir'less!" said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to tumble over the
drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater and two or three nutmegs, a
Methodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn
and knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or
two gilded china saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin old
shoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up enclosing some small white
onions, several damask table-napkins, some coarse crash towels, some
twine and darning-needles, and several broken papers, from which sundry
sweet herbs were sifting into the drawer.
"Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah?" said Miss Ophelia, with the air
of one who "prayed for patience."
"Most anywhar, missis; there's some in that cracked tea-cup up there,
and there's some over in that ar cupboard."
"Here are some in the grater," said Miss Ophelia, holding them up.
"Laws, yes; I put 'em there this morning; I likes to keep my things
handy," said Dinah. "You Jake! what are you stopping for? You'll cotch
it! Be still, thar!" she added, with a dive of her stick at the
criminal.
"What's this?" said Miss Ophelia, holding up the saucer of pomade.
"Laws, it's my _har-grease_: I put it thar to have it handy."
"Do you use your mistress's best saucers for that?"
"Law! it was 'cause I was driv' and in sich a hurry. I was gwine to
change it this very day."
"Here are two damask table-napkins."
"Them table-napkins I put thar to get 'em washed out some day."
"Don't you have some place here on purpose for things to be washed?"
"Well, Mas'r St. Clair got dat ar chest, he said, for dat; but I likes
to mix up biscuit and hev my things on it some days, and then it ain't
handy a-liftin' up the lid."
"Why don't you mix your biscuits on the pastry-table, there?"
"Law, missis, it gets sot so full of dishes, and one thing and another,
der ain't no room, noways."
"But you should wash your dishes, and clear them away."
"Wash my dishes!" said Dinah, in a high key, as her wrath began to rise
over her habitual respect of manner. "What does ladies know 'bout work,
I want to know? When'd mas'r ever get his dinner, if I was to spend all
my time a-washin' and a-puttin' up dishes? Miss Marie never telled me
so, nohow."
"Well, here are these onions."
"Laws, yes!" said Dinah; "that _is_ whar I put 'em, now. I couldn't
'member. Them's particular onions I was a savin' for dis yer very stew.
I'd forgot they was in dat ar old flannel."
Miss Ophelia lifted out the sifting papers of sweet herbs. "I wish
missis wouldn't touch dem ar. I likes to keep my things where I knows
whar to go to 'em," said Dinah, rather decidedly.
"But you don't want these holes in the papers."
"Them's handy for siftin' on't out," said Dinah.
"But you see it spills all over the drawer."
"Laws, yes! if missis will go a-tumblin' things all up so, it will.
Missis has spilt lots dat ar way," said Dinah, coming uneasily to the
drawers. "If missis only will go up-sta'rs till my clarin'-up time
comes, I'll have everything right; but I can't do nothin' when ladies is
'round a-henderin'. You Sam, don't you gib de baby dat ar sugar-bowl!
I'll crack ye over, if ye don't mind!"
"I'm going through the kitchen, and going to put everything in order,
_once_, Dinah; and then I'll expect you to _keep_ it so."
"Lor', now, Miss 'Phelia, dat ar ain't no way for ladies to do. I never
did see ladies doin' no sich; my old missis nor Miss Marie never did,
and I don't see no kinder need on't." And Dinah stalked indignantly
about, while Miss Ophelia piled and sorted dishes, emptied dozens of
scattering bowls of sugar into one receptacle, sorted napkins,
table-cloths, and towels, for washing; washing, wiping and arranging
with her own hands, and with a speed and alacrity which perfectly amazed
Dinah.
"Lor', now! if dat ar de way dem Northern ladies do, dey ain't ladies
nohow," she said to some of her satellites, when at a safe
hearing-distance. "I has things as straight as anybody, when my
clarin'-up times comes; but I don't want ladies 'round a-henderin' and
gettin' my things all where I can't find 'em."
To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxysms of
reformation and arrangement, which she called "clarin'-up times," when
she would begin with great zeal and turn every drawer and closet wrong
side outward on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion
sevenfold more confounded. Then she would light her pipe and leisurely
go over her arrangements, looking things over and discoursing upon them;
making all the young fry scour most vigorously on the tin things, and
keeping up for several hours a most energetic state of confusion, which
she would explain to the satisfaction of all inquirers by the remark
that she was a "clarin'-up." "She couldn't hev things a-gwine on so as
they had been, and she was gwine to make these yer young ones keep
better order;" for Dinah herself, somehow, indulged the illusion that
she herself was the soul of order, and it was only the _young uns_, and
the everybody else in the house, that were the cause of anything that
fell short of perfection in this respect. When all the tins were
scoured, and the tables scrubbed snowy white, and everything that could
offend tucked out of sight in holes and corners, Dinah would dress
herself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high, brilliant Madras
turban, and tell all marauding "young uns" to keep out of the kitchen,
for she was gwine to have things kept nice. Indeed, these periodic
seasons were often an inconvenience to the whole household, for Dinah
would contract such an immoderate attachment to her scoured tin as to
insist upon it that it shouldn't be used again for any possible
purpose,--at least till the ardor of the "clarin'-up" period abated.
THE STRIKE AT HINMAN'S
BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE
Away back in the fifties, "Hinman's" was not only the best school in
Peoria, but it was the greatest school in the world. I sincerely thought
so then, and as I was a very lively part of it, I should know. Mr.
Hinman was the Faculty, and he was sufficiently numerous to demonstrate
cube root with one hand and maintain discipline with the other. Dear old
man; boys and girls with grandchildren love him to-day, and think of him
among their blessings. He was superintendent of public instruction,
board of education, school trustee, county superintendent, principal of
the high school and janitor. He had a pleasant smile, a genius for
mathematics, and a West Point idea of obedience and discipline. He
carried upon his person a grip that would make the imported malady which
mocks that name in these degenerate days, call itself Slack, in very
terror at having assumed the wrong title.
We used to have "General Exercises" on Friday afternoon. The most
exciting feature of this weekly frivolity consisted of a free-for-all
exercise in mental arithmetic. Mr. Hinman gave out lists of numbers,
beginning with easy ones and speaking slowly; each succeeding list he
dictated more rapidly and with ever-increasing complications of
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, until at last he was
giving them out faster than he could talk. One by one the pupils dropped
out of the race with despairing faces, but always at the closing
peremptory:
"Answer?"
At least a dozen hands shot into the air and as many voices shouted the
correct result. We didn't have many books, and the curriculum of an
Illinois school in those days was not academic; but two things the
children could do, they could spell as well as the dictionary and they
could handle figures. Some of the fellows fairly wallowed in them. I
didn't. I simply drowned in the shallowest pond of numbers that ever
spread itself on the page. As even unto this day I do the same.
Well, one year the Teacher introduced an innovation; "compositions" by
the girls and "speakin' pieces" by the boys. It was easy enough for the
girls, who had only to read the beautiful thought that "spring is the
pleasantest season of the year." Now and then a new girl, from the east,
awfully precise, would begin her essay--"spring is the most pleasant
season of the year," and her would we call down with derisive laughter,
whereat she walked to her seat, very stiffly, with a proud dry-eyed look
in her face, only to lay her head upon her desk when she reached it, and
weep silently until school closed. But "speakin' pieces" did not meet
with favor from the boys, save one or two good boys who were in training
by their parents for congressmen or presidents.
The rest of us, who were just boys, with no desire ever to be anything
else, endured the tyranny of compulsory oratory about a month, and then
resolved to abolish the whole business by a general revolt. Big and
little, we agreed to stand by each other, break up the new exercise, and
get back to the old order of things--the hurdle races in mental
arithmetic and the geographical chants which we could run and intone
together.
Was I a mutineer? Well, say, son, your Pa was a constituent conspirator.
He was in the color guard. You see, the first boy called on for a
declamation was to announce the strike, and as my name stood very
high--in the alphabetical roll of pupils--I had an excellent chance of
leading the assaulting column, a distinction for which I was not at all
ambitious, being a stripling of tender years, ruddy countenance, and
sensitive feelings. However, I stiffened the sinews of my soul, girded
on my armor by slipping an atlas back under my jacket and was ready for
the fray, feeling a little terrified shiver of delight as I thought that
the first lick Mr. Hinman gave me would make him think he had broken my
back.
The hour for "speakin' pieces," an hour big with fate, arrived on time.
A boy named Aby Abbott was called up ahead of me, but he happened to be
one of the presidential aspirants (he was mate on an Illinois river
steamboat, stern-wheeler at that, the last I knew of him), and of course
he flunked and "said" his piece--a sadly prophetic selection--"Mr.
President, it is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope."
We made such suggestive and threatening gestures at him, however, when
Mr. Hinman wasn't looking, that he forgot half his "piece," broke down
and cried. He also cried after school, a little more bitterly, and with
far better reason.
Then, after an awful pause, in which the conspirators could hear the
beating of each other's hearts, my name was called.
I sat still at my desk and said:
"I ain't goin' to speak no piece."
Mr. Hinman looked gently surprised and asked:
"Why not, Robert?"
I replied:
"Because there ain't goin' to be any more speakin' pieces."
The teacher's eyes grew round and big as he inquired:
"Who says there will not?"
I said, in slightly firmer tones, as I realized that the moment had come
for dragging the rest of the rebels into court:
"All of us boys!"
But Mr. Hinman smiled, and said quietly that he guessed there would be
"a little more speaking before the close of the session." Then laying
his hand on my shoulder, with most punctilious but chilling courtesy, he
invited me to the rostrum. The "rostrum" was twenty-five feet distant,
but I arrived there on schedule time and only touched my feet to the
floor twice on my way.
And then and there, under Mr. Hinman's judicious coaching, before the
assembled school, with feelings, nay, emotions which I now shudder to
recall, I did my first "song and dance." Many times before had I stepped
off a solo-cachuca to the staccato pleasing of a fragment of slate
frame, upon which my tutor was a gifted performer, but never until that
day did I accompany myself with words. Boy like, I had chosen for my
"piece" a poem sweetly expressive of those peaceful virtues which I most
heartily despised. So that my performance, at the inauguration of the
strike, as Mr. Hinman conducted the overture, ran something like this--
"Oh, not for me (whack) is the rolling (whack) drum,
Or the (whack, whack) trumpet's wild (whack) appeal! (Boo-hoo!)
Or the cry (swish--whack) of (boo-hoo-hoo!) war when the (whack) foe
is come (ouch!)
Or the (ow--wow!) brightly (whack) flashing (whack-whack) steel!
(wah-hoo, wah-hoo!)"
Words and symbols can not convey to the most gifted imagination the
gestures with which I illustrated the seven stanzas of this beautiful
poem. I had really selected it to please my mother, whom I had invited
to be present, when I supposed I would deliver it. But the fact that she
attended a missionary meeting in the Baptist church that afternoon made
me a friend of missions forever. Suffice it to say, then, that my
pantomime kept pace and time with Mr. Hinman's system of punctuation
until the last line was sobbed and whacked out. I groped my bewildered
way to my seat through a mist of tears and sat down gingerly and
sideways, inly wondering why an inscrutable providence had given to the
rugged rhinoceros the hide which the eternal fitness of things had
plainly prepared for the school-boy.
But I quickly forgot my own sorrow and dried my tears with laughter in
the enjoyment of the subsequent acts of the opera, as the chorus
developed the plot and action. Mr. Hinman, who had been somewhat gentle
with me, dealt firmly with the larger boy who followed, and there was a
scene of revelry for the next twenty minutes. The old man shook Bill
Morrison until his teeth rattled so you couldn't hear him cry. He hit
Mickey McCann, the tough boy from, the Lower Prairie, and Mickey ran out
and lay down in the snow to cool off. He hit Jake Bailey across the legs
with a slate frame, and it hurt so that Jake couldn't howl--he just
opened his mouth wide, held up his hands, gasped, and forgot his own
name. He pushed Bill Haskell into a seat and the bench broke.
He ran across the room and reached out for Lem Harkins, and Lem had a
fit before the old man touched him. He shook Dan Stevenson for two
minutes, and when he let him go, Dan walked around his own desk five
times before he could find it, and then he couldn't sit down without
holding on. He whipped the two Knowltons with a skate-strap in each hand
at the same time; the Greenwood family, five boys and a big girl, he
whipped all at once with a girl's skipping rope, and they raised such a
united wail that the clock stopped.
He took a twist in Bill Rodecker's front hair, and Bill slept with his
eyes open for a week. He kept the atmosphere of that school-room full of
dust, and splinters, and lint, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth,
until he reached the end of the alphabet and all hearts ached and
wearied of the inhuman strife and wicked contention. Then he stood up
before us, a sickening tangle of slate frame, strap, ebony ferule and
skipping rope, a smile on his kind old face, and asked, in clear,
triumphant tones:
"WHO says there isn't going to be any more speaking pieces?"
And every last boy in that school sprang to his feet; standing there as
one human being with one great mouth, we shrieked in concerted anguish:
"NOBODY DON'T!"
And your Pa, my son, who led that strike, has been "speakin' pieces"
ever since.
A NAUTICAL BALLAD
BY CHARLES E. CARRYL
A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the "Walloping Window-blind";
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain's mind.
The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow,
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
That he'd been in his bunk below.
"The boatswain's mate was very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement, too;
And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
While the captain tickled the crew.
And the gunner we had was apparently mad,
For he sat on the after rail,
And fired salutes with the captain's boots,
In the teeth of the booming gale.
"The captain sat in a commodore's hat
And dined in a royal way
On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
And gummery bread each day.
But the cook was Dutch and behaved as such;
For the diet he gave the crew
Was a number of tons of hot-cross buns
Prepared with sugar and glue.
"All nautical pride we laid aside,
And we cast the vessel ashore
On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
And the Rumbletumbunders roar.
And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
And shot at the whistling bee;
And the cinnamon-bats wore water-proof hats
As they danced in the sounding sea.
"On rubgub bark, from dawn to dark,
We fed, till we all had grown
Uncommonly shrunk,--when a Chinese junk
Came by from the torriby zone.
She was stubby and square, but we didn't much care,
And we cheerily put to sea;
And we left the crew of the junk to chew
The bark of the rubgub tree."
NATURAL PERVERSITIES
BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
I am not prone to moralize
In scientific doubt
On certain facts that Nature tries
To puzzle us about,--
For I am no philosopher
Of wise elucidation,
But speak of things as they occur,
From simple observation.
I notice _little_ things--to wit:--
I never missed a train
Because I didn't _run_ for it;
I never knew it rain
That my umbrella wasn't lent,--
Or, when in my possession,
The sun but wore, to all intent,
A jocular expression.
I never knew a creditor
To dun me for a debt
But I was "cramped" or "busted"; or
I never knew one yet,
When I had plenty in my purse,
To make the least invasion,--
As I, accordingly perverse,
Have courted no occasion.
Nor do I claim to comprehend
What Nature has in view
In giving us the very friend
To trust we oughtn't to.--
But so it is: The trusty gun
Disastrously exploded
Is always sure to be the one
We didn't think was loaded.
Our moaning is another's mirth,--
And what is worse by half,
We say the funniest thing on earth
And never raise a laugh:
Mid friends that love us overwell,
And sparkling jests and liquor,
Our hearts somehow are liable
To melt in tears the quicker.
We reach the wrong when most we seek
The right; in like effect,
We stay the strong and not the weak--
Do most when we neglect.--
Neglected genius--truth be said--
As wild and quick as tinder,
The more you seek to help ahead
The more you seem to hinder.
I've known the least the greatest, too--
And, on the selfsame plan,
The biggest fool I ever knew
Was quite a little man:
We find we ought, and then we won't--
We prove a thing, then doubt it,--
Know _everything_ but when we don't
Know _anything_ about it.
BUDD WILKINS AT THE SHOW
BY S.E. KISER
Since I've got used to city ways and don't scare at the cars,
It makes me smile to set and think of years ago.--My stars!
How green I was, and how green all them country people be--
Sometimes it seems almost as if this hardly could be me.
Well, I was goin' to tell you 'bout Budd Wilkins: I declare
He was the durndest, greenest chap that ever breathed the air--
The biggest town on earth, he thought, was our old county seat,
With its one two-story brick hotel and dusty bizness street.
We'd fairs in fall and now and then a dance or huskin' bee,
Which was the most excitin' things Budd Wilkins ever see,
Until, one winter, Skigginsville was all turned upside down
By a troupe of real play actors a-comin' into town.
The court-house it was turned into a theater, that night,
And I don't s'pose I'll live to see another sich a sight:
I guess that every person who was able fer to go
Jest natchelly cut loose fer oncet, and went to see the show.
Me and Budd we stood around there all day in the snow,
But gosh! it paid us, fer we got seats right in the second row!
Well, the brass band played a tune or two, and then the play begun,
And 'twa'n't long 'fore the villain had the hero on the run.
Say, talk about your purty girls with sweet, confidin' ways--
I never see the equal yit, in all o' my born days.
Of that there brave young heroine, so clingin' and so mild,
And jest as innocent as if she'd been a little child.
I most forgot to say that Budd stood six feet in his socks,
As brave as any lion, too, and stronger than an ox!
But there never was a man, I'll bet, that had a softer heart,
And he was always sure to take the weaker person's part.
Budd, he fell dead in love right off with that there purty girl,
And I suppose the feller's brain was in a fearful whirl,
Fer there he set and gazed at her, and when she sighed he sighed,
And when she hid her face and sobbed, he actually cried.
He clinched his fists and ground his teeth when the villain laid
his plot
And said out loud he'd like to kill the rogue right on the spot,
And when the hero helped the girl, Budd up and yelled "Hooray!"
He'd clean fergot the whole blame thing was nothing but a play.
At last the villain trapped the girl, that sweet confidin' child,
And when she cried for help, why I'll admit that I was riled;
The hero couldn't do a thing, but roll and writhe around
And tug and groan because they'd got the poor chap gagged and bound.
The maiden cried: "Unhand me now, or, weak girl that I am--"
And then Budd Wilkins he jumped up and give his hat a slam,
And, quicker'n I can tell it he was up there raisin' Ned,
A-rescuin' the maiden and a-punchin' the rogue's head.
I can't, somehow, perticklerize concernin' that there row:
The whole thing seems a sort of blur as I recall it now--
But I can still remember that there was a fearful thud,
With the air chock full of arms and legs and the villain under Budd.
I never see a chap so bruised and battered up before
As that there villain was when he was picked up from the floor!--
The show? Oh, it was busted, and they put poor Budd in jail,
And kept him there all night, because I couldn't go his bail.
Next mornin' what d' you think we heard? Most s'prised in all my life!
That sweet, confidin' maiden was the cruel villain's wife!
Budd wilted when he heard it, and he groaned, and then, says he:
"Well, I'll be dummed! Bill, that's the last play actin' show fer me!"
BALLAD
BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND
Der noble Ritter Hugo
Von Schwillensaufenstein,
Rode out mit shpeer and helmet,
Und he coom to de panks of de Rhine.
Und oop dere rose a meer maid,
Vot hadn't got nodings on,
Und she say, "Oh, Ritter Hugo,
Vhere you goes mit yourself alone?"
And he says, "I rides in de creenwood
Mit helmet und mit shpeer,
Till I cooms into em Gasthaus,
Und dere I trinks some beer."
Und den outshpoke de maiden
Vot hadn't got nodings on:
"I tont dink mooch of beoplesh
Dat goes mit demselfs alone.
"You'd petter coom down in de wasser,
Vere deres heaps of dings to see,
Und hafe a shplendid tinner
Und drafel along mit me.
"Dere you sees de fisch a schwimmin,
Und you catches dem efery one:"--
So sang dis wasser maiden
Vot hadn't got nodings on.
"Dere ish drunks all full mit money
In ships dat vent down of old;
Und you helpsh yourself, by dunder!
To shimmerin crowns of gold.
"Shoost look at dese shpoons und vatches!
Shoost see dese diamant rings!
Coom down und full your bockets,
Und I'll giss you like avery dings.
"Vot you vantsh mit your schnapps und lager?
Coom down into der Rhine!
Der ish pottles der Kaiser Charlemagne
Vonce filled mit gold-red wine!"
_Dat_ fetched him--he shtood all shpell pound;
She pooled his coat-tails down,
She drawed him oonder der wasser,
De maidens mit nodings on.
THE HOOSIER AND THE SALT PILE
BY DANFORTH MARBLE
"I'm sorry," said Dan, as he knocked the ashes from his regalia, as he
sat in a small crowd over a glass of sherry, at Florence's, New York,
one evening,--"I'm sorry that the stages are disappearing so rapidly. I
never enjoyed traveling so well as in the slow coaches. I've made a good
many passages over the Alleghanies, and across Ohio, from Cleveland to
Columbus and Cincinnati, all over the South, down East, and up North, in
stages, and I generally had a good time.
"When I passed over from Cleveland to Cincinnati, the last time, in a
stage, I met a queer crowd. Such a corps, such a time, you never did
see. I never was better amused in my life. We had a good team,--spanking
horses, fine coaches, and one of them drivers you read of. Well, there
was nine 'insiders,' and I don't believe there ever was a stage full of
Christians ever started before, so chuck full of music.
"There was a beautiful young lady going to one of the Cincinnati
academies; next to her sat a Jew peddler,--Cowes and a market; wedging
him was a dandy black-leg, with jewelry and chains around about his
breast and neck enough to hang him. There was myself, and an old
gentleman with large spectacles, gold-headed cane, and a jolly,
soldering-iron-looking nose; by him was a circus-rider, whose breath was
enough to breed yaller fever and could be felt just as easy as cotton
velvet! A cross old woman came next, whose look would have given any
reasonable man the double-breasted blues before breakfast; alongside of
her was a rale backwoods preacher, with the biggest and ugliest mouth
ever got up since the flood. He was flanked by the low comedian of the
party, an Indiana Hoosier, 'gwine down to Orleans to get an army
contrac' to supply the forces, then in Mexico, with beef.
"We rolled along for some time. Nobody seemed inclined to 'open.' The
old aunty sat bolt upright, looking crab-apples and persimmons at the
hoosier and the preacher; the young lady dropped the green curtain of
her bonnet over her pretty face, and leaned back in her seat to nod and
dream over japonicas and jumbles, pantalets and poetry; the old
gentleman, proprietor of the Bardolph nose, looked out at the corduroy
and swashes; the gambler fell off into a doze, and the circus convoy
followed suit, leaving the preacher and me _vis-à-vis_ and saying
nothing to nobody. 'Indiany,' he stuck his mug out of the window and
criticized the cattle we now and then passed. I was wishing somebody
would give the conversation a start, when 'Indiany' made a break.
"'This ain't no great stock country,' says he to the old gentleman with
the cane.
"'No, sir,' says the old gentleman. 'There's very little grazing here,
and the range is pretty much wore out.'
"Then there was nothing said again for some time. Bimeby the hoosier
opened ag'in:
"'It's the d----dest place for 'simmon-trees and turkey-buzzards I ever
did see!'
"The old gentleman with the cane didn't say nothing, and the preacher
gave a long groan. The young lady smiled through her veil, and the old
lady snapped her eyes and looked sideways at the speaker.
"'Don't make much beef here, I reckon,' says the hoosier.
"'No,' says the gentleman.
"'Well, I don't see how in h----ll they all manage to get along in a
country whar thar ain't no ranges and they don't make no beef. A man
ain't considered worth a cuss in Indiany what hasn't got his brand on a
hundred head.'
"'Yours is a great beef country, I believe,' says the old gentleman.
"'Well, sir, it ain't anything else. A man that's got sense enuff to
foller his own cow-bell with us ain't in no danger of starvin'. I'm
gwine down to Orleans to see if I can't git a contract out of Uncle Sam
to feed the boys what's been lickin' them infernal Mexicans so bad. I
s'pose you've seed them cussed lies what's been in the papers about the
Indiany boys at Bony Visty.'
"'I've read some accounts of the battle,' says the old gentleman, 'that
didn't give a very flattering account of the conduct of some of our
troops.'
"With that, the Indiany man went into a full explanation of the affair,
and, gettin' warmed up as he went along, begun to cuss and swear like
he'd been through a dozen campaigns himself. The old preacher listened
to him with evident signs of displeasure, twistin' and groanin' till he
couldn't stand it no longer.
"'My friend,' says he, 'you must excuse me, but your conversation would
be a great deal more interesting to me--and I'm sure would please the
company much better--if you wouldn't swear so terribly. It's very wrong
to swear, and I hope you'll have respect for our feelin's, if you hain't
no respect for your Maker.'
"If the hoosier had been struck with thunder and lightnin', he couldn't
have been more completely tuck aback. He shut his mouth right in the
middle of what he was sayin', and looked at the preacher, while his
face got as red as fire.
"'Swearin',' says the old preacher, 'is a terrible bad practice, and
there ain't no use in it, nohow. The Bible says, Swear not at all, and I
s'pose you know the commandments about swearin'?'
"The old lady sort of brightened up,--the preacher was her 'duck of a
man'; the old fellow with the nose and cane let off a few 'umph, ah!
umphs'; but 'Indiany' kept shady; he appeared to be cowed down.
"'I know,' says the preacher, 'that a great many people swear without
thinkin', and some people don't b'lieve the Bible.'
"And then he went on to preach a regular sermon ag'in swearing, and to
quote Scripture like he had the whole Bible by heart. In the course of
his argument he undertook to prove the Scriptures to be true, and told
us all about the miracles and prophecies and their fulfilment. The old
gentleman with the cane took a part in the conversation, and the hoosier
listened, without ever opening his head.
"'I've just heard of a gentleman,' says the preacher, 'that's been to
the Holy Land and went over the Bible country. It's astonishin' to hear
what wonderful things he has seen. He was at Sodom and Gomorrow, and
seen the place whar Lot's wife fell.'
"'Ah!' says the old gentleman with the cane.
"'Yes,' says the preacher; 'he went to the very spot; and, what's the
remarkablest thing of all, he seen the pillar of salt what she was
turned into.'
"'Is it possible!' says the old gentleman.
"'Yes, sir; he seen the salt, standin' thar to this day.'
"'What!' says the hoosier, 'real genewine, good salt?'
"'Yes, sir, a pillar of salt, jest as it was when that wicked woman was
punished for her disobedience.'
"All but the gambler, who was snoozing in the corner of the coach,
looked at the preacher,--the hoosier with an expression of countenance
that plainly told us that his mind was powerfully convicted of an
important fact.
"'Right out in the open air?' he asked.
"'Yes, standin' right in the open field, whar she fell.'
"'Well, sir,' says 'Indiany,' 'all I've got to say is, if she'd dropped
in our parts, the cattle would have licked her up afore sundown!'
"The preacher raised both his hands at such an irreverent remark, and
the old gentleman laughed himself into a fit of asthmatics, what he
didn't get over till we came to the next change of horses. The hoosier
had played the mischief with the gravity of the whole party; even the
old maid had to put her handkerchief to her face, and the young lady's
eyes were filled with tears for half an hour afterward. The old preacher
hadn't another word to say on the subject; but whenever we came to any
place, or met anybody on the road, the circus-man nursed the thing along
by asking what was the price of salt."
A RIVAL ENTERTAINMENT
BY KATE FIELD
I once heard a bright child declare that if circuses were prohibited in
heaven, she did not wish to go there. She had been baptized, was under
Christian influences, and, previous to this heterodoxy, had never given
her good parents a moment's anxiety. Her naïve utterance touched a
responsive chord within my own breast, for well did I remember how
gloriously the circus shone by the light of other days; how the
ring-master, in a wrinkled dress-coat, seemed the most enviable of
mortals, being on speaking terms with all the celestial creatures who
jumped over flags and through balloons; how the clown was the dearest,
funniest of men; how the young athletes in tights and spangles were my
_beau-ideals_ of masculinity; and how La Belle Rose, with one foot upon
her native heath, otherwise a well-padded saddle, and the other pointed
in the direction of the sweet little cherubs that sat up aloft, was the
most fascinating of her sex. I am persuaded that circuses fill an aching
void in the universe. What children did before their invention I shudder
to think, for circuses are to childhood what butter is to bread; and
what the world did before the birth of Barnum is an almost equally
frightful problem. Some are born to shows, others attain shows, and yet
again others have shows thrust upon them. Barnum is a born showman. If
ever a man fulfills his destiny, it is the discoverer of Tom Thumb. With
the majority of men and women life is a failure. Not until one leg
dangles in the grave is their _raison d'être_ disclosed. The round
people always find themselves sticking in the square holes, and _vice
versa_; but with Barnum we need not deplore a _vie manquée_. We can
smile at his reverses, for even the phoenix has cause to blush in his
presence. Though pursued by tongues of fire, Barnum remains invincible
when iron, stone, and mortar crumble around him; and while yet the smoke
is telling volumes of destruction, the cheery voice of the showman
exclaims, "Here you are, gentlemen; admission fifty cents, children half
price."
Apropos of Barnum, once in my life I gave myself up to unmitigated joy.
Weary of lecturing, singing the song "I would I were a boy again," I
went to see the elephant. To speak truly, I saw not one elephant, but
half a dozen. I had a feast of roaring and a flow of circus. In fact I
indulged in the wildest dissipation. I visited Barnum's circus and
sucked peppermint candy in a way most childlike and bland. The reason
seems obscure, but circuses and peppermint candy are as inseparable as
peanuts and the Bowery. Appreciating this solemn fact, Barnum provides
bigger sticks adorned with bigger red stripes than ever Romans sucked in
the palmy days of the Coliseum. In the dim distance I mistook them for
barbers' poles, but upon direct application I recognized them for my
long lost own.
However, let me, like the Germans, begin with the creation. "Here,
ladies and gentlemen, is for sale Mr. Barnum's Autobiography, full of
interest and anecdote, one of the most charming productions ever issued
from the press, 900 pages, thirty-two full-page engravings, reduced from
$3.50 to $1.50. Every purchaser enters free."
How ordinary mortals can resist buying Barnum's Autobiography for one
dollar--such a bargain as never was--is incomprehensible. I believe
they can not. I believe they do their duty like men. As one man I
resisted, because I belong to the press, and therefore am not mortal.
Who ever heard of a journalist getting a bargain? With Spartan firmness
I turned a deaf ear to the persuasive music of the propagandist, and
entered where hope is all before. I was not staggered by a welcome from
all the Presidents of the United States, Fitz-Greene Halleck, General
Hooker, and Gratz Brown. These personages are rather woodeny and red
about the face, as though flushed with victories of the platform or the
table, but I recognize their fitness in a menagerie. What athlete has
turned more somersaults than some of these representative men? What lion
has roared more gently than a few of these sucking doves? Barnum's tact
in appropriately grouping curiosities, living and dead, is too well
known to require comment. Passing what Sam Weller would call "a reg'lar
knock-down of intellect," I took my seat high in the air amid a dense
throng of my fellow-creatures, and realized how many people it takes to
make up the world. What did I see? I saw double. I beheld not one ring
but two, in each of which the uncommon variety of man was disporting in
an entertaining manner. I felt for these uncommon men. Think what
immortal hates must arise from these dual performances! We all like to
receive the reward of merit, but when two performances are going on
simultaneously, how are the artists to know for whom it is intended?
Applause is the sweet compensation for which all strive privately or
publicly, and to be cheated out of it, or left in doubt as to its
destination, is a refined form of the Inquisition. Fancy the sensations
of the man balancing plates on the little end of nothing,--a feat to
which he has consecrated his life,--at thought of his neighbor's
performance of impossible feats in the air! It would be more than human
in both not to wish the other in Jericho, or in some equally remote
quarter of the globe. I sympathized with them. I became bewildered in my
endeavors to keep one eye on each. If human beings were constructed on
the same principles as Janus, and had two faces, a fore-and-aft circus
would be convenient; but as nowadays double-faced people only wear two
eyes in their heads, the Barnumian conception muddles the intellect. I
pray you, great and glorious showman, take pity on your artists and your
audiences. Don't drive the former mad and the latter distracted.
Remember that insanity is on the increase, and that accommodations in
asylums are limited. Take warning before you undermine the reason of an
entire continent. Beware! Beware!
I hear much and see more of the physical weakness of woman. Michelet
tells the sentimental world that woman is an exquisite invalid, with a
perennial headache and nerves perpetually on the rack. It is a mistake.
When I gaze upon German and French peasant-women, I ask Michelet which
is right, he or Nature? And since my introduction to Barnum's female
gymnast,--a good-looking, well-formed mother of a family, who walks
about unflinchingly with men and boys on her shoulders, and carries a
300-pound gun as easily as the ordinary woman carries a
clothes-basket,--I have been persuaded that "the coming woman," like
Brother Jonathan, will "lick all creation." In that good time, woman
will have her rights because she will have her muscle. Then, if there
are murders and playful beatings between husbands and wives, the wives
will enjoy all the glory of crime. What an outlook! And what a sublime
consolation to the present enfeebled race of wives that are having their
throats cut and their eyes carved out merely because their biceps have
not gone into training! Barnum's female gymnast is an example to her
sex. What woman has done woman may do again. Mothers, train up your
daughters in the way they should fight, and when they are married they
will not depart this life. God is on the side of the stoutest muscle as
well as of the heaviest battalions. It is perfectly useless to talk
about the equality of the sexes as long as a man can strangle his own
mother-in-law.
I was exceedingly thrilled by the appearance of the two young gentlemen
from the Cannibal Islands, who are beautifully embossed in green and
red, and compassionated them for the sacrifices they make in putting on
blankets and civilization. Is it right to deprive them of their daily
bread,--I mean their daily baby? Think what self-restraint they must
exercise while gazing upon the toothsome infants that congregate at the
circus! That they do gaze and smack their overhanging lips I know,
because, after going through their cannibalistic dance, they sat behind
me and howled in a subdued manner. The North American Indian who
occupied an adjoining seat, favored me with a translation of their
charming conversation, by which I learned many important facts
concerning man as an article of diet. It appears that babies, after all,
do not make the daintiest morsels. Tender they are, of course, but,
being immature, they have not the rich flavor of a youthful adult. This
seems reasonable. Veal is tender, but can it be favorably compared with
beef? The cases are parallel. The embossed young men consider babies
excellent for _entrées_, but for roasts there is nothing like plump
maidens in their teens. Men of twenty are not bad eating. When older,
they are invariably boiled. Commenting upon the audience, the critics
did not consider it appetizing; and, strange as it may appear, I felt
somewhat hurt by the remark, for who is not vain enough to wish to look
good enough to eat? Fancy being shipwrecked off the Fiji Islands, and
discarded by cannibals as a tough subject, while your companions are
literally killed with attention! Can you not imagine, that, under such
circumstances, a peculiar jealousy of the superior tenderness of your
friends would be a thorn in the flesh, rendering existence a temporary
burden? If we lived among people who adored squinting, should we not all
take to it, and cherish it as the apple of our eye? And if we fell among
anthropophagi, would not our love of approbation make us long to be as
succulent as young pigs? What glory to escape from the jaws of death, if
the jaws repudiate us? So long as memory holds a seat in this distracted
brain, I shall entertain unpleasant feelings toward the embossed young
gentlemen who did not sigh to fasten their affections--otherwise their
teeth--on me. It was worse than a crime: it was bad taste.
Roaming among the wild animals, I made the acquaintance of the
cassowary, in which I have been deeply interested since childhood's
sunny hours, for then't was oft I sang a touching hymn running thus:
"If I were a cassowary
Far away in Timbuctoo,
I should eat a missionary,
Hat, and boots, and hymn-book too."
From that hour the cassowary occupied a large niche in my heart. The
desire to gaze upon a bird capable of digesting food to which even the
ostrich never aspired, pursued me by day and tinctured my dreams by
night. "What you seek for all your life you will come upon suddenly when
the whole family is at dinner," says Thoreau. I met the cassowary at
dinner. He was dining alone, having left his family in Africa, and I
must say that I never met with a greater disappointment. Were it not for
the touching intimation of the hymn, I should believe it impossible for
him to eat a missionary. A quieter, more amiable bird never stood on two
legs. A polite attendant stirred him up for me, yet his temper and his
feathers remained unruffled. Perhaps if our geographical position had
changed to Timbuctoo, and I had been a missionary with hymn-book in
hand, the cassowary might have realized my expectations. As it was, one
more illusion vanished.
In order to regain my spirits, I shook hands with the handsome giant in
brass buttons; and speaking of giants leads me to the subject of all
_lusus naturæ_, particularly the Circassian young lady, the dwarf, the
living skeleton, the Albinos, and What-is-it. I have dropped more than
one tear at the fate of these unfortunate beings; for what is more
horribly solitary than to live in a strange crowd, with
"No one to love,
None to caress?"
Noah was human. When he retired to the ark, he selected two of a kind
from all the animal kingdom for the sake of sociability as well as for
more practical purposes. Showmen should be equally considerate. To think
of those Albino sisters with never an Albino beau, of the Circassian
beauty with never a Circassian sweetheart, of the living skeleton with
never another skeleton in his closet (how he can look so good-natured
would be most mysterious, were not his digestion pronounced perfect), to
think of the wretched What-is-it with never a Mrs. What-is-it, produces
unspeakable anguish. May they meet their affinities in another and a
more sympathetic world, where monstrosities are impossible for the
reason that we leave our bones on earth. Since gazing at the What-is-it,
I have become a convert to Darwin. It is too true. Our ancestors stood
on their hind legs, and the less we talk about pedigree the better. The
noble democrat in search of a coat-of-arms and a grandfather should
visit a grand moral circus. Let us assume a virtue, though we have it
not; let our pride _ape_ humility.
Were I asked which I thought the greater necessity of civilization,
lectures or circuses, I should lay my right hand upon my left heart, and
exclaim, "Circuses!"
YAWCOB STRAUSS
BY CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS
I haf von funny leedle poy,
Vot gomes schust to mine knee;
Der queerest schap, der createst rogue,
As efer you dit see.
He runs, und schumps, und schmashes dings
In all barts off der house:
But vot off dot? he vas mine son,
Mine leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He gets der measles und der mumbs,
Und eferyding dot's oudt;
He sbills mine glass off lager bier,
Poots schnuff indo mine kraut.
He fills mine pipe mit Limburg cheese,--
Dot vas der roughest chouse:
I'd dake dot vrom no oder poy
But leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He dakes der milk-ban for a dhrum,
Und cuts mine cane in dwo,
To make der schticks to beat it mit,--
Mine cracious, dot vas drue!
I dinks mine hed vas schplit abart,
He kicks oup sooch a touse:
But nefer mind; der poys vas few
Like dot young Yawcob Strauss.
He asks me questions sooch as dese:
Who baints mine nose so red?
Who vas it cuts dot schmoodth blace oudt
Vrom der hair ubon mine hed?
Und vhere der plaze goes vrom der lamp
Vene'er der glim I douse.
How gan I all dose dings eggsblain
To dot schmall Yawcob Strauss?
I somedimes dink I schall go vild
Mit sooch a grazy poy,
Und vish vonce more I gould haf rest,
Und beaceful dimes enshoy;
But ven he vas ashleep in ped,
So guiet as a mouse,
I prays der Lord, "Dake anyding,
But leaf dot Yawcob Strauss."
SEFFY AND SALLY
BY JOHN LUTHER LONG
The place was the porch of the store, the time was about ten o'clock in
the morning of a summer day, the people were the amiable loafers--and
Old Baumgartner. The person he was discoursing about was his son
Sephenijah. I am not sure that the name was not the ripe fruit of his
father's fancy--with, perhaps, the Scriptural suggestion which is likely
to be present in the affairs of a Pennsylvania-German--whether a
communicant or not--even if he live in Maryland.
"Yas--always last; expecial at funerals and weddings. Except his
own--he's sure to be on time at his own funeral. Right out in front!
Hah? But sometimes he misses his wedding. Why, I knowed a feller--yous
all knowed him, begoshens!--that didn't git there tell another feller'd
married her--'bout more'n a year afterward. Wasn't it more'n a year,
boys? Yas--Bill Eisenkrout. Or, now, was it his brother--Baltzer
Iron-Cabbage? Seems to me now like it was Baltz. Somesing wiss a B at
the front end, anyhow."
Henry Wasserman diffidently intimated that there was a curious but
satisfactory element of safety in being last--a "fastnacht" in their
language, in fact. Those in front were the ones usually hurt in railroad
accidents, Alexander Althoff remembered.
"Safe?" cried the speaker. "Of course! But for why--say, for why?" Old
Baumgartner challenged defiantly.
No one answered and he let several impressive minutes intervene.
"You don't know! Hang you, none of yous knows! Well--because he ain't
there when anysing occurs--always a little late!"
They agreed with him by a series of sage nods.
"But, fellers, the worst is about courting. It's no way to be always
late. Everybody else gits there first, and it's nossing for the
fastnacht but weeping and wailing and gnashing of the teeth. And mebby
the other feller gits considerable happiness--and a good farm."
There was complaint in the old man's voice, and they knew that he meant
his own son Seffy. To add to their embarrassment, this same son was now
appearing over the Lustich Hill--an opportune moment for a pleasing
digression. For you must be told early concerning Old Baumgartner's
longing for certain lands, tenements and hereditaments--using his own
phrase--which were not his own, but which adjoined his. It had passed
into a proverb of the vicinage; indeed, though the property in question
belonged to one Sarah Pressel, it was known colloquially as
"Baumgartner's Yearn."
And the reason of it was this: Between his own farm and the public road
(and the railroad station when it came) lay the fairest meadow-land
farmer's eye had ever rested upon. (I am speaking again for the father
of Seffy and with his hyperbole.) Save in one particular, it was like an
enemy's beautiful territory lying between one's less beautiful own and
the open sea--keeping one a poor inlander who is mad for the seas--whose
crops must either pass across the land of his adversary and pay tithes
to him, or go by long distances around him at the cost of greater tithes
to the soulless owners of the turnpikes--who aggravatingly fix a gate
each way to make their tithes more sure. So, I say, it was like having
the territory of his enemy lying between him and the deep water--save,
as I have also said, in one particular, to wit: that the owner--the
Sarah Pressel I have mentioned--was not Old Baumgartner's enemy.
In fact, they were tremendous friends. And it was by this
friendship--and one other thing which I mean to mention later--that Old
Baumgartner hoped, before he died, to attain the wish of his life, and
see, not only the Elysian pasture-field, but the whole of the adjoining
farm, with the line fences down, a part of his. The other thing I
promised to mention as an aid to this ambition--was Seffy. And, since
the said Sarah was of nearly the same age as Seffy, perhaps I need not
explain further, except to say that the only obstruction the old man
could see now to acquiring the title by marriage was--Seffy himself. He
was, and always had been, afraid of girls--especially such aggressive,
flirtatious, pretty and tempestuous girls as this Sarah.
These things, however, were hereditary with the girl. It was historical,
in fact, that, during the life of Sarah's good-looking father, so
importunate had been Old Baumgartner for the purchase of at least the
meadow--he could not have ventured more at that time--and so obstinate
had been the father of the present owner--(he had red hair precisely as
his daughter had)--that they had come to blows about it, to the
discomfiture of Old Baumgartner; and, afterward, they did not speak.
Yet, when the loafers at the store laughed, Baumgartner swore that he
would, nevertheless, have that pasture before he died.
But then, as if fate, too, were against him, the railroad was built, and
its station was placed so that the Pressel farm lay directly between it
and him, and of course the "life" went more and more in the direction
of the station--left him more and more "out of it"--and made him poorer
and poorer, and Pressel richer and richer. And, when the store laughed
at _that_, Baumgartner swore that he would possess half of the farm
before he died; and as Pressel and his wife died, and Seffy grew up, and
as he noticed the fondness of the little red-headed girl for his little
tow-headed boy, he added to his adjuration that he would be harrowing
that whole farm before _he_ died,--_without paying a cent for it_!
But both Seffy and Sally had grown to a marriageable age without
anything happening. Seffy had become inordinately shy, while the
coquettish Sally had accepted the attentions of Sam Pritz, the clerk at
the store, as an antagonist more worthy of her, and in a fashion which
sometimes made the father of Seffy swear and lose his temper--with
Seffy. Though, of course, in the final disposition of the matter, he was
sure that no girl so nice as Sally would marry such a person as Sam
Pritz, with no extremely visible means of support--a salary of four
dollars a week, and an odious reputation for liquor. And it was for
these things, all of which were known (for Baumgartner had not a single
secret) that the company at the store detected the personal equation in
Old Baumgartner's communications.
Seffy had almost arrived by this time, and Sally was in the store! With
Sam! The situation was highly dramatic. But the old man consummately
ignored this complication and directed attention to his son. For him,
the molasses-tapper did not exist. The fact is he was overjoyed. Seffy,
for once in his life, would be on time! He would do the rest.
"Now, boys, chust look at 'em! Dogged if they ain't bose like one
another! How's the proferb? Birds of a feather flock wiss one another?
I dunno. Anyhow, Sef flocks wiss Betz constant. And they understand one
another good. Trotting like a sidewise dog of a hot summer's day!" And
he showed the company, up and down the store-porch, just how a sidewise
dog would be likely to trot on a hot summer day--and then laughed
joyously.
If there had been an artist eye to see they would have been well worth
its while--Seffy and the mare so affectionately disparaged. And, after
all, I am not sure that the speaker himself had not an artist's eye. For
a spring pasture, or a fallow upland, or a drove of goodly cows deep in
his clover, I know he had. (Perhaps you, too, have?) And this was his
best mare and his only son.
The big bay, clad in broad-banded harness, soft with oil and glittering
with brasses, was shambling indolently down the hill, resisting her own
momentum by the diagonal motion the old man had likened to a dog's
sidewise trot. The looped trace-chains were jingling a merry dithyramb,
her head was nodding, her tail swaying, and Seffy, propped by his elbow
on her broad back, one leg swung between the hames, the other keeping
time on her ribs, was singing:
"'I want to be an angel
And with the angels stand,
A crown upon my forehead
A harp within my hand--'"
His adoring father chuckled. "I wonder what for kind of anchel he'd
make, anyhow? And Betz--they'll have to go together. Say, I wonder if it
_is_ horse-anchels?"
No one knew; no one offered a suggestion.
"Well, it ought to be. Say--he ken perform circus wiss ol' Betz!"
They expressed their polite surprise at this for perhaps the hundredth
time.
"Yas--they have a kind of circus-ring in the barnyard. He stands on one
foot, then on another, and on his hands wiss his feet kicking, and then
he says words--like hokey-pokey--and Betz she kicks up behind and throws
him off in the dung and we all laugh--happy efer after--Betz most of
all!"
After the applause he said:
"I guess I'd better wake 'em up! What you sink?"
They one and all thought he had. They knew he would do it, no matter
what they thought. His method, as usual, was his own. He stepped to the
adjoining field, and, selecting a clod with the steely polish of the
plowshare upon it, threw it at the mare. It struck her on the flank. She
gathered her feet under her in sudden alarm, then slowly relaxed, looked
slyly for the old man, found him, and understanding, suddenly wheeled
and ambled off home, leaving Seffy prone on the ground as her part of
the joke.
The old man brought Seffy in triumph to the store-porch.
"Chust stopped you afore you got to be a anchel!" he was saying. "We
couldn't bear to sink about you being a anchel--an' wiss the anchels
stand--a harp upon your forehead, a crown within your hand, I
expect--when it's corn-planting time."
Seffy grinned cheerfully, brushed off the dust and contemplated his
father's watch--held accusingly against him. Old Baumgartner went on
gaily.
"About an inch and a half apast ten! Seffy, I'm glad you ain't breaking
your reputation for being fastnachtich. Chust about a quarter of an inch
too late for the prize wiss flour on its hair and arms and its frock
pinned up to show its new petticoat! Uhu! If I had such a nice
petticoat--" he imitated the lady in question, to the tremendous delight
of the gentle loafers.
Seffy stared a little and rubbed some dust out of his eyes. He was
pleasant but dull.
"Yassir, Sef, if you'd a-got yere at a inch and a quarter apast! Now
Sam's got her. Down in the cellar a-licking molasses together! Doggone
if Sam don't git eferysing--except his due bills. He don't want to be no
anchel tell he dies. He's got fun enough yere--but Seffy--you're like
the flow of molasses in January--at courting."
This oblique suasion made no impression on Seffy. It is doubtful if he
understood it at all. The loafers began to smile. One laughed. The old
man checked him with a threat of personal harm.
"Hold on there, Jefferson Dafis Busby," he chid. "I don't allow no one
to laugh at my Seffy--except chust me--account I'm his daddy. It's a
fight-word the next time you do it."
Mr. Busby straightened his countenance.
"He don't seem to notice--nor keer--'bout gals--do he?"
No one spoke.
"No, durn him, he ain't no good. Say--what'll you give for him, hah?
Yere he goes to the highest bidder--for richer, for poorer, for better,
for worser, up and down, in and out, swing your partners--what's bid? He
ken plow as crooked as a mule's hind leg, sleep hard as a 'possum in
wintertime, eat like a snake, git left efery time--but he ken ketch
fish. They wait on him. What's bid?"
No one would hazard a bid.
"Yit a minute," shouted the old fellow, pulling out his bull's-eye
watch again, "what's bid? Going--going--all done--going--"
"A dollar!"
The bid came from behind him, and the voice was beautiful to hear. A
gleam came into the old man's eyes as he heard it. He deliberately put
the watch back in its pocket, put on his spectacles, and turned, as if
she were a stranger.
"Gone!" he announced then. "Who's the purchaser? Come forwards and take
away you' property. What's the name, please?" Then he pretended to
recognize her. "Oach! Sally! Well, that's lucky! He goes in good hands.
He's sound and kind, but needs the whip." He held out his hand for the
dollar.
It was the girl of whom he had spoken accurately as a prize. Her sleeves
were turned up as far as they would go, revealing some soft lace-trimmed
whiteness, and there _was_ flour on her arms. Some patches of it on her
face gave a petal-like effect to her otherwise aggressive color. The
pretty dress was pinned far enough back to reveal the prettier
petticoat--plus a pair of trimly-clad ankles.
Perhaps these were neither the garments nor the airs in which every
farmer-maiden did her baking. But then, Sally was no ordinary
farmer-maiden. She was all this, it is true, but she was, besides, grace
and color and charm itself. And if she chose to bake in such attire--or,
even, if she chose to pretend to do so, where was the churl to say her
nay, even though the flour was part of a deliberate "make up"? Certainly
he was not at the store that summer morning.
And Seffy was there. Her hair escaped redness by only a little. But that
little was just the difference between ugliness and beauty. For, whether
Sally were beautiful or not--about which we might contend a bit--her
hair was, and perhaps that is the reason why it was nearly always
uncovered--or, possibly, again, because it was so much uncovered was the
reason it was beautiful. It seemed to catch some of the glory of the
sun. Her face had a few freckles and her mouth was a trifle too large.
But, in it were splendid teeth.
In short, by the magic of brilliant color and natural grace she narrowly
escaped being extremely handsome--in the way of a sunburned peach, or a
maiden's-blush apple. And even if you should think she were not
handsome, you would admit that there was an indescribable rustic charm
about her. She was like the aroma of the hay-fields, or the woods, or a
field of daisies, or dandelions.
The girl, laughing, surrendered the money, and the old man, taking an
arm of each, marched them peremptorily away.
"Come to the house and git his clothes. Eferysing goes in--stofepipe
hat, butterfly necktie, diamond pin, toothbrush, hair-oil, razor and
soap."
They had got far enough around the corner to be out of sight of the
store, during this gaiety, and the old man now shoved Seffy and the girl
out in front of him, linked their arms, and retreated to the rear.
"What Sephenijah P. Baumgartner, Senior, hath j'ined together, let
nobody put athunder, begoshens!" he announced.
The proceeding appeared to be painful to Seffy, but not to Sally. She
frankly accepted the situation and promptly put into action its
opportunities for coquetry. She begged him, first, with consummate
aplomb, to aid her in adjusting her parcels more securely, insisting
upon carrying them herself, and it would be impossible to describe
adequately her allures. The electrical touches, half-caress,
half-defiance; the confidential whisperings, so that the wily old man in
the rear might not hear; the surges up against him; the recoveries--only
to surge again--these would require a mechanical contrivance which
reports not only speech but action--and even this might easily fail, so
subtle was it all!
"Sef--Seffy, I thought it was his old watch he was auctioning off. I
wanted it for--for--a nest-egg! aha-ha-ha! You must excuse me."
"You wouldn't 'a' bid at all if you'd knowed it was me, I reckon," said
Seffy.
"Yes, I would," declared the coquette. "I'd rather have you than any
nest-egg in the whole world--any two of 'em!"--and when he did not take
his chance--"if they were made of gold!"
But then she spoiled it.
"It's worse fellows than you, Seffy." The touch of coquetry was but too
apparent.
"And better," said Seffy, with a lump in his throat. "I know I ain't no
good with girls--and I don't care!"
"Yes!" she assented wickedly. "There _are_ better ones."
"Sam Pritz--"
Sally looked away, smiled, and was silent.
"Sulky Seffy!" she finally said.
"If he does stink of salt mackerel, and 'most always drunk!" Seffy went
on bitterly. "He's nothing but a molasses-tapper!"
Sally began to drift farther away and to sing. Calling Pritz names was
of no consequence--except that it kept Seffy from making love to her
while he was doing it--which seemed foolish to Sally. The old man came
up and brought them together again.
"Oach! go 'long and make lofe some more. I like to see it. I expect I
am an old fool, but I like to see it--it's like ol' times--yas, and if
you don't look out there, Seffy, I'll take a hand myself--yassir! go
'long!"
He drew them very close together, each looking the other way. Indeed he
held them there for a moment, roughly.
Seffy stole a glance at Sally. He wanted to see how she was taking his
father's odiously intimate suggestion. But it happened that Sally wanted
to see how he was taking it. She laughed with the frankest of joy as
their eyes met.
"Seffy--I _do_--like you," said the coquette. "And you ought to know it.
You imp!"
Now this was immensely stimulating to the bashful Seffy.
"I like _you_," he said--"ever since we was babies."
"Sef--I don't believe you. Or you wouldn't waste your time so--about Sam
Pritz!"
"Er--Sally--where you going to to-night?" Seffy meant to prove himself.
And Sally answered, with a little fright at the sudden aggressiveness
she had procured.
"Nowheres that _I_ know of."
"Well--may I set up with you?"
The pea-green sunbonnet could not conceal the utter amazement and then
the radiance which shot into Sally's face.
"Set--up--with--me!"
"Yes!" said Seffy, almost savagely. "That's what I said."
"Oh, I--I guess so! Yes! of course!" she answered variously, and rushed
off home.
"You know I own you," she laughed back, as if she had not been
sufficiently explicit. "I paid for you! Your pappy's got the money!
I'll expect my property to-night."
"Yas!" shouted the happy old man, "and begoshens! it's a reg'lar
bargain! Ain't it, Seffy? You her property--real estate, hereditaments
and tenements." And even Seffy was drawn into the joyous laughing
conceit of it! Had he not just done the bravest thing of his small life?
"Yes!" he cried after the fascinating Sally. "For sure and certain,
to-night!"
"It's a bargain!" cried she.
"For better or worser, richer or poorer, up an' down, in an' out,
chassez right and left! Aha-ha-ha! Aha-ha-ha! But, Seffy,"--and the
happy father turned to the happy son and hugged him, "don't you efer
forgit that she's a feather-head and got a bright red temper like her
daddy! And they both work mighty bad together sometimes. When you get
her at the right place onct--well, nail her down--hand and feet--so's
she can't git away. When she gits mad her little brain evaporates, and
if she had a knife she'd go round stabbing her best friends--that's the
only sing that safes her--yas, and us!--no knife. If she had a knife it
would be funerals following her all the time."
II
They advanced together now, Seffy's father whistling some tune that was
never heard before on earth, and, with his arm in that of his son, they
watched Sally bounding away. Once more, as she leaped a fence, she
looked laughingly back. The old man whistled wildly out of tune. Seffy
waved a hand!
"Now you shouting, Seffy! Shout ag'in!"
"I didn't say a word!"
"Well--it ain't too late! Go on!"
Now Seffy understood and laughed with his father.
"Nice gal, Sef--Seffy!"
"Yes!" admitted Seffy with reserve.
"Healthy."
Seffy agreed to this, also.
"No doctor-bills!" his father amplified.
Seffy said nothing.
"Entire orphen."
"She's got a granny!"
"Yas," chuckled the old man at the way his son was drifting into the
situation--thinking about granny!--"but Sally owns _the farm_!"
"Uhu!" said Seffy, whatever that might mean.
"And Sally's the boss!"
Silence.
"And granny won't object to any one Sally marries, anyhow--she dassent!
She'd git licked!"
"Who said anything about marrying?"
Seffy was speciously savage now--as any successful wooer might be.
"Nobody but me, sank you!" said the old man with equally specious
meekness. "Look how she ken jump a six-rail fence. Like a three-year
filly! She's a nice gal, Seffy--and the farms j'ine together--her
pasture-field and our corn-field. And she's kissing her hand backwards!
At me or you, Seffy?"
Seffy said he didn't know. And he did not return the kiss--though he
yearned to.
"Well, I bet a dollar that the first initial of his last name is
Sephenijah P. Baumgartner, _Junior_."
"Well!" said Seffy with a great flourish, "I'm going to set up with her
to-night."
"Oach--git out, Sef!"--though he knew it.
"You'll see."
"No, I won't," said his father. "I wouldn't be so durn mean. Nossir!"
Seffy grinned at this subtle foolery, and his courage continued to grow.
"I'm going to wear my high hat!" he announced, with his nose quite in
the air.
"No, Sef!" said the old man with a wonderful inflection, facing him
about that he might look into his determined face. For it must be
explained that the stovepipe hat, in that day and that country, was
dedicated only to the most momentous social occasions and that,
consequently, gentlemen wore it to go courting.
"Yes!" declared Seffy again.
"Bring forth the stovepipe,
The stovepipe, the stovepipe--"
chanted Seffy's frivolous father in the way of the Anvil Chorus.
"And my butterfly necktie with--"
"Wiss the di'mond on?" whispered his father.
They laughed in confidence of their secret. Seffy, the successful wooer,
was thawing out again. The diamond was not a diamond at all--the Hebrew
who sold it to Seffy had confessed as much. But he also swore that if it
were kept in perfect polish no one but a diamond merchant could tell the
difference. Therefore, there being no diamond merchant anywhere near,
and the jewel being always immaculate, Seffy presented it as a diamond
and had risen perceptibly in the opinion of the vicinage.
"And--and--and--Sef--Seffy, what you goin' to _do_?"
"Do?"
Seffy had been absorbed in what he was going to wear. "Yas--yas--that's
the most important." He encircled Seffy's waist and gently squeezed it.
"Oh, of _course_! Hah? But what _yit_?"
I regret to say that Seffy did not understand.
"Seffy," he said impressively, "you haf' tol' me what you goin' to wear.
It ain't much. The weather's yit pooty col' nights. But I ken stand it
if you ken--God knows about Sally! Now, what you goin' to _do_--that's
the conuntrum I ast you!"
Still it was not clear to Seffy.
"Why--what I'm a-going to do, hah? Why--whatever occurs."
"Gosh-a'mighty! And nefer say a word or do a sing to help the
occurrences along? Goshens! What a setting-up! Why--say--Seffy, what you
set up _for_?"
Seffy did not exactly know. He had never hoped to practise the thing--in
that sublimely militant phase.
"What do _you_ think?"
"Well, Sef--plow straight to her heart. I wisht I had your chance. I'd
show you a other-guess kind a setting-up--yassir! Make your mouth warter
and your head swim, begoshens! Why, that Sally's just like a young
stubble-field; got to be worked constant, and plowed deep, and manured
heafy, and mebby drained wiss blind ditches, and crops changed constant,
and kep' a-going thataway--constant--constant--so's the weeds can't git
in her. Then you ken put her in wheat after a while and git your money
back."
This drastic metaphor had its effect. Seffy began to understand. He said
so.
"Now, look here, Seffy," his father went on more softly, "when you git
to this--and this--and this,"--he went through his pantomime again, and
it included a progressive caressing to the kissing point--"well, chust
when you bose comfortable--hah?--mebby on one cheer, what I know--it's
so long sence I done it myself--when you bose comfortable, ast
her--chust ast her--aham!--what she'll take for the pasture-field! She
owns you bose and she can't use bose you and the pasture. A bird in the
hand is worth seferal in another feller's--not so?"
But Seffy only stopped and stared at his father. This, again, he did
_not_ understand.
"You know well enough I got no money to buy no pasture-field," said he.
"Gosh-a'mighty!" said the old man joyfully, making as if he would strike
Seffy with his huge fist--a thing he often did. "And ain't got nossing
to trade?"
"Nothing except the mare!" said the boy.
"Say--ain't you got no feelings, you idjiot?"
"Oh--" said Seffy. And then: "But what's feelings got to do with
cow-pasture?"
"Oach! No wonder he wants to be an anchel, and wiss the anchels
stand--holding sings in his hands and on his head! He's too good for
this wile world. He'd linger shifering on the brink and fear to launch
away all his durn life--if some one didn't push him in. So here goes!"
This was spoken to the skies, apparently, but now he turned to his son
again.
"Look a-yere, you young dummer-ux,[2] feelings is the same to gals like
Sally, as money is to you and me. You ken buy potatoes wiss 'em! Do you
understand?"
Seffy said that he did, now.
"Well, then, I'fe tried to _buy_ that pasture-field a sousand times--"
Seffy started.
"Yas, that's a little bit a lie--mebby a dozen times. And at last
Sally's daddy said he'd lick me if I efer said pasture-field ag'in, and
I said it ag'in and he licked me! He was a big man--and red-headed yit,
like Sally. Now, look a-yere--_you_ ken git that pasture-field wissout
money and wissout price--except you' dam' feelings which ain't no other
use. Sally won't lick _you_--if she is bigger--don't be a-skeered. You
got tons of feelin's you ain't got no other use for--don't waste
'em--they're good green money, and we'll git efen wiss Sally's daddy for
licking me yit--and somesing on the side! Huh?"
[Footnote 2: Dumb ox--a term of reproach.]
At last it was evident that Seffy fully understood, and his father broke
into that discordant whistle once more.
"A gal that ken jump a six-rail fence--and wissout no running
start--don't let her git apast you!"
"Well, I'm going to set up with her to-night," said Seffy again, with a
huge ahem. And the tune his father whistled as he opened the door for
him sounded something like "I want to be an angel."
"But not to buy no pasture-land!" warned Seffy.
"Oach, no, of course not!" agreed his wily old father. "That's just one
of my durn jokes. But I expect I'll take the fence down to-morrow! Say,
Sef, you chust marry the gal. I'll take keer the fence!"
III
It took Seffy a long time to array himself as he had threatened. And
when it was all done you wouldn't have known him--you wouldn't have
cared to know him. For his fine yellow hair was changed to an ugly brown
by the patent hair-oil with which he had dressed it--and you would not
have liked its fragrance, I trust. Bergamot, I think it was. His fine
young throat was garroted within a starched standing collar, his feet
were pinched in creaking boots, his hands close-gauntleted in buckskin
gloves, and he altogether incomparable, uncomfortable, and triumphant.
Down stairs his father paced the floor, watch in hand. From time to time
he would call out the hour, like a watchman on a minaret. At last:
"Look a-yere, Seffy, it's about two inches apast seven--and by the time
you git there--say, _nefer_ gif another feller a chance to git there
afore you or to leave after you!"
Seffy descended at that moment with his hat poised in his left hand.
His father dropped his watch and picked it up.
Both stood at gaze for a moment.
"Sunder, Sef! You as beautiful as the sun, moon and stars--and as stinky
as seferal apothecary shops. Yere, take the watch and git along--so's
you haf some time wiss you--now git along! You late a'ready. Goshens!
You wass behind time when you wass born! Yas, your mammy wass
disapp'inted in you right at first. You wass seventy-six hours late! But
now you reformed--sank God! I always knowed it wass a cure for it, but I
didn't know it wass anysing as nice as Sally."
Seffy issued forth to his first conquest--lighted as far as the front
gate by the fat lamp held in his father's hand.
"A--Sef--Seffy, shall I set up for you tell you git home?" he called
into the dark.
"No!" shouted Seffy.
"Aha--aha--aha! That sounds _right_! Don't you forgit when you
bose--well--comfortable--aha--aha! Mebby on one cheer aha--ha-ha. And
we'll bose take the fence down to-morrow. Mebby all three!"
AN ARCHÆOLOGICAL CONGRESS
BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE
"'There's none can tell about my birth
For I'm as old as the big round earth;
Ye young Immortals clear the track,
I'm the bearded Joke on the Carpet tack."
Thus spoke
A Joke
With boastful croak;
And as he said,
Upon his head
He stood, and waited for the tread
Of thoughtless wight,
Who, in the night,
Gets up, arrayed in garments white,
And indiscreet,
With unshod feet,
Prowls round for something good to eat.
But other Jokes
His speech provokes;
And old, and bald, and lame, and gray,
With loftiest scorn they say him Nay;
And bid him hold his unweaned tongue,
For they were blind ere he was young.
So hot
They grew,
This complot
Crew,
They laid a plan
To catch a Man;
That all the clan
Might then trepan
His skull with Jokes; they thus began:
First Mule, his heel its skill to try,
Amid his ribs like lightning laid--
And back recoiled--he well knew why;
"Insurance Man," he faintly sayed.
Next Stove Pipe rushed, as hot as fire,
"Put up!" he cried, in accents bold;
With Elbow joint he struck the lyre,
And knocked the Weather Prophet cold.
But thou, Ice Cream, with hair so gray,
Three thousand years before the Flood,
Cold, bitter cold, will be the day
Thou dost not warm the Jester's blood.
"Spoons for the spooney," was her ancient song,
That with slow measure dragged its deathless length along.
And longer had she sung, but with a frown,
Old Pie, impatient, rose
And roared, "Behold, I am the Funny Clown!
And without me there is no Joke that goes.
"To every Jester in the land,
I lend my omnipresent hand;
I've filled in Jokes of every grade
Since ever Jokes and Pies were made;
Sewed, pegged and pasted, glued or cast,
If not the first of Jokes, I'll be the last."
With heart unripe and mottled hide,
Pale summer watermeloncholly sighed,
And--but the Muse would find it vain
To give a list of all the train;
The hairless, purblind, toothless crew,
That burst on Man's astonished view--
The Bull dog and the Garden gate;
The Girl's Papa in wrathful state;
Ma'ma in law; the Leathern Clam;
The Woodshed Cat; the Rampant Ram;
The Fly, the Goat, the Skating Rink,
The Paste-brush plunging in the Ink;
The Baby wailing in the Dark;
The Songs they sang upon the Ark;
Things that were old when Earth was new,
And as they lived still old and older grew,
And as these Jokes about him cried,
And all their Ancient Arts upon him tried,
Their hapless victim, Man, lay down and died.
A BOY'S VIEW OF IT
BY FRANK L. STANTON
Mother--she's always a-sayin', she is,
Boys must be looked after--got to be strict;
When I tear my breeches like Billy tears his,
It helps 'em considerable when I am licked!
But it ain't leapin' over the fence or the post--
It's jest that same lickin' 'at tears 'em the most!
Mother--she's always a-sayin' to me,
Boys must have people to foller 'em roun';
Never kin tell where they're goin' to be;
Sure to git lost, an' then have to be foun'.
An' then--when they find 'em, they're so full of joy
They can't keep from lovin' an' lickin' the boy!
There's Jimmy Johnson--got lost on the road;
Daddy wuz drivin' to market one day,
Fell out the wagon, an' nobody knowed
Till they come to a halt, an' his daddy said: "Hey!
Wonder where Jimmy is gone to?" But Jim--
Warn't no two hosses could keep up with him!
Jest kept a-goin', an' got to a place
Where wuz a circus; took up with the clown,
Cut off his ringlets and painted his face,
An' then come right back to his daddy's own town!
An' what do you reckon? His folks didn't know,
An' paid to see Jimmy that night in the show!
An' there's Billy Jenkins--he jest run away
(Folks at his house wuzn't treatin' him right);
Went to the place where the red Injuns stay;
An' once, when his daddy wuz travelin' at night
An' the Injuns took after him, hollerin' loud,
Bill run to his rescue, an' scalped the whole crowd!
No use in talkin'--boys don't have no show!
Wuzn't fer people a-follerin' 'em roun',
Jest ain't no tellin' how fast they would grow;
Bet you they'd fool everybody in town!
But mother--she says they need lickin', an' so
They're too busy hollerin' to git up an' grow!
"RINGWORM FRANK"
BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
Jest Frank Reed's his _real_ name--though
Boys all calls him "Ringworm Frank,"
'Cause he allus _runs round_ so.--
No man can't tell where to bank
_Frank_'ll be,
Next you see
Er _hear_ of him!--Drat his melts!--
That man's allus _somers else_!
We're old pards.--But Frank he jest
_Can't_ stay still!--Wuz _prosper'n here_,
But lit out on furder West
Somers on a ranch, last year:
Never heard
Nary a word
_How_ he liked it, tel to-day,
Got this card, reads thisaway:--
"Dad-burn climate out here makes
Me homesick all Winter long,
And when Springtime _comes_, it takes
Two pee-wees to sing one song,--
One sings '_pee_'
And the other one '_wee_!'
Stay right where you air, old pard.--
Wisht _I_ wuz this postal-card!"
THE COLONEL'S CLOTHES
BY CAROLINE HOWARD GILMAN
Every man has some peculiar taste or preference, and, I think, though
papa dressed with great elegance, his was a decided love of his old
clothes; his garments, like his friends, became dearer to him from their
wear and tear in his service, and they were deposited successively in
his dressing-room, though mamma thought them quite unfit for him. He
averred that he required his old hunting-suits for accidents; his summer
jackets and vests, though faded, were the coolest in the world; his
worm-eaten but warm _roquelaure_ was admirable for riding about the
fields, etc. In vain mamma represented the economy of cutting up some
for the boys, and giving others to the servants; he would not consent,
nor part with articles in which he said he felt at home. Often did mamma
remonstrate against the dressing-room's looking like a haberdasher's
shop; often did she take down a coat, hold it up to the light, and show
him perforations that would have honored New Orleans or Waterloo; often,
while Chloe was flogging the pantaloons, which ungallantly kicked in
return, did she declare that it was a sin and a shame for her master to
have such things in the house; still the anti-cherubic shapes
accumulated on the nails and hooks, and were even considered as of
sufficient importance to be preserved from the fire at the burning of
Roseland.
Our little circle about this time was animated by a visit from a
peddler. As soon as he was perceived crossing the lawn with a large
basket on his arm, and a bundle slung across a stick on his shoulder, a
stir commenced in the house. Mamma assumed an air of importance and
responsibility; I felt a pleasurable excitement; Chloe's and Flora's
eyes twinkled with expectation; while, from different quarters, the
house servants entered, standing with eyes and mouth silently open, as
the peddler, after depositing his basket and deliberately untying his
bundle, offered his goods to our inspection. He was a stout man, with a
dark complexion, pitted with the small-pox, and spoke in a foreign
accent. I confess that I yielded myself to the pleasure of purchasing
some gewgaws, which I afterward gave to Flora, while mamma looked at the
glass and plated ware.
"Ver sheap," said the peddler, following her eye, and taking up a pair
of glass pitchers; "only two dollar--sheap as dirt. If te lady hash any
old closhes, it is petter as money."
Mamma took the pitchers in her hand with an inquisitorial air, balanced
them, knocked them with her small knuckles--they rang as clear as a
bell--examined the glass--there was not a flaw in it. Chloe went through
the same process; they looked significantly at each other, nodded, set
the pitchers on the slab, and gave a little approbatory cough.
"They are certainly very cheap," said mamma, tentatively.
"They is, for true, my mistress," said Chloe, with solemnity, "and more
handsomer than Mrs. Whitney's that she gin six dollars for at
Charleston."
"Chloe," said mamma, "were not those pantaloons you were shaking to-day
quite shrunk and worn out?"
"Yes, ma'am," said she; "and they don't fit nohow. The last time the
colonel wore them he seemed quite _on-restless_."
"Just step up," said her mistress, "and bring them down; but stay--what
did you say was the price of these candlesticks, sir?"
"Tish only von dollars; but tish more cheaper for te old closhes. If te
lady will get te old closhes, I will put in te pellows and te prush, and
it ish more sheaper, too."
Chloe and mamma looked at each other, and raised their eyebrows.
"I will just step up and see those pantaloons," said mamma, in a
consulting tone. "It will be a mercy to the colonel to clear out some of
that rubbish. I am confident he can never wear the pantaloons again;
they are rubbed in the knees, and require seating, and he never _will_
wear seated pantaloons. These things are unusually cheap, and the
colonel told me lately we were in want of a few little matters of this
sort." Thus saying, with a significant whisper to me to watch the
peddler, she disappeared with Chloe.
They soon returned, Chloe bearing a variety of garments, for mamma had
taken the important _premier pas_. The pantaloons were first produced.
The peddler took them in his hand, which flew up like an empty scale, to
show how light they were; he held them up to the sun, and a half
contemptuous smile crossed his lips; then shaking his head, he threw
them down beside his basket. A drab overcoat was next inspected, and was
also thrown aside with a doubtful expression.
"Mr. Peddler," said mamma, in a very soft tone, "you must allow me a
fair price; these are very excellent articles."
"Oh, ver fair," said he, "but te closhes ish not ver goot; te
closhesman is not going to give me noting for dish," and he laid a
waistcoat on the other two articles.
Mamma and Chloe had by this time reached the depths of the basket, and,
with sympathetic exclamations, arranged several articles on the slab.
"You will let me have these pitchers," said mamma, with a look of
concentrated resolution, "for that very nice pair of pantaloons."
The peddler gave a short whistle expressive of contempt, shook his head,
and said, "Tish not possibles. I will give two pishers and von prush for
te pantaloon and waistcoat."
Mamma and Chloe glanced at each other and at me; I was absorbed in my
own bargains, and said, carelessly, that the pitchers were perfect
beauties. Chloe pushed one pitcher a little forward, mamma pushed the
other on a parallel line, then poised a decanter, and again applied her
delicate knuckles for the test. That, too, rang out the musical,
unbroken sound, so dear to the housewife's ear, and, with a pair of
plated candlesticks, was deposited on the table. The peddler took up the
drab overcoat.
"Te closhesman's give noting for dish."
Mamma looked disconcerted. The expression of her face implied the fear
that the peddler would not even accept it as a gift. Chloe and she held
a whispering consultation. At this moment Binah came in with little
Patsey, who, seeing the articles on the slab, pointed with her dimpled
fingers, and said her only words,
"Pretty! pretty!"
At the same moment, Lafayette and Venus, the two little novices in
furniture-rubbing, exclaimed,
"Ki! if dem ting an't shine too much!"
These opinions made the turning-point in mamma's mind, though coming
from such insignificant sources.
"So they are pretty, my darling," said mamma to Patsey; and then,
turning to the peddler, she asked him what he would give in exchange for
the pantaloons, the waistcoat and the coat.
The peddler set aside two decanters, one pitcher, the plated
candlesticks, and a hearth-brush.
"Tish ver goot pargains for te lady," said he.
Mamma gained courage.
"I can not think of letting you have all these things without something
more. You must at least throw in that little tray," and she looked at a
small scarlet one, worth perhaps a quarter of a dollar.
The peddler hesitated, and held it up so that the morning sun shone on
its bright hues.
"I shall not make a bargain without _that_," said mamma, resolutely. The
peddler sighed, and laying it with the selected articles said:
"Tish ver great pargains for te lady."
Mamma smiled triumphantly, and the peddler, tying up his bundle and
slinging his stick, departed with an air of humility.
Papa's voice was soon heard, as usual, before he was seen.
"Rub down Beauty, Mark, and tell Diggory to call out the hounds."
There was a slight embarrassment in mamma's manner when he entered,
mingled with the same quantity of bravado. He nodded to her, tapped me
on the head with his riding-whip, gave Patsey a kiss as she stretched
out her arms to him, tossed her in the air, and, returning her to her
nurse, was passing on.
"Do stop, Colonel," said mamma, "and admire my bargains. See this cut
glass and plate that we have been wishing for, to save our best set."
"What, this trash?" said he, pausing a moment at the table--"blown glass
and washed brass! Who has been fooling you?"
"Colonel," said mamma, coloring highly, "how can you--"
"I can not stop a minute, now, wife," said he, "Jones and Ferguson are
for a hunt to-day! They are waiting at Drake's corner. It looks like
falling weather and my old drab will come in well to-day."
Mamma looked frightened, and he passed on up-stairs. He was one of those
gentlemen who keep a house alive, as the phrase is, whether in merriment
or the contrary, and we were always prepared to search for his hat, or
whip, or slippers, which he was confident he put in their places, but
which, by some miracle, were often in opposite directions. Our greatest
trial, however, was with mamma's and his spectacles, for they had four
pairs between them--far-sighted and near-sighted. There were, indeed,
_optical_ delusions practiced with them; for when papa wanted his, they
were hidden behind some pickle-jar; and when mamma had carefully placed
hers in her key-basket, they were generally found in one of papa's
various pockets; when a distant object was to be seen, he was sure to
mount the near-sighted, and cry "Pshaw!" and if a splinter was to be
taken out, nothing could be found but the far-sighted ones, and he said
something worse: sometimes all four pairs were missing, and such a
scampering ensued!
We now heard a great outcry up-stairs. "Wife! Chloe! Cornelia! come and
find my drab coat!" We looked at each other in dismay, but papa was not
a man for delay, and we obeyed his summons.
"Wife," said he, beating aside the externals of man that hung about his
dressing-room, "where is my old drab coat?"
Mamma swallowed as if a dry artichoke was in her throat, as she said,
slowly, "Why, colonel, you know you had not worn that coat for months,
and as you have another one, and a _roquelaure_, and the coat was full
of moth-holes, I exchanged it with the peddler for cut glass and plate."
"Cut devils!" said papa, who liked to soften an oath by combinations;
"it was worth twenty dollars--yes, more, because I felt at home in it. I
hate new coats as I do--"
"But, colonel," interrupted mamma, "you did not see the scarlet tray,
and the--"
"Scarlet nonsense," shouted papa; "I believe, if they could, women would
sell their husbands to those rascally peddlers!"
Beauty and the hounds were now pronounced ready. I followed papa to the
piazza, and heard his wrath rolling off as he cantered away.
_HERE'S A MERRY BOOK BY A MERRY MAN_
THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET
By MARSHALL P. WILDER
_Author of "Smiling 'Round the World"._
"His book--like American conversation--is made up of anecdotes. He talks
intimately of Richard Croker, President McKinley, President Harrison,
Joseph Jefferson, Senator Depew, Henry Watterson, Gen. Horace Porter,
Augustin Daly, Henry Irving, Buffalo Bill, King Edward VII., Mrs.
Langtry, and a host of other personages, large and small, and
medium-sized. He tells many good stories. We can recommend his book as
cheerful reading."--_New York Times._
"It is replete with anecdotes and observations relating to the
humorous side of life, intimate bits of interesting personalia, and
bright and witty chat concerning things in general."--_Pittsburg
Leader._
"Reading the book is like listening to a humorous lecture by
Marshall P. Wilder, full of wit and brightness, and it will cheer
and comfort the most morose man or woman just to read
it."--_Baltimore American._
_12mo, Cloth. Humorous Pen-and-Ink Sketches by Bart Haley.
Frontispiece Portrait of Mr. Wilder. Price, $1.20._
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers
NEW YORK AND LONDON
_ANOTHER ROARING FUN BOOK!_
SMILING 'ROUND THE WORLD
By MARSHALL P. WILDER
_Author of "The Sunny Side of the Street"_
"_Laugh and the world laughs with you_" can be truly said of Marshall P.
Wilder, the captivating entertainer of Presidents, Kings, Princes, and
the great public. As the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew says, "His mirth is
contagious," and as the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere remarked, "He makes
melancholy fly apace." You'll find laughs bubbling all through this new
book.
_SOME OPINIONS FROM THE NEWSPAPERS_
"There are many cheerful, amusing incidents of travel. It is a very
readable and entertaining book."--_Democrat and Chronicle_,
Rochester, N.Y.
"A marvelous lot of 'sunny stuff' is to be found in Mr. Wilder's
latest book. He merrily prattles of a thousand different things and
of as many different people."--_Record_, Philadelphia, Pa.
"In addition to the keen enjoyment which the reader will elicit
from the undercurrent of humor running through the volume, the book
gives a vivid picture of life as it is lived in distant
lands."--_Journal_, Boston, Mass.
_Decorated Cloth Cover. 12mo. Profusely Illustrated._
_Price, $1.50_
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers
NEW YORK AND LONDON
[Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents in the print edition lists
John Boyle O'Reilly's work entitled "A Disappointment" as being on
page 191. It is indeed on this page, but in Volume I, so has been
removed Volume II's Table of Contents here.]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wit and Humor of America, Volume
II. (of X.), by Various
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