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Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot

by Charles Heber Clark · English · Gutenberg #12581 · 475,589 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot

Author: Charles Heber Clark


        
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #12581]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELBOW-ROOM: A NOVEL WITHOUT A PLOT ***

ELBOW-ROOM

_A NOVEL WITHOUT A PLOT_

BY

MAX ADELER

1870


AUTHOR OF "OUT OF THE HURLY-BURLY," ETC., ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR B. FROST

[Illustration: Frontispiece]




PREFACE


If every book that contains nothing but nonsense confessed that fact
in its preface, the world would have been saved a vast amount of
dreary reading. Most of such volumes, however, are believed by their
authors to be full of wisdom of the solidest kind; and confession,
therefore, being impossible, the reader may learn the truth only
through much tribulation. The writer of this book freely admits, at
the outset, that it contains only the lightest humor, and that its
single purpose is to afford amusement. At the same time, he claims for
it that it is wiser and far more useful than many more solemn books
that have been published, with the intent to regenerate mankind, by
authors who would regard such a volume as this with feelings of scorn.

This is simply an effort to tell stories of a humorous character; and
although the attempt may not be so successful as it has been in the
hands of others, from Boccaccio downward, it has at least one quality
that some greater achievements do not possess: it is absolutely pure
in thought, word and suggestion. If it is filled with nonsense, that
nonsense at any rate is innocent. It is modest, cleanly and without
malice or irreverence. A worthier and nobler work might have been
written; a purer work could not have been.

What its other merits are he who reads it will discern. To apologize
for it in any manner would be to admit that it has grave deficiencies,
and such an admission the author would not make even if his conscience
impelled him to do so. The book is offered to the reader with the
conviction that if the man who laughs is the happiest man, it may
contribute something to the sum of human felicity.

The story of the French horn, related in the twentieth chapter, will
recall to the reader of the "Sparrowgrass Papers" an incident related
in that most charming book of humor. Perhaps it ought to be said that
the former narrative was at least suggested by the latter.

The artist who has illustrated the book, Mr. Arthur B. Frost, deserves
to have it said of him that he has done his work skilfully, tastefully
and with nice appreciation of the humor of the various situations.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE ADVANTAGES OF ELBOW-ROOM

II. THE TERRIBLE MISHAP TO MR. FOGG'S BABY

III. INTERNAL NAVIGATION.--AN UNFORTUNATE INVENTOR

IV. THE FACTS IN REFERENCE TO MR. BUTTERWICK'S HORSE

V. SOME EDUCATIONAL FACTS

VI. THE EDITOR OF "THE PATRIOT"

VII. HOW MR. BUTTERWICK PURSUED HORTICULTURE

VIII. THE MEETING, AND ITS MISSIONARY WORK

IX. JUDGE TWIDDLER'S COW

X. OUR CIVIL SERVICE

XI. FUNEREAL AND CONJUGAL

XII. A NEW MRS. TOODLES.--POTTS' ADVENTURES

XIII. THE RACES, AND SOME OTHER THINGS

XIV. RESPECTING CERTAIN SAVAGES

XV. LOVE, SUFFERING AND SUICIDE

XVI. MR. FOGG AS SPORTSMAN AND SPOUSE

XVII. HOW WE CONDUCT A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN

XVIII. THE MATUTINAL ROOSTER

XIX. AN UNRULY METER.--SCENES IN A SANCTUM

XX. HIGH ART

XXI. CERTAIN DENTAL EXPERIENCES.--AN UNFORTUNATE OFFICIAL

XXII. JUSTICE, AND A LITTLE INJUSTICE

XXIII. THE TRAMP WITH GENIUS AND WITHOUT IT

XXIV. THE DOG OF MR. BUTTERWICK'S, AND OTHER DOGS

XXV. A PERSECUTED JOURNALIST

XXVI. THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF DR. PERKINS

XXVII. GENERAL TRUMPS OF THE MILITIA

XXVIII. THE MISDIRECTED ENERGIES OF MR. BRADLEY

XXIX. THE TRIALS OF MR. KEYSER, GRANGER

XXX. MR. BANGER'S AUNT

XXXI. VARIOUS THINGS




ILLUSTRATIONS.

  ELBOW-ROOM
  MR. FOGG AS A MESMERIST
  A NOVEL MOUSETRAP
  A PERPLEXED MULE
  THE SECRETARY IS ALARMED
  MR. BUTTERWICK'S HORSE LIES DOWN
  THE BATTLE OF CANNÆ.
  MR. BARNES PROPOSES
  THE CARBOLIC DOOR-MAT
  THE GARDENER RETREATS
  TREADING WATER
  THE HEATHEN CLOTHE THEMSELVES
  THE JUDGE'S COW
  A TOMBSTONE CONTRACT
  MR. POTTS' MOUSE
  SHOOTING A BURGLAR
  A FLAT-IRON WEDDING
  AN EXCITED OLD LADY
  THE CAT SUCCUMBS
  HOW THE PIG WAS KILLED
  MR. SPOONER IS ALARMED
  THE LITTLE BABY-BEAR
  THE GOLDFISH TRICK.
  A CURTAILMENT
  AN INDIGNANT GUNNER
  CONFESSING THEIR FAULTS
  FORCED TO DO DUTY
  THE EARLY COCK
  THE AFFAIR AT THE POULTRY-SHOW
  THE SHERIFF IS MAD
  MR. SMITH'S GRIEF
  A SCARED FAMILY
  DR. SLUGG'S INVENTION
  JOE MIDDLES
  A COURT SCENE
  A DOG FOR SALE
  SMITH'S BOY RETREATS
  BANG!!!
  THE WANDERING JEW
  SIMPSON'S CASE
  THE GENERAL IN A RAGE
  "TAKE HER, YOUNG MAN!"
  BRADLEY'S CRADLE
  THE NEW MOTOR
  A QUEER PLANT
  TOO MUCH OF A BORE.
  BALLAST
  MAJOR SLOTT'S TIGER
  FACING THE TIGER




CHAPTER I.

PROLOGUE.

_THE ADVANTAGES OF ELBOW-ROOM_.


The professors of sociology, in exploring the mysteries of the science
of human living, have not agreed that elbow-room is one of the great
needs of modern civilized society, but this may be because they have
not yet reached the bottom of things and discovered the truth. In
crowded communities men have chances of development in certain
directions, but in others their growth is surely checked. A man who
lives in a large city is apt to experience a sharpening of his wits,
for attrition of minds as well as of pebbles produces polish and
brilliancy; but perhaps this very process prevents the free unfolding
of parts of his character. If his individuality is not partially lost
amid the crowd, it is likely that, first, his imitative faculty will
induce him to shape himself in accordance with another than his own
pattern, and that, second, the dread of the conspicuousness which is
the certain result of eccentricity will persuade him to avoid any
tendency he may have to become strongly unlike his neighbors.

The house that he lives in is tightly squeezed in a row of dwellings
builded upon a precisely similar plan, so that the influence brought
to bear upon him by the home resembles to some extent that which
operates upon his fellows. There is a pressure upon both sides of
him in the house; and when he plunges into business, there is a far
greater pressure there, in the shape of sharp competition, which
brings him into constant collision with other men, and mayhap drives
him or compels him to drive his weaker rival to the wall.

The city-man is likely to cover himself with a mantle of reserve and
dissimulation. If he has a longing to wander in untrodden and devious
paths, he is disposed resolutely to suppress his desire and to go in
the beaten track. If Smith, in a savage state, would certainly conduct
himself in a wholly original manner, in a social condition he yields
to an inevitable apprehension that Jones will think queer of his
behavior, and he shapes his actions in accordance with the plan that
Jones, with strong impulses to unusual and individual conduct, has
adopted because he is afraid he will be thought singular by Smith. And
in the mean time, Robinson, burning with a desire to go wantonly in a
direction wholly diverse from that of his associates, realizes that to
set at defiance the theories of which Smith and Jones are apparently
the earnest advocates would be to expose himself to harsh criticism,
sacrifices himself to his terror of their opinion and yields to the
force of their example.

In smaller and less densely-populated communities the weight of public
opinion is not largely decreased, but the pressure is not so great.
There is more elbow-room. A man who knows everybody about him gauges
with a reasonable degree of accuracy the characters of those who are
to judge him, and is able to form a pretty fair estimate of the value
of their opinions. When men can do this, they are apt to feel a
greater degree of freedom in following their natural impulses. If men
could sound the depths of all knowledge and read with ease the secrets
of the universe, they might lose much of their reverence. When they
know the exact worth of the judgment of their fellow-men, they begin
to regard it with comparative indifference. And so, if a dweller in a
small village desires to leave the beaten track, he can summon courage
to do so with greater readiness than the man of the town. If he has
occasionally that proneness to make a fool of himself which seizes
every man now and then, he may indulge in the perilous luxury without
great carefulness of the consequences. Smith's ordinary conduct is the
admiration of Jones as a regular thing; but when Smith switches off
into some eccentricity for which Jones has no inclination, it is
only a matter of course that Jones should indulge in his own little
oddities without caring whether Smith smiles upon him or not.

It is, therefore, in such communities that search can most profitably
be made for raw human nature that has had room to grow upon every side
with little check or hindrance. The man who chooses to seek may
find original characters, queer combinations of events, surprising
revelations of individual and family experiences and an unlimited fund
of amusement, especially if he is disposed, perhaps even while he
submits to an overpowering conviction that all life is tragic, to
summon into prominence those humorous phases of social existence
which, as in the best of artificial tragedies, are permitted to appear
in real life as the foil of that which is truly sorrowful. To depict
events that are simply amusing may not be the highest and best
function of a writer; but if he has a strong impulse to undertake
such a task in the intervals of more serious work, it may be that he
performs a duty which is more obvious because the common inclination
of those who tell the story of human life is to present that which is
sad and terrible, and to lead-the reader, whose soul has bitterness
enough of its own, into contemplation of the true or fictitious
anguish of others.

At any rate, an attempt to show men and their actions in a purely
humorous aspect is justified by the facts of human life; and if
fiction is, for the most part, tragedy, there is reason why much of
the remainder should be devoted to fun. To laugh is to perform as
divine a function as to weep. Man, who was made only a little lower
than the angels, is the only animal to whom laughter is permitted.
He is the sole earthly heir of immortality, and he laughs. More than
this, the process is healthful to both mind and body, for it is the
man who laughs with reason and judgment who is the kindly, pure,
cheerful and happy man.

It is in a village wherein there is elbow-room for the physical and
intellectual man that the characters in this book may be supposed to
be, to do and to suffer. It would be unfair to say that the reader can
visit the spot and meet face to face all these people who appear in
the incidents herein recorded, and it would be equally improper to
assert that there is naught written of them but veritable history. But
it might perhaps be urged that the individuals exist in less decided
and grotesque forms, and that the words and deeds attributed to them
are less than wholly improbable. And if any one shall consider it
worth while to inquire further concerning the matter, let him discover
where may be found a community which exists in such a locality as this
that I will now describe.

A hamlet set upon a hillside. The top a breezy elevation crowned
with foliage and commanding a view of matchless beauty. To the west,
beneath, a sea of verdure rolling away in mighty billows, which here
bear upon their crests a tiny wood, a diminutive dwelling, a flock of
sheep or a drove of cattle, and there sweep apparently almost over a
shadowy town which nestles between two of the emerald waves. Far, far
beyond the steeples which rise dimly from the distant town a range of
hills; beyond it still, a faint film of blue, the indistinct and misty
semblance of towering mountains.

To the north a lovely plain that rises a few miles away into a long
low ridge which forms the sharp and clear horizon. To the south and
east a narrow valley that is little more than a deep ravine, the sides
of the precipitous hills covered with forest to the brink of the
stream, which twists and turns at sharp angles like a wounded snake,
shining as burnished silver when one catches glimpses of it through
the trees, and playing an important part in a landscape which at brief
distance seems as wild and as unconscious of the presence of man as if
it were a part of the wilderness of Oregon rather than the adjunct of
a busy town which feels continually the stir and impulse of the huge
city only a dozen miles away.

He who descends from the top of the village hill will pass pretty
mansions set apart from their neighbors in leafy and flowery solitudes
wherein the most unsocial hermit might find elbow-room enough; he will
see little cottages which stand nearer to the roadside, as if they
shunned isolation and wished to share in the life that often fills
the highway in front of them. Farther down the houses become more
companionable; they cling together in groups with the barest
possibility of retaining their individuality, until at last the
thoroughfare becomes a street wherein small shops do their traffic in
quite a spirited sort of a way.

Clear down at the foot of the hill, by the brink of the sweet and
placid river, there are iron mills and factories and furnaces, whose
chimneys in the daytime pour out huge columns of black smoke, and from
which long tongues of crimson and bluish flame leap forth at night
against the pitchy darkness of the sky. Here, as one whirls by in the
train after nightfall, he may catch hurried glimpses of swarthy men,
stripped to the waist, stirring the molten iron with their long levers
or standing amid showers of sparks as the brilliant metal slips to and
fro among the rollers that mould it into the forms of commerce. If
upon a summer evening one shall rest amid the sweet air and the
rustling trees upon the hill-top, he may hear coming up from this
dusky, grimy blackness of the mills and the railway the soughing of
the blowers of the blast-furnaces, the sharp crack of the exploding
gases in the white-hot iron, the shriek of the locomotive whistle
and all night long the roar and rattle of the passing trains, but
so mellowed by the distance that the harsh sounds seem almost
musical--almost as pleasant and as easily endured as the voices of
nature. And in the early morning a look from the chamber window
perhaps may show a locomotive whirling down the valley around the
sharp curves with its white streamer flung out upon the green
hillside, and seeming like a snowy ribbon cut from the huge mass of
vapor which lies low upon the surface of the stream.

The name of this town among the hills is--well, it has a very
charming Indian name, to reveal which might be to point with too much
distinctness to the worthy people who in some sort figure in the
following pages. It shall be called Millburg in those pages, and its
inhabitants shall tell their stories and play their parts under the
cover of that unsuggestive title; so that the curious reader of little
faith shall have difficulty if he resolves to discover the whereabouts
of the village and to inquire respecting the author's claim to
credibility as a historian.




CHAPTER II.

_THE TERRIBLE MISHAP TO MR. FOGG'S BABY_.


Mr. and Mrs. Fogg have a young baby which was exceedingly restless and
troublesome at night while it was cutting its teeth. Mr. Fogg, devoted
and faithful father that he is, used to take a good deal more than his
share of the nursing of the infant, and often, when he would turn
out of bed for the fifteenth or sixteenth time and with fluttering
garments and unshod feet carry the baby to and fro, soothing it with
a little song, he would think how true it is, as Napoleon once said,
that "the only real courage is two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage."
Mr. Fogg thought he had a reasonable amount of genuine bravery, and
justly, for he performed the functions of a nurse with unsurpassed
patience and good humor.

One night, however, the baby was unusually wakeful and tempestuous,
and after struggling with it for several hours he called Mrs. Fogg and
suggested that it would be well to give the child some paregoric
to relieve it from the intense pain from which it was evidently
suffering. The medicine stood upon the bureau, but Mrs. Fogg had to go
down stairs to the dining-room to get some sugar; and while she was
fumbling about in the entry in the dark it occurred to Mr. Fogg that
he had heard of persons being relieved from pain by applications of
mesmerism. He had no notion that he could exercise such power; but
while musing upon the subject he rubbed the baby's eyebrows carelessly
with his fingers and made several passes with his hands upon its
forehead. As Mrs. Fogg began to feel her way up stairs, he was
surprised and pleased to find that the baby had become quiet and had
dropped off into sweet and peaceful slumber. Mrs. Fogg put the sugar
away as her husband placed the child in its crib and covered it up
carefully, and then they went to bed.

[Illustration: MR. FOGG AS A MESMERIST]

They were not disturbed again that night, and in the morning the baby
was still fast asleep. Mrs. Fogg said she guessed the poor little
darling must have gotten a tooth through, which made it feel easier.
Mr. Fogg said, "Maybe it has."

But he had a faint though very dark suspicion that something was
wrong.

After breakfast he went up to the bed-room to see if the baby was
awake. It still remained asleep; and Mr. Fogg, when he had leaned over
and listened to its breathing, shook it roughly three or four times
and cleared his throat in a somewhat boisterous manner. But it did not
wake, and Mr. Fogg went down stairs with a horrible dread upon him,
and assuming his hat prepared to go to the office. Mrs. Fogg called to
him,

"Don't slam the front door and wake the baby!"

And then Mr. Fogg did slam it with extraordinary violence; after which
he walked up the street with gloom in his soul and a wretched feeling
of apprehension that the baby would never waken.

"What on earth would we do if it should stay asleep for years?
S'pose'n it should sleep right straight ahead for half a century, and
grow to be an old man without knowing its pa and ma, and without ever
learning anything or seeing anything!"

The thought maddened him. He remembered Rip Van Winkle; he recalled
the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus; he thought of the afflicted woman whom
he saw once at a menagerie in a trance, in which she had been for
twenty years continuously, excepting when she awoke for a few moments
at long intervals to ask for something to eat. Perhaps when he and
Mrs. Fogg were dead the baby might be rented to a menagerie, and be
carried around the country as a spectacle. The idea haunted him. It
made him miserable. He tried for two or three hours to fix his mind
upon his office-duties, but it was impossible. He determined to
go back to the house to ascertain if the baby had returned to
consciousness. When he got there, Mrs. Fogg was beginning to feel very
uneasy. She said,

"Isn't it strange, Wilberforce, that the baby stays asleep? He is not
awake yet. I suppose it is nervous exhaustion, poor darling! but I am
a little worried about it."

Mr. Fogg felt awfully. He went up and jagged a pin into the baby's
leg quietly, so that his wife could not see him. Still it lay there
wrapped in slumber; and after repeating the experiment he abandoned
himself to despair and went back to his office, uncertain whether to
fly or to go home and confess the terrible truth to Mrs. Fogg.

In a couple of hours that lovely woman came in to see him. She was
scared and breathless:

"Mr. Fogg, the baby is actually asleep yet, and I can't rouse him.
I've shaken him, called to him and done _everything_, and he don't
stir. What _can_ be the matter with him? I'm afraid something dreadful
has happened to him."

"Maybe he is sleeping up a lot ahead, so's to stay awake at night some
more," said Mr. Fogg, with a feeble smile at his attempt at a joke.

"Wilberforce, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to trifle with such
a matter! S'pose the baby should die while it is in that condition? I
believe it _is_ going to die, and I want you to go straight for the
doctor."

Mr. Fogg started at once, and in half an hour he reached the house in
company with Dr. Gill. The doctor examined the child carefully and
said that it was a very queer case, but that, in his opinion, he must
be under the influence of opium.

"Did you give him any while I was asleep last night, Mr. Fogg?" asked
Mrs. Fogg, suspiciously and tearfully.

"Upon my word and honor I didn't," said Mr. Fogg, with the cold
perspiration standing upon his forehead.

"Are you _sure_ you didn't give him _anything_?" demanded the mother,
suddenly remembering that the baby became quiet while she was down
stairs upon the preceding night.

"Maria, do you think I would deceive you?" asked Mr. Fogg, in agony.
"I'll take my solemn oath that I did not give it a drop of medicine of
any kind."

"It is very remarkable--very," said the doctor. "I don't know that I
ever encountered precisely such a case before. I think I will call in
Dr. Brown and consult with him about it."

Then Mrs. Fogg began to sob; and while she fondled the baby, Mr. Fogg,
feeling like a murderer, followed the doctor down stairs. When they
reached the hall, Mr. Fogg drew the doctor aside and said, in a
confidential whisper:

"Doctor, I am going to tell you something, but I want you to promise
solemnly that you will keep it a secret."

"Very well; what is it?"

"You won't tell Mrs. Fogg?"

"No."

"Well, doctor, I--I--I--know what is the matter with that baby."

"You do! you know! Well, why didn't you--What _is_ the matter with
it?"

"The fact is, I mesmerized it last night."

"You did! Mesmerized it! And why don't you rouse it up again?"

"I don't know how; that's the mischief of it. I did it accidentally,
you know. I was sort of fingering around the child's forehead, and all
of a sudden it stopped crying and dropped off. Can't you find me a
professional mesmerizer to come and undo the baby?"

"I don't believe I can. The only one I know of lives in San Francisco,
and he couldn't get here in less than a week even if we should
telegraph for him."

"By that time," shrieked Mr. Fogg, "the baby'll be dead and Maria will
be insane! What, under Heaven, are we going to do about it?"

"Let's hunt up Brown; maybe he knows."

So they went around to Dr. Brown's office and revealed the secret to
him. Brown seemed to think that he might perhaps do something to rob
the situation of its horrors, and he accompanied Mr. Fogg and Dr.
Gill to the house. When they entered, Mrs. Fogg was rapidly becoming
hysterical. Dr. Brown placed the baby on the bed; he slapped its
little hands and rubbed its forehead and dashed cold water in its
face. In a few moments the baby opened its eyes, then it suddenly sat
up and began to cry. Mr. Fogg used to hate that noise, but now it
seemed to him sweeter than music. Mrs. Fogg was wild with joy. She
took the baby in her arms and kissed and hugged it, and then she said,

"What do you think was the matter with him, doctor?"

"Why, your husband says he mesmerized the child," replied the doctor,
incautiously letting the secret drop.

Then Mrs. Fogg looked at the culprit as if she wished to assassinate
him; but she merely ejaculated, "Monster!" and flew from the room; and
Mr. Fogg, as he went down with the physicians, put on an injured look
and said,

"If that baby wants to holloa now, I'm going to let him holloa, if he
holloas the top of his head off."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was this offence, according to popular rumor, that brought things
to a crisis in Mr. Fogg's family and induced Mrs. Fogg to seek to
remove the heavy burden of woe imposed upon her by her husband. Only
a few days later Mr. and Mrs. Fogg knocked at the door of Colonel
Coffin's law office, and then filed in, Mrs. Fogg in advance. Mr.
Fogg, the reader may care to know, was a subdued, weak-eyed and timid
person. He had the air of a victim of perpetual tyranny--of a man who
had been ruthlessly and remorselessly sat upon until his spirit was
wholly gone. And Mrs. Fogg looked as if she might have been his
despot. She opened the conversation by addressing the lawyer:

"Colonel, I have called to engage you as my counsel in a divorce suit
against Mr. Fogg. I have resolved to separate from him--to sunder our
ties and henceforth to live apart."

"Indeed!" replied the colonel; "I'm sorry to hear that. What's the
matter? Has he been beating and ill-treating you?"

"Beating!" exclaimed Mrs. Fogg, disdainfully; "I should think not! I
should like him to try it."

"Maria, let me--" interposed Mr. Fogg, mildly.

"Now, Wilberforce," she exclaimed, interrupting him, "you remain
quiet; I will explain this matter to Colonel Coffin. You see, colonel,
Mr. Fogg is eccentric beyond endurance. He goes on continually in a
manner that will certainly drive me to distraction. I can stand it no
longer. We _must_ be cut asunder. For years, colonel, Wilberforce has
been attempting to learn to play upon the flute. He has no more
idea of music than a crow, but he _will_ try to learn. He has been
practicing upon the flute since 1862, and he has learned but a portion
of but one tune--'Nelly Bly.' He can play but four notes, 'Nelly Bly
shuts--' and there he stops. He has practiced these four notes for
fourteen years. He plays them upon the porch in the evening; he blows
them out from the garret; he stands out in the yard and puffs them;
he has frequently risen in the night and seized his flute and played
'Nel-ly Bly shuts' for hours, until I had to scream to relieve my
feelings."

"Now, Maria," said Mr. Fogg, "you know that I can play as far as
'shuts her eye'--six notes in all. I learned them in the early part of
June."

"Very well, now; it's of no consequence. Don't interrupt me. This is
bad enough. I submitted to it because I loved him. But on Tuesday,
while I was watching him through the crack of the parlor door, I saw
him wink twice at my chambermaid; I saw him distinctly."

"Maria," shrieked Fogg, "this is scandalous. You know very well that I
am suffering from a nervous affection of the eye-lids."

"Wilberforce, hush! In addition to this wickedness, colonel, Mr. Fogg
is becoming so absent-minded that he torments my life; he makes me
utterly wretched. Four times now has he brought his umbrella to bed
with him and scratched me by joggling it around with the sharp points
of the ribs toward me. What on earth he means I cannot imagine. He
said he thought somehow it was the baby, but that is so preposterous
that I can hardly believe him."

"Why can't you? Don't you remember perfectly well that I emptied a
bottle of milk into the umbrella twice? Would I have done that if I
hadn't thought it was the baby?"

"There, now, Wilberforce! that's enough from you. Do let me have a
chance to talk! And, colonel, the real baby he treats in the most
malignant manner. A few days ago he mesmerized it secretly, and scared
me so that I am ill from the effects of it yet. I thought the dear
child would sleep for ever. And in addition to this, I came in on
Thursday and found that he had laid the large family Bible on the
darling's stomach. It was at the last gasp. I thought it would never
recover."

"Maria, didn't I tell you I gave it to the child to play with to keep
him quiet?"

"Mr. Fogg, will you please let me get a word in edgeways? Our older
children, too, he is simply ruining. He teaches them the most
pernicious and hurtful doctrines. He told Johnny the other day that
Madagascar was an island in the Peruvian Ocean off the coast of
Illinois, and that a walrus was a kind of a race horse used by the
Caribbees. And our oldest girl told me that he instructed her that
Polycarp fought the battle of Waterloo for the purpose of defeating
the Saracens."

"Not the Saracens, Maria; Lucy misunderstood--"

[Illustration: A NOVEL MOUSETRAP]

"Wilberforce, I wish you would hush! His general treatment of me was
scandalous. He was constantly taking my teeth for the purpose of
knocking around the spigot in the bath-tub at night when the baby
wanted a drink, and only last week he took both sets after I had gone
to bed, propped them apart, baited them with cheese, and caught two
horrid mice before morning. I was so hurt by his behavior that I drank
some laudanum for the purpose of committing suicide, and then Mr. Fogg
borrowed a pump in at Knott's drug store and pumped me out twice in
such a rude manner that I have felt hollow ever since."

"I did it from kindness, Maria."

"Don't talk of kindness to me, Wilberforce, after your conduct. And,
colonel, one night last week, after I had retired, Mr. Fogg sat down
in the room below and determined to see if it were true that a candle
could be shot through a board from a gun. He dropped a lighted candle
in his gun, and of course it exploded. It came up through the floor
and made a large spot of grease upon the ceiling of my room, nearly
scaring me to death and filling my legs full of bird-shot."

"Maria, I asked you to believe that I forgot about the candle being
lighted. I did it in a fit of absent-mindedness."

"Do go into the other room, Wilberforce, or else hold your tongue. So,
colonel, I want to get a divorce. Existence is unendurable to me. The
lives of my children are in danger. I cannot remain in such slavery
any longer. Can you release me?"

Colonel Coffin said he would think it over and give her an answer in a
week. His idea was to give her time to think better of it. So then
she told Wilberforce to put on his hat; and when he had done so, he
followed her meekly out, and they went home. It is believed in the
neighborhood that she has concluded to stick to him for a while
longer.




CHAPTER III.

_INTERNAL NAVIGATION.--AN UNFORTUNATE INVENTOR_.


The village not only has a railroad running by it, but it has a canal
upon which a large amount of traffic is done. There has been a good
deal of agitation lately concerning the possibility of improving
locomotion upon the canal, and the company offered a reward for the
best device that could be suggested in that direction. A committee was
appointed to examine and report upon the merits of the various plans
submitted. While the subject was under discussion one boat-owner,
Captain Binns, made an experiment upon his own account.

He had a pair of particularly stubborn mules to haul his boat, and
it occurred to him that he might devise some scientific method of
inducing the said mules to move whenever they were inclined to be
baulky. Both mules had phlegmatic temperaments; and when they made up
their minds to stop, they would do so and refuse to go, no matter with
what vigor the boy applied the whip. Captain Binns therefore bought a
tow-line made of three strands of galvanized wire; and placing iron
collars upon the necks of the mules, he fastened the wire to them, and
then he got a very strong galvanic battery and put it in the cabin
of the boat, attaching it to the other end of the line, forming a
circuit.

[Illustration: A PERPLEXED MULE]

The first time the mules stopped to reflect, the captain sent a strong
current through the wire. The leading mule gave a little start of
astonishment, and then it looked around at the boy upon the tow-path
with a mournful smile that seemed to say, "Sonny, I would like to know
how you worked that?" But the mules stood still. Then the captain
turned a stronger current on, and the mule shied a little and looked
hard at the boy, who was sitting by whittling a stick. The captain
sent another shock through the line, and then the mule, convinced
that that boy was somehow responsible for the mysterious occurrence,
reached over, seized the boy's jacket with his teeth, shook him up and
passed him to the hind mule, which kicked him carefully over the bank
into the river.

The mules were about to turn the matter over in their minds when
Captain Binns sent the full force of the current through the wire and
kept it going steadily. Thereupon the animals became panic-stricken.
They began to rear and plunge; they turned around and dashed down the
tow-path toward the boat. Then the line became taut; it jerked the
boat around suddenly with such force that the stern of it broke
through a weak place in the bank, and before the captain could turn
off his battery the mules had dashed around the other side of the
toll-collector's cabin, and then, making a lurch to the left, they
fell over the bank themselves, the line scraping the cabin, the
collector, three children and a colored man over with them. By the
time the line was cut and the sufferers rescued the mules were drowned
and all the water in the canal had gone out through the break. It
cost Captain Binns three hundred dollars for damages; and when he
had settled the account, he concluded to wait for the report of that
committee before making any new experiments.

The report of the committee upon improved locomotion was submitted to
the company during the following summer. It was a long and exceedingly
entertaining document, and the following extracts from it may possess
some interest:

THE REPORT.

"In reference to the plan offered by Henry Bushelson, which proposes
to run the boats by means of his patent propeller, we may remark that
the steam-engine with which the propeller is moved would sink the
boat; and even if it would not, the propeller-blades, being longer
than the depth of the canal, would dig about five hundred cubic
feet of mud out of the bottom at each revolution. As a mud-dredge
Bushelson's patent might be a success, but as a motive-power it is
a failure; and his suggestion that the tow-path might be cut into
lengths and laid side by side and sold for a farm, therefore, is not
wholly practicable.

"The idea of William Bradley is that holes might be cut in the bottom
of the boat, and through these the legs of the mule could be inserted,
so that it could walk along the bottom, while its body is safe and
dry inside. This notion is the offspring of a fruitful and ingenious
intellect; and if the water could be kept from coming through the
holes, it might be considered valuable but for one thing--somebody
would have to invent a new kind of mule with legs about seven feet
long. Mr. Bradley's mind has not yet devised any method of procuring
such a mule, and unless he can induce the ordinary kind to walk upon
stilts, we fear that the obstacles to success in this direction may be
regarded as insurmountable.

"Mr. Peterman Bostwick urges that important results might be secured
by making the canal an inclined plane, so that when a boat is placed
upon it the boat will simply slide down hill by the power of the
attraction of gravitation. This seems to us a beautiful method of
adapting to the wants of man one of the most remarkable of the laws of
Nature, and we should be inclined to give Mr. Bostwick the first prize
but for the fact that we have discovered, upon investigation, that
the water in the canal also would slide down hill, and that it would
require about fifteen rivers the size of the Mississippi to keep up
the supply. Mr. Bostwick does not mention where we are to get those
rivers. He does, however, say that if it shall be deemed inadvisable
to slope the canal, the boats themselves might be made in the shape of
inclined planes, so that they would run down hill upon a level canal.
There is something so deep, so amazing, in this proposition that your
committee needs more time to consider it and brood over it.

"Mr. W.P. Robbins proposes to draw off the water from the canal, lay
rails on the bottom, and then put the boats on wheels and run them
with a locomotive. Your committee has been very much struck with this
proposition, but has concluded, upon reflection, that it is rather too
revolutionary. If canal navigation should be begun in this manner,
probably we should soon have the railroad companies running their
trains on water by means of sails, and stage lines traveling in the
air with balloons. Such things would unsettle the foundations of
society and induce anarchy and chaos. A canal that has no water is
a licentious and incendiary canal; and it is equally improper and
equally repugnant to all conservative persons when, as Mr. Robbins
suggests, the boats are floated in tanks and the tanks are run on
rails.

"Your committee has given much thought and patient examination to the
plan of Mr. Thompson McGlue. He suggests that the mules shall be clad
in submarine armor and made to walk under water along the bottom of
the canal, being fed with air through a pump. As we have never seen a
mule in action while decorated with submarine armor, we are unable
to say with positiveness what his conduct would be under such
circumstances. But the objections to the plan are of a formidable
character. The mule would, of course, be wholly excluded from every
opportunity to view the scenery upon the route, and we fear that this
would have a tendency to discourage him. Being under water, too, he
might be tempted to stop frequently for the purpose of nibbling at the
catfish encountered by him, and this would distract his attention from
his work. Somebody would have to dive whenever he got his hind leg
over the tow-line; and when the water was muddy, he might lose his
way and either pull the boat in the wrong direction or be continually
butting against the bank.

"Of the various other plans submitted, your committee have to say that
A.R. Mackey's proposition to run the boat by sails, and to fill the
sails with wind by means of a steam blower on the vessel; James
Thompson's plan of giving the captain and crew small scows to put
on their feet, so that they could stand overboard and push behind;
William Black's theory that motion could be obtained by employing
trained sturgeon to haul the boat; and Martin Stotesbury's plea that
propulsion could be given by placing a cannon upon the poop-deck and
firing it over the stern, so that the recoil would shove the boat
along,--are wonderful evidences of what the human mind can do when it
exerts itself, but they are not as useful as they are marvelous."

The prize has not yet been awarded. It is thought that the canal
company will have to make it larger before they secure exactly what
they want.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is nothing in common between canals and sausages, but the
mention of Mr. William Bradley's name in the above report recalls
another report in which it figured. Bradley is an inventor who has
a very prolific mind, which, however, rarely produces anything that
anybody wants. One of Mr. Bradley's inventions during the war was
entitled by him "The Patent Imperishable Army Sausage." His idea
was to simplify the movements of troops by doing away with heavy
provision-trains and to furnish soldiers with nutritious food in
a condensed form. The sausage was made on strictly scientific
principles. It contained peas and beef, and salt and pepper, and
starch and gum-arabic, and it was stuffed in the skins by a machine
which exhausted the air, so that it would be air-tight. Bradley said
that his sausage would keep in any climate. You might lay it on the
equator and let the tropical sun scorch it, and it would remain
as sweet and fresh as ever; and Bradley said that there was more
flesh-and-muscle-producing material in a cubic inch of the sausage
than in an entire dinner of roast turkey and other such foolery.

So when Bradley had made up a lot of the Imperishable, he stored
the bulk of them in the garret; and putting a sample of them in his
pocket, he went down to Washington to see the Secretary of War, to get
him to introduce them to the army.

He walked into the secretary's office and pulled out a sausage,
and holding it toward him was about to explain it to him, when the
secretary suddenly dodged behind the table. The movement struck
Bradley as being queer, and he walked around after the secretary,
still holding out a sample of the Imperishable. Then the secretary
made a bolt for the door and went out, and presently in came a couple
of clerks with shot-guns. They aimed at Bradley, and told him to drop
his weapon or they would fire. He deposited the sausage on the table
and asked them what was the matter, and then the secretary came in and
said he mistook the sausage for a revolver. When Bradley explained his
mission, the secretary told him that nothing could be done without the
action of Congress, and he recommended the inventor to go up to the
Capitol and push his sausage through there.

[Illustration: THE SECRETARY IS ALARMED]

So Bradley was on hand next day before the session opened, and he laid
a sausage on the desk of each member. When the House assembled,
there was a large diversity of opinion respecting the meaning of the
extraordinary display. Some were inclined to regard the article as an
infernal machine introduced by some modern Guy Fawkes, while others
leaned to the view that it was a new kind of banana developed by
the Agricultural Department. After a while Bradley turned up and
explained, and he spent the winter there trying to force his sausage
on his beloved country. At the very end of the session a bill was
smuggled through, ordering the commissary department of the army to
appoint a commission to investigate Bradley's sausage, and to report
to the Secretary of War.

When the commission was organized, it came on with Bradley to his home
on his farm to examine his method. As the party approached the house
a terrific smell greeted them, and upon entering the front door it
became nearly unendurable. Mrs. Bradley said she thought there must be
something dead under the washboard. But upon going into the garret the
origin of the smell became obvious. About half a ton of the Patent
Imperishable Sausage lay on the floor in a condition of fearful decay.
Then the commissioners put their fingers to their noses and adjourned,
and the chairman went to the hotel to write out his report. It was
about as follows:

"After a careful examination of the Bradley Patent Imperishable
Army Sausage, we find that it is eminently suitable for certain
well-defined purposes. If it should be introduced to warfare as a
missile, we could calculate with precision that its projection from
a gun into a besieged town would instantly induce the garrison to
evacuate the place and quit; but the barbarity which would be involved
in subjecting even an enemy to direct contact with the Bradley Sausage
is so frightful that we shrink from recommending its use, excepting in
extreme cases. The odor disseminated by the stink-pot used in war by
the Chinese is fragrant and balmy compared with the perfume which
belongs to this article. It might also be used profitably as a manure
for poor land, and in a very cold climate, where it is absolutely
certain to be frozen, it could be made serviceable as a tent-pin.

"But as an article of food it is open to several objections. Bradley's
method of mixing is so defective that he has one sausage filled with
peas, another with gum-arabic, another with pepper and another with
beef. The beef sausages will certainly kill any man who eats a
mouthful, unless they are constantly kept on ice from the hour they
are made, and the gum-arabic sausages are not sufficiently nutritious
to enable an army to conduct an arduous campaign. We are therefore
disposed to recommend that the sausage shall not be accepted by the
department, and that Bradley's friends put him in an asylum where his
mind can be cared for."

When Bradley heard about the report, he was indignant; and after
reflecting that republics are always ungrateful, he sent a box of
the sausages to Bismarck, in order to ascertain if they could not be
introduced to the German army. Three months later he was shot at
one night by a mysterious person, and the belief prevails in this
neighborhood that it was an assassin sent over to this country by
Bismarck for the single purpose of butchering the inventor of the
Imperishable Army Sausage. Since then Bradley has abandoned the
project, and he is now engaged in perfecting a washing-machine which
has reached such a stage that on the first trial it tore four shirts
and a bolster-slip to rags.




CHAPTER IV.

_THE FACTS IN REFERENCE TO MR. BUTTERWICK'S HORSE_.


Mr. Butterwick is not a good judge of horses, but a brief while ago he
thought he would like to own a good horse, and so he went to a sale at
a farm over in Tulpehocken township, and for some reason that has not
yet been revealed he bid upon the forlornest wreck of a horse that
ever retained vitality. It was knocked down to him before he had a
chance to think, and he led it home with something like a feeling of
dismay. The purchase in a day or two got to be the joke of the whole
village, and people poked fun at Butterwick in the most merciless
manner. But he was inclined to take a philosophical view of the
matter, and to present it in rather a novel and interesting light.
When I spoke to him of the unkind things that were said about the
horse, he said,

"Oh, I know that they say he has the heaves; but one of the things I
bought him for was because he breathes so loud. That is a sign that he
has a plenty of wind. You take any ordinary horse, and you can't hear
him draw a breath; his lungs are frail and he daren't inflate 'em. But
my horse fills his up and blows 'em out again vigorously, so people
can hear for themselves how he enjoys the fresh air. Now, I'll let you
into a secret, only mind you don't go to whispering it about: When you
want to buy a horse, go and stand off a quarter of a mile and see if
you can hear him kinder sighing. If you can, why go for that horse;
he's worth his weight in gold. That's strictly between you and me, now
mind!

"And you know that old idiot, Potts, was trying to joke me because the
horse was sprung in the knees, as if that was not the very thing that
made me resolve to have that horse if I ran him up to five hundred
dollars! You are a young man with no experience in the world, and I'll
tell you why I like such legs: They give the horse more leverage. Do
you see? When a horse's leg is straight, the more he bears on it,
the more likely he is to fracture the bone. But you curve that leg a
little to the front, and the upper bone bears obliquely on the
lower bone, the pressure is distributed and the horse has plenty of
purchase. It is the well-known principle of the arch, you know. If
it's good in building a house, why isn't it good in getting up a
horse? Sprung in the knees! Why, good gracious, man! a horse that is
not sprung is not any horse at all; he is only fit for soap-fat and
glue. Now, that's as true as my name's Butterwick.

"And as for his tail, that they talk so much about! Who'n the thunder
wanted a long tail on the horse? I knew well enough it was short and
had only six or seven hairs on it. But the Romans and Egyptians made
their horses bob-tailed, and why? Maybe you ain't up in ancient
history? Why, those old Romans knew that a horse with a fifteen-inch
tail had more meat on him than a horse with a four-inch tail, and
consequently required more nourishment. They knew that more muscular
force is expended in brandishing a long tail than a short one, and
muscular force is made by food, so they chopped off their horses'
tails to make 'em eat less. They had level heads in those times. They
were up in scientific knowledge. But what do these idiots around this
town know about such things? Let 'em laugh. I can stand a tail that
saves me a couple of bushels of oats a year. I'll bet you anything
that there's millions and millions of dollars wasted--just thrown
away--in this country every year furnishing nutriment to tails that
are of no earthly use to the horses after they're nourished. You can
depend on that. I've examined the government statistics, and they're
enough to make a man cry to see how wasteful the American people are.

"And when you talk about his ribs showing so plainly through his
sides, you prove that you have a very singular want of taste. Which is
handsomer, a flat wall or a wall with a surface varied with columns
and pilasters? Well, then, when you take a horse, no man who loves art
wants to see him smooth and even from stem to stern. What you want is
a varied surface--a little bit of hill and a little bit of valley; and
you get it in a horse like mine. Most horses are monotonous. They tire
on you. But swell out the ribs, and there you have a horse that always
pleases the eye and appeals to the finer sensibilities of the mind.
Besides, you are always perfectly certain that he has his full number
of ribs, and that the man you buy him of is not keeping back a single,
solitary bone. Your horse is all there, and you go to bed at night
comfortable because you know it. That's the way I look at it; and
without caring to have it mentioned around, I don't mind telling you
that I know a man who came all the way from Georgia to buy my horse
simply because he heard that his ribs stuck out. I got my bid in ahead
of him, and he went home the worst disgusted man you ever saw.

"And about his having glanders and botts and blind staggers and a raw
shoulder, I can tell you that those things never attack any but a
thoroughbred horse; and for my part, I made up my mind years ago, when
I was a child, that if any man ever offered me a horse that hadn't
blind staggers I wouldn't take him as a gift. Now, that's as true as
you're alive. Professor Owen says that so far from regarding glanders
as a disease he considers it the crowning glory of a good horse, and
he wants the English government to pass a law inoculating every horse
on the island with it. You write to him and ask him if that ain't so."

And so Butterwick put his phenomenal horse in his stable, hired an
Irishman to take care of it, and possessed his soul in peace. However,
before he fairly had a chance to enjoy his purchase, he was summoned
to St. Louis to look after some business matters, and he was detained
there for about six weeks. During his absence Mrs. Butterwick assumed
the responsibility for the management of the horse; and as she knew
as much about taking care of horses as she did about conducting the
processes of the sidereal system, the result was that Mr. Butterwick's
horse was the unconscious parent of infinite disaster. When Butterwick
returned and had kissed his wife and talked over his journey, the
following conversation ensued. Mrs. Butterwick said,

"You know our horse, dearest?"

"Yes, sweet; how is he getting along?"

"Not so _very_ well; he has cost a great deal of money since you've
been away."

"Indeed?"

"Yes; besides his regular feed and Patrick's wages as hostler, I have
on hand unpaid bills to the amount of two thousand dollars on his
account."

"Two thousand! Why, Emma, you amaze me! What on earth does it mean?"

"I'll tell you the whole story, love. Just after you left he took a
severe cold, and he coughed incessantly. You could hear him cough for
miles. All the neighbors complained of it, and Mr. Potts, next door,
was so mad that he shot at the horse four times. Patrick said it was
whooping-cough."

"Whooping-cough, darling! Impossible! A horse _never_ has
whooping-cough."

"Well, Patrick said so. And as I always give paregoric to the children
when they cough, I concluded that it would be good for the horse, so I
bought a bucketful and gave it to him with sugar."

"A bucketful of paregoric, my love! It was enough to kill him."

"Patrick said that was a regular dose for a horse of sedentary habits;
and it didn't kill him: it put him to sleep. You will be surprised,
dear, to learn that the horse slept straight ahead for four weeks.
Never woke up once. I was frightened about it, but Patrick told me
that it was a sign of a good horse. He said that Dexter often slept
six months on a stretch, and that once they took Goldsmith Maid to
a race while she was sound asleep and she trotted a mile in 2:15, I
think he said, without getting awake."

"Patrick said that, did he?"

"Yes; that was at the end of the second week. But as the horse didn't
rouse up, Patrick said it couldn't be the paregoric that kept him
asleep so long; and he came to me and asked me not to mention it, but
he had suspicions that Mr. Fogg had mesmerized him."

"I never heard of a horse being mesmerized, dearest."

"Neither did I, but Patrick said it was a common thing with the better
class of horses. And when he kept on sleeping, dear, I got frightened,
and Patrick consulted the horse-doctor, who came over with a galvanic
battery, which he said would wake the horse. They fixed the wires to
his leg and turned on the current. It did rouse him. He got up and
kicked fourteen boards out of the side of the stable and then jumped
the fence into Mr. Potts' yard, where he trod on a litter of young
pigs, kicked two cows to death and bit the tops off of eight apple
trees. Patrick said he tried to swallow Mrs. Potts' baby, but I didn't
see him do that. Patrick may have exaggerated. I don't know. It seems
hardly likely, does it, that the horse would actually try to eat a
child?"

"The man that sold him to me didn't mention that he was fond of
babies."

"But he got over the attack. The only effect was that the paregoric or
the electricity, or something, turned his hair all the wrong way, and
he looks the queerest you ever saw. Oh yes; it did seem to affect his
appetite, too. He appeared to be always hungry. He ate up the hay-rack
and two sets of harness. And one night he broke out and nibbled off
all the door-knobs on the back of the house."

"Door-knobs, Emma? Has he shown a fondness for door-knobs?"

"Yes; and he ate Louisa's hymn-book, too. She left it lying on the
table on the porch. Patrick said he knew a man in Ireland whose horse
would starve to death unless they fed him on Bibles. If he couldn't
get Bibles, he'd take Testaments; but unless he got Scriptures of some
kind, he was utterly intractable."

"I would like to have had a look at that horse, sweet."

"So we got the horse-doctor again, and he said that what the poor
animal wanted was a hypodermic injection of morphia to calm his
nerves. He told Patrick to get a machine for placing the morphia under
the horse's skin. But Patrick said that he could do it without the
machine. So one day he got the morphia, and began to bore a hole in
the horse with a gimlet."

"A gimlet, Emma?"

"An ordinary gimlet. But it seemed unpleasant to the horse, and so he
kicked Patrick through the partition, breaking three of his ribs. Then
I got the doctor to perform the operation properly, and the horse
after that appeared right well, excepting that Patrick said that he
had suddenly acquired an extraordinary propensity for standing on his
head."

"He is the first horse that ever wanted to do that, love."

"Patrick said not. He told me about a man he worked for in Oshkosh who
had a team of mules which always stood on their heads when they were
not at work. He said all the mules in Oshkosh did. So Patrick tied a
heavy stone to our horse's tail to Balance him and keep him straight.
And this worked to a charm until I took the horse to church one
Sunday, when, while a crowd stood round him looking at him, he swung
his tail around and brained six boys with the stone."

"Brained them, love?"

"Well, I didn't see them myself, but Patrick told me, when I came out
of church, that they were as good as dead. And he said he remembered
that that Oshkosh man used to coax his mules to stand on their legs by
letting them hear music. It soothed them, he said. And so Patrick got
a friend to come around and sit in the stall and calm our horse by
playing on the accordion."

"Did it make him calmer?"

"It seemed to at first; but one day Patrick undertook to bleed him for
the blind staggers, and he must have cut the horse in the wrong place,
for the poor brute fell over on the accordion person and died, nearly
killing the musician."

"The horse is dead, then? Where is the bill?"

"I'll read it to you:

THE BILL.

  Horse-doctor's fees                     $125 50
  Paregoric for cough                       80 00
  Galvanic battery                          10 00
  Repairing stable                          12 25
  Potts' cow, pigs, apple trees and baby   251 00
  Damage to door-knobs, etc.               175 00
  Louisa's hymn-book                           25
  Gimlet and injections                     15 00
  Repairing Patrick's ribs                 145 00
  Music on accordion                        21 00
  Damages to player                        184 00
  Burying six boys                         995 00
                                        ---------
                                        $2,014 00

"That is all, love, is it?"

"Yes."

Then Mr. Butterwick folded the bill up and went out into the back yard
to think. Subsequently, he told me that he had concluded to repudiate
the unpaid portions of the bill, and then to try to purchase a better
horse. He said he had heard that Mr. Keyser, a farmer over in Lower
Merion, had a horse that he wanted to sell, and he asked me to go over
there with him to see about it. I agreed to do so.

When we reached the place, Mr. Keyser asked us into the parlor, and
while we were sitting there we heard Mrs. Keyser in the dining-room,
adjoining, busy preparing supper. Keyser would not sell his horse, but
he was quite sociable, and after some conversation, he said,

"Gentlemen, in 1847 I owned a hoss that never seen his equal in this
State. And that hoss once did the most extr'ordinary thing that
was ever done by an animal. One day I had him out, down yer by the
creek--"

Here Mrs. Keyser opened the door and exclaimed, shrilly,

"Keyser, if you want any supper, you'd better get me some kin'lin-wood
pretty quick."

Then Keyser turned to us and said, "Excuse me for a few moments,
gentlemen, if you please."

A moment later we heard him splitting wood in the cellar beneath, and
indulging in some very hard language with his soft pedal down, Mrs.
Keyser being the object of his objurgations. After a while he came
into the parlor again, took his seat, wiped the moisture from his
brow, put his handkerchief in his hat, his hat on the floor, and
resumed:

"As I was sayin', gentlemen, one day I had that hoss down yer by the
creek; it was in '47 or '48, I most forget which. But, howsomedever, I
took him down yer by the creek, and I was jest about to--"

_Mrs. Keyser_ (opening the door suddenly). "You, Keyser! there's not a
drop of water in the kitchen, and unless some's drawed there'll be no
supper in this house _this_ night, now mind _me_!"

_Keyser_ (with a look of pain upon his face). "Well, well! this is too
bad! too bad! Gentlemen, just wait half a minute. I'll be right back.
The old woman's rarin' 'round, and she won't wait."

Then we heard Keyser at work at the well-bucket; and looking out the
back window, we saw him bringing in a pail of water. On his way he
encountered a dog, and in order to give his pent-up feelings adequate
expression, he kicked the animal clear over the fence. Presently he
came into the parlor, mopped his forehead, and began again.

_Keyser_. "As I was sayin', that hoss was perfeckly astonishin'. On
the day of which I was speakin'. I was ridin' him down yer by the
creek, clost by the corn-field, and I was jest about to wade him in,
when, all of a suddent-like, he--"

_Mrs. Keyser_ (at the door, and with her voice pitched at a high key).
"ARE you goin' to fetch that ham from the smoke-house, or ARE you
goin' to set there jabberin' and go without your supper? If that ham
isn't here in short order, I'll know the reason why. You hear me?"

_Keyser_ (his face red and his manner excited). "_Gra_-SHUS! If this
isn't--Well, well! this just lays over all the--Pshaw! Mr. Butterwick,
if you'll hold on for a second, I'll be with you agin. I'll be right
back."

Then we heard Keyser slam open the smokehouse door, and presently he
emerged with a ham, which he carried in one hand, while with the other
he made a fist, which he shook threateningly at the kitchen door, as
if to menace Mrs. Keyser, who couldn't see him.

Again he entered the parlor, smelling of smoke and ham, and, crossing
his legs, he continued.

_Keyser_ "Excuse these little interruptions; the old woman's kinder
sing'ler, and you've got to humor her to live in peace with her. Well,
sir, as I said, I rode that extr'ordinary hoss down yer by the creek
on that day to which I am referring and after passin' the cornfield I
was goin' to wade him into the creek; just then, all of a, suddent,
what should that hoss do but--"

_Mrs. Keyser_ (at the door again). "Keyser, you lazy vagabone! Why
don't you 'tend to milkin' them cows? Not one mossel of supper do you
put in your mouth this night unless you do the milkin' right off. You
sha'n't touch a crust, or my name's not Emeline Keyser!"

Then Keyser leaped to his feet in a perfect frenzy of rage and hurled
the chair at Mrs. Keyser; whereupon she seized the poker and came
toward him with savage earnestness. Then we adjourned to the front
yard suddenly; and as Butterwick and I got into the carriage to go
home, Keyser, with a humble expression in his eyes, said:

"Gentlemen, I'll tell you that hoss story another time, when the old
woman's calmer. Good-day."

I am going to ask him to write it out. I am anxious to know what that
horse did down at the creek.

Butterwick subsequently bought another horse from a friend of his in
the city, but the animal developed eccentricities of such a remarkable
character that he became unpopular. Butterwick, in explaining the
subject to me, said,

"I was surprised to find, when I drove him out for the first time,
that he had an irresistible propensity to back. He seemed to be
impressed with a conviction that nature had put his hind legs in
front, and that he could see with his tail; and whenever I attempted
to start him, he always proceeded backward until I whipped him
savagely, and then he would go in a proper manner, but suddenly, and
with the air of a horse who had a conviction that there was a lunatic
in the carriage who didn't know what he was about. One day, while we
were coming down the street, this theory became so strong that he
suddenly stopped and backed the carriage through the plate-glass
window of Mackey's drug-store. After that I always hitched him up
with his head toward the carriage, and then he seemed to feel better
contented, only sometimes he became too sociable, and used to put his
head over the dasher and try to chew my legs or to eat the lap-cover.

"Besides, the peculiar arrangement of the animal excited unpleasant
remark when I drove out; and when I wanted to stop and would hitch him
by the tail to a post, he had a very disagreeable way of reaching out
with his hind legs and sweeping the sidewalk whenever he saw anybody
that he felt as if he would like to kick.

"He was not much of a saddle-horse; not that he would attempt to throw
his rider, but whenever a saddle was put on him it made his back itch,
and he would always insist upon rubbing it against the first tree or
fence or corner of a house that he came to; and if he could bark the
rider's leg, he seemed to be better contented. The last time I rode
him was upon the day of Mr. Johnson's wedding. I had on my best suit,
and on the way to the festival there was a creek to be forded. When
the horse got into the middle of it, he took a drink, and then looked
around at the scenery. Then he took another drink, and gazed again at
the prospect. Then he suddenly felt tired and lay down in the water.
By the time he was sufficiently rested I was ready to go home.

[Illustration: MR. BUTTERWICK'S HORSE LIES DOWN]

"The next day he was taken sick. Patrick said it was the epizooty, and
he mixed him up some turpentine in a bucket of warm feed. That night
the horse had spasms, and kicked four of the best boards out of the
side of the stable. Jones said that horse hadn't the epizooty, but
the botts, and that the turpentine ought to have been rubbed on the
outside of him instead of going into his stomach. So we rubbed him
with turpentine, and next morning he hadn't a hair on his body.

"Colonel Coffin told me that if I wanted to know what really ailed
that horse he would tell me. It was glanders, and if he wasn't bled he
would die. So the colonel bled him for me. We took away a tubful, and
the horse thinned down so that his ribs made him look as if he had
swallowed a flour-barrel.

"Then I sent for the horse-doctor, and he said there was nothing the
matter with the horse but heaves, and he left some medicine 'to patch
up his wind.' The result was that the horse coughed for two days as if
he had gone into galloping consumption, and between two of the
coughs he kicked the hired man through the partition and bit our
black-and-tan terrier in half.

"I thought perhaps a little exercise might improve his health, so I
drove him out one day, and he proceeded in such a peculiar manner that
I was afraid he might suddenly come apart and fall to pieces. When we
reached the top of White House hill, which is very steep by the side
of the road, he stopped, gave a sort of shudder, coughed a couple of
times, kicked a fly off his side with his hind leg, and then lay down
and calmly rolled over the bank. I got out of the carriage before he
fell, and I watched him pitch clear down to the valley beneath, with
the vehicle dragging after him. When we got to him he was dead, and
the man at the farm-house close by said he had the blind staggers.

"I sold him for eight dollars to a man who wanted to make him up into
knife-handles and suspender-buttons; and since then we have walked.
I hardly think I shall buy another horse. My luck doesn't seem good
enough when I make ventures of that kind."




CHAPTER V.

_SOME EDUCATIONAL FACTS_.


The public-school system of the village was reorganized during a
recent summer; and in consequence of a considerable enlargement of
the single school-building and the great increase of the number of
scholars, it was determined to engage an additional woman-teacher in
the girls' department. Accordingly, the board of directors advertised
for a suitable person, instructing applicants to call upon Judge
Twiddler, the chairman. A day or two later, Mrs. Twiddler advertised
in a city paper for a cook, and upon the same afternoon an Irish girl
came to the house to obtain the place in the kitchen. The judge was
sitting upon the front porch at the time reading a newspaper; and
when the girl entered the gate of the yard, he mistook her for a
school-mistress, and he said to her,

"Did you come about that place?"

"Yes, sor," she answered.

"Oh, very well, then; take a seat and I'll run over a few things in
order to ascertain what your qualifications are. Bound Africa."

"If you please, sor, I don't know what you mean."

"I say, bound Africa."

"Bou--bou--Begorra, I don't know what ye're referrin' to."

"Very strange," said the judge. "Can you tell me if 'amphibious' is an
adverb or a preposition? What is an adverb?"

"Indade, and ye bother me intirely. I never had anything to do wid
such things at my last place."

"Then it must have been a curious sort of an institution," said the
judge. "Probably you can tell me how to conjugate the verb 'to be,'
and just mention, also, what you know about Herodotus."

"Ah, yer Honor's jokin' wid me. Be done wid yer fun, now."

"Did you ever hear of Herodotus?"

"Never once in the whole coorse of my life. Do you make it with eggs?"

"This is the most extraordinary woman I ever encountered," murmured
the judge. "How she ever associated Herodotus with the idea of eggs is
simply incomprehensible. Well, can you name the hemisphere in which
China and Japan are situated?"

"Don't bother me wid yer fun, now. I can wash the china and the pans
as well as anybody, and that's enough, now, isn't it?"

"Dumb! awful dumb! Don't know the country from the crockery. I'll try
her once more. Name the limits of the Tropic of Capricorn, and tell me
where Asia Minor is located."

"I have a brother that's one, sor; that's all I know about it."

"One? One what?"

"Didn't ye ask me afther the miners, sor? My brother Teddy works wid
'em."

"And this," said the judge, "is the kind of person to whom we are
asked to entrust the education of youth. Woman, what _do_ you know?
What kind of a school have you been teaching?"

"None, sor. What should I teach school for?"

"Totally without experience, as I supposed," said the judge.

"Mrs. Ferguson had a governess teach the children when I was cookin'
for her."

"Cooking! Ain't you a school-teacher? What do you mean by proposing to
stop cooking in order to teach school? Why, it's preposterous."

"Begorra, I came here to get the cook's place, sor, and that's all of
it."

"Oh, by George! I see now. You ain't a candidate for the grammar
school, after all. You want to see Mrs. Twiddler. Maria, come down
here a minute. There's a thick-headed immigrant here wants to cook for
you."

And the judge picked up his paper and resumed the editorial on "The
Impending Crisis."

They obtained a good teacher, however, and the course of affairs in
the girls' department was smooth enough; but just after the opening of
the fall session there was some trouble in the boys' department.

Mr. Barnes, the master, read in the _Educational Monthly_ that boys
could be taught history better than in any other way by letting each
boy in the class represent some historical character, and relate the
acts of that character as if he had done them himself. This struck
Barnes as a mighty good idea, and he resolved to put it in practice.
The school had then progressed so far in its study of the history of
Rome as the Punic wars, and Mr. Barnes immediately divided the boys
into two parties, one Romans and the other Carthaginians, and certain
of the boys were named after the leaders upon both sides. All the boys
thought it was a fine thing, and Barnes noticed that they were so
anxious to get to the history lesson that they could hardly say their
other lessons properly.

When the time came, Barnes ranged the Romans upon one side of the room
and the Carthaginians on the other. The recitation was very spirited,
each party telling about its deeds with extraordinary unction. After a
while Barnes asked a Roman to describe the battle of Cannæ. Whereupon
the Romans hurled their copies of Wayland's Moral Science at the
enemy. Then the Carthaginians made a battering-ram out of a bench and
jammed it among the Romans, who retaliated with a volley of books,
slates and chewed paper-balls. Barnes concluded that the battle of
Cannæ had been sufficiently illustrated, and he tried to stop it;
but the warriors considered it too good a thing to let drop, and
accordingly the Carthaginians dashed over to the Romans with another
battering-ram and thumped a couple of them savagely.

Then the Romans turned in, and the fight became general. A
Carthaginian would grasp a Roman by the hair and hustle him around
over the desk in a manner that was simply frightful, and a Roman would
give a fiendish whoop and knock a Carthaginian over the head with
Greenleaf's Arithmetic. Hannibal got the head of Scipio Africanus
under his arm, and Scipio, in his efforts to break away, stumbled,
and the two generals fell and had a rough-and-tumble fight under the
blackboard. Caius Gracchus prodded Hamilcar with a ruler, and the
latter in his struggles to get loose fell against the stove and
knocked down about thirty feet of stove-pipe. Thereupon the Romans
made a grand rally, and in five minutes they chased the entire
Carthaginian army out of the school-room, and Barnes along with it;
and then they locked the door and began to hunt up the apples and
lunch in the desks of the enemy.

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF CANNÆ.]

After consuming the supplies they went to the windows and made
disagreeable remarks to the Carthaginians, who were standing in the
yard, and dared old Barnes to bring the foe once more into battle
array. Then Barnes went for a policeman; and when he knocked at the
door, it was opened, and all the Romans were found busy studying their
lessons. When Barnes came in with the defeated troops he went for
Scipio Africanus; and pulling him out of his seat by the ear, he
thrashed that great military genius with a rattan until Scipio began
to cry, whereupon Barnes dropped him and began to paddle Caius
Gracchus. Then things settled down in the old way, and next morning
Barnes announced that history in the future would be studied as it
always had been; and he wrote a note to the _Educational Monthly_ to
say that in his opinion the man who suggested the new system ought
to be led out and shot. The boys do not now take as much interest in
Roman history as they did on that day.

       *       *       *       *       *

The young tragedian who represented Scipio Africanus is named Smith.
His family came to the village to live only a few weeks before the
school opened. Scipio is a very enterprising and ingenious lad.
Colonel Coffin's boy leaned over the fence one day and gave to me his
impressions of Scipio, a lad about fourteen years old:

"Yes, me and him are right well acquainted now; he knows more'n I do,
and he's had more experience. Bill says his father used to be a robber
(Smith, by the way, is a deacon in the Presbyterian church, and a very
excellent lawyer), and that he has ten million dollars in gold buried
in his cellar, along with a whole lot of human bones--people he's
killed. And he says his father is a conjurer, and that he makes all
the earthquakes that happen anywheres in the world. The old man'll
come home at night, after there's been an earthquake, all covered with
perspiration and so tired he kin hardly stand. Bill says it's such
hard work.

"And Bill tole me that once when a man came around there trying to
sell lightning-rods his father got mad and et him--et him right up;
and he takes bites out of everybody he comes acrost.

"That's what Bill tells me. That's all I know about it. And he tole me
that once he used to have a dog--one of these little kind of dogs--and
he was flying his kite, and just for fun he tied the kite-string
onto his dog's tail. And then the wind struck her and his dog went
a-scuddin' down the street with his hind legs in the air for about a
mile, when the kite all of a sudden begun to go up, and in about
a minute the dog was fifteen miles high and commanding a view of
California and Egypt, I think Bill said. He came down, anyhow, I know,
in Brazil, and Bill said he swum home all the way in the Atlantic
Ocean; and when he landed, his legs were all nibbled off by sharks.

"I wish father'd buy me a dog, so's I could send him up that way. But
I never have any luck. Bill said that where they used to live he went
out on the roof one day to fly his kite, and he sat on top of the
chimbly to give her plenty of room, and while he was sitting there
thinking about nothing, the old man put a keg of powder down below
in the fire-place to clean the soot out of the chimbly. And when he
touched her off, Bill was blowed over agin the Baptist church steeple,
and he landed on the weather-cock with his pants torn, and they
couldn't git him down for three days, so he hung there, going round
and round with the wind, and he lived by eating the crows that came
and sat on him, because they thought he was made of sheet-iron and put
up there on purpose.

"He's had more fun than enough. He was telling me the other day about
a sausage-stuffer his brother invented. It was a kinder machine that
worked with a treadle; and Bill said the way they did in the fall was
to fix it on the hog's back, and connect the treadle with a string,
and then the hog'd work the treadle and keep on running it up and down
until the machine cut the hog all up fine and shoved the meat into the
skins. Bill said his brother called it 'Every Hog His Own Stuffer,'
and it worked splendid. But I do' know. 'Pears to me 'sif there
couldn't be no machine like that. But anyway, Bill said so.

"And he told me about an uncle of his out in Australia who was et by a
big oyster once; and when, he got inside, he stayed there until he'd
et the oyster. Then he split the shell open and took half a one for a
boat, and he sailed along until he met a sea-serpent, and he killed it
and drawed off its skin, and when he got home he sold it to an engine
company for a hose, for forty thousand dollars, to put out fires with.
Bill said that was actually so, because he could show me a man who
used to belong to the engine company. I wish father'd let me go out
to find a sea-serpent like that; but he don't let me have a chance to
distinguish myself.

"Bill was saying only yesterday that the Indians caught him once and
drove eleven railroad spikes through his stomach and cut off his
scalp, and it never hurt him a bit. He said he got away by the
daughter of the chief sneaking him out of the wigwam and lending him a
horse. Bill says she was in love with him; and when I asked him to let
me see the holes where they drove in the spikes, he said he daresn't
take off his clothes or he'd bleed to death. He said his own father
didn't know it, because Bill was afraid it might worry the old man.

"And Bill tole me they wasn't going to get him to go to Sunday-school.
He says his father has a brass idol that he keeps in the garret, and
Bill says he's made up his mind to be a pagan, and to begin to go
naked, and carry a tomahawk and a bow and arrow, as soon as the warm
weather comes. And to prove it to me, he says his father has this town
all underlaid with nitro-glycerine, and as soon as he gets ready he's
going to blow the old thing out, and bust her up, let her rip, and
demolish her. He said so down at the dam, and tole me not to tell
anybody, but I thought they'd be no harm in mentioning it to you.

"And now I believe I must be going. I hear Bill a-whistling. Maybe
he's got something else to tell me."

The Smith boy will be profitable to the youth of the community.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barnes, the pedagogue, is a worthy man who has seen trouble. Precisely
what was the nature of the afflictions which had filled his face with
furrows and given him the air of one who has been overburdened with
sorrows was not revealed until Mr. Keyser told the story one evening
at the grocery-store. Whether his narrative is strictly true or not
is uncertain. There is a bare possibility that Mr. Keyser may have
exaggerated grossly a very simple fact.

"Nobody ever knew how it got in there," said Mr. Keyser, clasping his
hands over his knee and spitting into the stove. "Some thought Barnes
must've swallowed a tadpole while drinking out of a spring and it
subsequently grew inside him, while others allowed that maybe he'd
accidentally eaten frogs' eggs some time and they'd hatched out.
But anyway, he had that frog down there inside of him settled and
permanent and perfectly satisfied with being in out of the rain. It
used to worry Barnes more'n a little, and he tried various things to
git rid of it. The doctors they give him sickening stuff, and over and
over agin emptied him; and then they'd hold him by the heels and shake
him over a basin, and they'd bait a hook with a fly and fish down his
throat hour after hour, but that frog was too intelligent. He never
even gave them a nibble; and when they'd try to fetch him with an
emetic, he'd dig his claws into Barnes's membranes and hold on until
the storm was over.

"Not that Barnes minded the frog merely being in there if he'd only a
kept quiet. But he was too vociferous--that's what Barnes said to me.
A taciturn frog he wouldn't have cared about so much. But how would
you like to have one down inside of you there a-whooping every now and
then in the most ridiculous manner? Maybe, for instance, Barnes'd be
out taking tea with a friend, and just when everybody else was quiet
it'd suddenly occur to his frog to tune-up, and the next minute you'd
hear something go 'Blo-o-o-ood-a-noun! Blo-oo-oo-ood-a-noun!' two or
three times, apparently under the table. Then the folks would ask if
there was an aquarium in the house or if the man had a frog-pond in
the cellar, and Barnes'd get as red as fire and jump up and go home.

"And often when he'd be setting in church, perhaps in the most solemn
part of the sermon, he'd feel something give two or three quick kinder
jerks under his vest, and presently that reptile would bawl right out
in the meeting 'Bloo-oo-oo-ood-a-noun! Bloo-oo-oo-ood-a-nou-ou-oun!'
and keep it up until the sexton would come along and run out two or
three boys for profaning the sanctuary. And at last he'd fix it on
poor old Barnes, and then tell him that if he wanted to practice
ventriloquism he'd better wait till after church. And then the frog'd
give six or seven more hollers, so that the minister would stop and
look at Barnes, and Barnes'd get up and skip down the aisle and go
home furious about it.

"It had a deep voice for an ordinary frog--betwixt a French horn and a
bark-mill. And Mrs. Barnes told me herself that often, when John'd get
comfortably fixed in bed and just dropping off into a nap, the frog'd
think it was a convenient time for some music; and after hopping
about a bit, it'd all at once grind out three or four awful
'Bloo-oo-ood-a-nouns' and wake Mrs. Barnes and the baby, and start
things up generally all around the house. And--would you believe
it?--if that frog felt, maybe, a little frisky, or p'raps had some
tune running through its head, it'd keep on that way for hours. It
worried Barnes like thunder.

"I dunno whether it was that that killed his wife or not; but anyhow,
when she died, Barnes wanted to marry agin, and he went for a while to
see Miss Flickers, who lives out yer on the river road, you know. He
courted her pretty steady for a while, and we all thought there was
goin' to be a consolidation. But she was telling my wife that one
evening Barnes had just taken hold of her hand and told her he
loved her, when all of a sudden something said,
'Bloo-oo-oo-ood-a-nou-ou-oun!'

"'What on earth's that?' asked Miss Flickers, looking sorter scared.

"'I dunno,' said Barnes; 'it sounds like somebody making a noise in
the cellar.' Lied, of course, for he knew mighty well what it was.

[Illustration: MR. BARNES PROPOSES]

"''Pears to me 'sif it was under the sofa,' says she.

"'Maybe it wasn't anything, after all,' says Barnes, when just then
the frog, he feels like running up the scales again, and he yells out,
'Bloo-oo-ood-a-nou-ou-ou-oun!'

"'Upon my word,' says Miss Flickers, 'I believe you've got a frog in
your pocket, Mr. Barnes; now, haven't you?'

"Then he gets down on his knees and owns up to the truth, and swears
he'll do his best to git rid of the frog, and all the time he is
talking the frog is singing exercises and scales and oratorios inside
of him, and worse than ever, too, because Barnes drank a good deal of
ice-water that day, and it made the frog hoarse--ketched cold, you
know.

"But Miss Flickers, she refused him. Said she might've loved him, only
she couldn't marry any man that had continual music in his interior.

"So Barnes, he was the most disgusted man you ever saw. Perfectly sick
about it. And one day he was lying on the bed gaping, and that frog
unexpectedly made up its mind to come up to ask Barnes to eat more
carefully, maybe, and it jumped out on the counterpane. After looking
about a bit it came up and tried three or four times to hop back,
but he kept his mouth shut, and killed the frog with the back of a
hair-brush. Ever since then he runs his drinking-water through a
strainer, and he hates frogs worse than you and me hate pison. Now,
that's the honest truth about Barnes; you ask him if it ain't."

Then Keyser bought some tobacco and went home.




CHAPTER VI.

_THE EDITOR OF THE PATRIOT_.


The editor of the village paper, _The Patriot and Advertiser_, is
Major Slott; and a very clever journalist he is. Even his bitterest
adversary, the editor of _The Evening Mail_, in the town above us on
the river, admits that. In the last political campaign, indeed, _The
Mail_ undertook to tell how it was that the major acquired such a
taste for journalism. The story was that shortly after he was born the
doctor ordered that the baby should be fed upon goat's milk. This was
procured from a goat that was owned by an Irish woman who lived in the
rear of the office of _The Weekly Startler_ and fed her goat chiefly
upon the exchanges which came to that journal. The consequence,
according to _The Mail_, was that young Slott was fed entirely upon
milk formed from digested newspapers; and he throve on it, although
when the Irish woman mixed the Democratic journals carelessly with the
Whig papers they disagreed after they were eaten, and the milk gave
the baby colic. Old Slott intended the boy to be a minister; but as
soon as he was old enough to take notice he cried for every newspaper
that he happened to see, and no sooner did he learn how to write than
he began to slash off editorials upon "The Need of Reform," etc. He
ran away from school four times to enter a newspaper office, and
finally, when the paternal Slott put him in the House of Refuge, he
started a weekly in there, and called it the _House of Refuge Record_;
and one day he slid over the wall and went down to the _Era_ office,
where he changed his name to Blott, and began his career on that paper
with an article on "Our Reformatory Institutions for the Young." Then
old Slott surrendered to what seemed to be a combination of manifest
destiny and goat's milk, and permitted him to pursue his profession.
The major, _The Mail_ alleges, has the instinct so strong that if he
should fall into the crater of Vesuvius his first thought on striking
bottom would be to write to somebody to ask for a free pass to come
out with. "But," continued _The Mail_, "you would hardly believe this
story if you ever read _The Patriot_. We often suspect, when we are
looking over that sheet, that the nurse used to mix the goat's milk
with an unfair proportion of water."

The major has a weekly edition in which he publishes serial stories
of a stirring character, and he is always looking out for good ones.
Recently a tale was submitted by a certain Mr. Stack, a young man who
had high ambition without much experience as a writer of fiction.
After waiting a long while and hearing nothing about the story, Mr.
Stack concluded to call upon the major in order to ascertain why
that narrative had not attracted attention. When Stack mentioned his
errand, the major reached for the manuscript; and looking very solemn,
he said,

"Mr. Stack, I don't think I can accept this story. In some respects it
is really wonderful; but I am afraid that if I published it, it would
attract almost too much attention. People would get too wild over it.
We have to be careful. For instance, here in the first chapter you
mention the death of Mrs. McGinnis, the hero's mother. She dies; you
inter Mrs. McGinnis in the cemetery; you give an affecting scene at
the funeral; you run up a monument over her and plant honeysuckle upon
her grave. You create in the reader's mind a strong impression
that Mrs. McGinnis is thoroughly dead. And yet, over here in the
twenty-second chapter, you make a man named Thompson fall in love with
her, and she is married to him, and she goes skipping around through
the rest of the story as lively as a grasshopper, and you all the time
alluding to Thompson as her second husband. You see that kind of thing
won't do. It excites remark. Readers complain about it."

"You don't say I did that? Well, now, do you know I was thinking
all the time that it was _Mr._ McGinnis that I buried in the first
chapter? I must have got them mixed up somehow."

"And then," continued the major, "when you introduce the hero, you
mention that he has but one arm, having lost the other in battle. But
in chapter twelve you run him through a saw-mill by an accident, and
you mention that he lost an arm there, too. And yet in the nineteenth
chapter you say, 'Adolph rushed up to Mary, threw his arms about her,
and clasped her to his bosom;' and then you go on to relate how he sat
down at the piano in the soft moonlight and played one of Beethoven's
sonatas 'with sweet poetic fervor.' Now, the thing, you see, don't
dovetail. Adolph couldn't possibly throw his arms around Mary if one
was buried in the field of battle and the other was minced up in a
saw-mill, and he couldn't clasp her to his bosom unless he threw a
lasso with his teeth and hauled her in by swallowing the slack of the
rope. As for the piano--well, you know as well as I do that an armless
man can't play a Beethoven sonata unless he knows how to perform on
the instrument with his nose, and in that case you insult the popular
intelligence when you talk about 'sweet poetic fervor.' I have my
fingers on the public pulse, and I know they won't stand it."

"Well, well," said Stack, "I don't know how I ever came to--"

"Let me direct your attention to another incendiary matter,"
interrupted the major. "In the first love-scene between Adolph
and--and--let me see--what's her name?--Mary--you say that 'her liquid
blue eye rested softly upon him as he poured forth the story of his
love, and its azure was dimmed by a flood of happy tears.' Well, sir,
about twenty pages farther on, where the villain insults her, you
observe that her black eyes flashed lightning at him and seemed to
scorch him where he stood. Now, let me direct attention to the fact
that if the girl's eyes were blue they couldn't be black; and if you
mean to convey the impression that she had one blue eye and one black
eye, and that she only looked softly at Adolph out of the off eye,
while the near eye roamed around, not doing anything in particular,
why, she is too phenomenal for a novel, and only suitable for a place
in the menagerie by the side of the curiosities. And then you say that
although her eye was liquid yet it scorched the villain. People
won't put up with that kind of thing. It makes them delirious and
murderous."

"Too bad!" said Stack. "I forgot what I'd said about her eyes when I
wrote that scene with the villain."

"And here, in the twentieth chapter, you say that Magruder was stabbed
with a bowie-knife in the hands of the Spaniard, and in the next
chapter you give an account of the _post-mortem_ examination, and make
the doctors hunt for the bullet and find it embedded in his liver.
Even patient readers can't remain calm under such circumstances. They
lose control of themselves."

"It's unfortunate," said Stack.

"Now, the way you manage the Browns in the story is also exasperating.
First you represent Mrs. Brown as taking her twins around to church to
be christened. In the middle of the book you make Mrs. Brown lament
that she never had any children, and you wind up the story by bringing
in Mrs. Brown with her grandson in her arms just after having caused
Mr. Brown to state to the clergyman that the only child he ever had
died in his fourth year. Just think of the effect of such a thing on
the public mind! Why, this story would fill all the insane asylums in
the country."

"Those Browns don't seem to be very definite, somehow," said Stack,
thoughtfully.

"Worst of all," said major, "in chapter thirty-one you make the lovers
resolve upon suicide, and you put them in a boat and drift them over
Niagara Falls. Twelve chapters farther on you suddenly introduce them
walking in the twilight in a leafy lane, and although afterward she
goes into a nunnery and takes the black veil because he has been
killed by pirates in the Spanish West Indies, in the next chapter to
the last you have a scene where she goes to a surprise-party at the
Presbyterian minister's and finds him there making arrangements for
the wedding as if nothing had ever happened; and then, after you
disclose the fact that she was a boy in disguise, and not a woman at
all, you marry them to each other, and represent the boy heroine as
giving her blessing to her daughter. Oh, it's awful--awful! It won't
do. It really won't. You'd better go into some other kind of business,
Mr. Stack."

Then Stack took his manuscript and went home to fix it up so as to
make the story run together better. The _Patriot_ will not publish it
even if Stack reconstructs it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Major Slott, like most other editors, is continually persecuted by
bores, but recently he was the victim of a peculiarly dastardly attack
from a person of this class. While he was sitting in the office of the
_Patriot_, writing an editorial about "Our Grinding Monopolies," he
suddenly became conscious of the presence of a fearful smell. He
stopped, snuffed the air two or three times, and at last lighted a
cigar to fumigate the room. Then he heard footsteps upon the stairs,
and as they drew nearer the smell grew stronger. When it had reached a
degree of intensity that caused the major to fear that it might break
some of the furniture, there was a knock at the door. Then a man
entered with a bundle under his arm, and as he did so the major
thought that he had never smelt such a fiendish smell in the whole
course of his life. He held his nose; and when the man saw the
gesture, he said,

"I thought so; the usual effect. You hold it tight while I explain."

"What hab you god id that buddle?" asked the major.

"That, sir," said the man, "is Barker's Carbolic Disinfecting
Door-mat. I am Barker, and this is the mat. I invented it, and it's a
big thing."

"Is id thad thad smells so thudderig bad?" asked the major, with his
nostrils tightly shut.

"Yes, sir; smells very strong, but it's a healthy smell. It's
invigorating. It braces the system. I'll tell you--"

"Gid oud with the blabed thig!" exclaimed the major.

"I must tell you all about it first. I called to explain it to you.
You see I've been investigating the causes of epidemic diseases. Some
scientists think they are spread by molecules in the air; others
attribute them to gases generated in the sewers; others hold that they
are conveyed by contagion; but I--"

"Aid you goig to tague thad idferdal thig away frob here?" asked the
major.

"But I have discovered that these diseases are spread by the agency of
door-mats. Do you understand? Door-mats! And I'll explain to you how
it's done. Here's a man who's been in a house where there's disease.
He gets it on his boots. The leather is porous, and it becomes
saturated. He goes to another house and wipes his boots on the mat.
Now, every man who uses that mat must get some of the stuff on his
boots, and he spreads it over every other door-mat that he wipes them
on. Now, don't he?"

"Why dode you tague thad sbell frob udder by dose?"

"Well, then, my idea is to construct a door-mat that will disinfect
those boots. I do it by saturating the mat with carbolic acid and
drying it gradually. I have one here prepared by my process. Shall I
unroll it?"

"If you do, I'll blow your braids out!" shouted the major.

"Oh, very well, then. Now, the objection to this beautiful invention
is that it possesses a very strong and positive odor."

"I'll bed it does," said the major.

[Illustration: THE CARBOLIC DOOR-MAT]

"And as this is offensive to many persons, I give to each purchaser a
'nose-guard,' which is to be worn upon the nose while in a house where
the carbolic mat is placed. This nose-guard is filled with a
substance which completely neutralizes the smell, and it has only one
disadvantage. Now, what is that?"

"Are you goig to quid and led me breathe, or are you goig to stay here
all day log?"

"Have patience, now; I'm coming to the point. I say, what is that? It
is that the neutralizing substance in the nose-guard evaporates too
quickly. And how do I remedy that? I give to every man who buys a mat
and a nose-guard two bottles of 'neutralizer.' What it is composed of
is a secret. But the bottles are to be carried in the pocket, so as to
be ready for every emergency. The disadvantage of this plan consists
of the fact that the neutralizer is highly explosive, and if a man
should happen to sit down on a bottle of it in his coat-tail pocket
suddenly it might hist him through the roof. But see how beautiful my
scheme is."

"Oh, thudder add lightnig! aid you ever goig to quid?"

"See how complete it is! By paying twenty dollars additional, every
man who takes a mat has his life protected in the Hopelessly Mutual
Accident Insurance Company, so that it really makes no great
difference whether he is busted through the shingles or not. Now, does
it?"

"Oh, dode ask me. I dode care a ced about id, adyway."

"Well, then, what I want you to do is to give me a first-rate notice
in your paper, describing the invention, giving the public some
general notion of its merits and recommending its adoption into
general use. You give me a half-column puff, and I'll make the thing
square by leaving you one of the mats, with a couple of bottles of the
neutralizer and a nose-guard. I'll leave them now."

"Whad d'you say?"

"I say I'll just leave you a mat and the other fixings for you to look
over at your leisure."

"You biserable scoundrel, if you lay wod ob those blasted thigs dowd
here, I'll burder you od the spod! I wod stad such foolishness."

"Won't you notice it, either?"

"Certaidly nod. I woulded do id for ten thousad dollars a lide."

"Well, then, let it alone; and I hope one of those epidemic diseases
will get you and lay you up for life."

As Mr. Barker withdrew, Major Slott threw up the windows, and after
catching his breath, he called down stairs to a reporter,

"Perkins, follow that man and hear what he's got to say, and then
blast him in a column of the awfulest vituperation you know how to
write."

Perkins obeyed orders, and now Barker has a libel suit pending against
_The Patriot_, while the carbolic mat has not yet been introduced to
this market.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Barker was not a more agreeable visitor than the book-canvasser
who, upon the same day, circulated about the village. He came into
my office with a portfolio under his arm. Placing it upon the table,
removing a ruined hat, and wiping his nose upon a ragged handkerchief
that had been so long out of wash that it was positively gloomy, he
said,

"Mister, I'm canvassing for the National Portrait Gallery; splendid
work; comes in numbers, fifty cents apiece. Contains pictures of all
the great American heroes from the earliest times to the present day.
Everybody's subscribing for it, and I want to see if I can't take your
name.

"Now, just cast your eyes over that," he said, opening his book and
pointing to an engraving. "That's--lemme see--yes, that's Columbus.
Perhaps you've heard sumfin about him? The publisher was telling me
to-day, before I started out, that he discovered--No; was it Columbus
that dis--Oh yes! Columbus, he discovered America. Was the first man
here. He came over in a ship, the publisher said, and it took fire,
and he stayed on deck because his father told him to, if I remember
right; and when the old thing busted to pieces, he was killed.
Handsome picture, ain't it? Taken from a photograph; all of 'em are;
done specially for this work. His clothes are kinder odd, but they say
that's the way they dressed in those days.

"Look here at this one. Now, isn't that splendid? William Penn; one
of the early settlers. I was reading the other day about him; when
he first arrived, he got a lot of Indians up a tree, and when they'd
shook some apples down, he set one on top of his son's head and shot
an arrow plumb through it, and never fazed him. They say it struck
them Indians cold, he was such a terrific shooter. Fine countenance,
hasn't he? Face shaved clean; he didn't wear a mustache, I believe,
but he seems to've let himself out on hair. Now, my view is that every
man ought to have a picture of that patriarch, so's to see how the
first settlers looked and what kind of weskits they used to wear. See
his legs, too! Trousers a little short, maybe, as if he was going to
wade in a creek; but he's all there. Got some kind of a paper in his
hand, I see. Subscription list, I reckon.

"Now, how does _that_ strike you? There's something nice. That,
I think, is--is--that is--a--a--yes, to be sure, Washington. You
recollect him, of course. Some people call him 'Father of his
Country,' George Washington. Had no middle name, I believe. He lived
about two hundred years ago, and he was a fighter. I heard the
publisher telling a man about him crossing the Delaware River up yer
at Trenton, and seems to me, if I recollect right, I've read about it
myself. He was courting some girl on the Jersey side, and he used
to swim over at nights to see her, when the old man was asleep. The
girl's family were down on him, I reckon. He looks like the man to do
that, now, don't he? He's got it in his eye. If it'd been me, I'd a
gone over on the bridge, but he probably wanted to show off before
her; some men are so reckless. Now, if you'll go in on this thing,
I'll get the publisher to write out some more stories about him, and
bring 'em around to you, so's you can study up on him. I know he
did ever so many other things, but I've forgot 'em; my memory's so
thundering poor.

"Less see; who have we next? Ah, Franklin! Benjamin Franklin. He was
one of the old original pioneers, I think. I disremember exactly what
he is celebrated for, but I believe it was flying a--oh, yes! flying a
kite, that's it. The publisher mentioned it. He was out one day flying
a kite, you know, like boys do nowadays, and while she was flickering
up in the sky, and he was giving her more string, an apple fell off a
tree and hit him on the head, and then he discovered the attraction of
gravitation, I think they call it. Smart, wasn't it? Now, if you or
me'd a been hit, it'd just a made us mad, like as not, and set us
a-cussing. But men are so different. One man's meat's another man's
pison. See what a double chin he's got. No beard on him, either,
though a goatee would have been becoming to such a round face. He
hasn't got on a sword, and I reckon he was no soldier; fit some when
he was a boy, maybe, or went out with the home-guard, but not a
regular warrior. I ain't one myself, and I think all the better of him
for it.

"Ah, here we are! Look at that! Smith and Pocahontas! John Smith.
Isn't that just gorgeous? See how she kneels over him and sticks out
her hands while he lays on the ground and that big fellow with a club
tries to hammer him up. Talk about woman's love! There it is. Modocs,
I believe. Anyway, some Indians out West there somewheres; and the
publisher tells me that Shacknasty, or whatever his name is, there,
was going to bang old Smith over the head with that log of wood, and
this girl here, she was sweet on Smith, it appears, and she broke
loose and jumped forward, and says to the man with the stick, 'Why
don't you let John alone? Me and him are going to marry; and if you
kill him, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live,' or words
like them; and so the man, he give it up, and both of them hunted up a
preacher and were married, and lived happily ever afterward. Beautiful
story, ain't it? A good wife she made him, too, I bet, if she _was_ a
little copper-colored. And don't she look just lovely in that picture?
But Smith appears kinder sick. Evidently thinks his goose is cooked;
and I don't wonder, with that Modoc swooping down on him with such a
discouraging club.

"And now we come to--to--ah--to Putnam--General Putnam. He fought in
the war, too; and one day a lot of 'em caught him when he was off his
guard, and they tied him flat on his back on a horse, and then licked
the horse like the very mischief. And what does that horse do but go
pitching down about four hundred stone steps in front of the house,
with General Putnam laying there nearly skeered to death. Leastways,
the publisher said somehow that way, and I oncet read about it myself.
But he came out safe, and I reckon sold the horse and made a pretty
good thing of it. What surprises me is he didn't break his neck;
but maybe it was a mule, and they're pretty sure-footed, you know.
Surprising what some of these men have gone through, ain't it?

"Turn over a couple of leaves. That's General Jackson. My father shook
hands with him once. He was a fighter, I know. He fit down in New
Orleans. Broke up the rebel legislature, and then, when the Ku-Kluxes
got after him, he fought 'em behind cotton breastworks and licked 'em
till they couldn't stand. They say he was terrific when he got real
mad. Hit straight from the shoulder, and fetched his man every time.
Andrew his first name was; and look how his hair stands up! And then
here's John Adams and Daniel Boone and two or three pirates, and a
whole lot more pictures, so you see it's cheap as dirt. Lemme have
your name, won't you?"

"I believe not to-day."

"What! won't go in on William Penn and Washington and Smith, and the
other heroes?"

"No."

"Well, well! Hang me if I'd a-wasted so much information on you if I'd
a knowed you wouldn't subscribe. If every man was like you, it'd break
up the business."

Then he wiped his nose and left. I hope he is doing better with the
work than he did with me.




CHAPTER VII.

_HOW MR. BUTTERWICK PURSUED HORTICULTURE_.


Soon after he moved out from the city to live in the village Mr.
Butterwick determined to secure the services of a good gardener who
could be depended upon to produce from the acre surrounding the house
the largest possible crop of fruit, vegetables and flowers. A man
named Brown was recommended as an expert, and Mr. Butterwick engaged
him. As Mr. Butterwick has no acquaintance with the horticultural art,
he instructed Brown to use his own judgment in fixing up the place,
and Brown said he would.

On the morning of the first day, while Mr. Butterwick was sitting on
the front porch, he saw Brown going out of the gate with a gun
upon his shoulder, and Mr. Butterwick conceived the idea that the
horticultural expert intended to begin his career in his new place by
taking a holiday.

In about an hour, however, Brown came sauntering up the street
dragging a deceased dog by the tail. Mr. Butterwick asked him if he
had accidentally shot his dog while aiming at a rabbit. But Brown
simply smiled significantly and passed silently in through the gate.

Then he buried the dog beneath the grape-arbor; and when the funeral
was over, Brown loaded up his gun, rubbed his muddy boots upon the
grass, brought his weapon to "right shoulder shift" and sallied out
again.

Mr. Butterwick asked him if he was going down to the woods after
squirrels; but he put his thumb knowingly to his nose, winked at Mr.
Butterwick and went mutely down the road. After a while he loomed up
again upon the horizon, and this time Mr. Butterwick noticed that he
was hauling after him a setter pup and a yellow dog, both dead, and
yoked together with one of Brown's suspenders.

Mr. Butterwick failed to comprehend the situation exactly, but he
ventured the remark that Brown must be a very poor shot to hit his own
dogs every time instead of the game. Brown, however, was not open to
criticism. He walked calmly down the yard, and after entombing the
dogs by the grape-arbor, he put four fingers of buckshot in his gun,
rearranged his suspenders, shouldered arms and struck out for the
front gate with a countenance as impassive as that of a graven image.

Mr. Butterwick inquired if there was a target-shooting match over at
the "King of Prussia;" but Brown didn't appear to hear him, and passed
serenely down the street. At half-past eleven Brown came within hail
again, and presently he marched up the yard with three departed cats
and a blue poodle.

[Illustration: THE GARDENER RETREATS]

Mr. Butterwick thought it was extraordinary, and he asked Brown if he
was engaged in gunning for domestic animals in order to settle a bet.
But Brown only coughed a couple of times, closed one eye sagaciously
and began to dig a fresh grave under the arbor. When the last sad
rites were over, he charged his gun as usual, rubbed his nose
thoughtfully with his sleeve, took a drink at the pump and wandered
away.

He had been gone about fifteen minutes, when Mr. Butterwick heard two
shots in quick succession. A minute later he saw Brown coming up the
road with a considerable amount of velocity, pursued by Mr. Potts and
a three-legged dog. Brown kept ahead; and when he had shot through the
gate, he dashed into the house and bolted the door. Then Potts arrived
with his dog, which stood by, looking as if it were very anxious to
lunch upon somebody, while Potts explained to Butterwick that Brown
had shot a leg off of his dog, and that he, Potts, intended to have
satisfaction for the injury, if he had to go to law about it.

When Mr. Butterwick had pacified Potts and sent him away, Mr.
Butterwick sought an interview with Brown:

"Brown, you have been behaving in a most preposterous manner ever
since you came here. I employed you as a gardener, not as a gunner.
You have nearly killed a valuable animal belonging to Mr. Potts; and
I'll thank you to tell me what you mean, and right off, too."

Brown winked again, cleared his throat, pulled up his shirt-collar and
said,

"I was goin' to quit soon as I ketched Potts's dog. He'd a bin
splendid to bury out yer with the others. Lemme tell you how it is:
The best thing to make grape-vines grow is dogs; bury 'em right down
among the roots. Some people prefer grandmothers and their other
relations. But gimme dogs and cats. Soon as I seen them vines of yourn
I said to myself, Them vines wants a few dogs, and I concluded to
put in the first day rakin' in all I could find. I'm goin' out again
to-morrow, down the other road."

But he didn't. Mr. Butterwick discharged him that night. He was too
enthusiastic for a gardener, and Mr. Butterwick thought that life
might open out to him a brighter and more beautiful vista in some
other capacity.

Subsequently, Mr. Butterwick concluded to attend to his garden
himself, and early in the spring he received from the Congressman of
our district a choice lot of assorted seeds brought from California
by the Agricultural Department. There were more than he wanted, so he
gave a quantity of sugar-beet and onion seeds to Mr. Potts, and
some turnip and radish seeds to Colonel Coffin; then he planted the
remainder, consisting of turnip, cabbage, celery and beet seeds, in
his own garden.

When the plants began to come up, he thought they looked kind of
queer, but he waited until they grew larger, and then, as he felt
certain something was wrong, he sent for a professional gardener to
make an examination.

"Mr. Hoops," he said, "cast your eye over those turnips and tell me
what you think is the matter with them."

"Turnip!" exclaimed Hoops. "Turnip! Why, bless your soul, man! that's
not turnip. That's nothin' but pokeberry. You've got enough pokeberry
in that bed to last a million years."

"Well, Mr. Hoops, come over here to this bed. Now, how does that
celery strike you? The munificent Federal government is spreading that
celery all over this land of the free. Great, isn't it?"

"Well, well!" said Hoops; "and they shoved that off on you for celery,
did they? Too bad! It's nothin' on earth but pokeberry. This is the
California kind--the deadliest pokeberry that was ever invented."

"Are you sure you're not mistaken, Mr. Hoops? But you haven't seen my
beets there in the adjoining bed. The seeds of those beets were sent
from Honolulu by our consul there. He reports that the variety attains
gigantic size."

"Really, now," said Hoops, "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but
to be fair and square with you, as between man and man, those are not
beets, you know. They are the Mexican pokeberry. I pledge you my word
it's the awfulest variety of that plant that grows. It'll stay in this
yer garden for ever. You'll never get rid of it."

"This seems a little hard, Mr. Hoops. But I'd like you to inspect my
cabbages. They're all right, I know. The commissioner of agriculture
got the seed from Borneo. They are the curly variety, I think. You
boil them with pork, and they cut down beautifully for slaw. Look at
these plants, will you? Ain't they splendid?"

"Mr. Butterwick," said Hoops, "I've got some bad news to break to you,
but I hope you'll stand it like a man. These afflictions come to all
of us in this life, sir. They are meant for our good. But really, sir,
those are not Borneo cabbages. Cabbages! Why, thunder and lightnin'!
They are merely a mixture of California and Mexican pokeberry with
the ordinary kind, and a little Osage orange sprinkled through. It's
awful, sir! Why, you've got about two acres of pokeberry and not a
blessed bit of cabbage or turnips among them."

"Mr. Hoops, this is terrible news; and do you know I gave a lot of
those seeds to Potts and Coffin?"

"I know you did; and I seen Colonel Coffin this mornin' with a
shot-gun goin' round askin' people if they knew where he could find
you."

"Find me! What do you mean?"

"Well, you see, sir, that there onion seed that you gave him was
really the seed of the silver maple tree, and it's growed up so thick
all over his garden that a cat can't crawl through it. There's about
forty million shoots and suckers in that garden, and they'll have to
be cut out with a handsaw. It'll take about a year to do it."

"You appall me, Hoops!"

"And that's not the worst of it. The roots are so matted and
interlocked jes beneath the surface that you can't make any impression
on 'em with a pickaxe. That garden of Coffin's is ruined--entirely
ruined, sir. You might blast those roots with gunpowder and it would
make no difference. And the suckers will grow faster than they're cut
down. He'll have to sell the property, sir."

"And the commissioner of agriculture said that was onion seed. Why
didn't Coffin hunt _him_ with a shot-gun?"

"Yes, sir; and Mr. Potts's got pokeberry and silver maple growin' all
over his place, too, and he's as mad as--Well, you just ought to hear
him snortin' around town. He'll kill somebody, I'm afeard."

Mr. Butterwick settled the difficulty with Coffin and Potts somehow,
but he made up his mind to vote for another man for Congress at the
next election.

Mr. Butterwick was the first man to introduce that ingenious and
useful implement the lawn-mower into our section of the country. As
his mower was the only one in the village, it was at once in great
demand. Everybody wanted to borrow it for a few days, and Butterwick
lent it with such generosity that it was out most of the time, and a
good many people had to wait for it. At last there was quite a rivalry
who should have it next, and the folks used to put in their claims
with the owner whenever they had an opportunity.

One day Mr. Smith's wife died, and Mr. Butterwick attended the
funeral. Smith was nearly wild with grief. As the remains were put
into their last resting-place he cried as if his heart would break,
and his friends began to get uneasy about his nervous system.
Presently he took his handkerchief from his eyes for a moment to rub
his nose, and as he did so he saw Butterwick looking at him. A thought
seemed to strike Smith. He dashed away a couple of tears; and stepping
over a heap of loose earth as they began to shovel it in, he grasped
Butterwick by the hand. Butterwick gave him a sympathetic squeeze, and
said,

"Sorry for you, Smith; I am indeed! A noble woman and a good wife. But
bear up under it, bear up! Our loss, you know, is her gain."

"Ah! she was indeed a woman in a thousand," responded Smith; "and
now to think that she has gone--gone, left us for ever! But these
afflictions must not make us forget the duty we owe to the living. She
has passed away from toil and suffering, but we still have much to do;
and, Butterwick, I want to borrow your lawn-mower. If you can fix it
for Tuesday, I think maybe the worst of my anguish will be over."

"You may have it, of course."

"Thank you; oh, thank you! Our friends are a great comfort to us
in the hour of bereavement;" and then Smith gave his arm to his
mother-in-law, put his handkerchief to his eyes and joined the
procession of mourners.

Upon the following Sunday, Rev. Dr. Dox preached a splendid sermon
over in the Free church, and just as he reached "secondly" he paused,
looked around upon the congregation for a minute, and then he beckoned
Deacon Moody to come up to the pulpit. He whispered something in
Moody's ear, and Moody seemed surprised. The congregation was wild
with curiosity to know what was the matter. Then the deacon, blushing
scarlet and seeming annoyed, walked down the aisle and whispered in
Butterwick's ear. Butterwick nodded, and whispered to his wife, who
was perishing to know what it was. She leaned over and communicated it
to Mrs. Bunnel, in the pew in front; and when the Bunnels all had it,
they sent it on to the people next to them, and so before the doctor
reached "thirdly" the whole congregation knew that he wanted to borrow
Butterwick's lawn-mower on Monday morning early.

A day or two later, while Butterwick was crossing the creek upon a
train of cars, the train ran off the track and rolled his car into
the water. Butterwick got out, however, into the stream, and as he
emerged, spluttering and blowing, he struck against a stranger who
was treading water. The stranger apologized, and said that Butterwick
might not recognize him in his dilapidated condition as Martin
Thompson, but while they were together, he would like to put in a word
for that lawn-mower when the parson was done with it.

[Illustration: TREADING WATER]

At last Butterwick grew tired of lending, and refused all applicants.
Then the people began to steal it, and six respectable citizens only
escaped going to jail because Butterwick had consideration for their
families. Finally he chained it to the pump, and then they sawed off
the pump and operated the mower with the log as a roller. Butterwick
at last put it on top of his house, and that night fourteen ladders
were seen against the wall. They did say that Ramsey, the lawyer, made
one effort with a hot-air balloon, and failed only because he fell out
and hurt his leg; but this was never traced to any reliable source.

The following week a man arrived and opened an agency for the sale
of the mowers in the village, and gradually the excitement abated.
Butterwick, however, has cut his grass with a sickle ever since.




CHAPTER VIII.

_THE MEETING AND ITS MISSIONARY WORK_.


The Methodist church in the village is doing now, as it has always
done, a good and noble work for Christianity and the cause of public
morals; but it has not escaped the trials which are permitted
sometimes to afflict the Church militant. Years ago, when the
congregation was first organized, it erected a small but very
pretty frame meeting-house. In the course of time the people became
dissatisfied with the location of the house of worship; and as they
had a good offer for the site, they sold it and bought a better one in
another quarter. Then they put rollers under the building, and as soon
as it was off the ground the purchaser of the lot began to build a
dwelling-house on the site. It was slow work pushing the church along
the street, and before they got far somebody discovered that the title
of the new site was not good, and so the bargain was annulled. The
next day the brethren went plunging around town trying to buy another
site, but nobody had one to sell; and on the following morning the
supervisors got an order from the court requiring that meeting-house
to be removed from the public street within twenty-four hours.

The brethren were nearly wild about it, and they begged old Brindley
to let them run the concern in on his vacant lot temporarily until
they could look around. But Brindley belonged to another denomination,
and he said he felt that it would be wrong for him to do anything
to help a church that believed false doctrines. Then they ran the
meeting-house out on the turnpike beyond the town, whereupon the
turnpike company notified them that its charges would be eight dollars
a day for toll. So they hauled it back again; and while going down the
hill it broke loose, plunged through the fence of Dr. Mackey's garden
and brought up on top of his asparagus-bed. He is an Episcopalian,
and he sued the meeting for damages; and the sheriff levied upon the
meetinghouse. The brethren paid the bill and dragged the building out
again.

They wanted to put it in the court-house yard, but Judge Twiddler, who
is a Presbyterian, said that after examining the statutes carefully he
could find no law allowing a Methodist meeting-house to be located
in that place. In despair, the brethren ran the building down to the
river-shore and fitted it on a huge raft of logs, concluding to tie it
to the wharf until they could buy a lot. But as the owner of the
wharf handed them on the third day a bill of twenty-five dollars for
wharfage, they took the building out and anchored it in the stream.
That night a tug-boat, coming up the river in the dark, ran halfway
through the Sunday-school room, and a Dutch brig, coming into
collision with it, was drawn out with the pulpit and three of the
front pews dangling from the bowsprit. The owners of both vessels sued
for damages, and the United States authorities talked of confiscating
the meeting-house as an obstruction to navigation. But a few days
afterward the ice-gorge sent a flood down the river and broke the
building loose from its anchor. It was subsequently washed ashore on
Keyser's farm; and he said he was willing to let it stay there at four
dollars a day rent until he was ready to plough for corn. As the cost
of removing it would have been very great, the trustees ultimately
sold it to Keyser for a barn, and then, securing a good lot, they
built a handsome edifice of stone.

On the first Sunday that the congregation worshiped in the new church
Mr. Potts attended; and in accordance with his custom, he placed his
silk high hat just outside of the pew in the aisle. In a few moments
Mrs. Jones entered, and as she proceeded up the aisle her abounding
skirts caught Mr. Potts' hat and rolled it nearly to the pulpit. Mr.
Potts pursued his hat with feelings of indignation; and when Mrs.
Jones took her seat, he walked back, brushing the hat with his sleeve.
A few moments later Mrs. Hopkins came into church; and as Mr. Potts
had again placed his hat in the aisle, Mrs. Hopkins' skirts struck it
and swept it along about twenty feet, and left it lying on the carpet
in a demoralized condition. Mr. Potts was singing a hymn at the time,
and he didn't miss it. But a moment later, when he looked over the end
of the pew to see if it was safe, he was furious to perceive that it
was gone. He skirmished up the aisle after it again, red in the face,
and uttering sentences which were very much out of place in the
sanctuary. However, he put the hat down again and determined to keep
his eye on it, but just as he turned his head away for a moment Mrs.
Smiley came in, and Potts looked around only in time to watch the hat
being gathered in under Mrs. Smiley's skirts and carried away by them.
He started in pursuit, and just as he did so the hat must have rolled
against Mrs. Smiley's ankles, for she gave a jump and screamed right
out in church. When her husband asked her what was the matter, she
said there must be a dog under her dress, and she gave her skirts
a twist. Out rolled Mr. Potts' hat, and Mr. Smiley, being very
near-sighted, thought it was a dog, and immediately kicked it so
savagely that it flew up into the gallery and lodged on top of the
organ. Mr. Potts, perfectly frantic with rage, forgot where he was;
and holding his clinched fist under Smiley's nose, he shrieked, "I've
half a mind to brain you, you scoundrel!" Then he flung down his
hymn-book and rushed from the church. He went home bareheaded, and the
sexton brought his humiliating hat around after dinner. After that Mr.
Potts expressed a purpose to go habitually to Quaker meeting, where he
could say his prayers with his hat on his head, and where the skirts
of female worshippers are smaller.

       *       *       *       *       *

Upon a subsequent occasion Mrs. Whistler had even a greater occasion
for dissatisfaction with the sanctuary.

The facts in Mrs. Whistler's case were these: Mrs. Whistler has
singular absence of mind, and on the last Sunday she attended church
Dr. Dox began to read from the Scriptures the account of the Deluge.
Mrs. Whistler was deeply attentive; and when the doctor came to the
story of how it rained for so many days and nights, she was so much
absorbed in the narrative and so strongly impressed with it that she
involuntarily put up her umbrella and held it over her head as she sat
in the pew. It appears that Mrs. Moody, who sits in the next pew in
front, frequently brings her lap-dog to church with her; and when
Mrs. Whistler raised her umbrella suddenly, the action affected the
sensibilities of Mrs. Moody's dog in such a manner that he began to
bark furiously.

Of course the sexton came in for the purpose of removing the animal,
but it dodged into a vacant pew upon the other side of the aisle and
defied him, barking vociferously all the time. Then the sexton became
warm and indignant, and he flung a cane at the dog, whereupon the dog
flew out and bit his leg. The excitement in the church by this time,
of course, was simply dreadful. Not only was the story of the Deluge
interrupted, but the unregenerate Sunday-school scholars in the
gallery actually hissed the dog at the sexton, and seemed to enjoy the
contest exceedingly.

Then Elder McGinn came after the dog with his cane, and as he pursued
the animal it dashed toward the pulpit and ran up the steps in such a
fierce manner that the doctor quickly mounted a chair and remarked,
with anger flashing through his spectacles, that if this disgraceful
scene did not soon come to an end he should dismiss the congregation.
Then the elder crept softly up the stairs, and after a short struggle
he succeeded in grasping the dog by one of its hind legs. Then
he walked down the aisle with it, the dog meantime yelling with
supernatural energy and the Sunday-school boys making facetious
remarks.

Mrs. Whistler turned around, with other members of the congregation,
to watch the retreating elder, and as she did so she permitted her
unconscious umbrella to droop so that the end of one of the ribs
caught Mrs. Moody's bonnet. A moment later, when she was straightening
up the umbrella, the bonnet was wrenched off, and hung dangling from
the umbrella. Mrs. Moody had become exceedingly warm, at any rate,
over the onslaught made upon her dog, but when Mrs. Whistler removed
her bonnet, she fairly boiled over; and turning around, white with
rage, she screamed,

"What'd you grab that bonnet for, you wretch! Haven't you made enough
fuss in this church to-day, skeering a poor innocent dog, without
snatching off such bonnets as the like of you can't afford to wear, no
matter how mean you live at home, you red-headed lunatic, you! You
let my bonnet alone, or I'll hit you with this parasol, if it is in
meeting, now mind me!"

Then Mrs. Whistler, for the first time, seemed to realize that her
umbrella made her conspicuous; so she furled it and concluded to
escape from an embarrassing position by going home. As she stepped
into the aisle her enemy gave her a parting salute:

"Sneaking off before the collection, too! You'd better spend less for
breastpins and give more to the poor heathen if you don't want to
ketch it hereafter!"

Then she began to fan herself furiously, and as Mrs. Whistler emerged
from the front door and things became calmer the doctor resumed the
story of the Flood. But Mrs. Whistler has given up her pew and gone
over to the Presbyterians, and there are rumors that Mrs. Moody is
going to secede also because Elder McGinn insists that she shall leave
her dog at home.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Dorcas and missionary societies of the church are particularly
active, but they were somewhat discouraged a year or two ago by
certain unforeseen occurrences. The ladies of the Dorcas Society made
up a large quantity of shirts, trousers and socks, and boxed them up
and sent them to a missionary station on the west coast of Africa.
A man named Ridley went out with the boxes and stayed in Africa for
several months. When he returned, the Dorcas Society, of course, was
anxious to hear how its donation was received, and Ridley one evening
met the members and told them about it in a little speech. He said,

"Well, you know, we got the clothes out there all right, and after
a while we distributed them among some of the natives in the
neighborhood. We thought maybe it would attract them to the mission,
but it didn't; and after some time had elapsed and not a native came
to church with the clothes on, I went out on an exploring expedition
to find out about it. It seems that on the first day after the goods
were distributed one of the chiefs attempted to dress himself in a
shirt. He didn't exactly understand it, and he pushed his legs through
the arms and gathered the tail up around his waist. He couldn't make
it stay up, however, and they say he went around inquiring in his
native tongue what kind of an idiot it was that constructed a garment
that wouldn't hang on, and swearing some of the most awful heathen
oaths. At last he let it drag, and that night he got his legs tangled
in it somehow and fell over a precipice and was killed.

"Another chief who got one on properly went paddling around in the
dark, and the people, imagining that he was a ghost, sacrificed four
babies to keep off the evil spirit.

[Illustration: THE HEATHEN CLOTHE THEMSELVES]

"And then, you know, those trousers you sent out? Well, they fitted
one pair on an idol, and then they stuffed most of the rest with
leaves and set them up as kind of new-fangled idols and began to
worship them. They say that the services were very impressive. Some of
the women split a few pairs in half, and after sewing up the legs used
them to carry yams in; and I saw one chief with a corduroy leg on his
head as a kind of helmet.

"I think, though, the socks were most popular. All the fighting-men
went for them the first thing. They filled them with sand and used
them as boomerangs and war-clubs. I learned that they were so much
pleased with the efficiency of those socks that they made a raid on a
neighboring tribe on purpose to try them; and they say they knocked
about eighty women and children on the head before they came home.
They asked me if I wouldn't speak to you and get you to send out a few
barrels more, and to make them a little stronger, so's they'd last
longer; and I said I would.

"This society's doing a power of good to those heathen, and I've no
doubt if you keep right along with the work you will inaugurate a
general war all over the continent of Africa and give everybody an
idol of his own. All they want is enough socks and trousers. I'll take
them when I go out again."

Then the Dorcas passed a resolution declaring that it would, perhaps,
be better to let the heathen go naked and give the clothes to the poor
at home. Maybe that is the better way.




CHAPTER IX.

_JUDGE TWIDDLER'S COW_.


For several months previous to last summer Judge Twiddler's family
obtained milk from Mr. Biles, the most prominent milk-dealer in the
village. The prevailing impression among the Twiddlers was that Mr.
Biles supplied an exceedingly thin and watery fluid; and one day when
the judge stepped over to pay his quarterly bill he determined to make
complaint. He found Mr. Biles in the yard mending the valve of his
pump; and when the judge made a jocular remark to the effect that the
dairy must be in a bad way when the pump was out of order, Mr. Biles,
rising with his hammer in his hand, said,

"Oh, I ain't going to deny that we water the milk. I don't mind the
joking about it. But all I say is that when people say we do it from
mercenary motives they slander the profession. No, sir; when I put
water in the milk, I do it out of kindness for the people who drink
it. I do it because I'm philanthropic--because I'm sensitive and can't
bear to see folks suffer. Now, s'pos'n a cow is bilious or something,
and it makes her milk unwholesome. I give it a dash or two of water,
and up it comes to the usual level. Water's the only thing that'll do
it. Or s'pos'n that cow eats a pison vine in the woods; am I going to
let my innocent customers be killed by it for the sake of saving a
little labor at the pump? No, sir; I slush in a few quarts of water,
neutralize the pison, and there she is as right as a trivet.

"But you take the best milk that ever was, and it ain't fit for the
human stomach as it comes from the cow. It has too much caseine in it.
Prof. Huxley says that millions of poor ignorant men and women are
murdered every year by loading down weak stomachs with caseine. It
sucks up the gastric juice, he says, and gets daubed all around over
the membranes until the pores are choked, and then the first thing you
know the man suddenly curls all up and dies. He says that out yer in
Asia, where the milkmen are not as conscientious as we are, there are
whole cemeteries chock full of people that have died of caseine, and
that before long all that country will be one vast burying-ground if
they don't ameliorate the milk. When I think of the responsibility
resting on me, is it singular that I look at this old pump and wonder
that people don't come and silver plate it and put my statue on it? I
tell you, sir, that that humble pump with the cast-iron handle is the
only thing that stands betwixt you and sudden death.

"And besides that, you know how kinder flat raw milk tastes--kinder
insipid and mean. Now, Prof. Huxley, he says that there is only one
thing that will vivify milk and make it luxurious to the palate, and
that is water. Give it a few jerks under the pump, and out it comes
sparkling and delicious, like nectar. I dunno how it is, but Prof.
Huxley says that it undergoes some kinder chemical change that nothing
else'll bring about but a flavoring of fine old pump-water. You know
the doctors all water the milk for babies. They know mighty well if
they didn't those young ones'd shrink all up and sorter fade away.
Nature is the best judge. What makes cows drink so much water?
Instinct, sir--instinct. Something whispers to 'em that if they don't
sluice in a little water that caseine'd make 'em giddy and eat 'em up.
Now, what's the odds whether I put in the water or the cow does? She's
only a poor brute beast, and might often drink too little; but when I
go at it, I bring the mighty human intellect to bear on the subject;
I am guided by reason, and I can water that milk so's it'll have the
greatest possible effect.

"Now, there's chalk. I know some people have an idea that it's wrong
to fix up your milk with chalk. But that's only mere blind bigotry.
What is chalk? A substance provided by beneficent nature for healing
the ills of the human body. A cow don't eat chalk because it's not
needed by her. Poor uneducated animal! she can't grasp these higher
problems, and she goes on nibbling sour-grass and other things, and
filling her milk with acid, which destroys human membranes and induces
colic. Then science comes to the rescue. Professor Huxley tells us
that chalk cures acidity. Consequently, I get some chalk, stir it in
my cans and save the membranes of my customers without charging them a
cent for it--actually give it away; and yet they talk about us milkmen
'sif we were buccaneers and enemies of the race.

"But I don't care. My conscience is clear. I know mighty well that I
have a high and holy mission to perform, and I'm going to perform it
if they burn me at the stake. What do I care how much this pump costs
me if it spreads blessings through the community? What difference does
it make to a man of honor like me if chalk is six cents a pound so
long as I know that without it there wouldn't be a membrane in this
community? Now, look at the thing in the right light, and you'll
believe me that before another century rolls around a grateful
universe will worship the memory of the first milkman who ever had a
pump and who doctored his milk with chalk. It will, unless justice is
never to have her own."

Then Mr. Biles rigged the sucker in the pump, toned up a few cans of
milk, corrected the acidity, and went into the house to receipt the
judge's bill.

Mr. Biles' theory interested the judge, but the argument did not
convince him. And so the judge resolved to buy a cow and obtain pure
milk, without regard for the alleged views of Professor Huxley.
Accordingly, he purchased a cow of a man named Smith, who lives over
at the Rising Sun. She was warranted to be fresh and a first-rate
milker. When Judge Twiddler got her home, he asked his hired man,
Mooney, if he knew how to milk a cow, and Mooney said of course he
did. The animal, therefore, was consigned to Mooney's care. On the
next day, however, Mooney came into the house to see the judge, and he
said,

"Judge, that man cheated you in that cow. Why, she's the awfullest old
beast that ever stood on four legs Dry as punk; hasn't got a drop of
milk in her. That's a positive fact. I've been trying to milk her for
three or four hours, and can't get a drop. Might as well attempt to
milk a clothes-horse. Regular fraud!"

"This is very extraordinary," exclaimed the judge.

"Yes, sir; and she's wicked. I never saw such a disposition in a cow.
Why, while I was working with her she kicked like a flint-lock musket;
butted and rared around. I'd rather fool with a tiger than with a cow
like that."

So the judge drove over to the Rising Sun to see Smith about it; and
when he complained that Smith had sold him a worthless and vicious
beast, and a dry cow at that, Smith said there must be some mistake
about it. He agreed to go back with the judge and investigate the
matter. When they reached the judge's stable, Mooney was not about,
but Smith descended from the wagon, approached the cow, and, to
the astonishment of the judge, milked her without the slightest
difficulty, the cow meantime remaining perfectly quiet, and even
breaking out now and then into what the judge thought looked like
smiles of satisfaction. And then the judge went out to hunt up his
hired man. He said to him,

"Mooney, what did you mean by telling me that our cow was dry and
ugly? You said you couldn't milk her, but Mr. Smith does so without
any difficulty, and the cow remains perfectly passive."

"I'd like to see him do it," said Mooney, incredulously.

Then Smith sat down and proceeded to perform the operation again. When
he began, Mooney exclaimed,

"Why, my gracious! that isn't the way you milk a cow, is it?"

"Of course it is," replied Smith. "How else would you do it?"

"Well, well! and that's the way _you_ milk, is it? I see now I didn't
go about it exactly right. Why, you know, I never had much experience
at the business; I was brought up in town, and, be George, when I
tackled her, I threw her over on her back and tried to milk her with a
clothes-pin. I see now I was wrong. We live and learn, don't we?"

[Illustration: THE JUDGE'S COW]

So Smith went home, and the cow remained, and the judge's man waxes
stronger in experience with the mysteries of existence daily.

But the cow was not a perfect animal, after all. Among other things,
Smith assured the judge that she had a splendid appetite. He said that
she was the easiest cow with her feed that he ever saw; she would eat
almost anything, and she was generally hungry.

At the end of the first week after she came, Mrs. Twiddler concluded
to churn. The hired man spent the whole day at the crank, and about
sunset the butter came. They got it out, and found that there was
almost half a pound. Then Mrs. Twiddler began to see how economical
it was to make her own butter. A half pound at the store cost thirty
cents. The wages of that man for one day were one dollar, and so the
butter was costing about three dollars a pound, without counting the
keep of the cow. When they tried the butter, it was so poor that they
couldn't eat it, and they gave it to the man to grease the wheelbarrow
with. It seemed somewhat luxurious and princely to maintain a cow
for the purpose of supplying grease at three dollars a pound for the
wheelbarrow, but it was hard to see precisely where the profits came
in. After about a fortnight the cow seemed so unhappy in the stable
that the judge turned her out in the yard.

The first night she was loose she upset the grape-arbor with her horns
and ate four young peach trees and a dwarf pear tree down to the
roots. The next day they gave her as much hay as she would eat, and
it seemed likely that her appetite was appeased. But an hour or two
afterward she swallowed six croquet-balls that were lying upon the
grass, and ate half a table-cloth and a pair of drawers from the
clothes-line. That evening her milk seemed thin, and the judge
attributed it to the indigestibility of the table-cloth.

During the night she must have got to walking in her sleep, for
she climbed over the fence; and when she was discovered, she was
swallowing one of Mrs. Twiddler's hoopskirts. That evening she ran dry
and didn't give any milk at all. The judge thought the exercise she
had taken must have been too severe, and probably the hoopskirt was
not sufficiently nutritious. It was comforting, however, to reflect
that she was less expensive, from the latter point of view, when she
was dry than when she was fresh. Next morning she ate the spout off
the watering-pot, and then put her head in the kitchen window and
devoured two dinner-plates and the cream-jug. Then she went out and
lay down on the strawberry-bed to think. While there something about
Judge Twiddler's boy seemed to exasperate her; and when he came over
into the yard after his ball, she inserted her horns into his trowsers
and flung him across the fence. Then she went to the stable and ate a
litter of pups and three feet of the trace-chain.

The judge felt certain that her former owner didn't deceive him when
he said her appetite was good. She had hunger enough for a drove of
cattle and a couple of flocks of sheep. That day the judge went after
the butcher to get him to buy her. When he returned with him, she had
just eaten the monkey-wrench and the screw-driver, and she was trying
to put away a fence-paling. The butcher said she was a fair-enough
sort of cow, but she was too thin. He said he would buy her if the
judge would feed her up and fatten her; and the judge said he would
try. He gave her that night food enough for four cows, and she
consumed it as if she had been upon half rations for a month. When she
finished, she got up, reached for the hired man's straw hat, ate it,
and then, bolting out into the garden, she put away the honeysuckle
vine and a coil of India-rubber hose. The man said that if it was his
cow he would kill her; and the judge told him that he had perhaps
better just knock her on the head in the morning.

During the night she had another attack of somnambulism, and while
wandering about she ate the door-mat from the front porch, bit off
all the fancy-work on top of the cast-iron gate, swallowed six loose
bricks that were piled up against the house, and then had a fit among
the rose bushes. When the judge came down in the morning, she seemed
to be breathing her last, but she had strength enough left to seize a
newspaper that the judge held in his hand; and when that was down,
she gave three or four kicks and rolled over and expired. It cost the
judge three dollars to have the carcase removed. Since then he has
bought his butter and milk and given up all kinds of live-stock.




CHAPTER X.

_OUR CIVIL SERVICE_.


Some of the public officers of Millburg are interesting in their way.
The civil service system of the village is based upon the principle
that if there is any particular function that a given man is wholly
unfitted to perform he should be chosen to perform it. The result is
that the business of our very small government goes plunging along in
the most surprising manner, with a promise that it will end some day
in chaos and revolution--of course upon a diminutive scale.

A representative man is Mr. Bones, the solitary night-watchman of the
town. One of the duties of Mr. Bones is to light the street-lamps. It
is an operation which does not require any very extraordinary effort
of the intellect; but during a part of the summer the mind of Mr.
Bones did not seem to be equal to the strain placed upon it by this
duty. It was observed that whenever there were bright moonlight nights
Mr. Bones would have all the lamps burning from early in the evening
until dawn, while upon the nights when there was no moon he would not
light them at all, and the streets would be as dark as tar. At last
people began to complain about it, and one day one of the supervisors
called to see Mr. Bones about it. He remarked to him,

"Mr. Bones, people are finding fault because you light up on moonlight
nights and don't light the lamps when it is dark. I'd like you to
manage the thing a little better."

"It struck me as being singular, too, but I can't help it. I've got
instructions to follow the almanac, and I'm going to follow it."

"Did the almanac say there'd be no moon last night?"

"Yes, it did."

"Well, the moon was shining, though, and at its full."

"I know," said Mr. Bones, "and that's what gits me. How in the thunder
the moon kin shine when the almanac says it won't beats me out.
Perhaps there's something the matter with the moon; got shoved off her
course may be."

"I guess not."

"Well, it's changed off somehow, and I've got to have something
regular to go by. I'm going by what the almanac says; and if the
moon's going to shuffle around kinder loose and not foller the
almanac, that's its lookout. If the almanac says no moon, then I'm
bound to light the lamps if there's millions of moons shining in the
sky. Them's my orders, and I'll mind 'em."

"How d'you know the almanac is not wrong?"

"Because I know it ain't. It was always right before."

"Let's look at it."

"There it is. Look there, now. Don't it say full moon on the 20th? and
this yer's only the 9th, and yet it's full moon now."

"That's so; and--Er--er--Less--see Er-er--Mr. Bones, do you know what
year this almanac is for?"

"Why, 1876, of course."

"No, it isn't; it's for 1866. It's ten years old."

"Oh no! 1866! Well, now, it is. I declare! 1866! Why, merciful Moses!
I got the wrong one off the shelf, and I've been depending on it
for three months! No wonder the lamps was wrong. Well, that beats
everything."

Then Mr. Bones tore up the almanac and got one for 1876, and ever
since that time the lamp-lighting department has given tolerable
satisfaction.

But it is as a night-watchman that Mr. Bones shines with surpassing
splendor. When he first entered the service, he was very anxious to
make a good impression on Colonel Coffin, the burgess and head of the
village government; and the first night upon which he went on duty
Colonel Coffin was awakened about half-past twelve by a furious ring
at his door-bell. He looked out of the window and perceived the
watchman, who said,

"She's all right. Nobody's broke in. I've got my eye on things. You
kin depend on me."

The colonel thought he was one of the most faithful watchmen he ever
saw, and he returned serenely to bed. On the following night, just
after twelve, there was another energetic ring at the bell; and when
the burgess raised the window, the watchman said,

"Your girls ain't left the window-shutters open and the house is not
afire. All right as a trivet while I'm around, you bet!"

"Louisa," said the colonel to his wife as he returned to his couch,
"that is a splendid watchman, but I think he's just the least bit too
enthusiastic."

A couple of nights later, when the door-bell rang at half-past one,
the colonel felt somewhat angry, and he determined to stay in bed; but
the person on the step below at last began to kick against the front
door, when the colonel threw up the window and exclaimed,

"What do you want?"

It was the watchman, and he said,

"You know old Mrs. Biles up the street yer? Well, I've just rung Biles
up, and he says her rheumatism ain't no better. Thought you might want
to know, so I called. I felt kinder lonesome out here, too."

As Colonel Coffin slammed the sash down he felt mad and murderous. The
next night, however, that faithful guardian applied the toe of his
boot to the front door with such energy that the colonel leaped from
bed, and protruding his head from the window said,

"I wish to _gracious_ you'd stop kicking up this kind of fuss around
here every night! What do you mean, anyhow?"

"Why, I only stopped to tell you that Butterwick has two setter pups,
and that I'd get you one if you wanted it. Nothing mean about that, is
there?"

The colonel uttered an ejaculatory criticism upon Butterwick and the
pups as he closed the window, and a moment later he heard the watchman
call up Smith, who lives next door, and remark to him,

"They tell me it's a splendid season for bananas, Mr. Smith."

When Coffin heard Smith hurling objurgations about bananas and
watchmen out upon the midnight air, he knew it was immoral, but he
felt his heart warm toward Smith. The next time the watchman tried
to get the colonel out by ringing and kicking the colonel refused to
respond, and finally the watchman banged five barrels of his revolver.
Then Coffin came to the window in a rage.

"You eternal idiot," he said, "if you don't stop this racket at night,
I'll have you put under bonds to keep the peace."

"Oh, all right," replied the watchman. "I had something important to
tell you; but if you don't want to hear it, very well; I kin keep it
to myself."

"Well, what is it? Out with it!"

"Why, I heard to-day that the kangaroo down at the Park in the city
can't use one of its hind legs. Rough on the Centennial, ain't it?"

Then, as the colonel withdrew in a condition of awful rage, the
watchman sauntered up the street to break the news to the rest of the
folks. On the next night a gang of burglars broke into Coffin's house
and ransacked it from top to bottom. Toward morning Coffin heard them;
and hastily dressing himself and seizing his revolver, he proceeded
down stairs. The burglars heard him coming and fled. Then the colonel
sprang his rattle and summoned the neighbors. When they arrived, the
colonel, in the course of conversation, made some remarks about the
perfect uselessness of night-watchmen. Thereupon Mr. Potts said,

"I saw that fellow Bones only an hour ago two squares above here, at
McGinnis's, routing McGinnis out to tell him that old cheese makes the
best bait for catfish."

Mr. Bones was reprimanded, but he remained upon what is facetiously
known as "the force." The borough cannot afford to dispense with the
services of such an original genius as he.

Our sheriff is a man of rather higher intelligence, but he also has a
singular capacity for perpetrating dreadful blunders. Over in the town
of Nockamixon one of the churches last year called a clergyman
named Rev. Joseph Striker. In the same place, by a most unfortunate
coincidence, resides also a prize-fighter named Joseph Striker, and
rumors were afloat a few weeks ago that the latter Joseph was about to
engage in a contest with a Jersey pugilist for the championship. Our
sheriff considered it his duty to warn Joseph against the proposed
infraction of the laws, and so he determined to call upon the
professor of the art of self-defence. Unhappily, in inquiring the way
to the pugilist's house, somebody misunderstood the sheriff, and sent
him to the residence of the Rev. Joseph Striker, of whom he had never
heard. When Mr. Striker entered the room in answer to the summons, the
sheriff said to him familiarly,

"Hello, Joe! How are you?"

Mr. Striker was amazed at this address, but he politely said,

"Good-morning."

"Joe," said the sheriff, throwing his leg lazily over the arm of the
chair, "I came round here to see you about that mill with Harry Dingus
that they're all talking about. I want you to understand that it can't
come off anywheres around here. You know well enough it's against the
law, and I ain't a-going to have it."

"Mill! Mill, sir? What on earth do you mean?" asked Mr. Striker, in
astonishment. "I do not own any mill, sir. Against the law! I do not
understand you, sir."

"Now, see here, Joe," said the sheriff, biting off a piece of tobacco
and looking very wise, "that won't go down with me. It's pretty thin,
you know. I know well enough that you've put up a thousand dollars on
that little affair, and that you've got the whole thing fixed, with
Bill Martin for referee. I know you're going down to Pea Patch Island
to have it out, and I'm not going to allow it. I'll arrest you as sure
as a gun if you try it on, now mind me!"

"Really, sir," said Mr. Striker, "there must be some mistake about--"

"Oh no, there isn't; your name's Joe Striker, isn't it?" asked the
sheriff.

"My name is Joseph Striker, certainly."

"I knew it," said the sheriff, spitting on the carpet; "and you see
I've got this thing dead to rights. It sha'n't come off; and I'm doing
you a favor in blocking the game, because Harry'd curl you all up any
way if I let you meet him. I know he's the best man, and you'd just
lose your money and get all bunged up besides; so you take my advice
now, and quit. You'll be sorry if you don't."

"I do not know what you are referring to," said Mr. Striker. "Your
remarks are incomprehensible to me, but your tone is very offensive;
and if you have any business with me, I'd thank you to state it at
once."

"Joe," said the sheriff, looking at him with a benign smile, "you play
it pretty well. Anybody'd think you were innocent as a lamb. But it
won't work, Joseph--it won't work, I tell you. I've got a duty to
perform, and I'm going to do it; and I pledge you my word, if you and
Dingus don't knock off now, I'll arrest you and send you up for ten
years as sure as death. I'm in earnest about it."

"What do you mean, sir?" asked Mr. Striker, fiercely.

"Oh, don't you go to putting on any airs about it. Don't you try any
strutting before me," said the sheriff; "or I'll put you under bail
this very afternoon. Let's see: how long were you in jail the last
time? Two years, wasn't it? Well, you go fighting with Dingus and
you'll get ten years sure."

"You are certainly crazy!" exclaimed Mr. Striker.

"I don't see what you want to stay at that business for, anyhow," said
the sheriff. "Here you are, in a snug home, where you might live
in peace and keep respectable. But no, you must associate with low
characters, and go to stripping yourself naked and jumping into a ring
to get your nose blooded and your head swelled and your body
hammered to a jelly; and all for what? Why, for a championship! It's
ridiculous. What good'll it do you if you're champion? Why don't you
try to be honest and decent, and let prize-fighting alone?"

"This is the most extraordinary conversation I ever listened to," said
Mr. Striker. "You evidently take me for a--"

"I take you for Joe Striker; and if you keep on, I'll take you to
jail," said the sheriff; with emphasis. "Now, you tell me who's got
those stakes and who's your trainer, and I'll put an end to the whole
thing."

"You seem to imagine that I am a pugilist," said Mr. Striker. "Let me
inform you, sir, that I am a clergyman."

"Joe," said the sheriff, shaking his head, "it's too bad for you to
lie that way--too bad, indeed."

"But I _am_ a clergyman, sir--pastor of the church of St. Sepulchre.
Look! here is a letter in my pocket addressed to me."

"You don't really mean to say that you're a preacher named Joseph
Striker?" exclaimed the sheriff, looking scared.

"Certainly I am. Come up stairs and I'll show you a barrelful of my
sermons."

"Well, if this don't beat Nebuchadnezzar!" said the sheriff. "This is
awful! Why, I mistook you for Joe Striker, the prize-fighter! I don't
know how I ever--A preacher! What an ass I've made of myself! I don't
know how to apologize; but if you want to kick me down the front
steps, just kick away; I'll bear it like an angel."

Then the sheriff withdrew unkicked, and Mr. Striker went up stairs
to finish his Sunday sermon. The sheriff talked of resigning, but he
continues to hold on.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Slingsby, our assessor and tax-collector, holds on too. He
is another model member of our civil service. The principal
characteristic of Mr. Slingsby is enthusiasm. He has an idea that
whenever a man gets anything new it ought to be taxed, and he is
always on hand to perform the service. I had about fifteen feet added
to one of my chimneys last spring; and when it was done, Slingsby
called and assessed it, under the head of "improved real estate," at
eighty dollars, and collected two per cent. on it. A few days later,
while I was standing by the fence, Slingsby came up and said,

"Beautiful dog you have there."

"Yes; it's a setter."

"Indeed! A setter, hey? The tax on setters is two dollars. I'll
collect it now, while I have it on my mind."

I settled the obligation, and the next day Slingsby came around again.
He opened the conversation with the remark,

"Billy Jones told me down at the grocery-store that your terrier had
had pups."

"Yes."

"A large litter?"

"Four."

"Indeed! Less see: tax is two dollars; four times two is eight--yes,
eight dollars tax, please. And hurry up, too, if you can, for they
have a new batch of kittens over at Baldwin's, and I want to ketch
old Baldwin before he goes out. By the way, when did you put that
weathercock on your stable?"

"Yesterday."

"You don't say! Well, hold on, then. Four times two is eight, and
four--on the weathercock, you know--is twelve. Twelve dollars is the
exact amount."

"What do you mean by four dollars tax on a weathercock? I never heard
of such a thing."

"Didn't, hey? Why, she comes in under the head of 'scientific
apparatus.' She's put up there to tell which way the wind blows, ain't
she? Well, that's scientific intelligence, and the apparatus is liable
to tax."

"Mr. Slingsby, that is the most absurd thing I ever heard of. You
might just as well talk of taxing Butterwick's twins."

"Butter--You don't mean to say Butterwick has twins? Why, certainly
they're taxable. They come in under the head of 'poll-tax.' Three
dollars apiece. I'll go right down there. Glad you mentioned it."
Then I paid him, and he left with Butterwick's twins on his
memorandum-book.

A day or two afterward Mr. Slingsby called to see me, and he said,

"I've got a case that bothers me like thunder. You know Hough the
tobacconist? Well, he's just bought a new wooden Indian to stand in
front of his store. Now, I have a strong feeling that I ought to tax
that figure, but I don't know where to place it. Would it come in as
'statuary'? Somehow that don't seem exactly the thing. I was going to
assess it under the head of 'idols,' but the idiots who got up this
law haven't got a word in in reference to idols. Think of that, will
you? Why, we might have paganism raging all over this country, and we
couldn't get a cent out of them. I'd a put that Indian under 'graven
images,' only they ain't mentioned, either. I s'pose I could tax the
bundle of wooden cigars in his fist as 'tobacco,' but that leaves out
the rest of the figure; and he's not liable to poll-tax because he
can't even vote. Now, how would it strike you if I levied on him as an
'immigrant'? He was made somewheres else than here, and he came here
from there, consequently he's an immigrant. That's my view. What do
you think of it?"

I advised him to try it upon that plan, and the next morning Mr.
Slingsby and Mr. Hough had a fight on the pavement in front of the
Indian because Mr. Slingsby tried to seize the immigrant for unpaid
taxes. Slingsby was taken home and put to bed, and the business of
collecting taxes was temporarily suspended. But Slingsby will be
around again soon with some new and ingenious ideas that he has
thought of during his illness.




CHAPTER XI.

_FUNEREAL AND CONJUGAL_.


Mrs. Banger has buried four husbands, and her experience of domestic
life in their company was so satisfactory that she recently married a
fifth, Mr. Banger. The name of her fourth was McFadden. The name of
her first and third was Smyth, while that of her second, oddly enough,
was Smith. Soon after her return from her last wedding-tour she was
visited by Mr. Toombs, the undertaker, who called ostensibly to
correct an error in his last bill. When Mrs. Banger entered the
parlor, Mr. Toombs greeted her cordially and said,

"Ah! Mrs. Smy--Banger, I mean; I hope I see you well? Did you have a
pleasant trip? Nice weather while you were away; a little backward,
maybe, but still comfortable, and likely to make things grow. Cemetery
looks beautiful now. I was out there to-day to a burying. Grass is
coming up charming on your lot, and I noticed a blackberry bush
growing out of Mr. Smyth's grave. He was fond of 'em, I reckon. There
they were lying, Smith and Smyth, and McFadden and the other Smyth,
all four of them. No woman could have done fairer with those men than
you did, ma'am; those mahogany coffins with silver-plated handles were
good enough for the patriarchs and prophets, and the President of the
United States himself daren't ask anything better than a hearse with
real ostrich feathers and horses that are black as ink all over.

"I know when we laid Mr. McFadden out I said to Tim Lafferty, my
foreman, that the affection you showed in having that man buried in
style almost made me cry; but I never fully realized what woman's love
really is till you made me line Mr. Smith's coffin with white satin
and let in a French plate-glass skylight over the countenance. That
worked on my feelings so that I pretty near forgot to distribute the
gloves to the mourners. And Mr. Smith was worthy of it; he deserved
it all. He was a man all over, no difference how you looked at him;
stoutish, maybe, and took a casket that was thick through, but he was
all there, and I know when you lost him it worried you like anything.

"Now, it's none of my business, Mrs. Banger; but casting my eye over
those graves to-day, it struck me that I might fix 'em up a little,
so's they'd be more comfortable like. I think McFadden wants a few
sods over the feet, and Smith's headstone has worked a little out of
plumb. He's settled some, I s'pose. I think I'd straighten it up and
put a gas-pipe railing around Mr. Smyth. And while you're about it,
Mrs. Banger, hadn't you better buy about ten feet beyond Mr. Smith,
so's there won't be any scrouging when you bury the next one? I like
elbow-room in a cemetery lot, and I pledge you my word it'll be a
tight squeeze to get another one in there and leave room for you
besides. It can't be done so's to look anyways right, and I know you
don't want to take all four of 'em out and make 'em move up, so's to
let the rest of you in. Of course it'd cut you up, and it'd cost like
everything, too.

"When a person's dead and buried, it's the fair thing to let him
alone, and not to go hustling him around. That's my view, any way; and
I say that if I was you, sooner than put Mr. Smith on top of McFadden
and Smyth on top of Smith, I'd buy in the whole reservation and lay
'em forty feet apart.

"And how _is_ Mr. Banger? Seem in pretty good health? Do you think we
are to have him with us long? I hope so; but there's consumption in
his family, I believe. Life is mighty uncertain. We don't know what
minute we may be called. I'm a forehanded kind of man, and while his
wedding-suit was being made I just stepped into the tailor's and ran
it over with a tape-measure, so's to get some idea of his size. You'd
hardly believe it, but I've got a black walnut casket at the shop
that'll fit him as exact as if it had been built for him. It was the
luckiest thing. An odd size, too, and wider than we generally make
them. I laid it away up stairs for him, to be prepared in case of
accident. You've been so clever with me that I feel 'sif I ought to
try my best to accommodate you; and I know how women hate to bother
about such things when their grief is tearing up their feelings and
they are fretting about getting their mourning-clothes in time for the
funeral.

"And that's partly what I called to see you about, Mrs. McFa--Banger,
I mean. I've got a note to pay in the morning, and the man's pushing
me very hard; but I'm cleaned right out. Haven't got a cent. Now, it
occurred to me that maybe you'd advance me the money on Mr. Banger's
funeral if I'd offer you liberal terms. How does fifteen per cent.
strike you? and if he lives for six or seven years, I'll make it
twenty. Mind you, I offer the casket and the best trimmings, eight
carriages, the finest hearse in the county, and ice enough for
three days in the swelteringest weather in August. And I don't
mind--well--yes, I'll even agree to throw in a plain tombstone. If
you can do that to accommodate a friend, why, I'll--No? Don't want to
speculate on it? Oh, very well; I'm sorry, because I know you'd been
satisfied with the way I'd have arranged things. But no matter; I
s'pose I can go round and borrow elsewhere. Good-morning; drop in some
time, and I'll show you that casket."

As Toombs was going out he met Mr. Banger at the door. When he was
gone, Banger said,

"My dear, who is that very odd-looking man?"

And Mrs. Banger hesitated a moment, turned very red, and answered,

"That is--that man is--a--a--he is, I believe--a--a--a--a some kind of
a--an undertaker."

Then Banger looked gloomy and went up stairs to ponder. But Mrs.
Banger felt that she had a duty to perform in taking care that the lot
in the cemetery should not fall into such disorder as Mr. Toombs had
indicated, and she resolved to call upon Mr. Mix, at his monumental
marble-works, to get him to attend to the matter for her. Mr. Mix did
not know her, and his ignorance of her past history turned out to be
unfortunate. The following conversation occurred between them:

_Mrs. Banger_. "Mr. Mix, I am anxious to have my cemetery lot fixed
up--to put in new tombstones and reset the railing; and I called to
see if I could make some satisfactory arrangement with you."

_Mix_. "Certainly, madam. Tell me precisely what it is you want done."

_Mrs. B_. "Well, I'd like to have a new tombstone put over the grave
of John--my husband, you know--and to have a nice inscription cut in
it, 'Here lies John Smyth,' etc., etc. You know what I mean; the usual
way, of course, and maybe some kind of a design on the stone like a
broken rosebud or something."

_Mix_. "I understand."

_Mrs. B_. "Well, then, what'll you charge me for getting up a
headstone just like that, out of pretty good white marble, and with a
little picture of a torch upside down or a weeping angel on it, and
the name of Thomas Smith cut on it?"

_Mix_. "John Smyth, you mean."

_Mrs. B_. "No, I mean Thomas."

_Mix_. "But you said John before."

_Mrs. B_. "I know, but that was my first husband, and Thomas was my
second, and I want a new headstone for each of them. Now, it seems to
me, Mr. Mix, that where a person is buying more than one, that way,
you ought to make some reduction in the price--throw something off.
Though, of course, I want a pretty good article at all the graves. Not
anything gorgeous, but neat and tasteful and calculated to please the
eye. Mr. Smyth was not a man who was fond of show. Give him a thing
comfortable, and he was satisfied. Now, which do you think is the
prettiest, to have the name in raised letters in a straight line over
the top of the stone, or just to cut the words 'Alexander P. Smyth' in
a kind of a semicircle in sunken letters?"

_Mix_. "Did I understand you to say Alexander P.? Were you referring
to John or Thomas?"

_Mrs. B_. "Of course not. Aleck was my third. I'm not going to neglect
his grave while I'm fixing up the rest. I wish to make a complete
job of it, Mr. Mix, while I am about it, and I'm willing for you to
undertake it if you are reasonable in your charges. Now, what'll you
ask me for the lot, the kind I've described, plain but substantial,
and sunk about two feet I should think, at the head of each grave?
What'll you charge me for them--for the whole four?"

_Mix_. "Well, I'll put you in those three headstones--"

[Illustration: A TOMBSTONE CONTRACT]

_Mrs. B. "Four_ headstones, Mr. Mix, not three."

_Mix_. "Four, was it? No; there was John and Thomas and Alexander P.
That's all you said, I think. Only three."

_Mrs. B_. "Why, I want one for Adolph too, as a matter of course, the
same as the others. I thought you knew I wanted one for Adolph, one
made just like John's, only with the name different. Adolph was my
fourth husband. He died about three years after I buried Philip, and
I'm wearing mourning for him now. Now, please give me your prices for
the whole of them."

_Mix_. "Well, madam, I want to be as reasonable as I can, and I tell
you what I'll do. You give me all your work in the future, and I'll
put you in those five headstones at hardly anything above cost; say--"

_Mrs. B_. "_Four_ headstones, not five."

_Mix_. "I think you mentioned five."

_Mrs. B_. "No; only four."

_Mix_. "Less see: there was John, and Thomas and Aleck, and Adolph and
Philip."

_Mrs. B_. "Yes, but Aleck and Philip were the same one. His middle
name was Philip, and I always called him by it."

_Mix_. "Mrs. Banger, I'll be much obliged to you if you'll tell me
precisely how many husbands you have planted up in that cemetery lot.
This thing's getting a little mixed."

_Mrs. B_. "What do you mean, sir, by saying planted? I never 'planted'
anybody. It's disgraceful to use such language."

_Mix_. "It's a technical term, madam. We always use it, and I don't
see as it's going to hurt any old row of fellows named Smyth. Planted
is good enough for other men, and it's good enough for them."

_Mrs. B_. "Old row of--What d'you mean, you impudent vagabond? I
wouldn't let you put a headstone on one of my graves if you'd do it
for nothing."

Then Mrs. Banger flounced out of the shop, and Mix called after her as
she went through the door,

"Lemme know when you go for another man, and I'll throw him in a
tombstone for a wedding-present He'll want it soon."

Mrs. Banger subsequently procured the services of a person in the
city, and she regards Mr. Mix with something like detestation.

But Mrs. Banger herself is not universally beloved. Colonel Coffin
knows of one woman who despises her methods and desires her complete
repression. A short time after the election of the colonel to the
Legislature a lady called to see him at his law-office. When she had
closed the door, she sat down and said,

"Colonel, my name is Mooney. I am unmarried--a single woman. I called
to see you in reference to pushing a bill through the Legislature
for the benefit of maiden ladies such as myself. Let me direct your
attention to some extraordinary facts. Statistics tell us that in the
entire population of the world there are one-fourth more women than
men. In this country the proportion of women to men is slightly
larger. In this State there are two and one-eighth women to every man.
Now, this outrageous condition of affairs--"

"Excuse me for a moment, madam," said the colonel. "Really, the
Legislature can do nothing to improve the matter. It cannot regulate
the proportion of the sexes by law."

"I know it," replied Miss Mooney. "That is not what I am coming at. I
say that this condition of affairs is grossly unjust. If I had had the
management of it, and had been compelled to arrange that there should
be more women than men, I certainly should not have had any fractions.
There are not only two women for every man, but an eighth of a woman
besides, so that ever so many of us women would each belong to eight
different men if a fair distribution were made. How do I know, for
instance, that an eighth of me does not belong to you? Why, I don't
know it; and I say it's awful."

"If such is the case, madam," said the colonel, "I surrender all my
rights without waiting for a legislative enactment."

"Excuse me," replied Miss Mooney, "but you do not catch the drift of
my remarks. Of course, while the laws against bigamy are in existence,
some of those women can never be married, although for my part, when a
man has two wives and an eighth of another wife, I call it polygamy.
Well, now, the point I want to make is this: When more than half of us
can't marry, it's only right that the other half should have a fair
chance. There are not men enough to go round, any how, and for
gracious' sake let's make them go as far as they honestly will. Well,
then, how'll we do it? How'll we make an equitable distribution of
those men?"

"Hanged if I know, madam. The Legislature daren't meddle with them."

"I'll tell you how to do it. Listen to me. Shut down on the widows.
You hear me! Suppress the widows. Make it death for any widow to marry
again. That's my remedy; and there'll never be any justice till it's
the law. Just look at it! When a woman has been married once, she's
had more than her share of the male population; she's had her own
share and the share of another woman and an eighth. Is it right, is it
honorable, for that woman to go and marry another man, and take the
share of two more women and an eighth? I say, is it just the thing?"

"Well, on the surface it does look a little crooked."

"Crooked is not the word. Colonel Coffin, I know these widows. I
have had my eye on them. They've got a way of bursting into a man's
feelings and walking off with his affections that fills a modest woman
like me with gall and bitterness. You know Mrs. Banger? No? Well, now,
look at her, f'r instance. First she married Mr. Smyth, although what
on earth he ever saw to admire about _her_ I cannot imagine. That was
her allowance. Having obtained Smyth, oughtn't she to have stood back
and given some other woman a chance--now, oughtn't she?"

"Really, madam, I am hardly able to express an opinion."

"But no. After a while Smyth succumbed. He died. She entombed him,
crying, mind you, all the time, as if, having lost Smyth, she wanted
to die and join Smyth in the grave and in Paradise. But no sooner was
he well settled than she began to flirt with Mr. Smith, and what does
he do but yield to her blandishments and marry her? Took her, and
seemed to glory in it.

"Now, you'd've thought that she'd've been satisfied with that, when
she'd got the share of four women and a quarter. But pretty soon, as
luck would have it, Smith, died and she hustled _him_ into the grave.
And in less than a year afterward I was amazed to hear that she was
going to marry another Smyth. I was never more astonished in my life.
Positively going to annex a third man, when the supply was too short
anyway. Did you ever hear of such impudence? Did you, now?"

"I'll think it over and see if I can remember."

"Well, then, I thought for certain _now_ that woman would knock off
and give the rest of us some kind of a chance; and when Smyth was
killed by cholera and interred, it never entered my head that that
widow'd go after _another_ man. But, bless your soul! she'd hardly got
into second mourning before she began to pursue Mr. McFadden, and
got him. Now, look at it. One woman, no better'n I am, has had the
property of eight women and a half, and here I am single and getting
on in life, with the chances growing absurdly small. No civilized
country ought to tolerate such a thing. It's worse than piracy. You
may scuttle a ship or blow her up or run her against the rocks, and no
great harm is done, because timber's plenty and you can build another
one. But when one woman scuttles three men and then ties to a fourth,
what are you going to do about it? You can't go out into the woods and
chop down trees and saw them up and tack them together and build a
man. Now, can you?"

"That seems to be the common impression, anyway."

"Just so. And I want you to pass a bill through that Legislature to
make it a felony for a widow to marry again. I've drawn up a draft of
a bill and I'll leave it with you. I've made it retroactive, so that
it'll bring that woman Banger up with a short turn and send her after
Smith and the others. I don't care to marry, myself, but I want
justice. Are you married?"

"Madam, leave the bill with me and I will examine it."

"I say are you married?"

"I--I--married did you say? Oh yes. I've been married for ten years."

"Very well, then; good-morning;" and Miss Mooney withdrew.

"Thunder!" exclaimed the colonel as he shut the door. "If I'd've been
single, I believe she'd've proposed on the spot."

It is not considered likely that the Mooney anti-widow bill will be
pushed very hard in the Legislature next session.




CHAPTER XII.

_A NEW MRS. TOODLES.--POTTS' ADVENTURES_.


One evening I met Mr. Potts out upon the turnpike, taking a walk;
and I joined him. As we proceeded he became rather confidential. The
subject of the mania for collecting bric-a-brac came up; and after an
expression of opinion from me respecting the matter, Mr. Potts told
the story of his wife's fondness for that kind of thing. He said,

"My wife is the most infatuated bric-a-brac hunter I ever heard of.
She's an uncommonly fine woman about most things; loves her children;
makes splendid pies; don't fool with any of those fan-dangling ways
women have of fixing their hair; and she's an angel for temper. But
she beats Mrs. Toodles for going to auctions. She's filled my house
with the wildest mess of bric-a-brac and such stuff you ever came
across outside of a museum of natural curiosities. She's spent
more money for wrecks that wouldn't be allowed in the cellar of a
poor-house than'd keep a family in comfort for years.

"You know Scudmore, who sold out the other day? She was there, bidding
away like a millionaire. Came home with a wagon-load of things--four
albata tea-pots without lids or handles; two posts of a bedstead and
three slats; a couple of churns and fourteen second-hand sun-bonnets,
and more mournful refuse like that. Said she didn't intend to buy,
but she bid on them to run them up to help Mrs. Scudmore, and the
auctioneer knocked them down quicker'n a wink. Said it was 'Lot 47,'
and she had to take it all. And she said maybe she could make up the
sun-bonnets into bibs for the baby and use the tea-pots for preserves.
She thought she might make a pretty fair bedstead out of the posts by
propping the other ends on a chair; and she said it was a lucky thing
she was so forehanded about those churns, because she might have a
cow knocked down to her, and then she would be all ready for
butter-making. More'n likely she'll buy some old steer and bring him
home while she's rummaging around for bric-a-brac.

"When the Paxtons had their sale in January she was around there,
of course, and came home after dinner with the usual dismembered
furniture; and when I said to her, 'Emma, why under Heaven did you buy
in the mud-dredge and the sausage-stuffer?' she said she thought the
sausage-stuffer would do for a cannon for the boys on the Fourth of
July, and there was no telling if Charley wouldn't want to be a
civil engineer when he grew up, and perhaps he'd get a contract for
deepening the channel of the river; and then he'd rise up and bless
the foresight of the mother who'd bought a mud-dredge for two dollars
and saved it up for him.

"I sold that scoop on Wednesday for old iron for fifteen cents; and
I'll bang the head off of Charley if he ever goes to dredging mud or
playing cannon with the sausage-stuffer. I won't have my boys carrying
on in that way.

"Over there at Robinson's sale I believe she'd've bid on the whole
concern if I hadn't come in while she was going it. As it was,
she bought an aneroid barometer, three dozen iron skewers, a
sacking-bottom and four volumes of Eliza Cook's poems. Said she
thought those volumes were some kind of cookery-books, or she wouldn't
have bid on them, and the barometer would be valuable to tell us which
was north. _North_, mind you! She thought it indicated the points of
the compass. And yet they want to let women vote! I threw in those
skewers along with the mud-dredge, and she's used the sacking-bottom
twice to patch Charley's pants; and that's all the good we ever got
out of that auction.

"But she don't care for utility; it's simply a mania for buying
things. We haven't a stove in the house, and yet what does she do at
Murphy's sale but bid on sixty-two feet and three elbows of rusty
stovepipe and cart it home with four debilitated gingham umbrellas.
Said the umbrellas were a bargain because, by putting in new covers
and handles and a rib here and there, they would do for birthday
presents for her aunts. And the stovepipe could be sent out to the
farm to be put around the peach trees to keep the cows off. How in
thunder she was ever going to get a stovepipe around a peach tree
never crossed her mind. She is just as impractical as a baby.

"When Bailey had the auction at his insurance office, there she was,
and, sure enough, that afternoon she landed in our side yard with
Bailey's poll-parrot and a circular saw. It amused me. She wanted to
use that saw as a dinner-gong, but it was cracked, and so she has
turned it into a griddle for muffins. Bailey had taught the parrot to
swear so that I was afraid it'd demoralize Charley, and I don't mind
telling you in confidence that I killed it by putting bug-poison in a
water-cracker.

"Now, I see there's an auction advertised for Friday at Peters'; and
Peters has a pyramid of old tomato cans and bric-a-brac of that sort
piled up in his back yard. Now, you see if that woman don't bid on
those cans until she runs them up to a dollar apiece, and then come
lugging them around to our house with some extraordinary idea about
loading them up with gunpowder and selling them to the government
during the next war for bombshells. If she does, that winds the thing
up. I'm a good-natured man, but no woman shall bring home three
hundred tomato cans to my house and retain a claim upon my affections.
I'll resign first."

My feeling was that he was a little mixed in his notions about
bric-a-brac, but that he really had a grievance.

       *       *       *       *       *

Potts told me, also, that he came home very late one night recently,
and when he went up stairs his wife and children were in bed asleep.
He undressed as softly as he could, and then, as he felt thirsty, he
thought he would get a drink of water. Fortunately, he saw a gobletful
standing on the washstand, placed there for him, evidently, by Mrs.
Potts. He seized it and drank the liquid in two or three huge gulps,
but just as he was draining the goblet he gagged, dropped the glass to
the floor, where it was shivered to atoms, while he ejected something
from his mouth. He was certain that a live animal of some kind had
been in the water, and that he had nearly swallowed it. This theory
was confirmed when he saw the object which he spat out go bounding
over the floor. He pursued it, kicking a couple of chairs over while
doing so, and at last he put his foot on it and held it. Of course
Mrs. Potts was wide awake by this time and scared nearly to death, and
the baby was screaming at the top of its lungs. Mrs. Potts got out of
bed and turned up the gas, and said,

"Mr. Potts, what in the name of common sense is the matter?"

"It's a mouse!" shouted Potts, in an excited manner. "It's a mouse in
the goblet. I nearly swallowed it, but I spat it out, and now I've got
my foot on it. Get a stick and kill it, quick!"

[Illustration: MR. POTTS' MOUSE]

Mrs. Potts was at first disposed to jump on a chair and scream, for,
like all women, she feared a mouse very much more than she did a
tiger. But at Potts' solicitation she got the broom and prepared to
demolish the mouse when Potts lifted his foot. He drew back, and she
aimed a fearful blow at the object and missed it. Then, as it did not
move, she took a good look at it. Then she threw down the broom, and
after casting a look of scorn at Potts, she said,

"Come to bed, you old fool! that's not a mouse."

"What d'you mean?"

"Why, you simpleton, that's the baby's India-rubber bottle-top that
I put in the goblet to keep it sweet. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself carrying on in this manner at one o'clock in the morning."

Then Potts turned in. After this he will drink at the pump.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the course of the conversation I remarked that I had seen some men
fixing Potts' roof recently; and when I asked Potts if anything was
the matter, he said,

"My roof was shingled originally; but as it leaked, I had the shingles
removed and a gravel-and-felt roof put on. The first night after it
was finished there was a very high wind, which blew the gravel
off with such force that it broke thirty-four panes of glass in
Butterwick's house, next door. The wind also tore up the felt and blew
it over the edge, so that it hung down over the front of the house
like a curtain. Of course it made the rooms pitch-dark, and I did not
get up until one o'clock in the afternoon, but lay there wondering how
it was the night seemed so long.

"Then I had a tin roof put on, and it did well enough for a while.
But whenever there was a heavy rain or the wind was high, it used to
rattle all night with a noise like the battle of Gettysburg. At last
it began to leak, and a tinner sent a man around to find the hole. He
spent a week on that roof, and he spread half a ton of solder over
it, but still it leaked. And finally, when the snow came, the water
trickled down the wall and ran into an eight-hundred-dollar piano,
which will be closed out at a low figure to anybody who wants mahogany
kindling-wood. When the tin was removed and the new slate roof was put
on, the slates used to get loose and slide down on the head of the
hired girl while she was hanging up the clothes. And when the man came
to replace the slates, he plunged off the roof and broke four ribs
and his leg, whereupon he sued me for damages. And while the case was
pending in court a snow-storm came. The snow blew in under the slates,
and my oldest boy spent the day with some of his friends snow-balling
and sledding in the garret. Then the snow on the garret floor
melted and wet the wall-paper down stairs, so that the house became
frightfully damp, and we had to move over to the hotel for a
fortnight.

"Then I tried the 'Patent Incombustible' roofing, because the man said
it would not only keep out the rain, but it was perfectly fireproof. A
week after it was on, Butterwick's stable caught fire and flung up
a great many sparks. All the houses in the neighborhood, however,
escaped--all except mine. My roof was in flames before the stable
was done burning; and when the firemen had put it out, they got to
fighting on my front stairs, with the result that the banister was
broken to splinters, a two-inch stream was played into the parlor for
fifteen minutes, and Chief Engineer Johnson bled all over our best
carpet.

"I have the 'Impervious Cement Roof' on now, and it seems to do well
enough, excepting that it isn't impervious. It lets in the water at
eight different places; and whenever there is a shower, I have to rush
my family out on the roof to shelter it with umbrellas. I fully expect
it will explode some night, or do some other deadly and infamous
thing. I am going to put the house up at auction and live in a circus
tent."

       *       *       *       *       *

They had a big excitement over at Potts' the other day about their
cat. They heard the cat howling and screeching somewhere around the
house for two or three days, but they couldn't find her. Potts used to
get up at night, fairly maddened with the noise, and heave things out
the back window at random, hoping to hit her and discourage her. But
she never seemed to mind them; and although eventually he fired off
pretty nearly every movable thing in the house excepting the piano,
she continued to shriek and scream in a manner that was simply
appalling. At last, one day, Potts made a critical examination of the
premises, and, guided by the noise, he finally located the cat in the
tin waterspout which descends the north wall of the house. He thinks
the cat must have been skylarking on the roof some dark night and
accidentally tumbled into the spout.

Potts tried to shake her down by hammering on the spout with a stick;
but the more he pounded, the louder she yelled, and the two noises
roused the entire neighborhood and attracted the attention of the
police. Then he procured a clothes-prop; and ascending to the roof, he
endeavored to push the animal out. But the stick was not long enough
to reach her. All it was good for was to make her howl more loudly;
and it did that. At last Potts concluded to take the spout down and
coax the cat out. When he got it on the ground, he peeped in at the
end, and he could see the animal's eyes shining like balls of fire far
back in the darkness of the hole. After shaking her up for a while
without inducing her to move, he made up his mind that she must be
jammed in the pipe and unable to budge. He wanted to cut the pipe
open, but Butterwick said it would be a pity to spoil such a good
spout for a mere cat.

So Potts finally determined to blow her out with powder. He procured a
small charge; and pushing it pretty well in with a stick, he "tamped"
the end of the spout with clay and lighted the slow-match. Two minutes
later there was an explosion, and the tamping-clay flew out and struck
Butterwick with some violence in the ribs, curling him all up on the
grass by the pump. When he recovered his breath, he got up and said,

"Hang your infernal cat! It's an outrage for you to be endangering the
lives of people with your diabolical schemes for getting at a beas'
that ought to've been killed long ago."

Then Butterwick sullenly got over the fence and went home, and the cat
meanwhile kept up a yowling that made everybody's hair stand on end.

Potts said that he made a mistake in not placing the butt of the spout
against something solid. And so, after putting in a couple of pounds
of powder, he turned the spout up and rested the end upon the ground,
propping it against the pump. Then he lighted the slow-match, and the
crowd scattered. There was a loud explosion, a general distribution of
fragments of tin around the yard, and then out from the upper end of
the spout there sailed something black. It ascended; it went higher
and higher and higher, until it was a mere speck; then it came sailing
down, down, down, until it struck the earth. It was the cat, singed
off, burned to a crisp, looking as if it had been spending the summer
in Vesuvius, but apparently still active and hearty; for as soon as it
alighted it set up a wild, unearthly screech and darted off for the
woodshed, where it continued to howl until Potts went in and killed it
with his shotgun. It cost him forty dollars for a new spout, but he
says he doesn't grudge the money now that he has stopped that fiendish
noise.

       *       *       *       *       *

Potts' clock got out of order one day last winter and began to strike
wrong. That was the cause of the fearful excitement at his house on a
certain night. They were all in bed sound asleep at midnight, when the
clock suddenly struck _five_. The new hired girl, happening to
wake just as it began, heard it, and bounced out of bed under the
impression that morning had come. And as it is dark at 5 A.M. just at
that season, she did not perceive her mistake, but went down into the
kitchen and began to get breakfast.

[Illustration: SHOOTING A BURGLAR]

While she was bustling about in a pretty lively manner, Potts happened
to wake, and he heard the noise. He opened his room door cautiously
and crept softly to the head of the stairs to listen. He could
distinctly hear some one moving about the kitchen and dining-room and
apparently packing up the china. Accordingly, he went back to his room
and woke Mrs. Potts, and gave her orders to spring the rattle out
of the front window the moment she heard his gun go off. Then Potts
seized his fowling-piece; and going down to the dining-room door,
where he could hear the burglars at work, he cocked the gun, aimed it,
pushed the door open with the muzzle and fired. Instantly Mrs. Potts
sprang the rattle, and before Potts could pick up the lacerated hired
girl the front door was burst open by two policemen, who came into the
dining-room.

Seeing Potts with a gun, and a bleeding woman on the floor, they
imagined that murder had been committed, and one of them trotted Potts
off to the station-house, while the other remained to investigate
things. Just then the clock struck six. An explanation ensued from the
girl, who only had a few bird-shot in her leg, and the policeman left
to bring Potts home. He arrived at about three in the morning, just as
the clock was striking eight. When the situation was unfolded to him,
his first action was to jam the butt of his gun through the clock,
whereupon it immediately struck two hundred and forty-three, and then
Potts pitched it over the fence. He has a new clock now, and things
are working better.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Pottses celebrated their "iron wedding" one day last winter, and
they invited about one hundred and twenty guests to the wedding. Of
course each person felt compelled to bring a present of some kind; and
each one did. When Mr. and Mrs. Smith came, they handed Potts a pair
of flatirons. When Mr. and Mrs. Jones arrived, they also had a pair of
flatirons. All hands laughed at the coincidence. And there was even
greater merriment when the Browns arrived with two pairs of flatirons.
But when Mr. and Mrs. Robinson came in with another pair of flatirons,
the laughter became perfectly convulsive.

There was, however, something less amusing about it when the Thompsons
arrived with four flatirons wrapped in brown paper. And Potts' face
actually looked grave when the three Johnson girls were ushered into
the parlor carrying a flatiron apiece. Each one of the succeeding
sixty guests brought flatirons, and there was no break in the
continuity until old Mr. Curry arrived from Philadelphia with a
cast-iron cow-bell. Now, Potts has no earthly use for a cow-bell, and
at any other time he would have treated such a present with scorn. But
now he was actually grateful to Mr. Curry, and he was about to embrace
him, when the Walsinghams came in with the new kind of-double-pointed
flatirons with wooden handles. And all the rest of the guests brought
the same articles excepting Mr. Rugby, and he had with him a patent
stand for holding flatirons. Potts got madder and madder every minute,
and by the time the company had all arrived he was nearly insane with
rage; and he went up to bed, leaving his wife to entertain the guests.
In the morning they counted up the spoils, and found that they had two
hundred and thirteen flatirons, one stand and a cow-bell. And now the
Pottses have cut the Smiths and Browns and Johnsons and Thompsons
and the rest entirely, for they are convinced that there was a
preconcerted design to play a trick upon them.

[Illustration: A FLAT-IRON WEDDING]

The fact, however, is that the hardware store in the place had an
overstock of flatirons and sold them at an absurdly low figure, and
Potts' guests unanimously went for the cheapest thing they could
find, as people always do on such occasions. Potts thinks he will not
celebrate his "silver wedding."




CHAPTER XIII.

_THE RACES, AND SOME OTHER THINGS_.


There was some horse-racing over at the Blank course one day last
fall, and Butterwick attended to witness it. On his way home in the
cars in the afternoon he encountered Rev. Dr. Dox, a clergyman who
knows no more about horse-racing than a Pawnee knows about psychology.
Butterwick, however, took for granted, in his usual way, that the
doctor was familiar with the subject; and taking a seat beside him, he
remarked loudly--for the doctor is deaf--

"I was out at the Blank course to-day to see Longfellow."

"Indeed! Was he there? Where did you say he was?"

"Why, over here at the course. I saw him and General Harney, and a
lot more of 'em. He run against General Harney, and it created a big
excitement, too; but he beat the general badly, and the way the crowd
cheered him was wonderful. They say that a good deal of money changed
hands. The fact is I had a small bet upon the general myself."

"You don't mean to say that Longfellow actually _beat_ General
Harney?"

"Yes, I do! Beat him the worst kind. You'd hardly've thought it, now,
would you? I was never more surprised in my life. What's queer about
it is that he seemed just as fresh afterward as before he commenced.
Didn't faze him a bit. Why, instead of wanting to rest, he was jumping
about just as lively; and when the crowd began to push around him, he
kicked a boy in the back and doubled him all up--nearly killed him.
Oh, he's wicked! I wouldn't trust him as far as I could see him."

"This is simply astonishing," said the doctor. "I wouldn't have
believed it possible. Are you _sure_ it was Longfellow, Mr.
Butterwick?"

"Why, certainly, of course; I've seen him often before. And after
breathing a while, he and Maggie Mitchell came out, and as soon as
they stepped off he put on an extra spurt or two and led her by a neck
all around the place, and she came in puffing and blowing, and nearly
exhausted. I never took much stock in her, anyway."

"Led her by the neck! Why, this is the most scandalous conduct I ever
heard of. Mr. Butterwick, you must certainly be joking."

"I pledge you my word it's the solemn truth. I saw it myself. And
after that Judge Bullerton and General Harney, they took a turn
together, and that was the prettiest contest of the day. First the
judge'd beat the general, and then the general'd put in a big effort
and give it to the judge, and the two'd be about even for a while, and
all of a sudden the general would give a kinder jerk or two and leave
the judge just nowhere, and by the time the general passed the third
quarter the judge keeled over against the fence and gave in. They say
he broke his leg, but I don't know if that's so or not. Anyway he was
used up. If he'd passed that quarter, he might have been all right."

"What was the matter with the quarter? Wasn't it good?"

"Oh yes. But you see the judge must have lost his wind or something;
and I reckon when he tumbled it was something like a faint, you know."

"Served him right for engaging in such a brutal contest."

"Well, I dunno. Depends on how you look at such things. And when that
was over, Longfellow entered with Mattie Evelyn. He kept shooting past
her all the time, and this worried her so that she ran a little to one
side, and somehow, I du

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